From The Month.
MADAME SWETCHINE AND HER SALON.
The salons of Paris form a distinctive feature of French society. Nowhere else is the same thing exactly to be found. Frenchwomen have a peculiar gift for conversation, due in a great measure to their graceful language, with its delicate shades of expression. We are prone to smile at French sentimentality, or to apply their own word verbiage, prefacing it with unmeaning. But when the epithet does truly fit, it is because the real thing has been abused, not because it does not exist. Conversation in France is cultivated as an art, just the same as epistolary style: both form an important branch of female education. When the soil is bad, the attempt at culture only betrays more clearly native poverty; in other words, a mind of little thought or taste becomes ridiculous in straining after the expression of what it can neither conceive nor feel. But when a well-informed and cultivated intelligence blossoms into keen appreciation of the beautiful, no language so delicately as French conveys minute shades of thought and feeling. 'Tis not repetition, then, but variety; and when such an instrument is handled with feminine tact, perfection in its kind is achieved.
No wonder that salons are exclusively French from the days of Julie de Rambouillet down to Madame Récamier. No wonder at the influence exercised by a woman who really has a salon. Few, very few, arrive at this result. Thousands may receive; hundreds glitter in the gay world of fashion, renowned for beauty, wit, good dressing, or good parties; two or three at most in a century are the presiding spirits of their social circles, and that is what constitutes having a salon. No one quality alone will do it; a combination is required; not always the same, but one or two together, whichsoever, attracting sympathy and producing influence. Influence—the effect, not the quality itself—can never be absent.
Strangers settling in Paris have had their salon; but we do not know that they could transport it with them to any other atmosphere. Beside Madame Récamier—whose rare beauty, joined to her goodness and her tact, helped to form her salon—two other women in our day, or just before it, have been the leading stars of their circles. Others, no doubt, there are; but the names of these three have escaped beyond Paris. Strange to say, two are foreigners, and both of these Russians. Except, however, as regards country and influence, no comparison can of course be established between the Princess Lieven and Madame Swetchine. One sought and gained a political object; the other accepted circumstances, and found them fame.
Madame Swetchine was already thirty-four years of age when she arrived in Paris. She had no beauty, and no pretensions to wit; indeed, her timidity was such that her expressions were always obscure when she began to speak; and it was only by degrees, as she went on, that she gathered confidence, and then her language flowed with ease, betraying, rather than fully revealing, the deep current of thought beneath. Still her advantages were many. As regards outward circumstances, she possessed good birth and high position; her manners were such as the early culture of a polished court bestows; she was accustomed to wield a large fortune, and to hold a prominent place in the social world. These were advantages that might be fairly set against the absence of beauty, wondrous as is that charm: beside, her person was not unpleasing. Though [{457}] small, she was graceful in her motions; despite little blue eyes, rather irregular, and a nose of Calmuck form, her face wore a soft kindly expression that attracted sympathy. Her complexion was remarkably fresh and clear.
But Madame Swetchine possessed innate qualities of heart and mind of the rarest description, that only unfolded themselves gradually the more closely she could be observed. Unlike mankind in general, the better she was known, the more was she beloved and admired. Her intelligence of richly-varied powers had been carefully cultivated; what she acquired in youth, with the aid of masters, had been since matured by her own unceasing study, and by reading of the most widely-discursive character. Not only was she familiar with ancient and modern literatures, perusing them in their originals, but she also conversed fluently in all the languages of Europe. Her imagination, enthusiastic and wild almost, as belongs to the north, successfully sought for outpourings, both in music and painting. By a strange combination, no natural quality of mind was more remarkable in Madame Swetchine than her good sense: the only feature that shone above it was her eminent gift of piety.
But virtues, and particularly religious virtues, proceed from the heart quite as much as from the intelligence; often, indeed, far more especially. Madame Swetchine possessed the warmest feelings, a nature both loving and expansive. As daughter, wife, and friend she evinced rare devotion; but the sentiment and thought that most filled heart and mind was undoubtedly her love for God.
What a rich assemblage of qualities is here! how strange that they should go to make up a Parisian woman of fashion! Such, however, in its most usual acceptation, Madame Swetchine never was: she never mingled in the light brilliant world; but she did form the centre of attraction to a large circle she had her salon.
General Swetchine, deeply wounded by the emperor, who lent too ready credence to unfounded reports whispered against so faithful a subject, would not stoop to justify himself, but quitted Russia in disgust, accompanied by his wife. When they reached Paris, in the spring of 1816, Louis XVIII. was on the throne of France. Madame Swetchine found now restored to their high positions those friends of her youth whom as exiles she had known and loved at St. Petersburg. Her place was naturally amongst them; new intimacies were soon added to the old. The Duchesse de Duras, authoress of Ourika, and friend of Madame de Staël, gained a strong hold on her affections. Yet it did not seem at first as if Madame Swetchine were destined to so much influence in French society. Modesty made her reserved. Madame de Staël had been invited to meet her at a small dinner-party; and Madame Swetchine, though seated opposite, was intimidated, and allowed the meal to pass over without speaking or scarcely raising her eyes. Afterward Madame de Staël came up and said, "I had been told that you desired my acquaintance; was I misinformed?" "By no means," was the reply; "but it is customary for royalty to speak first." Such was the homage she paid to genius.
At first it had seemed uncertain how long General and Madame Swetchine might remain absent from Russia; but after the lapse of a few years they took up their definite residence in Paris. Their hotel, Rue St. Dominique, was hired on a long lease, and fitted up as a permanent abode. They sent for their pictures and other articles from St. Petersburg. The general occupied the ground-floor; Madame Swetchine took the rooms above. Her apartments consisted of a salon and a library commanding an extensive view of gardens. Here it was that her friends used to assemble; not many at a time, but successively. She never gave soirées, and her dinner-parties consisted of a few intimates round a small table. Her hours for [{458}] reception were every day from three till six, and then from nine till midnight. Debarred by her health from paying visits, she contented herself with receiving in this manner; and for thirty years a continuous stream of persons was for ever passing on through her rooms. She had not sought to form it; but there was her salon, and one of a peculiar character.