Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

Mme. de Sévigné was possibly not a beautiful woman, but she was a charming one; broad in the scope of her affections, she found the making of friends no difficult task. M. Vallery-Radot leaves the following picture of her: "A blonde, with exuberant health, a transparent complexion, blue eyes, so frank, so limpid, a nose somewhat square, a mouth ready to smile, shoulders that seem to lend splendor to her pearl necklace. Her gayety and goodness are so in evidence that there is about her a kind of atmosphere of good humor."

M. du Bled most admirably sums up her character and writings in the following: "She is the person who most resembles her writings—that is, those that are found; for alas! many (the most confidential, the most interesting, I think) are lost forever: in them she is reflected as she reflects French society in them. Endowed—morally and physically—with a robust health, she is expansive, loyal, confiding, impressionable, loving gayety in full abundance as much as she does the smile of the refined, as eager for the prattle of the court as for solid reading, smitten with nobiliary pride, a captive of the prejudices, superstitions and tastes of her caste (or of even her coterie), with her pen hardly tender for her neighbor—her daughter and intimates excepted. A manager and a woman of imagination, a Frondist at the bottom of her soul, and somewhat of a Jansenist—not enough, however, not to cry out that Louis XIV. will obscure the glory of his predecessors because he had just danced with her—faithful to her friends (Retz, Fouquet, Pomponne) in disgrace and detesting their persecutors, seeking the favor of court for her children. In the salons, she is celebrated for her esprit—and this at an age when one seldom thinks about reputation, when one is like the princess who replied to a question on the state of her soul, 'At twenty one has no soul;' and she possesses the qualities that are so essential to style—natural éclat, originality of expression, grace, color, amplitude without pomposity and abundance without prolixity; moreover, she invents nothing, but, knowing how to observe and to express in perfection everything she had seen and felt, she is a witness and painter of her century: also, she loves nature—a sentiment very rare in the seventeenth century."

Mme. de Sévigné was endowed with the best qualities of the French race—good will and friendliness, which influence one to judge others favorably and to desire their esteem; of a very impressionable nature, she was gifted with a natural eloquence which enabled her to express her various emotions in a light or gay vein which often bordered on irony. Affectionate and appreciative and tender and kind to everyone in general, toward those whom she loved she was generous to a fault and unswerving in her fidelity.

Her last years were spent in the midst of her family. She died in 1696, of small-pox, thanking God that she was the first to go, after having trembled for the life of her daughter, whom she had nursed back to health after a long and dangerous illness. Her son-in-law, M. de Grignan, wrote to her uncle, M. de Coulanges:

"What calls far more for our admiration than for our regret, is the spectacle of a brave woman facing death—of which she had no doubt from the first days of her illness—with astounding firmness and submission. This person, so tender and so weak towards all whom she loved, showed nothing but courage and piety when she believed that her hour had come; and, impressed by the use she managed to make of that good store in the last moments of her life, we could not but remark of what utility and of what importance it is to have the mind stocked with the good matter and holy reading for which Mme. de Sévigné had a liking—not to say a wonderful hunger."

In order to give an idea of the place that Mme. de Sévigné holds in the opinion of the average Frenchman, we quote the final words of M. Vallery-Radot:

"To take a place among the greatest writers, without ever having written a book or even having thought of writing one—this is what seems impossible, and yet this is what happened to Mme. de Sévigné. Her contemporaries knew her as a woman distinguished for her esprit, frank, playful and sprightly humor, irreproachable conduct, loyalty to her friends, and as an idolizer of her daughter; no one suspected that she would partake of the glory of our classical authors—and she, less than any one. She had immortalized herself, without wishing or knowing it, by an intimate correspondence which is, to-day, universally regarded as one of the most precious treasures and one of the most original monuments to French literature. To deceive the ennui of absence, she wrote to her daughter all that she had in her heart and that came to her mind—what she did, wished to do, saw and learned, news of court, city, Brittany, army, everything—sadly or gayly, according to the subject, always with the most keen, ardent, delicate, and touching sentiments of tenderness and sympathy. She amuses, instructs, interests, moves to tears or laughter. All that passes within or before her, passes within and before us. If she depicts an object, we see it; if she relates an event, we are present at its occurrence; if she makes a character talk, we hear his words, see his gestures, and distinguish his accent. All is true, real, living: this is more than talent—it is enchantment. Generations pass away in turn; a single one, or, rather, a group escapes the general oblivion—the group of friends of Mme. de Sévigné."

A woman with characteristics the very opposite of those of Mme. de Sévigné, but who in some respects resembled her, was Mme. de La Fayette. Of her life, very little is to be said, except in regard to her lasting friendship and attachment for La Rochefoucauld. She was born in 1634, and, with Mme. de Sévigné, was probably the best educated among the great women of the seventeenth century. She was faithful to her husband, the Count of La Fayette, who, in 1665, took her to Paris, where she formed her lifelong attachment for the great La Rochefoucauld, and where she won immediate recognition for her exquisite politeness and as a woman with a large fund of common sense.

After her marriage, she seemed to have but one interest—La Rochefoucauld, just as that of Mme. de Maintenon was Louis XIV. and that of Mme. de Sévigné—her daughter. These three prominent women illustrate remarkably well that predominant trait of French women—faithfulness to a chosen cause; each one of the three was vitally concerned in an enduring, a legitimate, and sincere attachment, which state of affairs gives a certain distinction to the society of the time of Louis XIV.