The Women of the French Salons

by Amelia Gere Mason

Such was the woman who courted, flattered, petted, and patronized the literary and scientific men of Paris, called them her menagerie, put them into a sort of uniform, gave them two suppers a week, and sent them two ells of velvet for small clothes at New Year's. Of her salon, Marmontel gives us an interesting glimpse. He had been invited to read one of his tragedies, and it was his first introduction.

"I saw assembled there Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Mairan, Marivaux, the young Helvetius, Astruc, and others, all men of science or letters, and, in the midst of them, a woman of brilliant intellect and profound judgment, who, with her kind and simple exterior, had rather the appearance of the housekeeper than the mistress. This was Mme. de Tencin.... I soon perceived that the guests came there prepared to play their parts, and that their wish to shine did not leave the conversation always free to follow its easy and natural course. Every one tried to seize quickly and on the wing the moment to bring in his word, his story, his anecdote, his maxim, or to add his dash of light and sparkling wit; and, in order to do this opportunely, it was often rather far-fetched. In Marivaux, the impatience to display his finesse and sagacity was quite apparent. Montesquieu, with more calmness, waited for the ball to come to him, but he waited. Mairan watched his opportunity. Astruc did not deign to wait. Fontenelle alone let it come to him without seeking it, and he used so discreetly the attention given him, that his witty sayings and his clever stories never occupied more than a moment. Alert and reserved, Helvetius listened and gathered material for the future."

Mme. de Tencin loved literature and philosophy for their own sake, and received men of letters at their intrinsic value. She encouraged, too, the freedom of thought and expression at that time so rare and so dangerous. It was her influence that gave its first impulse to the success of Montesquieu's esprit DES LOIS, of which she personally bought and distributed many copies. If she talked well, she knew also how to listen, to attract by her sympathy, to aid by her generosity, to inspire by her intelligence, to charm by her versatility.

Another figure flits in and out of this salon, whose fine qualities of soul shine so brightly in this morally stifling atmosphere that one forgets her errors in a mastering impulse of love and pity. There is no more pathetic history in this arid and heartless age than that of Mlle. Aisse, the beautiful Circassian, with the lustrous, dark, Oriental eyes, who was brought from Constantinople in infancy by the French envoy, and left as a precious heritage to Mme. de Ferriol, the intriguing sister of Mme. de Tencin, and her worthy counterpart, if not in talent, in the faults that darkened their common womanhood. This delicate young girl, surrounded by worldly and profligate friends, and drawn in spite of herself into the errors of her time, redeemed her character by her romantic heroism, her unselfish devotion, and her final revolt against what seemed to be an inexorable fate. The struggle between her self-forgetful love for the knightly Chevalier d'Aydie and her sensitive conscience, her refusal to cloud his future by a portionless marriage, and her firmness in severing an unholy tie, knowing that the sacrifice would cost her life, as it did, form an episode as rare as it is tragical. But her exquisite personality, her rich gifts of mind and soul, her fine intelligence, her passionate love, almost consecrated by her pious but fatal renunciation, call up one of the loveliest visions of the century—a vision that lingers in the memory like a medieval poem.

Mme. de Tencin amused her later years b writing sentimental tales, which were found among her papers after her death. These were classed with the romances of Mme. de La Fayette. Speaking of the latter, La Harpe said, "Only one other woman succeeded, a century later, in painting with equal power the struggles of love and virtue." It is one of the curious inconsistencies of her character, that her creations contained an element which her life seems wholly to have lacked. Behind all her faults of conduct there was clearly an ideal of purity and goodness. Her stories are marked by a vividness and an ardor of passion rarely found in the insipid and colorless romances of the preceding age. Her pictures of love and intrigue and crime are touched with the religious enthusiasm of the cloister, the poetry of devotion, the heroism of self-sacrifice. Perhaps the dark and mysterious facts of her own history shaped themselves in her imagination. Did the tragedy of La Fresnaye, the despairing lover who blew out his brains at her feet, leaving the shadow of a crime hanging over her, with haunting memories of the Bastille, recall the innocence of her own early convent days? Did she remember some long-buried love, and the child left to perish upon the steps of St. Jean le Rond, but grown up to be her secret pride in the person of the great mathematician and philosopher d'Alembert? What was the subtle link between this worldly woman and the eternal passion, the tender self-sacrifice of Adelaide, the loyal heroine who breathes out her solitary and devoted soul on the ashes of La Trappe, unknown to her faithful and monastic lover, until the last sigh? The fate of Adelaide has become a legend. It has furnished a theme for the poet and the artist, an inspiration for the divine strains of Beethoven, another leaf in the annals of pure and heroic love. But the woman who conceived it toyed with the human heart as with a beautiful flower, to be tossed aside when its first fragrance was gone. She apparently knew neither the virtue, nor the honor, nor the purity, nor the truth of which she had so exquisite a perception in the realm of the imagination. Or were some of the episodes which darken the story of her life simply the myths of a gossiping age, born of the incidents of an idle tale, to live forever on the pages of history?

But it was not as a literary woman that Mme. de Tencin held her position and won her fame. Her gifts were eminently those of her age and race, and it may be of interest to compare her with a woman of larger talent of a purely intellectual order, who belonged more or less to the world of the salons, without aspiring to leadership, and who, though much younger, died in the same year. Mme. du Chatelet was essentially a woman of letters. She loved the exact sciences, expounded Leibnitz, translated Newton, gave valuable aid to Voltaire in introducing English thought into France, and was one of the first women among the nobility to accept the principles of philosophic deism. "I confess that she is tyrannical," said Voltaire; "one must talk about metaphysics, when the temptation is to talk of love. Ovid was formerly my master; it is now the turn of Locke." She has been clearly but by no means pleasantly painted for us in the familiar letters of Mme. de Graffigny, in the rather malicious sketches of the Marquise de Crequi, and in the still more strongly outlined portrait or Mme. du Deffand, as a veritable bas bleu, learned, pedantic, eccentric, and without grace or beauty. "Imagine a woman tall and hard, with florid complexion, face sharp, nose pointed—VOILA LA BELLE EMILIE," writes the latter; "a face with which she was so contented that she spared nothing to set it off; curls, topknots, precious stones, all are in profusion... She was born with much esprit; the desire of appearing to have more made her prefer the study of the abstract sciences to agreeable branches of knowledge; she thought by this singularity to attain a greater reputation and a decided superiority over all other women. Madame worked with so much care to seem what she was not, that no one knew exactly what she was; even her defects were not natural." "She talks like an angel"—"she sings divinely"—"our sex ought to erect altars to her," wrote Mme. de Graffigny during a visit at her chateau. A few weeks later her tone changed. They had quarreled. Of such stuff is history made. But she had already given a charming picture of the life at Cirey.

Mme. du Chatelet plunged into abstractions during the day. In the evening she was no more the savante, but gave herself up to the pleasures of society with the ardor of a nature that was extreme in everything. Voltaire read his poetry and his dramas, told stories that made them weep and then laugh at their tears, improvised verses, and amused them with marionettes, or the magic lantern. La belle Emilie criticized the poems, sang, and played prominent parts in the comedies and tragedies of the philosopher poet, which were first given in her little private theater. Among the guests were the eminent scientist, Maupertuis, her life-long friend and teacher; the Italian savant, Algarotti, President Henault, Helvetius, the poet, Saint-Lambert, and many others of equal distinction. "Of what do we not talk!" writes Mme. de Graffigny. "Poetry, science, art, everything, in a tone of graceful badinage. I should like to be able to send you these charming conversations, these enchanting conversations, but it is not in me."

Mme. du Chatelet owned for several years the celebrated Hotel Lambert, and a choice company of savants assembled there as in the days when Mme. de Lambert presided in those stately apartments. But this learned salon had only a limited vogue. The thinking was high, but the dinners were too plain. The real life of Mme. du Chatelet was an intimate one. "I confess that in love and friendship lies all my happiness," said this astronomer, metaphysician, and mathematician, who wrote against revelation and went to mass with her free-thinking lover. Her learning and eccentricities made her the target for many shafts of ridicule, but she counted for much with Voltaire, and her chief title to fame lies in his long and devoted friendship. He found the "sublime and respectable Emilie" the incarnation of all the virtues, though a trifle ill-tempered. The contrast between his kindly portrait and those of her feminine friends is striking and rather suggestive.

"She joined to the taste for glory a simplicity which does not always accompany it, but which is often the fruit of serious studies. No woman was ever so learned, and no one deserves less to be called a femme savante. Born with a singular eloquence, this eloquence manifested itself only when she found subjects worthy of it... The fitting word, precision, justness, and force were the characteristics of her style. She would rather write like Pascal and Nicole than like Mme. de Sevigne; but this severe strength and this vigorous temper of her mind did not render her inaccessible to the beauties of sentiment. The charms of poetry and eloquence penetrated her, and no one was ever more sensitive to harmony... She gave herself to the great world as to study. Everything that occupies society was in her province except scandal. She was never known to repeat an idle story. She had neither time nor disposition to give attention to such things, and when told that some one had done her an injustice, she replied that she did not wish to hear about it."

"She led him a life a little hard," said Mme. de Graffigny, after her quarrel; but he seems to have found it agreeable, and broke his heart—for a short time—when she died. "I have lost half of my being," he wrote—"a soul for which mine was made." To Marmontel he says: "Come and share my sorrow. I have lost my illustrious friend. I am in despair. I am inconsolable." One cannot believe that so clear-sighted a man, even though a poet, could live for twenty years under the spell of a pure illusion. What heart revelations, what pictures of contemporary life, were lost in the eight large volumes of his letters which were destroyed at her death!