FRENCH LITERARY LADIES. BY GEORGE HOGARTH. THE influence of the fair sex in society is accounted, and very reasonably, a test of the progress of civilization; and the French mean to imply their superiority to all the rest of the world in this respect by the use of their favourite proverbial phrase, "La belle France est le paradis des femmes." There can be no doubt that the ladies of France, in modern times at least, have exercised a greater degree of influence, not only over the habits, manners, and character of the male part of the creation, but over their most important affairs and avocations, public as well as private, than they have done in any other country whatever. The Salique Law, notwithstanding its long prevalence in France, may be said to have been little more than a dead letter; for where was the use of providing against a female succession to the crown, when the nation never ceased to be virtually under petticoat government? What did it matter that the throne could not be occupied by a female sovereign, when the whole power of the state was wielded by some female or other, who wanted nothing of sovereignty but the name? What, after all, was the much-boasted LOUIS LE GRAND but a crowned and sceptred puppet, while the real monarch of France, for the time, was Maintenon, or La Valliere, or Montespan? What was his successor but the slave of a Du Barry and a Pompadour? And what was the best and most virtuous of the race, the unhappy Louis the Sixteenth, but an instrument in the hands of his Austrian consort, whose imperious temper, and reckless interference with affairs of state, which she had neither knowledge to comprehend nor wisdom to conduct, precipitated the catastrophe which swept her family from the earth, and levelled in the dust the ancient monarchy of France? Seldom, however, has a French king been under so legitimate a sovereignty as that of his consort. The picture of the Grand Monarque holding his council in the boudoir of Madame de Maintenon, while the lady sat at her little table, with her work-basket before her, listening to the deliberations of grave statesmen, and quietly putting in her all-powerful word, represents, in fact, the machinery of the government of France for a century, at least, before the Revolution. It was the same influence which, more than anything else, gave the French society of those days its singular grace, elegance, and refinement. Other things, no doubt, contributed to produce that most remarkable state of manners: that constitutional gaiety and liveliness which makes a French man or woman, of whatever rank or station, an eminently social animal, must no doubt come in for its share. In the aristocratic society of the metropolis its exclusiveness had a similar tendency. No degree of wealth, or merely personal distinction, unaccompanied by rank, could admit any one within its pale. If men of letters and votaries of the arts were received into its circles, it was as literati and artists, whose position was perfectly understood on all hands. They had no pretensions which could interfere with those of the class with whom they were allowed to mingle; the toe of the poet could not gall the kibe of the courtier. They did not VOL. III. C require to be kept down by any assumption of superiority; and hence their social intercourse with the great was on a footing of apparent equality and freedom from restraint.* Something, too, must be ascribed to the very insignificance of the French aristocracy as a political body. They had no political power, no political functions, no political interests, no political cares: they had nothing to do but to hunt on their estates, or pursue the pleasures of the capital. The French noblesse of the seventeenth century accordingly were a degraded race; ignorant and vicious, coarse in their habits, and brutal in their amusements. From this debasement female influence contributed greatly to raise them. The crowd of men of genius, whose simultaneous appearance shed lustre over the age of Louis the Fourteenth, found, among the ladies of his brilliant court, their greatest admirers and patrons. It was through the influence of the fair sex that literature became the fashion, and that its professors came to be looked upon as the ornaments of polite society. Nothing can be more captivating than the accounts, contained in the numerous French biographies and memoirs of the last age, of these social circles, of which the elements were rank, beauty, learning, and genius. It had, however, its dark, as well as its light side. There was none of the restraint arising from the jealousy of rank and station, and the necessity of repelling the pretensions of inferiors: but the distinction acquired by wit and brilliancy of conversation introduced pretensions of another kind; and these nocles cœnæque Deum, were apt to become scenes of jealousy, rivalry, and laborious efforts of the company to outshine each other. "I soon perceived," says Marmontel, speaking of his first admission into this society, "that each guest arrived ready to play his part, and that the desire of exhibiting frequently prevented the conversation from following its easy and natural course. It was who should seize most quickly the passing moment, to bring out his epigram, his tale, his anecdote, his maxim, or his light and pointed satire; and very unnatural round-abouts were taken, in order to obtain a fit opportunity." There were, besides, other evils of a more serious nature. The moral tone of these elegant côteries was anything but pure; Professors of literature, mingling in the society of the noble and the wealthy upon sufferance, held a rank scarcely higher than that of musicians or actors, from among whom individuals have often, by their talents and character, become members of the best society, while the castes to which such individuals belong remain in general exposed to the most humiliating contempt. The lady of quality, who smiled on the man of letters, and the man of rank who admitted him to his intimacy, still retained their consciousness that he was not, like themselves, formed out of "the porcelain clay of the earth :" and even while receiving their bounties, or participating in their pleasures, the favourite savant must often have been disturbed by the reflection that he was only considered as a creature of sufferance, whom the caprice of fashion, or a sudden reaction of the ancient etiquette, might fling out of the society where he was at present tolerated. Under this disheartening and even degrading inferiority, the man of letters might be tempted invidiously to compare the luxurious style of living at which he sat a permitted guest with his own paltry hired apartment, and scanty and uncertain chance of support. And even those of a nobler mood, when they had conceded to their benefactors all the gratitude they could justly demand, must sometimes have regretted their own situation "Condemn'd as needy supplicants to wait, Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. i. there was little warmth of heart or elevation of sentiment, and a total absence of religious feeling or principle. Their prevailing spirit seems to have been a selfish indifference to everything beyond the pursuit or amusement of the hour. We suspect, after all, that their extreme polish arose from the hardness of the materials. Many distinguished women figure in the French literary annals of the last century, as occupying prominent places in the society we have been endeavouring to characterise. But a few notices of some of them will give a better notion of it than can be conveyed by any general description. We shall take, for the present, three of the most remarkable among them,-Madame Geoffrin, the Marquise Du Deffant, and her protegée and rival, Mademoiselle L'Espinasse, all contemporaries, and connected with each other. Madame Geoffrin was born in 1699. Her father was a man of family, and had a place in the household of the Dauphin. At fifteen she was married to M. Geoffrin, an eminent glass-manufacturer. Her talents and accomplishments early attracted notice, and during her husband's life, as well as after his death, her house became the rendezvous of the best society in Paris. He left her a considerable fortune, which she greatly augmented by prudence and economy, and which she employed in acts of benevolence and charity. Her generosity was extensive and noble, yet free from any profusion which could impair her means of doing good. "I perceive with satisfaction," she said to D'Alembert, (as he informs us,) "that as I grow older I grow more benevolent, I dare not say better, because my benevolence, like the malignity of some people, may be the effect of weakness of mind. I have profited by what was often said to me by the good Abbé de St. Pierre, that the charity of a worthy man should not be confined to the support and relief of the unfortunate, but that it should extend to the indulgence which their faults so often stand in need of; and, in imitation of him, I have taken for my motto two words, donner et pardonner." Such became her celebrity as a leader in the literary society of Paris, that no traveller of any note thought he had seen that capital till he was introduced to Madame Geoffrin. She had received no regular education, her mind having acquired its cultivation from her intercourse with the world. She confessed she could not even spell; but nothing could exceed the ease and grace of her style: and though she had never studied painting or music, she was an excellent judge and munificent patron of both these arts. Marmontel gives some pleasing pictures of the social meetings at this lady's house. "After having dined," he says, "at Madame Geoffrin's with men of letters or artists, I was again with her in the evening in a more intimate society, for she had also granted me the favour of admitting me to her little suppers. The entertainment was very moderate,—generally a chicken, some spinach, and an omelet. The company were not numerous; they consisted at most of five or six of her particular friends, or three or four gentlemen and ladies of the first fashion, selected to suit each other's tastes, and happy to be together. "You may easily conceive that at these little suppers my self-love prompted all the means I possessed of being amusing and agreeable. The new tales I was then writing, and of which these ladies had the first offering, were read for their entertainment before or after sup 20 per. They made regular appointments to hear them, and when the little supper was prevented by any accident, they assembled at dinner at Madame de Brionne's. I confess that no success ever flattered me so much as that which I obtained by these readings in that little circle, where wit, taste, and beauty were my judges, or rather my eulogists. There was not a single trait, either in my colouring or dialogue, however minutely delicate and subtle, that was not felt at once; and the pleasure I gave had the air of enchantment. I was enraptured to see the finest eyes in the world swimming in tears at the little touching scenes in which I had made love or nature weep. But, notwithstanding the indulgence of extreme politeness, I could well perceive, too, the cold and feeble passages which were passed over in silence, as well as those in which I had mistaken the tone of nature or the just shade of truth; and these passages I kept in mind, that I might correct them at leisure." Madame Geoffrin's husband, like the husbands of many other distinguished blues, was a thoroughly insignificant personage,-a perfect cipher in his own house. Grimm tells some amusing stories of him. He was in the habit of borrowing books of a friend, who, by way of joke, lent him the same book several times over. It happened to be a volume of Father Labat's Travels. Monsieur Geoffrin, with the most perfect simplicity, read it over every time it was lent him. "Well, sir!" said his friend, "how do you like the travels?" "Oh, very good-very good indeed; but I think the author a little given to repetition." A literary foreigner, who had frequently dined at Madame Geoffrin's without knowing her husband, asked her one day, after a long absence from Paris, what had become of the poor gentleman he used to meet there, and who always sat without opening his lips. "Oh!" said the lady, my husband-he is dead." "that was She was celebrated for her bon-mots, of which many are preserved by Grimm and other writers of the day. The Count de Coigny was one day at her table, telling, as was his wont, interminable stories. Some dish being set before him, he took a little clasp-knife from his pocket, and began to help himself, prosing away all the while. le Comte," said Madame Geoffrin at last, out of patience, "at dinner "M. we should have large knives and little stories." One of her literary friends, M. de Rulhiere, having threatened to publish some very imprudent remarks on the conduct of the court of Russia, from the sale of which he expected to make a large profit, she offered him a handsome sum to put his manuscript in the fire, from a good-natured wish to keep him from getting himself into trouble. The author began to talk in a high tone about honour and independence, and the baseness of taking money as a bribe for suppressing the truth. "Well, well," said she with a quiet smile, "say yourself how much more you must have." As may be supposed, she partook of the infidelity which prevailed among the society in which she lived, though her good disposition, and, we may add, good taste, prevented her from adopting the offensive style of conversation then fashionable on the subject of religion. In her long last illness she began to think seriously on this topic, and gave up the society of the philosophers. Having had a stroke of apoplexy, her daughter, the Marquise de la Ferte-Imbert, took the opportunity of shutting her door against D'Alembert, Marmontel, and her other old friends of this description. "Everybody expected," says Grimm, "that as soon as Madame Geoffrin came to herself, she would disavow her daughter's proceedings; but the world was mistaken. After having scolded a little, she forgave her daughter, and confessed that, after all, the viaticum and the philosophers would not do very well together. She said her daughter had been silly, but gave her credit for her zeal. "My daughter," she said with a smile, "is like Godfrey of Bouillon,-she wanted to defend my tomb against the infidels." This plaisanterie savours a little of levity; but her pious impressions appear to have been strengthened by the chastening hand of affliction. She persisted in her determination to see her infidel friends no more, and died, as we are informed by the Biographie Universelle, professing her belief in the truths of religion. She died in 1777, at the age of seventy-eight, leaving behind her a brilliant reputation, and a memory ennobled by many great and good qualities, and unstained by the vices and follies of her time. The character of the Marquise du Deffant reflects more faithfully the manners of the age, with which that of Madame Geoffrin, in many respects, stood in remarkable contrast. This celebrated lady had all the wit, all the talent, all the heartlessness, and all the immorality which entered so largely into the composition of the most polished society the world ever saw. She was born in 1699, of a noble family, and married, at an early age, to the Marquis du Deffant, a man much older than herself. The union was unhappy; they parted, and the lady consoled herself with a lover. This did not prevent a reconciliation from being patched up between the married pair by the intervention of friends. But the lover complained so loudly of the injury the lady had done him by taking back her husband, that, finding it necessary to choose between them, she gave her inamorato the preference, and once more contrived to get rid of the marquis. After this she seems to have had a succession, or rather a plurality of admirers, and to have given herself little trouble about preserving even the appearance of decorum. She is said to have had an intrigue with that inimitable roué the Regent Duke of Orleans; but her earliest known lover seems to have been Pont de Vesle, a man of literary eminence, and of as cold and heartless a character as herself. Her subsequent preference of others did not prevent her from remaining on terms of the most intimate friendship with him, as it was called, for more than forty years. On the very evening of his death, La Harpe tells us, she came to sup with a large party at Madame de Marchais'. On her arrival, somebody began to condole with her on her loss. "Alas!" she said, "he died this evening at six o'clock; had it not been so early I could not have been here." So saying, she sat down to supper, made, as usual, an excellent meal, and was the liveliest of the company. From a colloquy between her and this ancient friend, we may have some notion of the strength of her friendship. "Pont de Vesle," she said to him one day, "we have been friends these forty years, and I don't think we have had a single quarrel or difference all the time.' -“No, madam."-" Don't you think the reason is, that we do not care a great deal for one another?"—"Why, madam, it is very likely."-Well might La Harpe say of her, "Qu'il était difficile d'avoir moins de sensibilité et plus d'égoïsme." |