Until her dotage this woman, who, from a natural selfishness and lack of sympathy, was incapable of loving with the characteristic ardor of the women of her time, by knowing how to inspire love in others, controlled and held near her the famous men and women of her age. When she began to realize the calamity of her failing sight, which was probably due to her general state of restlessness and the resultant physical decay, she received, as companion, a relative, Mlle. de Lespinasse, who undertook the most difficult, disagreeable, and ungrateful task of waiting on the marquise. As Mme. du Deffand arose in time to receive at six, mademoiselle soon announced to the friends that she herself would be visible at an earlier hour. Thus, it happened that Marmontel, Turgot, Condorcet, and d'Alembert regularly assembled in mademoiselle's room--a proceeding which soon led to a rupture between the two women and a breach between Mme. du Deffand and d'Alembert. The marquise was therefore left alone, blind, but too proud to tolerate pity, yet by her conversation retaining her power of fascination. It was about this time that Horace Walpole became connected with her life. Upon the death of Mme. Geoffrin, she, hearing of the imposing ceremonies and funeral orations, exclaimed: Voilà bien du bruit pour une omelette au lard. [A great ado about a lard omelet!] Her latter years were dragged out most miserably, being marked by a singular feverishness and unavailing efforts toward the acceptance of some faith. Her death, in 1780, finally brought her relief.
The career of Mme. du Deffand actually began as early as 1730, when she opened her establishment on the Rue de Beaune, at the time that she became attached to the president Hénault, who presided over her salon for more than thirty years. The famous salon Du Deffand at the Convent Saint-Joseph was not opened until 1749; there she was very particular as to those whom she received, and access to her salon was a matter of difficulty. Grimm was never received, and Diderot was present but once. The conversation was always intellectual, and whenever she tired of French vivacity, she would spend an evening with Mme. Necker.
A letter of Walpole to Montagu leaves, on the whole, a splendid picture of her: "I have heard her dispute with all sorts of people, upon all sorts of subjects, and never knew her to be in the wrong. She humbles the learned, sets right their disciples, and finds conversation for everybody. As affectionate as Mme. de Sévigné, she has none of her prejudices, but a more universal taste; and with the most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue that would kill me were I to remain here."
The simple furnishings of her apartments, which were very spacious and had been occupied by the famous Mme. de Montespan, stood out in striking contrast to the elegance of her visitors. Here she gathered about her her two lovers, le Président Hénault and Pont de Veyle, besides D'Alembert, Turgot, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Necker, Walpole, the Abbés Barthélemy and Pernetty, the Chevalier de Lisle, de Formant, le Docteur Gatti, Hume, Gibbon, Baron de Gleichen, and many other celebrities, including the Princesses de Beauvau, de Poix, de Talmont, the Duchesses de Choiseul, d'Aiguillon, de Gramont, the Maréchale de Luxembourg, the Marquises de Boufflers and du Châtelet, the Comtesses de Rochefort, de Broglie, de Forcalquier, Mme. Necker, Lady Pembroke, De Lauzun, and many others, all of whom were society leaders. Whenever Mme. du Deffand had a special supper, it was said that Paris was at Mme. du Deffand's.
Her salon, above all others, was the centre of cosmopolitanism, where all great men, foreigners and natives, found means of social intercourse, and where, more than in any other salon, were assembled the great beauties of the day, represented especially by the Countesses de Forcalquier and Choiseul-Beaupré, Duchesse de La Vallière. Gallantry and beauty were found in the Maréchale de Luxembourg and the Comtesse de Boufflers. The philosophical movement of the Encyclopædists and Economists was not encouraged at all. Thus, in Mme. du Deffand's salon, we find neither pure philosophy nor religion, nor the air of pedants and déclamateurs; it was a royalist salon without illusion, hence indifferent to all questions. It represented the perfect type of the French model of esprit de finesse,--that is, precision,--and its leader possessed a keen insight into human character.
This wonderful woman, who, during a period of over forty years, had held at her feet the élite of the French world, at the age of about threescore and ten, fell desperately in love with a man of fifty--Horace Walpole. She who had never loved with her heart, but only with her mind, then declared it better to be dead than not to love someone. Although her actions and letters were pitiful in the extreme, her epistles are invaluable for their incomparable portraitures and keen reflections upon persons and events of the time. She attracted Walpole by the possibilities that were opened up to him by her position in society, and by her brilliant conversation, in which she scoffed at the clergy and the philosophers, showing a profound insight into human nature and the society of the time as well as into politics. Their correspondence shows one of the most pitiful, pathetic, and lamentable love tales in the history of society. He looked upon her friendship as a most valuable acquisition by which he was kept in touch with all the scandals and stories of society, of which he was so fond, and she mistook that friendship for love. He felt himself flattered in being the one preferred by such a distinguished old lady of high society.
All critics are at a loss for the explanation of such a love in a woman of seventy. Was it the result of the lifetime of disappointment of a woman who had constantly sought love but had never found it? Was it, thus, the hallucination of the childish old age of the woman who was physically consumed by incessant social functions and all-night reading? Mme. du Deffand sees in Walpole her ideal, and she gives expression to her feelings, regardless of propriety; for she is childish and irresponsible. To a certain extent, the same was true of Mme. de Staël, but she was still physically healthy and young enough to enjoy life and the realization of that which she had so long desired--an ideal affection. In the case of Mme. du Deffand, the soul was willing, but the body failed. Her emotion can scarcely be termed love, but is rather to be designated as a mental hallucination, an exaggerated intellectual affection bordering upon sentimentality--the outgrowth of that morbid imagination developed from her long suffering from ennui.
She was a woman destined to pass by the side of happiness without ever reaching it. She hardly had enjoyed what may be called friendship; she was always either suspicious of it and of her friends' sentiments, or she herself broke off relations for some trivial reason. This woman, however, always longed to believe her friends sincere, but never succeeded. "Her friends either leave her, they die, or they are far away; or, if present, faithful and attached to her, she cannot believe in their affection; her cursed scepticism deceived her heart."
Mme. du Deffand was one of the few women of the eighteenth century who saw reality and nothing but reality, and admitted what she saw; she was gifted with such quick penetration and such mental facility that she stands out prominently as one of the brightest and most intellectual of the spiritual women of her time. This quickness of perception and tendency to follow a mere impression made it difficult for her to examine closely, to be patient of details; too sure of herself, too emotional, too passionate, she displayed injustice, vehemence, over-enthusiasm; easily bored and disgusted, she was, at the same time, susceptible to infatuation. Scherer said: "She is a superior man in a body of a nervous and weak woman."
She was a woman dominated by her reason--a characteristic which led to an incurable ennui, thus causing her terrible suffering, but equipping her with a penetration which saw through the world and knew man, whom she divided into three classes: les trompeurs, les trompés, les trompettes. According to her judgment, man is either fatiguing or, if brilliantly endowed, usually false or jealous; but she realized, also, her own shortcomings, the incompleteness of her faculties. "The force of her thought does not reach talent; her intelligence is active and responsive, but fails to respond. She often shows a sovereign disdain for herself, everybody, and everything. She arrives at a point in life when she no longer has passion, desire, or even curiosity; she detests life, and dreads death because she does not know that there is another world. She is not happy enough to do without those whom she scorns, and must therefore seek diversion in the conversation of stupid people, preferring anything to solitude; this refers to the time when her best friends are no more and when she herself is out of her former milieu; she was too old, or lived too long; she belongs to another age."