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."
It was men like these who thronged her own salon, together with such
women as the Duchesse d'Anville, friend of the economists, the Duchesse
de Chatillon whom she loved so passionately, and others well-known in
the world of fashion and letters. But its tone was more philosophical
than that of Mme. du Deffand. Though far from democratic by taste or
temperament, she was so from conviction. The griefs and humiliations of
her life had left her peculiarly open to the new social and political
theories which were agitating France. She liked free discussion, and her
own large intelligence, added to her talent for calling out and giving
point to the ideas of others, went far towards making the cosmopolitan
circle over which she presided one of the most potent forces of the
time. Her influence may be traced in the work of the encyclopedists, in
which she was associated, and which she did more than any other woman
to aid and encourage. As a power in the making of reputations and in
the election of members to the Academy she shared with Mme. Geoffrin
the honor of being a legitimate successor of Mme. de Lambert. Chastellux
owed his admission largely to her, and on her deathbed she secured that
of La Harpe.
But the side of her character which strikes us most forcibly at this
distance of time is the emotional. The personal charm which is always so
large a factor in social success is of too subtle a quality to be
caught in words. The most vivid portrait leaves a divine something to
be supplied by the imagination, and the fascination of eloquence is gone
with the flash of the eye, the modulation of the voice, or some fleeting
grace of manner. But passion writes itself out in indelible characters,
especially when it is a rare and spontaneous overflow from the heart of
a man or woman of genius, whose emotions readily crystallize into form.
Her friendship for d'Alembert, loyal and devoted as it was, seems to
have been without illusions. It is true she had cast aside every other
consideration to nurse him through a dangerous illness, and as soon as
he was able to be removed, he had taken an apartment in the house where
she lived, which he retained until her death. But he was not rich,
and marriage was not to be thought of. On this point we have his own
testimony. "The one to whom they marry me in the gazettes is indeed a
person respectable in character, and fitted by the sweetness and charm
of her society to render a husband happy," he writes to Voltaire; "but
she is worthy of an establishment better than mine, and there is between
us neither marriage nor love, but mutual esteem, and all the sweetness
of friendship. I live actually in the same house with her, where there
are besides ten other tenants; this is what has given rise to the
rumor." His devotion through so many years, and his profound grief at
her loss, as well as his subsequent words, leave some doubt as to the
tranquillity of his heart, but the sentiments of Mlle.
de Lespinasse
seem never to have passed the calm measure of an exalted and sympathetic
friendship. It was remarked that he lost much of his prestige, and
that his society which had been so brilliant, became infinitely more
miscellaneous and infinitely less agreeable after the death of the
friend whose tact and finesse had so well served his ambition.
Not long after leaving Mme. du Deffand she met the Marquis de Mora,
a son of the Spanish ambassador, who became a constant habitue of her
salon. Of distinguished family and large fortune, brilliant, courtly,
popular, and only twenty-four, he captivated at once the fiery heart
of this attractive woman of thirty-five. It seems to have been a mutual
passion, as during one brief absence of ten days he wrote her twenty-two
letters. But his family became alarmed and made his delicate health a
pretext for recalling him to Spain. Her grief at the separation
enlisted the sympathy of d'Alembert. At her request he procured from his
physician a statement that the climate of Madrid would prove fatal to
M. de Mora, whose health had steadily failed since his return home, and
that if his friends wished to save him they must lose no time in sending
him back to Paris. The young man was permitted to leave at once, but he
died en route at Bordeaux.
In the meantime Mlle. de Lespinasse, sad and inconsolable, had met M.
Guibert, a man of great versatility and many accomplishments, whose
genius seems to have borne no adequate fruit. We hear of him later
through the passing enthusiasm of Mme. de Stael, who in her youth, made
a pen-portrait of him, sufficiently flattering to account in some
degree for the singular passion of which he became the object. Mlle. de
Lespinasse was forty. He was twenty-nine, had competed for the Academie
Francaise, written a work on military science, also a national tragedy
which was still unpublished. She was dazzled by his brilliancy, and when
she fathomed his shallow nature, as she finally did, it was too late to
disentangle her heart. He was a man of gallantry, and was flattered
by the preference of a woman much in vogue, who had powerful friends,
influence at the Academy, and the ability to advance his interest in
many ways. He clearly condescended to be loved, but his own professions
have little of the true ring.
Distracted by this new passion on one side, and by remorse for her
disloyalty to the old one, on the other, the health of Mlle. de
Lespinasse, naturally delicate and already undermined, began to succumb
to the hidden struggle. The death of M. de Mora solved one problem; the
other remained. Mr. Guibert wished to advance his fortune by a brilliant
marriage without losing the friend who might still be of service to him.
She sat in judgment upon her own fate, counseled him, aided him in
his choice, even praised the woman who became his wife, hoping still,
perhaps, for some repose in that exaltation of friendship which is often
the last consolation of passionate souls. But she was on a path that led
to no haven of peace. There was only a blank wall before her, and the
lightning impulses of her own heart were forced back to shatter her
frail life. The world was ignorant of this fresh experience; and,
believing her crushed by the death of M. de Mora, sympathized with
her sorrow and praised her fidelity. She tried to sustain a double
role--smiles and gaiety for her friends, tears and agony for the long
hours of solitude. The tension was too much for her. She died shortly
afterwards at the age of forty-three. "If to think, to love, and to
suffer is that which constitutes life, she lived in these few years many
ages," said one who knew her well.
It was not until many years later, when those most interested were gone,
that the letters to Guibert, which form her chief title to fame, were
collected, and, curiously enough, by his widow. Then for the first
time the true drama of her life was unveiled. It is impossible in a few
extracts to convey an adequate idea of the passion and devotion that
runs through these letters. They touch the entire gamut of emotion, from
the tender melancholy of a lonely soul, the inexpressible sweetness of
self-forgetful love, to the tragic notes or agony and despair. There are
many brilliant passages in them, many flashes of profound thought, many
vivid traits of the people about her; but they are, before all, the
record of a soul that is rapidly burning out its casket.
"I prefer my misery to all that the world calls happiness or pleasure,"
she writes. "I shall die of it, perhaps, but that is better than never
to have lived."
"I have no more the strength to love," she says again;
"my soul fatigues
me, torments me; I am no more sustained by anything. I have every day a
fever; and my physician, who is not the most skillful of men, repeats
to me without ceasing that I am consumed by chagrin, that my pulse, my
respiration, announce an active grief, and he always goes out saying,
'We have no cure for the soul.'"
"Adieu, my friend," were her last words to him. "If I ever return to
life I shall still love to employ it in loving you; but there is no more
time."
One could almost wish that these letters had never come to light. A
single grand passion has always a strong hold upon the imagination and
the sympathies, but two passions contending for the mastery verge
upon something quite the reverse of heroic. The note of heart-breaking
despair is tragic enough, but there is a touch of comedy behind it.
Though her words have the fire, the devotion, the abandon of Heloise,
they leave a certain sense of disproportion. One is inclined to wonder
if they do not overtop the feeling.
D'Alembert was her truest mourner, and fell into a profound melancholy
after her death. "Yes," he said to Marmontel, "she was changed, but I
was not; she no longer lived for me, but I ever lived for her. Since she
is no more, I know not why I exist. Ah! Why have I not still to suffer
those moments of bitterness that she knew so well how to sweeten and
make me forget? Do you remember the happy evenings we passed together?
Now what have I left? I return home, and instead of herself I find only
her shade. This lodging at the Louvre is itself a tomb, which I never
enter but with horror." To this "shade" he wrote two expressive and
well-considered eulogies, which paint in pathetic words the perfections
of his friend and his own desolation. "Adieu, adieu, my dear Julie,"
says the heartbroken philosopher; "for these eyes which I should like to
close forever fill with tears in tracing these last lines, and I see
no more the paper on which I write." His grief called out a sympathetic
letter from Frederick the Great which shows the philosophic warrior and
king in a new light. There is a touch of bitter irony in the inflated
eulogy of Guibert, who gave the too-loving woman a death blow in
furthering his ambition, then exhausted his vocabulary in laments and
praises. Perhaps he hoped to borrow from this friendship a fresh ray of
immortality.
Whatever we may think of the strange inconsistencies of Mlle. de
Lespinasse, she is doubly interesting to us as a type that contrasts
strongly with that of her age. Her exquisite tact, her brilliant
intellect, her conversational gifts, her personal charm made her the
idol of the world in which she lived. Her influence was courted, her
salon was the resort of the most distinguished men of the century, and
while she loved to discuss the great social problems which her
friends were trying to solve, she forgot none of the graces. With the
intellectual strength and grasp of a man, she preserved always the
taste, the delicacy, the tenderness of a woman. Her faults were those of
a strong nature. Her thoughts were clear and penetrating, her expression
was lively and impassioned. But in her emotional power she reached the
proportion of genius. With "the most ardent soul, the liveliest fancy,
the most inflammable imagination that has existed since Sappho," she
represents the embodied spirit of tragedy outlined against the cold,
hard background of a skeptical, mocking, realistic age.
"I love in order
to live," she said, "and I live to love." This is the key-note of her
life.
CHAPTER XVI. THE SALON HELVETIQUE
_The Swiss Pastor's Daughter--Her Social Ambition--Her Friends--Mme.
de Marchais--Mme. d'Houdetot--Duchesse de Lauzun--
Character of Mme.
Necker--Death at Coppet--Close of the most Brilliant Period of the
Salons._
There was one woman who held a very prominent place in the society of
this period, and who has a double interest for us, though she was not
French, and never quite caught the spirit of the eighteenth-century life
whose attractive forms she loved so well. Mme. Necker, whose history
has been made so familiar through the interesting memoirs of the Comte
d'Haussonville, owes her fame to her marked qualities of intellect and
character rather than to the brilliancy of her social talents. These
found an admirable setting in the surroundings which her husband's
fortune and political career gave her. The Salon Helvetique had a
distinctive color of its own, and was always tinged with the strong
convictions and exalted ideals of the Swiss pastor's daughter, who
passed through this world of intellectual affluence and moral laxity
like a white angel of purity--in it, but not of it. The center of a
choice and lettered circle which included the most noted men and women
of her time, she brought into it not only rare gifts, a fine taste, and
genuine literary enthusiasm, but the fresh charm of a noble character
and a beautiful family life, with the instincts of duty and right
conduct which she inherited from her simple Protestant ancestry.
She lacked a little, however, in the tact, the ease, the grace, the
spontaneity, which were the essential charm of the French women. Her
social talents were a trifle theoretical. "She studied society," says
one of her critics, "as she would a literary question."
She had a theory
of conducting a salon, as she had of life in general, and believed
that study would attain everything. But the ability to do a thing
superlatively well is by no means always implied in the knowledge of
how it ought to be done. Social genius is as purely a gift of nature
as poetry or music; and, of all others, it is the most subtle and
indefinable. It was a long step from the primitive simpli