The Swiss Pastor's Daughter—Her Social Ambition—Her Friends—Mme. de Marchais—Mme. d'Houdetot—Duchesse de Lauzun—Character of Mme. Necker—Death at Coppet—Close of the most Brilliant Period of the Salons.
There was one woman who held a very prominent place in the society of this period, and who has a double interest for us, though she was not French, and never quite caught the spirit of the eighteenth-century life whose attractive forms she loved so well. Mme. Necker, whose history has been made so familiar through the interesting memoirs of the Comte d'Haussonville, owes her fame to her marked qualities of intellect and character rather than to the brilliancy of her social talents. These found an admirable setting in the surroundings which her husband's fortune and political career gave her. The Salon Helvetique had a distinctive color of its own, and was always tinged with the strong convictions and exalted ideals of the Swiss pastor's daughter, who passed through this world of intellectual affluence and moral laxity like a white angel of purity—in it, but not of it. The center of a choice and lettered circle which included the most noted men and women of her time, she brought into it not only rare gifts, a fine taste, and genuine literary enthusiasm, but the fresh charm of a noble character and a beautiful family life, with the instincts of duty and right conduct which she inherited from her simple Protestant ancestry. She lacked a little, however, in the tact, the ease, the grace, the spontaneity, which were the essential charm of the French women. Her social talents were a trifle theoretical. "She studied society," says one of her critics, "as she would a literary question." She had a theory of conducting a salon, as she had of life in general, and believed that study would attain everything. But the ability to do a thing superlatively well is by no means always implied in the knowledge of how it ought to be done. Social genius is as purely a gift of nature as poetry or music; and, of all others, it is the most subtle and indefinable. It was a long step from the primitive simplicity in which Suzanne Curchod passed her childhood on the borders of Lake Leman to the complex life of a Parisian salon; and the provincial beauty, whose fair face, soft blue eyes, dignified but slightly coquettish manner, brilliant intellect, and sparkling though sometimes rather learned conversation had made her a local queen, was quick to see her own shortcomings. She confessed that she had a new language to learn, and she never fully mastered it. "Mme. Necker has talent, but it is in a sphere too elevated for one to communicate with her," said Mme. du Deffand, though she was glad to go once a week to her suppers at Saint-Ouen, and admitted that in spite of a certain stiffness and coldness she was better fitted for society than most of the grandes dames. The salon of Mme. Necker marks a transition point between two periods, and had two quite distinct phases. One likes best to recall her in the freshness of her early enthusiasm, when she gave Friday dinners, modeled after those of Mme. Geoffrin, to men of letters, and received a larger world in the evening; when her guests were enlivened by the satire of Diderot, the anecdotes of Marmontel, the brilliancy or learning of Grimm, d'Alembert, Thomas, Suard, Buffon, the Abbe Raynal, and other wits of the day; when they discussed the affairs of the Academy and decided the fate of candidates; when they listened to the recitations of Mlle. Clairon, and the works of many authors known and unknown. It is interesting to recall that "Paul and Virginia" was first read here. But there was apt to be a shade of stiffness, and the conversation had sometimes too strong a flavor of pedantry. "No one knows better or feels more sensibly than you, my dear and very amiable friend," wrote Mme. Geoffrin, "the charm of friendship and its sweetness; no one makes others experience them more fully. But you will never attain that facility, that ease, and that liberty which give to society its perfect enjoyment." The Abbe Morellet complained of the austerity that always held the conversation within certain limits, and the gay little Abbe Galiani found fault with Mme. Necker's coldness and reserve, though he addresses her as his "Divinity" after his return to Naples, and his racy letters give us vivid and amusing pictures of these Fridays, which in his memory are wholly charming.
In spite of her firm religious convictions, Mme. Necker cordially welcomed the most extreme of the philosophers. "I have atheistic friends," she said. "Why not? They are unfortunate friends." But her admiration for their talents by no means extended to their opinions, and she did not permit the discussion of religious questions. It was at one of her own dinners that she started the subscription for a statue of Voltaire, for whom she entertained the warmest friendship. One may note here, as elsewhere, a fine mental poise, a justness of spirit, and a discrimination that was superior to natural prejudices. Sometimes her frank simplicity was misunderstood. "There is a Mme. Necker here, a pretty woman and a bel esprit, who is infatuated with me; she persecutes me to have me at her house," wrote Diderot to Mlle. Volland, with an evident incapacity to comprehend the innocent appreciation of a pure-hearted woman. When he knew her better, he expressed his regret that he had not known her sooner. "You would certainly have inspired me with a taste for purity and for delicacy," he says, "which would have passed from my soul into my works." He refers to her again as "a woman who possesses all that the purity of an angelic soul adds to an exquisite taste."
Among the many distinguished foreigners who found their way into this pleasant circle was her early lover, Gibbon. The old days were far away when she presided over the literary coterie at Lausanne, speculated upon the mystery of love, talked of the possibility of tender and platonic friendships between men and women, after the fashion of the precieuses, and wept bitter tears over the faithlessness of the embryo historian. The memory of her grief had long been lost in the fullness of subsequent happiness, and one readily pardons her natural complacency in the brilliancy of a position which took little added luster from the fame of the man who had wooed and so easily forgotten her.
This period of Mme. Necker's career shows her character on a very engaging side. Loving her husband with a devotion that verged upon idolatry, she was rich in the friendship of men like Thomas, Buffon, Grimm, Diderot, and Voltaire, whose respectful tone was the highest tribute to her dignity and her delicacy. But the true nature of a woman is best seen in her relations with her own sex. There are a thousand fine reserves in her relations with men that, in a measure, veil her personality. They doubtless call out the most brilliant qualities of her intellect, and reveal her character, in some points, on its best and most lovable side; but the rare shades of generous and unselfish feeling are more clearly seen in the intimate friendships, free from petty vanities and jealous rivalries, rich in cordial appreciation and disinterested affection, which we often find among women of the finest type. It is impossible that one so serious and so earnest as Mme. Necker should have cherished such passionate friendships for her own sex, if she had been as cold or as calculating as she has been sometimes represented. Her intimacy with Mme. de Marchais, of which we have so many pleasant details, furnishes a case in point.
This graceful and vivacious woman, who talked so eloquently upon philosophical, political, and economic questions, was the center of a circle noted for its liberal tendencies. A friend of Mme. de Pompadour, at whose suppers she often sang; gifted, witty, and, in spite of a certain seriousness, retaining always the taste, the elegance, the charming manners which were her native heritage, she attracted to her salon not only a distinguished literary company, but many men and women from the great world of which she only touched the borders. Mme. Necker had sought the aid and advice of Mme. de Marchais in the formation of her own salon, and had taken for her one of those ardent attachments so characteristic of earnest and susceptible natures. She confided to her all the secrets of her heart; she felt a double pleasure when her joys and her little troubles were shared with this sympathetic companion. "I had for her a passionate affection," she says. "When I first saw her my whole soul was captivated. I thought her one of those enchanting fairies who combine all the gifts of nature and of magic. I loved her; or, rather, I idolized her." So pure, so confiding, so far above reproach herself, she refuses to see the faults of one she loves so tenderly. Her letters glow with exalted sentiment. "Adieu, my charming, my beautiful, my sweet friend," she writes. "I embrace you. I press you to my bosom; or, rather, to my soul, for it seems to me that no interval can separate yours from mine."
But the character of Mme. de Marchais was evidently not equal to her fascination. Her vanity was wounded by the success of her friend. She took offense at a trifling incident that touched her self-love. "The great ladies have disgusted me with friendship," she wrote, in reply to Mme. Necker's efforts to repair the breach. They returned to each other the letters so full of vows of eternal fidelity, and were friends no more. Apparently without any fault of her own, Mme. Necker was left with an illusion the less, and the world has another example to cite of the frail texture of feminine friendships.
She was not always, however, so unfortunate in her choice. She found a more amiable and constant object for her affections in Mme. d'Houdetot, a charming woman who, in spite of her errors, held a very warm place in the hearts of her cotemporaries. We have met her before in the philosophical circles of La Chevrette, and in the beautiful promenades of the valley of Montmorency, where Rousseau offered her the incense of a passionate and poetic love. She was facile and witty, graceful and gay, said wise and thoughtful things, wrote pleasant verses which were the exhalations of her own heart, and was the center of a limited though distinguished circle; but her chief attraction was the magic of a sunny temper and a loving spirit. "He only is unhappy who can neither love, nor work, nor die," she writes. Though more or less linked with the literary coteries of her time, Mme. d'Houdetot seems to have been singularly free from the small vanities and vulgar ambitions so often met there. She loved simple pleasures and the peaceful scenes of the country. "What more have we to desire when we can enjoy the pleasures of friendship and of nature?" she writes. "We may then pass lightly over the small troubles of life." She counsels repose to her more restless friend, and her warm expressions of affection have always the ring of sincerity, which contrasts agreeably with the artificial tone of the time. Mme. d'Houdetot lived to a great age, preserving always her youthfulness of spirit and sweet serenity of temper, in spite of sharp domestic sorrows. She took refuge from these in the life-long friendship of Saint-Lambert, for whom Mme. Necker has usually a gracious message. It is a curious commentary upon the manners of the age that one so rigid and severe should have chosen for her intimate companionship two women whose lives were so far removed from her own ideal of reserved decorum. But she thought it best to ignore errors which her world did not regard as grave, if she was conscious of them at all.
One finds greater pleasure in recalling her ardent and romantic attachment to the granddaughter of the Marechale de Luxembourg, the lovely Amelie de Boufflers, Duchesse de Lauzun, whose pen-portrait she sketched so gracefully and so tenderly; whose gentle sweetness and shy delicacy, in the rather oppressive glare of her surroundings, suggest a modest wild flower astray among the pretentious beauties of the hothouse, and whose untimely death on the scaffold has left her fragrant memory entwined with a garland of cypress. But we cannot dwell upon the intimate phases of this friendship, whose fine quality is shown in the few scattered leaves of a correspondence overflowing with the wealth of two rare though unequally gifted natures.
At a later period her husband's position in the ministry, and the pronounced opinions of her brilliant daughter, gave to the salon of Mme. Necker a marked political and semi-revolutionary coloring. Her inclinations always led her to literary diversions, rather than to the discussion of economic questions, but as Mme. de Stael gradually took the scepter that was falling from her hand, she found it difficult to guide the conversation into its old channels. Her pale, thoughtful face, her gentle manner, her soft and penetrating voice, all indicated an exquisitely feminine quality quite in unison with the spirit of urbanity and politeness that was even then going out of fashion. Her quiet and earnest though interesting conversation was somewhat overshadowed by the impetuous eloquence of Mme. de Stael, who gave the tone to every circle into which she came. "I am more and more convinced that I am not made for the great world," she said to the Duchesse de Lauzun, with an accent of regret. "It is Germaine who should shine there and who should love it, for she possesses all the qualities which put her in a position to be at once feared and sought."
If she was allied to the past, however, by her tastes and her sympathies, she belonged to the future by her convictions, and her many-sided intellect touched upon every question of the day. Profoundly religious herself, she was broadly tolerant; always delicate in health, she found time amid her numerous social duties to aid the poor and suffering, and to establish the hospital that still bears her name. Her letters and literary records reveal a woman of liberal thought and fine insight, as well as scholarly tastes. If she lacked a little in the facile graces of the French women, she had to an eminent degree the qualities of character that were far rarer in her age and sphere. Though she was cold and reserved in manner, beneath the light snow which she brought from her native hills beat a heart of warm and tender, even passionate, impulses. Devoted wife, loyal friend, careful mother, large-minded and large-souled woman, she stands conspicuous, in a period of lax domestic relations, for the virtues that grace the fireside as well as for the talents that shine in the salon.
But she was not exempt from the sorrows of a nature that exacts from life more than life can give, and finds its illusions vanish before the cold touch of experience. She had her hours of darkness and of suffering. Even the love that was the source of her keenest happiness was also the source of her sharpest griefs. In the days of her husband's power she missed the exclusive attention she craved. There were moments when she doubted the depth of his affection, and felt anew that her "eyes were wedded to eternal tears." She could not see without pain his extreme devotion to her daughter, whose rich nature, so spontaneous, so original, so foreign to her own, gave rise to many anxieties and occasional antagonisms. This touches the weak point in her character. She was not wholly free from a certain egotism and intellectual vanity, without the imagination to comprehend fully an individuality quite remote from all her preconceived ideas. She was slow to accept the fact that her system of education was at fault, and her failure to mold her daughter after her own models was long a source of grief and disappointment. She was ambitious too, and had not won her position without many secret wounds. When misfortunes came, the blows that fell upon her husband struck with double force into her own heart. She was destined to share with him the chill of censure and neglect, the bitter sting of ingratitude, the lonely isolation of one fallen from a high place, whose friendship and whose favors count no more.
In the solitude of Coppet, where she died at fifty-seven, during the last and darkest days of the Revolution, perhaps she realized in the tireless devotion of her husband and the loving care of Mme. de Stael the repose of heart which the brilliant world of Paris never gave her.
With all her gifts, which have left many records that may be read, and in spite of a few shadows that fall more or less upon all earthly relations, not the least of her legacies to posterity was the beautiful example, rarer then than now, of that true and sympathetic family life in which lies the complete harmony of existence, a safeguard against the storms of passion, a perennial fount of love that keeps the spirit young, the tranquility out of which spring the purest flowers of human happiness and human endeavor.
There were many salons of lesser note which have left agreeable memories. It would be pleasant to recall other clever and beautiful women whose names one meets so often in the chronicles of the time, and whose faces, conspicuous for their clear, strong outlines, still look out upon us from the galleries that perpetuate its life; but the list is too long and would lead us too far. From the moving procession of social leaders who made the age preceding the Revolution so brilliant I have chosen only the few who were most widely known, and who best represent its dominant types and its special phases.
The most remarkable period of the literary salons was really closed with the death of Mme. du Deffand, in 1780. Mme. Geoffrin had already been dead three years, and Mlle. de Lespinasse, four. Some of the most noted of the philosophers and men of letters were also gone, others were past the age of forming fresh ties, the young men belonged to another generation, and no new drawing rooms exactly replaced the old ones. Mme. Necker still received the world that was wont to assemble in the great salons, Mme. de Condorcet presided over a rival coterie, and there were numerous small and intimate circles; but the element of politics was beginning to intrude, and with it a degree of heat which disturbed the usual harmony. The reign of esprit, the perpetual play of wit had begun to pall upon the tastes of people who found themselves face to face with problems so grave and issues so vital. There was a slight reaction towards nature and simplicity. "They may be growing wiser," said Walpole, "but the intermediate change is dullness." For nearly half a century learned men and clever women had been amusing themselves with utopian theories, a few through conviction, the majority through fashion, or egotism, or the vanity of saying new things, just as the world is doing today. The doctrines put forth by Montesquieu, vivified by Voltaire, and carried to the popular heart by Rousseau had been freely discussed in the salons, not only by philosophers and statesmen, but by men of the world, poets, artists, and pretty women. The sparks of thought with which they played so lightly filtered slowly through the social strata. The talk of the drawing room at last reached the street. But the torch of truth which, held aloft, serves as a beacon star to guide the world towards some longed for ideal becomes often a deadly explosive when it falls among the poisonous vapors of inflammable human passions. Liberty, equality, fraternity assumed a new and fatal significance in the minds of the hungry and restless masses who, embittered by centuries of wrong, were ready to carry these phrases to their immediate and living conclusions. They had found their watchwords and their hour. The train was already laid beneath this complex social structure, and the tragedy that followed carried to a common ruin court and salon, philosophers and beaux esprits, innocent women and dreaming men.
That the salons were unconscious instruments in hastening the catastrophe, which was sooner or later inevitable, is undoubtedly true. Their influence in the dissemination of thought was immense. The part they played was, to a limited extent, precisely that of the modern press, with an added personal element. They moved in the drift of their time, directed its intelligence, and reflected its average morality. As centers of serious conversation they were distinctly stimulating. It is quite possible that they stimulated the intellect to the exclusion of the more solid qualities of character, and that they were the source of a vast amount of affectation. It was the fashion to have esprit, and those who were deficient in an article so essential to success were naturally disposed to borrow it, or to put on the semblance of it. But no phase of life is without its reverse side, and the present generation cannot claim freedom from pretension of the same sort. It is not unlikely that in expanding the intelligence they established new standards of distinction, which in a measure weakened the old ones. But if they precipitated the downfall of the court they began by rivaling, it was in the logical course of events, which few were wise enough to foresee, much less to determine.
It is worthy of remark that this reign of women, in which the manners and forms of modern society found their initiative and their models, was not a reign of youth, or beauty, though these qualities are never likely to lose their own peculiar fascination. It was, before all things, a reign of intelligence, and ascendency of women who had put on the hues of age without laying aside the permanent charm of a fully developed personality. It was intelligence blended with practical knowledge of the world and with the graceful amenities that heightened while half disguising its power. The women of the present have different aims. They are no longer content with the role of inspirer. Their methods are more direct. They depend less upon finesse, more upon inherent right and strength. But it is to the women who shone so conspicuously in France for more than two hundred years that we may trace the broadened intellectual life, the unfettered activities, the wide and beneficent influence of the women of today.
Change in the Character of the Salons—Mme. de Condorcet—Mme. Roland's Story of Her Own Life—A Marriage of Reason—Enthusiasm for the Revolution—Her Modest Salon—Her Tragical Fate
The salons of the Revolution were no longer simply the fountains of literary and artistic criticism, the centers of wit, intelligence, knowledge, philosophy, and good manners, but the rallying points of parties. They took the tone of the time and assumed the character of political clubs. The salon of 1790 was not the salon of 1770. A new generation had arisen, with new ideals and a new spirit that made for itself other forms or greatly modified the old ones. It was not led by philosophers and beaux esprits who evolved theories and turned them over as an intellectual diversion, but by men of action, ready to test these theories and force them to their logical conclusions. Mirabeau, Vergniaud, and Robespierre had succeeded Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert. Impelled towards one end, by vanity, ambition, love of glory, or genuine conviction, these men and their colleagues turned the salon, which had so long been the school of public opinion, into an engine of revolution. The exquisite flower of the eighteenth century had blossomed, matured, and fallen. Perhaps it was followed by a plant of sturdier growth, but the rare quality of its beauty was not repeated. The time was past when the gentle touch of women could temper the violence of clashing opinions, or subject the discussion of vital questions to the inflexible laws of taste. No tactful hostess could hold in leading strings these fiery spirits. The voices that had charmed the old generation were silent. Of the women who had made the social life of the century so powerful and so famous, many were quietly asleep before the storm broke; many were languishing in prison cells, with no outlook but the scaffold; some were pining in the loneliness of exile; and a few were buried in a seclusion which was their only safeguard.
But nature has always in reserve fresh types that come to the surface in a great crisis. The women who made themselves felt and heard above the din of revolution, though by no means deficient in the graces, were mainly distinguished for quite other qualities than those which shine in a drawing room or lead a coterie. They were either women of rare genius and the courage of their convictions, or women trained in the stern school of a bitter experience, who found their true milieu in the midst of stirring events. The names of Mme. de Stael, Mme. Roland, and Mme. de Condorcet readily suggest themselves as the most conspicuous representatives of this stormy period. With different gifts and in different measure, each played a prominent role in the brief drama to which they lent the inspiration of their genius and their sympathy, until they were forced to turn back with horror from that carnival of savage passions which they had unconsciously helped to let loose upon the world.
The salon of the young, beautiful, and gifted Mme. de Condorcet had its roots in the old order of things. During the ministry of Necker it was in come degree a rival of the Salon Helvetique, and included many of the same guests; later it became a rendezvous for the revolutionary party. The Marquis de Condorcet was not only philosopher, savant, litterateur, a member of two academies, and among the profoundest thinkers of his time, but a man of the world, who inherited the tastes and habits of the old noblesse. His wife, whom he had married late in life, was Sophie de Grouchy, sister of the Marechal, and was noted for remarkable talents, as well as for surpassing beauty. Belonging by birth and associations to the aristocracy, and by her pronounced opinions to the radical side of the philosophic party, her salon was a center in which two worlds met. In its palmy days people were only speculating upon the borders of an abyss which had not yet opened visibly before them. The revolutionary spirit ran high, but had not passed the limits of reason and humanity. Mme. de Condorcet, who was deeply tinged with the new doctrines, presided with charming grace, and her youthful beauty lent an added fascination to the brilliancy of her intellect and the rather grave eloquence of her conversation. In her drawing room were gathered men of letters and women of talent, nobles and scientists, philosophers and Beaux Esprits. Turgot and Malesherbes represented its political side; Marmontel, the Abbe Morellet, and Suard lent it some of the wit and vivacity that shone in the old salons. Literature, science, and the arts were discussed here, and there was more or less reading, music, or recitation. But the tendency was towards serious conversation, and the tone was often controversial.
The character of Condorcet was a sincere and elevated one. "He loved much and he loved many people," said Mlle. de Lespinasse. He aimed at enlightening and regenerating the world, not at overturning it; but, like many others, strong souls and true, he was led from practical truth in the pursuit of an ideal one. His wife, who shared his political opinions, united with them a fiery and independent spirit that was not content with theories. Her philosophic tastes led her to translate Adam Smith, and to write a fine analysis of the "Moral Sentiments." But the sympathy of which she spoke so beautifully, and which gave so living a force to the philosophy it illuminated, if not directed by broad intelligence and impartial judgment, is often like the ignis fatuus that plays over the poisonous marsh and lures the unwary to destruction. For a brief day the magical influence of Mme. de Condorcet was felt more or less by all who came within her circle. She inspired the equable temper of her husband with her own enthusiasm, and urged him on to extreme measures from which his gentler soul would have recoiled. When at last he turned from those scenes of horror, choosing to be victim rather than oppressor, it was too late. Perhaps she recalled the days of her power with a pang of regret when her friends had fallen one by one at the scaffold, and her husband, hunted and deserted by those he tried to serve, had died by his own hand, in a lonely cell, to escape a sadder fate; while she was left, after her timely release from prison, to struggle alone in poverty and obscurity, for some years painting water-color portraits for bread. She was not yet thirty when the Revolution ended, and lived far into the present century; but though the illusions of her youth had been rudely shattered, she remained always devoted to her liberal principles and a broad humanity.
The woman, however, who most fitly represents the spirit of the Revolution, who was at once its inspiration, its heroine, and its victim, is Mme. Roland. It is not as the leader of a salon that she takes her place in the history of her time, but as one of the foremost and ablest leaders of a powerful political party. Born in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, she had neither the prestige of a name nor the distinction of an aristocratic lineage. Reared in seclusion, she was familiar with the great world by report only. Though brilliant, even eloquent in conversation when her interest was roused, her early training had added to her natural distaste for the spirit, as well as the accessories, of a social life that was inevitably more or less artificial. She would have felt cramped and caged in the conventional atmosphere of a drawing room in which the gravest problems were apt to be forgotten in the flash of an epigram or the turn of a bon mot. The strong and heroic outlines of her character were more clearly defined on the theater of the world. But at a time when the empire of the salon was waning, when vital interests and burning convictions had for the moment thrown into the shade all minor questions of form and convenance, she took up the scepter in a simpler fashion, and, disdaining the arts of a society of which she saw only the fatal and hopeless corruption, held her sway over the daring and ardent men who gathered about her by the unassisted force of her clear and vigorous intellect.
It would be interesting to trace the career of the thoughtful and precocious child known as Manon or Marie Phlipon, who sat in her father's studio with the burin of an engraver in one hand and a book in the other, eagerly absorbing the revolutionary theories which were to prove so fatal to her, but it is not the purpose here to dwell upon the details of her life. In the solitude of a prison cell and under the shadow of the scaffold she told her own story. She has introduced us to the simple scenes of her childhood, the modest home on the Quai de l'Horloge, the wise and tender mother, the weak and unstable father. We are made familiar with the tiny recess in which she studies, reads, and makes extracts from the books which are such strange companions for her years. We seem to see the grave little face as it lights with emotion over the inspiring pages of Fenelon or the chivalrous heroes of Tasso, and sympathize with the fascination that leads the child of nine years to carry her Plutarch to mass instead of her prayer book. She portrays for us her convent life with its dreams, its exaltations, its romantic friendships, and its ardent enthusiasms. We have vivid pictures of the calm and sympathetic Sophie Cannet, to whom she unburdens all her hopes and aspirations and sorrows; of the lively sister Henriette, who years afterward, in the generous hope of saving her early friend, proposed to exchange clothes and take her place in the cells of Sainte-Pelagie. In the long and commonplace procession of suitors that files before us, one only touches her heart. La Blancherie has a literary and philosophic turn, and the young girl's imagination drapes him in its own glowing colors. The opposition of her father separates them, but absence only lends fuel to this virgin flame. One day she learns that his views are mercenary, that he is neither true nor disinterested, and the charm is broken. She met him afterward in the Luxembourg gardens with a feather in his hat, and the last illusion vanished.
There is an idyllic charm in these pictures so simply and gracefully sketched. She sees with the vision of one lying down to sleep after a life of pain, and dreaming of the green fields, the blue skies, the running brooks, the trees, the flowers, that make so beautiful a background for youthful loves and hopes. Perhaps we could wish sometimes that she were a little less frank. We miss a touch of delicacy in this nature that was so strong and self-poised. We are sorry that she dismissed La Blancherie quite so theatrically. There is a trace too much of consciousness in her fine self-analysis, perhaps a little vanity, and we half suspect that her unchildlike penetration and precocity of motive was sometimes the reflection of an afterthought. But it is to be remembered that, even in childhood, she had lived in such close companionship with the heroes and moralists of the past that their sentiments had become her own. She doubtless posed a little to herself, as well as to the world, but her frankness was a part of that uncompromising truthfulness which scorned disguises of any sort, and led her to paint faults and virtues alike.
Family sorrows—the death of the mother whom she adored, and the unworthiness of her father—combined to change the current of her free and happy life, and to deepen a natural vein of melancholy. In her loneliness of soul the convent seemed to offer itself as the sole haven of peace and rest. The child, who loved Fenelon, and dreamed over the lives of the saints, had in her much of the stuff out of which mystics and fanatics are made. Her ardent soul was raised to ecstasy by the stately ceremonial of the Church; her imagination was captivated by its majestic music, its mystery, its solemnity, and she was wont to spend hours in rapt meditation. But her strong fund of good sense, her firm reason fortified by wide and solid reading, together with her habits of close observation and analysis, saved her from falling a victim to her own emotional needs, or to chimeras of any sort. She had drawn her mental nourishment too long from Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, the English philosophers, and classic historians, to become permanently a prey to exaggerated sensibilities, though it was the same temperament fired by a sense of human inequality and wrong, that swept her at last along the road that led to the scaffold. At twenty-six the vocation of the religieuse had lost its fascination; the pious fervor of her childhood had vanished before the skepticism of her intellect, its ardent friendships had grown dim, its fleeting loves had proved illusive, and her romantic dreams ended in a cold marriage of reason.
It may be noted here that though Mme. Roland had lost her belief in ecclesiastical systems, and, as she said, continued to go to mass only for the "edification of her neighbors and the good order of society," there was always in her nature a strong undercurrent of religious feeling. Her faith had not survived the full illumination of her reason, but her trust in immortality never seriously wavered. The Invocation that was among her last written words is the prayer of a soul that is conscious of its divine origin and destiny. She retained, too, the firm moral basis that was laid in her early teachings, and which saved her from the worst errors of her time. She might be shaken by the storms of passion, but one feels that she could never be swept from her moorings.
Tall and finely developed, with dark brown hair; a large mouth whose beauty lay in a smile of singular sweetness; dark, serious eyes with a changeful expression which no artist could catch; a fresh complexion that responded to every emotion of a passionate soul; a deep, well-modulated voice; manners gentle, modest, reserved, sometimes timid with the consciousness that she was not readily taken at her true value—such was the PERSONNELLE of the woman who calmly weighed the possibilities of a life which had no longer a pleasant outlook in any direction, and, after much hesitation, became the wife of a grave, studious, austere man of good family and moderate fortune, but many years her senior.
It was this marriage, into which she entered with all seriousness, and a devotion that was none the less sincere because it was of the intellect rather than the heart, that gave the final tinge to a character that was already laid on solid foundations. Strong, clear-sighted, earnest, and gifted, her later experience had accented a slightly ascetic quality which had been deepened also by her study of antique models. Her tastes were grave and severe. But they had a lighter side. As a child she had excelled in music, dancing, drawing, and other feminine accomplishments, though one feels always that her distinctive talent does not lie in these things. She is more at home with her thoughts. There was a touch of poetry, too, in her nature, that under different circumstances might have lent it a softer and more graceful coloring. She had a natural love for the woods and the flowers. The single relief to her somber life at La Platiere, after her marriage, was in the long and lonely rambles in the country, whose endless variations of hill and vale and sky and color she has so tenderly and so vividly noted. In her last days a piano and a few flowers lighted the darkness of her prison walls, and out of these her imagination reared a world of its own, peopled with dreams and fancies that contrasted strangely with the gloom of her surroundings. This poetic vein was closely allied to the keen sensibility that tempered the seriousness of her character. With the mental equipment of a man, she combined the rich sympathy of a woman. Her devotion to her mother was passionate in its intensity; her letters to Sophie throb with warmth and sentiment. She is tender and loving, as well as philosophic and thoughtful. Her emotional ardor was doubtless partly the glow of youth and not altogether in the texture of a mind so eminently rational; but there were rich possibilities behind it. A shade of difference in the mental and moral atmosphere, a trace more or less of sunshine and happiness are important factors in the peculiar combination of qualities that make up a human being. The marriage of Mme. Roland led her into a world that had little color save what she brought into it. Her husband did not smile upon her friends. Sympathy other than that of the intellect she does not seem to have had. But her story is best told in her own words, written in the last days of her life.
"In considering only the happiness of my partner, I soon perceived that something was wanting to my own. I had never, for a single instant, ceased to see in my husband one of the most estimable of men, to whom I felt it an honor to belong; but I have often realized that there was a lack of equality between us, that the ascendency of an overbearing character, added to that of twenty years more of age, gave him too much superiority. If we lived in solitude, I had many painful hours to pass; if we went into the world, I was loved by men of whom I saw that some might touch me too deeply. I plunged into work with my husband, another excess which had its inconvenience; I gave him the habit of not knowing how to do without me for anything in the world, nor at any moment.
"I honor, I cherish my husband, as a sensible daughter adores a virtuous father to whom she would sacrifice even her lover; but I have found the man who might have been that lover, and remaining faithful to my duties, my frankness has not known how to conceal the feelings which I subjected to them. My husband, excessively sensitive both in his affections and his self-love, could not support the idea of the least change in his influence; his imagination darkened, his jealousy irritated me; happiness fled; he adored me, I sacrificed myself for him, and we were miserable.
"If I were free, I would follow him everywhere to soften his griefs and console his old age; a soul like mine leaves no sacrifices imperfect. But Roland was embittered by the thought of sacrifice, and the knowledge once acquired that I mad made one ruined his happiness; he suffered in accepting it, and could not do without it."
The sequel to this tale is told in allusions and half revelations, in her letters to Buzot, which glow with suppressed feeling; in her touching farewell to one whom she dared not to name, but whom she hoped to meet where it would not be a crime to love; in those final words of her "Last Thoughts"—"Adieu.... No, it is from thee alone that I do not separate; to leave the earth is to approach each other."
Beneath this semi-transparent veil the heart-drama of her life is hidden.
For the sake of those who would be pained by this story, as well as for her own, we would rather it had never been told. We should like to believe that the woman who worked so nobly with and for the man who died by his own hand five days after her death, because he could stay no longer in a world where such crimes were possible, had lived in the full perfection of domestic sympathy. But, if she carried with her an incurable wound, one cannot help regretting that her Spartan courage had not led her to wear the mantle of silence to the end. Posterity is curious rather than sympathetic, and the world is neither wiser nor better for these needless soul-revelations. There is always a certain malady of egotism behind them. But it is often easier to scale the heights of human heroism than to still the cry of a bruised spirit. Mme. Roland had moments of falling short of her own ideals, and this was one of them. Pure, loyal, self-sustained as she was, her strong sense of verity did not permit the veil which would have best served the interests of the larger truth. It is fair to say that she thought the malicious gossip of her enemies rendered this statement necessary to the protection of her fame. Perhaps, after all, she shows here her most human and lovable if not her strongest side. We should like Minerva better if she were not so faultlessly wise.
The outbreak of the Revolution found Mme. Roland at La Platiere, where she shared her husband's philosophic and economic studies, brought peace into a discordant family, attended to her household duties and the training of her child, devoted many hours to generous care for the sick and poor, and reserved a little leisure for poetry and the solitary rambles she loved so well. The first martial note struck a responsive chord in her heart. Her opportunity had come. Embittered by class distinctions over which she had long brooded, saturated with the sentiments of Rousseau, and full of untried theories constructed in the closet, with small knowledge of the wide and complex interests with which it was necessary to deal, she centered all the hitherto latent energies of her forceful nature upon the quixotic effort to redress human wrongs. Her birth, her intellect, her character, her temperament, her education, her associations—all led her towards the role she played so heroically. She had a keen appreciation for genuine values, but none whatever for factitious ones. Her inborn hatred of artificial distinctions had grown with her years and colored all her estimates of men and things. When she came to Paris, she noted with a sort of indignation the superior poise and courtesy of the men in the assembly who had been reared in the habit of power. It added fuel to her enmity towards institutions in which reason, knowledge, and integrity paid homage to fine language and distinguished manners. She found even Vergniaud too refined and fastidious in his dress for a successful republican leader. Her old contempt for a "philosopher with a feather" had in no wise abated. With such principles ingrained and fostered, it is not difficult to forecast the part Mme. Roland was destined to play in the coming conflict of classes. Whatever we may think of the wisdom of her attitude towards the Revolution, she represented at least its most sincere side. As she stood white-robed and courageous at the foot of the scaffold, facing the savage populace she had laid down her life to befriend, perhaps her perspectives were truer. Experience had given her an insight into the characters of men which is not to be gained in the library, nor in the worship of dead heroes. If it had not shaken her faith in human perfectibility, it had taught her at least the value of tradition in chaining brutal human passions.
The tragical fate of Mme. Roland has thrown a strong light upon the modest little salon in which the unfortunate Girondists met four times a week to discuss the grave problems that confronted them. A salon in the old sense it certainly was not. It had little in common with the famous centers of conversation and esprit. It was simply the rallying point of a party. The only woman present was Mme. Roland herself, but at first she assumed no active leadership. She sat at a little table outside of the circle, working with her needle, or writing letters, alive to everything that was said, venturing sometimes a word of counsel or a thoughtful suggestion, and often biting her lips to repress some criticism that she feared might not be within her province. She had left her quiet home in the country fired with a single thought—the regeneration of France. The men who gathered about her were in full accord with her generous aims. It was not to such enthusiasms that the old salons lost themselves. They had been often the centers of political intrigues, as in the days of the Fronde; or of religious partisanship, as during the troubles of Port Royal; they had ranged themselves for and against rival candidates for literary or artistic honors; but they had preserved, on the whole, a certain cosmopolitan character. All shades of opinion were represented, and social brilliancy was the end sought, not the triumph of special ideas. It is indeed true that earnest convictions were, to some extent, stifled in the salons, where charm and intelligence counted for so much, and the sterling qualities of character for so little. But the etiquette, the urbanity, the measure, which assured the outward harmony of a society that courted distinction of every kind, were quite foreign to the iconoclasts who were bent upon leveling all distinctions. The Revolution which attacked the whole superstructure of society, was antagonistic to its minor forms as well, and it was the revolutionary party alone which was represented in the salon of Mme. Roland. Brissot, Vergniaud, Petion, Guadet, and Buzot were leaders there—men sincere and ardent, though misguided, and unable to cope with the storm they had raised, to be themselves swept away by its pitiless rage. Robespierre, scheming and ambitious, came there, listened, said little, appropriated for his own ends, and bided his time. Mme. Roland had small taste for the light play of intellect and wit that has no outcome beyond the meteoric display of the moment, and she was impatient with the talk in which an evening was often passed among these men without any definite results. As she measured their strength, she became more outspoken. She communicated to them a spark of her own energy. The most daring moves were made at her bidding. She urged on her timid and conservative husband, she drew up his memorials, she wrote his letters, she was at once his stimulus, and his helper. Weak and vacillating men yielded to her rapid insight, her vigor, her earnestness, and her persuasive eloquence. This was probably the period of her greatest influence. Many of the swift changes of those first months may be traced to her salon. The moves which were made in the Assembly were concocted there, the orators who triumphed found their inspiration there. Still, in spite of her energy, her strength, and her courage, she prides herself upon maintaining always the reserve and decorum of her sex.
If she assumed the favorite role of the French woman for a short time while her husband was in the ministry, it was in a sternly republican fashion. She gave dinners twice a week to her husband's political friends. The fifteen or twenty men who met around her table at five o'clock were linked by political interests only. The service was simple, with no other luxury than a few flowers. There were no women to temper the discussions or to lighten their seriousness. After dinner the guests lingered for an hour or so in the drawing room, but by nine o'clock it was deserted. She received on Friday, but what a contrast to the Fridays of Mme. Necker in those same apartments! It was no longer a brilliant company of wits, savants, and men of letters, enlivened by women of beauty, esprit, rank, and fashion. There was none of the diversity of taste and thought which lends such a charm to social life. Mme. Roland tells us that she never had an extended circle at any time, and that, while her husband was in power, she made and received no visits, and invited no women to her house. She saw only her husband's colleagues, or those who were interested in his tastes and pursuits, which were also her own. The world of society wearied her. She was absorbed in a single purpose. If she needed recreation, she sought it in serious studies.
It is always difficult to judge what a man or a woman might have been under slightly altered conditions. But for some single circumstance that converged and focused their talent, many a hero would have died unknown and unsuspected. The key that unlocks the treasure house of the soul is not always found, and its wealth is often scattered on unseen shores. But it is clear that the part of Mme. Roland could never have been a distinctively social one. She lived at a time when great events brought out great qualities. Her clear intellect, her positive convictions, her boundless energy, and her ardent enthusiasm, gave her a powerful influence in those early days of the Revolution, that looked towards a world reconstructed but not plunged into the dark depths of chaos, and it is through this that she has left a name among the noted women of France. In more peaceful times her peculiar talent would doubtless have led her towards literature. In her best style she has rare vigor and simplicity. She has moments of eloquent thought. There are flashes of it in her early letters to Sophie, which she begs her friend not to burn, though she does not hope to rival Mme. de Sevigne, whom she takes for her model. She lacked the grace, the lightness, the wit, the humor of this model, but she had an earnestness, a serious depth of thought, that one does not find in Mme. de Sevigne. She had also a vein of sentiment that was an underlying force in her character, though it was always subject to her masculine intellect. She confesses that she should like to be the annalist of her country, and longs for the pen of Tacitus, for whom she has a veritable passion. When one reads her sharp, incisive pen-portraits, drawn with such profound insight and masterly skill, one feels that her true vocation was in the world of letters. At the close she verges a little upon the theatrical, as sometimes in her young days. But when she wrote her final records she felt her last hours slipping away. Life, with its large possibilities undeveloped and its promises unfulfilled, was behind her. Darkness was all around her, eternal silence before her. And she had lived but thirty-nine years.
Mme. Roland does not really belong to the world of the salons, though she has been included among them by some of her own cotemporaries. She was of quite another genre. She represents a social reaction in which old forms are adapted to new ideas and lose their essential quality by the change. But she foreshadows a type of woman that has had great influence since the salons have lost their prestige. She relied neither upon the reflected light of a coterie, the arts of the courtier, nor the subtle power of personal attraction; but, firm in her convictions, clear in her purpose, and unselfish in her aims, she laid down her interests, and, in the end, her life, upon the altar of liberty and humanity. She could hardly be regarded, however, as herself a type. She was cast in a rare mold and lived under rare conditions. She was individual, as were Hypatia, Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday—a woman fitted for a special mission which brought her little but a martyr's crown and a permanent fame.