Hugo P. Thieme - Women of Modern France
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Hugo P. Thieme >> Women of Modern France
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Mme. de Sevigne was but nineteen years old when, after the marriage of
Julie d'Angennes, the frequenters of the Hotel de Rambouillet began
to disperse, and she was in much demand by the successors of Mme. de
Rambouillet. While the women of the reign of Louis XIII.--Mmes.
de Hautefort, de Sable, de Longueville, de Chevreuse, etc.--were
exceedingly talented talkers, they were poor writers: but in Mme.
de Sevigne, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mlle. de Scudery both arts were
developed to the highest degree.
Mme. de Sevigne was on the best terms with every great writer of
her time--Pascal, Racine, La Fontaine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, La
Rochefoucauld. She was a woman of such broad affections that numerous
friends and admirers were a necessary part of her existence. Of all
the eminent women of the seventeenth century, she had the greatest
number of lovers--suitors who frequently became her tormentors.
Menage, her teacher, who threatened to leave her never to see her
again, was brought back to her by kind words, such as: "Farewell,
friend--of all my friends the best." The Abbe Marigny, that "delicate
epicurean, that improviser of fine triolets, ballads, vaudevilles,
that enemy of all sadness and sticklers for morality," charmed her, at
times, with sentimental ballads, such as the following:
"Si l'amour est un doux servage,
Si l'on ne peut trop estimer
Les plaisirs ou l'amour engage,
Qu'on est sot de ne pas aimer!
"Mais si l'on se sent enflammer
D'un feu dont l'ardeur est extreme,
Et qu'on n'ose pas l'exprimer,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!
"Si dans la fleur de son bel age,
Une qui pourrait tout charmer,
Vous donne son coeur en partage,
Qu'on est sot de ne point aimer!
"Mais s'il faut toujours s'alarmer,
Craindre, rougir, devenir bleme,
Aussitot qu'on s'entend nommer,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!
"Pour complaire au plus beau visage
Qu'amour puisse jamais former,
S'il ne faut rien qu'un doux langage,
Qu'on est sot de ne pas aimer!
"Mais quand on se voit consumer.
Si la belle est toujours de meme,
Sans que rien la puisse animer,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!
"L'ENVOI.
"En amour si rien n'est amer,
Qu'on est sot de ne pas aimer!
Si tout l'est au degre supreme,
Qu'on est sot alors que l'on aime!
[If love is a sweet bondage,
If we cannot esteem too much
The pleasures in which love engages,
How foolish one is not to love!
But if we feel ourselves inflamed
With a passion whose ardor is extreme,
And which we dare not express,
How foolish we are, then, to love!
If in the flower of her youth
There is one who could charm all.
And offers you her heart to share,
How very foolish not to love!
But if we must always be full of alarm--
Fear, blush and become pallid,
As soon as our name is spoken,
How foolish to love!
If to please the most beautiful countenance
That love can ever form,
Only a mellow language is necessary,
How foolish not to love!
But if we see ourselves wasting away,
If the belle is always the same
And cannot be animated,
How very foolish to love!
ENVOY.
If in love, nothing is bitter,
How dreadfully foolish not to love!
If everything is so to the highest degree,
How awfully foolish to love!]
Treville went so far as to say that the figure of Mme. de Sevigne was
beautiful enough to set the world afire. M. du Bled divides her lovers
into three classes: the first was composed of her literary friends;
the second, of those enamored, impassioned suitors, loving her from
good motives or from the opposite, who strove to compensate her for
the unfaithfulness of her husband while alive and for the ennui of her
widowhood; the third class was composed of her Parisian friends, of
whom she had hosts, court habitues who were leaders of society.
Representatives of the second class were the Prince de Conti, the
great Turenne, various counts and marquises, and Bussy-Rabutin, who
was a type of the sensual lover and the more dangerous on account of
the privileges he enjoyed because of his close relationship to Mme. de
Sevigne. His portrait of her is interesting: "I must tell you, madame,
that I do not think there is a person in the world so generally
esteemed as you are. You are the delight of humankind; antiquity
would have erected altars to you, and you would certainly have been a
goddess of something. In our century, when we are not so lavish with
incense, and especially for living merit, we are contented to say that
there is not a woman of your age more virtuous and more amiable than
are you. I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, great lords
with princely manners, great captains, gentlemen, ministers of state,
who would be off and away for you, if you would permit them. Can you
ask any more?"
Such eulogies came not only from men like the perfidious and cruel
cousin, but from her friends everywhere. The finest of these is
the one by her friend Mme. de La Fayette, contained in one of the
epistolary portraits so much in vogue at that time, and which were
turned out, _par excellence_, in the salon of Mlle. de Luxembourg:
"Know, madame,--if by chance you do not already know it,--that your
mind adorns and embellishes your person so well that there is not
another one on earth so charming as you when you are animated in a
conversation in which all constraint is banished. Your soul is great,
noble, ready to dispense with treasures, and incapable of lowering
itself to the care of amassing them. You are sensible to glory and
ambition, and to pleasures you are less so; yet you appear to be born
for the latter, and they made for you; your person augments pleasures,
and pleasures increase your beauty when they surround you. Joy is the
veritable state of your soul, and chagrin is more unlike to you than
to anyone. You are the most civil and obliging person that ever lived,
and by a free and calm air--which is in all your actions--the simplest
compliments of seemliness appear, in your mouth, as protestations of
friendship."
The originality which gained Mme. de Sevigne so many friends lay
principally in her force, wealth of resource, intensity, sincerity,
and frankness. M. Scherer said she possessed "surprises for us,
infinite energy, inexhaustible variety--everything that eternally
revives interest."
The interest of the modern world in this remarkable woman is centred
mainly in her letters. Guizot says: "Mme. de Sevigne is a friend whom
we read over and over again, whose emotions we share, to whom we go
for an hour's distraction and delightful chat; we have no desire to
chat with Mme. de Grignan (her daughter)--we gladly leave her to her
mother's exclusive affection, feeling infinitely obliged to her for
having existed, inasmuch as her mother wrote letters to her. Mme.
de Sevigne's letters to her daughter are superior to all her other
epistles, charming as they all are; when she writes to M. Pomponne, to
M. de Coulanges, to M. de Bussy, the style is less familiar, the heart
less open, the soul less stirred; she writes to her daughter as she
would speak to her--it is not a letter, it is an animated and charming
conversation, touching upon everything, embellishing everything with
an inimitable grace."
She had married her daughter to the Comte de Grignan, a man of
forty, twice married, and with children, homely, but wealthy and
aristocratic; writing to her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, concerning this
marriage, she said: "All these women (the count's former wives) died
expressly to make room for your cousin." By marrying her daughter
to such a man she encouraged all the questionable proprieties of the
time. Mme. de Sevigne's affection for that daughter amounted almost
to idolatry; it was to her that most of the mother's letters were
written, telling her of her health, what was being done at Vichy, and
about her business and for that child the authoress gave up her life
at Paris in order to economize and thereby to help Mme. de Grignan in
her extravagance, her son-in-law being an expert in spending money.
The intensity of her nature is well reflected in her letter upon the
separation from her daughter: "In vain I seek my darling daughter; I
can no longer find her, and every step she takes removes her farther
from me. I went to St. Mary's, still weeping and dying of grief; it
seemed as if my heart and my soul were being wrenched from me and, in
truth, what a cruel separation! I asked leave to be alone; I was taken
into Mme. du Housset's room, and they made me up a fire. Agnes sat
looking at me, without speaking--that was our bargain. I stayed there
till five o'clock, without ceasing to sob; all my thoughts were mortal
wounds to me. I wrote to M. de Grignan (you can imagine in what key).
Then I went to Mme. de La Fayette's, and she redoubled my griefs by
the interest she took in them; she was alone, ill, and distressed at
the death of one of the nuns; she was just as I should have desired,
I returned hither at eight; but oh, when I came in! can you conceive
what I felt as I mounted these stairs? That room into which I always
used to go, alas! I found the doors of it open, but I saw everything
upturned, disarranged, and your little daughter, who reminded me of
mine.... The wakenings of the night were dreadful. I think of you
continuously--it is what devotees call habitual thought, such as one
should have of God, if one did one's duty. Nothing gives me diversion;
I see that carriage which is forever going on and will never come
near me. I am forever on the highways; it seems as if I were sometimes
afraid that the carriage will upset with me; the rains there for the
last three days, drove me to despair. The Rhone causes me strange
alarm. I have a map before my eyes--I know all the places where you
sleep. This evening you are at Nevers; on Sunday you will be at
Lyons where you will receive this letter. I have received only two of
yours--perhaps the third will come; that is the only comfort I desire;
as for others, I seek none."
The letters of Mme. de Sevigne contain a great number of sayings
applicable to habits and conduct, and these have had their part
in shaping the customs and in depicting the time. To be modest and
moderate, friendly, and conciliatory, to be content with one's lot and
to bow to circumstances, to be sincere, to cultivate good sense and
good grace--these counsels have been and still are, according to
French opinion, the basis of French character: and Mme. de Sevigne's
own popularity and success attest their wisdom.
She had not the gift of seeing things vividly and reproducing them in
living form; her talent was a rarer one--it induced the reader to form
a mental picture of the scene described, so vivid as to be under the
illusion of being present in reality; and this is done with so much
grace, charm, happy ease and naturalness, that to read her letters
means to love the writer. What mother or friend would not fall a
willing victim to the charm of a woman who could write the following
letter?
"You ask me, my dear child, whether I continue to be really fond of
life; I confess to you that I find poignant sorrows in it, but I am
even more disgusted with death; I feel so wretched at having to end
all thereby, that, if I could turn back again, I would ask for nothing
better, I find myself under an obligation which perplexes me; I
embark upon life without my consent, and so must I go out of it; that
overwhelms me. And how shall I go? Which way? By what door? When will
it be? In what condition? Shall I suffer a thousand, thousand pains
which will make me die desperate? Shall I have brain fever? Shall I
die of an accident? How shall I be with God? What shall I have to show
Him? Shall fear, shall necessity bring me back to Him? Shall I have
sentiment except that of dread? What can I hope? Am I worthy of
heaven? Am I worthy of hell? Nothing is such madness as to leave one's
salvation in uncertainty, but nothing is so natural. The stupid life I
lead is the easiest thing in the world to understand; I bury myself
in these thoughts and I find death so terrible that I hate life more
because it leads me thereto, than because of the thorns with which
it is planted. You will say that I want to live forever, then; not at
all; but, if my opinion had been asked, I would have preferred to die
in my nurse's arms; that would have removed me from the vexations of
spirit and would have given me heaven full surely and easily."
Mme. de Sevigne never bored her readers with her own reflections. She
differed from her contemporaries, who seemed to be dead to nature's
beauty, in her striking descriptions of nature. A close observer, she
knew how to describe a landscape; animating and enlivening it, and
making it talk, she inspired the reader with love of it.
"I am going to be alone and I am very glad. Provided they do not take
away from me the charming country, the shore of the Allier, the woods,
streams, and meadows, the sheep and goats, the peasant girls who dance
the _bourree_ in the fields, I consent to say adieu; the country alone
will cure me.... I have come here to end the beautiful days and to say
adieu to the foliage--it is still on the trees, it has only changed
color; instead of being green, it is golden, and of so many golden
tints that it makes a brocade of rich and magnificent gold, which we
are likely to find more beautiful than the green, if only it were not
for the changing part."
If the style of her letters did not make her the greatest prose writer
of her time, it certainly entitled her to rank as one of the most
original. The prose of the seventeenth century lacked "easy suppleness
in lively movement, and imagination in the expression"--two qualities
which Mme. de Sevigne possessed in a high degree. The slow and grave
development, the just and harmonious equilibrium, the amplitude, are
in her supplanted by a quick, alert, and free _saillie_; the detail
and marvellous exactness are enriched by color, abundance of imagery,
and metaphors. M. Faguet says she is to prose what La Fontaine is to
poetry.
The literary style of Mme. de Sevigne is not learned, studied, nor
labored. In an epoch in which the language was already formed, she did
what Montaigne did a century before, when, we may almost assert, he
had to create the French language. Her most striking expressions are
her own--newly coined, not taken from the vocabulary in usage. Her
style cannot be duplicated, and for this reason she has few imitators.
Her letters show that they were improvised--her pen doing, alone, the
work over which she seemed to have no control when communicating with
her daughter; to the latter she said: "I write prose with a facility
that will kill you."
Mme. de Sevigne was possibly not a beautiful woman, but she was a
charming one; broad in the scope of her affections, she found the
making of friends no difficult task. M. Vallery-Radot leaves the
following picture of her: "A blonde, with exuberant health, a
transparent complexion, blue eyes, so frank, so limpid, a nose
somewhat square, a mouth ready to smile, shoulders that seem to lend
splendor to her pearl necklace. Her gayety and goodness are so in
evidence that there is about her a kind of atmosphere of good humor."
M. du Bled most admirably sums up her character and writings in the
following: "She is the person who most resembles her writings--that
is, those that are found; for alas! many (the most confidential, the
most interesting, I think) are lost forever: in them she is reflected
as she reflects French society in them. Endowed--morally and
physically--with a robust health, she is expansive, loyal, confiding,
impressionable, loving gayety in full abundance as much as she does
the smile of the refined, as eager for the prattle of the court as
for solid reading, smitten with nobiliary pride, a captive of the
prejudices, superstitions and tastes of her caste (or of even her
coterie), with her pen hardly tender for her neighbor--her daughter
and intimates excepted. A manager and a woman of imagination, a
Frondist at the bottom of her soul, and somewhat of a Jansenist--not
enough, however, not to cry out that Louis XIV. will obscure the glory
of his predecessors because he had just danced with her--faithful to
her friends (Retz, Fouquet, Pomponne) in disgrace and detesting their
persecutors, seeking the favor of court for her children. In the
salons, she is celebrated for her _esprit_--and this at an age when
one seldom thinks about reputation, when one is like the princess who
replied to a question on the state of her soul, 'At twenty one has
no soul;' and she possesses the qualities that are so essential to
style--natural _eclat_, originality of expression, grace, color,
amplitude without pomposity and abundance without prolixity; moreover,
she invents nothing, but, knowing how to observe and to express in
perfection everything she had seen and felt, she is a witness and
painter of her century: also, she loves nature--a sentiment very rare
in the seventeenth century."
Mme. de Sevigne was endowed with the best qualities of the French
race--good will and friendliness, which influence one to judge others
favorably and to desire their esteem; of a very impressionable nature,
she was gifted with a natural eloquence which enabled her to express
her various emotions in a light or gay vein which often bordered on
irony. Affectionate and appreciative and tender and kind to everyone
in general, toward those whom she loved she was generous to a fault
and unswerving in her fidelity.
Her last years were spent in the midst of her family. She died in
1696, of small-pox, thanking God that she was the first to go, after
having trembled for the life of her daughter, whom she had nursed back
to health after a long and dangerous illness. Her son-in-law, M. de
Grignan, wrote to her uncle, M. de Coulanges:
"What calls far more for our admiration than for our regret, is the
spectacle of a brave woman facing death--of which she had no doubt
from the first days of her illness--with astounding firmness and
submission. This person, so tender and so weak towards all whom she
loved, showed nothing but courage and piety when she believed that her
hour had come; and, impressed by the use she managed to make of that
good store in the last moments of her life, we could not but remark
of what utility and of what importance it is to have the mind stocked
with the good matter and holy reading for which Mme. de Sevigne had a
liking--not to say a wonderful hunger."
In order to give an idea of the place that Mme. de Sevigne holds in
the opinion of the average Frenchman, we quote the final words of M.
Vallery-Radot:
"To take a place among the greatest writers, without ever having
written a book or even having thought of writing one--this is what
seems impossible, and yet this is what happened to Mme. de Sevigne.
Her contemporaries knew her as a woman distinguished for her _esprit_,
frank, playful and sprightly humor, irreproachable conduct, loyalty to
her friends, and as an idolizer of her daughter; no one suspected that
she would partake of the glory of our classical authors--and she, less
than any one. She had immortalized herself, without wishing or knowing
it, by an intimate correspondence which is, to-day, universally
regarded as one of the most precious treasures and one of the most
original monuments to French literature. To deceive the _ennui_ of
absence, she wrote to her daughter all that she had in her heart and
that came to her mind--what she did, wished to do, saw and learned,
news of court, city, Brittany, army, everything--sadly or gayly,
according to the subject, always with the most keen, ardent, delicate,
and touching sentiments of tenderness and sympathy. She amuses,
instructs, interests, moves to tears or laughter. All that passes
within or before her, passes within and before us. If she depicts
an object, we see it; if she relates an event, we are present at its
occurrence; if she makes a character talk, we hear his words, see his
gestures, and distinguish his accent. All is true, real, living: this
is more than talent--it is enchantment. Generations pass away in turn;
a single one, or, rather, a group escapes the general oblivion--the
group of friends of Mme. de Sevigne."
A woman with characteristics the very opposite of those of Mme.
de Sevigne, but who in some respects resembled her, was Mme. de La
Fayette. Of her life, very little is to be said, except in regard to
her lasting friendship and attachment for La Rochefoucauld. She
was born in 1634, and, with Mme. de Sevigne, was probably the best
educated among the great women of the seventeenth century. She was
faithful to her husband, the Count of La Fayette, who, in 1665, took
her to Paris, where she formed her lifelong attachment for the great
La Rochefoucauld, and where she won immediate recognition for her
exquisite politeness and as a woman with a large fund of common sense.
After her marriage, she seemed to have but one interest--La
Rochefoucauld, just as that of Mme. de Maintenon was Louis XIV. and
that of Mme. de Sevigne--her daughter. These three prominent
women illustrate remarkably well that predominant trait of French
women--faithfulness to a chosen cause; each one of the three
was vitally concerned in an enduring, a legitimate, and sincere
attachment, which state of affairs gives a certain distinction to the
society of the time of Louis XIV.
Mme. de La Fayette, like Mme. de Sevigne, possessed an exceptional
talent for making and retaining friends. She kept aloof from
intrigues, in fact, knew nothing about them, and consequently never
schemed to use her favor at court for purposes of self-interest. Two
qualities belonged to her more than to any of her contemporaries--an
instinct which was superior to her reason, and a love of truth in all
things.
Compared with those of Mme. de Rambouillet, it is said that her
attainments were of a more solid nature; and while Mlle. de Scudery
had greater brilliancy, Mme. de La Fayette had better judgment.
These qualities combined with an exquisite delicacy, fine sentiment,
calmness, and depth of reason, the very basis of her nature, are
reflected in her works. Sainte-Beuve says that "her reason and
experience cool her passion and temper the ideal with the results of
observation." She was one of the very few women playing any role
in French history who were endowed with all things necessary to
happiness--fortune, reputation, talent, intimate and ideal
friendship. Extremely sensitive to surroundings, she readily received
impressions--a gift which was the source of a somewhat doubtful
happiness.
In her later days, notwithstanding terrible suffering, she became more
devout and exhibited an admirable resignation. A letter to Menage will
show the mental and physical state reached by her in her last days:
"Although you forbid me to write to you, I wish, nevertheless, to tell
you how truly affected I am by your friendship. I appreciate it as
much as when I used to see it; it is dear to me for its own worth, it
is dear to me because it is at present the only one I have. Time and
old age have taken all my friends away from me.... I must tell you the
state I am in. I am, first of all, a mortal divinity, and to an excess
inconceivable; I have obstructions in my entrails--sad, inexpressible
feelings; I have no spirit, no force--I cannot read or apply myself.
The slightest things affect me--a fly appears an elephant to me; that
is my ordinary state.... I cannot believe that I can live long in this
condition, and my life is too disagreeable to permit me to fear the
end. I surrender myself to the will of God; He is the All-Powerful,
and, from all sides, we must go to Him at last. They assure me that
you are thinking seriously of your salvation, and I am very happy over
it."
There probably never existed a more ideal friendship between two
French women, one more lasting, sincere, perfect in every way, than
that of Mme. de Sevigne and Mme. de La Fayette. The major part of
the information we possess regarding events in the life of Mme. de La
Fayette is obtained from their letters. Said Mme. de Sevigne: "Never
did we have the smallest cloud upon our friendship. Long habit had not
made her merit stale to me--the flavor of it was always fresh and new.
I paid her many attentions, from the mere promptings of my affection,
not because of the propriety by which, in friendships, we are bound. I
was assured, too, that I was her dearest consolation--which, for forty
years past, had been the case."
Shortly before her death, she wrote to Mme. de Sevigne: "Here is what
I have done since I wrote you last. I have had two attacks of fever;
for six months I had not been purged; I am purged once, I am purged
twice; the day after the second time, I sit down at the table; oh,
dear! I feel a pain in my heart--I do not want any soup. Have a little
meat, then? No, I do not wish any. Well, you will have some fruit? I
think I will. Very well, then, have some. I don't know--I think I
will have some by and by. Let me have some soup and some chicken
this evening.... Here is the evening, and there are the soup and the
chicken; I don't desire them. I am nauseated, I will go to bed--I
prefer sleeping to eating. I go to bed, I turn round, I turn back,
I have no pain, but I have no sleep either. I call--I take a book--I
close it. Day comes--I get up--I go to the window. It strikes four,
five, six--I go to bed again, I doze until seven, I get up at eight,
I sit down to table at twelve--to no purpose, as yesterday.... I lay
myself down in my bed, in the evening, to no purpose, as the night
before. Are you ill? Nay, I am in this state for three days and three
nights. At present, I am getting some sleep again, but I still eat
mechanically, horsewise--rubbing my mouth with vinegar. Otherwise, I
am very well, and I haven't so much as a pain in my head."
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