The Women of the French Salons
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Amelia Gere Mason >> The Women of the French Salons
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"Your mind so adorns and embellishes your person, that there is
no one in the world so fascinating when you are animated by a
conversation from which constraint is banished. All that you say
has such a charm, and becomes you so well, that the words attract
the Smiles and the Graces around you; the brilliancy of your
intellect gives such luster to your complexion and your eyes,
that although it seems that wit should touch only the ears, yours
dazzles the sight.
"Your soul is great and elevated. You are sensitive to glory and
to ambition, and not less so to pleasures; you were born for them
and they seem to have been made for you . . . In a word, joy is
the true state of your soul, and grief is as contrary to it as
possible. You are naturally tender and impassioned; there was
never a heart so generous, so noble, so faithful . . . You are
the most courteous and amiable person that ever lived, and the
sweet, frank air which is seen in all your actions makes the
simplest compliments of politeness seem from your lips
protestations of friendship."
Mlle. de Scudery sketches her as the Princesse Clarinte in
"Clelie," concluding with these words: "I have never seen together
so many attractions, so much gaiety, so much coquetry, so much
light, so much innocence and virtue. No one ever understood
better the art of having grace without affectation, raillery
without malice, gaiety without folly, propriety without
constraint, and virtue without severity."
Her malicious cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, who was piqued by her
indifference, and basely wished to avenge himself, said that her
"warmth was in her intellect;" that for a woman of quality she
was too badine, too economical, too keenly alive to her own
interests; that she made too much account of a few trifling words
from the queen, and was too evidently flattered when the king
danced with her. This opinion of a vain and jealous man is not
entitled to great consideration, especially when we recall that
he had already spoken of her as "the delight of mankind,:" and
said that antiquity would have dressed altars for her and she
would "surely have been goddess of something." The most
incomprehensible page in her history is her complaisance towards
the persistent impertinences of this perfidious friend. The only
solution of it seems to lie in the strength of family ties, and
in her unwillingness to be on bad terms with one of her very few
near relatives. Bussy-Rabutin was handsome, witty, brilliant, a
bel esprit, a member of the Academie Francaise, and very much in
love with his charming cousin, who clearly appreciated his
talents, if not his character. "You are the fagot of my
intellect," she says to him; but she forbids him to talk of love.
Unfortunately for himself, his vanity got the better of his
discretion. He wrote the "Histoire Amoureuse des Gauls," and
raised such a storm about his head by his attack upon many fair
reputations, that, after a few months of lonely meditation in the
Bastille, he was exiled from Paris for seventeen years. Long
afterwards he repented the unkind blow he had given to Mme. de
Sevigne, confessed its injustice, apologized, and made his peace.
But the world is less forgiving, and wastes little sympathy upon
the base but clever and ambitious man who was doomed to wear his
restless life away in the uncongenial solitude of his chateau.
Among the numerous adorers of Mme. de Sevigne were the Prince de
Conti, the witty Comte de Lude, the poet Segrais, Fouquet, and
Turenne. Her friendship for the last two seems to have been the
most lively and permanent. We owe to her sympathetic pen the
best account of the death of Turenne. Her devotion to the
interests of Fouquet and his family lasted though the many years
of imprisonment that ended only with his life. There was nothing
of the spirit of the courtier in her generous affection for the
friends who were out of favor. The loyalty of her character was
notably displayed in her unwavering attachment to Cardinal de
Retz, during his long period of exile and misfortune, after the
Fronde.
But one must go outside the ordinary channels to find the
veritable romance of Mme. de Sevigne's life. Her sensibility
lent itself with great facility to impressions, and her gracious
manners, her amiable character, her inexhaustible fund of gaiety
could not fail to bring her a host of admirers. She had
doubtless a vein of harmless coquetry, but it was little more
than the natural and variable grace of a frank and sympathetic
woman who likes to please, and who scatters about her the flowers
of a rich mind and heart, without taking violent passions too
seriously, if, indeed, she heeds them at all. Friendship, too,
has its shades, its subtleties, its half-perceptible and quite
unconscious coquetries. But the supreme passion of Mme. de
Sevigne was her love for her daughter. It was the exaltation of
her mystical grandmother, in another form. "To love as I love
you makes all other friendships frivolous," she writes. Whatever
her gifts and attractions may have been, she is known to the
world mainly through this affection and the letters which have
immortalized it. Nowhere in literature has maternal love found
such complete and perfect expression. Nowhere do we find a
character so clearly self-revealed. Others have professed to
unveil their innermost lives, but there is always a suspicion of
posing in deliberate revelations. Mme. De Sevigne has portrayed
herself unconsciously. It is the experience of yesterday, the
thought of today, the hope of tomorrow, the love that is at once
the joy and sorrow of all the days, that are woven into a
thousand varying but living forms. One naturally seeks in the
character of the daughter a key to the absorbing sentiment which
is the inspiration and soul of these letters; but one does not
find it there. More beautiful than her mother, more learned,
more accomplished, she lacked her sympathetic charm. Cold,
reserved, timid, and haughty, without vivacity and apparently
without fine sensibility, she was much admired but little loved
by the world in which she lived. "When you choose, you are
adorable," wrote her mother; but evidently she did not always so
choose. Bussy-Rabutin says of her, "This woman has esprit, but
it is esprit soured and of insupportable egotism. She will make
as many enemies as her mother makes friends and adorers." He did
not like her, and one must again take his opinion with reserve;
but she says of herself that she is "of a temperament little
communicative." In her mature life she naively writes: "At first
people thought me amiable enough, but when they knew me better
they loved me no more." "The prettiest girl in France," whose
beauty was expected to "set the world on fire," created a mild
sensation at court; was noticed by the king, who danced with her,
received her share of adulation, and finally became the third
wife of the Comte de Grignan, who carried her off to Provence, to
the lasting grief of her adoring mother, and to the great
advantage of posterity, which owes to this fact the series of
incomparable letters that made the fame of their writer, and
threw so direct and vivid a light upon an entire generation.
The world has been inclined to regard the son of Mme. de Sevigne
as the more lovable of her two children, but she doubtless
recognized in his light and inconsequent character many of the
qualities of her husband which had given her so much sorrow
during the brief years of her marriage. Amiable, affectionate,
and not without talent, he was nevertheless the source of many
anxieties and little pride. He followed in the footsteps of his
father, and became a willing victim to the fascinations of Ninon;
he frequented the society of Champmesle, where he met habitually
Boileau and Racine. He recited well, had a fine literary taste,
much sensibility, and a gracious ease of manner that made him
many friends. "He was almost as much loved as I am," remarked
the brilliant Mme. de Coulanges, after accompanying him on a
visit to Versailles. He appealed to Mme. de La Fayette to use
her influence with his mother to induce her to pay his numerous
debts. There is a touch of satire in the closing line of the
note in which she intercedes for him. "The great friendship you
have for Mme. de Grignan," she writes, "makes it necessary to
show some for her brother."--But we have glimpses of his
weakness and instability in many of his mother's intimate
letters. In the end, however, having exhausted the pleasures of
life and felt the bitterness of its disappointments, he took
refuge in devotion, and died in the odor of sanctity, after the
example of his devout ancestress.
Mme. de Grignan certainly offered a more solid foundation for her
mother's confidence and affection. It is quite possible, too,
that her reserve concealed graces of character only apparent on a
close intimacy. But love does not wait for reasons, and this
one had all the shades and intensities of a passion, with few of
its exactions. D'Andilly called the mother a "pretty pagan,"
because she made such an idol of her daughter. She sometimes has
her own misgivings on the score of religion. "I make this a
little Trappe," she wrote from Livry, after the separation. "I
wish to pray to God and make a thousand reflections; but, Ma
pauvre chere, what I do better than all that is to think of you.
. . I see you, you are present to me, I think and think again of
everything; my head and my mind are racked; but I turn in vain, I
seek in vain; the dear child whom I love with so much passion is
two hundred leagues away. I have her no more. Then I weep
without the power to help myself." She rings the changes upon
this inexhaustible theme. A responsive word delights her; a
brief silence terrifies her; a slight coldness plunges her into
despair. "I have an imagination so lively that uncertainty makes
me die," she writes. If a shadow of grief touches her idol, her
sympathies are overflowing. "You weep, my very dear child; it is
an affair for you; it is not the same thing for me, it is my
temperament."
But though this love pulses and throbs behind all her letters, it
does not make up the substance of them. To amuse her daughter
she gathers all the gossip of the court, all the news of her
friends; she keeps her au courant with the most trifling as well
as the most important events. Now she entertains her with a
witty description of a scene at Versailles, a tragical adventure,
a gracious word about Mme. Scarron, "who sups with me every
evening," a tender message from Mme. de La Fayette; now it is a
serious reflection upon the death of Turenne, a vivid picture of
her own life, a bit of philosophy, a spicy anecdote about a dying
man who takes forty cups of tea every morning, and is cured. A
few touches lay bare a character or sketch a vivid scene. It is
this infinite variety of detail that gives such historic value to
her letters. In a correspondence so intimate she has no interest
to conciliate, no ends to gain. She is simply a mirror in which
the world about her is reflected.
But the most interesting thing we read in her letters is the life
and nature of the woman herself. She has a taste for society and
for seclusion, for gaiety and for thought, for friendship and for
books. For the moment each one seems dominant. "I am always of
the opinion of the one heard last," she says, laughing at her own
impressibility. It is an amiable admission, but she has very
fine and rational ideas of her own, notwithstanding. In books,
for which she had always a passion, she found unfailing
consolation. Corneille and La Fontaine were her favorite
traveling companions. "I am well satisfied to be a substance
that thinks and reads," she says, finding her good uncle a trifle
dull for a compagnon de voyage. Her tastes were catholic. She
read Astree with delight, loved Petrarch, Ariosto, and Montaigne;
Rabelais made her "die of laughter," she found Plutarch
admirable, enjoyed Tacitus as keenly as did Mme. Roland a century
later, read Josephus and Lucian, dipped into the history of the
crusades and of the iconoclasts, of the holy fathers and of the
saints. She preferred the history of France to that of Rome
because she had "neither relatives nor friends in the latter
place." She finds the music of Lulli celestial and the preaching
of Bourdaloue divine. Racine she did not quite appreciate. In
his youth, she said he wrote tragedies for Champmesle and not for
posterity. Later she modified her opinion, but Corneille held
always the first place in her affection. She had a great love
for books on morals, read and reread the essays of Nicole, which
she found a perpetual resource against the ills of life -- even
rain and bad weather. St. Augustine she reads with pleasure, and
she is charmed with Bossuet and Pascal; but she is not very
devout, though she often tries to be. There is a serious naivete
in all her efforts in this direction. She seems to have always
one eye upon the world while she prays, and she mourns over her
own lack of devotion. "I wish my heart were for God as it is for
you," she writes to her daughter. "I am neither of God nor of
the devil," she says again; "that state troubles me though,
between ourselves, I find it the most natural in the world." Her
reason quickly pierces to the heart of superstition; sometimes
she cannot help a touch of sarcasm. "I fear that this trappe,
which wishes to pass humanity, may become a lunatic asylum," she
says. She believes little in saints and processions. Over the
high altar of her chapel she writes SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA.
"It is the way to make no one jealous," she remarks.
She was rather inclined toward Jansenism, but she could not
fathom all the subtleties of her friends the Port Royalists, and
begged them to "have the kindness, out of pity for her, to
thicken their religion a little as it evaporated in so much
reasoning." As she grows older the tone of seriousness is more
perceptible. "If I could only live two hundred years," she
writes, "it seems to me that I might be an admirable person."
The rationalistic tendencies of Mme. de Grignan give her some
anxiety, and she rallies her often upon the doubtful philosophy
of her PERE DESCARTES. She could not admit a theory which
pretended to prove that her dog Marphise had no soul, and she
insisted that if the Cartesians had any desire to go to heaven,
it was out of curiosity. "Talk to the Cardinal (de Retz) a
little of your MACHINES; machines that love, machines that have a
choice for some one, machines that are jealous, machines that
fear. ALLEZ, ALLEZ, you are jesting! Descartes never intended
to make us believe all that."
In her youth Mme. de Sevigne did not like the country because it
was windy and spoiled her beautiful complexion; perhaps, too,
because it was lonely. But with her happy gift of adaptation she
came to love its tranquillity. She went often to the solitary
old family chateau in Brittany to make economies and to retrieve
the fortune which suffered successively from the reckless
extravagance of her husband and son, and from the expensive
tastes of the Comte de Grignan, who was acting governor of
Provence, and lived in a state much too magnificent for his
resources. Of her life at The Rocks she has left us many
exquisite pictures. "I go out into the pleasant avenues; I have
a footman who follows me; I have books, I change place, I vary
the direction of my promenade; a book of devotion, a book of
history; one changes from one to the other; that gives diversion;
one dreams a little of God, of his providence; one possesses
one's soul, one thinks of the future."
She embellishes her park, superintends the planting of trees, and
"a labyrinth from which one could not extricate one's self
without the thread of Ariadne;" she fills her garden with orange
trees and jessamine until the air is so perfumed that she
imagines herself in Provence. She sits in the shade and
embroiders while her son "reads trifles, comedies which he plays
like Moliere, verses, romances, tales; he is very amusing, he has
esprit, he is appreciative, he entertains us." She notes the
changing color of the leaves, the budding of the springtime. "It
seems to me that in case of need I should know very well how to
make a spring," she writes. She loves too the "fine, crystal
days of autumn." Sometimes, in the evening, she has "gray-brown
thoughts which grow black at night," but she never dwells upon
these. Her "habitual thought--that which one must have for God,
if one does his duty"--is for her daughter. "My dear child,"
she writes, "it is only you that I prefer to the tranquil repose
I enjoy here."
If her own soul is open to us in all its variable and charming
moods, we also catch in her letters many unconscious reflections
of her daughter's character. She offers her a little needed
worldly advice. "Try, my child," she says, "to adjust yourself
to the manners and customs of the people with whom you live;
adapt yourself to that which is not bad; do not be disgusted with
that which is only mediocre; make a pleasure of that which is not
ridiculous." She entreats her to love the little Pauline and not
to scold her, nor send her away to the convent as she did her
sister Marie-Blanche. With what infinite tenderness she always
speaks of this child, smiling at her small outbursts of temper,
soothing her little griefs, and giving wise counsels about her
education. Evidently she doubted the patience of the mother.
"You do not yet too well comprehend maternal love," she writes;
"so much the better, my child; it is violent."
Unfortunately this adoring mother could not get on very well with
her daughter when they were together. She drowned her with
affection, she fatigued her with care for her health, she was
hurt by her ungracious manner, she was frozen by her indifference
in short, they killed each other. It is not a rare thing to
make a cult of a distant idol, and to find one's self unequal to
the perpetual shock of the small collisions which diversities of
taste and temperament render inevitable in daily intercourse. In
this instance, one can readily imagine that a love so interwoven
with every fiber of the mother's life, must have been a little
over-sensitive, a little exacting, a trifle too demonstrative for
the colder nature of the daughter; but that it was the less
genuine and profound, no one who has at all studied the character
of Mme. de Sevigne can for a moment imagine. How she suffers
when it becomes necessary for Mme. de Grignan to go back to
Provence! How the tears flow! How readily she forgives all,
even to denying that there is anything to forgive. "A word, a
sweetness, a return, a caress, a tenderness, disarms me, cures me
in a moment," she writes. And again: "Would to God, my daughter,
that I might see you once more at the Hotel de Carnavalet, not
for eight days, nor to make there a penitence, but to embrace you
and to make you see clearly that I cannot be happy without you,
and that the chagrins which my friendship for you might give me
are more agreeable than all the false peace of a wearisome
absence." In spite of these little clouds, the old love is never
dimmed; we are constantly bewildered with the inexhaustible
riches of a heart which gives so lavishly and really asks so
little for itself.
The Hotel de Carnavalet was one of the social centers of the
latter part of the century, but it was the source of no special
literature and of no new diversions. Mme. de Sevigne was herself
luminous, and her fame owes none of its luster to the reflection
from those about her. She was original and spontaneous. She
read because she liked to read, and not because she wished to be
learned. She wrote as she talked, from the impulse of the
moment, without method or aim excepting to follow where her rapid
thought led her. Her taste for society was of the same order.
Her variable and sparkling genius would have broken loose from
the formal conversations and rather studied brilliancy that had
charmed her youth at the Hotel de Rambouillet. The onerous
duties of a perpetual hostess would not have suited her
temperament, which demanded its hours of solitude and repose.
But she was devoted to her friends, and there was a delightful
freedom in all her intercourse with them. She has not chronicled
her salon, but she has chronicled her world, and we gather from
her letters the quality of her guests. She liked to pass an
evening in the literary coterie at the Luxembourg; to drop in
familiarly upon Mme. de La Fayette, where she found La
Rochefoucauld, Cardinal de Retz, sometimes Segrais, Huet, La
Fontaine, Moliere, and other wits of the time; to sup with Mme.
de Coulanges and Mme. Scarron. She is a constant visitor at the
old Hotel de Nevers, where Marie de Gonzague and the Princesse
Palatine had charmed an earlier generation, and where Mme.
Duplessis Guenegaud, a woman of brilliant intellect, heroic
courage, large heart, and pure character, whom d'Andilly calls
one of the great souls, presided over a new circle of young poets
and men of letters, reviving the fading memories of the Hotel de
Rambouillet. Mme. De Sevigne, who had fine dramatic talent,
acted here in little comedies. She heard Boileau read his
satires and Racine his tragedies. She met the witty Chevalier de
Chatillon, who asked eight days to make an impromptu, and
Pomponne, who wrote to his father that the great world he found
in this salon did not prevent him from appearing in a gray habit.
In a letter from the country house of Mme. Duplessis, at Fresnes,
to the same Pomponne, then ambassador to Sweden, Mme. de Sevigne
says: "I have M. d'Andilly at my left, that is, on the side of my
heart; I have Mme. de La Fayette at my right; Mme. Duplessis
before me, daubing little pictures; Mme. De Motteville a little
further off, who dreams profoundly; our uncle de Cessac, whom I
fear because I do not know him very well."
It is this life of charming informality; this society of lettered
tastes, of wit, of talent, of distinction, that she transfers to
her own salon. Its continuity is often broken by her long
absences in the country or in Provence, but her irresistible
magnetism quickly draws the world around her, on her return. In
addition to her intimate friends and to men of letters like
Racine, Boileau, Benserade, one meets representatives of the most
distinguished of the old families of France. Conde, Richelieu,
Colberg, Louvois, and Sully are a few among the great names, of
which the list might be indefinitely extended. We have many
interesting glimpses of the Grande Mademoiselle, the "adorable"
Duchesse de Chaulnes, the Duc and Duchesse de Rohan, who were
"Germans in the art of savoir-vivre," the Abbess de Fontevrault,
so celebrated for her esprit and her virtue, and a host of others
too numerous to mention. The sculptured portals and time-stained
walls of the Hotel de Carnavalet are still alive with the
memories of these brilliant reunions and the famous people who
shone there two hundred years ago.
Among those who exercised the most important influence upon the
life of Mme. de Sevigne was Corbinelli, the wise counselor, who,
with a soul untouched by the storms of adversity through which he
had passed, devoted his life to letters and the interests of his
friends. No one had a finer appreciation of her gifts and her
character. Her compared her letters to those of Cicero, but he
always sought to temper her ardor, and to turn her thoughts
toward an elevated Christian philosophy. "In him," said Mme. de
Sevigne, "I defend one who does not cease to celebrate the
perfections and the existence of God; who never judges his
neighbor, who excuses him always; who is insensible to the
pleasures and delights of life, and entirely submissive to the
will of Providence; in fine, I sustain the faithful admirer of
Sainte Therese, and of my grandmother, Sainte Chantal." This
gentle, learned, and disinterested man, whose friendship deepened
with years, was an unfailing resource. In her troubles and
perplexities she seeks his advice; in her intellectual tastes she
is sustained by his sympathy. She speaks often of the happy days
in Provence, when, together with her daughter, they translate
Tacitus, read Tasso, and get entangled in endless discussions
upon Descartes. Even Mme. de Grignan, who rarely likes her
mother's friends, in the end gives due consideration to this
loyal confidant, though she does not hesitate to ridicule the
mysticism into which he finally drifted.
After Mme. de La Fayette, the woman whose relations with Mme. de
Sevigne were the most intimate was Mme. de Coulanges, who merits
here more than a passing word. Her wit was proverbial, her
popularity universal. The Leaf, the Fly, the Sylph, the Goddess,
her friend calls her in turn, with many a light thrust at her
volatile but loyal character. This brilliant, spirituelle,
caustic woman was the wife of a cousin of the Marquis de Sevigne,
who was as witty as herself and more inconsequent. Both were
amiable, both sparkled with bons mots and epigrams, but they
failed to entertain each other. The husband goes to Italy or
Germany or passes his time in various chateaux, where he is sure
of a warm welcome and good cheer. The wife goes to Versailles,
visits her cousin Louvois, the Duchesse de Richelieu, and Mme. de
Maintenon, who loves her much; or presides at home over a salon
that is always well filled. "Ah, Madame," said M. de Barillon,
"how much your house pleases me! I shall come here very evening
when I am tired of my family." "Monsieur," she replied, "I
expect you tomorrow." When she was ill and likely to die, her
husband had a sudden access of affection, and nursed her with
great tenderness. Mme. de Coulanges dying and her husband in
grief, seemed somehow out of the order of things. "A dead
vivacity, a weeping gaiety, these are prodigies," wrote Mme. de
Sevigne. When the wife recovered, however, they took their
separate ways as before.
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