MARIE JEANNE D’AUMALE
A Little Schoolgirl of Saint-Cyr
Part I.
The little “new” girl had sobbed herself to sleep at last, and in all the long, white dormitory there was no sound but that of the regular breathing of healthy, sleeping children. Very gently, Madame de Fontaine withdrew her hand from the lock of the little fingers which had held it so long. Then, as she stooped to kiss the small face on the tear-stained pillow, she heard a murmur of “Maman!” and saw that the child was smiling in her sleep.
“She is dreaming of home,” said Madame de Fontaine to herself; and, involuntarily, she turned to the unshuttered window, when she was back in her cell at the end of the dormitory, and yielded her own dreams to the spells the white moon was weaving for them.
Away across the park, long cords of light were stretched across the dark mass of the Château, where a King and his courtiers held revel. Now and then, the night wind whispering to the tall trees, carried snatches of the music to which the dainty, jewelled feet of the Court ladies moved rhythmically. But these things barely touched the nun’s consciousness. Beyond the boundaries of the stately park, far away from the echoes of courtly music, or the light of a King’s presence, her dreams were following where those of little Marie Jeanne d’Aumale had led—to an old “gentilhommière” in the heart of the provinces, very shabby, and tumble-down, and dilapidated, but where a little girl could be very happy, because she called it “home.”
It may well have been that more than one of the little sleepers in the long row of little white beds was dreaming of just such an old “noblesse”;[14] and that is why, as she looked into the moonlit park, the nun could see it so plainly before her. Poor little girls! Two titles had procured for them their right of entrance into Saint-Cyr: nobility of birth, and poverty; and one was more clearly written across the tumble-down walls, the grass-grown courtyard, the empty byres and stables of their old provincial “gentilhommières,” than the other on the Coat of Arms carved above the dilapidated doorway.
And was not one as honourable as the other? Nun as she was, Madame de Fontaine was not yet dead to that noble pride, to which, as Madame de Maintenon herself has finely said, “before having died, one must have lived.” And, standing there at the window of that establishment, whose foundation, four years ago, represented an instalment of payment of the debt contracted by the Monarchy to France, to the nobility of France, ruined in its service, she felt the thrill of one whose order “hath chosen the better part.”
And all the time, from the lighted palace across the park, floated the soft strains of dance-music! There, they who had made the other choice, who had abandoned their homes, and their home duties, who lived at Court, absentees from their estates, and deserters from their “consigne,” were dancing their “branles,” and “courantes,” their “menuets” and “passe-pied” in the light of the King’s presence. Let them dance on! The true hope of France was in these little sleeping girls, who, gathered together under the pious roof of Saint-Cyr, were being trained for a womanhood, which should work out the regeneration of a kingdom.
Never has a more splendid tribute been paid to women than in the foundation of Saint-Cyr; and one runs the risk of failing to realize its importance, both in the history of feminism, and in the history of education, if one neglects to consider it, as much in the light of the statesmanship of Louis XIV. as in that of the charity of Madame de Maintenon. The primary idea was hers, no doubt—but it remained for the King, not only to supply her with the means of putting her project into execution, but to perceive the part it might play in the economical reconstruction of his kingdom. Long wars had left the country desolate, but no class was made “with its desolation more desolate” than the class of country gentlemen. And yet it was among them that the King had always found his most gallant and disinterested defenders. It grieved him to the heart when he heard the tales of the misery in which, among their untilled fields and half-ruined walls, they were rearing their families. In his coffers there was not the wherewithal to requite their services, and help them to cultivate their fields again and rebuild their “gentilhommières.” But there was something else that could be done for them, and the King did it. He could give them “Valiant Women”—and he knew in his heart that the gift was indeed a royal one, and worthy of him—more precious to those who received it than gold and silver. “Far, and from the uttermost coasts” was to be the price of those whom Saint-Cyr was rearing for France.
As I have said, the primary idea was Madame de Maintenon’s, and it developed successively from a small start at Rueil (1682) with sixty pupils, through Noisy with its one hundred and twenty-four, to stately Saint-Cyr with its projected five hundred. Herself a daughter of the class of smaller landed gentry, she had experienced in her own person all the sorrows and bitterness, all the temptations and dangers to which these poor little sisters of her order must inevitably be exposed—and her thought was to gather as many of them as possible into shelter from them. With the generous means put at her disposition she reckoned that she could provide for five hundred young girls, up to the age of fifteen.
But—and it was the statesmanship of the King that raised the point—would there really be very much gained by keeping the girls only until their fifteenth year, and then sending them back to their families with nothing but a half-finished education to their credit? Would it not be better to keep them in Saint-Cyr until they were twenty, and their education complete? With an education such as was planned for them, and a small dowry to supplement the fortune it represented, these girls would find no difficulty in securing suitable “partis,” or being received into convents.
Madame de Maintenon perceived that this course would be much better, and she willingly agreed to have the original number of five hundred pupils reduced to two hundred and fifty. For, as she plainly saw, it was less a question of gathering in the greatest number of girls possible, than of conferring a permanent benefit on the whole kingdom, “by making the foundation a source of pious instruction for it.” Saint-Cyr was to be the leaven, which, hidden in “three measures of meal” (being the whole of France), was “to leaven the whole.” Every girl who left Saint-Cyr, after her thirteen years’ training in all Christian and womanly virtues and accomplishments, was to be a centre of education and enlightenment for all those with whom she should come in contact. In her was to come to life that picture of the Christian Gentlewoman which Fénélon has painted in immortal colours, and which M. Octave Gréard has hung in its true place in his gallery of women:—
“As for me,” he says, in his admirable introduction to the “Education des Filles,” “I love to picture to myself the young woman, educated by Fénélon, as he has painted her, in the setting of a provincial ‘gentilhommière’ he has chosen for her. Up with the dawn, lest laziness or self-indulgence should gain any hold on her; carefully planning the employment of her own day, and that of her servants, and apportioning its various tasks among them with gentle authority; devoting to her children all the time that is necessary to learn to know their characters, and to train them in right principles; her clever hands always busy with some useful piece of needlework; interesting herself in the business of the farm and the estate, and missing no opportunity of learning even from the humblest of those engaged on them; thoughtful for the comforts and wants of her dependents; founding little schools for poor children, and interesting her friends in the care of the destitute sick; leading amid solid and useful occupations, such as these, a full if uneventful existence, and animating everything about her with the same sentiment of life.”
No one who knows intimately the Catholic women of France can fail to recognise the type, and in its persistence (which really inspires a belief in the resurrection of France) must see an overwhelming justification of the statesmanship of Louis XIV. “What France needs,” says Père La Chaise, and he spoke for his royal penitent, too, “is not good nuns—we have enough of them—but good mothers of families.” It is the glory of Saint-Cyr, from its foundation until it fell under the axe of Revolution, to have furnished France with them, and, what is more, to have assured the vitality of the strain in a degree to which the affairs of France bear witness even to-day. When at a recent re-union of the “Ligue des Femmes Françaises,” the Catholic Women’s League of France, we saw the portrait of the ideal “Femme Française,” drawn by the Marquis de Lespinay, and recognised, in every gracious detail, its identity with the ideal which Fénélon formulated, and Saint-Cyr realized, did it not seem, indeed, that Madame de Maintenon’s prayer had been heard? That Saint-Cyr will live—in spirit at least—as long as France, and that France will live—because of it—as long as the world? Vive Saint-Cyr! Puisse-t-il durer autant que la France, et la France autant que le monde!
She was accustomed to early hours at home, was our little Marie-Jeanne, being a busy young person, whose usefulness in minding turkeys, and similar offices, was never questioned in the d’Aumale household. Accordingly, she was quite wide-awake when, very early next morning, the shutters were opened, and somebody passed down the dormitory, pausing at each little white bed to pass the holy-water to its small occupant, and elicit “Deo Gratiases” of varying degrees of drowsiness in answer to a very brisk “Benedicamus Domino.” Some of the “Deo Gratiases” were very, very sleepy—but certainly not Marie-Jeanne’s. Hers absolutely vibrated with energy, and the emphatic bump with which she immediately transferred her small person from bed to floor was but its fitting sequel.
“The dear little one!” said a voice; and Marie Jeanne, interrupting her toilet, looked up to see a very tall and beautiful lady pass the asperges to the nun, who had put her lonely little self to sleep last night, and come and take her in her arms.
“Shall I send one of the ‘bleues’ to help her to dress, Madame?” inquired the nun. But the beautiful lady shook her head. “I will help her, myself,” she told the Sister, “but indeed I think she will not need much helping.”
She was quite right. Everything that a little girl could reasonably be expected to do for herself, Marie Jeanne d’Aumale did. But, as she explained (afterwards, naturally, for she rightly gathered conversation was not allowed in the dormitory), the uniform of Saint-Cyr, which she donned this morning for the first time, was not at all like the style of garment she had been accustomed to wear at home, and one had to learn the ways of the fastenings.
It was a very pretty uniform, she decided, when she was fully dressed and ready to survey herself. It consisted of a neat brown frock, with a cape and apron to match. The apron was bound, in Marie Jeanne’s case, with a smart red ribbon, which showed, as she presently learned, that she belonged to the “Rouges,” the division comprising the youngest in the school, the children between seven and ten. The “Vertes,” whose apron-ribbon was green, came next in order of age, being girls between eleven and thirteen. Then came the “Jaunes,” with their yellow ribbon—girls between fourteen and sixteen. The “Bleues” were the big girls of the school, and showed their standing by the blue ribbon which bordered their apron. Little or big, they all wore pretty white muslin caps on their heads, and soft white muslin collars round their necks, of the fashion we call “Puritan.” They were encouraged to do their hair, if modestly, as becomingly as possible, and a dainty bit of ribbon was supplied occasionally to help in its adornment. It would appear from an “Entretien” with the “Vertes” in the year 1703, that Madame de Maintenon and the Dames de Saint-Louis had occasionally a little trouble with the “demoiselles” about the way they wore their caps, which they persisted in putting too far back on their heads, showing too much hair.
You may be sure that Marie Jeanne’s cap was properly put on—for, as you have probably guessed already, it was no less a person than Madame de Maintenon herself who helped her to dress on her first morning at Saint-Cyr. As we know, she very often came to the house before the children got up, and was present at their toilet, and had an eye to the way in which they discharged the household tasks that were assigned to them.
And now that Marie Jeanne is dressed and we have sufficiently admired her uniform, I have to ask you whether you would wish to spend the rest of the day with her and the other “Rouges” here at Saint-Cyr. If you do (and I can imagine no experience more profitable for any one interested in little girls and their education), I shall allow Madame de Maintenon herself to do the honours.
In an instruction to the “Class rouge” in the year 1701, she describes in great detail how a “reasonable little girl” spends her day at Saint-Cyr. The “Entretien” is particularly interesting, as enabling us to reconstruct the programme of the day’s work at the celebrated “Maison de Saint-Louis.” Nor is it less interesting, as showing Madame de Maintenon’s methods of instruction. One likes to picture the Classroom of the “Rouge” for the occasion—a charming big room, with tall windows looking out on a beautiful park, with coloured prints and maps on the walls, and fifty-six little girls, in the uniform I have described, sitting in their benches. One fancies that they have hurried back from recreation in the park, with more promptness than usual at the news that Madame is coming to them to-day. And now the door opens, and they all stand up to receive her. We can picture her seated on the rostrum, and our little friends in their places—and the “Entretien” ready to begin. I had forgotten one detail: At Saint-Cyr they always began a lesson with the recitation of the “Veni Creator.”
She looks round the eager little faces, and picks one out. “Mademoiselle de Provieuse,” says Madame, “do you know what is meant by a ‘reasonable’ little girl?” Now, it is not quite easy to define in so many words a reasonable little girl, though one may know in one’s own mind very well what a reasonable little girl is. So Mademoiselle de Provieuse hesitates, and Madame comes to the rescue. It appears that “a reasonable person” is simply “a person who is always doing the right thing at the right time.” That sounds simple, and every little girl present is interested immediately. It seems, then, that to be “reasonable”—and if there is one thing every little Saint-Cyrienne worth her salt wants to be, it is “reasonable”—one has nothing to do, but to do as well as one possibly can whatever one is supposed to be doing at any particular time. Let us see how that works out.
The first thing our “reasonable” little girl does when she awakes in the morning is to make her Morning Offering—and that she does with all her heart. Then, when she is called, she gets up immediately (even though six o’clock seems rather early), dresses herself quickly and modestly, but as neatly and carefully as she can. After that, if she has any time to spare, she helps the smaller children to dress, and takes her share in making beds, tidying up the dormitory, sweeping, dusting, and polishing. No half-done work for her—untidily made beds, sweeping that leaves all the dirt in the corners, or polishing that shows more smears than anything else! No, whatever a “reasonable” little girl does, she does with all her heart, and her only pride is in work well done.
The next item in the day’s programme is morning prayers in the schoolroom. And here our little girl shows how “reasonable” she is by her devotion and attention. She is not the sort of little girl who giggles, and whispers, and tries to distract her companions—not she, for she knows that there is nothing more serious than praying to God. Prayers are followed by breakfast—and as it is as important to eat well as it is to do anything else well, nothing pleases Madame better than to hear of a little girl thoroughly enjoying her breakfast. It would seem that at Saint-Cyr, there was sometimes permission to talk at breakfast, while sometimes silence was enforced. Madame de Maintenon, who likes to give her girls a reason for the rules to which they are subjected, explains on another occasion (Instruction to the “Jaunes,” July, 1703) why these times of silence were prescribed: “The first reason is to teach you to hold your tongues; nothing is so ugly in a girl as to be always talking, even if she were a genius, and said the wittiest and cleverest things possible. The Saint-Cyr girls have always been accused of this fault. Another reason is to give you time to think, for we know that, if you employ it well, nothing will contribute so much to your advantage.”
At eight o’clock our little girl goes to Mass (here a hint is slipped in as to her behaviour in Church—she must see her companions well seated before taking her own place, and during Mass-time she must not turn her head to see who is coming out; she must follow the parts of the Mass with all the respect and devotion of which she is capable, for nothing is so sacred as the Mass).
Classes occupy the time from 8.30 until 12; and I know you will be interested to know what our little friend learns at them. The programme of instruction for the “Rouges” included reading, writing, and arithmetic, the elements of grammar, Catechism and Bible History. If she were a little advanced, she could help the others, and Madame de Maintenon loved to see her little friends doing the mother to their younger companions. According to her, a little girl could not too soon begin to make herself useful to others. In an “Entretien” with the nuns, dated 1701, on the “necessity of avoiding useless fatigues,” we catch a glimpse of a little girl comfortably seated, with a little new-comer, to whom she is teaching her “ba bé,” kneeling at her feet. As Madame de Maintenon is such a disciple of Fénélon (in matters of education) one is glad to think that the little Saint-Cyriennes learned their “ba bé,” not in a Latin Psalter, as was the general habit of the time, but in “the prettily-bound book, with gilt edges and nice pictures,” which he recommends.
For teaching writing, she certainly adopted his methods: “When children can read a little, you should make a sort of play for them by making them form letters.... Children have a natural inclination to draw figures on paper, and, with the least little bit of help and direction, they will learn to form letters, and gradually accustom themselves to write. Then you will say to them: Write me a little note, or send such and such a piece of news to your brother, or your cousin.” We know that Madame de Maintenon herself adopted this method with one of her first pupils, the Duke of Maine. When he was only five years old she told him one day to write a letter to the King. “Oh! but I don’t know how to write a letter,” said the little chap. “Have you nothing in your heart you would like to tell him?” “I am very sorry he has gone away,” says the little Duke, readily. “Very well, write that down; nothing could be better. What else?” “Well, I shall be very, very glad when he comes back.” “There’s your letter written,” says Madame. “All you have to do is to write it down simply as you think it, and, if you think amiss, we shall correct you.” It is in this way, as she told the “Bleues” one day she came to correct their letters for them, that she taught Monsieur de Maine, “and you know,” she said, “what beautiful letters he writes now.”
I have not been able to find any indication of how arithmetic was taught at Saint-Cyr—but its importance for girls had been too strongly insisted on by Fénélon for it to be neglected. “Girls,” he says, “should know the four rules—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. You should practice them in these rules by giving them accounts to make up. Many people find this task a great burden, but if one is accustomed to it from childhood, and learns to avail oneself of the help of the rules, to deal quickly with the most complicated accounts, one loses this distaste.” Very often, as he points out, good and economical housekeeping depends on the housekeeper’s exactitude in keeping accounts.
Grammar was taught at Saint-Cyr in the spirit of the “Education des Filles” by practice in correct writing and speaking, rather than by rule, “as boys study their Latin Grammar.” Again and again the importance of speaking “good French” is insisted upon—and we all know the models that were given them. It was to teach her little girls to speak the purest and best French that Madame de Maintenon had them trained to act some of the best plays of Corneille and Racine. There came a day when these young people “played ‘Andromaque’ so well that they would never play it again—neither it, nor any other of your pieces,” Madame writes to Racine. She did not keep her word, fortunately for us, for they were destined to play “Esther.”
Part II.
If our visit to Saint-Cyr had been paid in the year 1689, we might have been in time for a rehearsal of “Esther,” or even (thrilling thought!) for the famous “fifth” performance, where Madame de Sévigné sat between Madame de Bagnols and the Maréchal de Bellefonds, in “the second bench behind the Duchesses,” and showed her appreciation by an absorbed attention and “certaines louanges sourdes et bien placées” which had their reward. For the King was so gratified that he actually came and spoke to her. “Madame, I am told you like it.” “Sire, what I feel is beyond expression.” “Said his Majesty to me: ‘Racine is very clever.’ Said I to him: ‘Indeed, Sire, he is very clever, but these young people are very clever, too.’” And off she goes for the torchlight drive to Paris, thinking less, one suspects, of Racine and the “very clever young people” who acted his piece, than of her own clever self, and the triumph she had scored over her friends, who were merely fashionable or pretty.
Alas! Dates are stubborn things, and the date of Marie Jeanne’s arrival at Saint-Cyr (1690) precludes all possibility of her having been (for instance) the “youngest of the Israelites” on this occasion, and peeping out from behind the curtains to see that brilliant audience. There were many people in France who, if they had been questioned about the matter, would have said it was just as well for herself. For it was not the sturdy good sense of the Curé of Versailles, alone, that was now awake to the danger of turning the heads of the young actresses; almost everybody who gave any thought to the matter saw how much justice there was in his blunt criticism that this was the way to train up theatrical “stars,” not “novices.” The fact that Saint-Cyr did not primarily set itself to train up “novices,” but rather good wives and mothers, lessened in no way the force of M. Hébert’s strictures. And Madame de Maintenon was not slow to perceive her mistake, and to repair it energetically.
It happened, accordingly, that it was into a very quiet Saint-Cyr—a very dull Saint-Cyr, according to the girls, who had lived through the excitement of the “Esther” performances of the year before—that Marie Jeanne found herself. Now, one day was exactly like another, and anybody who knew the time-tables could tell, exactly, what every little girl in the place was doing at a given hour.
That makes it all the easier for us, who have left Marie Jeanne and her companions, the Rouges, at their morning lessons, and must now come back to finish the day with them. The classes are nearly ended now, and there is a general, and not unpleasant feeling, that it is getting near dinner-time.
But before going to dine there is something to be done. A little girl must examine her conscience “to see in what she may have offended God during the morning, to ask His pardon, and to form the resolution of doing better, with His help, during the rest of the day.” The work she has offered to Him, when she awoke in the morning, is now examined by her, before she hands it in, so to speak; and the faults and blemishes are, if not repaired, at least apologised for. “Most particularly does she examine herself to see if she has fallen into the principal fault from which she has undertaken to rid herself.” At Saint-Cyr, nobody is considered too young to be allowed to forget the responsibility she has, as between her own soul and God.
Dinner-hour is twelve o’clock; and again, as at breakfast, a little girl is expected to really enjoy her food, and every care is taken to have it both appetizing and abundant. It is instructive, in this regard, to find Madame de Maintenon taking the Superior to task when an occasional retrenchment is attempted. In 1696, she wrote to Madame du Peron: “Madame, I have always forgotten to ask you why you continue to give rye bread to the children at a time when wheat is not dear. It is well for them to learn by their own experience the ups and downs of life, and they ought to take their share in the nation’s reverses. But they must go back to their ordinary régime when there is nothing to prevent it. The tendency of communities is to retrench in the matter of food rather than in things that show.” Again speaking to Madame de Glapion, she returns to the subject, giving her a lesson in true economy, which not nuns alone, but all housewives, might read with profit. It would appear that the nuns had not only been pushing their spirit of saving (in what concerned the girls) to the extreme, but that the work-mistresses had allowed a certain spirit of commercialism to creep into their direction of the needlework classes. “Are your girls sempstresses?” she asks, angrily. “Is it for that the King has entrusted them to you?” It is far better for them to learn to turn their hand to all kinds of sewing and mending—family sewing one might call it—than to be expert mantua-makers. She protests against the “economy” which savours of meanness and stupidity. “Indeed, ma sœur, when the big girls have worn their dresses more than a year, it is too much to expect the same dresses to last as long again with the little ones. The same remark applies to ever so many other things, where ‘economy’ has been pushed to such an extreme that I don’t know where you get material for mending. This is what it comes to: you keep mending, and darning, and patching, continually, without reflecting, that if, on the one hand, you save something, you waste so much silk, and thread and time, on the other, that there is really nothing gained.” With these liberal sentiments on the part of its foundress, we may expect to find the “table” at Saint-Cyr abundant and excellent. It is true it had not a great name for hospitality to strangers. “Be sure to take your dinner before you go,” said Madame de Maintenon’s brother one day to Bourdalone, who was to preach at Saint-Cyr. “Saint-Cyr is, in very truth, a House of God. One eats not, neither does one drink.” “It is true,” said Madame de Maintenon, gaily, “our ‘fort’ is education, and our ‘faible’ is hospitality.” But, it is only fair to Saint-Cyr to add that what it saved on its guests, it spent very profitably on its inmates. To one guest it was hospitable, at all events—the little Duchess of Burgundy. Would you like to know what she had for dinner one day she spent there? Lobster soup (it was a fast day), eggs, “sur le plat,” baked sole, gooseberry jelly, cream cakes, brown and white bread, and fresh butter. It sounds appetizing.
Dinner was followed by recreation; and to be a “reasonable” little girl, a little girl after Madame de Maintenon’s own heart, one had to put as much good will into one’s recreation as into anything else. She loved to see her girls run about, and dance, and play, and help their companions to enjoy themselves. But a strange thing had been reported to her. When they were in the garden, nobody could get them to move; and when they were in the class-rooms, they were always complaining of having to sit still so long. “Everything in its own place, and the garden was the place to run about.”
Such a charming garden, and park, as Saint-Cyr possessed—designed by the great Mansard, and with the King himself as sponsor for its poetically-named groves and alleys: Allée de Réflexions; Allée Solitaire; Allée du Cœur; Cabinet de Recueillement, and Cabinet Solitaire. If it were not the Comte d’Haussonvilles from whom I draw this curious piece of information, I should have inevitably credited Mademoiselle de Scudéry with the choice of these names. They seem so utterly unlike what we would expect from Louis XIV. One fancies Madame de Maintenon must have only accepted them with a sort of resigned amusement. Certainly she had no intention of allowing the names to justify themselves; for, instead of the sentimental meditation which they seemed to suggest, she was all for filling these groves and alleys with the gay laughter and games of healthy and happy little girls.
In her system of education, recreation played a very important part—in the first place for its hygienic value. “Let the children run about in the open air as much as possible,” she is always preaching to her nuns, “nothing will help them so much to grow tall and strong.” But, more important still, at no time more frequently than during recreation does a girl get an opportunity of sacrificing her own inclinations in order to give pleasure to others—and this is a lesson no woman can learn too early for her own happiness, if for nothing else. Moreover, proficiency in games of skill was important from a social point of view. Everybody—from the Royal Family down—played those games, and a girl would feel herself at a disadvantage afterwards if she had not attained some proficiency in them. Games like “I love my love” had, according to Madame de Maintenon, the combined merits of making a girl quick-witted, and giving her subject for reflection. It seems to me that Madame de Maintenon showed an even greater amount of commonsense than usual in the answer she gave a nun, who wished to know whether she approved of the little ones making rag-dolls at recreation, in the two-fold design of making them handy and amusing them. “Anything is better than keeping them unoccupied,” is her reply; “but you will succeed better in making them handy, by employing them at something genuinely useful. Little girls,” continues this keen student of girl nature, “usually love to be working, and you cannot make them happier than by giving them something useful to do. Show them how to do this right, and you are not only amusing them, but training them.” I wish every mother would take that lesson to heart. A little girl of three or four usually develops all of a sudden a great taste for sweeping, and baking, and washing (washing, particularly). Now, instead of sending her out to play, a wise mother will seize the opportunity of showing the little one how to do these things right. I saw the prettiest sight the other day; it was a laundry lesson to a tiny girl of three-and-a-half. You never saw such a happy little girl as the pupil; no game ever invented could hold half the interest for her, and I am bound to say that she displayed more aptitude than many a poor girl who came to the work after her ’teens. For my part, I am convinced that sewing, and sweeping, and washing, are far better instruments for hand-and-eye training than paper-folding, and mixing and modelling dough into cakes and scones, while quite as interesting to children as modelling in clay, has the educational advantage which anything woven into the genuine web of life has over what is extraneous to it. And here I may be allowed to remark that much of the educational unrest, so keenly diagnosed by Dr. Starkie, is due to the fact that parents, the first and natural teachers, have in these days a tendency to turn over their children, body and soul to a professional class—shirking their own duties. Everything nowadays, is supposed to be taught at school; and the only part parents take in their children’s education is to criticise the teachers, and grumble at the results of the system. If parents did their own share, things would be more satisfactory. And I include among the parents’ share the duty of teaching cooking, etc., and training the willing little hands to turn themselves to useful account in the busy family life around them.
But we have got far away from Marie Jeanne and the “Rouges” of Saint-Cyr, who, after a jolly recreation in the park, are trooping into their class-room for the two o’clock “instruction,” which as often as not, Madame de Maintenon gave herself.
What did she talk about at these “instructions”? “Of everything under the sun,” one is tempted to exclaim at first, when one turns over the list of subjects drawn up by Madame de Berval. Books were rare at Saint-Cyr, especially after the “Reform” of 1691, and it was from these “instructions” that the girls laid in their provision of general information. “Do not accustom them to a great diversity of reading; the seven or eight books which are in use in your house would do them for all their lives, if they only read for edification. Curiosity is dangerous and insatiable.” But there are books for which she makes an exception: “Try to make them love Saint Francis de Sales; his books are solid and show one how to attain the greatest perfection, with the utmost courtesy and refinement.” As for herself, one always feels that the “Introduction à la Vie Dévote” was never long out of her hands; and she comes to her girls with some of its chapters fresh in her memory. If to understand the “pedagogy” of Saint-Cyr, one must have studied Fénélon’s “Education des Filles,” to understand the whole spirit of the institution, the union of “Religion and Commonsense,” on which it was founded, one must re-read Saint Francis de Sales. Sometimes, especially for the bigger girls, the “Instruction” began with a reading from the “Introduction.” We find an interesting example in an “Instruction à la Classe Bleue” of March, 1712.
Madame de Maintenon interrupted the reading to ask Mademoiselle du Mesnil what she understood by the good-humoured and generous humility of which St. Francis de Sales spoke. “I believe,” said the young lady, “that, in this case, the good-humour would consist in not allowing oneself to be discouraged by the faults, of which one’s humility forced one to convict oneself; and the generosity in setting oneself, with all the courage and goodwill possible, to correct them.” Madame was delighted with the answer, and went on to point out to the girls the perfection and solidity of the Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, “his straightforwardness, gentleness, and the attractive way he had of leading souls to God.” “Do you know him well, this Saint, my dear children?”
It appears they did, and Mademoiselle de Conflans proceeds to show her knowledge (and a fine literary taste, too, it seems to me) in the quotation she chooses from him, at Madame de Maintenon’s request. It is from that admirable chapter on “the manner of practising true poverty in the midst of riches” (Part III., Chapter XV.), and Mademoiselle de Conflans quotes it almost literally: “Tell me, are not the gardeners of great princes more concerned to cultivate and beautify the gardens they have in charge, than if they were their own? And why is that? Because, doubtless, they look on those gardens as belonging to the kings and princes, with whom they wish to gain favour by their services. My Philothea, the possessions we have are not ours.” (At this point, Mademoiselle de Conflans ceases to quote but paraphrases admirably.) “They are but given to us by God, to be managed for His glory, for our salvation, and for the good of our neighbour. As long as these ends are kept in view, we please God by looking well after our worldly possessions....”
“Suppose, Mademoiselle,” continues Madame, “then that you were married (she taught them, as we shall see presently, not to be afraid to mention the word marriage at Saint-Cyr), and that you had plenty of money, what would you do?” “I should feed and clothe my children well,” says Mademoiselle (who had not studied her Francis de Sales for nothing); “I should pay my debts; I should help my poor neighbours; I should take care of people who were ashamed to ask assistance; and I should visit and assist the sick poor in the hospitals.” “All that is excellent,” comments Madame, approvingly, “but among all these different kinds of charity, preference is to be given to that exercised towards your own poor tenants and poor relations. But if you met with some financial reverses, would it be right to borrow money to keep up your charities?” Mademoiselle de Chaunac gives it as her opinion that it would. “If you really think it would be right to borrow money to keep up one’s charities you are very much mistaken. One’s first duty is towards one’s own children and servants.”
That is good sense and justice, and the religion that was taught in Saint-Cyr was never separated from one or the other. “Make them see that true piety consists in the fulfilment of one’s duties; let them learn those of a wife and of a mother, their obligations towards their servants, the edification they owe to their neighbours, and what sort of a life they can and ought to lead in the world.” She was never tired, when talking to the girls, of contrasting true devotion with wrong-headed “voteenism.” She defined the latter by its manifestations: leaving the Blessed Sacrament to go to pray before a statue; leaving one’s class to say extra prayers; putting one’s head against the wall, for fear of allowing one’s devotion to evaporate, and being quite annoyed if one is interrupted, for something quite necessary; waiting an hour outside the confessional for “contrition” to fall from heaven, and then saying you don’t feel like going to confession, for you have not the proper sorrow for your sins; spending a lot of money on ornaments for the chapel and leaving your sisters in want; employing at prayer much more time than is marked out, and thereby neglecting the duties of your charge. “True piety, ‘devotion in the spirit of Saint François de Sales,’” as she calls it somewhere, “is, on the contrary, solid, simple, good-humoured, sweet, and free, consisting rather in innocence of life than in austerities and frequent retreats. When an educated woman misses vespers to stay with her sick husband, everybody will approve; when she holds the principle that we must honour our father and mother, however bad they may be, nobody will laugh; when she maintains that it is better for a woman to rear her children well, and train her servants, than to pass the whole morning in her oratory, people will easily accommodate themselves to that religion, and she will make it loved and respected.”
To prepare her girls for that exact fulfilment of duties which, according to her (and Saint Francis), is the best sign of true piety, she adopted two great means. The first was to train them to an exact observance of present duties. She was always preaching to them the honour and glory of work well done. It is a matter of pride to be able to sweep, and dust, and mend well, and, far from being ashamed of doing these things, a girl ought to be proud to be seen by everybody at them. But what of a girl who does not care in the least how her work is done, provided she gets through it some way or other? Madame de Maintenon has an ugly name for such little girls, and she does not hesitate to apply it: Coward! There was surely a terrible sting in the word, for girls of noble birth, with a long tradition of soldierly honour in their families. One fancies the lash of it made them turn to their sweeping, and dusting, and polishing with more zeal than the fear of punishment would have done. She likes her girls to remember they are noble, provided they show themselves worthy of their birth. “In the world, nobility is recognised by its true politeness; it loves to give pleasure, to spare trouble, to relieve pain. If one of you were forced to take a position with some individual, and could not bring yourself to do it, preferring to spend the whole day working to earn the necessaries of life, I could not blame her. If another received a proposal of marriage from a man of low birth, and she answered me, ‘I cannot overcome the disinclination I feel to it,’ I would pity her for refusing a match which might make her happy, but I should not find it strange, for these are inclinations common to the nobility. If I should hear a girl say, ‘I would rather a thousand times see my brother dead than hear that he had run away from the enemy, and is a coward’—a noble heart spoke there, and I feel the same as you. If some of you said, ‘I would rather wear homespun all my life than receive presents,’ I should say, ‘these are girls who feel their nobility, and are true to it.’” In the meantime, they can prove their nobility in no way better than the care they take to fulfil their daily duties exactly. In interesting their sense of honour, Madame de Maintenon shows her knowledge of girl nature, grafted on a good stock.
For the future, she looks forward, picturing vividly the life that awaits them. What matter if the picture be not very gay? It is well to face the truth, and teach her girls to be prepared for it. Most of them will marry; she hopes so, at all events, and in some cases goes out of her way to provide them with husbands. “What Saint-Cyr wants,” she says on one occasion, “is sons-in-law.” To all of them she repeats the advice she gave a girl, on leaving: “Either marry, or become a nun; don’t be an old maid.” She was more angry than ever her nuns remembered having seen her, one day she heard that they would not mention the word “marriage,” and that when they came to it in the Catechism, they passed it over. “What! a Sacrament, instituted by Jesus Christ, which He has honoured by His presence, the obligations of which are detailed by His apostles, and must be taught by you to your girls, cannot be named! That is what turns into ridicule the education given in convents. There is far more immodesty in this affectation than there is in talking of what is really innocent. When they have passed through matrimony, they will find there is nothing to laugh at in it. You must accustom them to speak of it very seriously, even sadly; for I believe it is the state of life in which one experiences the most tribulations, even in the happiest marriage.”
She herself speaks of it to the girls often, and seriously—and, if the truth must be told, too sadly. It was not quite fair to take her own experience as typical. Shall I be accused of a frightful heresy, too, if I judge her teaching that a woman should yield her taste and her judgment in all things to a husband (no matter how absurd and fanatical he may be) as extremely unwholesome?
The needlework lesson which followed the “Instruction” was considered among the most important of the day’s programme. “Try to give the girls a taste for work,” is a recommendation which is always recurring in Madame de Maintenon’s letters. Nor was it only for its direct practical application that she valued it for her girls. She wanted them, it is true, to be able to turn their hands to anything: “to pass from new to old, from fine to coarse, from dresses to underwear, caps and coifs.” But she knew, long before Lady Henry Somerset, the extraordinary comfort there is in the use of the hands. In a wonderfully suggestive article by Maude Egerton King in the “Vineyard,” Lady Henry Somerset’s discovery is recorded: “Who has not heard of Lady Henry Somerset and the help she has discovered for poor women drunkards in the use of their hands? She tells us how domestic grief brings desire for forgetting, and how this is most easily bought in poisonous drink—poor substitute, indeed, for the keen interest of handwork and the consolation found in its conquest of things.” “There was comfort in carding the wool, solace in the spinning-wheel, decision in the exacting shuttle as it flew to escape the batten and reed.” Madame de Maintenon had tasted in many hours of spirit weariness the solace of the busy hand: “nothing is more necessary for our sex than the love of work; it calms the passions, it occupies the mind, and filling up the time pleasantly, leaves one no leisure for evil thoughts. What is a woman to do who cannot bear to stay at home, or find pleasure in her household employments, or interest in a bit of needlework. What can she do but seek it at the theatre, or the card-table?” No wonder that next to piety, and reason, she values needlework as an instrument of education.
There is a singing lesson yet to be gone through, and a catechism lesson, before the supper and recreation, night prayers and examination of conscience which end the day at Saint-Cyr. Whether the girls have a voice or not, she likes them to join the singing-class. “Even if they cannot sing, they will know something about it, and take pleasure in it,” she tells the “Vertes” on one occasion, and goes on to impress them with the necessity of letting slip no opportunity of learning anything likely to be useful. “Look at me,” she says, “who found no talent so useful at Court as to be able to do hair well!”
At the Catechism Classes she likes the girls to question one another, but she had no patience with budding casuists, who made difficulties to show their own cleverness. Did she scold the little Duchess of Burgundy who, one day, doing Catechist to the “Bleues,” on being asked, “Where is the Valley of Jehosaphat?” covered her own ignorance by the scorn she poured on the questioner? “That’s a sensible question, indeed, Mademoiselle; and you have great need of knowing it in order to get to Heaven.” I do not think so. With Fénélon (whose precept in this particular was so much better than his practice) she held that women have not the brains for the subtleties of Theology or Philosophy. “Women only know things by halves” (here she repeats Fénélon’s very words), “and the little they know renders them proud, disdainful, talkative, and disgusted with common things.” “I would much prefer to see your girl occupied with your house-steward’s accounts than with the disputes of the Theologians,” Fénélon had said, and Madame de Maintenon (especially after the Quietist troubles, when even the “Rouges” talked of nothing else but “pure love,” “holy indifference,” “simplicity,” and all the other jargon of Madame Guyon’s letters) took the lesson to heart.
And now to conclude. In a letter to the “Dames de Saint Louis” of February, 1706, she sums up the whole aim of the education of Saint-Cyr, and nothing gives a more faithful picture of its ideal than her words:—
“Let all your instructions, conversations, reprimands, punishments, rewards, relaxations, be employed to make your girls virtuous, pure, modest, discreet, silent, reliable, kind, just, generous, lovers of honour, of good faith and probity, giving pleasure in all that is possible, hurting no one’s feelings, bearing peace everywhere, never repeating aught but what will please and reconcile. Thirteen years are not too long, my dear sisters, to train them up, and form them to so many good things.”
Thirteen years are certainly not too long—nor a whole life!