whole nights and days, ‘without speaking, hearing, or answering, as if
he were dead.’ The Abbé Raynal and Jean Jacques Rousseau constituted
themselves his nurses. They were both too romantic, and too much the
children of their time, to try the common-sense expedient of leaving the
rejected lover severely alone, or of throwing a bucket of cold water
over him. But when Rousseau saw a smile on the doctor’s face as he left
the patient’s room, his heart began to harden a little. And, sure
enough, one fine morning up gets the invalid, dresses, resumes his
ordinary course of life and never again mentions his malady to his
nurses--even to thank them.
Frédéric Melchior Grimm was, however, no sentimental fool. He was,
indeed, one of the most keen-witted of his great nation, though, like
many other children of the Fatherland, he had on the surface of his
worldly wisdom a fine layer of Teutonic sentimentality. If the Briton
finds the sentiment mawkish, not so the Frenchman. Grimm’s extraordinary
disease became his passport into the most exclusive circles in Paris.
Born at Ratisbon on September 26, 1723, with a poor Lutheran pastor for
a father, he had always known that he must make his own way in life,
and had always made it. At school he found a useful friend in one of
Baron Schomberg’s sons, and continued the friendship at the University
of Leipzig. When he was still a student there, he wrote a play,
‘Banise,’ which, before he left, he was a sufficiently just and astute
critic to find ‘pitiable.’ On leaving Leipzig he went to live in the
Schombergs’ house, as tutor to his friend’s younger brother. Frederick
the Great had already made the French language the fashion; and as at
the Schombergs’ Grimm heard nothing else, he soon learnt to speak and
read it. In 1748 came the first opportunity of his life; he took his
pupil to Paris, and remained there after the boy had returned to his
family.
To say that Grimm throughout his existence always fell on his feet,
would be a misleading idiom. He always fell on his head. The moment he
found himself thrown into a new set of circumstances, his calm judgment
skilfully arranged them to the very best advantage. At this time he was
twenty-five years old, rather tall and imposing looking, something of a
dandy in his dress (his enemies declared that he powdered his face and
scented himself like a woman), with very little money in hand, no
prospects, and a retrospect of that dismal failure ‘Banise,’ and that
‘thin travelling tutorship.’ In a very short time he got himself
appointed as reader to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha. The salary was thin
enough here too; but the Duke was a great person, and the Duchess was
the friend and the correspondent of Voltaire, and to be, for the rest of
her life, the friend and correspondent of Melchior Grimm as well. He was
not long in finding a situation much more lucrative and responsible.
In 1749, he became secretary, guide, and friend to a certain dissipated
young dog of a Comte de Frise, or Frisen, who was always borrowing money
of his famous uncle, Marshal Saxe, and certainly needed a prudent Grimm
to look after him.
If Grimm was only, or principally, honest because honesty is the best
policy, if he did his duty because in the long run duty is the surest
road to happiness, yet the facts remain that he did act uprightly, and
that he had settled principles, a strict course of conduct and a strong
line of action, in an age when no motives, good, bad, or indifferent,
produced such happy results in his friends.
Beneath that veneer of German emotionalism he was, perhaps, something
cold and selfish, stern and reserved. But if he was never ardent, he was
always faithful; if he was not generous, he was just. He occupied in his
life many positions of great trust and responsibility, and came out of
them all with honour. One can love a Diderot, but one must needs respect
a Grimm.
He had plenty of work to do in Paris. Besides the impossible task of
keeping Frisen in order, he had his own way and fortune to make and his
own friends to cultivate. His passion for Mademoiselle Fel was not his
only introduction to Parisian society. Jean Jacques Rousseau (then a
brilliant pauper copying music for his support and dreaming masterpieces
of which he had not yet written a line) introduced him to d’Holbach and
to Madame d’Épinay. He soon became fast friends with Madame Geoffrin (to
whose tranquil common-sense his judicious and well-ordered mind
particularly appealed), with Helvétius, and with Marmontel; he began a
life-long friendship with Diderot, and once a week at Frisen’s house, in
the Faubourg St. Honoré, he gave the most delightful bachelor dinner to
his friends, played exquisitely on the clavecin for their benefit, took
their amusement at his German-French in perfectly good part, and was
entirely witty and agreeable, while keeping always a certain reserve and
remaining entirely master of the situation.
In a very short time the poor German tutor was one of the most sought
after persons in Paris, fêted and petted by all the great people, and
minded to live no longer as bear-leader to boys, but by his own head
and pen.
His taste for music gave him a golden opportunity. Shall we have French
music at the opera, or Italian? Paris was as hotly divided on the
question, said Rousseau, as if the affair had been one of religion. The
French side had all the money, the fashion, and the women, and the
Italian side a very little party of real connoisseurs. Grimm joined the
Italians and wrote on their behalf, in 1753, a pamphlet called ‘The
Little Prophet of Boehmischbroda,’ in which the style is profanely
imitated from the prophets of the Old Testament. As Madame de Pompadour
was on the French side, which she protected by force and by summarily
dismissing the Italian singers on the spot, the pamphlet did no harm to
French music; but it made Grimm famous. Voltaire read it, and asked how
this Bohemian dares to have more wit than We have? And this Bohemian,
having made so successful a literary venture in a small part, now looked
round with his clever eyes for a larger one.
In 1754, he travelled for a time with d’Holbach, who had just lost his
wife; and in the following year Frisen, whom Grimm’s guardianship had
not been able to save from the fatal consequences of his depravity,
died, and left his mentor a free man.
In 1755 he began what was to be the work of his life and is his true
title to glory, the ‘Literary Correspondence.’
The idea of communicating to the sovereigns of Europe by letter, news of
the literature, science, and philosophy of Paris, that centre of the
world’s cultivation, was not a new one. In limiting the freedom of the
press, sovereigns had limited their own freedom. Newspapers were
official bulletins, not daring to utter unacceptable truths or
unpalatable opinions on any truths. Kings, as well as their subjects,
yawned over journals of this kind. So King Frederick the Great
originated the idea of paying an intelligent man in Paris to write him
direct the news and the gossip of the capital. Theriot, Voltaire’s
friend, filled the post very unsuccessfully, and Frederick complained
bitterly that Theriot never had a cold in his head without scribbling
four pages of rodomontade to tell him about it. La Harpe occupied the
same position to the Czarevitch Paul, and Suard and the Abbé Raynal,
Grimm’s nurse and friend, to the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha.
The idea was good, but it had been badly worked out. As Diderot and
d’Alembert quickened into mighty life the little Encyclopædia of
Chambers, so Grimm breathed vitality into the languishing ‘Literary
Correspondence.’ He saw in it, first of all, the germ of a great
career; but he saw in it, too, an influence which, by informing the
minds of kings, might change the destiny of kingdoms. To teach the
people was difficult in those days; to teach their rulers was well nigh
impossible. Here, then, was a chance, the one splendid chance, of
showing them the progress of the world, the ominous advance of knowledge
and of the old order towards the new. Raynal handed over to Grimm the
correspondence he had established with the Courts of the north and south
of Germany; and with this small connection Grimm began his work.
The ‘Literary Correspondence’ remains to-day the only literary review
which has survived the passage of time, and is still not merely a great
name, but a great living work. The ‘Spectator’ and the ‘Tatler’ of
Addison and Steele are kept eternally fresh by an exquisite charm of
style; but they rarely aspired to serious criticism, and are mainly a
record of modes and manners, not of literature or of science. The
‘Literary Correspondence’ is as much to-day as on the day it was
written, the guide-book to the letters, the art, and the drama of the
eighteenth century; the open door to its society and to the mind of
cultivated Paris; a book which is equally indispensable to the scholar
or to the novelist writing of its period, and which is certainly both
the most instructive and the most amusing literary compilation extant.
Of no settled length and in manuscript, it was despatched to its
subscribers twice a month. It had no fixed price, its readers paying as
much as they chose for it, or as much as Grimm could make them pay. His
old friend the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha was, as has been seen, one of his
first subscribers. The Landgrave of Hesse, the Queen of Sweden, and
Catherine the Great of Russia soon joined his select and limited
_clientèle_. Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, the Margrave of
Anspach, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany joined later. Frederick the
Great, after his unlucky experience with Theriot, was extremely dilatory
and vacillating in having anything to do with it; when he did add his
name to the list of subscribers he never paid his subscription and
harried Grimm to insert the scandals and the _on dits_ of the _cafés_
and the Court, which Grimm declined to do.
For greater security, the sheets did not go through the post, but
through the legations of the various countries. The thing was, in fact,
a secret, and a well-kept secret, for more than half a century, and
never knew the danger of print until it was published in 1812, under the
Empire, with many cautious Napoleonic omissions. In the meantime, its
secrecy and the limited number of its readers gave the discreet Grimm,
who declared that the most enlightened reasoning was not worth a night
in the Bastille, and who was cautious to the very fibre of his bones,
the opportunity of being at once candid, impartial, and safe.
He set forth a flaming prospectus, promising an ‘unlimited
truthfulness.’ The sheets shall be ‘dedicated to confidence and
frankness!’ They were. To those distant Courts and Kings there went
forth every fortnight the inimitable criticisms of the most bold, just,
and cool critic who ever breathed. He not only analysed, with
extraordinary brilliancy and fairness, the writings of Voltaire, of
friend Rousseau, and of Buffon, but he sat in discerning judgment on the
works of English novelists and poets. He criticised books which have not
lived, in criticisms which are undying. As to the value and the
longevity of the productions, he was sometimes, naturally and
inevitably, mistaken; but as a rule his opinions have been confirmed by
posterity and have weathered the test of time.
He also described to his readers the condition of the drama, the plots
of the plays, the art of the players. Of course he was clever enough if
the season was rather a dull one, to fill out his pages with extracts
from a tragedy or from a novel; sometimes, it is said, the ingenious man
gave quotations from works which had never been written.
He dealt with medical questions, and did not think it beneath his
dignity to examine the merits of a mouth-wash. He wrote many pages on
Tronchin, the great physician, and on inoculation. Here, surely, was one
of the chances to enlighten kings--kings who, more than any other class
of men, suffered and died from the ignorant tyranny of their physicians,
and who had to wait eighteen centuries before any man told them that
fresh air was a valuable property, and health a kingdom to be taken by
temperance, soberness, and chastity.
If there was a scientific marvel in the air, such as ventriloquism, why,
of course, Grimm must tell his correspondents about that; and the music,
French or Italian, of the capital, must also receive its comment. Then
there was the news of the day, and of Academical disputes, and, though
Grimm had declared he would not report them, occasional piquant
anecdotes with a sufficient spice of scandal in them to have pleased
King Frederick.
He further drew pen-portraits of celebrities. Nothing could be more fair
and shrewd than Grimm’s character-sketches. He solves in them the
supreme difficulty--how to be at once honest and charitable.
Next there is an epigram to be reported. While a charade that has amused
a Parisian line lady is surely good enough for a German duchess!
Politics were supposed to be excluded, and they were excluded in the
sense that there were no remarks on public events until those events had
become so notorious that the ‘Correspondence’ did not add to its
readers’ knowledge of them. But though, or because, he wrote for
governors, Grimm adduced his theories on government, he himself
believing in the divine rights neither of the ‘Social Contract’ nor of
kings. To his views on tolerance, finance, and education, he gave
utterance soberly, thoughtfully, and at length. He had a subscription
list in his paper for Voltaire’s unfortunate protégés, the Calas; and if
his pen was to flow freely, as he had promised, how could he stay his
indignation against the trial and the sacrifice of the Chevalier de la
Barre?
To the friend and intimate of the philosophers, the most ordinary event
suggested philosophical reflections. His religious views could hardly
help appearing; but Grimm’s was a quiet agnosticism, and had nothing in
common with the excited certainties of Diderot’s unbelief. He had, of
course, his theories on women, on art, and on languages; and he aired
them all. He brought out, in the same tantalising fashion in which
serials are now produced in weekly illustrated newspapers, Diderot’s
two novels.
He was himself not only the first critic of his day, but he was thinker
as well as chronicler, worldling and scholar, reporter and _savant_.
Foreigner though he was, he had learnt to write the French language in a
style inimitably clear, supple, and forcible. His command of irony alone
should have been a fortune to him. Add to this, his singularly wise,
calm head, and his unrivalled position as the friend of the women of the
_salons_ and the nobility of Paris as well as of its writers and
politicians. Further, this critic of music was himself a musician, this
judge of authors himself an author. He lived in one of the most
momentous and thrilling periods in the history of this earth, and in one
of the most stimulating of her cities, and was able to write wholly
without fear of consequence for readers of whose intelligent interest he
was sure, while he had ever before him the magnificent hope of so
opening the hearts and feeding the knowledge of those readers that they
might turn and do good unto their people and be a blessing, and not a
curse, to their lands.
Consider all this, and it is not marvellous that Grimm remains the first
journalist and the ‘Literary Correspondence’ the first newspaper in the
world.
It is hardly necessary to say that it gave its editor an enormous amount
of work. _Chaise de paille_, his friends called him in allusion to his
diligence; later, when he began to travel, Grimm suggested the nickname
should be altered to _chaise de poste_. He had many secretaries working
under him. One, Meister, was attached to him all his life, and benefited
largely under his will. When he was away from Paris the good-natured
Diderot made a brilliant substitute; and Madame d’Épinay took up a
delicate pen to become the first, and surely the most charming, of women
journalists.
Only a few months after his arrival in Paris Grimm had been introduced
to this little black-eyed, bright-witted, and all too seductive wife of
a worthless husband. In 1752, at Frisen’s table, he had heard her name
insulted, and had fought a duel for its honour. By 1755, on his return
from his journey with d’Holbach, he became a familiar figure in her
_salon_. First her wise and masterful friend, he was soon her despotic
lover.
It is always a vexed point of morals to determine how far right can come
out of wrong, how far a cause initially bad can be said to be good in
its results. It must certainly be conceded in Grimm’s case that, having
put himself into a false position and remaining there, he acted not only
sensibly and discreetly, but even honestly and conscientiously. He
found Madame d’Épinay silly, as are so many clever women, and he
insisted on her behaving with judgment and discretion. One of his first
acts was to demand that her old lover, Francueil, whom she still
permitted to visit her as a friend, should be given his dismissal. With
Duclos, man of letters, and of character rough, dissipated, and
unscrupulous, he bade her break entirely. Then he turned to Rousseau.
It has been justly said of Grimm that he never lost a friend save Jean
Jacques. In 1756 Madame d’Épinay, acting on one of those excessively
foolish impulses which she herself felt to be wholly fascinating, and
which had already more than once shipwrecked her life, gave Rousseau the
little Hermitage in the forest of Montmorency, close to her own
country-house of La Chevrette.
Grimm had not known Rousseau for six years without knowing his heart. He
looked up suddenly from the ‘Correspondence.’ ‘You have done Rousseau a
bad service,’ he told Madame d’Épinay sternly, ‘and yourself a worse.’
Still, it was done. In 1757, that _belle laide_, Madame d’Houdetot, also
had a house close to La Chevrette, and there attracted the notice of
Rousseau. After a brief summer day of delight, she grew tired of her
vehement admirer, or her lover, Saint-Lambert, grew tired of him for
her. At any rate, there burst over those three houses in the Montmorency
forest a storm of fierce passions and scandalous recriminations. All
Paris stood watching. Diderot plunged impulsively into that angry sea.
Rousseau accused Madame d’Épinay, in terms which no self-respecting
woman could have forgiven, of being the writer of a certain fatal
anonymous letter; and she forgave him. Grimm had been appointed
secretary to the Duke of Orleans, and was absent on duty in Westphalia.
He did not spare his little mistress’s pusillanimous weakness. ‘Your
excuses are feeble ... you have committed a very great fault,’ he wrote.
Hurrying home, he dealt with Rousseau in terms of unmistakable
plainness. He made Madame d’Épinay cast him off there, at once, and for
ever, and carried her off to Geneva on the excuse, a just excuse in
every sense, of her health.
But the consequences of her folly were not ended. Rousseau defamed her
character in the ‘Confessions,’ and in that unique masterpiece of
scurrility he speaks of Grimm as ‘a tiger whose fury increases daily.’
Diderot declared that Jean Jacques made him believe in the existence of
the devil and of hell. But Grimm wrote an obituary notice of Rousseau in
his ‘Correspondence’ of admirable justice and moderation, and spoke of
him as ‘embittered by sorrows which were of his own making but not the
less real,’ and as ‘a soul at once too weak and too strong to bear
quietly the burden of life.’ It must be allowed that Grimm could be
magnanimous.
Having saved Madame d’Épinay from her friends, it remained to him to
save her from herself. At Geneva he put her under the care of the great
and good Tronchin, and made her write for the ‘Correspondence.’ He
helped her to manage the miserable remains of the fortune her husband’s
mad extravagance had left her, supervised the education of her children,
and even showed her the harm she did them by speaking disrespectfully of
their father. His love was not fervent, perhaps, but it corrected her
follies and her weakness, and made her do and be her best. It had at
least some of the tokens of a good and honourable feeling.
These visits to Geneva were undoubtedly the happiest time in her life.
On this first one, which lasted eight months, from February to October
1759, she and Grimm often saw and talked with Voltaire; and Grimm
greatly appreciated the society of the solid and sensible Genevans and
the cultivated Tronchins. Mademoiselle Fel came to stay with Voltaire at
Les Délices, and when Grimm saw her there he proved convincingly the
truth that ‘the man’s love, once gone, never returns.’ But his real
passion was not even for Madame d’Épinay. His dominant taste was his
ambition; his dearest mistress, his career.
Already secretary to the Duke of Orleans, on the last evening of his
stay at Geneva, he heard the satisfactory news that he was made Envoy
for Frankfort at the Court of France. True, _M. l’Ambassadeur_, as
Diderot called him, soon lost his post by joking in a despatch at the
expense of an official person; but none the less he was rising in the
world. Presently he was busy settling M. d’Épinay’s bankruptcy and
helping Madame to arrange a satisfactory marriage for her daughter.
_Tyran le Blanc_ he was called by her and her circle. But, after all, no
woman is happy till she has met her master. Well for her if she find one
as judicious and upright as Melchior Grimm.
He was less with her as the years went by, though not in any sense less
faithful. In 1762 the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha appointed him her _chargé
d’affaires_; and when she died her husband made him Councillor of
Legation, with a pension.
He met Frederick the Great when he was travelling in Germany in 1769;
and Frederick, forgetting his grievance that Grimm would not turn the
‘Correspondence’ into a scandalous society newspaper, fell under the
spell of his fellow-countryman’s encyclopædical knowledge and dignified
affability. Grimm, said Meister, had the rare talent of living with
great people without losing any of the freedom and independence of his
character.
When he was nearly fifty years old, in 1771, he resumed an employment of
his youth, and, at a very large salary, consented to be tutor to the
Hereditary Prince of Hesse, a boy about nineteen. The pair went to
England and were well received at its ultra-German Court. Grimm was
delighted with ‘the simplicity, the naturalness, and the good sense’ of
the English character. The Landgravine, young Hesse’s mother, sold her
diamonds that her son might prolong his visit in so delightful a
country. And then Grimm brought him back to Paris and formed his mind
and manners in the society of d’Holbach and Diderot, of Madame Necker
and Madame Geoffrin.