MME. DE SEVIGNE, MME. DE LA FAYETTE, MME. DACIER, MME. DE CAYLUS
The seventeenth century was, in French history, the greatest century
from the standpoint of literary perfection, the sixteenth century the
richest in naissant ideas, and the eighteenth the greatest in the way
of developing and formulating those ideas; and each century produced
great women who were in perfect harmony with and expressed the ideals
of each period of civilization.
It is not within the limits of reason to expect women to rival, in
literature, the great writers such as Corneille, Racine, Moliere,
Bossuet, La Fontaine, Descartes, Pascal--most of whom were but little
influenced by femininity; there were those, however, among the sex,
who were conspicuous for elevation of thought, dignity in manner and
bearing, and brilliancy in conversation--attributes which they have
left to posterity in numberless exquisite and charming letters, in
interesting and invaluable memoirs, or in consummate psychological and
social portraitures incorporated into the form of novels. Among female
writers of letters, Mme. de Sevigne wears the laurel wreath; Mme. de
La Fayette, with Mlle. de Scudery, is the representative of the novel;
Mme. Dacier was the great advocate of the more liberal education
of women; and the _Souvenirs_ of Mme. de Caylus made that authoress
immortal.
The association of La Rochefoucauld, the Cardinal de Retz, the
Chevalier de Mere, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mme. de Sevigne, was
responsible for almost everything elevating and of interest produced
in the seventeenth century. Of that highly intellectual circle,
Mme. de Sevigne was the leading spirit by force of her extraordinary
faculty for making friends, her wonderful talent as a writer, her
originality and her charming disposition. She gave the tone to
letters; M. Faguet says that her epistles were all masterpieces of
amiable badinage, lively narration, maternal passion, true eloquence.
More than that, they are important sources of historical knowledge,
inasmuch as they contain much information concerning the politics of
the day, and furnish an excellent guide to the etiquette, fashions,
tastes, and literature of the writer's period.
Mme. de Sevigne was the most important figure of the time, being to
that third prodigiously intellectual epoch of France what Marguerite
de Navarre was to the sixteenth century, and the Hotel de Rambouillet
to the beginning of the seventeenth century. She represented the
style, _esprit_, elegance, and _gout_ of this greatest of French
cultural periods. Her life may be considered as having had two
distinct phases--one connected with an unhappy marriage and the other
the period of a restless widowhood.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marchioness of Sevigne, was born at Paris,
in 1626; at the age of eighteen months she lost her father; at seven
years of age, her mother; at eight, her grandmother; at ten, her
grandfather on her mother's side; she was thus left with her paternal
grandmother, Mme. de Chantal, who had her carefully educated under
the best masters, such as Menage and Chapelain (court favorites), from
whom she early imbibed a genuine taste for solid reading; from these
instructors she learned Spanish, Italian, and Latin.
In 1644, she was married to the Marquis Henri de Sevigne, who was
killed six years later in a duel, but who had, in the meantime,
succeeded in making a considerable gap in her immense fortune,
in spite of the precautions of her uncle, the Abbe of Coulanges.
Henceforward, her interests in life were centred in the education of
her two children; to them she wrote letters which have brought her
name down to posterity as, possibly, the greatest epistolary writer
that the history of literature has ever recorded.
Mme. de Sevigne was but nineteen years old when, after the marriage of
Julie d'Angennes, the frequenters of the Hotel de Rambouillet began
to disperse, and she was in much demand by the successors of Mme. de
Rambouillet. While the women of the reign of Louis XIII.--Mmes.
de Hautefort, de Sable, de Longueville, de Chevreuse, etc.--were
exceedingly talented talkers, they were poor writers: but in Mme.
de Sevigne, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mlle. de Scudery both arts were
developed to the highest degree.
Mme. de Sevigne was on the best terms with every great writer of
her time--Pascal, Racine, La Fontaine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, La
Rochefoucauld. She was a woman of such broad affections that numerous
friends and admirers were a necessary part of her existence. Of all
the eminent women of the seventeenth century, she had the greatest
number of lovers--suitors who frequently became her tormentors.
Menage, her teacher, who threatened to leave her never to see her
again, was brought back to her by kind words, such as: "Farewell,
friend--of all my friends the best." The Abbe Marigny, that "delicate
epicurean, that improviser of fine triolets, ballads, vaudevilles,
that enemy of all sadness and sticklers for morality," charmed her, at
times, with sentimental ballads, such as the following:
"Si l'amour est un doux servage,
Si l'on ne peut trop estimer
Les plaisirs ou l'amour engage,
Qu'on est sot de ne pas aimer!
"Mais si l'on se sent enflammer
D'un feu dont l'ardeur est extreme,
Et qu'on n'ose pas l'exprimer,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!
"Si dans la fleur de son bel age,
Une qui pourrait tout charmer,
Vous donne son coeur en partage,
Qu'on est sot de ne point aimer!
"Mais s'il faut toujours s'alarmer,
Craindre, rougir, devenir bleme,
Aussitot qu'on s'entend nommer,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!
"Pour complaire au plus beau visage
Qu'amour puisse jamais former,
S'il ne faut rien qu'un doux langage,
Qu'on est sot de ne pas aimer!
"Mais quand on se voit consumer.
Si la belle est toujours de meme,
Sans que rien la puisse animer,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!
"L'ENVOI.
"En amour si rien n'est amer,
Qu'on est sot de ne pas aimer!
Si tout l'est au degre supreme,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!"
[If love is a sweet bondage,
If we cannot esteem too much
The pleasures in which love engages,
How foolish one is not to love!
But if we feel ourselves inflamed
With a passion whose ardor is extreme,
And which we dare not express,
How foolish we are, then, to love!
If in the flower of her youth
There is one who could charm all.
And offers you her heart to share,
How very foolish not to love!
But if we must always be full of alarm--
Fear, blush and become pallid,
As soon as our name is spoken,
How foolish to love!
If to please the most beautiful countenance
That love can ever form,
Only a mellow language is necessary,
How foolish not to love!
But if we see ourselves wasting away,
If the belle is always the same
And cannot be animated,
How very foolish to love!
ENVOY.
If in love, nothing is bitter,
How dreadfully foolish not to love!
If everything is so to the highest degree,
How awfully foolish to love!]
Treville went so far as to say that the figure of Mme. de Sevigne was
beautiful enough to set the world afire. M. du Bled divides her lovers
into three classes: the first was composed of her literary friends;
the second, of those enamored, impassioned suitors, loving her from
good motives or from the opposite, who strove to compensate her for
the unfaithfulness of her husband while alive and for the ennui of her
widowhood; the third class was composed of her Parisian friends, of
whom she had hosts, court habitues who were leaders of society.
Representatives of the second class were the Prince de Conti, the
great Turenne, various counts and marquises, and Bussy-Rabutin, who
was a type of the sensual lover and the more dangerous on account of
the privileges he enjoyed because of his close relationship to Mme. de
Sevigne. His portrait of her is interesting: "I must tell you, madame,
that I do not think there is a person in the world so generally
esteemed as you are. You are the delight of humankind; antiquity
would have erected altars to you, and you would certainly have been a
goddess of something. In our century, when we are not so lavish with
incense, and especially for living merit, we are contented to say that
there is not a woman of your age more virtuous and more amiable than
are you. I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, great lords
with princely manners, great captains, gentlemen, ministers of state,
who would be off and away for you, if you would permit them. Can you
ask any more?"
Such eulogies came not only from men like the perfidious and cruel
cousin, but from her friends everywhere. The finest of these is
the one by her friend Mme. de La Fayette, contained in one of the
epistolary portraits so much in vogue at that time, and which were
turned out, _par excellence_, in the salon of Mlle. de Luxembourg:
"Know, madame,--if by chance you do not already know it,--that your
mind adorns and embellishes your person so well that there is not
another one on earth so charming as you when you are animated in a
conversation in which all constraint is banished. Your soul is great,
noble, ready to dispense with treasures, and incapable of lowering
itself to the care of amassing them. You are sensible to glory and
ambition, and to pleasures you are less so; yet you appear to be born
for the latter, and they made for you; your person augments pleasures,
and pleasures increase your beauty when they surround you. Joy is the
veritable state of your soul, and chagrin is more unlike to you than
to anyone. You are the most civil and obliging person that ever lived,
and by a free and calm air--which is in all your actions--the simplest
compliments of seemliness appear, in your mouth, as protestations of
friendship."
The originality which gained Mme. de Sevigne so many friends lay
principally in her force, wealth of resource, intensity, sincerity,
and frankness. M. Scherer said she possessed "surprises for us,
infinite energy, inexhaustible variety--everything that eternally
revives interest."
The interest of the modern world in this remarkable woman is centred
mainly in her letters. Guizot says: "Mme. de Sevigne is a friend whom
we read over and over again, whose emotions we share, to whom we go
for an hour's distraction and delightful chat; we have no desire to
chat with Mme. de Grignan (her daughter)--we gladly leave her to her
mother's exclusive affection, feeling infinitely obliged to her for
having existed, inasmuch as her mother wrote letters to her. Mme.
de Sevigne's letters to her daughter are superior to all her other
epistles, charming as they all are; when she writes to M. Pomponne, to
M. de Coulanges, to M. de Bussy, the style is less familiar, the heart
less open, the soul less stirred; she writes to her daughter as she
would speak to her--it is not a letter, it is an animated and charming
conversation, touching upon everything, embellishing everything with
an inimitable grace."
She had married her daughter to the Comte de Grignan, a man of
forty, twice married, and with children, homely, but wealthy and
aristocratic; writing to her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, concerning this
marriage, she said: "All these women (the count's former wives) died
expressly to make room for your cousin." By marrying her daughter
to such a man she encouraged all the questionable proprieties of the
time. Mme. de Sevigne's affection for that daughter amounted almost
to idolatry; it was to her that most of the mother's letters were
written, telling her of her health, what was being done at Vichy, and
about her business and for that child the authoress gave up her life
at Paris in order to economize and thereby to help Mme. de Grignan in
her extravagance, her son-in-law being an expert in spending money.
The intensity of her nature is well reflected in her letter upon the
separation from her daughter: "In vain I seek my darling daughter; I
can no longer find her, and every step she takes removes her farther
from me. I went to St. Mary's, still weeping and dying of grief; it
seemed as if my heart and my soul were being wrenched from me and, in
truth, what a cruel separation! I asked leave to be alone; I was taken
into Mme. du Housset's room, and they made me up a fire. Agnes sat
looking at me, without speaking--that was our bargain. I stayed there
till five o'clock, without ceasing to sob; all my thoughts were mortal
wounds to me. I wrote to M. de Grignan (you can imagine in what key).
Then I went to Mme. de La Fayette's, and she redoubled my griefs by
the interest she took in them; she was alone, ill, and distressed at
the death of one of the nuns; she was just as I should have desired,
I returned hither at eight; but oh, when I came in! can you conceive
what I felt as I mounted these stairs? That room into which I always
used to go, alas! I found the doors of it open, but I saw everything
upturned, disarranged, and your little daughter, who reminded me of
mine.... The wakenings of the night were dreadful. I think of you
continuously--it is what devotees call habitual thought, such as one
should have of God, if one did one's duty. Nothing gives me diversion;
I see that carriage which is forever going on and will never come
near me. I am forever on the highways; it seems as if I were sometimes
afraid that the carriage will upset with me; the rains there for the
last three days, drove me to despair. The Rhone causes me strange
alarm. I have a map before my eyes--I know all the places where you
sleep. This evening you are at Nevers; on Sunday you will be at
Lyons where you will receive this letter. I have received only two of
yours--perhaps the third will come; that is the only comfort I desire;
as for others, I seek none."
The letters of Mme. de Sevigne contain a great number of sayings
applicable to habits and conduct, and these have had their part
in shaping the customs and in depicting the time. To be modest and
moderate, friendly, and conciliatory, to be content with one's lot and
to bow to circumstances, to be sincere, to cultivate good sense and
good grace--these counsels have been and still are, according to
French opinion, the basis of French character: and Mme. de Sevigne's
own popularity and success attest their wisdom.
She had not the gift of seeing things vividly and reproducing them in
living form; her talent was a rarer one--it induced the reader to form
a mental picture of the scene described, so vivid as to be under the
illusion of being present in reality; and this is done with so much
grace, charm, happy ease and naturalness, that to read her letters
means to love the writer. What mother or friend would not fall a
willing victim to the charm of a woman who could write the following
letter?
"You ask me, my dear child, whether I continue to be really fond of
life; I confess to you that I find poignant sorrows in it, but I am
even more disgusted with death; I feel so wretched at having to end
all thereby, that, if I could turn back again, I would ask for nothing
better, I find myself under an obligation which perplexes me; I
embark upon life without my consent, and so must I go out of it; that
overwhelms me. And how shall I go? Which way? By what door? When will
it be? In what condition? Shall I suffer a thousand, thousand pains
which will make me die desperate? Shall I have brain fever? Shall I
die of an accident? How shall I be with God? What shall I have to show
Him? Shall fear, shall necessity bring me back to Him? Shall I have
sentiment except that of dread? What can I hope? Am I worthy of
heaven? Am I worthy of hell? Nothing is such madness as to leave one's
salvation in uncertainty, but nothing is so natural. The stupid life I
lead is the easiest thing in the world to understand; I bury myself
in these thoughts and I find death so terrible that I hate life more
because it leads me thereto, than because of the thorns with which
it is planted. You will say that I want to live forever, then; not at
all; but, if my opinion had been asked, I would have preferred to die
in my nurse's arms; that would have removed me from the vexations of
spirit and would have given me heaven full surely and easily."
Mme. de Sevigne never bored her readers with her own reflections. She
differed from her contemporaries, who seemed to be dead to nature's
beauty, in her striking descriptions of nature. A close observer, she
knew how to describe a landscape; animating and enlivening it, and
making it talk, she inspired the reader with love of it.
"I am going to be alone and I am very glad. Provided they do not take
away from me the charming country, the shore of the Allier, the woods,
streams, and meadows, the sheep and goats, the peasant girls who dance
the _bourree_ in the fields, I consent to say adieu; the country alone
will cure me.... I have come here to end the beautiful days and to say
adieu to the foliage--it is still on the trees, it has only changed
color; instead of being green, it is golden, and of so many golden
tints that it makes a brocade of rich and magnificent gold, which we
are likely to find more beautiful than the green, if only it were not
for the changing part."
If the style of her letters did not make her the greatest prose writer
of her time, it certainly entitled her to rank as one of the most
original. The prose of the seventeenth century lacked "easy suppleness
in lively movement, and imagination in the expression"--two qualities
which Mme. de Sevigne possessed in a high degree. The slow and grave
development, the just and harmonious equilibrium, the amplitude, are
in her supplanted by a quick, alert, and free _saillie_; the detail
and marvellous exactness are enriched by color, abundance of imagery,
and metaphors. M. Faguet says she is to prose what La Fontaine is to
poetry.
The literary style of Mme. de Sevigne is not learned, studied, nor
labored. In an epoch in which the language was already formed, she did
what Montaigne did a century before, when, we may almost assert, he
had to create the French language. Her most striking expressions are
her own--newly coined, not taken from the vocabulary in usage. Her
style cannot be duplicated, and for this reason she has few imitators.
Her letters show that they were improvised--her pen doing, alone, the
work over which she seemed to have no control when communicating with
her daughter; to the latter she said: "I write prose with a facility
that will kill you."
Mme. de Sevigne was possibly not a beautiful woman, but she was a
charming one; broad in the scope of her affections, she found the
making of friends no difficult task. M. Vallery-Radot leaves the
following picture of her: "A blonde, with exuberant health, a
transparent complexion, blue eyes, so frank, so limpid, a nose
somewhat square, a mouth ready to smile, shoulders that seem to lend
splendor to her pearl necklace. Her gayety and goodness are so in
evidence that there is about her a kind of atmosphere of good humor."
M. du Bled most admirably sums up her character and writings in the
following: "She is the person who most resembles her writings--that
is, those that are found; for alas! many (the most confidential, the
most interesting, I think) are lost forever: in them she is reflected
as she reflects French society in them. Endowed--morally and
physically--with a robust health, she is expansive, loyal, confiding,
impressionable, loving gayety in full abundance as much as she does
the smile of the refined, as eager for the prattle of the court as
for solid reading, smitten with nobiliary pride, a captive of the
prejudices, superstitions and tastes of her caste (or of even her
coterie), with her pen hardly tender for her neighbor--her daughter
and intimates excepted. A manager and a woman of imagination, a
Frondist at the bottom of her soul, and somewhat of a Jansenist--not
enough, however, not to cry out that Louis XIV. will obscure the glory
of his predecessors because he had just danced with her--faithful to
her friends (Retz, Fouquet, Pomponne) in disgrace and detesting their
persecutors, seeking the favor of court for her children. In the
salons, she is celebrated for her _esprit_--and this at an age when
one seldom thinks about reputation, when one is like the princess who
replied to a question on the state of her soul, 'At twenty one has
no soul;' and she possesses the qualities that are so essential to
style--natural _eclat_, originality of expression, grace, color,
amplitude without pomposity and abundance without prolixity; moreover,
she invents nothing, but, knowing how to observe and to express in
perfection everything she had seen and felt, she is a witness and
painter of her century: also, she loves nature--a sentiment very rare
in the seventeenth century."
Mme. de Sevigne was endowed with the best qualities of the French
race--good will and friendliness, which influence one to judge others
favorably and to desire their esteem; of a very impressionable nature,
she was gifted with a natural eloquence which enabled her to express
her various emotions in a light or gay vein which often bordered on
irony. Affectionate and appreciative and tender and kind to everyone
in general, toward those whom she loved she was generous to a fault
and unswerving in her fidelity.
Her last years were spent in the midst of her family. She died in
1696, of smallpox, thanking God that she was the first to go, after
having trembled for the life of her daughter, whom she had nursed back
to health after a long and dangerous illness. Her son-in-law, M. de
Grignan, wrote to her uncle, M. de Coulanges:
"What calls far more for our admiration than for our regret, is the
spectacle of a brave woman facing death--of which she had no doubt
from the first days of her illness--with astounding firmness and
submission. This person, so tender and so weak towards all whom she
loved, showed nothing but courage and piety when she believed that her
hour had come; and, impressed by the use she managed to make of that
good store in the last moments of her life, we could not but remark
of what utility and of what importance it is to have the mind stocked
with the good matter and holy reading for which Mme. de Sevigne had a
liking--not to say a wonderful hunger."
In order to give an idea of the place that Mme. de Sevigne holds in
the opinion of the average Frenchman, we quote the final words of M.
Vallery-Radot:
"To take a place among the greatest writers, without ever having
written a book or even having thought of writing one--this is what
seems impossible, and yet this is what happened to Mme. de Sevigne.
Her contemporaries knew her as a woman distinguished for her _esprit_,
frank, playful and sprightly humor, irreproachable conduct, loyalty to
her friends, and as an idolizer of her daughter; no one suspected that
she would partake of the glory of our classical authors--and she, less
than any one. She had immortalized herself, without wishing or knowing
it, by an intimate correspondence which is, to-day, universally
regarded as one of the most precious treasures and one of the most
original monuments to French literature. To deceive the _ennui_ of
absence, she wrote to her daughter all that she had in her heart and
that came to her mind--what she did, wished to do, saw and learned,
news of court, city, Brittany, army, everything--sadly or gayly,
according to the subject, always with the most keen, ardent, delicate,
and touching sentiments of tenderness and sympathy. She amuses,
instructs, interests, moves to tears or laughter. All that passes
within or before her, passes within and before us. If she depicts
an object, we see it; if she relates an event, we are present at its
occurrence; if she makes a character talk, we hear his words, see his
gestures, and distinguish his accent. All is true, real, living: this
is more than talent--it is enchantment. Generations pass away in turn;
a single one, or, rather, a group escapes the general oblivion--the
group of friends of Mme. de Sevigne."
A woman with characteristics the very opposite of those of Mme.
de Sevigne, but who in some respects resembled her, was Mme. de La
Fayette. Of her life, very little is to be said, except in regard to
her lasting friendship and attachment for La Rochefoucauld. She
was born in 1634, and, with Mme. de Sevigne, was probably the best
educated among the great women of the seventeenth century. She was
faithful to her husband, the Count of La Fayette, who, in 1665, took
her to Paris, where she formed her lifelong attachment for the great
La Rochefoucauld, and where she won immediate recognition for her
exquisite politeness and as a woman with a large fund of common sense.
After her marriage, she seemed to have but one interest--La
Rochefoucauld, just as that of Mme. de Maintenon was Louis XIV. and
that of Mme. de Sevigne--her daughter. These three prominent
women illustrate remarkably well that predominant trait of French
women--faithfulness to a chosen cause; each one of the three
was vitally concerned in an enduring, a legitimate, and sincere
attachment, which state of affairs gives a certain distinction to the
society of the time of Louis XIV.
Mme. de La Fayette, like Mme. de Sevigne, possessed an exceptional
talent for making and retaining friends. She kept aloof from
intrigues, in fact, knew nothing about them, and consequently never
schemed to use her favor at court for purposes of self-interest. Two
qualities belonged to her more than to any of her contemporaries--an
instinct which was superior to her reason, and a love of truth in all
things.
Compared with those of Mme. de Rambouillet, it is said that her
attainments were of a more solid nature; and while Mlle. de Scudery
had greater brilliancy, Mme. de La Fayette had better judgment.
These qualities combined with an exquisite delicacy, fine sentiment,
calmness, and depth of reason, the very basis of her nature, are
reflected in her works. Sainte-Beuve says that "her reason and
experience cool her passion and temper the ideal with the results of
observation." She was one of the very few women playing any role
in French history who were endowed with all things necessary to
happiness--fortune, reputation, talent, intimate and ideal
friendship. Extremely sensitive to surroundings, she readily received
impressions--a gift which was the source of a somewhat doubtful
happiness.
In her later days, notwithstanding terrible suffering, she became more
devout and exhibited an admirable resignation. A letter to Menage will
show the mental and physical state reached by her in her last days:
"Although you forbid me to write to you, I wish, nevertheless, to tell
you how truly affected I am by your friendship. I appreciate it as
much as when I used to see it; it is dear to me for its own worth, it
is dear to me because it is at present the only one I have. Time and
old age have taken all my friends away from me.... I must tell you the
state I am in. I am, first of all, a mortal divinity, and to an excess
inconceivable; I have obstructions in my entrails--sad, inexpressible
feelings; I have no spirit, no force--I cannot read or apply myself.
The slightest things affect me--a fly appears an elephant to me; that
is my ordinary state.... I cannot believe that I can live long in this
condition, and my life is too disagreeable to permit me to fear the
end. I surrender myself to the will of God; He is the All-Powerful,
and, from all sides, we must go to Him at last. They assure me that
you are thinking seriously of your salvation, and I am very happy over
it."
There probably never existed a more ideal friendship between two
French women, one more lasting, sincere, perfect in every way, than
that of Mme. de Sevigne and Mme. de La Fayette. The major part of
the information we possess regarding events in the life of Mme. de La
Fayette is obtained from their letters. Said Mme. de Sevigne: "Never
did we have the smallest cloud upon our friendship. Long habit had not
made her merit stale to me--the flavor of it was always fresh and new.
I paid her many attentions, from the mere promptings of my affection,
not because of the propriety by which, in friendships, we are bound. I
was assured, too, that I was her dearest consolation--which, for forty
years past, had been the case."
Shortly before her death, she wrote to Mme. de Sevigne: "Here is what
I have done since I wrote you last. I have had two attacks of fever;
for six months I had not been purged; I am purged once, I am purged
twice; the day after the second time, I sit down at the table; oh,
dear! I feel a pain in my heart--I do not want any soup. Have a little
meat, then? No, I do not wish any. Well, you will have some fruit? I
think I will. Very well, then, have some. I don't know--I think I
will have some by and by. Let me have some soup and some chicken
this evening.... Here is the evening, and there are the soup and the
chicken; I don't desire them. I am nauseated, I will go to bed--I
prefer sleeping to eating. I go to bed, I turn round, I turn back,
I have no pain, but I have no sleep either. I call--I take a book--I
close it. Day comes--I get up--I go to the window. It strikes four,
five, six--I go to bed again, I doze until seven, I get up at eight,
I sit down to table at twelve--to no purpose, as yesterday.... I lay
myself down in my bed, in the evening, to no purpose, as the night
before. Are you ill? Nay, I am in this state for three days and three
nights. At present, I am getting some sleep again, but I still eat
mechanically, horsewise--rubbing my mouth with vinegar. Otherwise, I
am very well, and I haven't so much as a pain in my head."
Her depressing melancholy kept her indoors a great deal; in fact,
after 1683, after the death of the queen, who was one of her best
friends, she was seldom seen at court. Mme. de Sevigne gives good
reason for this in her letter:
"She had a mortal melancholy. Again, what absurdity! is she not the
most fortunate woman in the world? That is what people said; it needed
that she should die to prove that she had good reason for not going
out and for being melancholy. Her reins and her heart were all
gone--was not that enough to cause those fits of despondency of which
she complained? And so, during her life she showed reason, and after
death she showed reason, and never was she without that divine reason
which was her principal gift."
Her liaison with La Rochefoucauld is the one delicate and tender point
in her life, a relation that afforded her much happiness and finally
completed the ruin of her health. M. d'Haussonville said: "It is true
that he took possession of her soul and intellect, little by little,
so that the two beings, in the eyes of their contemporaries, were
but one; for after his death (1680) she lived but an incomplete and
mutilated existence."
Some critics have ventured to pronounce this liaison one of material
love solely, others are convinced of its morality and pure friendship.
In favor of the latter view, M. d'Haussonville suggests the fact
that Mme. de La Fayette was over thirty years of age when she became
interested in La Rochefoucauld, and that at that age women rarely ally
themselves with men from emotions of physical love merely. At that age
it is reason that mutually attracts two beings; and this feeling was
probably the predominant one in that case, because her entire career
was one of the most extreme reserve, conservatism, good sense, and
propriety. However, other proofs are brought forward to show that
there was between the two a sort of moral marriage, so many examples
of which are found in the seventeenth century between people
of prominence, both of whom happened to have unhappy conjugal
experiences.
French society, one must remember, was different from any in the
world; it seems to have been a large family gathering, the members of
which were as intimate, took as much interest in each other's affairs,
showed as much sympathy for one another and participated in each
other's sorrows and pleasures, as though they were children of the
same parents.
In his early days, La Rochefoucauld found it convenient, for selfish
purposes, to simulate an ardent passion for Mme. de Longueville,
of which mention has been made in the chapter relating to Mme. de
Longueville. In his later period, he had settled down to a normal
mode of life and sought the friendship of a more reasonable and less
passionate woman. He himself said:
"When women have well-informed minds, I like their conversation better
than that of men; you find, with them, a certain gentleness which is
not met with among us; and it seems to me, besides, that they express
themselves with greater clearness and that they give a more pleasant
turn to the things they say."
Mme. de La Fayette exercised a great influence upon La
Rochefoucauld--an influence that was wholesome in every way. It was
through her influential friends at court that he was helped into
possession of his property, and it was she who maintained it for him.
As to his literary work (his _Maxims_), her influence over him was
supposed to have somewhat modified his ideas on women and to have
softened his tone in general. She wrote: "He gave me wit, but I
reformed his heart." M. d'Haussonville has proved, without doubt, that
her restraint modified many of his maxims that were tinged with
the spirit of the commonplace and trivial. While Mme. de
Sable--essentially a moralist and a deeply religious woman--was more
of a companion to him, and though his maxims were, for the greater
part, composed in her salon, Mme. de La Fayette, by her tenderness and
judgment, tempered the tone of them before they reached the public.
Mme. de La Fayette will always be known, however, as the great
novelist of the seventeenth century. Two novels, two stories, two
historical works, and her memoirs, make up her literary budget. M.
d'Haussonville claims that her memoirs of the court of France are not
reliable, because she was so often absent from court; also, in
them she shows a tendency to avenge herself, in a way, upon Mme. de
Maintenon, whose friend she was until the trouble between this lady
and Mme. de Montespan occurred. The latter was the intimate friend
of Mme. de La Fayette. As for her literary work proper, her desire to
write was possibly encouraged, if not created, by her indulgence in
the general fad of writing portraitures, in which she was especially
successful in portraying Mme. de Sevigne. Her literary effort was,
besides, a revolt of her own taste and sense against the pompous
and inflated language of the novels of the day and against the great
length of the development of the events and adventures in them. Thus,
Mme. de La Fayette inaugurated a new style of novel; to show her
influence, it will be well to consider the state of the Romanesque
novel at the period of her writing.
In the beginning of the century, D'Urfe's novels were in vogue; these
works were characterized by interminable developments, relieved by an
infinite number of historical episodes. All characters, shepherds
as well as noblemen, expressed the same sentiments and in the same
language. There was no pretension to truth in the portraying of
manners and customs.--A reaction was natural and took the form of
either a kind of parody or gross realism. These novels, of which
_Francion_ and _Berger Extravagant_ were the best known, depicted
shepherds of the Merovingian times, heroes of Persia and Rome, or
procurers, scamps, and scoundrels; but no descriptions of the manners
of decent people (_honnetes gens_) were to be found.
The novels of Mlle. de Scudery, while interesting as portraitures, are
not thoroughly reliable in their representation of the sentiments
and environment of the times; on the other hand, those of Mme. de La
Fayette are impersonal--no one of the characters is recognizable; yet
their atmosphere is that of the court of Louis XIV., and the language,
never so correct as to be unnatural, is that used at the time. Her
novels reflect perfectly the society of the court and the manner of
life there. "Thus," says M. d'Haussonville, "she was the first to
produce a novel of observation and sentiment, the first to paint
elegant manners as they really were."
Her first production was _La Princesse de Montpensier_ (1662); in
1670, appeared _Zayde_, it was ostensibly the work of Segrais, her
teacher and a writer much in vogue at the time; in 1678, _La Princesse
de Cleves_, her masterpiece, stirred up one of the first real quarrels
of literary criticism. For a long time after the appearance of that
book, society was divided into two classes--the pros and the cons. It
was the most popular work of the period.
M. d'Haussonville says it is the first French novel which is an
illustration of woman's ability to analyze the most subtile of human
emotions. Mme. de La Fayette was, also, the first to elevate, in
literature, the character of the husband who, until then, was a
nonentity or a booby; she makes of him a hero--sympathetic, noble, and
dignified.
In no fictitious tale before hers was love depicted with such rare
delicacy and pathos. In her novel, _La Princesse de Cleves_, "a novel
of a married woman, we feel the woman who has loved and who knows what
she is saying, for she, also, has struggled and suffered." The writer
confesses her weakness and leaves us witness of her virtue. All
the soul struggles and interior combats represented in her work the
authoress herself has experienced. As an example of this we cite the
description of the sentiments of Mme. de Cleves when she realizes that
her feeling toward one of the members of the court may develop into an
emotion unworthy of her as a wife. She falls upon her knees and says:
"I am here to make to you a confession such as has never been made
to man; but the innocence of my conduct and my intentions give me
the necessary courage. It is true that I have reasons for desiring to
withdraw from court, and that I wish to avoid the perils which persons
of my age experience. I have never shown a sign of weakness, and I
would not fear of ever showing any, if you permitted me to withdraw
from court, or if I still had, in my efforts to do right, the support
of Mme. de Chartres. However dangerous may be the action I take, I
take it with pleasure, that I may be worthy of your actions, I ask a
thousand pardons; if I have sentiments displeasing to you, I shall
at least never displease you by my actions. Remember, to do what I am
doing, one must have for a husband more friendship and esteem than was
ever before had. Have pity on me and lead me away---and love me still,
if you can."
_La Princesse de Cleves_ is a novel of human virtue purely, and
teaches that true virtue can find its reward in itself and in the
austere enjoyment of duty accomplished. "It is a work that will
endure, and be a comfort as well as a guide to those who aspire to a
high morality which necessitates a difficult sacrifice."
M. d'Haussonville regards the novels of Mmes. de Charriere, de Souza,
de Duras, de Boigne, as mere imitations or as having been inspired by
that masterpiece of Mme. de La Fayette. He says: "In fact, novels in
general, that depict the struggle between passion and duty, with the
victory on the side of virtue, emanate more or less from it."
Taine wrote: "She described the events in the careers of society
women, introducing no special terms of language into her descriptions.
She painted for the sake of painting and did not think of attempting
to surpass her predecessors. She reflects a society whose scrupulous
care was to avoid even the slightest appearance of anything that might
displease or shock. She shows the exquisite tact of a woman--and a
woman of high rank."
Mme. de La Fayette is one of the very rare French writers that have
succeeded in analyzing love, passion, and moral duty, without becoming
monotonous, vulgar, brutal, or excessively realistic. Her creations
contain the most minute analyses of heart and soul emotions, but these
never become purely physiologic and nauseating, as in most novels.
This achievement on her part has been too little imitated, but it,
alone, will preserve the name of Mme. de La Fayette.
Mme. de Motteville is deserving of mention among the important
literary women of the seventeenth century. She is regarded as one
of the best women writers in French literature, and her memoirs are
considered authority on the history of the Fronde and of Anne of
Austria. The poetry of Mme. des Houlieres was for a long time much
in vogue; to-day, however, it is not read. The memoirs of Mlle. de
Montpensier are more occupied with herself than with events of the
time or the numerous princes who tarried about her as longing lovers.
Guizot says: "She was so impassioned and haughty, with her head
so full of her own greatness, that she did not marry in her youth,
thinking no one worthy of her except the king and the emperor, and
they had no fancy for her." The following portrait of her was sketched
by herself:
"I am tall, neither fat nor thin, of a very fine and easy figure.
I have a good mien, arms and hands not beautiful, but a beautiful
skin--and throat, too. I have a straight leg and a well-shaped foot;
my hair is light and of a beautiful auburn; my face is long, its
contour is handsome, nose large and aquiline; mouth neither large
nor small, but chiselled and with a very pleasing expression; lips
vermilion, not fine, but not frightful, either; my eyes are blue,
neither large nor small, but sparkling, soft, and proud like my mien.
I talk a great deal, without saying silly things or using bad words. I
am a very vicious enemy, being very choleric and passionate, and that,
added to my birth, may well make my enemies tremble; but I have, also,
a noble and kindly soul. I am incapable of any base and black deed;
and so I am more disposed to mercy than to justice. I am melancholic,
and fond of reading good and solid books; trifles bore me--except
verses, and them I like, of whatever sort they may be; and undoubtedly
I am as good a judge of such things as if I were a scholar."
Possibly the greatest female scholar that France ever produced was
Mme. Dacier, a truly learned woman and one of whom French women are
proud; during her last years she enjoyed the reputation of being one
of the foremost scholars of all Europe. It was Mme. de Lambert who
wrote of her:
"I esteem Mme. Dacier infinitely. Our sex owes her much; she has
protested against the common error which condemns us to ignorance.
Men, as much from disdain as from a fancied superiority, have denied
us all learning; Mme. Dacier is an example proving that we are capable
of learning. She has associated erudition and good manners; for, at
present, modesty has been displaced; shame is no longer for vices,
and women blush over their learning only. She has freed the mind,
held captive under this prejudice, and she alone supports us in our
rights."
Tanneguy-Lefevre, the father of Mme. Dacier, was a savant and a type
of the scholars of the sixteenth century. He brought up his sons to be
like him--instructing them in Greek, Latin, and antiquities. The young
daughter, present at all the lessons given to her brothers, acquired,
unaided, a solid education; her father, amazed at her marvellous
faculty for comprehending and remembering, soon devoted most of his
energy to her. He was, at that time, professor at the College of
Saumur; and he was conspicuous not only for the liberty he exhibited
in his pedagogical duties, but for his general catholicity.
After the death of her father, the young daughter went to Paris where
her family friends, Chapelain and Huet, encouraged her in her studies,
the latter, who was assistant preceptor to the dauphin, even going so
far as to request her to assist him in preparing the Greek text for
the use of the dauphin. She soon eclipsed all scholars of the time by
her illuminating studies of Greek authors and of the quality of
the new editions which she prepared of their works, but she was
continually pestered on account of her erudition and her religion, the
Protestant faith, to which she clung while realizing that it had been
the cause of the failure of her father's advancement.
From that time appeared her famous series of translations of Terence
and Plautus, which were the delight of the women of the period and
which gave her the reputation of being the most intellectual woman of
the seventeenth century. In 1635, when nearly thirty years of age, she
married M. Dacier, the favorite pupil of her father, librarian to
the king and translator of Plutarch--a man of no means, but one who
thoroughly appreciated the worth of Mlle. Lefevre. This union was
spoken of by her contemporaries as "the marriage of Greek and Latin."
Two years after their marriage, after long and serious deliberation,
both abjured Protestantism, adopted the Catholic religion, and
succeeded in converting the whole town of Castres--an act which
gained them royal favor, and Louis XIV. granted them a pension of
two thousand livres. Sainte-Beuve states that their conversion was
perfectly sincere and conscientious. In all their subsequent works
were seen traces of Mme. Dacier's powerful intellect, which was much
superior to that of her husband. Boileau said: "In their production of
_esprit_, it is Mme. Dacier who is the father."
Besides her translations of the plays of Plautus, all of Terence, the
_Clouds_ and _Plutus_ of Aristophanes, she published her translation
of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ (1711-1716), which gave her a prominent
place in the history of French literature, especially as it appeared
at the time of the "quarrels of the ancients and moderns," which
concerned the comparative merits of ancient and modern literature.
Mme. Dacier thoroughly appreciated the grandeur of Homer and knew the
almost insurmountable difficulties of a translation; therefore,
when in 1714 the _Iliad_ appeared in verse (in twelve songs by La
Motte-Houdart), preceded by a discourse on Homer, in which the author
announced that his aim was to purify and embellish Homer by ridding
him "of his barbarian crudeness, his uncivil familiarities, and his
great length," the ire of Mme. Dacier was aroused, and in defence of
her god she wrote her famous _Des Causes de la Corruption du Gout_
(Causes of the Corruption of Taste), a long defence of Homer, to which
La Motte replied in his _Reflexions de la Critique_ This rekindled the
whole controversy, and sides were immediately formed.
Mme. Dacier was not politic; although she sustained her ideas well
and displayed much erudition and depth of reason, she is said to have
injured her cause by the violence of her polemic. Her immoderate tone
and bitter assaults upon the elegant and discerning favorite only
detracted from his opponent's favor and grace. Voltaire said: "You
could say that the work of M. de La Motte was that of a woman of
_esprit_, while that of Mme. Dacier was of a _homme savant_. He
translated the _Iliad_ very poorly, but attacked very well." Mme.
Dacier's translation remained a standard for two centuries. She and
her adversary became reconciled at a dinner given by M. de Valincour
for the friends of both parties; upon that festive occasion, "they
drank to the health of Homer, and all was well."
Mme. Dacier died in 1720. "She was a _savante_ only in her study or
when with savants; otherwise, she was unaffected and agreeable
in conversation, from the character of which one would never have
suspected her of knowing more than the average woman." She was an
incessant worker and had little time for social life; in the evening,
after having worked all morning, she received visits from the literary
men of France; and, to her credit may it be added, amid all her
literary work, she never neglected her domestic and maternal duties.
A woman of an entirely different type from that of Mme. Dacier, one
who fitly closes the long series of great and brilliant women of the
age of Louis XIV., who only partly resembles them and yet does not
quite take on the faded and decadent coloring of the next age, was
Mme. de Caylus, the niece of Mme. de Maintenon. It was she who, partly
through compulsion, partly of her own free will, undertook the rearing
of the young and beautiful Marthe-Marguerite de Villette. Mme. de
Maintenon was then at the height of her power, and naturally her
beautiful, clever, and witty niece was soon overwhelmed by proposals
of marriage from the greatest nobles of France. To one of these, M. de
Boufflers, Mme. de Maintenon replied: "My niece is not a sufficiently
good match for you. However, I am not insensible to the honor you pay
me; I shall not give her to you, but in the future I shall consider
you my nephew."
She then married the innocent young girl to the Marquis de Caylus, a
debauched, worthless reprobate--a union whose only merit lay in the
fact that her niece could thus remain near her at court. At the latter
place, her beauty, gayety, and caustic wit, her adaptable and somewhat
superficial character and her freedom of manners and speech, did
not fail to attract many admirers. Her frankness in expressing her
opinions was the source of her disgrace; Louis XIV. took her at her
word when she exclaimed, in speaking of the court: "This place is so
dull that it is like being in exile to live here," and forbade her to
appear again in the place she found so tiresome. Those rash words
cost her an exile of thirteen years, and only through good behavior,
submission, and piety was she permitted to return.
She appeared at a supper given by the king, and, by the brilliancy
of her beauty and _esprit_, she attracted everyone present and soon
regained her former favor and friends. From that time she was the
constant companion of Mme. de Maintenon, until the king's death, when
she returned to Paris; at that place her salon became an intellectual
centre, and there the traditions of the seventeenth century were
perpetuated.
Sainte-Beuve said that Mme. de Caylus perfectly exemplified what
was called urbanity--"politeness in speech and accent as well as in
_esprit_." In her youth she was famous for her extraordinary acting in
the performance, at Saint-Cyr, of Racine's _Esther_. Mme. de Sevigne
wrote: "It is Mme. de Caylus who makes Esther." Her brief and witty
_Souvenirs_ (Memoirs), showing marvellous finesse in the art of
portraiture, made her name immortal. M. Saint-Amand describes her work
thus:
"Her friends, enchanted by her lively wit, had long entreated her
to write--not for the public, but for them--the anecdotes which she
related so well. Finally, she acquiesced, and committed to paper
certain incidents, certain portraits. What a treasure are these
_Souvenirs_--so fluently written, so unpretentious, with neither dates
nor chronological order, but upon which, for more than a century, all
historians have drawn! How much is contained in this little book
which teaches more in a few lines than interminable works do in many
volumes! How feminine it is, and how French! One readily understands
Voltaire's liking for these charming _Souvenirs_. Who, than Mme. de
Caylus, ever better applied the famous precept: 'Go lightly, mortals;
don't bear too hard.'"
She belonged to that class of spontaneous writers who produce artistic
works without knowing it, just as M. Jourdain wrote prose, and who do
not even suspect that they possess that chief attribute of literary
style--naturalness. What pure, what ready wit! What good humor,
what unconstraint, what delightful ease! What a series of charming
portraits, each more lifelike, more animated, still better than all
the others! "These little miniatures--due to the brush of a woman
of the world--are better worth studying than is many a picture or
fresco."