THE PARISIAN LECTURE AND SALON
In no city in the world is the public lecturer so popular as in Paris.
The _Conférence_ is almost a national institution, like the _salon_ and
the _foyer_. I will frankly confess that I find the average Parisian
lecturer overrated, and the whole thing sadly overdone. In the winter and
spring there are a great deal too many lectures, on too many subjects,
but that is the way the Parisian, above all, Parisian woman, likes to
take a dose of culture. When the season opens in January, you will
generally find that your friends have subscribed somewhere or other for
a course of lectures—six or twelve. Sometimes they take place in the
lecture-hall of the Rue Caumartin, or in a lecture-hall in the Rue Boissy
d’Anglas, or at the Société Géographique on the Boulevard St. Germain.
Then there are the lectures of the Sorbonne, or the Collége de France,
where the salaried professors of the State lecture, and a host of stray
lectures on every subject under the sun, in various private dwellings or
hired rooms. In spite of the competition between the well-known French
lecturers, professors, men of letters and of science, foreigners are
given courteous hearing, and if they have anything novel and interesting
to say, are heartily thanked as well as generously paid for saying it.
This I know, for I have had the honour of giving several lectures in
Paris on modern English literature, and had reason to congratulate myself
on my sympathetic and appreciative audience of intelligent and cultivated
Frenchwomen. They dress so well, these pleasant-looking Frenchwomen,
and listen with such speaking, sparkling visages, that no wonder there
is so much competition between the male lecturers. Even a morose man of
science, when he casts his eye over his audience, must be gladdened and
freshened by their presence. He may prefer communion with the masculine
intellect; but he must find his countrywoman’s alert and agreeable face,
under its ever-becoming bonnet, a welcome vision.
Distinguished foreign writers, if they know enough French, are generally
invited to lecture by some society. Fogazzarro was asked to lecture
here on his recent visit, and a very pleasant little lecture it was,
delivered in the best and easiest manner possible; and after him came
Madame Pardo Bazán, the Spanish writer, with a few commonplaces about
Spain. The fashionable resort for the lecture fanatic has been, for
some years past, the Bodinière, in the Rue St. Lazare. This is an old
theatre, a concert hall, a kind of fast musical chamber, where ballets,
songs, and lectures all mingle strangely, and the lecturer, when the
curtain rises, is revealed seated before a table, with ballet-girls
heel-and-toe-tipped on the walls around him. The first time I attended a
fashionable lecture at the Bodinière, it was to hear the Abbé Charbonnel
talk to us on Lamennais. I am not easily shocked, but I found both
incongruous and indecorous the picture made by an abbé in his uniform
of religion, between two ballet-girls, with images everywhere of public
dance and light morals. The lecture was an impressive one, far above the
average Parisian lecture, eloquent, original, solemnly grave, polished
as only a Frenchman’s prose is polished, with a note of burning revolt
running through it. This, too, surprised me. When all London gathered to
hear why an eminent clergyman of the Church of England left the faith
of his fathers, they congregated in a church, and listened with a sense
of solemnity to a solemn avowal. Here was a French abbé talking to us
with a just indignation of the tyranny of Rome; talking with passion and
admiration of Lamennais’s revolt and the injustice of Rome, talking as
only a man who felt and shared the moral sufferings of his hero could
talk. It was undoubtedly beautiful and thrilling. It was like hearing
a heart beat, like watching a brain throb, feeling one’s self face to
face with a naked soul in one of its great crises. But was a fashionable
lecture-hall the place for such a public confession? Were frivolous,
fluttering women of society a fitting audience in such an hour? Were
these ladies of the ballet painted on the walls, this theatrical curtain,
seemly environment? And was it in his abbé’s robe that Victor Charbonnel
should have denounced the tyranny of Rome in public? Shortly afterwards
the Abbé Charbonnel was excommunicated, which was no more than everybody
expected; and though there was not a word he uttered in that remarkable
lecture on a remarkable subject with which I did not sympathise, I should
have preferred to hear it delivered elsewhere,—in other and more solemn
surroundings.
There is one thing that I have always noticed in the Parisian
lecturer,—his complete lack of timidity, of want of self-confidence.
However dull he may be, however mediocre, however uneloquent,—and
he is often one, or all three,—no matter, he is sure of himself. He
has chosen to shine as a lecturer, and as a lecturer he will under
no circumstance be induced to recognise himself as a failure. This
stupendous self-conceit is a masculine characteristic, I know, but the
Parisian lecturer carries it off with art. He is an artist in his genius
for believing in himself. How many great men have I gone forth to hear
talk of their art or of themselves, and come away amazed by the string of
admirably delivered commonplaces they have uttered!
M. Gustave Larroumet is a lecturer all Paris was wild about some years
ago. I was told that for love or money you could not get a place at
one of his lectures, unless you subscribed beforehand for the whole
course, and even then that he was bombarded with declarations, like
a popular tenor, and that young girls died of undeclared love for
him. Never was such a popular lecturer as M. Larroumet! I went in
dread and awe. Should I, too, succumb, and add one more to the daily
thousand and one declarations of a hopeless passion? The vast hall was
thronged, the dresses were exquisite, the bonnets dazzling. All the
young girls of fashionable Paris were there, with note-books and scented
pocket-handkerchiefs for the expected great emotions. He came, the
popular lecturer, and never was I more grievously disillusioned. He spoke
well, his gesticulation and enunciation were equally delightful to hear
and behold. He was, what one might expect him to be after such a course
of public worship, the _blasé_ fine gentleman of the lecture-hall,
good-looking, youngish, the very tenor of lecturers. But to what hopeless
mediocrities he treated us, what _lieux-communs_ he imperturbably walked
us through! It was one of Gresset’s plays he analysed. The gist of it
all was that our grandmothers were better bred than we are, because they
indulged in _persiflage_ and we in _blagues_. And this was the great
lecturer of the hour!
Everybody knows the initial story of the French _salon_, and the
fortunate influence on manners and literature of the prestige of the
Hôtel de Rambouillet; Molière, who laughed at everything, even at
his own desperate sufferings, laughed at it in his _Les Précieuses
Ridicules_, for nothing on earth is sacred to a Frenchman. Whatever his
name, in whatever century he was born, he must, in consistency with his
nationality, prove himself a scoffer; and as he has the art of mocking
admirably, it is always very difficult to know when he is serious or
when he is laughing in his sleeve. A Frenchman will work night and day
with frenzy for a purpose dearer to him than anything on earth, and
all the while will deliberately make a mockery of his labour and his
devotion. Writing to me on this subject, the eternal passion of the
French for _blagues_ (my correspondent defines in lucid English the word
_blaguer_, “To say about somebody or something one admires or respects,
jokes of which one does not believe the first word,” and I leave the
definition with its pleasing French savour of composition and sentiment),
a Frenchman says: “There is not a man in the whole of France about whom
we have more joked than about M. Brisson, the ancient minister, the
only political man to whom nothing could ever be reproached, but the
epithet ‘austere’ deprived him of three-fourths of his authority, though
Frenchmen are, after all, as sensible as other people to the virtue of
honesty.” And so may be said of Molière. He was as well aware as anyone
could be of the immense benefit to his race and to his language of the
establishment of the _salon_, even when he laughed at it.
Though the century of the _salon_ has passed away, and carried along
with it some of the glory of French literature, some of its traditions
still linger, and will never be lost as long as the race delights in
good conversation. English people visit to kill time, to fulfil a
social obligation, and consider that their duty to themselves and their
neighbours is done if they happen to remark that it is a fine day.
Now, the French visit to talk. A pretty and well-dressed woman will,
perhaps, have other more private and personal preoccupations, and wish
to distract masculine attention to an adorable gown or a bewitching
bonnet; this was one of the reasons why that model keeper of a _salon_,
Madame Geoffrin, excluded women from hers. She found they interfered
with serious conversation. I advisedly call Madame Geoffrin the “keeper”
of a _salon_, because she made a business of it, and ruled and tamed
her literary menagerie by a discreet and liberal use of her purse. I
have often wondered if her great men in their hearts did not sometimes
revolt against the thraldom in which they lived from the moment they
became celebrated. To be bound to be brilliant and witty, in return for
a good dinner and a consideration every evening of one’s life! And to be
condemned to meet none but brilliant and witty persons, and listen to
their splendid talk when not talking splendidly oneself! There is matter
for reflection here to make dull and obscure persons occasionally thank
their stars. If good talk is not spontaneous, I own it has no charm for
me, but then I have never aspired to hold a _salon_, and if you hold a
_salon_ and wish it to be a success, talk cannot be spontaneous.
Quite recently Madame Aubernon died, and Paris lost a literary _salon_,
modelled, at a long distance, on that of Madame Geoffrin. Madame
Aubernon was a rich _bourgeoise_, with no pretensions on the score of
age, good looks, or dress. Her only ambition was to form a menagerie of
celebrities. She gave them every evening dinners by no means as good
as those of Madame Geoffrin, and checked, controlled, made them march
to her liking. She, too, professed mistrust of pretty women, whom she
invited only to lunches and teas and such entertainments, because she
feared that their pretty frocks, their arms and shoulders, would divert
the attention of her great men from their duty to her and her _salon_.
She kept a little bell beside her, and only allowed the great men to
talk in turn. “Now, M. Renan,” and Renan poured forth to order. “If
you please, M. Dumas,” and behold M. Dumas acquitting himself with
docility and force. The famous story of the _petits pois_ is told of
every distinguished guest of Madame Aubernon. Sometimes you hear it
with Dumas’s name, or Renan’s, or Pailleron’s. It does not matter, but
the incident remains a delightful illustration of the inconveniences
of eating your dinner on the understanding that you are to pay for it
in wit. The great man opened his lips out of turn, when the hostess
stormily rang the bell, and ordered him to shut them again. Somebody else
was speaking with permission. When he ceased, Madame Aubernon turned
graciously to her tame lion, and said: “Now you may speak. What was
it you wanted to say?” “Oh, nothing, madame. I only wanted to ask for
another helping of peas.” Musical celebrities are not so easily trained.
When, after dining at some Parisian countess’s, Chopin was asked to play,
he quietly retorted: _Madame, j’ai si peu mangé_. But if the great men
of letters had been such bears as Chopin there would never have been the
_salon_, and the story of Parisian life would be the poorer. And, after
all, it is an excellent discipline. Men acquire the art of listening as
well as that of talking, and it is a virtue of national importance to
teach people not to be dull. For if you are dull you have no possible
place in a salon. Your hostess has no desire to crowd her rooms with
inanimate or bored figure-heads. You come on a distinct treaty, the
conditions of which are accepted by your appearance,—to amuse and be
amused. If you speak, either you must have something to say, or you must
say whatever you wish to utter well.
Since the Faubourg has been sulking, and the aristocracy is no longer
a power in the land, the aristocratic _salon_ has dwindled into a
tradition. The young men are so desperately taken up with sport, with
automobiles, that they have not the leisure their elders had for the arts
and graces of life. The _rosse_ literature has spoiled the traditions
of the Faubourg for us. The French aristocracy has come to mean Gyp and
Lavedan for us, and a course of those writers may be warranted to drive
any intelligent reader into the society of washerwomen and tramps as a
pleasing change. The absence from all these heraldic pages, in which
everybody is more or less titled, of such a thing as a gentleman, or
even an ordinarily honest man, is what stupefies me. What their admirers
can imagine would be the benefit to France in upsetting the Republic in
order to place in power a party, upon its own testimony, so scantily
furnished with brains or honour, is what I am unable to grasp. And if
their women-folk had their way, we should have back the “White Terror,”
and science and liberal thought would receive an emphatic blow. But
happily there is no immediate fear of their triumph. The Duc d’Aumale and
the Prince de Joinville took with them to the grave all the prestige that
was left the House of France, and not even his followers take the Duke of
Orleans seriously.
Political intrigue is, of course, worked in the _salon_, as Academy
elections are helped. The Frenchwoman’s influence is too great not to
find an opening in every question of the hour. If she has no vote, she
inhabits a land where the sorcery of her sex exercises a wider and
deeper, a more permanent power than any political rights could ever
give her, though, for many reasons, I am inclined to believe that it
would be better for her and for her race if the significance of this
power were other than it is. In a country where the courtesan plays a
triumphant part, where newspapers solemnly recount her doings, describe
her toilettes at Longchamps, at Auteuil, and interview her, we can
scarcely expect women not to misuse their sovereignty. They know that
the day it bores them to be chaste, they need not cloak sin in the mantle
of night. They may wear their lovers on their sleeves in broad daylight,
and lose not a pennyweight of consideration. The _salon_ of the woman
who is known to have had (or to have) sentimental adventures will be
thronged, and people will only smile and say of her that she “distracts”
herself. I remember hearing an extraordinary story once of a beautiful
woman, the admired and courted holder of a famous _salon_. The cousin of
the friend who told me the story fell a victim to her charms, and was
staying with his mother at some Mediterranean resort, when he learnt of
the siren’s arrival at a neighbouring town. He forsook his mother to
rush after her, and remained with her during the greater part of the
long summer vacation. When their holiday had drawn to a close, the lady
took the train, and called on her lover’s mother, and in the highest
_ancien régime_ manner, said: “Madame, I come to return your dear son
to you.” His little _fugue_, she said, was at an end. The two ladies
parted on the best of terms, the one to welcome back the erring sheep
(not that a French mother regards her son under these circumstances as
an erring sheep), and the other to open the doors of her closed _salon_
in Paris to all the notabilities she had left sighing for her brilliant
and hospitable roof. What will you? When a woman is not his own wife, a
Parisian does not put any price upon her honour. True, he makes up for
this laxity in regard to his neighbour’s wife by arrogating to himself
the right to murder his own faithless wife with impunity. By this legal
ferocity he buys back the privilege of considering himself at times a
model of Roman virtue.
The _salon_ is all very well, so are the songs of Montmartre, the Théâtre
Rosse, but there is just one little point, a solitary point, on which
the Frenchman is in no mood to _blaguer_, not being Molière, and that
is _his_ wife’s fidelity to the marriage vow, which vow, if we are to
believe him (I confess I do not) he spends his own life in breaking.
He laughs at most other things, but here he displays a desperate and
unhumorous gravity. The law considerately assists him, by telling him
that killing is no murder. But if he doesn’t laugh, his neighbours round
him laugh joyously for him. The infidelity of another man’s wife is the
best of all jokes in France, and public sympathy always goes with the
wife.
[Illustration: GLEANERS
_J. A. Breton_]
And yet, while laughing at himself, and at all things round him, the
Frenchman offers us the ideal of an indefatigable worker in whatever
road he has elected to run his career. If he can talk well, he can work
hard, and no race seeks so strenuously as his to achieve perfection in
every path. The alacrity and precision of his speech he brings into
all he does, and I know no men who have won renown able to wear it so
simply, with such a delightful absence of pompousness, as distinguished
Frenchmen. Victor Hugo was, of course, the big exception indispensable
for the proof of the rule, for Victor Hugo sat in pontifical state on
his Throne of Letters, and posed as a sort of Napoleon. But that was a
part of his flamboyant genius, which had to make a life apart for itself.
Renan, with his delicate scepticism, his good-humoured tolerance, was
a much more convincing figure of French genius; he was more in keeping
with the urbane, gentle traditions of his race. The French language lends
itself to such a daily dignity of existence, that this may partly be the
reason there always seems to me something peculiarly and indescribably
harmonious about intimate life in France, as well as in its larger social
phases. Everybody about you, beginning with your servant, speaks so well,
that long intercourse with them unfits you for latitudes where speech is
less admirable and less choice.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]