The Women of the French Salons

by Amelia Gere Mason

But this social life was to serve a personal end. It was to furnish an added instrument of power to the autocrat who ruled, to reflect always and everywhere the glory of Napoleon. The period which saw its cleverest woman in hopeless exile, and its most beautiful one under a similar ban for the crime of being her friend, was not one which favored intellectual supremacy. The empire did not encourage literature, it silenced philosophy, and oppressed the talent that did not glorify itself. Its blighting touch rested upon the whole social fabric. The finer elements which, to some extent, entered into it were lost in the glitter of display and pretension. The true spirit of conversation was limited to private coteries that kept themselves in the shade, and were too small to be noted.

The salon which represented the best side of the new regime was that of Mme. de Montesson, wife of the Duc d'Orleans, a woman of brilliant talents, finished manners, great knowledge of the world, fine gifts of conversation, and, what was equally essential, great discrimination and perfect tact. If her niece, Mme. de Genlis, is to be trusted, she had more ambition that originality, her reputation was superior to her abilities, and her beauty covered many imperfections. But she had experience, finesse, and prestige. Napoleon was quick to see the value of such a woman in reorganizing a court, and treated her with the greatest consideration, even asking her to instruct Josephine in the old customs and usages. Her salon, however, united many elements which it was impossible to fuse. There were people of all parties and all conditions, a few of the nobles and returned emigres, the numerous members of the Bonaparte family, the new military circle, together with many people of influence "not to the manner born." Mme. de Montesson revived the old amusements, wrote plays for the entertainment of her guests gave grand dinners and brilliant fetes. But the accustomed links were wanting. Her salon simply illustrates a social life in a state of transition.

Mme. de Genlis had lived much in the world before the Revolution, and her position in the family of the Duc d'Orleans, together with her great versatility of talent, had given her a certain vogue. Author, musician, teacher, moralist, critic, poser, egotist, femme d'esprit, and friend of princes, her romantic life would fill a volume and cannot be even touched upon in a few lines. After ten years of exile she returned to Paris, and her salon at the Arsenal was a center for a few celebrities. Many of these names have small significance today. A few men like Talleyrand, LaHarpe, Fontanes, and Cardinal Maury were among her friends, and she was neutral enough, or diplomatic enough, not to give offense to the new government. But she was a woman of many affectations, and in spite of her numerous accomplishments, her cleverness, and her literary fame, the circle she gathered about her was never noted for its brilliancy or its influence. As a historic figure, she is more remarkable for the variety of her voluminous work, her educational theories, and her observations upon the world in which she lived, than for talents of a purely social order.

One is little inclined to dwell upon the ruling society of this period. It had neither the dignity of past traditions nor freedom of intellectual expression. Its finer shades were drowned in loud and glaring colors. The luxury that could be commanded counted for more than the wit and intelligence that could not.

As the social elements readjusted themselves on a more natural basis, there were a few salons out of the main drift of the time in which the literary spirit flourished once more, blended with the refined tastes, the elegant manners, and the amiable courtesy that had distinguished the old regime. But the interval in which history was made so rapidly, and the startling events of a century were condensed into a decade, had wrought many vital changes. It was no longer the spirit of the eighteenth century that reappeared under its revived and attractive forms. We note a tone of seriousness that had no permanent place in that world of esprit and skepticism, of fine manners and lax morals, which divided its allegiance between fashion and philosophy. The survivors of so many heart-breaking tragedies, with their weary weight of dead hopes and sad memories, found no healing balm in the cold speculation and scathing wit of Diderot or Voltaire. Even the devotees of philosophy gave it but a half-hearted reverence. It was at this moment that Chateaubriand, saturated with the sorrows of his age, and penetrated with the hopelessness of its philosophy, offered anew the truths that had sustained the suffering and broken-hearted for eighteen centuries, in a form so sympathetic, so fascinating, that it thrilled the sensitive spirits of his time, and passed like an inspiration into the literature of the next fifty years. The melancholy of "Rene" found its divine consolation in the "Genius of Christianity." It was this spirit that lent a new and softer coloring to the intimate social life that blended in some degree the tastes and manners of the old noblesse with a refined and tempered form of modern thought. It recalls, in many points, the best spirit of the seventeenth century. There is a flavor of the same seriousness, the same sentiment. It is the sentiment that sent so many beautiful women to the solitude of the cloister, when youth had faded and the air of approaching age began to grow chilly. But it is not to the cloister that these women turn. They weave romantic tales out of the texture of their own lives, they repeat their experiences, their illusions, their triumphs, and their disenchantments. As the day grows more somber and the evening shadows begin to fall, they meditate, they moralize, they substitute prayers for dreams. But they think also. The drama of the late years had left no thoughtful soul without earnest convictions. There were numerous shades of opinion, many finely drawn issues. In a few salons these elements were delicately blended, and if they did not repeat the brilliant triumphs of the past, if they focused with less power the intellectual light which was dispersed in many new channels, they have left behind them many fragrant memories. One is tempted to linger in these temples of a goddess half-dethroned. One would like to study these women who added to the social gifts of their race a character that had risen superior to many storms, hearts that were mellowed and purified by premature sorrow, and intellects that had taken a deeper and more serious tone from long brooding over the great problems of their time. But only a glance is permitted us here. Most of them have been drawn in living colors by Saint-Beuve, from whom I gather here and there a salient trait.

Who that is familiar with the fine and exquisite thought of Joubert can fail to be interested in the delicate and fragile woman whom he met in her supreme hour of suffering, to find in her a rare and permanent friend, a literary confidante, and an inspiration? Mme. de Beaumont—the daughter of Montmorin, who had been a colleague of Necker in the ministry—had been forsaken by a worthless husband, had seen father, mother, brother, perish by the guillotine, and her sister escape it only by losing her reason, and then her life, before the fatal day. She, too, had been arrested with the others, but was so ill and weak that she was left to die by the roadside en route to Paris—a fate from which she was saved by the kindness of a peasant. It was at this moment that Joubert befriended her. These numerous and crushing sorrows had shattered her health, which was never strong, but during the few brief years that remained to her she was the center of a coterie more distinguished for quality than numbers. Joubert and Chateaubriand were its leading spirits, but it included also Fontanes, Pasquier, Mme. de Vintimille, Mme. de Pastoret, and other friends who had survived the days in which she presided with such youthful dignity over her father's salon. The fascination of her fine and elevated intellect, her gentle sympathy, her keen appreciation of talent, and her graces of manner lent a singular charm to her presence. Her character was aptly expressed by this device which Rulhiere had suggested for her seal: "Un souffle m'agite et rien ne m'ebrante." Chateaubriand was enchanted with a nature so pure, so poetic, and so ardent. He visited her daily, read to her "Atala" and "Rene," and finished the "Genius of Christianity" under her influence. He was young then, and that she loved him is hardly doubtful, though the friendship of Joubert was far truer and more loyal than the passing devotion of this capricious man of genius, who seems to have cared only for his own reflection in another soul. But this sheltered nook of thoughtful repose, this conversational oasis in a chaotic period had a short duration. Mme. de Beaumont died at Rome, where she had gone in the faint hope of reviving her drooping health, in 1803. Chateaubriand was there, watched over her last hours with Bertin, and wrote eloquently of her death. Joubert mourned deeply and silently over the light that had gone out of his life.

We have pleasant reminiscences of the amiable, thoughtful, and spirituelle Mme. de Remusat, who has left us such vivid records of the social and intimate life of the imperial court. A studious and secluded childhood, prematurely saddened by the untimely fate of her father in the terrible days of 1794, an early and congenial marriage, together with her own wise penetration and clear intellect, enabled her to traverse this period without losing her delicate tone or serious tastes. She had her quiet retreat into which the noise and glare did not intrude, where a few men of letters and thoughtful men of the world revived the old conversational spirit. She amused her idle hours by writing graceful tales, and, after the close of her court life and the weakening of her health, she turned her thoughts towards the education and improvement of her sex. Blended with her wide knowledge of the world, there is always a note of earnestness, a tender coloring of sentiment, which culminates towards the end in a lofty Christian resignation.

We meet again at this time a woman known to an earlier generation as Mme. de Flahaut, and made familiar to us through the pens of Talleyrand and Gouverneur Morris. She saw her husband fall by the guillotine, and, after wandering over Europe for years as an exile, became the wife of M. de Souza, and, returning to Paris, took her place in a quiet corner of the unaccustomed world, writing softly colored romances after the manner of Mme. de La Fayette, wearing with grace the honors her literary fame brought her, and preserving the tastes, the fine courtesies, the gentle manners, the social charms, and the delicate vivacity of the old regime.

One recalls, too, Mme. de Duras, whose father, the noble and fearless Kersaint, was the companion of Mme. Roland at the scaffold; who drifted to our own shores until the storms had passed, and, after saving her large fortune in Martinique, returned matured and saddened to France. As the wife of the Duc de Duras, she gathered around her a circle of rank, talent, and distinction. Chateaubriand, Humboldt, Curier, de Montmorency were among her friends. What treasures of thought and conversation do these names suggest! What memories of the past, what prophecies for the future! Mme. de Duras, too, wore gracefully the mantle of authorship with which she united pleasant household cares. She, too, put something of the sad experiences of her own life into romances which reflect the melancholy of this age of restlessness and lost illusions. She, too, like many of the women of her time whose youth had been blighted by suffering, passed into an exalted Christian strain. The friend of Mme. de Stael, the literary CONFIDANTE of Chateaubriand, the woman of many talents, many virtues, and many sorrows, died with words of faith and hope and divine consolation on her lips.

The devotion of Mme. de Cantal, the mysticism of Mme. Guyon, find a nineteenth-century counterpart in the spiritual illumination of Mme. de Krudener. Passing from a life of luxury and pleasure to a life of penitence and asceticism, singularly blending worldliness and piety, opening her salon with prayer, and adding a new sensation to the gay life of Paris, this adviser of Alexander I, and friend of Benjamin Constant, who put her best life into the charming romances which ranked next to "Corinne" and "Delphine" in their time; this beautiful woman, novelist, prophetess, mystic, illuminee, fanatic, with the passion of the South and the superstitious vein of the far North, disappeared from the world she had graced, and gave up her life in an ecstasy of sacrifice in the wilderness of the Crimea.