_Characteristics of the Eighteenth Century--Its Epicurean
Philosophy--Anecdote of Mme. du Deffand--the Salon an Engine of
Political Power--Great Influence of Women--Salons Defined Literary
Dinners--Etiquette of the Salons--An Exotic on American Soil._
The traits which strike us most forcibly in the lives and characters of
the women of the early salons, which colored their minds, ran through
their literary pastimes, and gave a distinctive flavor to their
conversation, are delicacy and sensibility. It was these qualities,
added to a decided taste for pleasures of the intellect, and an innate
social genius, that led them to revolt from the gross sensualism of
the court, and form, upon a new basis, a society that has given another
complexion to the last two centuries. The natural result was, at first,
a reign of sentiment that was often over-strained, but which represented
on the whole a reaction of morality and refinement. The wits and
beauties of the Salon Bleu may have committed a thousand follies, but
their chivalrous codes of honor and of manners, their fastidious tastes,
even their prudish affectations, were open though sometimes rather
bizarre tributes to the virtues that lie at the very foundation of
a well-ordered society. They had exalted ideas of the dignity of
womanhood, of purity, of loyalty, of devotion. The heroines of Mlle.
de Scudery, with their endless discourses upon the metaphysics of love,
were no doubt tiresome sometimes to the blase courtiers, as well as to
the critics; but they had their originals in living women who reversed
the common traditions of a Gabrielle and a Marion Delorme, who combined
with the intellectual brilliancy and fine courtesy of the Greek Aspasia
the moral graces that give so poetic a fascination to the Christian and
medieval types. Mme. de la Fayette painted with rare delicacy the old
struggle between passion and duty, but character triumphs over passion,
and duty is the final victor. In spite of the low standards of the age,
the ideal woman of society, as of literature, was noble, tender, modest,
pure, and loyal.
But the eighteenth century brings new types to the surface. The
precieuses, with their sentimental theories and naive reserves, have
had their day. It is no longer the world of Mme. de Rambouillet that
confronts us with its chivalrous models, its refined platonism, and its
flavor of literature, but rather that of the epicurean Ninon, brilliant,
versatile, free, lax, skeptical, full of intrigue and wit, but without
moral sense of spiritual aspiration. Literary portraits and ethical
maxims have given place to a spicy mixture of scandal and philosophy,
humanitarian speculations and equivocal bons mots. It is piquant
and amusing, this light play of intellect, seasoned with clever and
sparkling wit, but the note of delicacy and sensibility is quite gone.
Society has divested itself of many crudities and affectations perhaps,
but it has grown as artificial and self-conscious as its rouged and
befeathered leaders.
The woman who presided over these centers of fashion and intelligence
represent to us the genius of social sovereignty. We fall under the
glamour of the luminous but factitious atmosphere that surrounded them.
We are dazzled by the subtlety and clearness of their intellect, the
brilliancy of their wit. Their faults are veiled by the smoke of the
incense we burn before them, or lost in the dim perspective. It is
fortunate, perhaps, for many of our illusions, that the golden age,
which is always receding, is seen at such long range that only the
softly colored outlines are visible. Men and women are transfigured in
the rosy light that rests on historic heights as on far-off mountain
tops. But if we bring them into closer view, and turn on the pitiless
light of truth, the aureole vanishes, a thousand hidden defects are
exposed, and our idol stands out hard and bare, too often divested of
its divinity and its charm.
To do justice to these women, we must take the point of view of an age
that was corrupt to the core. It is needless to discuss here the merits
of the stormy, disenchanting eighteenth century, which was the mother
of our own, and upon which the world is likely to remain hopelessly
divided. But whatever we may think of its final outcome, it can hardly
be denied that this period, which in France was so powerful in ideas, so
active in thought, so teeming with intelligence, so rich in philosophy,
was poor in faith, bankrupt in morals, without religion, without poetry,
and without imagination. The divine ideals of virtue and renunciation
were drowned in a sea of selfishness and materialism. The austere
devotion of Pascal was out of fashion. The spiritual teachings of
Bossuet and Fenelon represented the out-worn creeds of an age that
was dead. It was Voltaire who gave the tone, and even Voltaire was
not radical enough for many of these iconoclasts. "He is a bigot and a
deist," exclaimed a feminine disciple of d'Holbach's atheism. The gay,
witty, pleasure-loving abbe, who derided piety, defied morality, was
the pet of the salon, and figured in the worst scandals, was a fair
representative of the fashionable clergy who had no attribute of
priesthood but the name, and clearly justified the sneers of the
philosophers. Tradition had given place to private judgment and in its
first reaction private judgment knew no law but its own caprices. The
watchword of intellectual freedom was made to cover universal license,
and clever sophists constructed theories to justify the mad carnival of
vice and frivolity. "As soon as one does a bad action, one never fails
to make a bad maxim," said the clever Marquise de Crequi. "As soon as a
school boy has his love affairs, he wishes no more to say his prayers;
and when a woman wrongs her husband, she tries to believe no more in
God."
The fact that this brilliant but heartless and epicurean world was
tempered with intellect and taste changed its color but not its moral
quality. Talent turned to intrigue, and character was the toy of the
scheming and flexible brain. The maxims of La Rochefoucauld were the
rule of life. Wit counted for everything, the heart for nothing. The
only sins that could not be pardoned were stupidity and awkwardness.
"Bah! He has only revealed every one's secret," said Mme. du Defand to
an acquaintance who censured Helvetius for making selfishness the basis
of all human actions. To some one who met this typical woman of her
time, in the gay salon of Mme. de Marchais, and condoled with her upon
the death of her lifelong friend and lover, Pont de Veyle, she quietly
replied, "Alas! He died this evening at six o'clock; otherwise you would
not see me here." "My friend fell ill, I attended him; he died, and
I dissected him" was the remark of a wit on reading her satirical
pen portrait of the Marquise du Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen
analysis, and undisguised heartlessness strike the keynote of the
century which was socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, and
morally so weak.
The liberty and complaisance of the domestic relations were complete. It
is true there were examples of conjugal devotion, for the gentle human
affections never quite disappear in any atmosphere; but the fact that
they were considered worthy of note sufficiently indicates the drift
of the age. In the world of fashion and of form there was not even a
pretense of preserving the sanctity of marriage, if the chronicles of
the time are to be credited. It was simply a commercial affair which
united names and fortunes, continued the glory of the families,
replenished exhausted purses, and gave freedom to women. If love entered
into it at all, it was by accident. This superfluous sentiment was
ridiculed, or relegated to the bourgeoisie, to whom it was left to
preserve the tradition of household virtues. Every one seems to have
accepted the philosophy of the irrepressible Ninon, who "returned thanks
to God every evening for her esprit, and prayed him every morning to be
preserved from follies of the heart." If a young wife was modest or
shy, she was the object of unflattering persiflage. If she betrayed her
innocent love for her husband, she was not of the charmed circle of wit
and good tone which frowned upon so vulgar a weakness, and laughed at
inconvenient scruples.
"Indeed," says a typical husband of the period, "I cannot conceive how,
in the barbarous ages, one had the courage to wed. The ties of marriage
were a chain. Today you see kindness, liberty, peace reign in the bosom
of families. If husband and wife love each other, very well; they live
together; they are happy. If they cease to love, they say so honestly,
and return to each other the promise of fidelity. They cease to be
lovers; they are friends. That is what I call social manners, gentle
manners." This reign of the senses is aptly illustrated by the epitaph
which the gay, voluptuous, and spirtuelle Marquise de Boufflers wrote
for herself:
Ci-git dans une paix profonde
Cette Dame de Volupte
Qui, pour plus grande surete,
Fit son paradis de ce monde.
"Courte et bonne," said the favorite daughter of the Regent, in the same
spirit.
It is against such a background that the women who figure so prominently
in the salons are outlined. Such was the air they breathed, the spirit
they imbibed. That it was fatal to the finer graces of character goes
without saying. Doubtless, in quiet and secluded nooks, there were
many human wild flowers that had not lost their primitive freshness and
delicacy, but they did not flourish in the withering atmosphere of
the great world. The type in vogue savored of the hothouse. With its
striking beauty of form and tropical richness of color, it had no
sweetness, no fragrance. Many of these women we can only consider on the
worldly and intellectual side. Sydney Smith has aptly characterized them
as "women who violated the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant
little suppers." But standing on the level of a time in which their
faults were mildly censured, if at all, their characteristic gifts shine
out with marvelous splendor. It is from this standpoint alone that we
can present them, drawing the friendly mantle of silence over grave
weaknesses and fatal errors.
In this century, in which women have so much wider scope, when they may
paint, carve, act, sing, write, enter professional life, or do whatever
talent and inclination dictate, without loss of dignity or prestige,
unless they do it ill,--and perhaps even this exception is a trifle
superfluous,--it is difficult to understand fully, or estimate
correctly, a society in which the best feminine intellect was centered
upon the art of entertaining and of wielding an indirect power through
the minds of men. These Frenchwomen had all the vanity that lies at
the bottom of the Gallic character, but when the triumphs of youth were
over, the only legitimate path to individual distinction was that of
social influence. This was attained through personal charm, supplemented
by more or less cleverness, or through the gift of creating a society
that cast about them an illusion of talent of which they were often only
the reflection. To these two classes belong the queens of the salons.
But the most famous of them only carried to the point of genius a talent
that was universal.
In its best estate a brilliant social life is essentially an external
one. Its charm lies largely in the superficial graces, in the facile and
winning manners, the ready tact, the quick intelligence, the rare and
perishable gifts of conversation--in the nameless trifles which are
elusive as shadows and potent as light. It is the way of putting things
that tells, rather than the value of the things themselves. This world
of draperies and amenities, of dinners and conversaziones, of epigrams,
coquetries, and sparkling trivialities in the Frenchwoman's milieu. It
has little in common with the inner world that surges forever behind
and beneath it; little sympathy with inconvenient ideals and exalted
sentiments. The serious and earnest soul to which divine messages have
been whispered in hours of solitude finds its treasures unheeded, its
language unspoken here. The cares, the burdens, the griefs that weigh
so heavily on the great heart of humanity are banished from this social
Eden. The Frenchman has as little love for the somber side of life as
the Athenian, who veiled every expression of suffering. "Joy marks the
force of the intellect," said the pleasure-loving Ninon. It is this
peculiar gift of projecting themselves into a joyous atmosphere, of
treating even serious subjects in a piquant and lively fashion, of
dwelling upon the pleasant surface of things, that has made the French
the artists, above all others, of social life. The Parisienne selects
her company, as a skillful leader forms his orchestra, with a fine
instinct of harmony; no single instrument dominates, but every member is
an artist in his way, adding his touch of melody or color in the fitting
place. She aims, perhaps unconsciously, at a poetic ideal which
shall express the best in life and thought, divested of the rude and
commonplace, untouched by sorrow or passion, and free from personality.
But the representative salons, which have left a permanent mark upon
their time, and a memory that does not seem likely to die, were no
longer simply centers of refined and intellectual amusement. The moral
and literary reaction of the seventeenth century was one of the great
social and political forces of the eighteenth. The salon had become a
vast engine of power, an organ of public opinion, like the modern
press. Clever and ambitious women had found their instrument and
their opportunity. They had long since learned that the homage paid to
weakness is illusory; that the power of beauty is short-lived. With none
of the devotion which had made the convent the time-honored refuge
of tender and exalted souls, finding little solace in the domestic
affections which played so small a role in their lives, they turned the
whole force of their clear and flexible minds to this new species of
sovereignty. Their keenness of vision, their consummate skill in
the adaptation of means to ends, their knowledge of the world, their
practical intelligence, their instinct of pleasing, all fitted them for
the part they assumed. They distinctly illustrated the truth that "our
ideal is not out of ourselves, but in ourselves wisely modified." The
intellect of these women was rarely the dupe of the emotions. Their
clearness was not befogged by sentiment, nor, it may be added, were
their characters enriched by it. "The women of the eighteenth century
loved with their minds and not with their hearts," said the Abbe
Galiani. The very absence of the qualities so essential to the highest
womanly character, according to the old poetic types, added to their
success. To be simple and true is to forget often to consider effects.
Spontaneity is not apt to be discriminating, and the emotions are not
safe guides to worldly distinction. It is not the artist who feels the
most keenly, who sways men the most powerfully; it is the one who has
most perfectly mastered the art of swaying men. Self-sacrifice and a
lofty sense of duty find their rewards in the intangible realm of
the spirit, but they do not find them in a brilliant society whose
foundations are laid in vanity and sensualism. "The virtues, though
superior to the sentiments, are not so agreeable," said Mme. du Deffand;
and she echoed the spirit of an age of which she was one of the most
striking representatives. To be agreeable was the cardinal aim in the
lives of these women. To this end they knew how to use their talents,
and they studied, to the minutest shade, their own limitations. They
had the gift of the general who marshals his forces with a swift eye
for combination and availability. To this quality was added more or less
mental brilliancy, or, what is equally essential, the faculty of calling
out the brilliancy of others; but their education was rarely profound
or even accurate. To an abbe who wished to dedicate a grammar to Mme.
Geoffrin she replied: "To me? Dedicate a grammar to me? Why, I do not
even know how to spell." Even Mme. du Deffand, whom Sainte Beuve ranks
next to Voltaire as the purest classic of the epoch in prose, says
of herself, "I do not know a word of grammar; my manner of expressing
myself is always the result of chance, independent of all rule and all
art."
But it is not to be supposed that women who were the daily and
lifelong companions and confidantes of men like Fontenelle, d'Alembert,
Montesquieu, Helvetius, and Marmontel were deficient in a knowledge of
books, though this was always subservient to a knowledge of life. It was
a means, not an end. When the salon was at the height of its power, it
was not yet time for Mme. de Stael; and, with rare exceptions, those who
wrote were not marked, or their literary talent was so overshadowed by
their social gifts as to be unnoted. Their writings were no measure of
their abilities. Those who wrote for amusement were careful to disclaim
the title of bel esprit, and their works usually reached the public
through accidental channels. Mme. de Lambert herself had too keen an
eye for consideration to pose as an author, but it is with an accent of
regret at the popular prejudice that she says of Mme. Dacier, "She knows
how to associate learning with the amenities; for at present modesty is
out of fashion; there is no more shame for vices, and women blush only
for knowledge."
But if they did not write, they presided over the mint in which books
were coined. They were familiar with theories and ideas at their
fountain source. Indeed the whole literature of the period pays its
tribute to their intelligence and critical taste. "He who will write
with precision, energy, and vigor only," said Marmontel, "may live with
men alone; but he who wishes for suppleness in his style, for amenity,
and for that something which charms and enchants, will, I believe, do
well to live with women. When I read that Pericles sacrificed every
morning to the Graces, I understand by it that every day Pericles
breakfasted with Aspasia." This same author was in the habit of reading
his tales in the salon, and noting their effect. He found a happy
inspiration in "the most beautiful eyes in the world, swimming in
tears;" but he adds, "I well perceived the cold and feeble passages,
which they passed over in silence, as well as those where I had mistaken
the word, the tone of nature, or the just shade of truth." He refers to
the beautiful, witty, but erring and unfortunate Mme. de la Popeliniere,
to whom he read his tragedy, as the best of all his critics. "Her
corrections," he said, "struck me as so many rays of light." "A point of
morals will be no better discussed in a society of philosophers than in
that of a pretty woman of Paris," said Rousseau. This constant habit of
reducing thoughts to a clear and salient form was the best school for
aptness and ready expression. To talk wittily and well, or to lead
others to talk wittily and well, was the crowning gift of these women.
This evanescent art was the life and soul of the salons, the magnet
which attracted the most brilliant of the French men of letters, who
were glad to discuss safely and at their ease many subjects which
the public censorship made it impossible to write about. They found
companions and advisers in women, consulted their tastes, sought
their criticism, courted their patronage, and established a sort of
intellectual comradeship that exists to the same extent in no country
outside of France. Its model may be found in the limited circle that
gathered about Aspasia in the old Athenian days.
It is perhaps this habit of intellectual companionship that, more than
any other single thing, accounts for the practical cleverness of the
Frenchwomen and the conspicuous part they have played in the political
as well as social life of France. Nowhere else are women linked to
the same degree with the success of men. There are few distinguished
Frenchmen with whose fame some more or less gifted woman is not closely
allied. Montaigne and Mlle. de Gournay, La Rochefoucauld and Mme. de
La Fayette, d'Alembert and Mlle. de Lespinasse, Chateaubriand and Mme.
Recamier, Joubert and Mme. de Beaumont--these are only a few of the
well-known and unsullied friendships that suggest themselves out of a
list that might be extended indefinitely. The social instincts of
the French, and the fact that men and women met on a common plane of
intellectual life, made these friendships natural; that they excited
little comment and less criticism made them possible.
The result was that from the quiet and thoughtful Marquise de Lambert,
who was admitted to have made half of the Academicians, to the clever
but less scrupulous Mme. de Pompadour, who had to be reckoned with in
every political change in Europe, women were everywhere the power behind
the throne. No movement was carried through without them. "They form a
kind of republic," said Montesquieu, "whose members, always active, aid
and serve one another. It is a new state within a state; and whoever
observes the action of those in power, if he does not know the women who
govern them, is like a man who sees the action of a machine but does not
know its secret springs." Mme. de Tenein advised Marmontel, before all
things, to cultivate the society of women, if he wished to succeed. It
is said that both Diderot and Thomas, two of the most brilliant thinkers
of their time, failed of the fame they merited, through their neglect
to court the favor of women. Bolingbroke, then an exile in Paris, with
a few others, formed a club of men for the discussion of literary and
political questions. While it lasted it was never mentioned by women.
It was quietly ignored. Cardinal Fleury considered it dangerous to the
State, and suppressed it. At the same time, in the salon of Mme. de
Tenein, the leaders of French thought were safely maturing the theories
which Montesquieu set forth in his "Esprit des Lois," the first open
attack on absolute monarchy, the forerunner of Rousseau, and the germ of
the Revolution. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
But the salons were far from being centers of "plain living and high
thinking." "Supper is one of the four ends of man," said Mme. du
Deffand; and it must be admitted that the great doctrine of human
equality was rather luxuriously cradled. The supreme science of the
Frenchwomen was a knowledge of men. Understanding their tastes, their
ambitions, their interests, their vanities, and their weaknesses, they
played upon this complicated human instrument with the skill of an
artist who knows how to touch the lightest note, to give the finest
shade of expression, to bring out the fullest harmony. In their efforts
to raise social life to the most perfect and symmetrical proportions,
the pleasures of sense and the delicate illusions of color were not
forgotten. They were as noted for their good cheer, for their attention
to the elegances that strike the eye, the accessories that charm the
taste, as for their intelligence, their tact, and their conversation.
But one must look for the power and the fascination of the French salons
in their essential spirit and the characteristics of the Gallic race,
rather than in any definite and tangible form. The word simply suggests
habitual and informal gatherings of men and women of intelligence and
good breeding in the drawing-room, for conversation and amusement. The
hostess who opened her house for these assemblies selected her guests
with discrimination, and those who had once gained an entree were always
welcome. In studying the character of the noted salons, one is struck
with a certain unity that could result only from natural growth about
a nucleus of people bound together by many ties of congeniality and
friendship. Society, in its best sense, does not signify a multitude,
nor can a salon be created on commercial principles. This spirit of
commercialism, so fatal to modern social life, was here conspicuously
absent. It was not at all a question of debit and credit, of formal
invitations to be given and returned. Personal values were regarded.
The distinctions of wealth were ignored and talent, combined with the
requisite tact, was, to a certain point, the equivalent of rank. If
rivalries existed, they were based upon the quality of the guests rather
than upon material display. But the modes of entertainment were as
varied as the tastes and abilities of the women who presided. Many of
the well-known salons were open daily. Sometimes there were suppers,
which came very much into vogue after the petits soupers of the regent.
The Duchesse de Choiseul, during the ministry of her husband, gave a
supper every evening excepting on Friday and Sunday. At a quarter before
ten the steward glanced through the crowded rooms, and prepared the
table for all who were present. The Monday suppers at the Temple were
thronged. On other days a more intimate circle gathered round the
tables, and the ladies served tea after the English fashion. A few women
of rank and fortune imitated these princely hospitalities, but it was
the smaller coteries which presented the most charming and distinctive
side of French society. It was not the luxurious salon of the Duchesse
du Maine, with its whirl of festivities and passion for esprit, nor
that of the Temple, with its brilliant and courtly, but more or less
intellectual, atmosphere; nor that of the clever and critical Marechale
de Luxembourg, so elegant, so witty, so noted in its day--which left the
most permanent traces and the widest fame. It was those presided over
by women of lesser rank and more catholic sympathies, of whom Voltaire
aptly said that "the decline of their beauty revealed the dawn of their
intellect;" women who had the talent, tact, and address to gather about
them a circle of distinguished men who have crowned them with a luminous
ray from their own immortality. The names of Mme. de Lambert, Mme. de
Tencin, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. Necker, Mme. de Stael, and
others of lesser note, call up visions of a society which the world is
not likely to see repeated.
Not the least among the attractions of this society was its charming
informality. A favorite custom in the literary and philosophical salons
was to give dinners, at an early hour, two or three times a week. In the
evening a larger company assembled without ceremony. A popular man
of letters, so inclined, might dine Monday and Wednesday with Mme.
Geoffrin, Tuesday with Mme. Helvetius, Friday with Mme. Necker, Sunday
and Thursday with Mme. d'Holbach, and have ample time to drop into other
salons afterward, passing an hour or so, perhaps, before going to the
theater, in the brilliant company that surrounded Mlle. de Lespinasse,
and, very likely, supping elsewhere later. At many of these gatherings
he would be certain to find readings, recitations, comedies, music,
games, or some other form of extemporized amusement. The popular mania
for esprit, for literary lions, for intellectual diversions ran through
the social world, as the craze for clubs and culture, poets and parlor
readings, musicales and amateur theatricals, runs through the society of
today. It had numberless shades and gradations, with the usual train of
pretentious follies which in every age furnish ample material for
the pen of the satirist, but it was a spontaneous expression of the
marvelously quickened taste for things of the intellect. The woman who
improvised a witty verse, invented a proverb, narrated a story, sang
a popular air, or acted a part in a comedy entered with the same easy
grace into the discussion of the last political problem, or listened
with the subtlest flattery to the new poem, essay, or tale of the
aspiring young author, whose fame and fortune perhaps hung upon her
smile. In the musical and artistic salon of Mme. de la Popeliniere
the succession of fetes, concerts, and receptions seems to have been
continuous. On Sunday there was a mass in the morning, afterward a grand
dinner, at five o'clock a light repast, at nine a supper, and later a
musicale. One is inclined to wonder if there was ever any retirement,
any domesticity in this life so full of movement and variety.
But it was really the freedom, wit, and brilliancy of the conversation
that constituted the chief attraction of the salons. Men were in the
habit of making the daily round of certain drawing rooms, just as they
drop into clubs in our time, sure of more or less pleasant discussion on
whatever subject was uppermost at the moment, whether it was literature,
philosophy, art, politics, music, the last play, or the latest word
of their friends. The talk was simple, natural, without heat, without
aggressive egotism, animated with wit and repartee, glancing upon the
surface of many things, and treating all topics, grave or gay, with
the lightness of touch, the quick responsiveness that make the charm of
social intercourse.
The unwritten laws that governed this brilliant world were drawn from
the old ideas of chivalry, upon which the etiquette of the early salons
was founded. The fine morality and gentle virtues which were the bases
of these laws had lost their force in the eighteenth century, but the
manners which grew out of them had passed into a tradition. If morals
were in reality not pure, nor principles severe, there was at least
the vanity of posing as models of good breeding. Honor was a religion;
politeness and courtesy were the current, though by no means always
genuine, coin of unselfishness and amiability; the amenities stood
in the place of an ethical code. Egotism, ill temper, disloyalty,
ingratitude, and scandal were sins against taste, and spoiled the
general harmony. Evil passions might exist, but it was agreeable to hide
them, and enmities slept under a gracious smile. noblesse OBLIGE was the
motto of these censors of manners; and as it is perhaps a Gallic trait
to attach greater importance to reputation than to character, this
sentiment was far more potent than conscience. Vice in many veiled forms
might be tolerated, but that which called itself good society barred
its doors against those who violated the canons of good taste, which
recognize at least the outward semblance of many amiable virtues.
Sincerity certainly was not one of these virtues; but no one was
deceived, as it was perfectly well understood that courteous forms
meant little more than the dress which may or may not conceal a physical
defect, but is fit and becoming. It was not best to inquire too closely
into character and motives, so long as appearances were fair and
decorous. How far the individual may be affected by putting on the garb
of qualities and feelings that do not exist may be a question for the
moralist; but this conventional untruth has its advantages, not only in
reducing to a minimum the friction of social machinery, and subjecting
the impulses to the control of the will, but in the subtle influence
of an ideal that is good and true, however far one may in reality fall
short of it.
Imagine a society composed of a leisure class with more or less
intellectual tastes; men eminent in science and letters; men less
eminent, whose success depended largely upon their social gifts, and
clever women supremely versed in the art of pleasing, who were the
intelligent complements of these men; add a universal talent for
conversation, a genius for the amenities of social life, habits of daily
intercourse, and manners formed upon an ideal of generosity, amiability,
loyalty, and urbanity; consider, also, the fact that the journals and
the magazines, which are so conspicuous a feature of modern life, were
practically unknown; that the salons were centers in which the affairs
of the world were discussed, its passing events noted--and the power of
these salons may be to some extent comprehended.
The reason, too, why it is idle to dream of reproducing them today on
American soil will be readily seen. The forms may be repeated, but the
vitalizing spirit is not there. We have no leisure class that finds its
occupation in this pleasant daily converse. Our feverish civilization
has not time for it. We sit in our libraries and scan the news of the
world, instead of gathering it in the drawing rooms of our friends.
Perhaps we read and think more, but we talk less, and conversation is
a relaxation rather than an art. The ability to think aloud, easily and
gracefully, is not eminently an Anglo-Saxon gift, though there are many
individual exceptions to this limitation. Our social life is largely a
form, a whirl, a commercial relation, a display, a duty, the result of
external accretion, not of internal growth. It is not in any sense a
unity, nor an expression of our best intellectual life; this seeks other
channels. Men are immersed in business and politics, and prefer the
easy, less exacting atmosphere of the club. The woman who aspires to
hold a salon is confronted at the outset by this formidable rival.
She is a queen without a kingdom, presiding over a fluctuating circle
without homogeneity, and composed largely of women--a fact in itself
fatal to the true esprit de societe. It is true we have our literary
coteries, but they are apt to savor too much of the library; we
take them too seriously, and bring into them too strong a flavor
of personality. We find in them, as a rule, little trace of the
spontaneity, the variety, the wit, the originality, the urbanity,
the polish, that distinguished the French literary salons of the last
century. Even in their own native atmosphere, the salons exist no longer
as recognized institutions. This perfected flower of a past civilization
has faded and fallen, as have all others. The salon in its widest sense,
and in some modified form, may always constitute a feature of French
life, but the type has changed, and its old glory has forever departed.
In a foreign air, even in its best days, it could only have been an
exotic, flourishing feebly, and lacking both color and fragrance. As
a copy of past models it is still less likely to be a living force.
Society, like government, takes its spirit and its vitality from its own
soil.