There is much to be said for Anarchy in the abstract, nothing at all in the concrete. Mr. Smillie, however, appears to favour it, raw, rough and ready. In that he is precocious, and, like the rathe primrose, will "forsaken die." He will rend the Labour party in twain from the top to the bottom, and will see the agricultural vote drop off his industrials just as it had begun to adhere to them. I know the peasantry. They will never strike for political ends, for though they are not quick to see the consequences of hypothetical actions, they do see that if you make Parliamentary government impossible you make a Labour majority not worth having.
And another thing: Mr. Smillie and his friends may want a revolution, but Hodge and his most certainly do not. They want to earn their livelihood, pay their way, and dig their plots of ground. No more warfare for them. I dare say I shall be sorry for Mr. Smillie when the time comes; but I may have to be still more sorry for my country first. I can't help hoping, however, when it comes to the point that his feet will be a little colder than his head seems to be just now.
LA PETITE PERSONNE
No letter-writer's stage can at any time be called empty, because upon it you necessarily have at all times two persons at least: the mover of the figures and the audience, the puppeteer and the puppetee, the letter-writer and the letter-reader. The play presented is, therefore, a play within a play: like the Mousetrap in Hamlet, like Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, like the romantic drama of Gayferos and Melisandra which Don Quixote witnessed with a select company of acquaintance at an inn. The temperament of this presented spectator, himself or herself a person of the scene, is always reflected in the entertainment when the letter-writer is a sensitive artist. So Horace Walpole's comedy varies according as it goes before Sir Horace Mann in Florence or Lady Upper-Ossory at Ampthill; so, more delicately, does Madame de Sévigné's. There are blacker strokes in the dialogue when Bussy is to see the play; there is always idolatry implied, and sometimes anxiety, if the spoilt child of Provence is the audience. It is this chère bonne, this Madame de Grignan, nine times out of ten, who is queen of the entertainment. You have to reckon with her upon her throne of degrees, set up there like Hippolita, Duchess of Athens, to be propitiated and, if possible, diverted. For her sake, not for ours, her incomparable mother beckons from the wings character after character, and gives each his cue, having set the scene with her exquisite art. In a few cases her anxiety to please spoils the effects. As we should say, she "laboured" the Cardinal de Retz. The sour-faced beauty would have none of him. But that is a rare case, one in which predilection betrayed her. Madame de Sévigné had a weakness for the Cardinal. It is very seldom that the lightest hand in the world fails her at a portrait. Her great successes are her thumb-nail sketches: she will be remembered by Picard in the hayfield so long as the world knows how to laugh. One of her best, because one of her tenderest, is the petite personne.
The name is Charles de Sévigné's, but his mother takes it up after him, and makes better play with it. Charles writes from Les Rochers in December, 1675—Madame being really ill for once in her life with "a nice little rheumatism," and Charles her amanuensis—"in the room of la Plessis," that striving lady, too, was ill, or thought she was—"we have had lately a very pretty young party (une petite personne fort jolie) whose good looks don't at all remind us of that divinity. At her instigation we have started Reversis: now, instead of knaves, we talk about jacks." He adds a stroke too good to be lost, though his mother might have left it out. "To give you a notion of her age and quality, she has just confided to us that the day after Easter Eve was a Tuesday. She thought that over, then said, 'No—it was a Monday!' Then, judging by the look of us that that wouldn't do either, 'Heavens, how stupid! Of course—it was a Friday!' That is the kind of party we are. If you wouldn't mind sending us word what day of the week you believe it to have been, you will save us a great deal of discomfort." The stage is the brisker for the coming in of this pretty soubrette.
Madame de Sévigné, meantime, is in a discomfort of her own. It takes her some ten days to absorb the petite personne, but then she fixes her for ever. Nobody can wish to know more about a young party than this:
"Christmas Day (1675)…. I still have that nice child here. She lives on the other side of the park; her mother is the good-wife Marcile's daughter—but you won't remember her. The mother lives at Rennes, but I shall keep her here. She plays trictrac, reversis; she is quite pretty, quite innocent, and called Jeannette. She is no more trouble than Fidèle."
Quite pretty, quite innocent and called Jeannette! Quid Plura? Need I say who Fidèle was? Fidèle is a shrewd touch of Madame's, put in, as I guess, to placate the hungry-eyed Goddess of Grignan; but it does clinch the portrait. All that one needs to know of the nature, parentage, and upbringing of a petite personne is in these two letters.
Immediately upon her entry the comedy begins, with Mademoiselle du Plessis in a leading part. "… La Plessis has a quartan fever. It is pretty to see her jealous fury when she comes here and finds the child with me. The fuss there is to have my stick or muff to hold! But enough of these nothings…."
It was of nothings that the vexed days of Mlle. du Plessis must exist.
An elderly virgin, evidently; stiff, gauche, full of guinderie, says
Madame, "et de l'esprit fichu." Everybody made game of her at Les
Rochers. As we shall see, the servants knew that very well. Charles is
always witty at her expense. Madame de Grignan once slapped her.