But Bolingbroke was not the only English peer who paid court to the ‘nonne défroquée.’ Lord Chesterfield was introduced to her by Montesquieu, and, in 1741, passed some time in her salon, during its later glory. Here he enjoyed the society of authors whom he was always pleased to regard as superior to those of his own country and whose works, particularly Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, Fontenelle’s Pluralité des Mondes, and the productions of Crébillon and Marivaux, he never tired of recommending to his son. Fontenelle, the placid death’s-head who had never laughed and who could lead a minuet at the age of ninety-seven, must have seemed to Chesterfield the pattern of a man. And yet he could assert, a few years later, that Fontenelle had sacrificed somewhat too much to the Graces.[58]
But what did he think of Madame? What did the great exemplar of the bel air, himself a patron of letters, think of the life and aims of the salon? It is not easy to say. He flattered Madame de Tencin outrageously, according to his professed theories; he praised the good taste of Frenchmen (of which Madame was at once ‘le soutien et l’ornement’), and denounced the brusqueness of his countrymen according to his wont. He boasted himself[59] the ‘ami, favori, et enfant de la maison’ of Madame de Tencin. But when he had occasion to describe the literary life of Paris to his son, he declared that the salons were filled with gossips who talked nonsense and philosophes whose works were metaphysical fustian, verba et voces et praeterea nihil.[60] It was an institution which young Stanhope must visit, where he was to talk epigrams, false sentiments, and philosophical nonsense, but to which he was to maintain a large superiority. Yet, in spite of this show of indifference, I cannot but feel that Chesterfield liked the salon. What else in heaven or earth was there for such a man to like? What could have been more to his taste than its courtly union of intrigue and elegance, of literature and wit, of free thought and easy morals? The salon certainly liked Chesterfield. ‘Let him come back to us,’ cried Montesquieu and the rest of them when Madame de Tencin had read his letter to the circle, and read it more than once. ‘He writes French better than we do,’ exclaimed Fontenelle, ‘qu’il se contente, s’il lui plaît, d’être le premier homme de sa nation, d’avoir les lumières et la profondeur de génie qui la caractérisent; et qu’il ne vienne point encore s’emparer de nos grâces et de nos gentillesses.’[61] When Madame de Tencin despatched this mass of flattery to Chesterfield, Fontenelle added a note begging the English lord not to draw down upon himself too much French jealousy.[62] Unless Chesterfield was, like Fontenelle, incapable of all human emotions, he was pleased by that. The Frenchmen had studied him well. They touched his vulnerable point, and posterity will not easily be persuaded that it was in vain.
‘In future, then,’ said Fontenelle, after the death of Madame de Tencin, ‘I shall go to Madame Geoffrin’s.’ The change must have supplied the aged wit with many observations on the diversity of the female character; for though ‘la Geoffrin’ had studied the methods of her predecessor, there was no resemblance in character between the two. There is no suggestion of Madame de Tencin’s subtlety in the amiable bourgeoise who became a queen of society at fifty, but rather a rich simplicity of nature that is very winning. Her faults as well as her virtues are quite obvious. Her humour is for ever expressing itself in homely maxims[63] which suggest the lore of peasants. She made her way by the simplest means, a warm heart, abiding common sense, and a persistent will. Her keen intelligence, the gift of nature, not of books, enabled her to understand the philosophers at least as well as they understood themselves, to advise—almost lead—them, to be their ‘Mother,’ and to push them into the Academy. It is, at first blush, amazing that a woman without education, who, indeed, found grammar a mystery, could thus have become the empress of the wits. But living as she did in an ‘age of reason’ when the imagination was turning back to contemplate man in a ‘state of nature,’ unspoiled by the arts of a luxurious civilization, such a defect was not fatal. Shrewd, placid yet alert, simple and with the sweep of vision that is given only to the simple, she looked out fearlessly upon the society of her time, with all its elaborate systems and new philosophies—and understood. As she was without fear, so she was without contempt. She saw what was good in the new order and encouraged it, but without becoming its slave. Like Johnson (whom she would have understood), she contrived to ‘worship in the age of Voltaire,’ but this was with no surrender of her interest in Voltaire. She was intolerant of pretence. She adopted a manner of treating her friends which, in its combination of brusqueness and affection, is thoroughly parental. She scolds and pushes, punishes and rewards. She decides disputes with a word. She spends with open hand. Her great desire is to be of help to her children. D’Alembert writes[64] of her, ‘“Vous croyez,” disait elle à un des hommes qu’elle aimait le plus, “que c’est pour moi que je vois des grands et des ministres? Détrompez-vous; je les vois pour vous et pour vos semblables, qui pouvez en avoir besoin: si tous ceux que j’aime étaient heureux et sages, ma porte serait tous les jours fermée a neuf heures, excepté pour eux.”’ But she never forgot that, in her own house, she alone was mistress. Her charity, which she conducted on a heroic scale, implied a certain obedience in the recipients of it; but both charity and obedience were only devices for promoting their interests. ‘Elle ne respirait que pour faire le bien,’ said d’Alembert.[65] He and the other writers for the Cyclopædia profited by her charity, for without her patronage that great work could hardly have been carried to publication.
In the salon of Madame Geoffrin and her free-thinking friends, David Hume found, in 1763, a natural abiding-place. It had, indeed, a dual attraction for him in the person of its hostess and the character of her coterie. Madame Geoffrin must have found the Scotch philosopher a man after her own heart. She understood the broad-featured, simple man, whom she presently took to calling[66] her ‘coquin,’ her ‘gros drôle.’ Like her, he enjoyed the society of rationalists. He writes naïvely in his Autobiography: ‘Those who have not seen the strange effects of modes, will never imagine the strange reception I met with at Paris, from men and women of all ranks and stations. The more I resiled from their excessive civilities, the more I was loaded with them. There is, however, a real satisfaction in living at Paris from the great number of sensible, knowing, and polite company with which the city abounds above all places in the universe. I thought once of settling there for life.’ But he kept his head under the pelting flattery. He neither despised his social success nor exalted it as the summum bonum. Like Madame Geoffrin, he made no apologies for himself, and pretended to no social graces which he could not easily acquire. His French was wretched. Walpole protested[67] that it was ‘almost as unintelligible as his English.’ He had no bons mots. He did not even talk much. Grimm found[68] him heavy, and Madame du Deffand dubbed him ‘the peasant.’[69]
But to more serious souls he was even as the Spirit of the Age. He had voiced the new scepticism. He had given the death-blow to miracles. Before his coming to Paris, all his better-known work had been done, and the fame of it preceded him. Alexander Street wrote from Paris to Sir William Johnstone, on December 16, 1762: ‘When you have occasion to see our friend, David Hume, tell him that he is so much worshipped here that he must be void of all passions, if he does not immediately take post for Paris. In most houses where I am acquainted here, one of the first questions is, “Do you know M. Hume whom we all admire so much?” I dined yesterday at Helvétius’s, where this same M. Hume interrupted our conversation very much.’[70]
His influence was, in truth, greater in France than in England; for the temper of English literature never became openly rationalistic. Deism itself was living a subterranean existence; for the authority of such powerful men as Johnson and Burke ran directly counter to it. But in France all sails were set, and men’s faces turned towards ‘unpath’d waters, undreamed shores.’ To the ‘free’ thought that was becoming ever freer and now drifting towards all manner of negation, Hume came as a high priest, an acknowledged pontiff. He was the man whom the King delighted to honour, whose praises were lisped by the King’s children, who was approved by Voltaire, petted by all the women and revered by all the men. In less than two years, Walpole finds him[71] ‘the mode,’ ‘fashion itself’; he is ‘treated with perfect veneration,’ and his works held to be the ‘standards of writing.’ Hume himself writes to Fergusson[72] that he overheard an elderly gentleman, ‘esteemed one of the cleverest and most sensible’ of men, boasting that he had caught sight of Hume that day at court.[73] At last they pay him the compliment (Madame Geoffrin leading off, no doubt) of ‘bantering’ him and telling droll stories of him. He begins to fear that the great ladies are taking him too much from the society of d’Alembert, Buffon, Marmontel, Diderot, and the rest.[74]
Among the distinguished women in Paris who wooed him were Mlle. de Lespinasse, Madame du Bocage, who sent him her works, and the Marquise de Boufflers, who made no secret of her fondness for the British. This lady once cherished a ‘petite flamme’[75] for Beauclerk, Johnson’s gay friend, and even crossed the path of the Lexicographer himself; for it was she whom Johnson, like a squire of dames, gallantly escorted to her coach, and afterwards honoured with a letter. The sentimental homage which she paid to Hume incurred the contempt of Madame du Deffand, who sneered at her worship of false gods, and made her miserable by leading others to denounce her idol.[76]
Madame de Boufflers played a prominent part in the great quarrel between Hume and Rousseau, which involved many of the most prominent persons mentioned in this chapter. The story, which has been frequently told, may be briefly dismissed.[77] The union by which the sentimentalist gave himself in charge to the rationalist, might well have furnished a Hogarth with a subject for an allegorical group representing Scotch solidity and Gallic perversity. Hume, through Madame de Boufflers, had assured Rousseau that he could find in England appreciation, friends, and a true home; and the ill-assorted pair accordingly departed from Paris early in 1776. It was not long before wild letters reached the salons.[78] The two philosophers were hurling epithets at each other, scélérat! traître!
The most immediate cause of their rupture was a letter, written by Walpole, to amuse Madame Geoffrin’s coterie. It purported to be by the King of Prussia, and invited Rousseau to come to court and enjoy his fill of persecution. A brief extract will show the character of this sprightly epistle: