The Women of the French Salons

by Amelia Gere Mason

Ci-git dans une paix profonde
Cette Dame de Volupte
Qui, pour plus grande surete,
Fit son paradis de ce monde.

"Courte et bonne," said the favorite daughter of the Regent, in the same spirit.

It is against such a background that the women who figure so prominently in the salons are outlined. Such was the air they breathed, the spirit they imbibed. That it was fatal to the finer graces of character goes without saying. Doubtless, in quiet and secluded nooks, there were many human wild flowers that had not lost their primitive freshness and delicacy, but they did not flourish in the withering atmosphere of the great world. The type in vogue savored of the hothouse. With its striking beauty of form and tropical richness of color, it had no sweetness, no fragrance. Many of these women we can only consider on the worldly and intellectual side. Sydney Smith has aptly characterized them as "women who violated the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers." But standing on the level of a time in which their faults were mildly censured, if at all, their characteristic gifts shine out with marvelous splendor. It is from this standpoint alone that we can present them, drawing the friendly mantle of silence over grave weaknesses and fatal errors.

In this century, in which women have so much wider scope, when they may paint, carve, act, sing, write, enter professional life, or do whatever talent and inclination dictate, without loss of dignity or prestige, unless they do it ill,—and perhaps even this exception is a trifle superfluous,—it is difficult to understand fully, or estimate correctly, a society in which the best feminine intellect was centered upon the art of entertaining and of wielding an indirect power through the minds of men. These Frenchwomen had all the vanity that lies at the bottom of the Gallic character, but when the triumphs of youth were over, the only legitimate path to individual distinction was that of social influence. This was attained through personal charm, supplemented by more or less cleverness, or through the gift of creating a society that cast about them an illusion of talent of which they were often only the reflection. To these two classes belong the queens of the salons. But the most famous of them only carried to the point of genius a talent that was universal.

In its best estate a brilliant social life is essentially an external one. Its charm lies largely in the superficial graces, in the facile and winning manners, the ready tact, the quick intelligence, the rare and perishable gifts of conversation—in the nameless trifles which are elusive as shadows and potent as light. It is the way of putting things that tells, rather than the value of the things themselves. This world of draperies and amenities, of dinners and conversaziones, of epigrams, coquetries, and sparkling trivialities in the Frenchwoman's milieu. It has little in common with the inner world that surges forever behind and beneath it; little sympathy with inconvenient ideals and exalted sentiments. The serious and earnest soul to which divine messages have been whispered in hours of solitude finds its treasures unheeded, its language unspoken here. The cares, the burdens, the griefs that weigh so heavily on the great heart of humanity are banished from this social Eden. The Frenchman has as little love for the somber side of life as the Athenian, who veiled every expression of suffering. "Joy marks the force of the intellect," said the pleasure-loving Ninon. It is this peculiar gift of projecting themselves into a joyous atmosphere, of treating even serious subjects in a piquant and lively fashion, of dwelling upon the pleasant surface of things, that has made the French the artists, above all others, of social life. The Parisienne selects her company, as a skillful leader forms his orchestra, with a fine instinct of harmony; no single instrument dominates, but every member is an artist in his way, adding his touch of melody or color in the fitting place. She aims, perhaps unconsciously, at a poetic ideal which shall express the best in life and thought, divested of the rude and commonplace, untouched by sorrow or passion, and free from personality.

But the representative salons, which have left a permanent mark upon their time, and a memory that does not seem likely to die, were no longer simply centers of refined and intellectual amusement. The moral and literary reaction of the seventeenth century was one of the great social and political forces of the eighteenth. The salon had become a vast engine of power, an organ of public opinion, like the modern press. Clever and ambitious women had found their instrument and their opportunity. They had long since learned that the homage paid to weakness is illusory; that the power of beauty is short-lived. With none of the devotion which had made the convent the time-honored refuge of tender and exalted souls, finding little solace in the domestic affections which played so small a role in their lives, they turned the whole force of their clear and flexible minds to this new species of sovereignty. Their keenness of vision, their consummate skill in the adaptation of means to ends, their knowledge of the world, their practical intelligence, their instinct of pleasing, all fitted them for the part they assumed. They distinctly illustrated the truth that "our ideal is not out of ourselves, but in ourselves wisely modified." The intellect of these women was rarely the dupe of the emotions. Their clearness was not befogged by sentiment, nor, it may be added, were their characters enriched by it. "The women of the eighteenth century loved with their minds and not with their hearts," said the Abbe Galiani. The very absence of the qualities so essential to the highest womanly character, according to the old poetic types, added to their success. To be simple and true is to forget often to consider effects. Spontaneity is not apt to be discriminating, and the emotions are not safe guides to worldly distinction. It is not the artist who feels the most keenly, who sways men the most powerfully; it is the one who has most perfectly mastered the art of swaying men. Self-sacrifice and a lofty sense of duty find their rewards in the intangible realm of the spirit, but they do not find them in a brilliant society whose foundations are laid in vanity and sensualism. "The virtues, though superior to the sentiments, are not so agreeable," said Mme. du Deffand; and she echoed the spirit of an age of which she was one of the most striking representatives. To be agreeable was the cardinal aim in the lives of these women. To this end they knew how to use their talents, and they studied, to the minutest shade, their own limitations. They had the gift of the general who marshals his forces with a swift eye for combination and availability. To this quality was added more or less mental brilliancy, or, what is equally essential, the faculty of calling out the brilliancy of others; but their education was rarely profound or even accurate. To an abbe who wished to dedicate a grammar to Mme. Geoffrin she replied: "To me? Dedicate a grammar to me? Why, I do not even know how to spell." Even Mme. du Deffand, whom Sainte Beuve ranks next to Voltaire as the purest classic of the epoch in prose, says of herself, "I do not know a word of grammar; my manner of expressing myself is always the result of chance, independent of all rule and all art."

But it is not to be supposed that women who were the daily and lifelong companions and confidantes of men like Fontenelle, d'Alembert, Montesquieu, Helvetius, and Marmontel were deficient in a knowledge of books, though this was always subservient to a knowledge of life. It was a means, not an end. When the salon was at the height of its power, it was not yet time for Mme. de Stael; and, with rare exceptions, those who wrote were not marked, or their literary talent was so overshadowed by their social gifts as to be unnoted. Their writings were no measure of their abilities. Those who wrote for amusement were careful to disclaim the title of bel esprit, and their works usually reached the public through accidental channels. Mme. de Lambert herself had too keen an eye for consideration to pose as an author, but it is with an accent of regret at the popular prejudice that she says of Mme. Dacier, "She knows how to associate learning with the amenities; for at present modesty is out of fashion; there is no more shame for vices, and women blush only for knowledge."

But if they did not write, they presided over the mint in which books were coined. They were familiar with theories and ideas at their fountain source. Indeed the whole literature of the period pays its tribute to their intelligence and critical taste. "He who will write with precision, energy, and vigor only," said Marmontel, "may live with men alone; but he who wishes for suppleness in his style, for amenity, and for that something which charms and enchants, will, I believe, do well to live with women. When I read that Pericles sacrificed every morning to the Graces, I understand by it that every day Pericles breakfasted with Aspasia." This same author was in the habit of reading his tales in the salon, and noting their effect. He found a happy inspiration in "the most beautiful eyes in the world, swimming in tears;" but he adds, "I well perceived the cold and feeble passages, which they passed over in silence, as well as those where I had mistaken the word, the tone of nature, or the just shade of truth." He refers to the beautiful, witty, but erring and unfortunate Mme. de la Popeliniere, to whom he read his tragedy, as the best of all his critics. "Her corrections," he said, "struck me as so many rays of light." "A point of morals will be no better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman of Paris," said Rousseau. This constant habit of reducing thoughts to a clear and salient form was the best school for aptness and ready expression. To talk wittily and well, or to lead others to talk wittily and well, was the crowning gift of these women. This evanescent art was the life and soul of the salons, the magnet which attracted the most brilliant of the French men of letters, who were glad to discuss safely and at their ease many subjects which the public censorship made it impossible to write about. They found companions and advisers in women, consulted their tastes, sought their criticism, courted their patronage, and established a sort of intellectual comradeship that exists to the same extent in no country outside of France. Its model may be found in the limited circle that gathered about Aspasia in the old Athenian days.

It is perhaps this habit of intellectual companionship that, more than any other single thing, accounts for the practical cleverness of the Frenchwomen and the conspicuous part they have played in the political as well as social life of France. Nowhere else are women linked to the same degree with the success of men. There are few distinguished Frenchmen with whose fame some more or less gifted woman is not closely allied. Montaigne and Mlle. de Gournay, La Rochefoucauld and Mme. de La Fayette, d'Alembert and Mlle. de Lespinasse, Chateaubriand and Mme. Recamier, Joubert and Mme. de Beaumont—these are only a few of the well-known and unsullied friendships that suggest themselves out of a list that might be extended indefinitely. The social instincts of the French, and the fact that men and women met on a common plane of intellectual life, made these friendships natural; that they excited little comment and less criticism made them possible.

The result was that from the quiet and thoughtful Marquise de Lambert, who was admitted to have made half of the Academicians, to the clever but less scrupulous Mme. de Pompadour, who had to be reckoned with in every political change in Europe, women were everywhere the power behind the throne. No movement was carried through without them. "They form a kind of republic," said Montesquieu, "whose members, always active, aid and serve one another. It is a new state within a state; and whoever observes the action of those in power, if he does not know the women who govern them, is like a man who sees the action of a machine but does not know its secret springs." Mme. de Tenein advised Marmontel, before all things, to cultivate the society of women, if he wished to succeed. It is said that both Diderot and Thomas, two of the most brilliant thinkers of their time, failed of the fame they merited, through their neglect to court the favor of women. Bolingbroke, then an exile in Paris, with a few others, formed a club of men for the discussion of literary and political questions. While it lasted it was never mentioned by women. It was quietly ignored. Cardinal Fleury considered it dangerous to the State, and suppressed it. At the same time, in the salon of Mme. de Tenein, the leaders of French thought were safely maturing the theories which Montesquieu set forth in his "Esprit des Lois," the first open attack on absolute monarchy, the forerunner of Rousseau, and the germ of the Revolution. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —