THE EMBROIDERY OF LIFE
Meanwhile, there is a life to live, there are things to do! A woman must
get happiness from the exercise of all her activities, both spontaneous
and enforced—even more than from her drawing-room or her jewels. We
propose to pass in review as large a number of these occupations as
possible, to show that, small or great, there is not one but appears to a
woman a source of joy and glory if she mingles love with it. Everything
she does, however infinitely humble, be it kneading bread for her husband
or washing his feet, is vivified with a transfiguring radiance whenever
the spirit of abnegation animates her toil, whenever she reflects that
this husband is not the sole man existing in the world, nor a sort of
domestic drill-sergeant, but represents the eternal idea sounding in
every heart. We have already seen these noble women in days of trouble
quivering with devotion at the bedside of their sick husbands; it is
the same in days of happiness. They find strength in abstraction; the
things that surround us so marvellously change their aspect, contract,
expand, according as we take them for what they are or glorify them with
thoughts of higher things—thoughts, not idle fancies, whether roseate or
gloomy, whether too brilliant in prospect or too distressing in reality.
It is chiefly in domestic life that abstraction is useful. The woman must
steep her hands in beauty, fill her eyes with love, and then look at
things courageously and truthfully. Everything, even vice itself, appears
frigid, vulgar, and commonplace to materialists; women ought (yes, ought,
not merely can) to render everything warm and gay—even virtue.
Let us take haphazard some of the doings which most strikingly exhibit
them—their eating, walking, country habits, Sunday occupations. From
each of these they are able to strike the sacred spark. We shall see how
everything is transfigured in their hands.
First then, their eating. Nothing is more material in itself, and nothing
better lends itself to spiritualisation.
A house was characterised by the way in which a formal dinner was
managed; this was the touchstone of true style. On the table was placed
the massive and weighty silver plate, the family treasure which the
mistress of the house kept under lock and key, and which was worth a
fortune. The plate of some families was valued at a million francs. On
days of high festivity the table blazed with ponderous gold, but they
were content with silver for private dinners.
The regulation of the menu was rightly regarded as a matter of such
difficulty and importance that men of the highest merit made it their
study to lay down fixed principles on the subject. Fulvio Orsini[195] has
acquainted us with all the best traditions of ancient Rome. Platina,[196]
the Raphael of the tribe, published under the auspices of Cardinal
Roverella a treatise which may be cited as a perfect model.
In countries strange to the new ideas, men thought only of their palates,
_os sublime_, in the ironical phrase of Brandt.[197] In Germany guzzling,
at rare intervals but in enormous quantities, was the only joy. So
late as the end of the century Montaigne asked a former ambassador in
Germany how often he had been obliged to get drunk in the service of his
sovereign, and the ambassador reckoned up with all gravity, and declared
that he had got off with three occasions, all told.
The French traditional practice was the same. Fairs, markets,
pilgrimages, weddings, baptisms, funerals, anniversaries, meetings of
gilds or corporations all served as pretexts for village gourmandisings
characterised by enthusiastic drunkenness, and often enlivened with
brawls in which both sexes took part. At the end of one of these feasts
we find the wife of the gild president dealing most energetically with
a toper who had called her an “old witch.” The châteaux were no less
fond of high feeding.[198] Historians ought to consult the kitchen
account-books! Without them they will never succeed in arriving at
well-founded judgments; we know no human document more convincing, none
which enables us with more certainty to reconstruct a bygone mode of
life. Unhappily the old kitchen books of France reveal a deplorable
spectacle; it is one long procession of herds of oxen and flocks of
sheep, innumerable poultry, rabbits and partridges by the dozen, small
game in hundreds, and pigs in disgusting profusion. The whole of the
delicacies consists, even in the most distinguished houses, of a few
cloves or sticks of cinnamon to make hippocras of. As to the wine, it is
wine of the current vintage drawn from the cask! Caesar Borgia must have
been greatly surprised one Friday, in the winter of 1498, while staying
with Madame de la Trémoille, to see filing in a course of two hundred
and fifty fish. The next day, again a fast day, the avenues leading to
the château were thronged with carts loaded with fish, in honour of the
visit of King Louis XII.; in particular there arrived seven hundred and
fifty eels. This was in Rabelais’ country. Further, in regard to tutelary
geniuses of the table, they were acquainted with none but appalling
spectres—Dame Gout,[199] Madam Gravel, or my Lady Apoplexy, to whom they
gaily made their salutations.[200]
Then comes philosophy to preside at their feasts with salutary effect.
It teaches men that dining is a spiritual function. The table becomes
idealised. Much thought is devoted to its decorations, to regaling the
eyes with the sight of beautiful birds in their charming many-hued
plumage—peacocks, storks, or small and pretty birds strung on skewers.
The mistress of the house shows her art in having the daintiest courses
served on gold and crystal—things which while tickling the palate
content the mind; first dessert, composed of fruits and sweetmeats, then
compounds of eggs or fish, light dishes, in which pistachios, pepper,
ginger, rosemary, thyme, peppermint—everything that has sweetness or
aroma insinuates itself and figures in manifold combinations. Just as in
Plato’s _Symposium_, people take their places at table not to eat but
to talk, because conversation can have no warmer, more cheerful, more
restful setting. Often in the platonist system some incomparable lady
presided, and everything centred in her; from her eyes “rained love,”
that is, in the words of the guests, “meat and drink, ambrosia and
nectar.” She set the pitch; there was a cross-fire of witticisms flashing
over the table like fireworks, or else wit fluttered lightly about amid
a subdued hum of laughter. With one consent these were voted delightful
hours. Men fuddled themselves with talk: “’Tis my greatest vice,”
confesses Erasmus.
This art became so well acclimatised at the court of Francis I. that it
soon became the joy of France. Margaret of France writes enthusiastically
about those dinners at which they used to “fill themselves with words
more than with meat.” French wit, which always owes a little to good
cheer, sparkled quite naturally.
In Italy they were at fault in using aesthetic means too freely to
support the dinner. They durst not trust simply to conversation, but
employed music, a proceeding which appeared rank heresy in France. King
Alfonso of Naples, indeed, long regarded as the pastmaster of good
living, complicated his dinners with all sorts of refinements; after the
first courses, the ears were enchanted with harmonies soft as the breeze
of Capri blowing over the sparkling, rippling sea; or else there were
mimes, the _pulcinella_,[201] and roars of laughter. Then his guests
returned to the table and remained till the moment when, their heads
swimming with the strong and generous fumes of Falernian, they removed
the plate and withdrew.
In Germany the whole day was spent at the table, with a licence that
was often gross, and with all that old mediaeval gaiety of which the
_Table-talk_ of Luther has preserved an excellent specimen. Yet the Rhine
is not so broad nor the Alps so high but that such customs soon appeared
disgusting and lamentable when compared with the politer modes which
were spreading through the world. Many writers endeavoured to polish
these table manners by publishing manuals of etiquette and collections of
_bons mots_. If they did not establish the complete art of conversation
they indicated its rudiments, and indeed their success was sufficient to
necessitate in 1549 a recasting of the fourth edition of the classical
collection of Gastius,[202] and the suppression of a certain number of
pleasantries which seemed out of place “in view of the distresses of the
time.” Thus the art of table-talk became so popular that even in Germany
people endeavoured to cultivate it; but sprightliness, which is its very
salt, remained till further orders a distinctively French quality.
The ball and the dance, though much more aesthetic in themselves,
were a great deal more difficult to idealise, because in them the
sensuous element bulks more largely. Here, however, there was no need
to exaggerate, and to proscribe dancing would have been absurd. What
could be more ridiculous than the jealousy of certain husbands (husbands
do not stand sufficiently in awe of ridicule!). And it was so useless,
too. A woman who has her wits about her is never at a loss for a pretext
for going to a rout; there is always a young girl at hand who needs
chaperoning. Someone, indeed, mentions a young matron of Louise of
Savoy’s own court, who, to save an old husband an apoplectic fit, had the
heroism to immure herself at home; but this is dead against the spirit
of sociability. Why forge useless chains? Vivès himself, who is not open
to suspicion, agrees that “dancing is a very natural accompaniment
to the pleasures of society and the table.” But there is dancing and
dancing. The ideal of platonist joy and happiness would be a free and
thoroughly intellectual dance with a calm and delicious rhythm, a dance
that would add a pleasure to life, the dancer in light floating drapery,
bare-footed, bare-headed, ungirt, in the sweet air of springtime, on a
smooth, soft lawn among jasper and coral, under the long-leaved palms,
amidst the scent of roses and pine-trees—an intoxicating dance the pure
motion of which harmonises with the vast music of Nature, the cooing of
doves, the mighty arpeggios of the sea. The woman who, alone or hand
in hand with her companions, abandons herself to this exquisite charm,
this magical sweetness, who associates herself with all things in this
imponderable rhythm—does she not represent a goddess of happiness, and
does she not come to incarnate for us the divine charm of Nature?
In practice the dance hardly attains this ideal; yet, even confined
within the walls of a room and reduced to a social art, it can still meet
the high demands of moral fellowship and become for women an instrument
of the most legitimate charm. The Italians especially excelled in
giving it a solemn air of sentimental gravity; some of their fêtes are
remarkable in history—for example, the ball given at Milan by Francesco
Bernardino Visconti on October 15, 1499, in honour of the conqueror,
Louis XII., or, in point of magnificence, the subscription ball got up by
the household servants of Venice in February, 1524. These were memorable
triumphs of art. But this high significance of the ball was never
understood in France. When people gave a ball they troubled themselves
very little about posterity, but a great deal about a certain number of
trifling present joys; and these made women descend a little from their
pedestal.
There was in particular one peculiar custom, eminently pleasant in
itself, but not very celestial, and lending itself to abuses. This was
the custom of kissing.
Well-bred men in every country used respectfully to kiss a lady’s
hand.[203] The Italians did so with fervour; if required they would have
kissed the feet; and a man had to be a German to stigmatise as idolatry
the kiss applied to the toes of the Pope! Italian women disported with
this kissing with perfect grace and all sorts of little refinements. At
a casual meeting they confined themselves to a pleasant handshake; but
tête-à-tête with a man they wished to honour, they would be the first
to kiss his hand, fondly, and without any of those affectations of
bashfulness which sometimes inspire such bitter afterthoughts. It was a
charming and very natural custom; but in France it took quite another
complexion. Men, being the masters, knew nothing of fine shades and nice
distinctions; the having to greet or take leave of an agreeable woman was
sufficient pretext for kissing her lips, and the motive they alleged for
this proceeding was that it struck them as being “amiable and sweet.”
In the ballroom it was another story; every dance-figure ended in a
kiss, and if we must add that it was complicated with wild and giddy
horse-play, it must be remembered that a French ball was racy of the
soil. Like a genuine Frenchman, Louis XII. felt it his duty at Bernardino
Visconti’s ball to kiss one after another all the ladies presented to
him, in other words, every woman in Lombardy.
Ah! if the platonists and the true friends of women had been heeded,
things would have been different! They were scandalised at such
spectacles, which poisoned their intellectual joys. Years before,
Petrarch had risen against customs that much less affected their
position: what would he have said if he had come to life again! The worst
of it was that these French manners were like the little leaven, and
Castiglione notes that the leaven was creeping into Italy—Castiglione,
who had seen the time when a man durst not even take the hand of his
partner! As to Vivès, he dashes off a picture of dances and kisses
with his Spanish impetuosity: “What is the meaning of so many kisses?
Of old time it was lawful to give a kiss only to one’s relatives; now
’tis a general custom, in Burgundy and in England, to kiss whomsoever
a man pleases.... As for me, I would fain know what means so much
osculation.... What is the use of these many leaps that girls make, held
by their companions under the arms so that they may kick the higher? What
pleasure do these grasshoppers take in torturing themselves thus and
remaining the greater part of the night without wearying of the dance
body and soul?”
The question was more than once raised as to what extent good manners
authorised, or rather obliged, well-born women to offer their lips to all
and sundry, and to lend themselves to promiscuous capering.[204] This
question was much debated: in general the most sensible folk considered
that they could not absolutely avoid the custom, accepted as it was in
good society, but that it was possible to practise some reserve; for
example, to present the cheek instead of the mouth. Montaigne pities with
all his heart the women “who have to lend their lips to any Jack with
three lackeys in his suite”; but so trivial a subjection seemed to him,
by its very triviality, to be of no consequence: “A high price adds a
flavour to meat!” He holds rather with those who saw in it a simple act
of courtesy, to which an honest woman could have no possible objection,
or at most so insignificant a favour that there was nothing to make a
fuss about. We are bound to add, however, that this was not everyone’s
opinion; and there were not wanting dilettantes who by no means regarded
this favour as so unimportant; Ronsard in all frankness considered
it delightful and took infinite pleasure in it.[205] As to Melin de
Saint-Gelais, on one occasion when he had won a dozen kisses at forfeits,
he swore that it was not half enough: “Twelve is too few, compared with
the infinite.”
Here again fashion was more than a match for philosophy; and, barring a
few isolated exceptions, kissing and dancing carried all before them.
Examples come from all sides: from the court with its licentious masked
balls, and from the heart of the provinces; witness that singular strike
of the ladies of Aix in Provence. The courts having interdicted, on the
score of modesty, the dance known as the _volta_ (a sort of cancan),
these ladies at once threatened to betake themselves _en masse_ to
the pope at Avignon, and their affrighted husbands had to obtain the
annulment of the decree.
The platonists and their friends knew the world too well deliberately
to open a campaign against abuses they could not destroy. They confined
themselves to bewailing them. It struck them as deplorable to see men
amusing themselves hour after hour in cutting their clownish capers at
the expense of honest women. They considered it absolutely ridiculous to
pretend to forbid men in the ordinary intercourse of life to smirch by
word, look or gesture a lady who pleased them, while at a ball everything
was permissible.
The remedy, they thought, would be found in giving women more serious and
more elevated tastes; they believed that a woman habituated to really
noble ideas would know how to set herself high enough to win love without
yielding to the caprice of the first comer.
The Huguenots pursued a different policy, and did not shrink from
attacking with all their force every kind of dancing: it would seem that
they did not dance at all. They spoke of animals coupling, of disastrous
confidences: “Look,” cries the good Daneau[206] with horror, “look at
this lady with her head high, vaulting, whirling, swinging herself about,
making a clatter with her feet.” That was what you saw at the ball: could
anything be more ridiculous? But what most strikes him is that she leaves
her modesty and her mantle together in the-hands of the lackeys in the
cloak-room. “There any man may run his eye over the ladies as they stand,
even with their husbands or mothers, and may choose any woman he pleases,
in other words, the woman who excites his lust: those whom the eyes have
chosen the hands clasp, and the men, as though already in the thrill
and enjoyment of their desires, kiss them, hug them, lead them through
the room; the young fellows exert themselves to appear lively and gay,
so as to entertain and caress with a thousand tricks and approaches the
girls they hold, and the girls show no reluctance to respond in kind. In
the _volta_ there are regular tricks for making one’s partner bound and
rise so high that the calves, even the thighs are shamelessly exposed
and prostituted to the eyes of the throng. The dancers go up and down,
lose sight of each other, then find themselves close together again; and
when they meet there are oglings and caperings, redoubled gaieties, all
showing how their hearts are bounding with joy at seeing themselves once
more so near the accomplishment of their desires. Every kind of dance
gives opportunity for discovering ways of pleasing, seeing, touching one
another more familiarly; and all this goes on to the strains of all sorts
of instruments.”
The Huguenots, it will be seen, did not mince their words. But dancing
was never a whit the worse. According to the feminists it was in itself
neither evil nor ridiculous; the art consisted in idealising the play
of the limbs, as the work of the digestion had been idealised; and they
were agreed that, the brain being in this case farther away, the task was
obviously more difficult.
On the other hand, women readily gave up anything that was not congenial
to sensibility: gaming, for instance. With their husbands gaming was a
frenzy; mature men, boys, busy men, idle men, everybody gambled. At the
gaming table all distinctions of rank disappeared; a great lord would
borrow a hundred crowns from his barber. What was a gaming-hall? A place
where not a word was uttered save as an exclamation or an oath. The
ladies permitted a game of draughts, chess or trictrac, but would hear of
nothing else. They preferred the embraces of which Daneau, Vivès and the
husbands complained.
For ladies of middle station a usual means of exercising their charm to
the best advantage was to go to mass, especially on a Sunday, to the
“church parade”; that served them instead of a drawing-room.
We have nothing to do here, of course, with their religious sentiments,
but only with their visible devices for captivating men. They went to
church as to a common haunt or a family reunion. God is the good Father
who collects His children about Him once a week. Sunday is the day
consecrated to lofty impressions, to the enjoyment in common of the
things that constitute life—the day of beauty, the day of music, lovely
frescoes, and displays of the latest fashion. The sanctuary was treated
with an affectionate familiarity, against which the preachers had long
been protesting in vain.
In the northern parts indeed this familiarity was accompanied with very
objectionable scenes, and the clergy were at great pains to restrain its
abuses. At Tournay, for example, it appeared very disagreeable to the
cathedral clergy to serve every year as lay figures in the grotesque
procession of the Holy Innocents, and afterward to be abbots of misrule
in taverns; they obtained the suppression of the festival in 1489.
But the coarse merriment was not scotched; everybody, the principal
personages of the town included, made common cause with the children
dispossessed of so venerable a privilege; and in 1498 the agitation took
the shape of a nocturnal kettle-drumming which gave great concern to the
Parliament of Paris.
In the south there was no need to fear such eccentricities; the church
was the temple of the Beautiful because it belonged to the women.
The congregation gathers in a motley, swaying, chattering crowd; it
takes some time for every lady to succeed in settling her finery on
her cushion, in a convenient place for seeing and hearing well. Then
there arises a confused hum of gossip more or less discreet, a sound of
stifled laughter, a rustling of cushions: “There is no better place for
a chat than church”; it is for all the world like a concert of “magpies
caught in a snare.” Ladies call each other by name, “Jeanne, Catherine,
Françoise.” A lady who comes late tries to skip in before another who
arrived early. The orchestra can barely drown all these noises; the
opening prayer is delayed. Many men standing in the aisles fancy they
are on ’change, and talk over their affairs; at one time dandies used to
come hawk on fist or dog at heel: others, motionless like machines, are
meditating—who knows what? Nothing at all, probably. Some are watching
the many-coloured undulations in the nave—the crimped hair, the dainty
hats. They quiz a handsome blue bodice with yellow strings and green
sleeves, cut very low. The ladies have a wonderful talent for sitting
stiffly erect, posing in such a way that they show their profile or
half-profile to the best advantage, their eyes sparkling, and sometimes
stealing a wicked little side-glance. That is what they call high mass;
those are the accessories of a fashionable confessional.
In this way a fine philosophic equality establishes itself with the
utmost perfection at the steps of the altar, far more successfully than
in any palace; all cliquishness even disappears; a woman who has toiled
all the week at her spinning-wheel displays her charms by the side of the
lady of rank, moved by the same sentiment of elegance, idleness, and art.
For anyone with the least spark of sensibility or love of the beautiful,
church becomes the land of dreams, the starting-point for every elevating
influence. The Gothic church, with its lofty, light, graceful columns,
lifts the soul into a sort of mystic accord; there is something warmer,
more human, more genuinely intimate about the Italian church; women
high or humble experience there a sensation of unmixed delight. They
contemplate with tender trustfulness the imperturbable Madonna who has
already seen the passage of many generations, and who continues to regard
them from her nook in the wall with her woman’s smile—that smile of
infinite sweetness, of lingering and universal pity, directed towards the
children and the dead, towards all who suffer and love, weep and laugh,
a smile like a sweet-savoured incense of purification and grace. The
Italians loved the magnificence of their temples—the marbles bathed in
sunlight, the shadowy arches where the soul could unbosom itself without
blasphemy, and all those little secluded chapels in which every man
found his own saint, and came to offer up his poor, trembling, fainting
heart as the whole _ex-voto_ of life. In these hidden splendours, in the
charm of mystic music soaring amidst paintings and sculptures, gilded
ornaments and exquisite perfumes, midway between the past and the future,
there is a wonderfully soft and voluptuous pleasure. It is with profound
philosophy that Caviceo lays the scene of the first interview between
his hero and heroine in the shade of an altar; assuredly, in wrapping
itself with this veil of refinement and modesty, love puts on a sacred
character. So the church becomes, in its wealth of compassion, the haven
of refuge for pure and sensitive souls, and even for some others. Anne
of Rohan gave tryst to her lover in the chapel of Amboise;[207] a young
girl of Orleans with Machiavelian cunning made a Franciscan friar her
catspaw to attract the student she loved.[208] Pontanus depicts the
prolonged meditations of the Neapolitan ladies, long after the last of
the candles had been extinguished in the dusky nave.[209] A thousand
incidents of this sort might be cited: Francis I. in the church of
Amboise pursuing a charming girl with his devotion;[210] Panurge, whom
Rabelais sets to dog the footsteps of a noble lady, piously offering
her holy water, slipping inflammatory love-letters into her hand during
mass, and playing the most impudent tricks to attract her attention; the
poet Crétin, furious because at Lyons the church services are turned to
account almost exclusively by young fops and paunchy bankers.
Pilgrimages also were capable of becoming a source of exquisite emotions
for artists in happiness. The author of the _Imitation_ has said that to
be often on pilgrimage is seldom to be a saint. Indeed, at the moment
when the indulgences were pronounced, the church porches were quite
invisible behind the smoke from the cookshops or the booths in the fair,
and an old author complains that you could not even catch sight of
your friends. But how these gross indulgences were transfigured by the
aesthetic spirit! What ravishing effects it derived from them!
It was no longer paintings or sculptures that troubled hearts and pure
hearts gazed upon: they penetrated the clear heavens above. Blessed are
the pure!
The sweet, tender Isabella d’Este set out thus to transport her soul
across the plains of Umbria, towards the calm and glorious homes of peace
and art, Loretto and Assisi. It was early spring, when the days were
clear and sunny; every morning after mass the little caravan resumed its
march with its picturesque escort, piously, tranquilly, ideally. During
the Easter festival it made a halt with the Duke and Duchess of Urbino
in the delightful palace of Gubbio, smiling down from amongst its gardens
and fountains.
The woman who has been able to live these hours of pure enthusiasm is
conscious of accomplishing a large part of her dream. She is within
sight of reconciling two opposing forces, the forces of Nature and the
forces of the human heart, and forming out of them a love in harmony with
Plato’s thought and Raphael’s brush.
In their dealings with Nature, the platonists sought above all to elevate
and sentimentalise it; they did not care for it masculine and stern, but
wished it feminine.
They did not ask it to express itself in vast horizons, in a display
of wild vigour. Untamed Nature displeased them; it struck them as a
tyrannical mechanism which would keep moving and straining itself without
definite purpose, whilst it should be influenced and controlled by human
thought. On the contrary, the more supple Nature became,—the more docile,
urbane, almost affectionate—the better she answered their expectations.
They did not appreciate the _objects_ of Nature; but they valued a
beautiful sunny day, a beautiful horizon, the flowers which scent the
air, the glistening, rippling, soothing sea, the buds bursting with
sap and life, because this life is one with man’s. Plato has indicated
the need he felt of such a setting in the celebrated prologue of the
_Phaedrus_, where Socrates and his friend, strolling along the bank of
the Ilissus, seat themselves near a temple of the Muses, in the shade of
a lofty plane-tree, on one of those velvet swards in which every footstep
leaves its trace. Stirred by the fierce heat of the glowing sun, life
buzzes and sings on all sides; the murmur of water mingles with the
chirp of grasshoppers and innumerable confused dronings; odours of all
kinds fill the air, and life is quaffed in deep draughts; but amid all
these myriad voices blending into one grand symphony the mind of the
philosopher reigns supreme.
Man, then, must in no way be considered the enemy of Nature; he is her
friend and master. Nature speaks to us, and we speak to her, and are
subject to her influence in the highest degree. Not merely do climate,
temperature, the beauties of the scenery exercise a paramount influence
upon us, as the monks so well understood who loved extensive horizons
and noble summits, but it may be said that there is not a tree or a plant
but influences us by its vicinage. The love of Nature emits a radiance
like the love of a woman, like all love, though in a less degree. It is
good then and right not to neglect so important a source of emotion.
Nature herself delights us because she smiles on us and we feel she
loves us,—because a higher power settles her proud rocks and governs her
volcanic fires. How pleasant it is (especially in warm countries) to
shape for ourselves in the broad world, too vast for us, a private and
particular nook: to send our very selves, as it were, out through the
woods by straight paths which make our will felt far away; to give the
flowers what forms and tints we please; to impress our character upon
everything; thus we banish all savour of imperfection and ugliness and
allow nothing to be seen but uniformity and affection; for, in the words
of a man of that time, if you go into the country, it is not to “descend
from light into the gloom.”
Salut! palais, jardins, paradis de délices,
Dont les beaultez font ignorer les vices.[211]
Under these circumstances, ladies, philosophers, and prelates considered
the country a perfect setting for the intellectual life. They there
got deeper, intenser spiritual enjoyment than in the city (though city
life in those days was not such a rush and bustle as it is to-day). The
dread hours of solitude will themselves contribute to this pleasure if
you know how to bring a delightful egotism unobtrusively into play;
they will enable you to recall many fleeting thoughts, to ruminate on
them, feast on them for your sole pleasure, in the spirit of the sublime
preoccupation of Lucullus when he chanced one day to be dining alone:
“Is not Lucullus entertaining Lucullus to-day?” We find, then, in the
country the same _mise-en-scène_ as in the town—the same furniture, the
same plate, but ranged under the luminous ceiling of a summer sky; the
same dances, but by the light of torches and the stars.[212] All Nature
breathes and thinks: the trees, artistically shaped, hang their sombre
drapery behind statues; charming walks wind or disappear among labyrinths
of laurel, thyme, and rosemary; a cascade leaps lightly and with musical
bickering from a tiny artificial rock, and speeds away swiftly but
noiselessly into the miniature presentment of a well-mown meadow. Or if
the owner’s wealth is equal to measuring itself royally against Nature,
he adorns the landscape with splendid villas, the glory of Rome, like
the Este villa at Tivoli, a sort of proof before letters of Versailles,
so moving still in the spectral life of its deserted groves, its silent
fountains, its shattered marbles.
We must note, too, the singular phenomenon that the urbanity and
bountifulness of Nature appeared to these lovers of beauty a thing of
course. Nature is loved for herself only in countries where she plays the
step-dame. Lombards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, on leaving the smoky scenes
of their daily toil, did not shrink from a life in the depths of a dull
place in the country, or from intercourse with the rustics; they might
be seen any day chatting and whiling away an idle hour with the farmers
on the village green. At Paris people were passionately fond of natural
flowers, the annual consumption of which was valued by statisticians at
fifteen thousand golden crowns; even the University preferred them to
paper garlands.[213] The people of the south, on the contrary, spoilt
children of a soil which yields fruit of itself, trampled roses and
violets beneath their feet with never a thought of gathering them. The
Italian painters used to adorn manuscripts with elaborate golden scrolls;
the ladies framed their faces in gold and pearls, and valued flowers
only for the delicate softness of their perfume; many of them strewed
lilies and roses and violets about their bowers, as the quintessence of
sweetness. But everyone abhorred a country life. Castiglione has only one
word for the existence of gentlemen-farmers: “It is indecent.” As for
Margaret of France, she could find no stronger abuse, no more expressive
appellation for a froward heart than: “O rough heart, rural and bucolic.”
Nor would one expect to find a liking for animals among the platonists.
Ladies valued only the boudoir pet, the little affectionate, obedient
animal, their very own, which meekly took their kisses and upon which
they lavished without misgiving a portion of their tenderness: a bird
for instance, or a pug. I say _a_ pug, for there was seldom more than
one. What was the good of a troop of shaggy animals however graceful,
like those which fill the canvases of Veronese? A lady much preferred
her one little lapdog, which she carried on her arm against her heart,
took to bed with her, and had painted in her own portrait. “Love me,
love my dog.” Titian’s Venus of the Prado is nude, but she keeps the
indispensable ornaments—a pearl necklace, a musical instrument, and a
little dog. Margaret in writing to M. de Montmorency[214] tells him gaily
that she is looking after her niece’s “belongings,” that is, “her parrot
and her daughters.” The death of the darling bird or the little pug was
a cruel event. What tears were shed! So faithful a little dog! How many
men might have learned a lesson from him! Friends could hardly venture
to speak of the fleas of the demised, or the hair that he dropped all
around, or the other objects which his mistress might perhaps find for
her affection.
People did not care for flocks and herds, except perhaps as a distant
ornament of the landscape. The King of Naples and the Cardinal of Amboise
kept peacocks and stags. Anne of France founded a sort of Zoological
Garden in which she acclimatised turkeys and bred parrots. But that had
nothing to do with aesthetics.
From country life we naturally proceed to the grave question of the
utility of physical exercises for women—a question much more difficult
to decide than appears at first sight. Suppose a number of old-style
French châtelaines, sun-baked, inured to the inclemencies of the weather,
dashing huntswomen, had been asked to relinquish violent exercises like
hunting, fencing, boxing, tennis, on the ground that to indulge in
them was to waste their charm? They would have ridiculed the idea. And
yet, after mature deliberation, the Urbino coterie decided that these
exercises were altogether incompatible with the feminine temperament.
One had to come to Lyons to find a pretty and clever woman like Louise
Labé posing as Bradamante or Marphise, and boasting of her riding and her
skill with the lance. Every well-born Italian woman detested such mannish
ways. When Charles VIII. arrived at Naples, the princess of Melphi,
to humour the barbarian’s tastes, presented to him her daughter on
horseback, but mounted in such a manner “as not to do wrong to her sex.”
Here there is a problem in pure aesthetics. Not that women like Isabella
d’Este and others are deficient in energy; when need arises they will
give proof of an extraordinary vigour; Margaret of France, in her passion
for serving her brother, bestrode a horse and galloped to the Spanish
frontier with a speed and endurance that the postal service has rarely
attained. But if, impelled by strong feeling, they accomplished feats
like this, they did not boast of them. What charm would Margaret with
all her heroism have for us if we had to see her flying with loose rein
astraddle on her nag? It is impossible to cite a military woman of a more
energetic temperament than Catherine Sforza: when did she shrink from
sleeping on the bare ground and passing her nights in the open air? Yet
this was the lady who, when she had a minute’s peace, solemnly dispatched
a Jewish old-clo’ man to her neighbours, to discover for her a certain
down for bed-ticks which was reputed exceptionally soft.
The very decided disfavour in which physical exercises were held by women
had its counterpart among the men, and very largely diminished their
ardour for anything in the way of sport or athletics. Even at the court
of Julius II. a young cardinal was mercilessly chaffed because, instead
of showing his visitors his books, coins, or pictures, he hurried them
off to a jumping-match in his garden! In France the taste for violent
exploits utterly died out, at least in court circles. When ladies were
by, there was much talk, in language borrowed from the romances, about
the virtue of arms and the nobility of valour, and as they spoke the
striplings brandished inoffensive swords. Tournaments were in favour as
a show adapted to captivate ladies’ eyes, and purely decorative—barring
accidents! Some in silver habits, others in red, green, and blue,
the combatants would make a few passes, and when they had done, the
victor, followed by his pages, galloped all round the fine-sanded
lists, to receive his meed of applause. After all, the ladies had
little appreciation for this relic of barbarism; they did not see the
philosophic necessity of equipping oneself with lance and steed to run
the _grand prix_ of life; in their view that prize was called “repose and
sovereign joy”; and that is not won at a gallop.
The question of the chase gave rise to somewhat various opinions.
Hunting, like war, gave man pleasure; to him it was a noble and sacred
occupation, since its end was the shedding of blood,—a point in which it
displeased the platonists. But, on the other hand, man is a born fighter,
and he should only be encouraged to work off his combativeness against
animals created precisely to be slaughtered by him. There is nothing
criminal in the trade of butcher, and it is far better to kill an ox than
a man, a boar than an ox. The chase was thus a valuable expedient.
But in an age of such exquisite refinement, when the infinite sweetness
of the Beautiful came at length to penetrate men to the very marrow,
people became more fastidious, and asked themselves if any brilliant idea
could be derived from the chase, or if it was not a sufficient concession
to the animal spirits to ramble about casually, to take the air without
excuses, and to go out riding under the eyes of the ladies, even though
too manifestly like a groom exercising his cob. Perhaps that would have
been better.
But the chase was popular at Rome.
The hunts in the Roman Campagna were of old renown. The deer there was
reputed very fleet, and the boar a particularly tough customer; the
hounds belonged to those idolised and sagacious breeds which could not be
bought at any price, and whose whelps were begged for by princesses and
potentates with absolute servility.[215] Further, in default of military
pomp, the glory of the chase, material as it was, seemed essential to the
political interests of the papacy,—and consequently to the interests of
religion,—with respect to certain eminent personages more accessible to
such arguments than to those of theology; and it must not be forgotten
that the Roman prelates, unfortunately for themselves, were politicians
as well as devotees of art. While closely allying themselves with women,
they had to reckon with men. The hunt organised by Paul II. for Borso
d’Este in 1471 has remained justly celebrated in the annals of the
church. It was therefore less a question of slaying animals than of
saving souls, and it may be said that in this respect the chase conduced
towards a spiritual end.
The great Popes of the Renaissance, however, were somewhat lukewarm
in cultivating it. Alexander VI., though an excellent horseman, was
but an infrequent and inexpert huntsman. Julius II. went out into the
rich vinelands rarely, if at all; for, born of a sea-faring stock, he
preferred to cast his nets into the deep like St. Peter. Leo X. rode
more, owing to threatenings of obesity; he hunted with application and
brilliance, and with his habitual love of perfection, but without that
quality which makes hunting an art, that indefinable something which
hunters call the “sacred fire” or the “devil may care” spirit, and the
friends of the Beautiful call love. He was a Florentine, and manifestly
did not regard the hunter’s rôle as a fine one; he could not imagine that
to spur a horse was to stimulate one’s ideas. To men of his stamp Nature
was, so to speak, truly feminine; they would have liked to put her under
glass. On the other hand, a number of prelates revived the chase with
their enthusiasm; they portrayed it in their poetry; they brought to it
all their gravity, urbanity, and decorum. When the ancient walls of pagan
Rome or the limestone benches of the Coliseum were blushing under the
first rays of dawn, or when the old triumphal arches were looking young
again under the smile of the Sabine mountains, a brilliant procession
set the pontifical flagstones ringing under their horses’ hoofs. Look at
these great figures who are passing. Here is the proud Catherine Sforza;
Tebaldeo, the poet skilful in following the forest tracks; Pontanus, the
methodical huntsman, the taciturn philosopher; the pride of Venice, the
sprightly Bembo, somewhat excited, for he wishes to “stick” the boar
and cut off its head, and therewith to do honour to the Virgin of the
woods, “in verses which will go down to posterity.” Here is the fair
Lucretia Borgia, “the glory of her race,” and, in close attendance,
Ercole Strozzi, just writing for her his great poem called _The Chase_, a
medley of venery and politics. Who next? Here is the omnipotent Ascanio
Sforza, vice-chancellor of the Roman church, all impetuosity, full of the
boyish animation which he will retain through the most cruel trials till
that day when he goes to his long rest in the church of Santa Maria del
Popolo. Behind him comes cardinal Adriano Castelli, the witty diplomatist
who wins all hearts, the admirable humanist who is going to celebrate
this chase. These ladies and prelates sing the praises of Diana; it seems
to them that the noble goddess in person is guiding their long cavalcade
among the tombs, in the impressive silence of this great Roman desert
where long aqueducts (odd vegetation!) lend sombre decoration to the
landscape.
Her broidered chlamys she has raised;
Her golden locks float in the breeze,
The purple buskins reach her knees;
Her gilded quiver’s ringing sound
Wakes echoes in the woods around.
Ascanio, courteous, debonair,
Rides close to show her every care;
Collects the troop, on Lybian steeds,
And harks them forth to doughty deeds.
View halloo! The boar is started at the foot of the hills, the hounds are
off, the hunters scatter and gallop up hill and down dale, dogged and
indefatigable. Presently, shouts, bayings, howls of wounded dogs! All is
over. Cardinal Ascanio appears, with flaming eye and flaming cheeks, his
coat red, his knife redder still, near the boar dripping red. This is
the epical, the intoxicating moment. The hounds tumble over each other,
the whippers-in bestir themselves, the hunters come panting up from all
directions. Suddenly all is hushed; as if by magic an exquisite repast
is served; the sweet measured tones of guitars, the voices of singers,
the plaudits of the banqueters alone wake the languid echoes, while huge
flagons of a generous wine go round. Then Cardinal Castelli rises, and
in his elegant Latin recites a Pindaric ode in honour of the victorious
huntsman, “the empurpled senate’s glory and grace.” Nothing could be more
piously orthodox or more delightful than this hunting ode. The Cardinal
recalls how the Redeemer, “true religion’s lord and emperor,” has put
vain deities to flight and given solace to perishing humanity, bringing
life and strength and joy. Ascanio responds with this invocation:
O Dian, virgin goddess of the woods and groves,
Or whether it behoves
To hail Proserpina, light of the glooming sky,
Lucina, Hecate, or e’en
Of the dim nether world the woful queen,
Dictynna else, or Trivia—whosoe’er
Dost to my swinking hours apply
Thy constant care,
Thee in my heart I hold eternally!
Evening creeps on, and the shadows extend. Soon the joyous clatter of
hoofs is re-echoing along the Sacred Way; these are the masters of Rome,
whom the shades of Tiberius and Constantine salute in the darkness.
While at Rome the chase was thus allying itself with poetry, in France,
as may be surmised, it followed no such bent. The good Louis XII.,
ruling with circumspection, would not have been hard put to it to give
his exploits a character of seriousness and tranquillity, for his
health obliged him to hunt in a litter, and more often with hawks than
with hounds; indeed, even at the kennels of Blois the spirit of poetry
modestly crept in; the court poets, not having at their disposal the
Roman mythology, or the shades of Tiberius and Constantine, extolled
the royal hawks and hounds. They honoured with a charming epitaph the
venerable Chailly, doyen of the pack, and a model of probity and honour,
who, after having followed the king even to war, had peacefully finished
his course at the feet of Queen Anne. They sang also of the famous
falcon Muguet, the terror of herons, “little of body but wondrous full
of courage”:
Trois passetemps parfaits a eu Louis douzième:
Triboulet et Chailly, et je fus le troisième.[216]
But all this fine poetry only celebrated the mettlesomeness of the
animals; it did not protect the game from slaughter; it left hunting
with its primitive characteristics, which continued to wound the finer
feelings, and snuffed out the faintest glimmer of the spiritual life.
One man was found, with the heroic determination to reform the French
style of hunting in the Roman direction. This man was Guillaume Budé,
generally known as the founder of the College of France, but as good a
hunter as a Hellenist, and in this regard as worthy of renown.
Budé is a brilliant example of the intellectual development of many men
of his generation. Come of a line of high officials, he went through
the usual experiences: a tutor, fashionable masters, a special Greek
tutor, one George Hermonymos, brought direct from Lacedaemonia to teach
him to lisp the Greek alphabet at the remuneration of five hundred
crowns monthly; but Lefèvre d’Etaples[217] did not succeed in making
a philosopher of him, nor Fra Giocondo[218] a mathematician. Then,
after lolling for a while on the long-suffering benches of the Orleans
University of Law, Budé resigned himself to run in the paternal grooves;
apart from hunting, he was not known to have any accomplishment or
passion except fishing. So he went to Rome as secretary to an embassy
at the time of the election of Julius II. This proved the turning-point
of his life. The aesthetic splendour of Rome struck him and held him
spellbound; he experienced the electric shock, the complete change of
view which the sudden revelation of the spirit of beauty has from all
time occasioned in choice minds. He came back a changed man. He became
an apostle of beauty; he resigned his diplomatic appointments, and his
office as secretary to the king; he even refused a comfortable retreat on
the bench, in order to devote himself to that noble intellectual life,
the radiance of which had filled his soul.
He gave up everything except hunting. And it was then that he had to face
the trying problem that rose in his mind with peculiar intensity—how to
spiritualise the chase.
The solution he arrived at was of the most original kind. He has
communicated it to us in the form of a conversation, real or imaginary,
between himself and King Francis I. This dialogue attained a measure of
popularity; written in Latin (following the Roman fashion), it had the
honour of being translated by the great court translator, Louis Le Roy,
and in our time has been re-published by M. Chevreul.
Budé’s idea was wonderfully simple, and nicely calculated, he thought,
to make an impression on Francis I. The king was not very clever, but he
was very willing to learn, and had great confidence in the new ideas,
particularly those of his friend.
Budé merely suggested the adoption of Latin as the language of venery. At
first sight, Francis did not quite catch the piquancy of this proposal;
however, he made no opposition; and discovered on reflection, indeed,
that it hit the mark admirably. Certain persons were agitating for the
suppression of Latin in law proceedings, with the professed object of
rendering them more comprehensible: here was an excellent means of
silencing the agitators, by showing them that Latin, if it can serve for
the slang of the turf, can serve for anything.
History does not relate whether Francis halloed his hounds in Latin
verse; but the seed dropped by Budé was not lost, and another scholar,
Michelangelo Blando, the commentator on Aristotle and Hippocrates, took
up the same subject as a second study. In a learned Latin treatise on
hunting, Blando shows how important it is for the huntsmen to be men
of literary culture; for their benefit he investigates every branch
of canine lore from the earliest times: breeds, regimen, maladies,
training—on all these points he admirably collects the various threads
of tradition. Nor does he forget the lives of the most illustrious of
hunters down to and including Francis I. Among these, naturally, he makes
honourable mention of a number of noble ladies who were ardent devotees
of the chase, and with whom the sport almost always meant a dedication of
their virginity; for example, the fair Atalanta, who disdained marriage;
Calixto, daughter of a king of Arcadia; Arethusa, daughter of the Centaur
Hippochrome; Amimone, a Breton nymph, daughter of Danaus; and a thousand
other vestals whom it is unnecessary to recall, says he, “being household
words with all hunters worthy of the name.” After such an enumeration,
one might indeed be tempted to believe that, for women at any rate, the
chase elevates the soul and has platonic virtues.
But, all this notwithstanding, the lady artists in charm did not think
it deserved either encouragement or sympathy on their part. In what
respect had this sport any moral efficacy? It had, on the contrary,
the disadvantage of giving a woman a somewhat masculine appearance,
of diluting in her all that constitutes the essence of platonic
sweetness.[219]
Riding to hounds was no longer indulged in, except by some few
over-energetic and rather old-fashioned ladies like Margaret of Austria,
who was so proud of her stuffed wolves’ heads; or Anne of France, a
passionate and classical huntress, whom one of her faithful henchmen, the
seneschal of Normandy, enthusiastically styles the “grand mistress” of
this “glorious trade”; but whom he calls also its last representative.
Anne hunted in the same way that she did everything; coldly and
methodically she with her own eyes examined the trail, and gave the word
to hark forward; then she set off with her dogs, and suddenly warming
to the work, grew animated and vociferous, and smartly handled her
hunting-spear. Such ways as these have caused her to be always wrongly
judged, even by her closest friends, and have given her a reputation for
mannishness, whereas in her heart of hearts she was infinitely feminine,
and femininely philosophic.
The large majority of her contemporaries would have been careful not to
imitate her, and if they resigned themselves to the chase, it was for
some good reason. Personally they went in for little else than hawking.
It was indifferent to them whether men rode out and effected more or less
slaughter; but they loved the associations of the hunt—the delightful
evenings, favourable to flirtation (when the hunters were not too hungry
or sleepy); the succeeding days of tranquillity, when the unconstraint
of country life allowed them to rise early and come down into the fresh
air without stopping to do up their hair or their complexions, but with
clear, rosy cheeks; to hurry through a hunter’s mass, and then start
gossiping in the shade on the respective merits of dogs and birds until
it was time for breakfast. In short, to platonist ladies, the less
hunting there was, the more genuine and admirable the chase appeared. If
men absolutely insisted on spilling blood, why not get it over quickly?
Why not fill their parks with tame stags and one fine morning go out and
massacre a few? But for pity’s sake let there be no more talk of their
Red Indian stratagems, or of competing in instinct with the animals!
“Tell me,” cries Margaret of France, “is the capture of a stag fit work
for a prince?”—he might as well turn mason or hind!
They came to the conclusion that, if they did not wish to live in the
kennel, there was nothing for it but to give up hunting, and this was
more logical than Budé’s or Blando’s attempt to imbue huntsmen with lofty
and fantastic ideas which would never make a good sportsman.
Like all human things, the charming theories we have just indicated
had their dark side. The habit of suppressing nature, of making her
all grace and attractiveness, of embellishing and transfiguring her,
is pretty sure to lead to the loss of any real knowledge of nature. A
landscape is transformed into a drawing-room. Lemaire de Belges and
others discourse to us of nothing but branches gently swaying, rustling
leaflets, the waning autumn, huts in which mock shepherds in sham
goat-skins listen to the moaning of the winter wind with a ravishment
which it is difficult not to fancy humbug too. If only this mawkish
sentimentality always led to the ideal! But no; the coy Phillises sport
their demure little tricks at all hours but the lover’s hour, when
perhaps they would not be out of place.
The fleshly Venetian school, with its feeling for colour and its somewhat
pagan naturalism, much more successfully expressed man’s relations with
Nature. It opens for us not a mere garden bower, but a huge factory of
sensuous pleasure, whence ascend a thousand high-soaring aspirations and
a penetrating effluence. Giorgione and Titian have wonderfully rendered
the poetry of these love-filled horizons. From the smooth sea, or the
foaming billows, or the flowery meadows depicted by their pencils, loud
voices speak to us; and nothing but the old, imaginative mythology is
wanted to personify all the unknowable and unknown unions whence we
feel that the physical world is every day drawing its life and its
overmastering thirst for renewal. The epicureans let themselves drift
along aimlessly, resting on their oars,[220] and do no more than sing
their little part, hardly audible in this colossal orchestration. The
platonists, on the other hand, will not allow themselves to be seduced,
and combat nature even while caressing her, preferring to keep her too
much in subjection rather than to yield her too much obedience. Nature
untamed or sensual would slay man, they think. She is a slave, meant
to be subject to us, meditating revenge, and eager to suck or shed our
blood; and she is set among the slaves.
Finally, a word must be said about a life which held a place
midway between country life and city life, namely, the life of the
watering-places, both inland and by the sea. In France the fashion
was difficult to introduce, good society preferring the large and
comfortable existence of the country house; but to take the waters was
all the rage in Italy.
Except at church, there was no scene where people could better meet
together, or take one another more seriously without hypocrisy. A
public bath represented the ideal of equality. You go in, cut a figure,
and come out again, and Jack is as good as his master. It is an open
drawing-room, in which people who elsewhere are strangers to one another,
acquaintances, and bosom friends all have one idea—to distil their soul
drop by drop into the ears of kindred spirits, like the neighbouring
spring.
The difficulty with which the custom became acclimatised in France has
been attributed to very various causes. Following an old tradition, many
preachers so late as the 16th century inveighed against the habit of
bathing. Out of thirty women who go bathing, says one, not one can call
herself pure. “O fatal laving, prolific in elements of death!” exclaims
another. “Ye women who stew yourselves,” says Oliver Maillard,[221] “I
summon you all to the stewpots of Hell!” The Calvinists went to still
greater lengths of indignation, and more than one physician, even,
thought well to adopt a cautious attitude. At the end of a long treatise
on hygiene, Gazius says: “I have still to speak about the baths, and I
shall do so briefly, for the custom of bathing does not exist among us,
and further, it is a pleasure which is not devoid of danger; perhaps it
would be better not to speak of it, lest I should appear to recommend
it. For myself, I have never taken a bath, and I am none the worse for
it, thank God!” However, Gazius, not to come to logger-heads with the
ancients, or the Arabs, or his colleagues, goes so far as to acknowledge
that cold water is in use “in very distinguished countries”; for his
part, he sees nothing objectionable in a douche followed by brisk
friction or massage.
But we must get to the bottom of this matter, a question of morals rather
than hygiene.
We have unexpectedly come upon principles which we recognise as old
acquaintances. Neither preachers nor Calvinists were willing to admit
that any consideration of utility could induce a self-respecting woman
to strip herself of all, or nearly all, her clothes, either in the open
air as in ancient times, or in one of those public bathing establishments
which were cried every day in the market-places between the artichokes
and the cheese,[222] and where the authorities winked at certain
familiarities. Many historians have concluded outright that Calvinists
and preachers had a horror of water; but this is not strictly accurate;
they recommended baths at home. Thus the council of Basle passed a canon
inviting persons to set bath-rooms in their houses. The platonists fell
in the more heartily with the council’s recommendation in that they
treated their bodies with sacerdotal attentions, so to speak, and that
no refinement appeared to them unreasonable in forging the weapon of
delightful love. Some discriminating women preferred dry methods to
water—powders, pastes, scraping of the skin, which enabled them to say
“that they did not wash their hands”; but the majority owed a great
deal to water, and the room devoted to this work of regeneration was a
sanctuary. The little bath-rooms of the 18th or the beginning of the 19th
century, hung all round with mirrors, are familiar to us. The idolatry of
the 16th century was less blatant but not less ardent; Raphael himself
decorated Bibbiena’s bath-room, and, as we know, the subject chosen by
the charming prelate for his frescoes was the story of Venus and Cupid.
In one of her most amusing letters Madame de Sévigné bewails the
necessity of taking shower-baths at Vichy, which she regarded as a
“humiliating” situation to be in. To give herself courage, she conceived
the singular idea of keeping her two maids with her, so that she might
“see familiar faces.” At the same time, she got her physician, a man of
parts, to conceal himself behind a curtain, so that she might chat with
him during the operation.
We do not know what the impressions of Madame de Sévigné’s descendants
are, but we know that her ancestresses were on this point extremely
fastidious. Margaret of France, not to lose sight of the story of the
chaste Susanna, had it embroidered on a table-cover.
We get an idea, then, of the cautious attitude adopted in regard to
hydrotherapeutics. But on the other hand the friends of antiquity
restored water to a place of honour; scholars proved that the Romans had
been devoted to it; the higher clergy became its apostles. George of
Amboise and his brothers multiplied the spas at Rouen, Blois, Gaillon,
Clermont, as the pope did at Rome.
In regard to mineral springs, there appeared, under the auspices of the
pope and the Venetian senate, a large folio official guide,[223] which
explained that there were waters for all sick bodies as there were saints
for all sick souls,[224] but that no one should venture to them without
seeking advice in the proper quarter.
A person wishing to go to the waters would consult a physician. If he was
a specialist like Savonarola, he would look at everything with aquatic
prepossessions, and commence his patient’s initiation at home with baths
of various kinds—baths of oil, of wine, of milk, of fire, of compressed
air. One fine morning he would announce that mineral waters were spoilt
in transit, that he was tired of making the patient drink stale water,
and he would then dispatch him to some natural spring.
Most of the Italian springs, at any rate such as were much frequented,
had the good taste to flow in or near a city, and thus people were
likely to meet familiar faces, if only among the regular visitors. Under
Louis XII., the city of Genoa revolted because its French captain,
the Sire de Roquebertin, instead of attending to business, tiresome
certainly, passed his life at the waters of Acqui.
A lady of distinction, however, first of all secured a good escort to
keep her company; Margaret of France, for instance, carried her whole
party off to Cauterets. Then she had to listen to the parting exhortation
of her doctor, a punctilious and intelligent man, who apparently had
no excessive confidence in his colleagues or his fair client, and who
catechised her and made her read the folio. He mentioned eight enemies
lying in wait for her—headache, insomnia, and the rest;—he instructed
her how, by watchfully studying her little secret vices and never for a
moment forgetting her digestion, and so on, she would put them to rout.
Then he carefully consulted the horoscope, the direction of the wind,
the temperature, his chart of epidemics; he assured himself as to the
character of the year (for there were some years in which the waters
killed off the invalids or made them worse), and finally he pronounced
the _exeat_.
Flinging off this wet blanket with his terrestrial visions, the patient
sped away. Pity if it was towards Porretta, near Bologna, a very popular
haunt but dreadfully purgative. However, the spirit of Beauty can
idealise everything, and an agreeable poet, Battista of Mantua, undertook
to show all the moral and aesthetic satisfaction to be got in drinking
three glasses of a laxative water, and then leaving Nature to herself.
He describes this regimen in admirable verses:
“Far from the bed and all its joys,
You go and come and eke advance
In the slow measure of a stately dance,”
and so on.
In fact, the idea of becoming young again, the thought of gaining new
freedom of mind, new warmth of heart, new suppleness of the bodily frame
by sacrifices so slight, of seeing the wrinkles vanish of themselves,
in short the pursuit of beauty as a bounden duty, threw the glamour of
poetry over many things, and was well worth the self-imposition of
twenty-one days of hardship. For all that, fashionable people preferred
the bathing-places to the spas.
Life at such places presented the admirable advantage that people
could there enjoy the most perfect liberty. Nowhere were there better
opportunities for seeing one’s friends, for intimate conversation, for
deriving real profit from companionship. It was that which made this
life so precious. A man who had followed in the train of the princess he
loved had absolutely nothing to do but to devote himself to her, for he
put up with the rubbings and purgings only as a sop to his conscience.
What delightful opportunities between two glasses of water to improve
the mind or tell stories! Many collections of _Novelli_ originated near
a spring. It was during a season at Lucca, in April 1538, that Vittoria
Colonna made the acquaintance of Carnesecchi, the adventurous theologian,
and launched out with him into the abstrusest religious speculations.
Everyone followed his own bent, and the gentlemen who did not love
husbands were less irked there than elsewhere.
We shall not go so far as to say that platonism exercised undivided sway
over the bathers;[225] but to have a place at all was something gained.
There is no indication that a much purer virtue reigned north of the Alps
among the virtuous races. The goings-on at Baden in Aargau scandalised
even Brantôme. A Florentine,[226] who thought life at Florence pleasant
enough, has related his impressions at Baden with a naïve stupefaction;
he was dumbfounded the very moment he arrived. The beautiful platonism of
his own province, flanked always by jealous husbands and _impedimenta_
of all sorts, appeared to him mere food for babes, a phantom, a faded
flower, an unsubstantial pageant, beside those Piccadilly manners. But
they did not offend him: “Bravo!” he cries, “who wouldn’t be platonic,
since Plato preaches the community of women? Here the husbands take
everything, absolutely everything, in good part! How wonderfully sensible
of them! These Germans don’t rack themselves for suspicions, they enjoy
the present.” And then, Florentine as he is, he goes on to describe
the charms of Baden with genuine enthusiasm: the handsome streets in
which never a sign of infirmity is to be seen (Baden was recommended to
childless women); exquisite fine ladies; men in cloth of gold and silver;
somewhat exotic beauties sprung from God knows where, attended by a
lackey and one or two waiting-maids; here and there a few noble abbesses
of reasonable piety.... What a whirl! It is one mad race for pleasure!
Serious people who take care of themselves and desire a cure, have two or
three baths a day, living like so many ducks. For ordinary folk there are
common swimming-baths of wonderful picturesqueness, but every respectable
hostel possesses one bath for men, and another for women, with a gallery
to which men are admitted in their dressing-gowns. To describe the gaiety
that reigns there is impossible. There is chatting and laughter, eating
and drinking, dancing in a ring; the gentlemen fling down coins which
the fair bathers catch with the tips of their fingers or in their linen
chemisettes, with much contortioning and struggling. Sometimes, when the
company are on intimate terms, they end by fraternising in a single tank,
which is much more amusing, and pleases the physicians, because nothing
ensures more conscientious bathing. _Honi soit qui mal y pense!_
In the evening a broad meadow serves as a casino; there is more dancing
and singing: and these amusements are mingled with various pastimes
such as the game of _balle à grelots_,[227] which leads to all sorts of
horse-play.
That is Baden.
One singular fact is brought out. Platonism was regarded as nothing if
not complex and elaborate, and indeed it believed itself to be such;
antiplatonism, on the contrary, affected airs of the most complete
simplicity: yet whenever the two are confronted, it is platonism that
proves the more ingenuous.