CHAPTER VIII
SALON LEADERS MME. DE TENCIN, MME. GEOFFRIN, MME. DU DEFFAND, MLLE. DE LESPINASSE, MME. DU CHÂTELET
In studying the vast numbers of salons of the eighteenth century, three types are discernible, each of which was prominent and in full sway throughout the century up to the Revolution. To the first class belong the great literary and philosophical salons which, though not political in nature, finally changed politics; such were the circles of Mme. de Tencin, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. du Deffand, Mlle. de Lespinasse, Mme. Necker, Mme. d'Epinay, Mme. de Genlis; with these every literary student is familiar. The second class includes the smaller and less important literary, philosophical, and social salons--those of Mme. de Marchais, Mme. de Persan, Mme. de Villars, Mme. de Vaines, and of D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Helvétius. The third class is of a social nature exclusively, good breeding and good tone being the essentials; its conspicuous features were the dinners and suppers of Suard, Saurin, the Abbés Raynal and Morellet, of the Palais-Royal of Mme. de Blot, of the Temple of the Prince of Conti, those of Mme. de Beauvau, Mme. de Gramont, M. de La Popeliniére, and others.
The distinctions thus made will not hold throughout, but they facilitate the presentation of a subject that is exceedingly complicated. It may almost be said that each generation of the eighteenth century had a salon with a different physiognomy; those of 1710, 1730, 1760, and 1780 were all inspired by different motives, causes, and events, and were all led by women of different histories and aspirations, whose common idol was man, but whose ideas of what constituted a hero were as widely different as was the constitution of society in the respective periods. Not until the middle of the reign of Louis XIV. did social life become detached from Versailles, and, spreading out and circulating in a thousand hôtels, showed itself in all its force, splendor, and elegance. The celebrated women of the regency--Mme. de Prie, Mme. de Parabère, Mme. de Sabran--had no salon, while those of the Marquis d'Alluys and the Hôtels de Sully, de Duras, de Villars, and the suppers of Mme. de Chauvelin were of a distinctly different type from those of the earlier and the later periods.
In a certain sense, the salons changed the complexion of the age. The eighteenth century itself was friendly and generous; it was, also, impatient and inexperienced, seeing things not as they were but as it wished them to be, compelling science and art to serve its purpose. It was frank, often brutally frank, a characteristic due partly to the conversational license of the salons. With its Fontenelle, Voltaire, Piron, etc., it was indeed a happy century. A bon mot was the event of the day and travelled over all the civilized world.
Feeling keenly the need of a guiding principle, the need of a more substantial foundation in education, the women of the century thought and wrote much on that subject; such was, for the most part, the work of the great salons, but in them the philosophical tenets of the age were also discussed. The spirit of criticism thus created and cultivated, which finally spread through all classes of society, gradually conquered the new power in the state--public opinion which, at the end of the century, ruled supreme in all its strength and vehemence, defying every effort of the government to stifle it. The highest form of agreeable and intellectual society which the world has ever seen attained to its most complete development in these salons.
Every century has had its specialty: the twelfth had its crusades, the sixteenth its religious struggles, the seventeenth its grand goût, the eighteenth its conversation and love of reason, the nineteenth its political struggles; and each one displayed the French passion for esprit; the eighteenth, however, was, par excellence, the century of esprit, and it was most remarkably developed in woman.
"Such astonishingly loquacious people as lived in Paris in the eighteenth century! ineffective, sardonic, verbose, sociable, intellectual, elegant, immoral--grand gentlemen and ladies, with tears for mimic woes and none for actual ones, praise for wit, rewards for cleverness, and absolute ignorance of the destinies they were preparing for themselves;" such is the story of women and society of the eighteenth century. Among these women the salon leaders will be found the most attractive, and the most influential in literature, theory of government, and social and moral development; to the mistresses belongs the title of "politicians."
La Ménagerie de Mme. de Tencin was one of the earliest of the eighteenth-century salons, although, in the strict sense of the word, Mme. de Tencin's salon was of a political rather than a literary nature. Successively nun, mistress, mother, she was one of the shrewdest women of the century. Born in 1681, she early became a nun; but such was the character of her life at the convent that it was not long before she became a mother. In 1714 she abandoned her conventual life and went to Paris, where she rose to influence as the mistress of Cardinal Dubois and of the regent, the Duke of Orléans. At Paris her real activity began; she arrived at that gay capital with no other collateral than a pretty face and an extraordinary cunning, which soon brought her a fortune. Fertile in resources of all kinds, she succeeded immediately, and gained for her nephew the cardinal's hat. In 1717 was born to her the afterward famous d'Alembert, whom she left upon the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond; afterward, when he had become eminent and her power was waning, she unsuccessfully used every means at her command to gain his favor and recognition; the father of that child was the Chevalier Destouches.