MEN AND WOMEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
We have Louis Quinze chairs in our parlors, Louis Quinze carving and gilding about our mirrors, our ladies (in a double sense, of grace and utility), sweep past us in the streets or rustle in the ball-room in Louis Quinze brocades, with the boddice, if not the train, of pattern identical with that of Madame de Pompadour, as depicted in the excellent portrait before us in Mr. Redfield's elegant volumes, and we are, if scandal does not lie more than usual, making very practical acquaintance with Louis Quinze morals. It may be as well, therefore, to become more familiar with a period we find it so convenient to imitate. The great events of French history since 1789, their rapid sequence and ever varying character, have thrown into the shade the previous annals of the kingdom. Especially has this been the case with the period immediately preceding the days of terror. This period has been dispatched in a few sentences, in the opening chapters of works on the French Revolution—in some vague generalities on its profligacy and chaotic infamy. We have had glimpses, through the Œil de Bœuf, at groups of exquisite gentlemen and gay ladies; abbés who wrote every thing but sermons, and were free from the censure of not practising what they preached since they did not preach at all; generals who fought a campaign as deliberately and ceremoniously as they danced a minuet; statesmen whose diplomacy was more of the seraglio than the council; painters who improved on nature, applying the same tricks of art to the landscape as with powders to their curls; and simpering lips of the Marquise, and poets whose highest flights were a sonnet to Pompadour, or a pastoral to a sheep-tending Phillis. Our casual observations of all these people, however, have been vague and slight, for few have probably had patience to follow these worthies to their retirement, and look over their shoulders at the memoirs which every mother's son and daughter of the set, from the prime minister to the cook, found—it is impossible to tell how—time to scribble down for the edification of posterity. In the volumes of Arsene Houssaye before us, these gay but unsubstantial shadows take flesh and blood, and become the Men and Women—the living realities of the Eighteenth Century. We have here the most piquant adventures of the Memoirs and the choicest mots of the Anas, culled from the hundreds of volumes which weigh down the shelves of the French public libraries. Not only indeed have we the run of the petites soupers of Versailles, but we may wander at will in the coulisses of the Grand Opera, picking up the latest gossip of Camargo or Sophie Arnold, enter the foyer of the classic Theatre Française, or adjourn to the Café Procope to hear the last joke of Piron, or the latest news from Fernay. And better than all these, we may mount, au cinquième, au sexième, to the lofty yet humble garret of the author or the artist, and there find, in an age of sickening heartlessness, refreshing scenes of household sincerity, patient endurance of hardship, showing that even that depraved age was not utterly devoid of the heroic and the pure. M. Houssaye is no rigid moralist, he employs no historic pillory, and often displays the painful flippancy of the modern French school on religious points, but he does honor to these better traits of humanity when he meets them. And we are not sure but that the morality of the work is the more impressive for the absence of the didactic. Here is little danger of our falling in love with vice, seductive as she appears in the annals of Louis XV., for we see the rotten canvas as well as the brilliant scene. We remember with the gaudy blossoms of 1740-60, the ashen fruit of 1789-'95. It is as hard to select extracts from M. Houssaye's volumes on account of the embarras des richesses, as it would be to choose a gem or two for our drawing-room from a gallery of Watteau and Greuze, or a row of Laucret's passets. Much as the reader, we doubt not, will enjoy those we have picked for him, he will still find equal or greater pleasure in those we have left untouched.
Here are the first steps in the ascent of Madame de Pompadour to that "bad eminence" she attained of virtual though virtueless Queen of France. The entire sketch is the best life of this celebrated woman with which we are acquainted:
"Madame de Pompadour was born in Paris, in 1720. She always said it was 1722. It is affirmed, that Poisson, her father, at least the husband of her mother, was a sutler in the army; some historians state that he was the butcher of the Hospital of the Invalides, and was condemned to be hung; according to Voltaire, she was the daughter of a farmer of Ferté-sous-Jouarre. What matters it, since he who was truly a father to her was the farmer-general, Lenormant de Tourneheim. This gentleman, thinking her worthy of his fortune, took her to his home, and brought her up, as if she had been his own daughter. He gave her the name of Jeanne-Antoinette. She bore till she was sixteen years of age this sweet name of Jeanne. From her infancy, she exhibited a passion for music and drawing. All the first masters of the day were summoned to the hotel of Lenormant de Tourneheim. Her masters did not disgust Jeanne with the fine arts of which she was so fond. Her talent was soon widely known. Fontenelle, Duclos, and Crébillon, who were received at the hotel as men of wit, went about every where, talking of her beauty, her grace, and talent.
"Madame de Pompadour was an example of a woman that was both handsome and pretty; the lines of her face possessed all the harmony and elevation of a creation of Raphael's; but instead of the elevated sentiment with which that great master animated his faces, there was the smiling expression of a Parisian woman. She possessed in the highest degree all that gives to the face brilliancy, charm, and sportive gayety. No lady at court had then so noble and coquettish a bearing, such delicate and attractive features, so elegant and graceful a figure. Her mother used always to say, 'A king alone is worthy of my daughter.' Jeanne had an early presentiment of a throne! at first, from the ambitious longings of her mother; afterward, because she believed that she was in love with the king. 'She confessed to me,' says Voltaire, in his memoirs, 'that she had a secret presentiment that the king would fall in love with her, and that she had a violent inclination for him.' There is a time in life when destiny reveals itself. All those who have succeeded in climbing the rugged mountain of human vanity relate that, from their earliest youth, dazzling visions revealed to them their future glory.
"Well, how was the throne of France to be reached, the very idea of which made her head turn? In the mean time, full of genius, always admired, and always listened to, she familiarized herself with the life of a beautiful queen; she saw at her feet all the worshippers of the fortune of her father; she gathered about her poets, artists, and philosophers, over whom she already threw a royal protection.
"The farmer-general had a nephew, Lenormant d'Etioles. He was an amiable young man, and had the character and manners of a gentleman; he was heir to the immense fortune of the farmer-general, at least, according to law. Jeanne, on her side, had some claim to a share of this fortune. It was a very simple way of making all agreed, by marrying the young people. Jeanne, as we have seen, was already in love with the king; she married D'Etioles without shifting her point in view: Versailles, Versailles, that was her only horizon. Her young husband became desperately enamored of her; but this passion of his, which amounted almost to madness, she never felt in the least. She received it with resignation, as a misfortune that could not last long.
"The hotel of the newly-married couple, Rue-Croix-des-Petits-Champs, was established on a lordly footing; the best company in Paris left the fashionable salons for that of Madame D'Etioles until that time, there had never been such a gorgeous display of luxury in France. The young bride hoped by this means to make something of a noise at court, and thus excite the curiosity of the king. Day after day passed away in feasts and brilliant entertainments. Celebrated actors, poets, artists, and foreigners, all made their rendezvous at this hotel, the mistress of which was its life and ornament; all the world went there, in one word, except the king."
The painters are among the pleasantest personages of Mr. Houssaye's book, as they generally are in whatever society or whatever time we find them, all the world over. Watteau is familiar to us all, if not from his works, at second-hand in engravings, or those dainty little china shepherdesses and shepherds which we have seen on our grandmothers' mantel-pieces, and which are again emerging from the glass corner cupboard to the rosewood and mirrored étagère. The following passages descriptive of his early life, are full of animation: