SOCIETY AND PUBLIC LIFE IN LETTERS
Before noticing the theories of classical poetry in the writings of
its master critic, Boileau, we must glance at certain writers who
belonged rather to the world of public life and of society than to
the world of art, but who became each a master in literary craft,
as it were, by an irresistible instinct. Memoirs, maxims, epistolary
correspondence, the novel, in their hands took a distinguished place
in the hierarchy of literary art.
FRANCOIS VI., DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Prince de Marsillac, was born
in 1613, of one of the greatest families of France. His life is divided
into two periods--one of passionate activity, when with romantic
ardour he threw himself into the struggles of the Fronde, only to
be foiled and disillusioned; and the other of bitter reflection,
consoled by certain social successes, loyal friendships, and an
unique literary distinction. His _Maximes_ are the brief confession
of his experience of life, an utterance of the pessimism of an
aristocratic spirit, moulded into a form proper to the little world
of the _salon_--each maxim a drop of the attar not of roses but of
some more poignant and bitterly aromatic blossom. In the circle of
Mme. de Sable, now an elderly _precieuse_, a circle half-Epicurean,
half-Jansenist, frivolously serious and morosely gay, the
composition of maxims and "sentences" became a fashion. Those of La
Rochefoucauld were submitted to her as to an oracle; five years were
given to shaping a tiny volume; fifteen years to rehandling and
polishing every phrase. They are like a collection of medals struck
in honour of the conquests of cynicism. The first surreptitious
edition, printed in Holland in 1664, was followed by an authorised
edition in 1665; the number of maxims, at first 317, rose finally
in 1678 to 504; some were omitted; many were reduced to the extreme
of concision; under the influence of Mme. de la Fayette, in the later
texts the indictment of humanity was slightly attenuated. "Il m'a
donne de l'esprit," said Mme. de la Fayette, "mais j'ai reforme son
coeur."
The motto of the book, "Our virtues are commonly vices in disguise,"
expresses its central idea. La Rochefoucauld does not absolutely deny
disinterested goodness; there may be some such instinctive virtue
lying below all passions which submit to be analysed; he does not
consider the love of God, the parental or the filial affections; but
wherever he applies analysis, it is to reduce each apparently
disinterested feeling to self-love. "We all have strength enough to
endure the misfortunes of another;" "When vices desert us, we flatter
ourselves with the belief that it is we who desert them;" "With true
love it is as with apparitions--every one talks of them, but few
persons have seen them;" "Virtues lose themselves in self-interest
as rivers lose themselves in the sea;" "In the adversity of our best
friends we always find something which does not displease us"--such
are the moral comments on life graven in ineffaceable lines by La
Rochefoucauld. He is not a philosophic thinker, but he is a
penetrating and remorseless critic, who remains at one fixed point
of view; self-interest is assuredly a large factor in human conduct,
and he exposes much that is real in the heart of man; much also that
is not universally true was true of the world in which he had moved;
whether we accept or reject his doctrine, we are instructed by a
statement so implacable and so precise of the case against human
nature as he saw it. Pitiless he was not himself; perhaps his artistic
instinct led him to exclude concessions which would have marred the
unity of his conception; possibly his vanity co-operated in producing
phrases which live and circulate by virtue of the shock they
communicate to our self-esteem. The merit of his _Maximes_ as examples
of style--a style which may be described as lapidary--is
incomparable; it is impossible to say more, or to say it more
adequately, in little; but one wearies in the end of the monotony
of an idea unalterably applied, of unqualified brilliance, of
unrelieved concision; we anticipate our surprise, and its purpose
is defeated. Traces of preciosity are found in some of the earliest
sentences; that infirmity was soon overcome by La Rochefoucauld, and
his utterances become as clear and as hard as diamond.
He died at the age of sixty-seven, in the arms of Bossuet. His
_Memoires_,[1] relating to the period of the Fronde, are written with
an air of studied historical coldness, which presents a striking
contrast to the brilliant vivacity of Retz.
[Footnote 1: Ed. 1662, surreptitious and incomplete; complete ed.,
1868-1884.]
The most interesting figure of the Fronde, its portrait-painter, its
analyst, its historian, is CARDINAL DE RETZ (1614-1679). Italian by
his family, and Italian in some features of his character, he had,
on a scale of grandeur, the very genius of conspiracy. When his first
work, _La Conjuration de Fiesque_, was read by Richelieu, the judgment
which that great statesman pronounced was penetrating--"Voila un
dangereux esprit." Low of stature, ugly, ill-made, short-sighted,
Retz played the part of a gallant and a duellist. Never had any one
less vocation for the spiritual duties of an ecclesiastic; but, being
a churchman, he would be an illustrious actor on the ecclesiastical
stage. There was something demoniac in his audacity, and with the
spirit of turbulence and intrigue was united a certain power of
self-restraint. When fallen, he still tried to be magnificent, though
in disgrace: he would resign his archbishopric, pay his enormous debts,
resign his cardinalate, exhibit himself as the hero in misfortune.
"Having lived as a Catiline," said Voltaire, "he lived as an Atticus."
In retirement, as his adventurous life drew towards its close, he
wrote, at the request of Madame de Caumartin, those Memoirs which
remained unpublished until 1717, and which have insured him a place
in literature only second to Saint-Simon.
It was an age remarkable for its memoirs; those of Mlle. de Montpensier,
of Mme. de Motteville, of Bussy-Rabutin are only a few of many. The
_Memoires_ of Retz far surpass the rest not only in their historical
interest, but in their literary excellence. Arranging facts and dates
so that he might superbly figure in the drama designed for future
generations, he falsifies the literal truth of things; but he lays
bare the inner truth of politics, of life, of character, with
incomparable mastery. He exposes the disorder of his conduct in early
years with little scruple. The origins of the Fronde are expounded
in pages of profound sagacity. His narrative has all the impetuosity,
all the warmth and hues of life, all the tumult and rumour of action;
he paints, but in painting he explains; he touches the hidden springs
of passion; his portraits of contemporaries are not more vivid in
their colours than they are searching in their psychology: and in
his style there is that negligent grandeur which belongs rather to
the days of Louis XIII. than to the age of his successor, when language
grew more exact for the intelligence, but lost much of its passion
and untamed energy.
The epistolary art, in which the art itself is nature, may be said
to have reached perfection, with scarcely an historical development,
in the letters of MME. DE SEVIGNE. The letters of Balzac are rhetorical
exercises; those of Voiture are often, to use a word of Shakespeare,
"heavy lightness, serious vanity." Mme. de Sevigne entered into the
gains of a cultivated society, in which graceful converse had become
a necessity of existence. She wrote delightfully, because she
conveyed herself into her letters, and because she conversed freely
and naturally by means of her pen. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, born
in 1626, deprived of both parents in her earliest years, was carefully
trained in literary studies--Latin, Italian, French--under the
superintendence of her uncle, "le bien bon," the Abbe de Coulanges.
Among her teachers were the scholar Menage and the poet Chapelain.
Married at eighteen to an unworthy husband, the Marquis Henri de
Sevigne, she was left at twenty-five a widow with two children, the
daughter whom she loved with excess of devotion, and a son, who
received from his mother a calmer affection. She saw the life of the
court, she was acquainted with eminent writers, she frequented the
Hotel de Rambouillet (retaining from it a touch of preciosity, "one
superfluous ribbon," says Nisard, "in a simple and elegant toilet"),
she knew and loved the country and its rural joys, she read with
excellent judgment and eager delight the great books of past and
present times.
When her daughter, "the prettiest girl in France," was married in
1669 to M. de Grignan, soon to be Lieutenant-General of Provence,
Mme. de Sevigne, desiring to be constantly one with her, at least
in thought, transferred into letters her whole life from day to day,
together with much of the social life of the time during a period
of nearly thirty years. She allowed her pen to trot, throwing the
reins, as she says, upon its neck; but if her letters are
improvisations, they are improvisations regulated by an exquisite
artistic instinct. Her imagination is alert in discovering,
combining, and presenting the happiest meanings of reality. She is
gay, witty, ironical, malicious, and all this without a trace of
malignity; amiable rather than passionate, except in the ardour of
her maternal devotion, which sometimes proved oppressive to a
daughter who, though not unloving, loved with a temperate heart;
faithful to friends, loyal to those who had fallen into misfortune,
but neither sentimental nor romantic, nor disposed to the
generosities of a universal humanity; a woman of spirit, energy, and
good sense; capable of serious reflection, though not of profound
thought; endowed with an exquisite sense of the power of words, and,
indeed, the creator of a literary style. While her interests were
in the main of a mundane kind, she was in sympathy with Port-Royal,
admired the writings of Pascal, and deeply reverenced Nicole.
Domestic affairs, business (concern for her children having involved
her in financial troubles), the aristocratic life of Paris and
Versailles, literature, the pleasures and tedium of the country, the
dulness or gaiety of a health-resort, the rise and fall of those in
power, the petty intrigues and spites and follies of the day--these,
and much besides, enter into Mme. de Sevigne's records, records made
upon the moment, with all the animation of an immediate impression,
but remaining with us as one of the chief documents for the social
history of the second half of the seventeenth century. In April 1696
Mme. de Sevigne died.
Beside the letters addressed to her daughter are others--far fewer
in number--to her cousin Bussy-Rabutin, to her cousin Mme. de
Coulanges, to Pomponne, and other correspondents. In Bussy's
_Memoires et Correspondance_ (1696-97) first appeared certain of her
letters; a collection, very defective and inaccurate, was published
in 1726; eight years later the first portion of an authorised text
was issued under the sanction of the writer's grand-daughter;
gradually the material was recovered, until it became of vast extent;
even since the appearance of the edition among the _Grands Ecrivains
de la France_ two volumes of _Lettres inedites_ have been published.
Among the other letter-writers of the period, perhaps the most
distinguished were Mme. de Sevigne's old and attached friend Mme.
de la Fayette, and the woman of supreme authority with the King, Mme.
de Maintenon. A just view of Mme. de Maintenon's character has been
long obscured by the letters forged under her name by La Beaumelle,
and by the bitter hostility of Saint-Simon. On a basis of ardour and
sensibility she built up a character of unalterable reason and good
sense. Her letters are not creations of genius, unless practical
wisdom and integrity of purpose be forms of genius. She does not gossip
delightfully; at times she may seem a little hard or dry; but her
reason is really guided by human kindness. "Her style," wrote a high
authority, Dollinger, "is clear, terse, refined, often sententious;
her business letters are patterns of simplicity and pregnant brevity.
They might be characterised as womanly yet manly, so well do they
combine the warmth and depth of womanly feeling with the strength
and lucidity of a masculine mind." The foundation of Saint-Cyr, for
the education of girls wellborn but poor, was the object of her
constant solicitude; there she put out her talents as a teacher and
guide of youth to the best interest; there she found play for her
best affections: "C'est le lieu," she said, "de delices pour moi."
The friend of Madame de Sevigne, the truest woman whom La
Rochefoucauld had ever known, MADAME DE LA FAYETTE was the author
of two historical works, of which one is exquisite--a memorial of
her friend the Duchess of Orleans, and of two--perhaps
three--romances, the latest of which, in the order of chronology,
is the masterpiece of seventeenth-century fiction. Marie de la Vergne,
born in 1634, a pupil of Menage, married at twenty-one to M. de la
Fayette, became the trusted companion of the bright and gracious
Henrietta of England. It is not that part of Madame's life, when she
acted as intermediary between Louis XIV. and her brother, Charles
II., that is recorded by her friend: it is the history of her heart.
Nothing is more touching in its simplicity than the narrative of
Madame's last moments; it serves as the best possible comment on the
pathetic Funeral Oration of Bossuet. We have no grounds for asserting
that the married life of Madame de la Fayette was unhappy, except
through the inadequacy of a husband whose best qualities seem to have
been of a negative kind. During the fifteen years which preceded the
death of La Rochefoucauld her friendship for him was the centre of
her existence. She seemed to bear about with her some secret grief;
something remained veiled from other friends than he, and they named
her _le Brouillard_. She outlived her friend by thirteen years, and
during ten was widowed. In 1693 she died.
Her earliest novel, _La Princesse de Montpensier_ (1662), a tale of
the days of the Valois and of St. Bartholomew, is remarkable for its
truthful pictures of the manners of the court, its rendering of
natural and unexaggerated feeling, and for the fact that it treats
of married life, occupying itself with such themes as have been dealt
with in many of its modern successors. The _Zayde_, of eight years
later, was written in collaboration with Segrais. It is in _La
Princesse de Cleves_ (1678) that the genius and the heart of Madame
de la Fayette find a perfect expression. The Princess, married to
a husband who loves her devotedly, and whom she honours, but whose
feelings she cannot return, is tempted by the brilliant Duc de Nemours
and by the weakness of her own passion, to infidelity. She resolves
to confide her struggle to her husband, and seek in him a protector
against herself. The hard confession is made, but a grievous and
inevitable change has passed over their lives. Believing himself
deceived, M. de Cleves is seized by a fever and dies, not without
the consolation of learning his error. Nemours renews his vows and
entreaties; the Princess refuses his hand, and atones for her error
in cloistered seclusion. The tale has lost none of its beauty and
pathos after a lapse of two centuries. Does it reveal the hidden grief
of the writer's life? And was her friend, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld,
delivered from his gout and more than a score of years, transformed
by Madame de la Fayette into the foiled lover of her tale?