A Short History of French Literature Part 35

The personality of Madame de Stael is far from being attractive owing to her excessive vanity, which disgusted all her contemporaries, and the folly which made a woman, who had never been beautiful, continue, long after she had ceased to be young, to give herself in life and literature the airs of a newest Helose. But she is a very important figure in French literature. Part of her influence, as represented by the book _De l'Allemagne,_ does not directly concern us in this chapter; this part was mainly, but not wholly, literary. It was helped and continued, however, by her other works, especially by her novels, and, above all, by _Corinne_. This influence, put briefly, was to break up the narrowness of French notions on all subjects, and to open it to fresh ideas. Her political and general works led the way to the nineteenth century, side by side with Chateaubriand's, but in an entirely different sense. What Chateaubriand inculcated was the sense of the beauty of older and simpler times, countries, and faiths which the self-satisfaction of the eighteenth century had obscured; what Madame de Stael had to impress were general ideas of liberalism and progress to which the same century, in its crusade against superst.i.tion and its rather short-sighted belief in its own enlightenment, was equally blind.

_Delphine_, which is in the main a romance of French society only, written before the author had seen much of any other world except a close circle of French emigrants abroad, exhibits this tendency much less than _Corinne_, which was written after that German visit--by far the most important event of Madame de Stael's life. Here, as Rousseau had inculcated the story of nature and savage life, as Chateaubriand was, at the same time, inculcating the study of Christian antiquity and the middle ages, so Madame de Stael inculcated the cultivation of aesthetic emotions and impulses as a new influence to be brought to bear on life. Her style, though not to be spoken of disrespectfully, is, on the whole, inferior to her matter. It is full of the drawbacks of eighteenth-century _eloges_ and academic discourses, now tawdry, now deficient in colour, flexibility, and life, at one time below the subject, at another puffed up with commonplace and insincere declamation. Yet when she understood a subject, which was by no means invariably the case, Madame de Stael was an excellent exponent; and when her feelings were sincere, which they sometimes were, she was a fair mistress of pathos.

A considerable number of names of writers of fiction during the later republic and the empire have a traditional place in the history of literature, and some of their works are still read, but chiefly as school-books. Madame de Genlis, the author of _Les Veillees du Chateau_, and also of many volumes of ill-natured, and not too accurate, memoirs and reminiscences, continued the moral tale of the eighteenth century, and in _Mlle. de Clermont_ produced work of merit. Fievee, a journalist and critic of some talent, is remembered for the pretty story of the _Dot de Suzette_. Madame de Souza, in her _Adele de Senanges_ and other works, revived, to a certain extent, the style of Madame de la Fayette.

_Ourika_ and _Edouard_, especially the latter, preserve the name of Madame de Duras. Madame Cottin, in _Malek Adel_, _Elizabeth_ or _Les Exiles de Siberie_, etc., combined a mild flavour of romance with irreproachable moral sentiments. A vigorous continuator of the licentious style of novel, with hardly any of the literary refinement of its eighteenth-century contributors, but with more fertility of incident and fancy, was Pigault Lebrun, the forerunner of Paul de k.o.c.k. Madame de Krudener, a woman of remarkable history, produced a good novel of sentiment in _Valerie_.

[Sidenote: Xavier de Maistre.]

Two novelists, singularly different in idiosyncrasy, complete what may be called the eighteenth-century school. Xavier de Maistre, younger brother of the great Catholic polemist, Joseph de Maistre, was born at Chambery, in 1763. He served in the Piedmontese army during his youth, and his most famous work, the _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, was published in 1794. The national extinction of Savoy and Piedmont, at least the annexation of Savoy and the effacement of Piedmont, made Xavier de Maistre an exile. He joined his brother in St. Petersburg, served in the Russian army, fought, and was wounded in the Caucasus; attained the rank of general, and died at St. Petersburg, in 1852, at the great age of eighty-nine. His work consists of the _Voyage_, an account of a temporary imprisonment in his quarters at Turin, obviously suggested by Sterne, but exceedingly original in execution; _Le Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste,_ in which the same inspiration and the same independent use of it are noticeable; and _Les Prisonniers du Caucase_, a vivid narrative rather in the manner of the nineteenth than of the eighteenth century, with a continuation of the _Voyage_ called _Expedition Nocturne_, which has not escaped the usual fate of continuations, and a short version of the touching story of Prascovia, which contrasts very curiously with Madame Cottin's more artificial handling of the same subject. The important point about Xavier de Maistre is that he unites the sentimentality of the eighteenth century, and not a little of its _Marivaudage_, with an exactness of observation, a general truth of description, and a sense of narrative art which belong rather to the nineteenth. Although he was not a Frenchman, his style has always been regarded as a model of French; and the great authority of Sainte Beuve justly places him and Merimee side by side as the most perfect tellers of tales in the simple fas.h.i.+on.

[Sidenote: Benjamin Constant.]

Benjamin Constant's _Adolphe_, 1815, is a very different work, but an equally remarkable one. It may be a question whether it is not ent.i.tled to take rank rather as the first book of the nineteenth-century school than as the last of the eighteenth. But its author (better known as a politician) published no further attempt to pursue the way he had opened; and though he himself denied its application to the persons who were usually identified with its characters, there is every reason to believe that it was rather the record of a personal experience than a deliberate effort of art. It is very short, dealing with the love of a certain Adolphe for a certain Ellenore and his disenchantment. The psychological drawing, though one-sided, is astonis.h.i.+ngly true, and though _sensibilite_ is still present, it has obviously lost its hold both on the characters represented and their creator. Deliberate a.n.a.lysis appears almost as much as in the work of Beyle himself. It is in every respect a remarkable book, and many parts of it might have been written at the present day. What distinguishes it from almost all its forerunners is that there is hardly any attempt at incident, far less at adventure. The play of thought and feeling is the sole source of interest. It is true that the situation is one that could not support a long book, and that it is thus rather an essay at the modern a.n.a.lytic novel than a finished example of it. But it is such an essay, and very far from an unsuccessful one.

FOOTNOTES:

[288] The works of fiction written by the great authors of the century are easily obtainable. _Manon Lescaut_ has been frequently and satisfactorily reproduced of late years--the two editions of Glady, with and without ill.u.s.trations, being especially noteworthy. Restif de la Bretonne is a literary curiosity whose voluminous works hardly any collector possesses in their entirety; but the three volumes of the _Contemporaines_, selected and edited for the _Nouvelle Collection Jannet_ by M. a.s.sezat, will give a very fair idea of his peculiarities.

Of most of the other authors mentioned convenient, handsome, and not too expensive editions will be found in the _Bibliotheque Amusante_ of MM.

Garnier Freres. This includes Mesdames de Tencin, de Fontaines, Riccoboni, de Beaumont, de Genlis, de Duras, de Souza, as well as Marivaux and Fievee. Lesage's more remarkable fictions are obtainable at every library. Xavier de Maistre forms a single cheap volume. A handsome little edition of Constant's _Adolphe_ has been edited by M. de Lescure for the Librairie des Bibliophiles. Cazotte's _Diable Amoureux_ is in the _Nouvelle Collection Jannet_. M. Uzanne's reproductions of the prose tale-tellers are excellent.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORIANS, MEMOIR-WRITERS, LETTER-WRITERS.

[Sidenote: Characteristics and Divisions of Eighteenth-century History.]

In the three branches of literature included in this chapter the interest of the eighteenth century is great, but unequally divided. In history proper, that is to say, the connected survey from doc.u.ments of a greater or lesser period of the past, the age saw, if not the beginning, certainly the maturing of a philosophical conception of the science.

Putting Bossuet out of the question, Vico in Italy, Montesquieu and Turgot in France, are usually and rightly credited with the working out of this great conception. But though pretty fully worked, or at least sketched out, it was not applied in any book of bulk and merit. The writings of Montesquieu and Turgot themselves are not history--they are essays of lesser or greater length in historical philosophy. Nor from the merely literary point of view has France any historical production of the first rank to put forward at this time. The works of greater extent, such as Rollin's, are of no special literary value; the works of literary value, such as Voltaire's studies, are of but small extent, and rather resemble the historical essay of the preceding century, which still continued to be practised, and which had one special pract.i.tioner of merit in Rulhiere. But nothing even distantly approaching the English masterpiece of the period, the _Decline and Fall_, was produced; hardly anything approaching Hume's History. Nor again do the memoirs[289] of this time equal those of the seventeenth century in literary power, though they are useful as sources of historical and social information.

No man of letters of the first cla.s.s has left such work, and no one, not by profession a man of letters, has by such work come even near the position of the Cardinal de Retz or the Duke de Saint Simon, the latter of whom, it is fair to remember, actually lived into the second half of the century. On the other hand, the letter-writers of the time are numerous and excellent. Although no one of them equals Madame de Sevigne in bulk and in completeness of merit, the letters of Mademoiselle de l'Espina.s.se, of Madame du Deffand, of Diderot to Mademoiselle Volland, and some others, are of very great excellence, and almost unsurpa.s.sed in their characterization of the intellectual and social peculiarities of the time. The absence of regular histories of the first merit would be more surprising than it is if it were not fully accounted for by the dominant peculiarity of the day, which is never to be forgotten in studying its history--the absorption, that is to say, of the greater part of the intellect of the time in the _philosophe_ polemic. Almost all the histories that were written, except as works of pure erudition, were in reality pamphlets intended to point, more or less allegorically, some moral as to real or supposed abuses in the social, ecclesiastical, or political state of France. This peculiarity could not fail to detract from their permanent interest, even if it did not (as it too often did) make the authors less careful to give a correct account of their subject than to make it serve their purpose.

[Sidenote: Rollin.]

The first regular historian who deserves mention is Charles Rollin, who perhaps had a longer and wider monopoly of a certain kind of historical instruction than any other author. He was born at Paris in January, 1661, of the middle cla.s.s, and, after studying at the College du Plessis, he became Professor at the College de France, and, in 1694, Rector of the University; a post in which he distinguished himself by introducing many useful and much-needed reforms. He was a Jansenist, but was not much inconvenienced in consequence. Rollin's book (that is to say the only one by which he is remembered) is his extensive _Histoire Ancienne_, 1730-1738, the work of his advanced years, which was the standard treatise on the subject for nearly a century, and was translated into most languages. Although showing no particular historical grasp, written with no power of style, and not universally accurate, it deserves such praise as may be due to a work of great practical utility requiring much industrious labour, and not imitated from or much a.s.sisted by any previous book. The _Histoire Romaine_, which followed it, was of little worth, but Rollin's _Traite des etudes_ was a very useful book in its time.

[Sidenote: Dubos.]

[Sidenote: Boulainvilliers.]

Two historians, who hardly deserve the name, are usually ranked together in this part of French history, partly because they represent almost the last of the fabulous school of history-writers, partly because their disputes (for they were of opposite factions) have had the honour to be noticed by Montesquieu. These were Dubos and Boulainvilliers. The Abbe Dubos was a writer of some merit on a great variety of subjects; his _Reflexions sur la Poesie et la Peinture_ being of value. His chief historical work is ent.i.tled _Histoire Critique de l'Etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Monarchie Francaise dans les Gaules_, in which, with a paradoxical patriotism, which has found some echoes among living historians, he maintained that the Frankish invasion of Gaul was the consequence of an amicable invitation, that the Gauls were in no sense conquered, and that all conclusions based on the supposition of such a conquest were therefore erroneous. It is fair to Dubos to say that he had been in a manner provoked by the arguments of the Count de Boulainvilliers.

According to this latter, the Frankish conquest had resulted in the establishment of a dominant caste, which alone had full enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and which was lineally, or at least t.i.tularly, represented by the French aristocracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These reckless and baseless hypotheses would not require notice, were it not important to show how long it was before the idea of rigid enquiry into doc.u.mentary facts on the one hand, and philosophical application of general laws on the other, were observed in historical writing.

[Sidenote: Voltaire.]

Montesquieu himself will come in for mention under the head of philosophers, but Voltaire's ubiquity will be maintained in this chapter. His strictly historical work was indeed considerable, even if what is perhaps the most remarkable of it, the _Essai sur les Moeurs_ (which may be described as a treatise, with instances, on the philosophy of history, as applied to modern times), be excluded. Besides smaller works, the histories of Charles XII. and Peter the Great, the _Age of Louis XIV._, the _Age of Louis XV._, and the _Annals of the Empire_, belong to the cla.s.s of which we are now treating. Of these there is no doubt that the _Siecle de Louis Quatorze_, 1752, is the best, though the slighter sketches of Charles, 1731, and Peter, 1759, are not undeserving of the position they have long held as little masterpieces. Voltaire, however, was not altogether well qualified for a historian; indeed, he had but few qualifications for the work, except his mastery of a clear, light, and lively style. He had no real conception, such as Montesquieu had, of the philosophy of history, or of the operation of general causes. His reading, though extensive, was desultory and uncritical, and he constantly fell into the most grotesque blunders. His prejudices were very strong, and he is more responsible than any other single person for the absurd and ignorant disdain of the middle ages, which, so long as it lasted, made comprehension of modern history and society simply impossible, because the origins of both were wilfully ignored. These various drawbacks had perhaps less influence on the _Siecle de Louis Quatorze_ than on any other of his historical works, and it is accordingly the best. He was well acquainted with the subject, he was much interested in it, it touched few of his prejudices, and he was able to speak with tolerable freedom about it. The result is excellent, and it deserves the credit of being almost the first finished history (as distinguished from mere diaries like those of L'Estoile) in which not merely affairs of state, but literary, artistic, and social matters generally found a place.

[Sidenote: Mably.]

The third and fourth quarters of the century are the special period when history was, as has been said, degraded to the level of a party pamphlet, especially in such works as the Abbe Raynal's _Histoire des Indes_. This was a mere vehicle for _philosophe_ tirades on religious and political subjects, many if not most of which are known to have proceeded from Diderot's fertile pen. Crevier and Lebeau, however, names forgotten now, continued the work of Rollin; and meanwhile the descendants of the laborious school of historians mentioned in the last book (many of whom survived until far into the century) pursued their useful work. Not the least of these was Dom Calmet, author of the well-known 'Dictionary of the Bible.' But the chief historical names of the later eighteenth century are Mably and Rulhiere. Mably, who might be treated equally well under the head of philosophy, was an abbe, and moderately orthodox in religion, though decidedly Republican in politics. He was a man of some learning; but, if less ignorant than Voltaire, he was equally blind to the real meaning and influence of the middle ages and of mediaeval inst.i.tutions. He looked back to the inst.i.tutions of Rome, and still more of Greece, as models of political perfection, without making the slightest allowance for the difference of circ.u.mstances; and to him more than to any one else is due the nonsensical declamation of the Jacobins about tyrants and champions of liberty. His works, the _Entretiens de Phocion_, the _Observations sur l'Histoire de France_, the _Droits de l'Europe fondes sur les Traites_, are, however, far from dest.i.tute of value, though, as generally happens, it was their least valuable part which (especially when Rousseau followed to enforce similar ideas with his contagious enthusiasm) produced the greatest effect.

[Sidenote: Rulhiere.]

Rulhiere, who was really a historian of excellence, and who might under rather more favourable circ.u.mstances have been one of the most distinguished, was born about 1735. His Christian names were Claude Carloman. He was of n.o.ble birth, was educated at the College Louis-le-Grand, and served in the army till he was nearly thirty years old. He then went to St. Petersburg as secretary to the amba.s.sador Breteuil, whom he also accompanied to Sweden. He returned to Paris and began to write the history of the singular proceedings which during his stay in the Russian capital had placed Catherine II. on the throne. The Empress, it is said, tried both to bribe and to frighten him, but could obtain nothing but a promise not to print the sketch till her death. He continued to live in Paris, where he was distinguished for rather ill-natured wit and for polished verse-tales and epigrams. For some reason he devoted himself to the history of Poland. In 1787 he was elected to the Academy. Then he wrote some _Eclairciss.e.m.e.nts Historiques sur les Causes de la Revocation de l'edit de Nantes_, and is said to have begun other historical works. He died in 1791. His 'Anecdotes on the Revolution in Russia' did not appear till 1797; his _Histoire de l'Anarchie de Pologne_ not till even later. The Polish book is unfinished, and is said to have been garbled in ma.n.u.script. But it has very considerable merits, though there is perhaps too much discussion in proportion to the facts given. The Russian anecdotes deserve to rank with the historical essays of Retz and Saint-Real in vividness and precision of drawing.

These are the chief names of the century in history proper, for Volney, who concludes it in regard to the study of history, is, like many of his predecessors, rather a philosopher busying himself with the historical departments and applications of his subject than a historian proper.

Still more may this be said of Diderot in such works as the _Essai sur les Regnes de Claude et de Neron_. The creation of a school of accomplished historians was left for the next century, when the opportunity of such a subject as the French Revolution in the immediate past, the stimulus of the precepts and views of the great writers on the philosophy of history, and lastly the disinterring of the original doc.u.ments of mediaeval and ancient history, did not fail to produce their natural effect. The number of historians of the first and second cla.s.s born towards the close of the eighteenth century is remarkable.

[Sidenote: Memoirs. Madame de Staal-Delaunay.]

[Sidenote: Duclos.]

[Sidenote: Besenval.]

[Sidenote: Madame d'Epinay.]

The first memoirs, properly so called, which have to be mentioned as belonging to the eighteenth century, are those of Mademoiselle Delaunay, afterwards Madame de Staal. Mademoiselle Delaunay was attached to the household of the d.u.c.h.ess du Maine, the beautiful, impetuous, and highborn wife of one of the stupidest and least interesting of men, who happened also to be the illegitimate son of Louis XIV. The Duke du Maine, or rather his wife, for he himself was nearly as dest.i.tute of ambition as of ability, was at the head of the party opposed to that of which the Duke of Orleans (the Regent) was the natural chief, and Saint Simon the ablest partisan. The 'party of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' failed, but the d.u.c.h.ess kept up a vigorous literary and political agitation against the Regent. The court (as it may be called) of this opposition was held at Sceaux, and of the doings of this court Madame de Staal has left a very vivid account. The Marquis d'Argenson, a statesman and a man of great intelligence, concealed under a rough and clumsy exterior, has left memoirs which are valuable for the early and middle part of the reign of Louis XV. The memoirs, properly so called, of Duclos are of small extent, but he has left impersonal memoirs of the later reign of Louis XIV. and the beginning of that of his great-grandson, which are among the best historical work of the time. His account of the famous 'system'

of Law is one of the princ.i.p.al sources of information on its subject, as is his handling of the Cellamare conspiracy and other affairs of the regency. Duclos was a man not only of considerable literary talent, but of wide historical reading, which appears amply in his work. The gossiping memoirs, attributed to Madame du Hausset, bedchamber-woman to Madame de Pompadour, give many curious details of the middle period of Louis XV.'s reign; and in the vast collection of t.i.ttle-tattle, often scandalous enough, called the _Memoires de Bachaumont_, much matter of interest, and some that is of value, may be found. Among the most valuable memoirs of this kind are those of Colle, which have been only recently edited in full. Colle, who, though a time-server and an ill-natured man, had much literary talent, was an acute observer, and enjoyed great opportunities, has left important materials for the middle of the century. The Baron de Besenval, half a Savoyard and half a Pole, who played an important part in the early days of the Revolution, and who had previously encouraged Marie Antoinette in the levities, harmless enough but worse than ill-judged, which had so fatal a result, has left reminiscences of the later years of Louis XV., and a connected narrative of the outbreak of the Revolution. The memoirs concerning the _Philosophes_ form a library in themselves, even those which concern Voltaire alone making a not inconsiderable collection. Those of Madame d'Epinay (the friend of Grimm, of Galiani, and of Rousseau), of Marmontel, of Morellet, are perhaps the princ.i.p.al of this group.

Marmontel's memoirs are among his best works, and Madame d'Epinay's are among the most characteristic of the period. There is a certain number of interesting memoirs of actors and actresses, which dates from this time, including those of the great actress Mademoiselle Clairon, the tragic actor Le Kain, and others.

[Sidenote: Minor Memoirs.]

Circ.u.mstances rather political than literary have given a place in literary history to the memoirs of Linguet and Latude concerning the Bastile. That celebrated building, however, figures largely in the memoirs of the time, and the experiences of Voltaire, Marmontel, Crebillon, and others show how greatly exaggerated is the popular notion of its dungeons and torments. The so-called memoirs of the Duke de Richelieu (the type, and a very debased type, of the French n.o.blesse of the eighteenth century, as La Rochefoucauld was of that of the seventeenth) are the work of Soulavie, a literary man and unfrocked abbe of very dubious character: but they at least rest upon authentic data, and abound in the most curious information. The President Henault, a man of probity and learning, has left memoirs of value.

[Sidenote: Memoirs of the Revolutionary Period.]

As might be expected, the collection of memoirs which have reference to the Revolution and the Empire is very large. The fortunes of the ill-fated royal family are dealt with in three sets of memoirs, on which all historians have been obliged to draw, those of Madame Campan, of Weber, and of Clery, all three of whom were attendants on Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. The memoirs of the first-named are supposed to be the least accurate in matters of fact. The ill-natured and factious Madame de Genlis has left two different works of the memoir kind, the one ent.i.tled _Souvenirs de Felicie_, which is somewhat fict.i.tious in form and arrangement, but is believed to be accurate enough in facts; the other, definitely called _Memoirs_, which was written long after date, and is much coloured by prejudice. The Marquis de Bouille, whose gallant conduct during the Nancy mutiny set an example which the n.o.bility of France were unfortunately slow to follow, and who would have saved Louis XVI. in the Varennes flight but for ill-luck and the king's incredible folly, has also left memoirs of value; and so has Dumouriez. The memoirs of Louvet, of Daunou, of Riouffe, of the Duke de Lauzun, of the Comte de Vaublanc, of the Comte de Segur, may be mentioned. The unamiable but striking and characteristic figure of Madame Roland lives in memoirs which are among the most celebrated of the time. A group of short but striking accounts of eye-witnesses and narrowly-rescued victims remains to testify to the atrocities of that Second of September, which some recent historians have striven in vain to palliate. Many of the men of the Revolution, of the servants of the Empire and of their wives, have left accounts (of more or less value in point of matter) of the events of the time, some of which have been only very recently published. Among these latter special notice is deserved by the memoirs of Davout, of Madame de Remusat, and of Count Miot de Melito. But with few exceptions (those of Madame de Remusat are perhaps the princ.i.p.al) none of these memoirs are of great literary importance or interest. They are often very valuable to the historian, very curious to the student of manners or the mere seeker after interesting and amusing facts; but no one of them, named or unnamed, can be said to rank in literary interest with the work which is so plentiful in the preceding century, and which const.i.tutes so large a part of that century's claim to a place of first importance in the history of French literature.

[Sidenote: Abundance of Letter-writers.]

It is otherwise with letters, of which the century contributes to literature some of the most remarkable which we possess. It is impossible even to give a bare list of those which remain from a time when almost every person of quality knew how to correspond either in the natural or the artificial style; but the most remarkable (each of which is in its way typical of a group) may be noticed with some minuteness.

Among these the correspondence of Grimm, though one of the bulkiest and most important, may be dismissed with a brief reference; for it will be noticed again in the succeeding chapter, and most of it is not either the work of one man or real correspondence. The flying sheets which Grimm, largely aided by his complaisant friends, and especially by Diderot, sent to his august Russian and German correspondents, were in reality periodical summaries of the state of politics, society, letters, and art in Paris, not different in subject and style from the printed newspaper letters of the present day. They form in the aggregate a very important work, whether looked at from the point of view of history, or from the point of view of literature; but they are not, properly speaking, letters. Of the letter-writers proper three women and three men may be selected,--Mademoiselle a.s.se, Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se, and Madame du Deffand; Voltaire, Diderot, and Galiani.

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle a.s.se.]

Mademoiselle a.s.se had a singular history. When a child she was carried off by Turkish rovers, and sold at Constantinople to the French amba.s.sador, M. de Ferriol. This was at the beginning of the century. Her purchaser had her brought up carefully at Paris as his property, which no doubt he always considered her. But in his old age he became childish, and Mademoiselle a.s.se was free to frequent society to which she had been early introduced. She met and fell in love with a certain Chevalier d'Aydie, who himself (at a later date, for the most part,) was a letter-writer of some merit. Her letters to him and of him const.i.tute her claim to a position in the history of literature. They display the _sensibilite_ of the time in a decided form, but in a milder one than the later letters of Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se. But there is something in them more than mere _sensibilite_--a tender and affectionate spirit finding graceful expression and deserving a happier fate. Mademoiselle a.s.se, like most other people of her time, turned devout, but earlier than most. She died in 1733.

[Sidenote: Madame du Deffand.]

Madame du Deffand was a very different person. She was born in 1697, and she distinguished herself when quite a girl, not merely by her beauty, but by her wit and tendency to freethinking. She was married in 1718 to the Marquis du Deffand, but soon separated from him, and lived for many years the then usual life of gallantry. This merged insensibly into a life of literary and philosophical society. Though Madame du Deffand was not, like the wealthier but more plebeian Madame Geoffrin, and later Madame Helvetius, a 'nursing mother of the philosophers,' in the sense of supplying their necessities, her salon in the Rue Saint Dominique was long one of the chief resorts of philosophism. In 1753 she became blind, but this made little difference in her appet.i.te for society. She lived like many other great ladies in a monastery. She died in 1780. As a letter-writer Madame du Deffand was the correspondent of most of the greatest men of letters of the time (Voltaire, D'Alembert, Henault, Montesquieu, etc.). But her most remarkable correspondence, and perhaps her most interesting one, was with Horace Walpole, the most French of contemporary Englishmen. Their friends.h.i.+p, for which it is hard to find an exact name, unless, perhaps, it may be called a kind of pa.s.sionate community of tastes, belongs to the later part of her long life. Madame du Deffand is the typical French lady of the eighteenth century, as Richelieu is the typical _grand seigneur_. She was perhaps the wittiest woman (in the strict sense of the adjective) who ever lived[290], and an astonis.h.i.+ngly large proportion of the best sayings of the time is traced or attributed to her. Nearly seventy years of conversation and a great correspondence did not exhaust her faculty of acute sallies, of ruthless criticism, of cynical but clearsighted judgment on men and things. But she was thoroughly unamiable, purely selfish, jealous, spiteful, dest.i.tute of humour, if full of wit. A comparison with Madame de Sevigne shows how the French character had, in the upper ranks at least, degenerated (it is worth remembering that Madame du Deffand was born just after Madame de Sevigne's death), though it must be admitted that the earlier character shows perhaps the germs of what is repulsive in the second.

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se.]

The third most remarkable lady letter-writer of the century, Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se, was closely connected with Madame du Deffand. She was indeed her companion, her coadjutor, and her rival.

Julie Jeanne Eleonore de Lespina.s.se was in reality the illegitimate daughter of a lady of rank, the Countess d'Albon, who lived apart from her husband, and the name Lespina.s.se was merely a fancy name taken from the D'Albon genealogy. She was born, or at least baptized, at Lyons on the 19th November, 1732. Her mother, who practically acknowledged her, died when she was fifteen, leaving her fairly provided for. But her half-brothers and sisters deprived her of most of her portion, though for a time they gave her a home. In 1754 Madame du Deffand, to whom she had been recommended, and who had just been struck with blindness, invited her to come and live with her, which she did, after some hesitation. For ten years the two presided jointly over their society, but at last Madame du Deffand's jealousy broke out. Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se retired, taking with her not a few of the habitues of the salon, with D'Alembert at their head. Madame Geoffrin seems to have endowed her, and she established herself in the Rue de Bellecha.s.se, where D'Alembert before long came to join her. They lived in a curious sort of relations.h.i.+p for more than ten years, until Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se died on the 22nd May, 1776. During this time she was a gracious hostess and a bond of union to many men of letters, especially those of the younger _philosophe_ school. But this is not what gives her her place here. Her claim rests upon a collection of love-letters, not addressed to D'Alembert. She was thirty-four when the earliest of her love affairs began, and had never been beautiful. When she died she was forty-four, and her later letters are more pa.s.sionate than the earlier.

Her first lover was a young Spaniard, the Marquis Gonsalvo de Mora; her second, the Count de Guibert, a poet and essayist of no great merit, a military reformer said to have been of some talent, and pretty evidently a bad-hearted c.o.xcomb. To him the epistles we have are addressed. All the circ.u.mstances of these letters are calculated to make them ridiculous, yet there is hardly any word which they less deserve. The great defect of the eighteenth century is that its _sensibilite_ excludes real pa.s.sion. The men and women of feeling of the period always seem as if they were playing at feeling; the affairs of the heart, which occupy so large a place in its literature, show only the progress of a certain kind of game which has its rules and stages to which the players must conform, but which, when once over, leaves no more traces than any other kind of game. To this Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se is a conspicuous exception. It has been said of her that her letters burn the paper they are written on with the fervency of their sentiment, nor is the expression an exaggerated one. Except in Rousseau and (in a different form) in _Manon Lescaut_, it is in these letters that we must look for almost the only genuine pa.s.sion of the time. It is no doubt unreal to a certain degree, morbid also in an even greater degree as regards what is real in it. But it is in no sense consciously affected, and conscious affectation was the bane of the period.