Cradles of the New Philosophy—Noted Salons of this Period— Character of Mme. Geoffrin—Her Practical Education—Anecdotes of her Husband—Composition of her Salon—Its Insidious Influence—Her Journey to Warsaw—Her Death
During the latter half of the eighteenth century the center of social life was no longer the court, but the salons. They had multiplied indefinitely, and, representing every shade of taste and thought, had reached the climax of their power as schools of public opinion, as well as their highest perfection in the arts and amenities of a brilliant and complex society. There was a slight reaction from the reckless vices and follies of the regency. If morals were not much better, manners were a trifle more decorous. Though the great world did not take the tone of stately elegance and rigid propriety which it had assumed under the rule of Mme. de Maintenon, it was superficially polished, and a note of thoughtfulness was added. Affairs in France had taken too serious an aspect to be ignored, and the theories of the philosophers were among the staple topics of conversation; indeed, it was the great vogue of the philosophers that gave many of the most noted social centers their prestige and their fame. It is not the salons of the high nobility that suggest themselves as the typical ones of this age. It is those which were animated by the habitual presence of the radical leaders of French thought. Economic questions and the rights of man were discussed as earnestly in these brilliant coteries as matters of faith and sentiment, of etiquette and morals, had been a hundred years before. Such subjects were forced upon them by the inexorable logic of events; and fashion, which must needs adapt itself in some measure to the world over which it rules, took them up. If the drawing rooms of the seventeenth century were the cradles of refined manners and a new literature, those of the eighteenth were literally the cradles of a new philosophy.
The practical growth and spread of French philosophy was too closely interwoven with the history of the salons not to call for a word here. Its innovations were faintly prefigured in the coterie of Mme. de Lambert, where it colored almost imperceptibly the literary and critical discussions. But its foundations were more firmly laid in the drawing room of Mme. de Tencin, where the brilliant wit and radical theories of Montesquieu, as well as the pronounced materialism of Helvetius, found a congenial atmosphere. Though the mingled romance and satire of the "Persian Letters," with their covert attack upon the state and society, raised a storm of antagonism, they called out a burst of admiration as well. The original and aggressive thought of men like Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, and Diderot, with its diversity of shading, but with the cardinal doctrine of freedom and equality pervading it all, had found a rapidly growing audience. It no longer needed careful nursing, in the second half of the century. It had invaded the salons of the haute noblesse, and was discussed even in the anterooms of the court. Mme. de Pompadour herself stole away from her tiresome lover-king to the freethinking coterie that met in her physician's apartments in the Entresol at Versailles, and included the greatest iconoclasts of the age. If she had any misgivings as to the outcome of these discussions, they were fearlessly cast aside with "Apres Nous le Deluge." "In the depth of her heart she was with us," said Voltaire when she died.
There were clairvoyant spirits who traced the new theories to their logical results. Mme. du Deffand speaks with prophetic vision of the reasoners and beaux esprits "who direct the age and lead it to its ruin." There were conservative women, too, who used their powerful influence against them. It was in the salon of the delicate but ardent young Princesse de Robecq that Palissot was inspired to write the satirical comedy of "The Philosophers," in which Rousseau was represented as entering on all fours, browsing a lettuce, and the Encyclopedists were so mercilessly ridiculed. This spirited and heroic daughter-in-law of the Duchesse de Luxembourg, the powerful patroness of Rousseau, was hopelessly ill at the time, and, in a caustic reply to the clever satire, the abbe Morellet did not spare the beautiful invalid who desired for her final consolation only to see its first performance and be able to say, "Now, Lord, thou lettest thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen vengeance." The cruel attack was thought to have hastened her death, and the witty abbe was sent to the Bastille; but he came out in two months, went away for a time, and returned a greater hero than ever. There is a picture, full of pathetic significance, which represents the dying princess on her pillow, crowned with a halo of sanctity, as she devotes her last hours to the defense of the faith she loves. One is reminded of the sweet and earnest souls of Port Royal; but her vigorous protest, which furnished only a momentary target for the wit of the philosophers, was lost in the oncoming wave of skepticism.
The vogue of these men received its final stamp in the admiring patronage of the greatest sovereigns in Europe. Voltaire had his well-known day of power at the court of Frederick the Great. Grimm and Diderot, too, were honored guests of that most liberal of despots, and discussed their novel theories in familiar fashion with Catherine II, at St. Petersburg. The reply of this astute and clear-sighted empress to the eloquent plea of Diderot may be commended for its wisdom to the dreamers and theorists of today.
"I have heard, with the greatest pleasure, all that your brilliant intellect has inspired you to say; but with all your grand principles, which I comprehend very well, one makes fine books and bad business. You forget in all your plans of reform the difference of our two positions. You work only on paper, which permits everything; it is quite smooth and pliant, and opposes no obstacles to your imagination nor to your pen; while I, poor empress, I work upon the human cuticle, which is quite sensitive and irritable."
It is needless to say that the men so honored by sovereigns were petted in the salons, in spite of their disfavor with the Government. They dined, talked, posed as lions or as martyrs, and calmly bided their time. The persecution of the Encyclopedists availed little more than satire had done, in stemming the slowly rising tide of public opinion. Utopian theories took form in the ultra circles, were insidiously disseminated in the moderate ones, and were lightly discussed in the fashionable ones. Men who talked, and women who added enthusiasm, were alike unconscious of the dynamic force of the material with which they were playing.
Of the salons which at this period had a European reputation, the most noted were those of Mme. du Deffand, Mlle. de Lespinasse, and Mme. Geoffrin. The first was the resort of the more intellectual of the noblesse, as well as the more famous of the men of letters. The two worlds mingled here; the tone was spiced with wit and animated with thought, but it was essentially aristocratic. The second was the rallying point of the Encyclopedists and much frequented by political reformers, but the rare gifts of its hostess attracted many from the great world. The last was moderate in tone, though philosophical and thoroughly cosmopolitan. Sainte-Beuve pronounced it "the most complete, the best organized, and best conducted of its time; the best established since the foundation of the salons; that is, since the Hotel de Rambouillet."
"Do you know why La Geoffrin comes here? It is to see what she can gather from my inventory," remarked Mme. de Tencin on her death bed. She understood thoroughly her world, and knew that her friend wished to capture the celebrities who were in the habit of meeting in her salon. But she does not seem to have borne her any ill will for her rather premature schemes, as she gave her a characteristic piece of advice: "Never refuse any advance of friendship," she said; "for, if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you. Everything is of service in a menage if one knows how to use his tools." Mme. Geoffrin was an apt pupil in the arts of diplomacy, and the key to her remarkable social success may be found in her ready assimilation of the worldly wisdom of her sage counselor. But to this she added a far kinder heart and a more estimable character.
Of all the women who presided over famous salons, Mme. Geoffrin had perhaps the least claim to intellectual preeminence. The secret of her power must have lain in some intangible quality that has failed to be perpetuated in any of her sayings or doings. A few commonplace and ill-spelled letters, a few wise or witty words, are all the direct record she has left of herself. Without rank, beauty, youth, education, or remarkable mental gifts of a sort that leave permanent traces, she was the best representative of the women of her time who held their place in the world solely through their skill in organizing and conducting a salon. She was in no sense a luminary; and conscious that she could not shine by her own light, she was bent upon shining by that of others. But, in a social era so brilliant, even this implied talent of a high order. A letter to the Empress of Russia, in reply to a question concerning her early education, throws a ray of light upon her youth and her peculiar training.
"I lost my father and mother," she writes, "in the cradle. I was brought up by an aged grandmother, who had much intelligence and a well-balanced head. She had very little education; but her mind was so clear, so ready, so active, that it never failed her; it served always in the place of knowledge. She spoke so agreeably of the things she did not know that no one wished her to understand them better; and when her ignorance was too visible, she got out of it by pleasantries which baffled the pedants who tried to humiliate her. She was so contented with her lot that she looked upon knowledge as a very useless thing for a woman. She said: 'I have done without it so well that I have never felt the need of it. If my granddaughter is stupid, learning will make her conceited and insupportable; if she has talent and sensibility, she will do as I have done—supply by address and with sentiment what she does not know; when she becomes more reasonable, she will learn that for which she has the most aptitude, and she will learn it very quickly.' She taught me in my childhood simply to read, but she made me read much; she taught me to think by making me reason; she taught me to know men by making me say what I thought of them, and telling me also the opinion she had formed. She required me to render her an account of all my movements and all my feelings, correcting them with so much sweetness and grace that I never concealed from her anything that I thought or felt; my internal life was as visible as my external. My education was continual."
The daughter of a valet de chambre of the Duchess of Burgundy, who gave her a handsome dowry, Marie Therese Rodet became, at fourteen, the wife of a lieutenant-colonel of the National Guard and a rich manufacturer of glass. Her husband did not count for much among the distinguished guests who in later years frequented her salon, and his part in her life seems to have consisted mainly in furnishing the money so essential to her success, and in looking carefully after the interests of the menage. It is related that some one gave him a history to read, and when he called for the successive volumes the same one was always returned to him. Not observing this, he found the work interesting, but "thought the author repeated a little." He read across the page a book printed in two columns, remarking that "it seemed to be very good, but a trifle abstract." One day a visitor inquired for the white-haired old gentleman who was in the habit of sitting at the head of the table. "That was my husband," replied Mme. Geoffrin; "he is dead."
But if her marriage was not an ideal one, it does not appear that it was unhappy. Perhaps her bourgeois birth and associations saved her youth from the domestic complications which were so far the rule in the great world as to have, in a measure, its sanction. At all events her life was apparently free from the shadows that rested upon many of her contemporaries.
"Her character was a singular one," writes Marmontel, who lived for ten years in her house, "and difficult to understand or paint, because it was all in half-tints and shades; very decided nevertheless, but without the striking traits by which one's nature distinguishes and defines itself. She was kind, but had little sensibility; charitable, without any of the charms of benevolence; eager to aid the unhappy, but without seeing them, for fear of being moved; a sure, faithful, even officious friend, but timid and anxious in serving others, lest she should compromise her credit or her repose. She was simple in her taste, her dress, and her furniture, but choice in her simplicity, having the refinements and delicacies of luxury, but nothing of its ostentation nor its vanity; modest in her air, carriage, and manners, but with a touch of pride, and even a little vainglory. Nothing flattered her more than her intercourse with the great. At their houses she rarely saw them,—indeed she was not at her ease there,—but she knew how to attract them to her own by a coquetry subtly flattering; and in the easy, natural, half-respectful and half-familiar air with which she received them, I thought I saw remarkable address."
In a woman of less tact and penetration, this curious vein of hidden vanity would have led to pretension. But Mme. Geoffrin was preeminently gifted with that fine social sense which is apt to be only the fruit of generations of culture. With her it was innate genius. She was mistress of the amiable art of suppressing herself, and her vanity assumed the form of a gracious modesty. "I remain humble, but with dignity," she writes to a friend; "that is, in depreciating myself I do not suffer others to depreciate me." She had the instinct of the artist who knows how to offset the lack of brilliant gifts by the perfection of details, the modesty that disarms criticism, and a rare facility in the art of pleasing.
There was an air of refinement and simple elegance in her personality that commanded respect. Tall and dignified, with her silvery hair concealed by her coif, she combined a noble presence with great kindliness of manner. She usually wore somber colors and fine laces, for which she had great fondness. Her youth was long past when she came before the world, and that sense of fitness which always distinguished her led her to accept her age seriously and to put on its hues. The "dead-leaf mantle" of Mme. de Maintenon was worn less severely perhaps, but it was worn without affectation. Diderot gives us a pleasant glimpse of her at Grandval, where they were dining with Baron d'Holbach. "Mme. Geoffrin was admirable," he wrote to Mlle. Volland. "I remark always the noble and quiet taste with which this woman dresses. She wore today a simple stuff of austere color, with large sleeves, the smoothest and finest linen, and the most elegant simplicity throughout."
In her equanimity and her love of repose she was a worthy disciple of Fontenelle. She carefully avoided all violent passions and all controversies. To her lawyer, who was conducting a suit that worried her, she said, "Wind up my case. Do they want my money? I have some, and what can I do with money better than to buy tranquillity with it?" This aversion to annoyance often reached the proportions of a very amiable selfishness. "She has the habit of detesting those who are unhappy," said the witty Abbe Galiani, "for she does not wish to be so, even by the sight of the unhappiness of others. She has an impressionable heart; she is old; she is well; she wishes to preserve her health and her tranquillity. As soon as she learns that I am happy she will love me to folly."
But her generosity was exceptional. "Donner et pardonner" was her device. Many anecdotes are related of her charitable temper. She had ordered two marble vases of Bouchardon. One was broken before reaching her. Learning that the man who broke it would lose his place if it were known, and that he had a family of four children, she immediately sent word to the atelier that the sculptor was not to be told of the loss, adding a gift of twelve francs to console the culprit for his fright. She often surprised her impecunious friends with the present of some bit of furniture she thought they needed, or an annuity delicately bestowed. "I have assigned to you fifteen thousand francs," she said one day to the Abbe Morellet; "do not speak of it and do not thank me." "Economy is the source of independence and liberty" was one of her mottoes, and she denied herself the luxuries of life that she might have more to spend in charities. But she never permitted any one to compromise her, and often withheld her approbation where she was free with her purse. To do all the good possible and to respect all the convenances were her cardinal principles. Marmontel was sent to the Bastille under circumstances that were rather creditable than otherwise; but it was a false note, and she was never quite the same to him afterwards. She wept at her own injustice, schemed for his election to the Academy, and scolded him for his lack of diplomacy; but the little cloud was there. When the Sorbonne censured his Belisarius her friendship could no longer bear the strain, and, though still received at her dinners, he ceased to live in her house.
Her dominant passion seems to have been love of consideration, if a calm and serene, but steadily persistent, purpose can be called a passion. No trained diplomatist ever understood better the world with which he had to deal, or managed more adroitly to avoid small antagonisms. It was her maxim not to create jealousy by praising people, nor irritation by defending them. If she wished to say a kind word, she dwelt upon good qualities that were not contested. She prided herself upon ruling her life by reason. Sainte-Beuve calls her the Fontenelle of women, but it was Fontenelle tempered with a heart.
This "foster-mother of philosophers" evidently wished to make sure of her own safety, however matters might turn out in the next world. She had a devotional vein, went to mass privately, had a seat at the Church of the Capucins, and an apartment for retreat in a convent. During her last illness the Marquise de la Ferte-Imbault, who did not love her mother's freethinking friends, excluded them, and sent for a confessor. Mme. Geoffrin submitted amiably, and said, smiling, "My daughter is like Godfrey of Bouillon; she wishes to defend my tomb against the infidels."
Into the composition of her salon she brought the talent of an artist. We have a glimpse of her in 1748 through a letter from Montesquieu. She was then about fifty, and had gathered about her a more or less distinguished company, which was enlarged after the death of Mme. de Tencin, in the following year. She gave dinners twice a week—one on Monday for artists, among whom were Vanloo, Vernet, and Boucher; and one on Wednesday for men of letters. As she believed that women were apt to distract the conversation, only one was usually invited to dine with them. Mlle. de Lespinasse, the intellectual peer and friend of these men, sat opposite her, and aided in conducting the conversation into agreeable channels. The talent of Mme. Geoffrin seems to have consisted in telling a story well, in a profound knowledge of people, ready tact, and the happy art of putting every one at ease. She did not like heated discussions nor a too pronounced expression of opinion. "She was willing that the philosophers should remodel the world," says one of her critics, "on condition that the kingdom of Diderot should come without disorder or confusion." But though she liked and admired this very free and eloquent Diderot, he was too bold and outspoken to have a place at her table. Helvetius, too, fell into disfavor after the censure which his atheistic DE L'esprit brought upon him; and Baron d'Holbach was too apt to overstep the limits at which the hostess interfered with her inevitable "Voila qui est bien." Indeed, she assumed the privilege of her years to scold her guests if they interfered with the general harmony or forgot any of the amenities. But her scoldings were very graciously received as a slight penalty for her favor, and more or less a measure of her friendship. She graded her courtesies with fine discrimination, and her friends found the reflection of their success or failure in her manner of receiving them. Her keen, practical mind pierced every illusion with merciless precision. She defined a popular abbe who posed for a bel esprit, as a "fool rubbed all over with wit." Rulhiere had read in her salon a work on Russia, which she feared might compromise him, and she offered him a large sum of money to throw it into the fire. The author was indignant at such a reflection upon his courage and honor, and grew warmly eloquent upon the subject. She listened until he had finished, then said quietly, "How much more do you want, M. Rulhiere?"
The serene poise of a character without enthusiasms and without illusions is very well illustrated by a letter to Mme. Necker. After playfully charging her with being always infatuated, never cool and reserved, she continues:
"Do you know, my pretty one, that your exaggerated praises confound me, instead of pleasing and flattering me? I am always afraid that your giddiness will evaporate. You will then judge me to be so different from your preconceived opinion that you will punish me for your own mistake, and allow me no merit at all. I have my virtues and my good qualities, but I have also many faults. Of these I am perfectly well aware, and every day I try to correct them.
"My dear friend, I beg of you to lessen your excessive admiration. I assure you that you humiliate me; and that is certainly not your intention. The angels think very little about me, and I do not trouble myself about them. Their praise or their blame is indifferent to me, for I shall not come in their way; but what I do desire is that you should love me, and that you should take me as you find me."
Again she assumes her position of mentor and writes: "How is it possible not to answer the kind and charming letter I have received from you? But still I reply only to tell you that it made me a little angry. I see that it is impossible to change anything in your uneasy, restless, and at the same time weak character."
Horace Walpole, who met her during his first visit to Paris, and before his intimacy with Mme. du Deffand had colored his opinions, has left a valuable pen-portrait of Mme. Geoffrin. In a letter to Gray, in 1766, he writes:
"Mme. Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with, great quickness in discovering characters, penetrating and going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness, seldom a favorable one. She exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility, great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little arts and offices of friendship, and by a freedom and severity which seem to be her sole end for drawing a concourse to her. She has little taste and less knowledge, but protects artisans and authors, and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her dependents. In short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and punishments."
Later, when he was less disinterested, perhaps, he writes to another friend: "Mme. du Deffand hates the philosophers, so you must give them up to her. She and Mme. Geoffrin are no friends; so if you go thither, don't tell her of it—Indeed you would be sick of that house whither all the pretended beaux esprits and false savants go, and where they are very impertinent and dogmatic."
The real power of this woman may be difficult to define, but a glance at her society reveals, at least partly, its secret. Nowhere has the glamour of a great name more influence than at Paris. A few celebrities form a nucleus of sufficient attraction to draw all the world, if they are selected with taste and discrimination. After the death of Fontenelle, d'Alembert, always witty, vivacious, and original, in spite of the serious and exact nature of his scientific studies, was perhaps the leading spirit of this salon. Among its constant habitues were Helvetius, who put his selfishness into his books, reserving for his friends the most amiable and generous of tempers; Marivaux, the novelist and dramatist, whose vanity rivaled his genius, but who represented only the literary spirit, and did not hesitate to ridicule his companions the philosophers; the caustic but brilliant and accomplished Abbe Morellet, who had "his heart in his head and his head in his heart;" the severe and cheerful Mairan, mathematician, astronomer, physician, musical amateur, and member of two academies, whose versatile gifts and courtly manners gave him as cordial a welcome in the exclusive salon at the Temple as among his philosophical friends; the gay young Marmontel, who has left so clear and simple a picture of this famous circle and its gentle hostess; Grimm, who combined the SAVANT and the courtier; Saint-Lambert, the delicate and scholarly poet; Thomas, grave and thoughtful, shining by his character and intellect, but forgetting the graces which were at that time so essential to brilliant success; the eloquent Abbe Raynal; and the Chevalier de Chastellux, so genial, so sympathetic, and so animated. To these we may add Galiani, the smallest, the wittiest, and the most delightful of abbes, whose piercing insight and Machiavellian subtlety lent a piquant charm to the stories with which for hours he used to enliven this choice company; Caraccioli, gay, simple, ingenuous, full of Neapolitan humor, rich in knowledge and observation, luminous with intelligence and sparkling with wit; and the Comte de Crentz, the learned and versatile Swedish minister, to whom nature had "granted the gift of expressing and painting in touches of fire all that had struck his imagination or vividly seized his soul." Hume, Gibbon, Walpole, indeed every foreigner of distinction who visited Paris, lent to this salon the eclat of their fame, the charm of their wit, or the prestige of their rank. It was such men as these who gave it so rare a fascination and so lasting a fame.
A strong vein of philosophy was inevitable, though in this circle of diplomats and litterateurs there were many counter-currents of opinion. It was her consummate skill in blending these diverse but powerful elements, and holding them within harmonious limits, that made the reputation of the autocratic hostess. The friend of savants and philosophers, she had neither read nor studied books, but she had studied life to good purpose. Though superficial herself, she had the delicate art of putting every one in the most advantageous light by a few simple questions or words. It was one of her maxims that "the way not to get tired of people is to talk to them of themselves; at the same time, it is the best way to prevent them from getting tired of you." Perhaps Mme. Necker was thinking of her when she compared certain women in conversation to "light layers of cotton wool in a box packed with porcelain; we do not pay much attention to them, but if they were taken away everything would be broken."
Mme. Geoffrin was always at home in the evening, and there were simple little suppers to which a few women were invited. The fare was usually little more than "a chicken, some spinach, and omelet." Among the most frequent guests were the charming, witty, and spirituelle Comtesse d'Egmont, daughter of the Duc de Richelieu, who added to the vivacious and elegant manners of her father an indefinable grace of her own, and a vein of sentiment that was doubtless deepened by her sad little romance; the Marquise de Duras, more dignified and discreet; and the beautiful Comtesse de Brionne, "a Venus who resembled Minerva." These women, with others who came there, were intellectual complements of the men; some of them gay and not without serious faults, but adding beauty, rank, elegance, and the delicate tone of esprit which made this circle so famous that it was thought worth while to have its sayings and doings chronicled at Berlin and St. Petersburg. Perhaps its influence was the more insidious and far reaching because of its polished moderation. The "let us be agreeable" of Mme. Geoffrin was a potent talisman.
Among the guests at one time was Stanislas Poniatowski, afterwards King of Poland. Hearing that he was about to be imprisoned by his creditors, Mme. Geoffrin came forward and paid his debts. "When I make a statue of friendship, I shall give it your features," he said to her; "this divinity is the mother of charity." On his elevation to the throne he wrote to her, "Maman, your son is king. Come and see him." This led to her famous journey when nearly seventy years of age. It was a series of triumphs at which no one was more surprised than herself, and they were all due, she modestly says, "to a few mediocre dinners and some petits soupers." One can readily pardon her for feeling flattered, when the emperor alights from his carriage on the public promenade at Vienna and pays her some pretty compliments, "just as if he had been at one of our little Wednesday suppers." There is a charm in the simple naivete with which she tells her friends how cordially Maria Theresa receives her at Schonbrunn, and she does not forget to add that the empress said she had the most beautiful complexion in the world. She repeats quite naturally, and with a slight touch of vanity perhaps, the fine speeches made to her by the "adorable Prince Galitzin" and Prince Kaunitz, "the first minister in Europe," both of whom entertained her. But she would have been more than a woman to have met all this honor with indifference. No wonder she believes herself to be dreaming. "I am known here much better than in the Rue St. Honore," she writes, "and in a fashion the most flattering. My journey has made an incredible sensation for the last fifteen days." To be sure, she spells badly for a woman who poses as the friend of litterateurs and savants, and says very little about anything that does not concern her own fame and glory. But she does not cease to remember her friends, whom she "loves, if possible, better than ever." Nor does she forget to send a thousand caresses to her kitten.
A messenger from Warsaw meets her with everything imaginable that can add to the comfort and luxury of her journey, and on reaching there she finds a room fitted up for her like her own boudoir in the Rue St. Honore. She accepts all this consideration with great modesty and admirable good sense. "This tour finished," she writes to d'Alembert, "I feel that I shall have seen enough of men and things to be convinced that they are everywhere about the same. I have my storehouse of reflections and comparisons well furnished for the rest of my life. All that I have seen since leaving my Penates makes me thank God for having been born French and a private person."
The peculiar charm which attracted such rare and marked attentions to a woman not received at her own court, and at a time when social distinctions were very sharply defined, eludes analysis, but it seems to have lain largely in her exquisite sense of fitness, her excellent judgment, her administrative talent, the fine tact and penetration which enabled her to avoid antagonism, an instinctive knowledge of the art of pleasing, and a kind but not too sensitive heart. These qualities are not those which appeal to the imagination or inspire enthusiasm. We find in her no spark of that celestial flame which gives intellectual distinction. In her amiability there seems to be a certain languor of the heart. Her kindness has a trace of calculation, and her friendship of self-consciousness. Of spontaneity she has none. "She loved nothing passionately, not even virtue," says one of her critics. There was a certain method in her simplicity. She carried to perfection the art of savoir vivre, and though she claimed freedom of thought and action, it was always strictly within conventional limits.
She suffered the fate of all celebrities in being occasionally attacked. The role assigned to her in the comedy of "The Philosophers" was not a flattering one, and some criticisms of Montesquieu wounded her so deeply that she succeeded in having them suppressed. She did not escape the shafts of envy, nor the sneers of the grandes dames who did not relish her popularity. But these were only spots on the surface of a singularly brilliant career. Calm, reposeful, charitable, without affectation or pretension, but not untouched by ennui, the malady of her time, she held her position to the end of a long life which closed in 1777.
"Alas," said d'Alembert, who had been in the habit of spending his mornings with Mlle. de Lespinasse until her death, and his evenings with Mme. Geoffrin, "I have neither evenings nor mornings left."
"She has made for fifty years the charm of her society," said the Abbe Morellet. "She has been constantly, habitually virtuous and benevolent." Her salon brought authors and artists into direct relation with distinguished patrons, especially foreigners, and thus contributed largely to the spread of French art and letters. It was counted among "the institutions of the eighteenth century."
Mme. de Graffigny—Baron d'Holbach—Mme. d'Epinay's Portrait of Herself—Mlle. Quinault—Rousseau—La Chevrette—Grimm—Diderot—The Abbe Galiani—Estimate of Mme. d'Epinay
A few of the more radical and earnest of the philosophers rarely, if ever, appeared at the table of Mme. Geoffrin. They would have brought too much heat to this company, which discussed everything in a light and agreeable fashion. Perhaps, too, these free and brilliant spirits objected to the leading-strings which there held every one within prescribed limits. They could talk more at their ease at the weekly dinners of Baron d'Holbach, in the salons of Mme. Helvetius, Mme. de Marchais, or Mme. de Graffigny, in the Encyclopedist coterie of Mlle. de Lespinasse, or in the liberal drawing room of Mme. d'Epinay, who held a more questionable place in the social world, but received much good company, Mme. Geoffrin herself included.
Mme. de Graffigny is known mainly as a woman of letters whose life had in it many elements of tragedy. Her youth was passed in the brilliant society of the little court at Luneville. She was distantly related to Mme. du Chatelet, and finally took refuge from the cruelties of a violent and brutal husband in the "terrestrial paradise" at Cirey. La belle Emilie was moved to sympathy, and Voltaire wept at the tale of her sorrows. A little later she became a victim to the poet's sensitive vanity. He accused her of sending to a friend a copy of his "Pucello," an unfinished poem which was kept under triple lock, though parts of it had been read to her. Her letters were opened, her innocent praises were turned against her, there was a scene, and Cirey was a paradise no more. She came to Paris, ill, sad, and penniless. She wrote "Les Lettres d'une Peruvienne" and found herself famous. She wrote "Cenie," which was played at the Comedie Francaise, and her success was established. Then she wrote another drama. "She read it to me," says one of her friends; "I found it bad; she found me ill-natured. It was played; the public died of ennui and the author of chagrin." "I am convinced that misfortune will follow me into paradise," she said. At all events, it seems to have followed her to the entrance.
Her salon was more or less celebrated. The freedom of the conversations may be inferred from the fact that Helvetius gathered there the materials for his "De l'Esprit," a book condemned by the Pope, the Parliament, and the Sorbonne. It was here also that he found his charming wife, a niece of Mme. de Graffigny, and the light of her house as afterwards of his own.
A more permanent interest is attached to the famous dinners of Baron d'Holbach, where twice a week men like Diderot, Helvetius, Grimm, Marmontel, Duclos, the Abbe Galiani and for a time Buffon and Rousseau, met in an informal way to enjoy the good cheer and good wines of this "maitre d'hotel of philosophy," and discuss the affairs of the universe. The learned and free-thinking baron was agreeable, kind, rich, and lavish in his hospitality, but without pretension. "He was a man simply simple," said Mme. Geoffrin. We have many pleasant glimpses of his country place at Grandval, with its rich and rare collections, its library, its pictures, its designs, and of the beautiful wife who turned the heads of some of the philosophers, whom, as a rule, she did not like overmuch, though she received them so graciously. "We dine well and a long time," wrote Diderot. "We talk of art, of poetry, of philosophy, and of love, of the greatness and vanity of our own enterprises... Of gods and kings, of space and time, of death and of life."
"They say things to make a thunderbolt strike the house a hundred times, if it struck for that," said the Abbe Morellet.
Among the few women admitted to these dinners was Mme. d'Epinay, for whom d'Holbach, as well as his amiable wife, always entertained the warmest friendship. This woman, whose position was not assured enough to make people overlook her peculiar and unfortunate domestic complications, has told the story of her own life in her long and confidential correspondence with Grimm, Galiani, and Voltaire. The senseless follies of a cruel and worthless husband, who plunged her from great wealth into extreme poverty, and of whom Diderot said that "he had squandered two millions without saying a good word or doing a good action," threw her into intimate relations with Grimm; this brought her into the center of a famous circle. Her letters give us a clear but far from flattering reflection of the manners of the time. She unveils the bare and hard facts of her own experience, the secret workings of her own soul. The picture is not a pleasant one, but it is full of significance to the moralist, and furnishes abundant matter for psychological study.
The young girl, who had entered upon the scene about 1725, under the name of Louise Florence Petronille-Tardieu d'Esclavelles, was married at twenty to her cousin. It seems to have been really a marriage of love; but the weak and faithless M. d'Epinay was clearly incapable of truth or honor, and the torturing process by which the confiding young wife was disillusioned, the insidious counsel of a false and profligate friend, with the final betrayal of a tender and desolate heart, form a chapter as revolting as it is pathetic. The fresh, lively, pure-minded, sensitive girl, whose intellect had been fed on Rollin's history and books of devotion, who feared the dissipations of the gay world and shrank with horror from the rouge which her frivolous husband compelled her to put on, learned her lesson rapidly in the school of suffering.
At thirty she writes of herself, after the fashion of the pen portraits of the previous century:
"I am not pretty; yet I am not plain. I am small, thin, very well formed. I have the air of youth, without freshness, but noble, sweet, lively, spirituelle, and interesting. My imagination is tranquil. My mind is slow, just, reflective, and inconsequent. I have vivacity, courage, firmness, elevation, and excessive timidity. I am true without being frank. Timidity often gives me the appearance of dissimulation and duplicity; but I have always had the courage to confess my weakness, in order to destroy the suspicion of a vice which I have not. I have the finesse to attain my end and to remove obstacles; but I have none to penetrate the purposes of others. I was born tender and sensible, constant and no coquette. I love retirement, a life simple and private; nevertheless I have almost always led one contrary to my taste. Bad health, and sorrows sharp and repeated, have given a serious cast to my character, which is naturally very gay."
Her first entrance into the world in which wit reigned supreme was in the free but elegant salon of Mlle. Quinault, an actress of the Comedie Francaise, who had left the stage, and taking the role of a femme d'esprit, had gathered around her a distinguished and fashionable coterie. This woman, who had received a decoration for a fine motet she had composed for the queen's chapel, who was loved and consulted by Voltaire, and who was the best friend of d'Alembert after the death of Mlle. de Lespinasse, represented the genius of esprit and finesse. She was the companion of princes, the adoration of princesses, the oracle of artists and litterateurs, the model of elegance, and the embodiment of social success. It did not matter much that the tone of her salon was lax; it was fashionable. "It distilled dignity, la convenance, and formality," says the Marquise de Crequi, who relates an anecdote that aptly illustrates the glamour which surrounded talent at that time. She was taken by her grandmother to see Mlle. Quinault, and by some chance mistook her for Mlle. de Vertus, who was so much flattered by her innocent error that she left her forty thousand francs, when she died a few months later.
Mme. d'Epinay was delighted to find herself in so brilliant a world, and was greatly fascinated by its wit, though she was not sure that those who met there did not "feel too much the obligation of having it." But she caught the spirit, and transferred it, in some degree, to her own salon, which was more literary than fashionable. Here Francueil presents "a sorry devil of an author who is as poor as Job, but has wit and vanity enough for four." This is Rousseau, the most conspicuous figure in the famous coterie. "He is a man to whom one should raise altars," wrote Mme. d'Epinay. "And the simplicity with which he relates his misfortunes! I have still a pitying soul. It is frightful to imagine such a man in misery." She fitted up for him the Hermitage, and did a thousand kind things which entitled her to a better return than he gave. There is a pleasant moment when we find him the center of an admiring circle at La Chevrette, falling madly in love with her clever and beautiful sister-in-law the Comtesse d'Houdetot, writing "La Nouvelle Heloise" under the inspiration of this passion, and dreaming in the lovely promenades at Montmorency, quite at peace with the world. But the weeping philosopher, who said such fine things and did such base ones, turned against his benefactress and friend for some imaginary offense, and revenged himself by false and malicious attacks upon her character. The final result was a violent quarrel with the whole circle of philosophers, who espoused the cause of Mme. d'Epinay. This little history is interesting, as it throws so much light upon the intimate relations of some of the greatest men of the century. Behind the perpetual round of comedies, readings, dinners, music, and conversation, there is a real comedy of passion, intrigue, jealousy, and hidden misery that destroys many illusions.
Mme. d'Epinay has been made familiar to us by Grimm, Galiani, Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire. Perhaps, on the whole, Voltaire has given us the most agreeable impression. She was ill of grief and trouble, and had gone to Geneva to consult the famous Tronchin when she was thrown into more or less intimacy with the Sage of Ferney. He invited her to dinner immediately upon her arrival. "I was much fatigued, besides having confessed and received communion the evening before. I did not find it fitting to dine with Voltaire two days afterward," writes this curiously sensitive friend of the free-thinkers. He addresses her as ma belle philosophe, speaks of her as "an eagle in a cage of gauze," and praises in verse her philosophy, her esprit, her heart, and her "two great black eyes." He weeps at her departure, tells her she is "adored at Delices, adored at Paris, adored present and absent." But "the tears of a poet do not always signify grief," says Mme. d'Epinay.
There is a second period in her life, when she introduces us again to the old friends who always sustained her, and to many new ones. The world that meets in her salon later is much the same as that which dines with Baron d'Holbach. To measure its attractions one must recall the brilliancy and eloquence of Diderot; the wit, the taste, the learning, the courtly accomplishments of Grimm; the gaiety and originality of d'Holbach, who had "read everything and forgotten nothing interesting;" the sparkling conversation of the most finished and scholarly diplomats in Europe, many of whom we have already met at the dinners of Mme. Geoffrin. They discuss economic questions, politics, religion, art, literature, with equal freedom and ardor. They are as much divided on the merits of Gluck's "Armida" and Piccini's "Roland" as upon taxes, grains, and the policy of the government. The gay little Abbe Galiani brings perennial sunshine with the inexhaustible wit and vivacity that lights his clear and subtle intellect. "He is a treasure on rainy days," says Diderot. "If they made him at the toy shops everybody would want one for the country." "He was the nicest little harlequin that Italy has produced," says Marmontel, "but upon the shoulders of this harlequin was the head of a Machiavelli. Epicurean in his philosophy and with a melancholy soul, seeing everything on the ridiculous side, there was nothing either in politics or morals apropos of which he had not a good story to tell, and these stories were always apt and had the salt of an unexpected and ingenious allusion." He did not accept the theories of his friends, which he believed would "cause the bankruptcy of knowledge, of pleasure, and of the human intellect." "Messieurs les philosophes, you go too fast," he said. "I begin by saying that if I were pope I would put you in the Inquisition, and if I were king of France, into the Bastille." He saw the drift of events; but if he reasoned like a philosopher he laughed like a Neapolitan. What matters tomorrow if we are happy today!
The familiar notes and letters of these clever people picture for us a little world with its small interests, its piques, its loves, its friendships, its quarrels, and its hatreds. Diderot, who refused for a long time to meet Mme. d'Epinay, but finally became an intimate and lasting friend, touches often, in his letters to Sophie, upon the pleasant informality of La Chevrette, with its curious social episodes and its emotional undercurrents. He does not forget even the pigeons, the geese, the ducks, and the chickens, which he calls his own. Pouf, the dog, has his place here too, and flits often across the scene, a tiny bit of reflected immortality. These letters represent the bold iconoclast on his best side, kind, simple in his tastes, and loyal to his friends. He was never at home in the great world. He was seen sometimes in the salons of Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. Necker, and others, but he made his stay as brief as possible. Mme. d'Epinay succeeded better in attaching him to her coterie. There was more freedom, and he probably had a more sympathetic audience. "Four lines of this man make me dram more and occupy me more," she said, "than a complete work of our pretended beaux esprits." Grimm, too, was a central figure here, and Grimm was his friend. But over his genius, as over that of Rousseau, there was the trail of the serpent. The breadth of his thought, the brilliancy of his criticisms, the eloquence of his style were clouded with sensualism. "When you see on his forehead the reflection of a ray from Plato," says Sainte-Beuve, "do not trust it; look well, there is always the foot of a satyr."
It was to the clear and penetrating intellect of Grimm, with its vein of German romanticism, that Mme. d'Epinay was indebted for the finest appreciation and the most genuine sympathy. "Bon Dieu," he writes to Diderot, "how this woman is to be pitied! I should not be troubled about her if she were as strong as she is courageous. She is sweet and trusting; she is peaceful, and loves repose above all; but her situation exacts unceasingly a conduct forced and out of her character; nothing so wears and destroys a machine naturally frail." She aided him in his correspondance litteraire; wrote a treatise on education, which had the honor of being crowned by the Academy; and, among other things of more or less value, a novel, which was not published until long after her death. With many gifts and attractions, kind, amiable, forgiving, and essentially emotional, Mme. d'Epinay seems to have been a woman of weak and undecided character, without sufficient strength of moral fiber to sustain herself with dignity under the unfortunate circumstances which surrounded her. "It depends only upon yourself," said Grimm, "to be the happiest and most adorable creature in the world, provided that you do not put the opinions of others before your own, and that you know how to suffice for yourself." Her education had not given her the worldly tact and address of Mme. Geoffrin, and her salon never had a wide celebrity; but it was a meeting place of brilliant and radical thinkers, of the men who have perhaps done the most to change the face of the modern world. In a quiet and intimate way, it was one among the numberless forces which were gathering and gaining momentum to culminate in the great tragedy of the century. Mme. d'Epinay did not live to see the catastrophe. Worn out by a life of suffering and ill health, she died in 1783.
Whatever her faults and weaknesses may have been, the woman who could retain the devoted affection of so brilliant and versatile a man as Grimm for twenty-seven years, who was the lifelong friend and correspondent of Galiani and Voltaire, and the valued confidante of Diderot, must have had some rare attractions of mind, heart, or character.