The Women of the French Salons

by Amelia Gere Mason

"I honor, I cherish my husband, as a sensible daughter adores a virtuous father to whom she would sacrifice even her lover; but I have found the man who might have been that lover, and remaining faithful to my duties, my frankness has not known how to conceal the feelings which I subjected to them. My husband, excessively sensitive both in his affections and his self-love, could not support the idea of the least change in his influence; his imagination darkened, his jealousy irritated me; happiness fled; he adored me, I sacrificed myself for him, and we were miserable.

"If I were free, I would follow him everywhere to soften his griefs and console his old age; a soul like mine leaves no sacrifices imperfect. But Roland was embittered by the thought of sacrifice, and the knowledge once acquired that I mad made one ruined his happiness; he suffered in accepting it, and could not do without it."

The sequel to this tale is told in allusions and half revelations, in her letters to Buzot, which glow with suppressed feeling; in her touching farewell to one whom she dared not to name, but whom she hoped to meet where it would not be a crime to love; in those final words of her "Last Thoughts"—"Adieu.... No, it is from thee alone that I do not separate; to leave the earth is to approach each other."

Beneath this semi-transparent veil the heart-drama of her life is hidden.

For the sake of those who would be pained by this story, as well as for her own, we would rather it had never been told. We should like to believe that the woman who worked so nobly with and for the man who died by his own hand five days after her death, because he could stay no longer in a world where such crimes were possible, had lived in the full perfection of domestic sympathy. But, if she carried with her an incurable wound, one cannot help regretting that her Spartan courage had not led her to wear the mantle of silence to the end. Posterity is curious rather than sympathetic, and the world is neither wiser nor better for these needless soul-revelations. There is always a certain malady of egotism behind them. But it is often easier to scale the heights of human heroism than to still the cry of a bruised spirit. Mme. Roland had moments of falling short of her own ideals, and this was one of them. Pure, loyal, self-sustained as she was, her strong sense of verity did not permit the veil which would have best served the interests of the larger truth. It is fair to say that she thought the malicious gossip of her enemies rendered this statement necessary to the protection of her fame. Perhaps, after all, she shows here her most human and lovable if not her strongest side. We should like Minerva better if she were not so faultlessly wise.

The outbreak of the Revolution found Mme. Roland at La Platiere, where she shared her husband's philosophic and economic studies, brought peace into a discordant family, attended to her household duties and the training of her child, devoted many hours to generous care for the sick and poor, and reserved a little leisure for poetry and the solitary rambles she loved so well. The first martial note struck a responsive chord in her heart. Her opportunity had come. Embittered by class distinctions over which she had long brooded, saturated with the sentiments of Rousseau, and full of untried theories constructed in the closet, with small knowledge of the wide and complex interests with which it was necessary to deal, she centered all the hitherto latent energies of her forceful nature upon the quixotic effort to redress human wrongs. Her birth, her intellect, her character, her temperament, her education, her associations—all led her towards the role she played so heroically. She had a keen appreciation for genuine values, but none whatever for factitious ones. Her inborn hatred of artificial distinctions had grown with her years and colored all her estimates of men and things. When she came to Paris, she noted with a sort of indignation the superior poise and courtesy of the men in the assembly who had been reared in the habit of power. It added fuel to her enmity towards institutions in which reason, knowledge, and integrity paid homage to fine language and distinguished manners. She found even Vergniaud too refined and fastidious in his dress for a successful republican leader. Her old contempt for a "philosopher with a feather" had in no wise abated. With such principles ingrained and fostered, it is not difficult to forecast the part Mme. Roland was destined to play in the coming conflict of classes. Whatever we may think of the wisdom of her attitude towards the Revolution, she represented at least its most sincere side. As she stood white-robed and courageous at the foot of the scaffold, facing the savage populace she had laid down her life to befriend, perhaps her perspectives were truer. Experience had given her an insight into the characters of men which is not to be gained in the library, nor in the worship of dead heroes. If it had not shaken her faith in human perfectibility, it had taught her at least the value of tradition in chaining brutal human passions.

The tragical fate of Mme. Roland has thrown a strong light upon the modest little salon in which the unfortunate Girondists met four times a week to discuss the grave problems that confronted them. A salon in the old sense it certainly was not. It had little in common with the famous centers of conversation and esprit. It was simply the rallying point of a party. The only woman present was Mme. Roland herself, but at first she assumed no active leadership. She sat at a little table outside of the circle, working with her needle, or writing letters, alive to everything that was said, venturing sometimes a word of counsel or a thoughtful suggestion, and often biting her lips to repress some criticism that she feared might not be within her province. She had left her quiet home in the country fired with a single thought—the regeneration of France. The men who gathered about her were in full accord with her generous aims. It was not to such enthusiasms that the old salons lost themselves. They had been often the centers of political intrigues, as in the days of the Fronde; or of religious partisanship, as during the troubles of Port Royal; they had ranged themselves for and against rival candidates for literary or artistic honors; but they had preserved, on the whole, a certain cosmopolitan character. All shades of opinion were represented, and social brilliancy was the end sought, not the triumph of special ideas. It is indeed true that earnest convictions were, to some extent, stifled in the salons, where charm and intelligence counted for so much, and the sterling qualities of character for so little. But the etiquette, the urbanity, the measure, which assured the outward harmony of a society that courted distinction of every kind, were quite foreign to the iconoclasts who were bent upon leveling all distinctions. The Revolution which attacked the whole superstructure of society, was antagonistic to its minor forms as well, and it was the revolutionary party alone which was represented in the salon of Mme. Roland. Brissot, Vergniaud, Petion, Guadet, and Buzot were leaders there—men sincere and ardent, though misguided, and unable to cope with the storm they had raised, to be themselves swept away by its pitiless rage. Robespierre, scheming and ambitious, came there, listened, said little, appropriated for his own ends, and bided his time. Mme. Roland had small taste for the light play of intellect and wit that has no outcome beyond the meteoric display of the moment, and she was impatient with the talk in which an evening was often passed among these men without any definite results. As she measured their strength, she became more outspoken. She communicated to them a spark of her own energy. The most daring moves were made at her bidding. She urged on her timid and conservative husband, she drew up his memorials, she wrote his letters, she was at once his stimulus, and his helper. Weak and vacillating men yielded to her rapid insight, her vigor, her earnestness, and her persuasive eloquence. This was probably the period of her greatest influence. Many of the swift changes of those first months may be traced to her salon. The moves which were made in the Assembly were concocted there, the orators who triumphed found their inspiration there. Still, in spite of her energy, her strength, and her courage, she prides herself upon maintaining always the reserve and decorum of her sex.

If she assumed the favorite role of the French woman for a short time while her husband was in the ministry, it was in a sternly republican fashion. She gave dinners twice a week to her husband's political friends. The fifteen or twenty men who met around her table at five o'clock were linked by political interests only. The service was simple, with no other luxury than a few flowers. There were no women to temper the discussions or to lighten their seriousness. After dinner the guests lingered for an hour or so in the drawing room, but by nine o'clock it was deserted. She received on Friday, but what a contrast to the Fridays of Mme. Necker in those same apartments! It was no longer a brilliant company of wits, savants, and men of letters, enlivened by women of beauty, esprit, rank, and fashion. There was none of the diversity of taste and thought which lends such a charm to social life. Mme. Roland tells us that she never had an extended circle at any time, and that, while her husband was in power, she made and received no visits, and invited no women to her house. She saw only her husband's colleagues, or those who were interested in his tastes and pursuits, which were also her own. The world of society wearied her. She was absorbed in a single purpose. If she needed recreation, she sought it in serious studies.

It is always difficult to judge what a man or a woman might have been under slightly altered conditions. But for some single circumstance that converged and focused their talent, many a hero would have died unknown and unsuspected. The key that unlocks the treasure house of the soul is not always found, and its wealth is often scattered on unseen shores. But it is clear that the part of Mme. Roland could never have been a distinctively social one. She lived at a time when great events brought out great qualities. Her clear intellect, her positive convictions, her boundless energy, and her ardent enthusiasm, gave her a powerful influence in those early days of the Revolution, that looked towards a world reconstructed but not plunged into the dark depths of chaos, and it is through this that she has left a name among the noted women of France. In more peaceful times her peculiar talent would doubtless have led her towards literature. In her best style she has rare vigor and simplicity. She has moments of eloquent thought. There are flashes of it in her early letters to Sophie, which she begs her friend not to burn, though she does not hope to rival Mme. de Sevigne, whom she takes for her model. She lacked the grace, the lightness, the wit, the humor of this model, but she had an earnestness, a serious depth of thought, that one does not find in Mme. de Sevigne. She had also a vein of sentiment that was an underlying force in her character, though it was always subject to her masculine intellect. She confesses that she should like to be the annalist of her country, and longs for the pen of Tacitus, for whom she has a veritable passion. When one reads her sharp, incisive pen-portraits, drawn with such profound insight and masterly skill, one feels that her true vocation was in the world of letters. At the close she verges a little upon the theatrical, as sometimes in her young days. But when she wrote her final records she felt her last hours slipping away. Life, with its large possibilities undeveloped and its promises unfulfilled, was behind her. Darkness was all around her, eternal silence before her. And she had lived but thirty-nine years.

Mme. Roland does not really belong to the world of the salons, though she has been included among them by some of her own cotemporaries. She was of quite another genre. She represents a social reaction in which old forms are adapted to new ideas and lose their essential quality by the change. But she foreshadows a type of woman that has had great influence since the salons have lost their prestige. She relied neither upon the reflected light of a coterie, the arts of the courtier, nor the subtle power of personal attraction; but, firm in her convictions, clear in her purpose, and unselfish in her aims, she laid down her interests, and, in the end, her life, upon the altar of liberty and humanity. She could hardly be regarded, however, as herself a type. She was cast in a rare mold and lived under rare conditions. She was individual, as were Hypatia, Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday—a woman fitted for a special mission which brought her little but a martyr's crown and a permanent fame.