Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

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.

About 1726, when lovers were numerous and friends plentiful, the death of Lafresnaye occurred at her salon. In his testament he stated that his death was caused by Mme. de Tencin; however, she was too shrewd, cunning, and careful to be guilty of permitting any weak points to appear in her plots, and it was not difficult for her to clear herself of that charge by the verdict of the judges, who considered the accusation a posthumous vengeance.

The great literary men whom Mme. de Tencin gathered about her, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Marivaux, Helvétius, Marmontel, were called her menagerie, or her bêtes. Among them, Marivaux received a pension of one thousand écus from her, besides drawing at will upon the exchequer of an old maid by the name of Saint-Jean. Marmontel, desirous of writing tragedies, took lessons from the famous Mlle. Clairon—at his friend's expense. To give a correct idea of the character of woman's influence upon the literary style of that century, the words of Marmontel may be quoted: "He who wishes to write with precision, energy, and vigor, may live with man only; but he who in his style wishes to have subtleness, amenity, charm, flexibility, will do well, I think, to live with woman."

Mme. de Tencin exerted an immense influence upon the men of her circle, especially socially; for example, she married the wealthy M. de La Popelinière to Mlle. Dancourt. She was one of the few really consummate diplomats; later on, she became less associated with intrigues, and gave lessons in current diplomacy, with which she was perfectly familiar. Her counsel to her pupils was to gain friends among women rather than among men. "For," she would say, "we do whatever we wish with men; they are so dissipated, or so preoccupied with their personal interests, that to give attention to them would be to neglect your own interests."

Every New Year's Day the bêtes of her menagerie received two yards of velvet, to make knickerbockers to be worn at her receptions; this custom was observed up to the last year of the existence of her salon. Her receptions were among the first of the kind in France. Like the majority of salon leaders, she was an authoress of no mean ability. Her novels were widely read at the time—Le Siège de Calais and Les Malheurs de l'Amour. Her memoirs, throwing light upon the intrigues and plots, social animosities, and general state of the society of the time, are historically valuable. She died in Paris, in 1749.

Among all the great salons, that of Mme. de Tencin was the only one in which gambling was indulged in on a wholesale scale; fortunes changed hands every evening, a large part of the gains always falling to the lot of the hostess, as a sort of "rake off." She herself was a professional at the business, and by receiving private information from headquarters, through her famous friend Law, the contrôleur-général, and her lover Dubois, she was able to acquire an immense fortune which she distributed freely among her friends and favorites. Her place among the literary salon leaders depends mainly upon her endeavors to advance the interests of the aspiring young authors who were willing to place themselves under her protection.