Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs

by Osgood E. Fuller

She was, nevertheless, the farthest in the world from becoming a literary dragon. All this did not impair the freshness of girlhood. She was meek and pure. Passages in her autobiography, which I can not repeat, yet which ought to be read, establish this. She was throughout entirely domestic. She did the marketing, cooked the food; nursed her mother; kept a sharp eye on the apprentices; nearly fell in love, for when the young painter, Taborel, who was twenty, and blushed like a girl, visited her father's workshop, she always had a crayon or something else to seek there, but at the sight of him ran away trembling, without saying a word.

It was not difficult for her to be both scholar and housewife. Writing in after years, of domestic cares, she says: "I never could comprehend how the attention of a woman who possesses method and activity can be engrossed by them.... Nothing is wanting but a proper distribution of employments, and a small share of vigilance.... People who know how to employ themselves always find leisure moments, while those who do nothing are in want of time for any thing.... I think that a wife should keep the linen and clothes in order, or cause them to be so kept; nurse her children; give directions concerning the cookery, or superintend it herself, but without saying a word about it, and with such command of her temper, and such management of her time, as may leave her the means of talking of other matters, and of pleasing no less by her good humor than by the graces natural to her sex.... It is nearly the same in the government of states as of families. Those famous housewives who are always expatiating on their labors are sure either to leave much in arrears, or to render themselves tiresome to every one around them; and, in like manner, those men in power so talkative and so full of business, only make a mighty bustle about the difficulties they are in because too awkward or ignorant to remove them."

An acquaintance which one of her uncles, who was an ecclesiastic, had with an upper servant of the royal household, enabled her to spend some days at the palace of Versailles. She was lodged with the servants, and enjoyed the servant's privilege of seeing every thing and sparing nothing. Royalty was never put in the focus of eyes so critical. Her comments upon this visit are very brief. She expresses her detestation of what she saw, saying, "It gives me the feeling of injustice, and obliges me every moment to contemplate absurdity."

The studies and experiences which have been described bring us to her fifteenth year. She was then a beautiful woman. In her memoirs she declines to state how she looked when a child, saying that she knows a better time for such a sketch. In describing herself at fifteen, she says: "I was five feet four inches tall; my leg was shapely; my hips high and prominent; my chest broad and nobly decorated; my shoulders flat; ... my face had nothing striking in it except a great deal of color, and much softness and expression; my mouth is a little too wide--you may see prettier every day--but you will see none with a smile more tender and engaging; my eyes are not very large; the color of the iris is hazel; my hair is dark brown; my nose gave me some uneasiness; I thought it a little too flat at the end.... It is only since my beauty has faded that I have known what it has been in its bloom. I was then unconscious of its value, which was probably augmented by my ignorance."

That she understated her personal charms, the concurrent admiration of contemporary men and women fully attests. Her physical beauty was marvelous, and when great men were subjected to its influence, to the imperial functions of her intellect, and to the persuasions of an organization exceedingly spiritual and magnetic, it is no wonder that her influence, domestic woman, housewife, as she always was, became so effectual over them.

Let me here warn my hearers not to forestall this woman in their judgments. She was not a manlike female. No better wife ever guided her husband anonymously by her intuitions, or assisted him by her learning. In the farm house and in the palace she was as wifely and retiring as any of the excellent women who have been the wives of American statesmen. Every one knew her abilities and her stupendous acquirements, and she felt them herself, but, notwithstanding, she never would consent to write a line for publication and avow it as her own, and never did, until that time when her husband was an outlaw, when her child was torn from her, when she herself stood in the shadow of the guillotine, and writhed under the foulest written and spoken calumnies that can torture outraged womanhood into eloquence. She then wrote, in twenty-six days, her immortal Appeal to Posterity, and those stirring letters and papers incident to her defense, from which some extracts have been here presented. She was mistress of a faultless style. Her command over the resources of her language was despotic. She could give to French prose an Italian rhythmus. She had wit and imagination--a reasoning imagination. She was erudite. Probably no woman ever lived better entitled to a high position in literature. But she never claimed it. She holds it now only as a collateral result of her defense in the struggle in which her life was the stake, and in which she lost. She says: "Never, however, did I feel the smallest temptation to become an author. I perceived at a very early period that a woman who acquires this title loses far more than she gains. She forfeits the affections of the male sex, and provokes the criticisms of her own. If her works be bad, she is ridiculed, and not without reason; if good, her right to them is disputed; or if envy be forced to acknowledge the best part to be her own, her character, her morals, her conduct, and her talents are scrutinized in such a manner that the reputation of her genius is fully counterbalanced by the publicity given to her defects. Besides, my happiness was my chief concern, and I never saw the public intermeddle with that of any one without marring it.... During twelve years of my life I shared in my husband's labors as I participated in his repasts, because one was as natural to me as the other. If any part of his works happened to be quoted in which particular graces of style were discovered, or if a flattering reception was given to any of the academic trifles, which he took a pleasure in transmitting to the learned societies, of which he was a member, I partook of his satisfaction without reminding him that it was my own composition.... If during his administration an occasion occurred for the expression of great and striking truths, I poured forth my whole soul upon the paper, and it was but natural that its effusions should be preferable to the laborious teemings of a secretary's brain. I loved my country. I was an enthusiast in the cause of liberty. I was unacquainted with any interest or any passions that could enter into competition with that enthusiasm; my language, consequently, could not but be pure and pathetic, as it was that of the heart and of truth.... Why should not a woman act as secretary to her husband without depriving him of any portion of his merit? It is well known that ministers can not do every thing themselves; and, surely, if the wives of those of the old governments, or even of the new, had been capable of making draughts of letters, of official dispatches, or of proclamations, their time would have been better employed than in intriguing first for one paramour and then for another." "An old coxcomb, enamored of himself, and vain of displaying the slender stock of science he has been so long in acquiring, might be in the habit of seeing me ten years together without suspecting that I could do more than cast up a bill or cut out a shirt."

Suitors, she writes, came numerously from her fifteenth year. She marches them off en masse in her memoirs. As is the custom in France, the first overture was made to her father, and usually by letter. Her music teacher was her first devotee. He was followed by her dancing master, who, as a propitiatory preparation had a wen cut out of his cheek; then came a wealthy butcher; then a man of rank; then a dissolute physician, from marrying whom she narrowly escaped; then a jeweler, and many others. The merits of these gentlemen--particularly those of the energetic butcher---were warmly commended by their female friends, who, in France, are brokers in this business on a very extensive scale. It is a unique proof of her ascendancy over every person near her that the letters which her father received, requesting his permission to address her, were submitted by him to her to draft the answer he was to send. So she placed herself loco parentis, and wrote the most paternal letters of refusal; all of which her father dutifully copied and sent, with many a pang when she let riches and rank pass by her. The suitors were dismissed, one and all, and she resumed her books and studies.

Her mother died in 1775. She became the mistress of the house. Her father formed disreputable connections. Late in that year her future husband, Roland de la Platiere, presented himself, with a letter from a friend of her girlhood. He was forty years old; he was a student; his form was awkward and his manners were stiff; his morals were irreproachable, his disposition was exacting, but his ability was great. He was capable of instructing even her on many subjects, and they became well acquainted by the elective sympathy of scholarship. She became the critic and depositary of his manuscripts. Finally, one day, after asking leave, in her father's presence the worthy man actually kissed her, on his departure for Italy. Her father, sinking lower and lower, squandered her little fortune of about three thousand dollars, wasted his own business, and then treated her with brutality. Her only amusement at this time was playing the violin, accompanied by an old priest who tortured a bass viol, while her uncle made a flute complain.

Finally, after an acquaintance of five years, Roland, by letter to her father, proposed marriage. The purity of Roland's life was esteemed by Phlipon such a reproach to his own dissoluteness that he revenged himself by an insulting refusal. He then made his daughter's life at home so insupportable that she took lodgings in a convent. She was visited there by Roland, and they were finally married, without again consulting her father. During the year next succeeding their marriage they remained at Paris. From Paris they went to Amiens, and lived there four years, where her daughter was born. She assisted her husband in the preparation of several statistical and scientific articles for the Encyclopedic. She made a hortus siccus of the plants of Picardy.

In 1784 they removed to the family estate of Roland at Villefranche, near Lyons. She had, in the course of her studies, acquired considerable knowledge of medicine. There was no physician in that little community, and she became the village doctor. Some of her experiences were quite whimsical. A country-woman came several leagues, and offered her a horse if she would save the life of her husband, whom a physician had given up to die. She visited the sick man, and he recovered, but she had great difficulty in resisting the importunities of his wife that she should take the horse.