Lives of Celebrated Women

by Samuel G. Goodrich

The study of Plutarch and the ancient historians was not, perhaps, favorable to the happiness of Mademoiselle Philipon. She regretted that her lot had not been cast in a free state, which she had persuaded herself was the only nursery of virtue, generosity, and wisdom. She contrasted the state of society, as she saw it around her, with the ideal state of its existence in ancient Greece and Rome. She had once paid a visit of eight days to Versailles, and witnessed the routine of the court. How different were the weak and dissolute actors upon that tinsel and tawdry stage from the heroes and philosophers with whom she was wont, in imagination, to associate! She “sorrowfully compared the Asiatic luxury, the insolent pomp, with the abject misery of the degraded people, who ran after the idols of their own creating, and stupidly applauded the brilliant shows for which they paid out of their own absolute necessaries.” Sometimes she was taken to visit certain ladies who called themselves noble, and who, looking upon her as an inferior, sent her to dine with the servants. But their airs of condescending kindness were even yet more offensive, and made her bosom swell with indignant emotion. She acknowledges that this feeling made her hail the revolution with greater transport.

The daughter of a prosperous tradesman, she had 271 many suitors of her own rank; but she had formed to herself a beau ideal of wedded life which none but a man of education could satisfy; they were all rejected. A physician proposed; more refinement and knowledge was to be expected in the learned professions; she hesitated, but he also was rejected. In the mean time, her father’s habits began to change; he became a speculator, fond of pleasure and careless of his business. His speculations failed, and his customers left him. Her mother witnessed the approach of poverty with anxiety; she feared for her daughter alone, for her own health was so feeble, that she could look only for a short term of life. She wished to see her daughter’s happiness made as secure as possible, and tried to persuade her to accept the addresses of a young jeweller who had health and a good character to recommend him; but Manon wished to find in her husband a companion and a guide.

Her mother died; and intense grief overwhelmed the daughter, both body and mind. It was long before she could be roused to any exertion from that melancholy “which made her a burden to herself and others.” At this moment, the “Nouvelle Heloise” was placed in her hands; it excited her attention, and called her thoughts from her loss. “I was twenty-one,” she says, “and Rousseau made the same impression on me as Plutarch had done when I was eight. Plutarch had disposed me to republicanism; he had awakened the energy and pride which are its characteristics; he inspired me with a true enthusiasm for public virtue and freedom. Rousseau showed me domestic happiness, and the ineffable felicity I was capable 272 of tasting.” She now returned to her studies. Her friends, among whom she numbered some literary men, finding that she committed her reflections to writing, predicted that she would become an author. But she was not ambitious of public distinction; she had adopted the sentiment of Rousseau, that the “dignity of woman is in being unknown; her glory, in the esteem of her husband; her pleasures, in the happiness of her family.” “I saw,” says Madame Roland, “that an authoress loses more than she gains. My chief object was my own happiness, and I never knew the public interfere with that for any one without spoiling it; there is nothing more delightful than to be appreciated by those with whom one lives, and nothing so empty as the admiration of those whom we are never to meet.”

In her school-girl days, Manon had formed a friendship with a girl of her own age, named Sophia, and the intercourse was still kept up by letters. Sophia felt the highest admiration for her friend, and often spoke of it. Among those who, through her, became acquainted with Manon’s character was M. Roland, a man whose great simplicity of character and strict integrity had gained for him universal esteem and confidence. His family was not of the ancient nobles, but of official dignity. He was fond of study, and laborious in the pursuit of knowledge. He had long sought for an introduction to Mademoiselle Philipon, and Sophia at length gave him a letter of introduction. “This letter,” she writes, “will be given you by the philosopher I have often mentioned, M. Roland, an enlightened and excellent man, who can only be reproached for his great admiration 273 of the ancients at the expense of the moderns, whom he despises, and his weakness in liking to talk too much about himself.”

M. Roland’s appearance was not calculated to make a favorable impression upon a young woman; his manners were cold and stiff; he was careless in his dress, and he had passed the meridian of life. But Mademoiselle Philipon discerned and appreciated his excellence, and received him to her friendship and confidence. For five years, this intercourse between them continued, before he disclosed to her the sentiments of love which had been making a slow, but deeply-rooted, growth in his heart. His proposal of marriage was not distasteful to her; but she was proud, and did not like to encounter the opposition which the match with a girl of humble birth would meet with from his family. Roland persisted in his addresses, and she at length referred him to her father. Philipon did not like the terms of his letter, and returned a rude answer, rejecting the proffered alliance.

The result, though anticipated by Manon, was a great disappointment to her, and the manner in which her father had conducted, shocked her feelings. She had a great cause for anxiety in his general management; his affairs were fast approaching utter ruin; extreme poverty was before her; she resolved to secure her own independence, and purchased an annuity of about one hundred and twenty dollars. With this she hired a room in a convent, and lived upon the simplest food, which she prepared for herself: her wants were strictly limited by her means.

Six months elapsed, and M. Roland once more presented 274 himself to her at the convent. He renewed his offer, and it was accepted. “I reflected deeply,” says Madame Roland, “on what I ought to do. I could not conceal from myself that a younger man would not have delayed, for several months, entreating me to change my resolution, and I confess this circumstance had deprived my feelings of every illusion. I considered, on the other hand, that this deliberation was an assurance that I was appreciated; and that, if he had overcome his pride, which shrunk from the disagreeable circumstances that accompanied his marrying me, I was the more secure of an esteem I could not fail to preserve. In short, if marriage was, as I thought, an austere union, an association in which the woman usually burdens herself with the happiness of two individuals, it were better that I should exert my abilities and my courage in so honorable a task, than in the solitude in which I lived.”

Such were the feelings with which she married. She was then twenty-six years old. She discharged with fidelity the duties she assumed. She was her husband’s friend and companion, and soon became absolutely necessary to him. With him she visited England and Switzerland, and finally they took up their abode at the family mansion near Lyons. She had one child, a daughter; and to educate her, and make her husband and those about her happy, was apparently to be the whole scope of her life. At this period, she writes to a friend, “Seated in my chimney corner, at eleven before noon, after a peaceful night and my morning tasks,—my husband at his desk, and my little girl knitting,—I am conversing with the former, and 275 overlooking the work of the letter; enjoying the happiness of being warmly sheltered in the bosom of my dear little family, and writing to a friend, while the snow is falling on so many poor wretches overwhelmed by sorrow and penury. I grieve over their fate. I repose on my own, and make no account of those family annoyances, which appeared formerly to tarnish my felicity.”

The revolution came to disturb this peaceful existence. At first she hailed it with joy; but fears soon arose. “Is the question,” she says, “to be whether we have one tyrant or a hundred?” She attached herself zealously to that party which advocated liberty without anarchy. The confusion of the times proved destructive to the manufacturing interests of Lyons; twenty thousand workmen were thrown out of employment, and were without means of support. M. Roland was selected to proceed to Paris to make known the distresses to the National Assembly, and to solicit relief.

The Girondists held opinions most in consonance with her own; her house at Paris soon became the rendezvous of that party; and her talents, beauty, and enthusiasm, insensibly procured for her a great influence in their councils. A late historian thus speaks of her: “Roland was known for his clever writings on manufactures and mechanics. This man, of austere life, inflexible principles, and cold, repulsive manners, yielded, without being aware, to the superior ascendency of his wife. She was young and beautiful. Nourished in seclusion by philosophical and republican sentiments, she had conceived ideas superior to her 276 sex, and had erected a strict religion from the then reigning opinions. Living in intimate friendship with her husband, she wrote for him, communicated her vivacity and ardor, not only to him, but to all the Girondists, who, enthusiastic in the cause of liberty and philosophy, adored beauty and talent, and their own opinions in her.” But she carefully guarded against appearing to exert influence. Present at the councils held at her own house, she sat apart, and, apparently engaged in needle-work or in writing, took no part in the public deliberations; but her opinions were freely expressed in private to the leaders of the party, who eagerly engaged with her in discussion.