Madame de Sévigné was that delightful combination—a beauty, a wit, and a femme d’esprit. As an instance of the flattery to which even genius stooped in speaking to a monarch who loved flattery and adulation more than anything, she relates an answer made by Racine to Louis XIV when that sovereign expressed his regret that the poet had not accompanied the army in its last campaign. “Sire,” said Racine, “we had none but town-clothes, and had ordered others to be made; but the places you attacked were all taken before they could be finished.” “This,” adds Madame de Sévigné, “was well received.”
It is in her famous correspondence with her daughter that we find many an account of a garden party, or a fête, which we should gladly have seen, and which at our own garden parties we are glad to remember. Her letters contain much talk on books, religion, philosophy, and politics; on the frowns and smiles of the great monarch; the favor accorded to this courtier, the disgrace of that; the marriage contracted, the bons mots circulated. But it is upon society that she is strongest. She loved nature, too, in a Frenchwoman’s way. When she walked the garden of her uncle, the Abbé, at Livry, or far away in the solitudes of Brittany, she rejoiced in the song of the nightingale, in the change of the leaf, in the glad freshness of the air. She is a poet, without meaning it. Her garden-party letters are her best letters.
Very stately must have been those garden parties at Wilton, when Ben Jonson and Philip Massinger afforded amusement to the intellectual great. The Masque, an entertainment of the rich and noble in the time of Elizabeth and James I, called out the powers of these men. The actors were people of the highest class, sometimes royal personages, the masques always in the open air. Dancing and music were introduced. These various actors learned their parts under the tutorship of the Master of the Revels. Lawes composed music, to which the poetry of Jonson was sung; and the scenes, decorations, and dresses were contrived and executed by Inigo Jones. Certain great families copied the example of the court, and ordered masques to be written, and played at their own country-seats; calling in for the choruses the children of the Chapel Royal, who were regularly trained to take their part in masques. At Wilton, at Belvoir Castle, at Whitehall, at Windsor, these charming but costly diversions were carried on. Ben Jonson might have been heard scolding and working over these garden parties at the house of the beautiful Mary Sidney, sister to the author of the “Arcadia,” who was afterward Countess of Pembroke. She often gave these entertainments at Wilton. She there received Queen Elizabeth, Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Essex, Will Shakespeare, Spenser, and Cecil. Philip Massinger was in her servants’ hall, a humble retainer. The pious Countess, for her solemn hours, had Dr. Donne, most devoted of servitors. The death of her noble brother, Philip Sidney, broke her heart, and there were no more garden parties at Wilton. We all know how Walter Scott has described these garden parties in “Kenilworth.” Indeed, they make us rather out of love with our later attempts.
Once in our own land a masque was attempted, the famous Mischianza of Major André, on the Delaware, at Philadelphia. Had not he and Arnold gone out together in that rather sad way, we might like to tell of that garden party, but we will skip it.
After all, man was born, the race was started, in a garden. Adam and Eve held the first garden party. What a pity that the serpent crawled in!
[XII.]
DANCING.
Dancing is so well known to all young people as a Home Amusement that it seems perhaps banale to describe it. A glance at the dances now fashionable may, however, not be out of place.
From the Virginia Reel to the German Cotillon is indeed a bound. Our grandfathers were taught to dance the Pirouette, the delicate Pigeon-wing—indeed, all the paces of the dance such as it was when Vestris bounded before Louis XVI. When commanded to dance before him, the dancer loftily replied: “The House of Vestris has always danced for that of Bourbon.”