Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

The interest of the modern world in this remarkable woman is centred mainly in her letters. Guizot says: "Mme. de Sévigné is a friend whom we read over and over again, whose emotions we share, to whom we go for an hour's distraction and delightful chat; we have no desire to chat with Mme. de Grignan (her daughter)—we gladly leave her to her mother's exclusive affection, feeling infinitely obliged to her for having existed, inasmuch as her mother wrote letters to her. Mme. de Sévigné's letters to her daughter are superior to all her other epistles, charming as they all are; when she writes to M. Pomponne, to M. de Coulanges, to M. de Bussy, the style is less familiar, the heart less open, the soul less stirred; she writes to her daughter as she would speak to her—it is not a letter, it is an animated and charming conversation, touching upon everything, embellishing everything with an inimitable grace."

She had married her daughter to the Comte de Grignan, a man of forty, twice married, and with children, homely, but wealthy and aristocratic; writing to her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, concerning this marriage, she said: "All these women (the count's former wives) died expressly to make room for your cousin." By marrying her daughter to such a man she encouraged all the questionable proprieties of the time. Mme. de Sévigné's affection for that daughter amounted almost to idolatry; it was to her that most of the mother's letters were written, telling her of her health, what was being done at Vichy, and about her business and for that child the authoress gave up her life at Paris in order to economize and thereby to help Mme. de Grignan in her extravagance, her son-in-law being an expert in spending money.

The intensity of her nature is well reflected in her letter upon the separation from her daughter: "In vain I seek my darling daughter; I can no longer find her, and every step she takes removes her farther from me. I went to St. Mary's, still weeping and dying of grief; it seemed as if my heart and my soul were being wrenched from me and, in truth, what a cruel separation! I asked leave to be alone; I was taken into Mme. du Housset's room, and they made me up a fire. Agnes sat looking at me, without speaking—that was our bargain. I stayed there till five o'clock, without ceasing to sob; all my thoughts were mortal wounds to me. I wrote to M. de Grignan (you can imagine in what key). Then I went to Mme. de La Fayette's, and she redoubled my griefs by the interest she took in them; she was alone, ill, and distressed at the death of one of the nuns; she was just as I should have desired, I returned hither at eight; but oh, when I came in! can you conceive what I felt as I mounted these stairs? That room into which I always used to go, alas! I found the doors of it open, but I saw everything upturned, disarranged, and your little daughter, who reminded me of mine.... The wakenings of the night were dreadful. I think of you continuously—it is what devotees call habitual thought, such as one should have of God, if one did one's duty. Nothing gives me diversion; I see that carriage which is forever going on and will never come near me. I am forever on the highways; it seems as if I were sometimes afraid that the carriage will upset with me; the rains there for the last three days, drove me to despair. The Rhone causes me strange alarm. I have a map before my eyes—I know all the places where you sleep. This evening you are at Nevers; on Sunday you will be at Lyons where you will receive this letter. I have received only two of yours—perhaps the third will come; that is the only comfort I desire; as for others, I seek none."

The letters of Mme. de Sévigné contain a great number of sayings applicable to habits and conduct, and these have had their part in shaping the customs and in depicting the time. To be modest and moderate, friendly, and conciliatory, to be content with one's lot and to bow to circumstances, to be sincere, to cultivate good sense and good grace—these counsels have been and still are, according to French opinion, the basis of French character: and Mme. de Sévigné's own popularity and success attest their wisdom.

She had not the gift of seeing things vividly and reproducing them in living form; her talent was a rarer one—it induced the reader to form a mental picture of the scene described, so vivid as to be under the illusion of being present in reality; and this is done with so much grace, charm, happy ease and naturalness, that to read her letters means to love the writer. What mother or friend would not fall a willing victim to the charm of a woman who could write the following letter?

"You ask me, my dear child, whether I continue to be really fond of life; I confess to you that I find poignant sorrows in it, but I am even more disgusted with death; I feel so wretched at having to end all thereby, that, if I could turn back again, I would ask for nothing better, I find myself under an obligation which perplexes me; I embark upon life without my consent, and so must I go out of it; that overwhelms me. And how shall I go? Which way? By what door? When will it be? In what condition? Shall I suffer a thousand, thousand pains which will make me die desperate? Shall I have brain fever? Shall I die of an accident? How shall I be with God? What shall I have to show Him? Shall fear, shall necessity bring me back to Him? Shall I have sentiment except that of dread? What can I hope? Am I worthy of heaven? Am I worthy of hell? Nothing is such madness as to leave one's salvation in uncertainty, but nothing is so natural. The stupid life I lead is the easiest thing in the world to understand; I bury myself in these thoughts and I find death so terrible that I hate life more because it leads me thereto, than because of the thorns with which it is planted. You will say that I want to live forever, then; not at all; but, if my opinion had been asked, I would have preferred to die in my nurse's arms; that would have removed me from the vexations of spirit and would have given me heaven full surely and easily."

Mme. de Sévigné never bored her readers with her own reflections. She differed from her contemporaries, who seemed to be dead to nature's beauty, in her striking descriptions of nature. A close observer, she knew how to describe a landscape; animating and enlivening it, and making it talk, she inspired the reader with love of it.

"I am going to be alone and I am very glad. Provided they do not take away from me the charming country, the shore of the Allier, the woods, streams, and meadows, the sheep and goats, the peasant girls who dance the bourrée in the fields, I consent to say adieu; the country alone will cure me.... I have come here to end the beautiful days and to say adieu to the foliage—it is still on the trees, it has only changed color; instead of being green, it is golden, and of so many golden tints that it makes a brocade of rich and magnificent gold, which we are likely to find more beautiful than the green, if only it were not for the changing part."

If the style of her letters did not make her the greatest prose writer of her time, it certainly entitled her to rank as one of the most original. The prose of the seventeenth century lacked "easy suppleness in lively movement, and imagination in the expression"—two qualities which Mme. de Sévigné possessed in a high degree. The slow and grave development, the just and harmonious equilibrium, the amplitude, are in her supplanted by a quick, alert, and free saillie; the detail and marvellous exactness are enriched by color, abundance of imagery, and metaphors. M. Faguet says she is to prose what La Fontaine is to poetry.

The literary style of Mme. de Sévigné is not learned, studied, nor labored. In an epoch in which the language was already formed, she did what Montaigne did a century before, when, we may almost assert, he had to create the French language. Her most striking expressions are her own—newly coined, not taken from the vocabulary in usage. Her style cannot be duplicated, and for this reason she has few imitators. Her letters show that they were improvised—her pen doing, alone, the work over which she seemed to have no control when communicating with her daughter; to the latter she said: "I write prose with a facility that will kill you."