International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art, and Science — Volume 1, No. 4, July 22, 1850

by Various

If we venture to bring the Parisian evening, dinner and supper parties into connection with the general history of Europe, and the ladies also at whose houses these parties took place, we can neither be blamed for scrupulous severity, nor for paradoxical frivolity. It belongs to the character of the eighteenth century, that the historian who wishes to bring the true springs of conduct and sources of action to light, must condescend even so far. It must also be borne in mind, when the clever women and societies of Paris are spoken of, that the demands of the age and progressive improvement and culture were altogether unattended to at the court of Louis XV., as well before as after the death of Cardinal Fleury, and that all which was neglected at Versailles was cultivated in Paris. The court and the city had been hitherto united in their wants and in their judgment; the court ruled education, fashion and the general tone, as it ruled the state; now, however, they completely separated. Afterward the voice of the city was raised in opposition, and the voice of this opposition became the organ of the age and of the country; but it was felt and recognized in Versailles only when it was too late. How easy it would have been then, as Marmontel had shown very clearly in his memoirs, to fetter Voltaire, who was offensive to the people, and how important this would have been for the state, will appear in the following paragraphs, in which we shall show that even the Parisian theatre, whose boards were regarded as a model by all Europe, freed itself from the influence of the court, became dependent on the tone-giving circles of Paris, and assumed a decidedly democratic direction.

As early as the time of Louis XIV., the court had separated itself from the learned men of the age; and at the end of the seventeenth century the houses and societies could be historically pointed out, in which judgments were pronounced upon questions of literature in the same manner as the pit became the tribunal to which plays and play-actors must appeal; we shall not, however, go back so far, but keep the later times always in our view. In those associations in which the Abbé de Chaulieu and other friends of Vendome and Conti led the conversation, literature was brought wholly under the dominion of audacious pretension and immorality, in the time of the Regency and during the minority of Louis XV. In reference to the leaders there needs no proof. What could a Philip of Orleans or his Dubois take under his protection, except what corresponded with his ideas and mode of life?

The time of the minority of Louis XV. and that of the administration of Cardinal Fleury was for several reasons highly favorable to the formation of private societies, which entertained themselves with wit and satire, and carried on a quiet but continual contest with the persons and systems which were protected by the government and the clergy. Fleury regarded everything as sinful which had the appearance of worldly knowledge, or partook of the character of jests, novels, or plays; Louis, as he grew up, showed himself quite indifferent to everything which had no connection with religious ceremonies, hunting, or handsome women. Fleury spoke and wrote in that ecclesiastical phraseology which was laughed at in the world: he favored the clergy, school learning, the tone of the times of Louis XIV.; but the spirit of the age demanded something different from this. All that was regarded with disfavor by Fleury assembled around those celebrated men, who held their reunions in Paris, and this court soon became more important to the vain than the royal one itself, and it was proved by experience that reputation and glory might be gained without the aid or protection of the court at Versailles. This no one could have previously believed, but the public soon learnt to do homage to the tone-giving scholars, to the ladies and gentlemen who fostered them, as it had formerly paid its homage to the ministers of the court. This gave to the ladies, who collected around them the celebrated men of the time (for reputation was much more the question than merit,) and who protected and entertained them, a degree of weight in the political and literary world, which made them as important in the eighteenth century as Richelieu and Colbert had been in the seventeenth.

The queen, on her part, might have been able to exercise a beneficial influence, however little power she had in other respects, when compared with the mistresses of the king; but the daughter of Stanislaus Leckzinski was a gentle, admirable woman, although somewhat narrow-minded, and wholly given up to irrational devotional exercises and bigotry. Like her father, she was altogether in the hands of the Jesuits, blindly and unconditionally their servant; such an attachment to a religious order, and such blind devotedness as hers would be quite incredible, if we did not possess her own and her father's autograph letters, as proofs of the fact. We shall present our readers with some extracts from these letters, which are preserved in the archives of the French empire, when we come to speak of the abolition of the order of Jesuits.

As to the enlightened mistresses who had much more power and influence than the queen, Pompadour seemed, as we learn from Marmontel, desirous of participating in the literature of the age and of doing something for its promotion, when she saw how important writers and the influence of the press had become; but partly because both she and the king were altogether destitute of any sense for the beautiful in literature or art, and partly because the better portion of the learned men at the time neither could nor would be pleased with what a Bernis, Düclos and Marmontel were disposed to be, who undoubtedly received some marks of favor from her. Voltaire is therefore quite right when he lays upon the court the blame of allowing the influence which literature then exercised upon the people, to be withdrawn altogether from king and his ministers, and to be transferred to the hands of the Parisian ladies and farmers-general, &c. Voltaire, in his well-known verses,[¹] admits, with great openness and simplicity, that he attached much importance to the applause of a court, although it neither possessed judgment nor feeling for the merits of a writer, nor for poetical beauties; and he complains at the same time that this court had neither duly estimated his tragedies nor his epic poems. It is characteristic both of the court and of Voltaire that he eagerly pressed himself forward for admission to its favor, and sought to attract attention by a work which be himself called a piece of trash, and that the court extended its approbation and applause to this miserable and altogether inappropriate piece, ('La Princesse de Navarre,') which he composed on the occasion of the Dauphin's marriage with the Infanta of Spain, whilst it entirely neglected his masterpieces.

The Paris societies had got full possession of the field of literature, and erected their tribunals before the middle of the century, whilst at Versailles nothing was spoken or thought of except amusements and hunting, Jesuits and processions, and the grossest sensuality prevailed. The members of the Parisian societies were not a whit more moral or decent in their behavior than those about the court at Versailles, but they carried on open war against hypocrisy, and all that was praised and approved of by the court.

We shall now proceed to mention three or four of the most distinguished of those societies, which have obtained an historical importance, not merely for the French literature and mental and moral culture of the eighteenth century, but for Europe in general, without however restraining ourselves precisely within the limits of the half century. The minute accounts which Grimm has given, for the most part affect only the later periods; we turn our attention therefore the rather to what the weak, vain, talkative Marmontel has related to us on the subject in his 'Autobiography,' because Rousseau was by far too one-sided in his notices, and drew public attention to the most demoralized and degraded members of the circle only.

The first lady who must be mentioned, is Madame de Tencin. She belonged to the period within which we must confine ourselves, and she gained for herself such a name, not only in Paris, but in all Europe, that she was almost regarded as the creator of that new literature which stood in direct and bold opposition to the prevailing taste, inasmuch as she received at her house, entertained and cherished, those who were really its originators and supporters. This lady could not boast of the morality of her early years, nor of her respect even for common propriety. She is not only notorious for having exposed, when a child, the celebrated D'Alembert, who was her natural son, and for regarding with indifference his being brought up by the wife of a common glazier as her own son; but stories still worse than even these are told of her. She enriched herself, as many others did, in the time of Law's scheme, by no very creditable means; and fell under such a serious suspicion of having been privy to the death of one of those who had carried on an intrigue with her, that she was imprisoned and involved in a criminal prosecution, from which she escaped, not through her own innocence, but by means of the powerful influence of her distinguished relations and friends.

All this did not prevent Pope Benedict XIV., who, as Cardinal Lambertini, had been often at her house, as a member of the society of men of talents who met there, from carrying on a continual intercourse with her by letter; he also sent her his picture as a testimony of kind remembrance. This lady succeeded in procuring for her brother the dignity of a cardinal, and through him had great weight with Fleury, with the court, and with the city in general; she is also known as an authoress. As we are not writing a history of literature properly speaking, we pass by her novels in silence, with this remark only, that people are accustomed to place the 'Comte de Comminges,' written by Madame de Tencin, on the same footing with the 'Princess de Clêve,' by Madame de Lafayette.

The society in the house of Madame de Tencin consisted of well-known men of learning, and some younger men of distinguished name and family; she united, in later years, a certain amiability with her care for the entertainment and recreation of those whom she had once received into her house. This society, after the death of De Tencin, assembled in the house of Geoffrin. It appears, however, that Madame de Tencin, as well as the whole fashionable world to which she belonged, could never altogether disavow their contempt for science, if indeed it be true, that she was accustomed to call her society by the indecent by-name of her ménagerie. Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Helvetius who was then quite young and present rather as a hearer than a speaker, Marivaux and Astruc, formed the nucleus of this clever society and led the conversation. Marmontel, who was not well suited to this society, in which more real knowledge and a deeper train of thought was called for than he possessed, informs us what the tone of this society was, and speaks of their hunting after lively conceits and brilliant flashes of wit, in a somewhat contemptuous manner. Marmontel, however, himself admits, that he was only once in the society, and that in order to read his 'Aristomenes,' and that greater simplicity and good humor prevailed there than in the house of Madame Geoffrin, in which he was properly at home.