The Women of the French Salons
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Amelia Gere Mason >> The Women of the French Salons
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Under such teaching she was not long in taking her own free and
independent course, which was reckless even in that age of
laxity. At her first supper at the Palais Royal she met Voltaire
and fascinated the Regent, though her reign lasted but a few
days. The counsels of her aunt, the dignified Duchesse de
Luynes, availed nothing. Her husband was speedily sent off on
some mission to the provinces and she plunged into the current.
Once afterwards, in a fit of ennui, she recalled him, frankly
stating her position. But she quickly wearied of him again, grew
dull, silent, lost her vivacity, and fell into a profound
melancholy. Her friend Mme. de Parabere took it upon herself to
explain to him the facts, and he kindly relieved her forever of
his presence, leaving a touching and pathetic letter which gave
her a moment of remorse in spite of her lightened heart. This
sin against good taste the Parisian world could not forgive, and
even her friends turned against her for a time. But the Duchesse
due Maine came to her aid with an all-powerful influence, and
restored her finally to her old position. For some years she
passed the greater part of her time at Sceaux, and was a favorite
at this lively little court.
It is needless to trace here the details of a career which gives
us little to admire and much to condemn. It was about 1740 when
her salon became noted as a center for the fashionable and
literary world of Paris. Montesquieu and d'Alembert were then
among her intimate friends. Of the latter she says: "The
simplicity of his manners, the purity of his morals, the air of
youth, the frankness of character, joined to all his talents,
astonished at first those who saw him." It is said to have been
through her zeal that he was admitted to the Academy so young.
Among others who formed her familiar circle were her devoted
friend Pont de Veyle; the Chevalier d'Aydie; Formont, the
"spirituel idler and amiable egotist," who was one of the three
whom she confesses really to have loved; and President Henault,
who brought always a fund of lively anecdote and agreeable
conversation. This world of fashion and letters, slightly
seasoned with philosophy, is also the world of Mme. de
Luxembourg, of the brilliant Mme. de Mirepoix, of the Prince and
Princesse de Beauvau, and of the lovely Duchesse de Choiseul, a
femme d'esprit and "mistress of all the elegances," whose gentle
virtues fall like a ray of sunlight across the dark pages of this
period. It is the world of elegant forms, the world in which a
sin against taste is worse than a sin against morals, the world
which hedges itself in by a thousand unwritten laws that save it
from boredom.
After the death of the Duchesse du Maine, Mme. du Deffand retired
to the little convent of St. Joseph, where, after the manner of
many women of rank with small fortunes, she had her menage and
received her friends. "I have a very pretty apartment," she
writes to Voltaire; "very convenient; I only go out for supper.
I do not sleep elsewhere, and I make no visits. My society is
not numerous, but I am sure it will please you; and if you were
here you would make it yours. I have seen for some time many
savants and men of letters; I have not found their society
delightful." The good nuns objected a little to Voltaire at
first, but seem to have been finally reconciled to the visits of
the arch-heretic. At this time Mme. du Deffand had supposably
reformed her conduct, if not her belief.
She continued to entertain the flower of the nobility and the
stars of the literary and scientific world. But while the most
famous of the men of letters were welcome in her salon, the tone
was far from pedantic or even earnest. It was a society of
conventional people, the elite of fashion and intelligence, who
amused themselves in an intellectual but not too serious way.
Montesquieu, who liked those houses in which he could pass with
his every-day wit, said, "I love this woman with all my heart;
she pleases and amuses me; it is impossible to feel a moment's
ennui in her company." Mme. de Genlis, who did not love her
expressed her surprise at finding her so natural and so kindly.
Her conversation was simple and without pretension. When she was
pleased, her manners were even affectionate. She never entered
into a discussion, confessing that she was not sufficiently
attached to any opinion to defend it. She disliked the
enthusiasm of the philosophers unless it was hidden behind the
arts of the courtier, as in Voltaire, whose delicate satire
charmed her. Diderot came once, "eyed her epicurean friends,"
and came no more. The air was not free enough. When at home she
had three or four at supper every day, often a dozen, and, once a
week, a grand supper. All the intellectual fashions of the time
are found here. La Harpe reads a translation from Sophocles and
his own tragedy. Clairon, the actress in vogue, recites the
roles of Phedre and Agrippine, Lekain reads Voltaire, and Goldoni
a comedy of his own, which the hostess finds tiresome. New
books, new plays, the last song, the latest word of the
philosophers--all are talked about, eulogized, or dismissed with
a sarcasm. The wit of Mme. du Deffand is feared, but it
fascinates. She delights in clever repartees and sparkling
epigrams. A shaft of wit silences the most complacent of
monologues. "What tiresome book are you reading?" she said one
day to a friend who talked too earnestly and too long--saving
herself from the charge of rudeness by an easy refuge in her
blindness.
Her criticisms are always severe. "There are only two pleasures
for me in the world--society and reading," she writes. "What
society does one find? Imbeciles, who utter only commonplaces,
who know nothing, feel nothing, think nothing; a few people of
talent, full of themselves, jealous, envious, wicked, whom one
must hate or scorn." To some one who was eulogizing a mediocre
man, adding that all the world was of the same opinion, she
replied, "I make small account of the world, Monsieur, since I
perceive that one can divide it into three parts, les trompeurs,
les trompes, et les trompettes." Still it is life alone that
interests her. Though she is not satisfied with people, she has
always the hope that she will be. In literature she likes only
letters and memoirs, because they are purely human; but the age
has nothing that pleases her. "It is cynical or pedantic," she
writes to Voltaire; "there is no grace, no facility, no
imagination. Everything is a la glace, hardness without force,
license without gaiety; no talent, much presumption."
As age came on, and she felt the approach of blindness, she found
a companion in Mlle. de Lespinasse, a young girl of remarkable
gifts, who had an obscure and unacknowledged connection with her
family. For ten years the young woman was a slave to the
caprices of her exacting mistress, reading to her through long
nights of wakeful restlessness, and assisting to entertain her
guests. The one thing upon which Mme. du Deffand most prided
herself was frankness. She hated finesse, and had stipulated
that she would not tolerate artifice in any form. It was her
habit to lie awake all night and sleep all day, and as she did
not receive her guests until six o'clock, Mlle. de Lespinasse,
whose amiable character and conversational charm had endeared her
at once to the circle of her patroness, arranged to see her
personal friends--among whom were d'Alembert, Turgot,
Chastellux, and Marmontel--in her own apartments for an hour
before the marquise appeared. When this came to the knowledge of
the latter, she fell into a violent rage at what she chose to
regard as a treachery to herself, and dismissed her companion at
once. The result was the opening of a rival salon which carried
off many of her favorite guests, notably d'Alembert, to whom she
was much attached. "If she had died fifteen years earlier, I
should not have lost d'Alembert," was her sympathetic remark when
she heard of the death of Mlle. de Lespinasse.
But the most striking point in the career of this worldly woman
was her friendship for Horace Walpole. When they first met she
was nearly seventy, blind, ill-tempered, bitter, and hopelessly
ennuyee. He was not yet fifty, a brilliant, versatile man of the
world, and saw her only at long intervals. Their curious
correspondence extends over a period of fifteen years, ending
only with her death.
In a letter to Grayson, after meeting her, he writes: "Mme. du
Deffand is now very old and stone blind, but retains all her
vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, passion, and agreeableness. She
goes to operas, plays, suppers, Versailles; gives supper twice a
week; has everything new read to her; makes new songs and
epigrams--aye, admirably--and remembers every one that has been
made these fourscore years. She corresponds with Voltaire,
dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, is no bigot to
him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and the
philosophers. In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is
very warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong; her judgment on
every subject is as just as possible; on every point of conduct
as wrong as possible; for she is all love and hatred, passionate
for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious to be loved--I
don't mean by lovers--and a vehement enemy openly."
The acquaintance thus begun quickly drilled into an intimacy.
Friendship she calls this absorbing sentiment, but it has all the
caprices and inconsistencies of love. Fed by the imagination,
and prevented by separation from wearing itself out, it became
the most permanent interest of her life. There is something
curiously pathetic in the submissive attitude of this blind,
aged, but spirited woman--who scoffs at sentiment and confesses
that she could never love anything--towards the man who
criticizes her, scolds her, crushes back her too ardent feeling,
yet calls her his dear old friend, writes her a weekly letter,
and modestly declares that she "loves him better than all France
together."
The spirit of this correspondence greatly modifies the impression
which her own words, as well as the facts of her career, would
naturally give us. We find in the letters of this period little
of the freshness and spontaneity that lent such a charm to the
letters of Mme. de Sevigne and her contemporaries. Women still
write of the incidents of their lives, the people they meet,
their jealousies, their rivalries, their loves, and their
follies; but they think, where they formerly mirrored the world
about them. They analyze, they compare, the criticize, they
formulate their own emotions, they add opinions to facts. The
gaiety, the sparkle, the wit, the play of feeling, is not there.
Occasionally there is the tone of passion, as in the letters of
Mlle. Aisse and Mlle. de Lespinasse, but this is rare. Even
passion has grown sophisticated and deals with phrases. There is
more or less artificiality in the exchange of written thoughts.
Mme. du Deffand thinks while she writes, and what she sees takes
always the color of her own intelligence. She complains of her
inability to catch the elusive quality, the clearness, the
flexibility of Mme. de Sevigne, whom she longs to rival because
Walpole so admires her. But if she lacks the vivacity, the
simplicity, the poetic grace of her model, she has qualities not
less striking, though less lovable. Her keen insight is
unfailing. With masterly penetration she grasps the essence of
things. No one has portrayed so concisely and so vividly the men
and women of her time. No one has discriminated between the
shades of character with such nicety. No one has so clearly
fathomed the underlying motives of action. No one has forecast
the outcome of theories and events with such prophetic vision.
The note of bitterness and cynicism is always there. The nature
of the woman reveals itself in every line: keen, dry, critical,
with clear ideals which she can never hope to attain. But we
feel that she has stripped off the rags of pretension and brought
us face to face with realities. "All that I can do is to love
you with all my heart, as I have done for about fifty years,"
wrote Voltaire. "How could I fail to love you? Your soul seeks
always the true; it is a quality as rare as truth itself." So
far does she carry her hatred of insincerity that one is often
tempted to believe she affects a freedom from affectation. "I am
so fatigued with the vanity of others that I avoid the occasion
of having any myself," she writes. Is there not here a trace of
the quality she so despises?
But beneath all this runs the swift undercurrent of an absorbing
passion. A passion of friendship it may be, but it forces itself
through the arid shells of conventionalism; it is at once the
agony and the consolation of a despairing soul. Heartless, Mme.
du Deffand is called, and her life seems to prove the truth of
the verdict; but these letters throb and palpitate with feeling
which she laughs at, but cannot still. It is the cry of the soul
for what it has not; what the world cannot give; what it has
somehow missed out of a cold, hard, restless, and superficial
existence. With a need of loving, she is satisfied with no one.
There is something wanting; even in the affection of her friends.
"Ma grand'maman," she says to the gentle Duchesse de Choiseul,
"you KNOW that you love me, but you do not FEEL it."
Devouring herself in solitude, she despises the society she
cannot do without. "Men and women appear to me puppets who go,
come, talk, laugh, without thinking, without reflecting, without
feeling," she writes. She confesses that she has a thousand
troubles in assembling a choice company of people who bore her to
death. "One sees only masks, one hears only lies," is her
constant refrain. She does not want to live, but is afraid to
die; she says she is not made for this world, but does not know
that there is any other. She tries devotion, but has no taste
for it. Of the light that shines from within upon so many
darkened and weary souls she has no knowledge. Her vision is
bounded by the tangible, which offers only a rigid barrier,
against which her life flutters itself away. She dies as she has
lived, with a deepened conviction of the nothingness of
existence. "Spare me three things," she said to her confessor in
her last moments; "let me have no questions, no reasons, and no
sermons." Seeing Wiart, her faithful servitor, in tears, she
remarks pathetically, as if surprised, "You love me then?"
"Divert yourself as much as you can," was her final message to
Walpole. "You will regret me, because one is very glad to know
that one is loved." She commends to his care and affection
Tonton, her little dog.
Strong but not gentle, brilliant but not tender, too penetrating
for any illusions, with a nature forever at war with itself, its
surroundings, and its limitations, no one better points the moral
of an age without faith, without ideals, without the inner light
that reveals to hope what is denied to sense.
The influence of such a woman with her gifts, her energy, her
power, and her social prestige, can hardly be estimated. It was
not in the direction of the new drift of thought. "I am not a
fanatic as to liberty," she said; "I believe it is an error to
pretend that it exists in a democracy. One has a thousand
tyrants in place of one." She had no breadth of sympathy, and
her interests were largely personal; but in matters of style and
form her taste was unerring. Pitiless in her criticisms, she
held firmly to her ideals of clear, elegant, and concise
expression, both in literature and in conversation. She
tolerated no latitudes, no pretension, and left behind her the
traditions of a society that blended, more perfectly, perhaps,
than any other of her time, the best intellectual life with
courtly manners and a strict observance of les convenances.
CHAPTER XV. MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE
A Romantic Career--Companion of Mme. du Deffand--Rival Salons--
Association with the Encyclopedists--D'Alembert--A Heart
Tragedy--Impassioned Letters--A Type Unique in her Age
Inseparably connected with the name of Mme. du Deffand is that of
her companion and rival, Mlle. de Lespinasse, the gifted,
charming, tender and loving woman who presided over one of the
most noted of the philosophical salons; who was the chosen friend
and confidante of the Encyclopedists; and who died in her prime
of a broken heart, leaving the world a legacy of letters that
rival those of Heloise or the poems of Sappho, as "immortal
pictures of passion." The memory of her social triumphs,
remarkable as they were, pales before the singular romances of
her life. In the midst of a cold, critical, and heartless
society, that adored talent and ridiculed sentiment, she became
the victim of a passion so profound, so ardent, so hopeless, that
her powerful intellect bent before it like a reed before a storm.
She died of that unsuspected passion, and years afterwards these
letters found the light and told the tale.
The contrast between the two women so closely linked together is
complete. Mme. du Deffand belonged to the age of Voltaire by
every fiber of her hard and cynical nature. What she called love
was a fire of the intellect which consumed without warming. It
was a violent and fierce prejudice in favor of those who
reflected something of herself. The tenderness of self-sacrifice
was not there. Mlle. de Lespinasse was of the later era of
Rousseau; the era of exaggerated feeling, of emotional delirium,
of romantic dreams; the era whose heroine was the loving and
sentimental "Julie," for whose portrait she might have sat, with a
shade or so less of intellect and brilliancy. But it was more
than a romantic dream that shadowed and shortened the life of
Mlle. de Lespinasse. She had a veritable heart of flame, that
consumed not only itself but its frail tenement as well.
Julie-Jeanne-Eleonore de Lespinasse, who was born at Lyons in
1732, had a birthright of sorrow. Her mother, the Comtesse
d'Albon, could not acknowledge this fugitive and nameless
daughter, but after the death of her husband she received her on
an inferior footing, had her carefully educated, and secretly
gave her love and care. Left alone and without resources at
fifteen, Julie was taken, as governess and companion, into the
family of a sister who was the wife of Mme. du Deffand's brother.
Here the marquise met her on one of her visits and heard the
story of her sorrows. Tearful, sad, and worn out by
humiliations, the young girl had decided to enter a convent.
"There is no misfortune that I have not experienced," she wrote
to Guibert many years afterwards. "Some day, my friend, I will
relate to you things not to be found in the romances of Prevost
nor of Richardson . . . I ought naturally to devote myself to
hating; I have well fulfilled my destiny; I have loved much and
hated very little. Mon Dieu, my friend, I am a hundred years
old." Mme. du Deffand was struck with her talent and a certain
indefinable fascination of manner which afterwards became so
potent. "You have gaiety," she wrote to her, "you are capable of
sentiment; with these qualities you will be charming so long as
you are natural and without pretension." After a negotiation of
some months, Mlle. de Lespinasse went to Paris to live with her
new friend. The history of this affair has been already related.
Parisian society was divided into two factions on the merits of
the quarrel--those who censured the ingratitude of the younger
woman, and those who accused the marquise of cruelty and
injustice. But many of the oldest friends of the latter aided
her rival. The Marechale de Luxembourg furnished her apartments
in the Rue de Belle-Chasse. The Duc de Choiseul procured her a
pension, and Mme. Geoffrin gave her an annuity. She carried with
her a strong following of eminent men from the salon of Mme. du
Deffand, among whom was d'Alembert, who remained faithful and
devoted to the end. It is said that President Henault even
offered to marry her, but how, under these circumstances, he
managed to continue in the good graces of his lifelong friend,
the unforgiving marquise, does not appear. A letter which he
wrote to Mlle. de Lespinasse throws a direct light upon her
character, after making due allowance for the exaggeration of
French gallantry.
"You are cosmopolitan; you adapt yourself to all situations. The
world pleases you; you love solitude. Society amuses you, but it
does not seduce you. Your heart does not give itself easily.
Strong passions are necessary to you, and it is better so, for
they will not return often. Nature, in placing you in an
ordinary position, has given you something to relieve it. Your
soul is noble and elevated, and you will never remain in a crowd.
It is the same with your person. It is distinguished and
attracts attention, without being beautiful. There is something
piquante about you . . . You have two things which do not often
go together: you are sweet and strong; your gaiety adorns you and
relaxes your nerves, which are too tense . . . You are extremely
refined; you have divined the world."
The age of portraits was not quite passed, and the privilege of
seeing one's self in the eyes of one's friends was still
accorded, a fact to which we owe many striking if sometimes
rather highly colored pictures. A few words from d'Alembert are
of twofold interest. He writes some years later:
"The regard one has for you does not depend alone upon your
external charms; it depends, above all, upon your intellect and
your character. That which distinguishes you in society is the
art of saying to every one the fitting word and that art is very
simple with you; it consists in never speaking of yourself to
others, and much of themselves. It is an infallible means of
pleasing; thus you please every one, though it happens that all
the world pleases you; you know even how to avoid repelling those
who are least agreeable."
This epitome of the art of pleasing may be commended for its
wisdom, aside from the very delightful picture it gives of an
amiable and attractive woman. Again he writes:
"The excellence of your tone would not be a distinction for one
reared in a court, and speaking only the language she has
learned. In you it is a merit very real and very rare. You have
brought it from the seclusion of a province, where you met no one
who could teach you. You were, in this regard, as perfect the
day after your arrival at Paris as you are today. You found
yourself, from the first, as free, as little out of place in the
most brilliant and most critical society as if you had passed
your life there; you have felt its usages before knowing them,
which implies a justness and fineness of tact very unusual, an
exquisite knowledge of les convenances."
It was her innate tact and social instinct, combined with rare
gifts of intellect and great conversational charm, that gave this
woman without name, beauty, or fortune so exceptional a position,
and her salon so distinguished a place among the brilliant
centers of Paris. As she was not rich and could not give costly
dinners, she saw her friends daily from five to nine, in the
interval between other engagements. This society was her chief
interest, and she rarely went out. "If she made an exception to
this rule, all Paris was apprised of it in advance," says Grimm.
The most illustrious men of the State, the Church, the Court, and
the Army, as well as celebrated foreigners and men of letters,
were sure to be found there. "Nowhere was conversation more
lively, more brilliant, or better regulated," writes Marmontel. .
. "It was not with fashionable nonsense and vanity that every
day during four hours, without languor or pause, she knew how to
make herself interesting to a circle of sensible people."
Caraccioli went from her salon one evening to sup with Mme. du
Deffand. "He was intoxicated with all the fine works he had
heard read there," writes the latter. "There was a eulogy of one
named Fontaine by M. de Condorcet. There were translations of
Theocritus; tales, fables by I know not whom. And then some
eulogies of Helvetius, an extreme admiration of the esprit and
the talents of the age; in fine, enough to make one stop the
ears. All these judgments false and in the worst taste." A hint
of the rivalry between the former friends is given in a letter
from Horace Walpole. "There is at Paris," he writes, "a Mlle. de
Lespinasse, a pretended bel esprit, who was formerly a humble
companion of Mme. du Deffand, and betrayed her and used her very
ill. I beg of you not to let any one carry you thither. I dwell
upon this because she has some enemies so spiteful as to try to
carry off all the English to Mlle. de Lespinasse."
But this "pretended bel esprit" had socially the touch of genius.
Her ardent, impulsive nature lent to her conversation a rare
eloquence that inspired her listeners, though she never drifted
into monologue, and understood the value of discreet silence.
"She rendered the marble sensible, and made matter talk," said
Guibert. Versatile and suggestive herself, she knew how to draw
out the best thoughts of others. Her swift insight caught the
weak points of her friends, and her gracious adaptation had all
the fascination of a subtle flattery. Sad as her experience had
been, she had nevertheless been drawn into the world most
congenial to her tastes. "Ah, how I dislike not to love that
which is excellent," she wrote later. "How difficult I have
become! But is it my fault? Consider the education I have
received with Mme. du Deffand. President Henault, Abbe Bon, the
Archbishop of Toulouse, the Archbishop of Aix, Turgot,
d'Alembert, Abbe de Boismont--these are the men who have taught
me to speak, to think, and who have deigned to count me for
something."
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