_La Marechale de Luxembourg--The Temple--Comtesse de Boufflers-- Mme.
du Deffand--Her Convent Salon--Rupture with Mlle. de Lespinasse--Her
Friendship with Horace Walpole--Her brilliancy and Her Ennui_
While the group of iconoclasts who formed the nucleus of the
philosophical salons was airing its theories and enjoying its increasing
vogue, there was another circle which played with the new ideas more or
less as a sort of intellectual pastime, but was aristocratic au fond,
and carefully preserved all the traditions of the old noblesse. One met
here the philosophers and men of letters, but they did not dominate;
they simply flavored these coteries of rank and fashion. In this age of
esprit no salon was complete without its sprinkling of literary men. We
meet the shy and awkward Rousseau even in the exclusive drawing room of
the clever and witty but critical Marechale de Luxembourg, who presides
over a world in which the graces rule--a world of elegant manners, of
etiquette, and of forms. This model of the amenities, whose gay and
faulty youth ripened into a pious and charitable age, was at the head
of that tribunal which pronounced judgment upon all matters relating
to society. She was learned in genealogy, analyzed and traced to their
source the laws of etiquette, possessed a remarkable memory, and without
profound education, had learned much from conversation with the savants
and illustrious men who frequented her house. Her wit was proverbial,
and she was never at a loss for a ready repartee or a spicy anecdote.
She gave two grand suppers a week. Mme. de Genlis, who was often there,
took notes, according to her custom, and has left an interesting record
of conversations that were remarkable not only for brilliancy, but for
the thoughtful wisdom of the comments upon men and things. La Harpe
read a great part of his works in this salon. Rousseau entertained the
princely guests at Montmorency with "La Nouvelle Heloise" and "Emile,"
and though never quite at ease, his democratic theories did not prevent
him from feeling greatly honored by their friendly courtesies; indeed,
he loses his usual bitterness when speaking of this noble patroness.
He says that her conversation was marked by an exquisite delicacy that
always pleased, and her flatteries were intoxicating because they were
simple and seemed to escape without intention.
Mme. de Luxembourg was an autocrat, and did not hesitate to punish
errors in taste by social ostracism. "Erase the name of Monsieur
-- -- from my list," she said, as a gentleman left after relating a
scandalous story reflecting upon some one's honor. It was one of her
theories that "society should punish what the law cannot attack."
She maintained that good manners are based upon noble and delicate
sentiments, that mutual consideration, deference, politeness,
gentleness, and respect to age are essential to civilization. The
disloyal, the ungrateful bad sons, bad brothers, bad husbands, and
bad wives, whose offenses were serious enough to be made public, she
banished from that circle which called itself la bonne compagnie. It
must be admitted, however, that it was les convenances rather than
morality which she guarded.
A rival of this brilliant salon, and among the most celebrated of
its day, was the one at the Temple. The animating spirit here was the
amiable and vivacious Comtesse de Boufflers, celebrated in youth for
her charms, and later for her talent. She was dame d'honneur to the
Princesse de Conti, wife of the Duc d'Orleans, who was noted for her
caustic wit, as well as for her beauty. It was in the salon of his
clever and rather capricious sister that the learned Prince de Conti
met her and formed the intimacy that ended only with his life. She was
called the idole of the Temple, and her taste for letters gave her also
the title of Minerve savante. She wrote a tragedy which was said to be
good, though she would never let it go out of her hands, and has been
immortalized by Rousseau, with whom she corresponded for sixteen years.
Hume also exchanged frequent letters with her, and she tried in vain to
reconcile these two friends after their quarrel. President Henault said
he had never met a woman of so much esprit, adding that "outside all her
charms she had character." For society she had a veritable passion. She
said that when she loved England the best she could not think of staying
there without "taking twenty-four or twenty-five intimate friends,
and sixty or eighty others who were absolutely necessary to her." Her
conversation was full of fire and brilliancy, and her gaiety of heart,
her gracious manners, and her frank appreciation of the talent of others
added greatly to her piquant fascination. She delighted in original
turns of expression, which were sometimes far-fetched and artificial.
One of her friends said that "she made herself the victim of
consideration, and lost it by running after it." Her rule of life may
be offered as a model. "In conduct, simplicity and reason; in manners,
propriety and decorum; in actions, justice and generosity; in the use
of wealth, economy and liberality; in conversation, clearness, truth,
precision; in adversity, courage and pride; in prosperity, modesty
and moderation." Unfortunately she did not put all this wisdom into
practice, if we judge her by present standards. We have a glimpse of the
famous circle over which she presided in an interesting picture formerly
at Versailles, now at the Louvre. The figures are supposed to be
portraits. Among others are Mme. de Luxembourg, the Comtesse de
Boufflers, and the lovely but ill-fated young stepdaughter, Amelie,
Comtesse de Lauzun, to whom she is so devoted; the beautiful Comtesse
d'Egmont, Mme. de Beauvan, President Henault, the witty Pont de Veyle,
Mairan, the versatile scientist, and the Prince de Conti. In the midst
of this group the little Mozart, whose genius was then delighting
Europe, sits at the harpsichord. The chronicles of the time give us
pleasant descriptions of the literary diversions of this society, which
met by turns at the Temple and Ile-Adam. But the Prince as well as
the clever Comtesse had a strong leaning towards philosophy, and
the amusements were interspersed with much conversation of a serious
character that has a peculiar interest today when read by the light of
after events.
Among the numerous salons of the noblesse there was one which calls for
more than a passing word, both on account of its world-wide fame and the
exceptional brilliancy of its hostess. Though far less democratic and
cosmopolitan than that of Mme. Geoffrin, with which it was contemporary,
its character was equally distinct and original. Linked by birth
with the oldest of the nobility, allied by intellect with the most
distinguished in the world of letters, Mme. du Deffand appropriated the
best in thought, while retaining the spirit of an elegant and refined
social life. She was exclusive by nature and instinct, as well as by
tradition, and could not dispense with the arts and amenities which
are the fruit of generations of ease; but the energy and force of her
intellect could as little tolerate shallowness and pretension, however
disguised beneath the graceful tyranny of forms. Her salon offers a sort
of compromise between the freedom of the philosophical coteries and the
frivolities of the purely fashionable ones. It included the most noted
of the men of letters--those who belonged to the old aristocracy and a
few to whom nature had given a prescriptive title of nobility--as
well as the flower of the great world. Her sarcastic wit, her clear
intelligence, and her rare conversational gifts added a tone of
individuality that placed her salon at the head of the social centers
of the time in brilliancy and in esprit. In this group of wits,
LITTERATEURS, philosophers, statesmen, churchmen, diplomats, and men of
rank, Mme. du Deffand herself is always the most striking figure. The
art of self-suppression she clearly did not possess. But the art of so
blending a choice society that her own vivid personality was a pervading
note of harmony she had to an eminent degree. She could easily have
made a mark upon her time through her intellectual gifts without the
factitious aid of the men with whom her name is associated. But society
was her passion society animated by intellect, sparkling with wit, and
expressing in all its forms the art instincts of her race. She never
aspired to authorship, but she has left a voluminous correspondence in
which one reads the varying phases of a singularly capricious character.
In her old age she found refuge from a devouring ennui in writing her
own memoirs. Merciless to herself as to others, she veils nothing,
revealing her frailties with a freedom that reminds one of Rousseau.
It is not the portrait of an estimable woman that we can paint from
these records; but in her intellectual force, her social gifts, and her
moral weakness she is one of the best exponents of an age that trampled
upon the finest flowers of the soul in the blind pursuit of pleasure and
the cynical worship of a hard and unpitying realism. Living from 1697
to 1780, she saw the train laid for the Revolution, and died in time to
escape its horrors. She traversed the whole experience of the women
of her world with the independence and abandon of a nature that was
moderate in nothing. It is true she felt the emptiness of this arid
existence, and had an intellectual perception of its errors, but she saw
nothing better. "All conditions appear to me equally unhappy, from the
angel to the oyster," is the burden of her hopeless refrain.
She reveals herself to us as two distinct characters. The one best known
is hard, bitter, coldly analytic, and mocks at everything bordering upon
sentiment or feeling. The other, which underlies this, and of which
we have rare glimpses, is frank, tender, loving even to weakness, and
forever at war with the barrenness of a period whose worst faults
she seems to have embodied, and whose keenest penalties she certainly
suffered.
Voltaire, the lifelong friend whom she loved, but critically measured,
was three years old when she was born; Mme. de Sevigne had been dead
nearly a year. Of a noble family in Burgundy, Marie de Vichy-Chamroud
was brought to Paris at six years of age and placed in the convent of
St. Madeleine de Traisnel, where she was educated after the superficial
fashion which she so much regrets in later years. She speaks of herself
as a romantic, imaginative child, but she began very early to shock
the pious sisters by her dawning skepticism. One of the nuns had a wax
figure of the infant Jesus, which she discovered to have been a doll
formerly dressed to represent the Spanish fashions to Anne of Austria.
This was the first blow to her illusions, and had a very perceptible
influence upon her life. She pronounced it a deception. Eight days of
solitude with a diet of bread and water failed to restore her reverence.
"It does not depend upon me to believe or disbelieve," she said. The
eloquent and insinuating Massillon was called in to talk with her.
"She is charming," was his remark, as he left her after two hours of
conversation; adding thoughtfully, "Give her a five-cent catechism."
Skeptical by nature and saturated with the free-thinking spirit of
the time, she reasoned that all religion was au fond, only paganism
disguised. In later years, when her isolated soul longed for some
tangible support, she spoke regretfully of the philosophic age which
destroyed beliefs by explaining and analyzing everything.
But a beautiful, clever, high-spirited girl of sixteen is apt to feel
her youth all suffering. It is certain that she had no inclination
towards the life of a religieuse, and the country quickly became
insupportable after her return to its provincial society. Ennui took
possession of her. She was glad even to go to confessional, for the sake
of telling her thoughts to some one. She complained bitterly that
the life of women compelled dependence upon the conduct of others,
submission to all ills and all consequences. Long afterwards she said
that she would have married the devil if he had been clothed as a
gentleman and assured her a moderate life. But a husband was at last
found for her, and merely to escape the monotony of her secluded
existence, she was glad, at twenty-one, to become the wife of the
Marquis du Deffand--a good but uninteresting man, much older than
herself.
Brilliant, fascinating, restless, eager to see and to learn, she felt
herself in her element in the gay world of Paris. She confessed that,
for the moment, she almost loved her husband for bringing her there.
But the moment was a short one. They did not even settle down to what
a witty Frenchman calls the "politeness of two indifferences." It is a
curious commentary upon the times, that the beautiful but notorious Mme.
de Parabere, who introduced her at once into her own unscrupulous world
and the petits soupers of the Regent, condoled with the young bride
upon her marriage, regretting that she had not taken the easy vows of a
chanoinesse, as Mme. de Tencin had done. "In that case," she said, "you
would have been free; well placed everywhere; with the stability of a
married woman; a revenue which permits one to live and accept aid from
others; the independence of a widow, without the ties which a family
imposes; unquestioned rank, which you would owe to no one; indulgence,
and impunity. For these advantages there is only the trouble of wearing
a cross, which is becoming; black or gray habits, which can be made as
magnificent as one likes; a little imperceptible veil, and a knitting
sheath."
Under such teaching she was not long in taking her own free and
independent course, which was reckless even in that age of laxity. At
her first supper at the Palais Royal she met Voltaire and fascinated
the Regent, though her reign lasted but a few days. The counsels of her
aunt, the dignified Duchesse de Luynes, availed nothing. Her husband was
speedily sent off on some mission to the provinces and she plunged
into the current. Once afterwards, in a fit of ennui, she recalled him,
frankly stating her position. But she quickly wearied of him again, grew
dull, silent, lost her vivacity, and fell into a profound melancholy.
Her friend Mme. de Parabere took it upon herself to explain to him the
facts, and he kindly relieved her forever of his presence, leaving a
touching and pathetic letter which gave her a moment of remorse in spite
of her lightened heart. This sin against good taste the Parisian world
could not forgive, and even her friends turned against her for a
time. But the Duchesse due Maine came to her aid with an all-powerful
influence, and restored her finally to her old position. For some years
she passed the greater part of her time at Sceaux, and was a favorite at
this lively little court.
It is needless to trace here the details of a career which gives us
little to admire and much to condemn. It was about 1740 when her salon
became noted as a center for the fashionable and literary world of
Paris. Montesquieu and d'Alembert were then among her intimate friends.
Of the latter she says: "The simplicity of his manners, the purity of
his morals, the air of youth, the frankness of character, joined to all
his talents, astonished at first those who saw him." It is said to have
been through her zeal that he was admitted to the Academy so young.
Among others who formed her familiar circle were her devoted friend
Pont de Veyle; the Chevalier d'Aydie; Formont, the "spirituel idler and
amiable egotist," who was one of the three whom she confesses really to
have loved; and President Henault, who brought always a fund of lively
anecdote and agreeable conversation. This world of fashion and letters,
slightly seasoned with philosophy, is also the world of Mme. de
Luxembourg, of the brilliant Mme. de Mirepoix, of the Prince and
Princesse de Beauvau, and of the lovely Duchesse de Choiseul, a femme
d'esprit and "mistress of all the elegances," whose gentle virtues fall
like a ray of sunlight across the dark pages of this period. It is the
world of elegant forms, the world in which a sin against taste is
worse than a sin against morals, the world which hedges itself in by a
thousand unwritten laws that save it from boredom.
After the death of the Duchesse du Maine, Mme. du Deffand retired to the
little convent of St. Joseph, where, after the manner of many women of
rank with small fortunes, she had her menage and received her friends.
"I have a very pretty apartment," she writes to Voltaire; "very
convenient; I only go out for supper. I do not sleep elsewhere, and I
make no visits. My society is not numerous, but I am sure it will please
you; and if you were here you would make it yours. I have seen for some
time many savants and men of letters; I have not found their society
delightful." The good nuns objected a little to Voltaire at first, but
seem to have been finally reconciled to the visits of the arch-heretic.
At this time Mme. du Deffand had supposably reformed her conduct, if not
her belief.
She continued to entertain the flower of the nobility and the stars of
the literary and scientific world. But while the most famous of the men
of letters were welcome in her salon, the tone was far from pedantic
or even earnest. It was a society of conventional people, the elite of
fashion and intelligence, who amused themselves in an intellectual but
not too serious way. Montesquieu, who liked those houses in which he
could pass with his every-day wit, said, "I love this woman with all my
heart; she pleases and amuses me; it is impossible to feel a moment's
ennui in her company." Mme. de Genlis, who did not love her expressed
her surprise at finding her so natural and so kindly. Her conversation
was simple and without pretension. When she was pleased, her manners
were even affectionate. She never entered into a discussion, confessing
that she was not sufficiently attached to any opinion to defend it. She
disliked the enthusiasm of the philosophers unless it was hidden behind
the arts of the courtier, as in Voltaire, whose delicate satire charmed
her. Diderot came once, "eyed her epicurean friends," and came no more.
The air was not free enough. When at home she had three or four at
supper every day, often a dozen, and, once a week, a grand supper. All
the intellectual fashions of the time are found here. La Harpe reads a
translation from Sophocles and his own tragedy. Clairon, the actress in
vogue, recites the roles of Phedre and Agrippine, Lekain reads Voltaire,
and Goldoni a comedy of his own, which the hostess finds tiresome.
New books, new plays, the last song, the latest word of the
philosophers--all are talked about, eulogized, or dismissed with a
sarcasm. The wit of Mme. du Deffand is feared, but it fascinates. She
delights in clever repartees and sparkling epigrams. A shaft of wit
silences the most complacent of monologues. "What tiresome book are you
reading?" she said one day to a friend who talked too earnestly and too
long--saving herself from the charge of rudeness by an easy refuge in
her blindness.
Her criticisms are always severe. "There are only two pleasures for me
in the world--society and reading," she writes. "What society does one
find? Imbeciles, who utter only commonplaces, who know nothing, feel
nothing, think nothing; a few people of talent, full of themselves,
jealous, envious, wicked, whom one must hate or scorn." To some one who
was eulogizing a mediocre man, adding that all the world was of the
same opinion, she replied, "I make small account of the world, Monsieur,
since I perceive that one can divide it into three parts, les trompeurs,
les trompes, et les trompettes." Still it is life alone that interests
her. Though she is not satisfied with people, she has always the hope
that she will be. In literature she likes only letters and memoirs,
because they are purely human; but the age has nothing that pleases her.
"It is cynical or pedantic," she writes to Voltaire; "there is no grace,
no facility, no imagination. Everything is a la glace, hardness without
force, license without gaiety; no talent, much presumption."
As age came on, and she felt the approach of blindness, she found a
companion in Mlle. de Lespinasse, a young girl of remarkable gifts, who
had an obscure and unacknowledged connection with her family. For
ten years the young woman was a slave to the caprices of her exacting
mistress, reading to her through long nights of wakeful restlessness,
and assisting to entertain her guests. The one thing upon which Mme. du
Deffand most prided herself was frankness. She hated finesse, and had
stipulated that she would not tolerate artifice in any form. It was
her habit to lie awake all night and sleep all day, and as she did not
receive her guests until six o'clock, Mlle. de Lespinasse, whose amiable
character and conversational charm had endeared her at once to the
circle of her patroness, arranged to see her personal friends--among
whom were d'Alembert, Turgot, Chastellux, and Marmontel--in her own
apartments for an hour before the marquise appeared. When this came to
the knowledge of the latter, she fell into a violent rage at what she
chose to regard as a treachery to herself, and dismissed her companion
at once. The result was the opening of a rival salon which carried off
many of her favorite guests, notably d'Alembert, to whom she was much
attached. "If she had died fifteen years earlier, I should not have lost
d'Alembert," was her sympathetic remark when she heard of the death of
Mlle. de Lespinasse.
But the most striking point in the career of this worldly woman was
her friendship for Horace Walpole. When they first met she was nearly
seventy, blind, ill-tempered, bitter, and hopelessly ennuyee. He was not
yet fifty, a brilliant, versatile man of the world, and saw her only at
long intervals. Their curious correspondence extends over a period of
fifteen years, ending only with her death.
In a letter to Grayson, after meeting her, he writes: "Mme. du Deffand
is now very old and stone blind, but retains all her vivacity, wit,
memory, judgment, passion, and agreeableness. She goes to operas, plays,
suppers, Versailles; gives supper twice a week; has everything new read
to her; makes new songs and epigrams--aye, admirably--and remembers
every one that has been made these fourscore years. She corresponds with
Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, is no bigot
to him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and the philosophers.
In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet
scarce ever in the wrong; her judgment on every subject is as just as
possible; on every point of conduct as wrong as possible; for she is all
love and hatred, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious
to be loved--I don't mean by lovers--and a vehement enemy openly."
The acquaintance thus begun quickly drilled into an intimacy. Friendship
she calls this absorbing sentiment, but it has all the caprices and
inconsistencies of love. Fed by the imagination, and prevented by
separation from wearing itself out, it became the most permanent
interest of her life. There is something curiously pathetic in the
submissive attitude of this blind, aged, but spirited woman--who scoffs
at sentiment and confesses that she could never love anything--towards
the man who criticizes her, scolds her, crushes back her too ardent
feeling, yet calls her his dear old friend, writes her a weekly letter,
and modestly declares that she "loves him better than all France
together."
The spirit of this correspondence greatly modifies the impression which
her own words, as well as the facts of her career, would naturally give
us. We find in the letters of this period little of the freshness and
spontaneity that lent such a charm to the letters of Mme. de Sevigne and
her contemporaries. Women still write of the incidents of their lives,
the people they meet, their jealousies, their rivalries, their loves,
and their follies; but they think, where they formerly mirrored the
world about them. They analyze, they compare, the criticize, they
formulate their own emotions, they add opinions to facts. The gaiety,
the sparkle, the wit, the play of feeling, is not there. Occasionally
there is the tone of passion, as in the letters of Mlle. Aisse and Mlle.
de Lespinasse, but this is rare. Even passion has grown sophisticated
and deals with phrases. There is more or less artificiality in the
exchange of written thoughts. Mme. du Deffand thinks while she writes,
and what she sees takes always the color of her own intelligence. She
complains of her inability to catch the elusive quality, the clearness,
the flexibility of Mme. de Sevigne, whom she longs to rival because
Walpole so admires her. But if she lacks the vivacity, the simplicity,
the poetic grace of her model, she has qualities not less striking,
though less lovable. Her keen insight is unfailing. With masterly
penetration she grasps the essence of things. No one has portrayed
so concisely and so vividly the men and women of her time. No one has
discriminated between the shades of character with such nicety. No one
has so clearly fathomed the underlying motives of action. No one has
forecast the outcome of theories and events with such prophetic vision.
The note of bitterness and cynicism is always there. The nature of the
woman reveals itself in every line: keen, dry, critical, with clear
ideals which she can never hope to attain. But we feel that she has
stripped off the rags of pretension and brought us face to face with
realities. "All that I can do is to love you with all my heart, as I
have done for about fifty years," wrote Voltaire. "How could I fail to
love you? Your soul seeks always the true; it is a quality as rare as
truth itself." So far does she carry her hatred of insincerity that one
is often tempted to believe she affects a freedom from affectation. "I
am so fatigued with the vanity of others that I avoid the occasion of
having any myself," she writes. Is there not here a trace of the quality
she so despises?
But beneath all this runs the swift undercurrent of an absorbing
passion. A passion of friendship it may be, but it forces itself through
the arid shells of conventionalism; it is at once the agony and the
consolation of a despairing soul. Heartless, Mme. du Deffand is called,
and her life seems to prove the truth of the verdict; but these letters
throb and palpitate with feeling which she laughs at, but cannot still.
It is the cry of the soul for what it has not; what the world cannot
give; what it has somehow missed out of a cold, hard, restless, and
superficial existence. With a need of loving, she is satisfied with no
one. There is something wanting; even in the affection of her friends.
"Ma grand'maman," she says to the gentle Duchesse de Choiseul, "you KNOW
that you love me, but you do not FEEL it."
Devouring herself in solitude, she despises the society she cannot do
without. "Men and women appear to me puppets who go, come, talk, laugh,
without thinking, without reflecting, without feeling," she writes.
She confesses that she has a thousand troubles in assembling a choice
company of people who bore her to death. "One sees only masks, one hears
only lies," is her constant refrain. She does not want to live, but is
afraid to die; she says she is not made for this world, but does not
know that there is any other. She tries devotion, but has no taste for
it. Of the light that shines from within upon so many darkened and weary
souls she has no knowledge. Her vision is bounded by the tangible, which
offers only a rigid barrier, against which her life flutters itself
away. She dies as she has lived, with a deepened conviction of the
nothingness of existence. "Spare me three things," she said to her
confessor in her last moments; "let me have no questions, no reasons,
and no sermons." Seeing Wiart, her faithful servitor, in tears, she
remarks pathetically, as if surprised, "You love me then?" "Divert
yourself as much as you can," was her final message to Walpole. "You
will regret me, because one is very glad to know that one is loved." She
commends to his care and affection Tonton, her little dog.
Strong but not gentle, brilliant but not tender, too penetrating for any
illusions, with a nature forever at war with itself, its surroundings,
and its limitations, no one better points the moral of an age without
faith, without ideals, without the inner light that reveals to hope what
is denied to sense.
The influence of such a woman with her gifts, her energy, her power,
and her social prestige, can hardly be estimated. It was not in the
direction of the new drift of thought. "I am not a fanatic as to
liberty," she said; "I believe it is an error to pretend that it exists
in a democracy. One has a thousand tyrants in place of one." She had
no breadth of sympathy, and her interests were largely personal; but
in matters of style and form her taste was unerring. Pitiless in her
criticisms, she held firmly to her ideals of clear, elegant, and concise
expression, both in literature and in conversation. She tolerated
no latitudes, no pretension, and left behind her the traditions of a
society that blended, more perfectly, perhaps, than any other of her
time, the best intellectual life with courtly manners and a strict
observance of les convenances.