The Women of the French Salons
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Amelia Gere Mason >> The Women of the French Salons
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The fact that this brilliant but heartless and epicurean world
was tempered with intellect and taste changed its color but not
its moral quality. Talent turned to intrigue, and character was
the toy of the scheming and flexible brain. The maxims of La
Rochefoucauld were the rule of life. Wit counted for everything,
the heart for nothing. The only sins that could not be pardoned
were stupidity and awkwardness. "Bah! He has only revealed
every one's secret," said Mme. du Defand to an acquaintance who
censured Helvetius for making selfishness the basis of all human
actions. To some one who met this typical woman of her time, in
the gay salon of Mme. de Marchais, and condoled with her upon the
death of her lifelong friend and lover, Pont de Veyle, she
quietly replied, "Alas! He died this evening at six o"clock;
otherwise you would not see me here." "My friend fell ill, I
attended him; he died, and I dissected him" was the remark of a
wit on reading her satirical pen portrait of the Marquise du
Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen analysis, and undisguised
heartlessness strike the keynote of the century which was
socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, and morally so
weak.
The liberty and complaisance of the domestic relations were
complete. It is true there were examples of conjugal devotion,
for the gentle human affections never quite disappear in any
atmosphere; but the fact that they were considered worthy of note
sufficiently indicates the drift of the age. In the world of
fashion and of form there was not even a pretense of preserving
the sanctity of marriage, if the chronicles of the time are to be
credited. It was simply a commercial affair which united names
and fortunes, continued the glory of the families, replenished
exhausted purses, and gave freedom to women. If love entered
into it at all, it was by accident. This superfluous sentiment
was ridiculed, or relegated to the bourgeoisie, to whom it was
left to preserve the tradition of household virtues. Every one
seems to have accepted the philosophy of the irrepressible Ninon,
who "returned thanks to God every evening for her esprit, and
prayed him every morning to be preserved from follies of the
heart." If a young wife was modest or shy, she was the object of
unflattering persiflage. If she betrayed her innocent love for
her husband, she was not of the charmed circle of wit and good
tone which frowned upon so vulgar a weakness, and laughed at
inconvenient scruples.
"Indeed," says a typical husband of the period, "I cannot
conceive how, in the barbarous ages, one had the courage to wed.
The ties of marriage were a chain. Today you see kindness,
liberty, peace reign in the bosom of families. If husband and
wife love each other, very well; they live together; they are
happy. If they cease to love, they say so honestly, and return
to each other the promise of fidelity. They cease to be lovers;
they are friends. That is what I call social manners, gentle
manners." This reign of the senses is aptly illustrated by the
epitaph which the gay, voluptuous, and spirtuelle Marquise de
Boufflers wrote for herself:
Ci-git dans une paix profonde
Cette Dame de Volupte
Qui, pour plus grande surete,
Fit son paradis de ce monde.
"Courte et bonne," said the favorite daughter of the Regent, in
the same spirit.
It is against such a background that the women who figure so
prominently in the salons are outlined. Such was the air they
breathed, the spirit they imbibed. That it was fatal to the
finer graces of character goes without saying. Doubtless, in
quiet and secluded nooks, there were many human wild flowers that
had not lost their primitive freshness and delicacy, but they did
not flourish in the withering atmosphere of the great world. The
type in vogue savored of the hothouse. With its striking beauty
of form and tropical richness of color, it had no sweetness, no
fragrance. Many of these women we can only consider on the
worldly and intellectual side. Sydney Smith has aptly
characterized them as "women who violated the common duties of
life, and gave very pleasant little suppers." But standing on
the level of a time in which their faults were mildly censured,
if at all, their characteristic gifts shine out with marvelous
splendor. It is from this standpoint alone that we can present
them, drawing the friendly mantle of silence over grave
weaknesses and fatal errors.
In this century, in which women have so much wider scope, when
they may paint, carve, act, sing, write, enter professional life,
or do whatever talent and inclination dictate, without loss of
dignity or prestige, unless they do it ill,--and perhaps even
this exception is a trifle superfluous,--it is difficult to
understand fully, or estimate correctly, a society in which the
best feminine intellect was centered upon the art of entertaining
and of wielding an indirect power through the minds of men.
These Frenchwomen had all the vanity that lies at the bottom of
the Gallic character, but when the triumphs of youth were over,
the only legitimate path to individual distinction was that of
social influence. This was attained through personal charm,
supplemented by more or less cleverness, or through the gift of
creating a society that cast about them an illusion of talent of
which they were often only the reflection. To these two classes
belong the queens of the salons. But the most famous of them
only carried to the point of genius a talent that was universal.
In its best estate a brilliant social life is essentially an
external one. Its charm lies largely in the superficial graces,
in the facile and winning manners, the ready tact, the quick
intelligence, the rare and perishable gifts of conversation--in
the nameless trifles which are elusive as shadows and potent as
light. It is the way of putting things that tells, rather than
the value of the things themselves. This world of draperies and
amenities, of dinners and conversaziones, of epigrams,
coquetries, and sparkling trivialities in the Frenchwoman's
milieu. It has little in common with the inner world that surges
forever behind and beneath it; little sympathy with inconvenient
ideals and exalted sentiments. The serious and earnest soul to
which divine messages have been whispered in hours of solitude
finds its treasures unheeded, its language unspoken here. The
cares, the burdens, the griefs that weigh so heavily on the great
heart of humanity are banished from this social Eden. The
Frenchman has as little love for the somber side of life as the
Athenian, who veiled every expression of suffering. "Joy marks
the force of the intellect," said the pleasure-loving Ninon. It
is this peculiar gift of projecting themselves into a joyous
atmosphere, of treating even serious subjects in a piquant and
lively fashion, of dwelling upon the pleasant surface of things,
that has made the French the artists, above all others, of social
life. The Parisienne selects her company, as a skillful leader
forms his orchestra, with a fine instinct of harmony; no single
instrument dominates, but every member is an artist in his way,
adding his touch of melody or color in the fitting place. She
aims, perhaps unconsciously, at a poetic ideal which shall
express the best in life and thought, divested of the rude and
commonplace, untouched by sorrow or passion, and free from
personality.
But the representative salons, which have left a permanent mark
upon their time, and a memory that does not seem likely to die,
were no longer simply centers of refined and intellectual
amusement. The moral and literary reaction of the seventeenth
century was one of the great social and political forces of the
eighteenth. The salon had become a vast engine of power, an
organ of public opinion, like the modern press. Clever and
ambitious women had found their instrument and their opportunity.
They had long since learned that the homage paid to weakness is
illusory; that the power of beauty is short-lived. With none of
the devotion which had made the convent the time-honored refuge
of tender and exalted souls, finding little solace in the
domestic affections which played so small a role in their lives,
they turned the whole force of their clear and flexible minds to
this new species of sovereignty. Their keenness of vision, their
consummate skill in the adaptation of means to ends, their
knowledge of the world, their practical intelligence, their
instinct of pleasing, all fitted them for the part they assumed.
They distinctly illustrated the truth that "our ideal is not out
of ourselves, but in ourselves wisely modified." The intellect
of these women was rarely the dupe of the emotions. Their
clearness was not befogged by sentiment, nor, it may be added,
were their characters enriched by it. "The women of the
eighteenth century loved with their minds and not with their
hearts," said the Abbe Galiani. The very absence of the
qualities so essential to the highest womanly character,
according to the old poetic types, added to their success. To be
simple and true is to forget often to consider effects.
Spontaneity is not apt to be discriminating, and the emotions are
not safe guides to worldly distinction. It is not the artist who
feels the most keenly, who sways men the most powerfully; it is
the one who has most perfectly mastered the art of swaying men.
Self-sacrifice and a lofty sense of duty find their rewards in
the intangible realm of the spirit, but they do not find them in
a brilliant society whose foundations are laid in vanity and
sensualism. "The virtues, though superior to the sentiments, are
not so agreeable," said Mme. du Deffand; and she echoed the
spirit of an age of which she was one of the most striking
representatives. To be agreeable was the cardinal aim in the
lives of these women. To this end they knew how to use their
talents, and they studied, to the minutest shade, their own
limitations. They had the gift of the general who marshals his
forces with a swift eye for combination and availability. To
this quality was added more or less mental brilliancy, or, what
is equally essential, the faculty of calling out the brilliancy
of others; but their education was rarely profound or even
accurate. To an abbe who wished to dedicate a grammar to Mme.
Geoffrin she replied: "To me? Dedicate a grammar to me? Why, I
do not even know how to spell." Even Mme. du Deffand, whom
Sainte Beuve ranks next to Voltaire as the purest classic of the
epoch in prose, says of herself, "I do not know a word of
grammar; my manner of expressing myself is always the result of
chance, independent of all rule and all art."
But it is not to be supposed that women who were the daily and
lifelong companions and confidantes of men like Fontenelle,
d'Alembert, Montesquieu, Helvetius, and Marmontel were deficient
in a knowledge of books, though this was always subservient to a
knowledge of life. It was a means, not an end. When the salon
was at the height of its power, it was not yet time for Mme. de
Stael; and, with rare exceptions, those who wrote were not
marked, or their literary talent was so overshadowed by their
social gifts as to be unnoted. Their writings were no measure of
their abilities. Those who wrote for amusement were careful to
disclaim the title of bel esprit, and their works usually reached
the public through accidental channels. Mme. de Lambert herself
had too keen an eye for consideration to pose as an author, but
it is with an accent of regret at the popular prejudice that she
says of Mme. Dacier, "She knows how to associate learning with
the amenities; for at present modesty is out of fashion; there is
no more shame for vices, and women blush only for knowledge."
But if they did not write, they presided over the mint in which
books were coined. They were familiar with theories and ideas at
their fountain source. Indeed the whole literature of the period
pays its tribute to their intelligence and critical taste. "He
who will write with precision, energy, and vigor only," said
Marmontel, "may live with men alone; but he who wishes for
suppleness in his style, for amenity, and for that something
which charms and enchants, will, I believe, do well to live with
women. When I read that Pericles sacrificed every morning to the
Graces, I understand by it that every day Pericles breakfasted
with Aspasia." This same author was in the habit of reading his
tales in the salon, and noting their effect. He found a happy
inspiration in "the most beautiful eyes in the world, swimming in
tears;" but he adds, "I well perceived the cold and feeble
passages, which they passed over in silence, as well as those
where I had mistaken the word, the tone of nature, or the just
shade of truth." He refers to the beautiful, witty, but erring
and unfortunate Mme. de la Popeliniere, to whom he read his
tragedy, as the best of all his critics. "Her corrections," he
said, "struck me as so many rays of light." "A point of morals
will be no better discussed in a society of philosophers than in
that of a pretty woman of Paris," said Rousseau. This constant
habit of reducing thoughts to a clear and salient form was the
best school for aptness and ready expression. To talk wittily
and well, or to lead others to talk wittily and well, was the
crowning gift of these women. This evanescent art was the life
and soul of the salons, the magnet which attracted the most
brilliant of the French men of letters, who were glad to discuss
safely and at their ease many subjects which the public
censorship made it impossible to write about. They found
companions and advisers in women, consulted their tastes, sought
their criticism, courted their patronage, and established a sort
of intellectual comradeship that exists to the same extent in no
country outside of France. Its model may be found in the limited
circle that gathered about Aspasia in the old Athenian days.
It is perhaps this habit of intellectual companionship that, more
than any other single thing, accounts for the practical
cleverness of the Frenchwomen and the conspicuous part they have
played in the political as well as social life of France.
Nowhere else are women linked to the same degree with the success
of men. There are few distinguished Frenchmen with whose fame
some more or less gifted woman is not closely allied. Montaigne
and Mlle. de Gournay, La Rochefoucauld and Mme. de La Fayette,
d'Alembert and Mlle. de Lespinasse, Chateaubriand and Mme.
Recamier, Joubert and Mme. de Beaumont--these are only a few of
the well-known and unsullied friendships that suggest themselves
out of a list that might be extended indefinitely. The social
instincts of the French, and the fact that men and women met on a
common plane of intellectual life, made these friendships
natural; that they excited little comment and less criticism made
them possible.
The result was that from the quiet and thoughtful Marquise de
Lambert, who was admitted to have made half of the Academicians,
to the clever but less scrupulous Mme. de Pompadour, who had to
be reckoned with in every political change in Europe, women were
everywhere the power behind the throne. No movement was carried
through without them. "They form a kind of republic," said
Montesquieu, "whose members, always active, aid and serve one
another. It is a new state within a state; and whoever observes
the action of those in power, if he does not know the women who
govern them, is like a man who sees the action of a machine but
does not know its secret springs." Mme. de Tenein advised
Marmontel, before all things, to cultivate the society of women,
if he wished to succeed. It is said that both Diderot and
Thomas, two of the most brilliant thinkers of their time, failed
of the fame they merited, through their neglect to court the
favor of women. Bolingbroke, then an exile in Paris, with a few
others, formed a club of men for the discussion of literary and
political questions. While it lasted it was never mentioned by
women. It was quietly ignored. Cardinal Fleury considered it
dangerous to the State, and suppressed it. At the same time, in
the salon of Mme. de Tenein, the leaders of French thought were
safely maturing the theories which Montesquieu set forth in his
"Esprit des Lois," the first open attack on absolute monarchy, the
forerunner of Rousseau, and the germ of the Revolution.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
But the salons were far from being centers of "plain living and
high thinking." "Supper is one of the four ends of man," said
Mme. du Deffand; and it must be admitted that the great doctrine
of human equality was rather luxuriously cradled. The supreme
science of the Frenchwomen was a knowledge of men. Understanding
their tastes, their ambitions, their interests, their vanities,
and their weaknesses, they played upon this complicated human
instrument with the skill of an artist who knows how to touch the
lightest note, to give the finest shade of expression, to bring
out the fullest harmony. In their efforts to raise social life
to the most perfect and symmetrical proportions, the pleasures of
sense and the delicate illusions of color were not forgotten.
They were as noted for their good cheer, for their attention to
the elegances that strike the eye, the accessories that charm the
taste, as for their intelligence, their tact, and their
conversation.
But one must look for the power and the fascination of the French
salons in their essential spirit and the characteristics of the
Gallic race, rather than in any definite and tangible form. The
word simply suggests habitual and informal gatherings of men and
women of intelligence and good breeding in the drawing-room, for
conversation and amusement. The hostess who opened her house for
these assemblies selected her guests with discrimination, and
those who had once gained an entree were always welcome. In
studying the character of the noted salons, one is struck with a
certain unity that could result only from natural growth about a
nucleus of people bound together by many ties of congeniality and
friendship. Society, in its best sense, does not signify a
multitude, nor can a salon be created on commercial principles.
This spirit of commercialism, so fatal to modern social life, was
here conspicuously absent. It was not at all a question of debit
and credit, of formal invitations to be given and returned.
Personal values were regarded. The distinctions of wealth were
ignored and talent, combined with the requisite tact, was, to a
certain point, the equivalent of rank. If rivalries existed,
they were based upon the quality of the guests rather than upon
material display. But the modes of entertainment were as varied
as the tastes and abilities of the women who presided. Many of
the well-known salons were open daily. Sometimes there were
suppers, which came very much into vogue after the petits soupers
of the regent. The Duchesse de Choiseul, during the ministry of
her husband, gave a supper every evening excepting on Friday and
Sunday. At a quarter before ten the steward glanced through the
crowded rooms, and prepared the table for all who were present.
The Monday suppers at the Temple were thronged. On other days a
more intimate circle gathered round the tables, and the ladies
served tea after the English fashion. A few women of rank and
fortune imitated these princely hospitalities, but it was the
smaller coteries which presented the most charming and
distinctive side of French society. It was not the luxurious
salon of the Duchesse du Maine, with its whirl of festivities and
passion for esprit, nor that of the Temple, with its brilliant
and courtly, but more or less intellectual, atmosphere; nor that
of the clever and critical Marechale de Luxembourg, so elegant,
so witty, so noted in its day--which left the most permanent
traces and the widest fame. It was those presided over by women
of lesser rank and more catholic sympathies, of whom Voltaire
aptly said that "the decline of their beauty revealed the dawn of
their intellect;" women who had the talent, tact, and address to
gather about them a circle of distinguished men who have crowned
them with a luminous ray from their own immortality. The names
of Mme. de Lambert, Mme. de Tencin, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. du
Deffand, Mme. Necker, Mme. de Stael, and others of lesser note,
call up visions of a society which the world is not likely to see
repeated.
Not the least among the attractions of this society was its
charming informality. A favorite custom in the literary and
philosophical salons was to give dinners, at an early hour, two
or three times a week. In the evening a larger company assembled
without ceremony. A popular man of letters, so inclined, might
dine Monday and Wednesday with Mme. Geoffrin, Tuesday with Mme.
Helvetius, Friday with Mme. Necker, Sunday and Thursday with Mme.
d'Holbach, and have ample time to drop into other salons
afterward, passing an hour or so, perhaps, before going to the
theater, in the brilliant company that surrounded Mlle. de
Lespinasse, and, very likely, supping elsewhere later. At many
of these gatherings he would be certain to find readings,
recitations, comedies, music, games, or some other form of
extemporized amusement. The popular mania for esprit, for
literary lions, for intellectual diversions ran through the
social world, as the craze for clubs and culture, poets and
parlor readings, musicales and amateur theatricals, runs through
the society of today. It had numberless shades and gradations,
with the usual train of pretentious follies which in every age
furnish ample material for the pen of the satirist, but it was a
spontaneous expression of the marvelously quickened taste for
things of the intellect. The woman who improvised a witty verse,
invented a proverb, narrated a story, sang a popular air, or
acted a part in a comedy entered with the same easy grace into
the discussion of the last political problem, or listened with
the subtlest flattery to the new poem, essay, or tale of the
aspiring young author, whose fame and fortune perhaps hung upon
her smile. In the musical and artistic salon of Mme. de la
Popeliniere the succession of fetes, concerts, and receptions
seems to have been continuous. On Sunday there was a mass in the
morning, afterward a grand dinner, at five o'clock a light
repast, at nine a supper, and later a musicale. One is inclined
to wonder if there was ever any retirement, any domesticity in
this life so full of movement and variety.
But it was really the freedom, wit, and brilliancy of the
conversation that constituted the chief attraction of the salons.
Men were in the habit of making the daily round of certain
drawing rooms, just as they drop into clubs in our time, sure of
more or less pleasant discussion on whatever subject was
uppermost at the moment, whether it was literature, philosophy,
art, politics, music, the last play, or the latest word of their
friends. The talk was simple, natural, without heat, without
aggressive egotism, animated with wit and repartee, glancing upon
the surface of many things, and treating all topics, grave or
gay, with the lightness of touch, the quick responsiveness that
make the charm of social intercourse.
The unwritten laws that governed this brilliant world were drawn
from the old ideas of chivalry, upon which the etiquette of the
early salons was founded. The fine morality and gentle virtues
which were the bases of these laws had lost their force in the
eighteenth century, but the manners which grew out of them had
passed into a tradition. If morals were in reality not pure, nor
principles severe, there was at least the vanity of posing as
models of good breeding. Honor was a religion; politeness and
courtesy were the current, though by no means always genuine,
coin of unselfishness and amiability; the amenities stood in the
place of an ethical code. Egotism, ill temper, disloyalty,
ingratitude, and scandal were sins against taste, and spoiled the
general harmony. Evil passions might exist, but it was agreeable
to hide them, and enmities slept under a gracious smile.
noblesse OBLIGE was the motto of these censors of manners; and as
it is perhaps a Gallic trait to attach greater importance to
reputation than to character, this sentiment was far more potent
than conscience. Vice in many veiled forms might be tolerated,
but that which called itself good society barred its doors
against those who violated the canons of good taste, which
recognize at least the outward semblance of many amiable virtues.
Sincerity certainly was not one of these virtues; but no one was
deceived, as it was perfectly well understood that courteous
forms meant little more than the dress which may or may not
conceal a physical defect, but is fit and becoming. It was not
best to inquire too closely into character and motives, so long
as appearances were fair and decorous. How far the individual
may be affected by putting on the garb of qualities and feelings
that do not exist may be a question for the moralist; but this
conventional untruth has its advantages, not only in reducing to
a minimum the friction of social machinery, and subjecting the
impulses to the control of the will, but in the subtle influence
of an ideal that is good and true, however far one may in reality
fall short of it.
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