sentiment!
President Henault, the life-long friend of Mme. du Deffand, whose light
criticism of a pure-minded woman might be regarded as rather flattering
than otherwise, says: "It was apparent that Mme. de Lambert touched upon
the time of the Hotel de Rambouillet; she was a little affected, and had
not the force to overstep the limits of the prude and the precieuse. Her
salon was the rendevous of celebrated men.... In the evening the scenery
changed as well as the actors. A more elegant world assembled at
the suppers. The Marquise took pleasure in receiving people who were
agreeable to each other. Her tone, however, did not vary, and she
preached la belle galanterie to some who went a little beyond it. I
was of the two parties; I dogmatized in the morning and sang in the
evening." The two eminent Greek Scholars, La Motte and Mme. Dacier, held
spirited discussions on the merits of Homer, which came near ending in
permanent ill-feeling, but the amiable hostess gave a dinner for them,
"they drank to the health of the poet, and all was forgotten." The war
between the partizans of the old and the new was as lively then as it
is today. "La Motte and Fontenelle prefer the moderns,"
said the
caustic Mme. du Deffand; "but the ancients are dead, and the moderns
are themselves." The names of Sainte-Aulaire, de Sacy, Mairan, President
Henault, and others equally scholarly and witty, suffice to indicate the
quality of the conversation, which treated lightly and gracefully of
the most serious things. The Duchesse du Maine and her clever companion,
Mlle. de Launay were often among the guests; also the beautiful and
brilliant Mme. de Caylus, a niece of Mme. de Maintenon, whom some
poetical critic has styled "the last flower of the seventeenth
century." Sainte-Aulaire, tired of the perpetual excitement at Sceaux,
characterized this salon by a witty quatrain: Je suis las de l'esprit, il me met en courroux, Il me renverse la cervelle;
Lambert, je viens chercher un asile chez vous, Entre La Motte et Fontenelle.
The wits of the day launched many a shaft of satire against it, as they
had against the Hotel de Rambouillet a century earlier; but it was
an intellectual center of great influence, and was regarded as the
sanctuary of old manners as well as the asylum of new liberties. Its
decorous character gave it the epithet of "very respectable;" but this
eminently respectable company, which represented the purest taste of the
time, often included Adrienne Lecouvreur, who was much more remarkable
for talent than for respectability. We have a direct glimpse of it
through the pen of d'Artenson:
"I have just met with a very grievous loss in the death of the Marquise
de Lambert" (he writes in 1733). "For fifteen years I have been one of
her special friends, and she has done me the favor of inviting me to her
house, where it is an honor to be received. I dined there regularly on
Wednesday, which was one of her days.... She was rich, and made a good
and amiable use of her wealth, for the benefit of her friends, and above
all for the unfortunate. A pupil of Bachaumont, having frequented only
the society of people of the world, and of the highest intelligence, she
knew no other passion than a constant and platonic tenderness."
The quality of character and intellect which gave Mme.
de Lambert so
marked an influence, we find in her own thoughts on a great variety of
subjects. She gives us the impression of a woman altogether sensible
and judicious, but not without a certain artificial tone. Her
well-considered philosophy of life had an evident groundwork of ambition
and worldly wisdom, which appears always in her advice to her children.
She counsels her son to aim high and believe himself capable of great
things. "Too much modesty," she says, "is a languor of the soul, which
prevents it from taking flight and carrying itself rapidly towards
glory"--a suggestion that would be rather superfluous in this
generation. Again, she advises him to seek the society of his superiors,
in order to accustom himself to respect and politeness.
"With equals
one grows negligent; the mind falls asleep." But she does not regard
superiority as an external thing, and says very wisely,
"It is merit
which should separate you from people, not dignity or pride." By
"people" she indicates all those who think meanly and commonly. "The
court is full of them," she adds. Her standards of honor are high, and
her sentiments of humanity quite in the vein of the coming age. She
urges her daughter to treat her servants with kindness.
"One of the
ancients says they should be regarded as unfortunate friends. Think that
humanity and Christianity equalize all."
Her criticisms on the education of women are of especial interest.
Behind her conventional tastes and her love of consideration she has a
clear perception of facts and an appreciation of unfashionable truths.
She recognizes the superiority of her sex in matters of taste and in the
enjoyment of "serious pleasures which make only the MIND
LAUGH and
do not trouble the heart" She reproaches men with
"spoiling the
dispositions nature has given to women, neglecting their education,
filling their minds with nothing solid, and destining them solely to
please, and to please only by their graces or their vices." But she had
not always the courage of her convictions, and it was doubtless quite as
much her dislike of giving voice to unpopular opinions as her aversion
to the publicity of authorship, that led her to buy the entire edition
of her "Reflexions sur les Femmes," which was published without her
consent.
One of her marked traits was moderation. "The taste is spoiled by
amusements," she writes. "One becomes so accustomed to ardent pleasures
that one cannot fall back upon simple ones. We should fear great
commotions of the soul, which prepare ennui and disgust." This wise
thought suggests the influence of Fontenelle, who impressed himself
strongly upon the salons of the first half of the century. His calm
philosophy is distinctly reflected in the character of Mme. de Lambert,
also in that of Mme. Geoffrin, with whom he was on very intimate terms.
It is said that this poet, critic, bel esprit, and courtly favorite,
whom Rousseau calls "the daintiest pedant in the world,"
was never
swayed by any emotion whatever. He never laughed, only smiled; never
wept; never praised warmly, though he did say pretty things to women;
never hurried; was never angry; never suffered, and was never moved by
suffering. "He had the gout," says one of his critics,
"but no pain;
only a foot wrapped in cotton. He put it on a footstool; that was all."
It is perhaps fair to present, as the other side of the medallion, the
portrait drawn by the friendly hand of Adrienne LeCouvreur. "The charms
of his intellect often veiled its essential qualities.
Unique of
his kind, he combines all that wins regard and respect.
Integrity,
rectitude, equity compose his character; an imagination lively and
brilliant, turns fine and delicate, expressions new and always
happy ornament it. A heart pure, actions clear, conduct uniform, and
everywhere principles.... Exact in friendship, scrupulous in love;
nowhere failing in the attributes of a gentleman. Suited to intercourse
the most delicate, though the delight of savants; modest in his
conversation, simple in his actions, his superiority is evident, but he
never makes one feel it." He lived a century, apparently because it
was too much trouble to die. When the weight of years made it too much
trouble to live, he simply stopped. "I do not suffer, my friends, but I
feel a certain difficulty in existing," were his last words. With this
model of serene tranquillity, who analyzed the emotions as he would a
problem in mathematics, and reduced life to a debit and credit account,
it is easy to understand the worldly philosophy of the women who came
under his influence.
But while Mme. de Lambert had a calm and equable temperament, and loved
to surround herself with an atmosphere of repose, she was not without
a fine quality of sentiment. "I exhort you much more to cultivate your
heart," she writes to her son, "than to perfect your mind; the true
greatness of the man is in the heart." "She was not only eager to
serve her friends without waiting for their prayers or the humiliating
exposure of their needs," said Fontenelle, "but a good action to be done
in favor of indifferent people always tempted her warmly.... The ill
success of some acts of generosity did not correct the habit; she was
always equally ready to do a kindness." She has written very delicately
and beautifully of friendships between men and women; and she had her
own intimacies that verged upon tenderness, but were free from any
shadow of reproach. Long after her death, d'Alembert, in his academic
eulogy upon de Sacy, refers touchingly to the devoted friendship that
linked this elegant savant with Mme. de Lambert. "It is believed,"
says President Henault, "that she was married to the Marquis de
Sainte-Aulaire. He was a man of esprit, who only bethought himself,
after more than sixty years, of his talent for poetry; and Mme. de
Lambert, whose house was filled with Academicians, gained him entrance
into the Academy, not without strong opposition on the part of Boileau
and some others." Whether the report of this alliance was true or not,
the families were closely united, as the daughter of Mme. de Lambert
was married to a son of Sainte-Aulaire; it is certain that the enduring
affection of this ancient friend lighted the closing years of her life.
Though tinged with the new philosophy, Mme. de Lambert regarded religion
as a part of a respectable, well-ordered life. "Devotion is a becoming
sentiment in women, and befitting in both sexes," she writes. But she
clearly looked upon it as an external form, rather than an internal
flame. When about to die, at the age of eighty-six, she declined the
services of a friendly confessor, and sent for an abbe who had a great
reputation for esprit. Perhaps she thought he would give her a more
brilliant introduction into the next world; this points to one of her
weaknesses, which was a love of consideration that carried her sometimes
to the verge of affectation. It savors a little of the hypercritical
spirit that is very well illustrated by an anecdote of the witty
Duchesse de Luxenbourg. One morning she took up a prayer book that was
lying upon the table and began to criticize severely the bad taste
of the prayers. A friend ventured to remark that if they were said
reverently and piously, God surely would pay no attention to their
good or bad form. "Indeed," exclaimed the fastidious Marechale, whose
religion was evidently a becoming phase of estheticism,
"do not believe
that."
The thoughts of Mme. de Lambert, so elevated in tone, so fine in
moral quality, so rich in worldly wisdom, and often so felicitous in
expression, tempt one to multiply quotations, especially as they show
us an intimate side of her life, of which otherwise we know very
little. Her personality is veiled. Her human experiences, her loves,
her antipathies, her mistakes, and her errors are a sealed book to us,
excepting as they may be dimly revealed in the complexion of her mind.
Of her influence we need no better evidence than the fact that her salon
was called the antechamber to the Academie Francaise.
The precise effect of this influence of women over the most powerful
critical body of the century, or of any century, perhaps, we can hardly
measure. In the fact that the Academy became for a time philosophical
rather than critical, and dealt with theories rather than with pure
literature, we trace the finger of the more radical thinkers who made
themselves so strongly felt in the salons. Sainte=Beuve tells us that
Fontenelle, with other friends of Mme. de Lambert, first gave it
this tendency; but his mission was apparently an unconscious one, and
strikingly illustrates the accidental character of the sources of the
intellectual currents which sometimes change the face of the world. "If
I had a handful of truths, I should take good care not to open it,"
said this sybarite, who would do nothing that was likely to cause him
trouble. But the truths escaped in spite of him, and these first words
of the new philosophy were perhaps the more dangerous because veiled
and insidious. "You have written the 'Histoire des Oracles,'" said a
philosopher to him, after he had been appointed the royal censor, "and
you refuse me your approbation." "Monsieur," replied Fontenelle, "if I
had been censor when I wrote the 'Histoire des Oracles,'
I should have
carefully avoided giving it my approbation." But if the philosophers
finally determined the drift of this learned body, it was undoubtedly
the tact and diplomacy of women which constituted the most potent factor
in the elections which placed them there. The mantle of authority,
so gracefully worn by Mme. de Lambert, fell upon her successors, Mme.
Geoffrin and Mlle. de Lespinasse, losing none of its prestige. As a
rule, the best men in France were sooner or later enrolled among the
Academicians. If a few missed the honor through failure to enlist the
favor of women, as has been said, and a few better courtiers of less
merit attained it, the modern press has not proved a more judicious
tribunal.
CHAPTER X. THE DUCHESSE DU MAINE
_Her Capricious Character--Her Esprit--Mlle. de Launay--
Clever Portrait
of Her Mistress--Perpetual Fetes at Sceaux--Voltaire and the "Divine
Emilie"--Dilettante Character of this Salon._
The life of the eighteenth century, with its restlessness, its love
of amusements, its ferment of activities, and its essential frivolity,
finds a more fitting representative in the Duchesse du Maine,
granddaughter of the Grand Conde, and wife of the favorite son of
Louis XIV, and Mme. de Montespan. The transition from the serene
and thoughtful atmosphere which surrounded Mme. de Lambert, to the
tumultuous whirl of existence at Sceaux, was like passing from the soft
light and tranquillity of a summer evening to the glare and confusion
of perpetual fireworks. Of all the unique figures of a masquerading age
this small and ambitious princess was perhaps the most striking, the
most pervading. It was by no means her aim to take her place in the
world as queen of a salon. Louise-Benedicte de Bourbon belonged to the
royal race, and this was by far the most vivid fact in her life. She
was but a few steps from the throne, and political intrigues played a
conspicuous part in her singular career. But while she waited for the
supreme power to which she aspired, and later, when the feverish dream
of her life was ended, she must be amused, and her diversions must have
an intellectual and imaginative flavor. Wits, artists, literary men, and
savants were alike welcome at Sceaux, if they amused her and entertained
her guests. "One lived there by esprit, and esprit is my God," said Mme.
du Deffand, who was among the brightest ornaments of this circle.
Born in 1676, the Duchesse du Maine lived through the first half of
the next century, of which her little court was one of the most notable
features. Scarcely above the stature of a child of ten years, slightly
deformed, with a fair face lighted by fine eyes; classically though
superficially educated; gifted in conversation, witty, brilliant,
adoring talent, but cherishing all the prejudices of the old
noblesse--she represented in a superlative degree the passion for esprit
which lent such exceptional brilliancy to the social life of the time.
In character the duchess was capricious and passionate.
"If she were as
good as she is wicked," said the sharp-tongued Palatine,
"there would be
nothing to say against her. She is tranquil during the day and passes it
playing at cards, but at its close the extravagances and fits of passion
begin; she torments her husband, her children, her servants, to such
a point that they do not know which way to turn." Her will brooked no
opposition. When forced to leave the Tuileries after the collapse of her
little bubble of political power, she deliberately broke every article
of value in her apartments, consigning mirrors, vases, statues,
porcelains alike to a common ruin, that no one else might enjoy them
after her. This fiery scion of a powerful family, who had inherited its
pride, its ambition, its uncontrollable passions, and its colossal will,
had little patience with the serene temperament and dilettante tastes of
her amiable husband, and it is said she did not scruple to make him
feel the force of her small hands. "You will waken some morning to find
yourself in the Academie Francaise, and the Duc d'Orleans regent," she
said to him one day when he showed her a song he had translated. Her
device was a bee, with this motto: "I am small, but I make deep wounds."
Doubtless its fitness was fully realized by those who belonged to the
Ordre de la Mouche-a-miel which she had instituted, and whose members
were obliged to swear, by Mount Hymettus, fidelity and obedience
to their perpetual dictator. But what pains and chagrins were not
compensated by the bit of lemon-colored ribbon and its small meed of
distinction!
The little princess worked valiantly for political power, but she worked
in vain. The conspiracy against the regent, which seemed to threaten
another Fronde, came to nothing, and this ardent instrigante, who had
the disposition to "set the four corners of the kingdom on fire" to
attain her ends, found her party dispersed and herself in prison. But
this was only an episode, and though it gave a death blow to her dreams
of power, it did not quench her irrepressible ardor. If she could not
rule in one way, she would in another. As soon as she regained her
freedom, her little court was again her kingdom, and no sovereign ever
reigned more imperiously. "I am fond of company," she said, "for I
listen to no one, and every one listens to me." It was an incessant
thirst for power, a perpetual need of the sweet incense of flattery,
that was at the bottom of this "passion for a multitude." "She believed
in herself," writes Mlle. de Launay, afterward Baronne de Staal, "as
she believed in God or Descartes, without examination and without
discussion."
This lady's maid, who loved mathematics and anatomy, was familiar with
Malebranche and Descartes, and left some literary reputation as a writer
of gossipy memoirs, was a prominent figure in the lively court at Sceaux
for more than forty years, and has given us some vivid pictures of her
capricious mistress. A young girl of clear intellect and good education,
but without rank, friends, or fortune, she was forced to accept the
humiliating position of femme de chambre with the Duchesse du Maine, who
had been attracted by her talents. She was brought into notice through
a letter to Fontenelle, which was thought witty enough to be copied and
circulated. If she had taken this cool dissector of human motives as
a model, she certainly did credit to his teaching. Her curiously
analytical mind is aptly illustrated by her novel method of measuring
her lover's passion. He was in the habit of accompanying her home from
the house of a friend. When he began to cross the square, instead of
going round it, she concluded that his love had diminished in the exact
proportion of two sides of a square to the diagonal.
Promoted to the
position of a companion, she devoted herself to the interests of her
restless mistress, read to her, talked with her, wrote plays for her,
and was the animating spirit of the famous Nuits Blanches. While the
duchess was in exile she shared her disgrace, refused to betray her, and
was sent to the Bastille for her loyalty. She resigned herself to her
imprisonment with admirable philosophy, amused herself in the study of
Latin, in watching the gambols of a cat and kitten, and in carrying on
a safe and sentimental flirtation with the fascinating Duc de Richelieu,
who occupied an adjoining cell and passed the hours in singing with her
popular airs from Iphigenie. "Sentimental" is hardly a fitting word to
apply to the coquetries of this remarkably clear and calculating young
woman. She returned with her patroness to Sceaux, found many admirers,
but married finally with an eye to her best worldly interests, and,
it appears, in the main happily--at least, not unhappily. The shade of
difference implies much. She had a keen, penetrating intellect which
nothing escaped, and as it had the peculiar clearness in which people
and events are reflected as in a mirror, her observations are of great
value. "Aside from the prose of Voltaire, I know of none more agreeable
than that of Mme. de Staal de Launay," said Grimm. Her portrait of her
mistress serves to paint herself as well.
"Mme. la Duchesse du Maine, at the age of sixty years, has yet learned
nothing from experience; she is a child of much talent; she has
its defects and its charms. Curious and credulous, she wishes to be
instructed in all the different branches of knowledge; but she is
contented with their surface. The decisions of those who educated her
have become for her principles and rules upon which her mind has never
formed the least doubt; she submits once for all. Her provision for
ideas is made; she rejects the best demonstrated truths and resists the
best reasonings, if they are contrary to the first impressions she has
received. All examination is impossible to her lightness, and doubt is
a state which her weakness cannot support. Her catechism and the
philosophy of Descartes are two systems which she understands equally
well.... Her mirror cannot make her doubt the charms of her face; the
testimony of her eyes is more questionable than the judgment of those
who have decided that she is beautiful and well-formed.
Her vanity is
of a singular kind, but seems the less offensive because it is not
reflective, though in reality it is the more ridiculous, Intercourse
with her is a slavery; her tyranny is open; she does not deign to color
it with the appearance of friendship. She says frankly that she has the
misfortune of not being able to do without people for whom she does not
care. She proves it effectually. One sees her learn with indifference
the death of those who would call forth torrents of tears if they were a
quarter of an hour too late for a card party or a promenade."
But this vain and self-willed woman read Virgil and Terence in the
original, was devoted to Greek tragedies, dipped into philosophy,
traversed the surface of many sciences, turned a madrigal with facility,
and talked brilliantly. "The language is perfect only when you speak it
or when one speaks of you," wrote Mme. de Lambert, in a tone of discreet
flattery. "No one has ever spoken with more correctness, clearness, and
rapidity, neither in a manner more noble or more natural," said Mlle. de
Launay.
Through this feminine La Bruyere, as Sainte-Beuve has styled her, we
are introduced to the life at Sceaux. It was the habit of the guests
to assemble at eight, listen to music or plays, improvise verses f