When the Hôtel de Rambouillet was in its apogee La Grande Mademoiselle was in the flush of early youth. She was born in 1627. Mme. de Sévigné was Mademoiselle's elder by one year.
When we consider the social and intellectual condition of the times we must regard many features of the enterprise of "fair Arthénice" as wonderful, but its most characteristic feature was the opportunity and the advancement it accorded to men of letters. Whatever "literary" men were elsewhere, they were received as the equals of the nobility in the Salon de Rambouillet. Such a sight had never been seen! Superior minds had always been regarded leniently. They had had their periods of usefulness, when the quality had been forced to recognise their existence, but the possessors of those minds had been treated—well, to speak clearly, they had been treated as they had expected to be treated; for how could the poor fellows have hoped for anything better when they knew that they passed two thirds of their time with spines humbly curved and with palms outstretched soliciting equivocal complaisancies, or inviting écus, or struggling to secure a seat at the lower end of dinner tables by means of heartrending dedications?
Alack! how many Sarrazins and Costars there were to one Balzac, or to one d'Urfé! how numerous were the natural parasites, piteous leeches! whose wit went begging for a discarded bone! How many were condemned by their vocation to die of hunger;—and there was no help for them! Had their talent been ten times greater than it was it would have been equally impossible for them to introduce dignity into their existence. There were no journals, no reviews where an author could present his stuff or his stories for inspection; no one had ever heard of authors' rights; and however successful a play, the end of the dramatist was the same; he was allowed no literary property. How then could he live if not by crooked ways and doubtful means? If a certain amount of respect, not to say honour, were due to his profession, by what means could he acquire his share of it? Any yeoman—the first country squire—could, when so it pleased him, have a play stricken from the roll; if so it pleased him could have the rod laid over the author's back, amidst the plaudits of the contingent which we should call the claque. Was it any wonder that authors were pedants to the marrow of their bones when pedantry was the only paying thing in their profession? Writers who chanted their own praises did good unto themselves and enjoyed the reputation of the erudite. They were regarded as professors of mentality, they reflected credit upon the men who lodged and nourished them. For that reason,—and very logically,—when a man knew that he was being lodged and nourished for the sake of his bel esprit if there was any manhood in him he entered heart and soul into his pretensions; and sleeping or waking, night or day, from head to foot, and without one hour of respite, played the part of "man of letters"; he mouthed his words, went about with brows knit, talked from his chest, and, in short, did everything to prove to the world that he was wise beyond his generation; his every effort was bent to manifest his ability; and his manners, his costumes, and his looks, all proved him to be a student of books. And when this was proven his master—the man who lodged and nourished him—was able to get his full money's worth and to stand up before the world revealed in the character of benefactor and protector of Belles Lettres. In our day things wear a different aspect. The author has reached his pinnacle, and in some cases it may even be possible that his merits are exaggerated.
Knowing this, it is difficult for us to appreciate the conditions existing when the Salon of the Hôtel de Rambouillet was opened. We know that there is nothing essentially admirable in putting black marks on white paper, and we know that a good shoemaker is a more useful citizen than can be made of an inferior writer, and knowing these facts, and others of the same sort, we can hardly realise that only three hundred years ago there were honest boys who entered upon the career of Letters when they might have earned a living selling tallow.
The Hôtel de Rambouillet regulated the scale of social values and diminished the distance between the position accorded to science, intellect, and genius and the position accorded to birth. For the first time within the memory of Frenchmen Men of Letters tasted the sweets of consideration; their eloquence was not forced back, nor was it drawn out by the imperious demands of hunger; authors were placed on a footing with their fellow-men; they were still expected to discourse, but as their wit was the result of normal conditions, it acquired the quality of order and the flavour of nature. In the Blue Room the weary writers were allowed to rest. They were not called upon to give proofs of their intellect; they were led gently forward, placed at a distance that made them appear genial, persuaded to discard their dogmatism, and by inferences and subtle influences taught to be indulgent and to distribute their wisdom with the philosophical civility which was then called "the spirit of the Court,"—and the term was a just one; a great gulf lay between the incisive rushing expression of the thought of Condé, the pupil of Mme. de Rambouillet, and the laboured facitiæ of Voiture and the Academician, Jacques Esprit, although Voiture and Esprit were far in advance of their predecessors. Under the beneficent treatment of the Hôtel de Rambouillet the Men of Letters gradually lost their stilted and pedagogic airs. The fair reformers of "the circle" found many a barrier in their path; the gratitude of the pedants was not exhilarating, the leopards' spots long retained their colour,—Trissotin proved that,—but by force of repeated "dippings" the dye was eventually compelled to take and the stains that it left upon the fingers of "fair Arthénice" were not disfiguring.
A glance at Racine or at Boileau shows us the long road traversed after the Salon de Rambouillet instituted the recognition of merit regardless of rank and fortune. Love of intellectual pleasures, courage, and ambitious determination had ordered a march resumed after forced halts; and at last, when the ardent innovators reached the port from which they were to launch their endeavour, recognition of merit had become a custom, and the first phase of democratic evolution was an accomplished fact. Our own day shows further progress; the same evolution in its untrammelled freedom tends to cast suspicion upon personal merit because it unhinges the idea of equality.
"All Paris" of that day filed through the portals of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and passed in review before the Blue Room. Malherbe was one of the most faithful attendants of the Salon whose Laureate he remained until he died (1628). Yet according to Tallemant and to many others he was boorish and uncivil. He was abrupt in conversation, but he wrote excellent poetry and never said a word that did not reach its mark. When he visited the Salon he was very amiable; and his grey beard made him a creditable dean for the circle of literary companions. He wrote pretty verses in honour of Arthénice, he was diverting and instructive—in a word, he made himself necessary to the Salon. But he was too old to change either his character or his appearance, and his attempts to conform to the fashions of the hour made him ridiculous. He was "a toothless gallant, always spitting."
He had been in the pay of M. de Bellegarde, from whom he had received a salary of one thousand livres, table and lodging, and board and lodging for one lackey and one horse. He drew an income from a pension of five hundred écus granted by Marie de Médicis; he was in possession of numerous gratuities, perquisites, and "other species of gifts" which he had secretly begged by the sweat of his brow. Huet, Archbishop of Avranche, wrote: "Malherbe is trying his best to increase his fortunes, and his poetry, noble though it be, is not always nobly employed." M. d'Yveteaux said that Malherbe "demanded alms sonnet in hand." The greedy poet had one rival at the Hôtel de Rambouillet; a very brilliant Italian addicted to flattery, whom all the ladies loved. Women were infatuated by him, as they are always infatuated by any foreign author—be he good or bad! Marini—in Paris they called him "Marin"—conversed in long sentences joined by antitheses. In his hours of relaxation when his thoughts were supposed to be in literary undress, he called the rose "the eye of the springtide."[50] At the time of which I now speak he was labouring upon a poem of forty-five thousand verses, entitled Adonis. Every word written or uttered by him was calculated to produce its effect. "The Circle," to the disgust of Malherbe, lay at the feet of the Italian pedant, swooning with ecstasy. "Marin's" influence over the first Salon of France was deplorable, and a contemporary chronicler recorded his progress with evident dejection[51]; "In time he relieved the country of his presence; but he had remained in it long enough to deposit in fruitful soil the germs of his factitious preciosity."
Chapelain was of other metal. He began active life as a teacher. M. de Longueville, who was the first to appreciate his merits, granted him his first pension (two thousand livres). Chapelain was fond of his work, a natural writer, industrious, and frugal. He went into retirement, lived upon his little pension, and brought forth La Pucelle. De Longueville was delighted by the zeal and the talent of his protégé and he added one thousand livres to his pension. Richelieu also granted Chapelain a pension (one thousand livres) and when Mazarin came to power he supplemented the gift of his predecessor by a pension of five hundred écus.