Classic French Course in English

IX.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.

1626-1696.

Of Madame de SÉvignÉ, if it were permitted here to make a pun and a paradox, one might justly and descriptively say that she was not a woman of letters, but only a woman of—letters. For Madame de SÉvignÉ's addiction to literature was not at all that of an author by profession. She simply wrote admirable private letters, in great profusion, and became famous thereby.

Madame de SÉvignÉ's fame is partly her merit, but it is also partly her good fortune. She was rightly placed to be what she was. This will appear from a sketch of her life, and still more from specimens to be exhibited of her own epistolary writing.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was her maiden name. She was born a baroness. She was married, young, a marchioness. First early left an orphan, she was afterward early left a widow,—not too early, however, to have become the mother of two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter grew to be the life-long idol of the widowed mother's heart. The letters she wrote to this daughter, married, and living remote from her, compose the greater part of that voluminous epistolary production by which Madame de SÉvignÉ became, without her ever aiming at such a result, or probably ever thinking of it, one of the classics of the French language.

Madame de SÉvignÉ was wealthy as orphan heiress, and she should have been wealthy as widow. But her husband was profligate, and he wasted her substance. She turned out to be a thoroughly capable woman of affairs who managed her property well. During her long and stainless widowhood—her husband fell in a shameful duel when she was but twenty-five years old, and she lived to be seventy—she divided her time between her estate, The Rocks, in Brittany, and her residence in Paris. This period was all embraced within the protracted reign of Louis XIV., perhaps, upon the whole, the most memorable age in the history of France.

Beautiful, and, if not brilliantly beautiful, at least brilliantly witty, Madame de SÉvignÉ was virtuous—in that chief sense of feminine virtue—amid an almost universal empire of profligacy around her. Her social advantages were unsurpassed, and her social success was equal to her advantages. She had the woman courtier's supreme triumph in being once led out to dance by the king—her own junior by a dozen years—no vulgar king, remember, but the "great" Louis XIV. Her cynical cousin, himself a writer of power, who had been repulsed in dishonorable proffers of love by the young marchioness during the lifetime of her husband,—we mean Count Bussy,—says, in a scurrilous work of his, that Madame de SÉvignÉ remarked, on returning to her seat after her dancing-bout with the king, that Louis possessed great qualities, and would certainly obscure the lustre of all his predecessors. "I could not help laughing in her face," the ungallant cousin declared, "seeing what had produced this panegyric." Probably, indeed, the young woman was pleased. But, whatever may have been her faults or her follies, nothing can rob Madame de SÉvignÉ of the glory that is hers, in having been strong enough in womanly and motherly honor to preserve, against many dazzling temptations, amid general bad example, and even under malignant aspersions, a chaste and spotless name. When it is added, that, besides access to the royal court itself, this gifted woman enjoyed the familiar acquaintance of La Rochefoucauld and other high-bred wits, less famous, not a few, enough will have been said to show that her position was such as to give her talent its best possible chance. The French history of the times of Louis XIV. is hinted in glimpses the most vivid and the most suggestive, throughout the whole series of the letters.

We owe it to our readers (and to Madame de SÉvignÉ no less) first of all to let them see a specimen of the affectionate adulation that this French woman of rank and of fashion, literally in almost every letter of hers, effuses on her daughter,—a daughter who, by the way, seems very languidly to have responded to such demonstrations:—

The Rocks, Sunday, June 28, 1671.

You have amply made up to me my late losses; I have received two letters from you which have filled me with transports of joy. The pleasure I take in reading them is beyond all imagination. If I have in any way contributed to the improvement of your style I did it in the thought that I was laboring for the pleasure of others, not for my own. But Providence, who has seen fit to separate us so often, and to place us at such immense distances from each other, has repaid me a little for the privation in the charms of your correspondence, and still more in the satisfaction you express in your situation, and the beauty of your castle; you represent it to me with an air of grandeur and magnificence that enchants me. I once saw a similar account of it by the first Madame de Grignan; but I little thought at that time, that all these beauties were one day to be at your command. I am very much obliged to you for having given me so particular an account of it. If I could be tired in reading your letters, it would not only betray a very bad taste in me, but would likewise show that I could have very little love or friendship for you. Divest yourself of the dislike you have taken to circumstantial details. I have often told you, and you ought yourself to feel the truth of this remark, that they are as dear to us from those we love, as they are tedious and disagreeable from others. If they are displeasing to us, it is only from the indifference we feel for those who write them. Admitting this observation to be true, I leave you to judge what pleasure yours afford me. It is a fine thing, truly, to play the great lady, as you do at present.

Conceive the foregoing multiplied by the whole number of the separate letters composing the correspondence, and you will have no exaggerated idea of the display that Madame de SÉvignÉ makes of her regard for her daughter. This regard was a passion, morbid, no doubt, by excess, and, even at that, extravagantly demonstrated; but it was fundamentally sincere. Madame de SÉvignÉ idealized her absent daughter, and literally "loved but only her." We need not wholly admire such maternal affection. But we should not criticise it too severely.

We choose next a marvellously vivid "instantaneous view," in words, of a court afternoon and evening at Versailles. This letter, too, is addressed to the daughter—Madame de Grignan, by her married name. It bears date, "Paris, Wednesday, 29th July." The year is 1676, and the writer is just fifty:—

I was at Versailles last Saturday with the Villarses.... At three the king, the queen, Monsieur [eldest brother to the king], Madame [that brother's wife], Mademoiselle [that brother's eldest unmarried daughter], and every thing else which is royal, together with Madame de Montespan [the celebrated mistress of the king] and train, and all the courtiers, and all the ladies,—all, in short, which constitutes the court of France, is assembled in the beautiful apartment of the king's, which you remember. All is furnished divinely, all is magnificent. Such a thing as heat is unknown; you pass from one place to another without the slightest pressure. A game at reversis [the description is of a gambling scene, in which Dangeau figures as a cool and skilful gamester] gives the company a form and a settlement. The king and Madame de Montespan keep a bank together; different tables are occupied by Monsieur, the queen, and Madame de Soubise, Dangeau and party, LanglÉe and party. Everywhere you see heaps of louis d'ors; they have no other counters. I saw Dangeau play, and thought what fools we all were beside him. He dreams of nothing but what concerns the game; he wins where others lose; he neglects nothing, profits by every thing, never has his attention diverted; in short, his science bids defiance to chance. Two hundred thousand francs in ten days, a hundred thousand crowns in a month, these are the pretty memorandums he puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind enough to say that I was partners with him, so that I got an excellent seat. I made my obeisance to the king, as you told me; and he returned it as if I had been young and handsome.... The duke said a thousand kind things without minding a word he uttered. Marshal de Lorges attacked me in the name of the Chevalier de Grignan; in short, tutti quanti [the whole company]. You know what it is to get a word from everybody you meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of Bourbon, and asked me how I liked Vichi, and whether the place did me good. She said that Bourbon, instead of curing a pain in one of her knees, injured both.... Her size is reduced by a good half, and yet her complexion, her eyes, and her lips, are as fine as ever. She was dressed all in French point, her hair in a thousand ringlets, the two side ones hanging low on her cheeks, black ribbons on her head, pearls (the same that belonged to Madame de l'HÔpital), the loveliest diamond earrings, three or four bodkins—nothing else on the head; in short, a triumphant beauty, worthy the admiration of all the foreign ambassadors. She was accused of preventing the whole French nation from seeing the king; she has restored him, you see, to their eyes; and you cannot conceive the joy it has given all the world, and the splendor it has thrown upon the court. This charming confusion, without confusion, of all which is the most select, continues from three till six. If couriers arrive, the king retires a moment to read the despatches, and returns. There is always some music going on, to which he listens, and which has an excellent effect. He talks with such of the ladies as are accustomed to enjoy that honor.... At six the carriages are at the door. The king is in one of them with Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de Thianges, and honest d'Heudicourt in a fool's paradise on the stool. You know how these open carriages are made; they do not sit face to face, but all looking the same way. The queen occupies another with the princess; and the rest come flocking after, as it may happen. There are then gondolas on the canal, and music; and at ten they come back, and then there is a play; and twelve strikes, and they go to supper; and thus rolls round the Saturday. If I were to tell you how often you were asked after, how many questions were put to me without waiting for answers, how often I neglected to answer, how little they cared, and how much less I did, you would see the iniqua corte [wicked court] before you in all its perfection. However, it never was so pleasant before, and everybody wishes it may last.

There is your picture. Picture, pure and simple, it is—comment none, least of all, moralizing comment. The wish is sighed by "everybody," that such pleasant things may "last." Well, they did last the writer's time. But meanwhile the French revolution was a-preparing. A hundred years later it will come, with its terrible reprisals.

We have gone away from the usual translations to find the foregoing extract in an article published forty years ago and more, in the "Edinburgh Review." Again we draw from the same source—this time, the description of a visit paid by a company of grand folks, of whom the writer of the letter was one, to an iron-foundery:—

Friday, 1st Oct. (1677).

Yesterday evening at Cone, we descended into a veritable hell, the true forges of Vulcan. Eight or ten Cyclops were at work, forging, not arms for Æneas, but anchors for ships. You never saw strokes redoubled so justly, nor with so admirable a cadence. We stood in the middle of four furnaces; and the demons came passing about us, all melting in sweat, with pale faces, wild-staring eyes, savage mustaches, and hair long and black,—a sight enough to frighten less well-bred folks than ourselves. As for me, I could not comprehend the possibility of refusing any thing which these gentlemen, in their hell, might have chosen to exact. We got out at last, by the help of a shower of silver, with which we took care to refresh their souls, and facilitate our exit.

Once more:—

Paris, 29th November (1679).

I have been to the wedding of Madame de Louvois. How shall I describe it? Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses all gold and brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of flowers, confusions of carriages, cries out of doors, lighted torches, pushings back, people run over; in short, a whirlwind, a distraction; questions without answers, compliments without knowing what is said, civilities without knowing who is spoken to, feet entangled in trains. From the midst of all this, issue inquiries after your health, which not being answered as quick as lightning, the inquirers pass on, contented to remain in the state of ignorance and indifference in which they [the inquiries] were made. O vanity of vanities! Pretty little De Mouchy has had the small-pox. O vanity, et cÆtera!

Yet again. The gay writer has been sobered, perhaps hurt, by a friend's frankly writing to her, "You are old." To her daughter:—

So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la Fayette, blended with so much friendship. 'Twas a truth, I own, which I ought to have borne in mind; and yet I must confess it astonished me, for I do not yet perceive in myself any such decay. Nevertheless, I cannot help making many reflections and calculations, and I find the conditions of life hard enough. It seems to me that I have been dragged, against my will, to the fatal period when old age must be endured; I see it; I have come to it; and I would fain, if I could help it, not go any farther; not advance a step more in the road of infirmities, of pains, of losses of memory, of disfigurements ready to do me outrage; and I hear a voice which says, "You must go on in spite of yourself; or, if you will not go on, you must die;" and this is another extremity from which nature revolts. Such is the lot, however, of all who advance beyond middle life. What is their resource? To think of the will of God and of universal law, and so restore reason to its place, and be patient. Be you, then, patient accordingly, my dear child, and let not your affection soften into such tears as reason must condemn.

She dates a letter, and recalls that the day was the anniversary of an event in her life:—

Paris, Friday, Feb. 5, 1672.

This day thousand years I was married.

Here is a passage with power in it. The great war minister of Louis has died. Madame de SÉvignÉ was now sixty-five years old. The letter is to her cousin Coulanges:—

I am so astonished at the news of the sudden death of M. de Louvois, that I am at a loss how to speak of it. Dead, however, he is, this great minister, this potent being, who occupied so great a place; whose me (le moi), as M. Nicole says, had so wide a dominion; who was the centre of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage! what designs, what projects, what secrets! what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct! Ah! my God, grant me a little time; I want to give check to the Duke of Savoy—checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall not have a moment, not a single moment. Are events like these to be talked of? Not they. We must reflect upon them in our closets.

A glimpse of Bourdaloue:—

Ah, that Bourdaloue! his sermon on the Passion was, they say, the most perfect thing of the kind that can be imagined; it was the same he preached last year, but revised and altered with the assistance of some of his friends, that it might be wholly inimitable. How can one love God, if one never hears him properly spoken of? You must really possess a greater portion of grace than others.

A distinguished caterer or steward, a gentleman described as possessing talent enough to have governed a province, commits suicide on a professional point of honor:—

Paris, Sunday, April 26, 1671.

I have just learned from Moreuil, of what passed at Chantilly with regard to poor Vatel. I wrote to you last Friday that he had stabbed himself—these are the particulars of the affair: The king arrived there on Thursday night; the walk, and the collation, which was served in a place set apart for the purpose, and strewed with jonquils, were just as they should be. Supper was served; but there was no roast meat at one or two of the tables, on account of Vatel's having been obliged to provide several dinners more than were expected. This affected his spirits; and he was heard to say several times, "I have lost my honor! I cannot bear this disgrace!" "My head is quite bewildered," said he to Gourville. "I have not had a wink of sleep these twelve nights; I wish you would assist me in giving orders." Gourville did all he could to comfort and assist him, but the failure of the roast meat (which, however, did not happen at the king's table, but at some of the other twenty-five) was always uppermost with him. Gourville mentioned it to the prince [CondÉ, the great CondÉ, the king's host], who went directly to Vatel's apartment, and said to him, "Every thing is extremely well conducted, Vatel; nothing could be more admirable than his Majesty's supper." "Your highness's goodness," replied he, "overwhelms me; I am sensible that there was a deficiency of roast meat at two tables." "Not at all," said the prince; "do not perplex yourself, and all will go well." Midnight came; the fireworks did not succeed; they were covered with a thick cloud; they cost sixteen thousand francs. At four o'clock in the morning Vatel went round and found everybody asleep; he met one of the under-purveyors, who was just come in with only two loads of fish. "What!" said he, "is this all?" "Yes, sir," said the man, not knowing that Vatel had despatched other people to all the seaports around. Vatel waited for some time; the other purveyors did not arrive; his head grew distracted; he thought there was no more fish to be had. He flew to Gourville: "Sir," said he, "I cannot outlive this disgrace." Gourville laughed at him. Vatel, however, went to his apartment, and setting the hilt of his sword against the door, after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded, in the third, in forcing his sword through his heart. At that instant the couriers arrived with the fish; Vatel was inquired after to distribute it. They ran to his apartment, knocked at the door, but received no answer; upon which they broke it open, and found him weltering in his blood. A messenger was immediately despatched to acquaint the prince with what had happened, who was like a man in despair. The Duke wept, for his Burgundy journey depended upon Vatel.

The italics here are our own. We felt that we must use them.

Is it not all pathetic? But how exquisitely characteristic of the nation and of the times! "Poor Vatel," is the extent to which Madame de SÉvignÉ allows herself to go in sympathy. Her heart never bleeds very freely—for anybody except her daughter. Madame de SÉvignÉ's heart, indeed, we grieve to fear, was somewhat hard.

In another letter, after a long strain as worldly as any one could wish to see, this lively woman thus touches, with a sincerity as unquestionable as the levity is, on the point of personal religion:—

But, my dear child, the greatest inclination I have at present is to be a little religious. I plague La Mousse about it every day. I belong neither to God nor to the devil. I am quite weary of such a situation; though, between you and me, I look upon it as the most natural one in the world. I am not the devil's, because I fear God, and have at the bottom a principle of religion; then, on the other hand, I am not properly God's, because his law appears hard and irksome to me, and I cannot bring myself to acts of self-denial; so that altogether I am one of those called lukewarm Christians, the great number of which does not in the least surprise me, for I perfectly understand their sentiments, and the reasons that influence them. However, we are told that this is a state highly displeasing to God; if so, we must get out of it. Alas! this is the difficulty. Was ever any thing so mad as I am, to be thus eternally pestering you with my rhapsodies?

Madame de SÉvignÉ involuntarily becomes a maxim-maker:—

The other day I made a maxim off-hand, without once thinking of it; and I liked it so well that I fancied I had taken it out of M. de la Rochefoucauld's. Pray tell me whether it is so or not, for in that case my memory is more to be praised than my judgment. I said, with all the ease in the world, that "ingratitude begets reproach, as acknowledgment begets new favors." Pray, where did this come from? Have I read it? Did I dream it? Is it my own idea? Nothing can be truer than the thing itself, nor than that I am totally ignorant how I came by it. I found it properly arranged in my brain, and at the end of my tongue.

The partial mother lets her daughter know whom the maxim was meant for. She says, "It is intended for your brother." This young fellow had, we suspect, been first earning his mother's "reproaches" for spendthrift habits, and then getting more money from her by "acknowledgment."

She hears that son of hers read "some chapters out of Rabelais," "which were enough," she declares, "to make us die with laughing." "I cannot affect," she says, "a prudery which is not natural to me." No, indeed, a prude this woman was not. She had the strong Æsthetic stomach of her time. It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl with Nicole ("We are going to begin a moral treatise of Nicole's"), a severe Port-Royalist, in one and the same letter. But this is French; above all, it is Madame de SÉvignÉ. By the way, she and her friends, first and last, "die" a thousand jolly deaths "with laughing."

A contemporary allusion to "Tartuffe," with more French manners implied:—

The other day La Biglesse played Tartuffe to the life. Being at table, she happened to tell a fib about some trifle or other, which I noticed, and told her of it; she cast her eyes to the ground, and with a very demure air, "Yes, indeed, madam," said she, "I am the greatest liar in the world; I am very much obliged to you for telling me of it. "We all burst out a-laughing, for it was exactly the tone of Tartuffe,—"Yes, brother, I am a wretch, a vessel of iniquity."

M. de La Rochefoucauld appears often by name in the letters. Here he appears anonymously by his effect:—

"Warm affections are never tranquil"; a maxim.

Not a very sapid bit of gnomic wisdom, certainly. We must immediately make up to our readers, on Madame de SÉvignÉ's behalf, for the insipidity of the foregoing "maxim" of hers, by giving here two or three far more sententious excerpts from the letters, excerpts collected by another:—

There may be so great a weight of obligation that there is no way of being delivered from it but by ingratitude.

Long sicknesses wear out grief, and long hopes wear out joy.

Shadow is never long taken for substance; you must be, if you would appear to be. The world is not unjust long.

Madame de SÉvignÉ makes a confession, which will comfort readers who may have experienced the same difficulty as that of which she speaks:—

I send you M. de Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," revised and corrected, with additions; it is a present to you from himself. Some of them I can make shift to guess the meaning of; but there are others that, to my shame be it spoken, I cannot understand at all. God knows how it will be with you.

What was it changed this woman's mood to serious? She could not have been hearing Massillon's celebrated sermon on the "fewness of the elect," for Massillon was yet only a boy of nine years; she may have been reading Pascal's "Thoughts,"—Pascal had been dead ten years, and the "Thoughts" had been published; or she may have been listening to one of those sifting, heart-searching discourses of Bourdaloue,—the date of her letter is March 16, 1672, and during the Lent of that year Bourdaloue preached at Versailles,—when she wrote sombrely as follows:—

You ask me if I am as fond of life as ever. I must own to you that I experience mortifications, and severe ones too; but I am still unhappy at the thoughts of death; I consider it so great a misfortune to see the termination of all my pursuits, that I should desire nothing better, if it were practicable, than to begin life again. I find myself engaged in a scene of confusion and trouble; I was embarked in life without my own consent, and know I must leave it again; this distracts me, for how shall I leave it? In what manner? By what door? At what time? In what disposition? Am I to suffer a thousand pains and torments that will make me die in a state of despair? Shall I lose my senses? Am I to die by some sudden accident? How shall I stand with God? What shall I have to offer to him? Will fear and necessity make my peace with him? Shall I have no other sentiment but that of fear? What have I to hope? Am I worthy of heaven? Or have I deserved the torments of hell? Dreadful alternative! Alarming uncertainty! Can there be greater madness than to place our eternal salvation in uncertainty? Yet what is more natural, or can be more easily accounted for, than the foolish manner in which I have spent my life? I am frequently buried in thoughts of this nature, and then death appears so dreadful to me that I hate life more for leading me to it, than I do for all the thorns that are strewed in its way. You will ask me, then, if I would wish to live forever? Far from it; but, if I had been consulted, I would very gladly have died in my nurse's arms; it would have spared me many vexations, and would have insured heaven to me at a very easy rate; but let us talk of something else.

A memorable sarcasm saved for us by Madame de SÉvignÉ, at the very close of one of her letters:—

Guillenagues said yesterday that Pelisson abused the privilege men have of being ugly.

Readers familiar with Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," will recognize in the following narrative a state of society not unlike that described by the novelist as immediately preceding the French Revolution:—

The Archbishop of Rheims, as he returned yesterday from St. Germain, met with a curious adventure. He drove at his usual rate, like a whirlwind. If he thinks himself a great man, his servants think him still greater. They passed through Nanterre, when they met a man on horseback, and in an insolent tone bid him clear the way. The poor man used his utmost endeavors to avoid the danger that threatened him, but his horse proved unmanageable. To make short of it, the coach-and-six turned them both topsy-turvy; but at the same time the coach, too, was completely overturned. In an instant the horse and the man, instead of amusing themselves with having their limbs broken, rose almost miraculously; the man remounted, and galloped away, and is galloping still, for aught I know; while the servants, the archbishop's coachman, and the archbishop himself at the head of them, cried out, "Stop that villain, stop him! thrash him soundly!" The rage of the archbishop was so great, that afterward, in relating the adventure, he said, if he could have caught the rascal, he would have broke all his bones, and cut off both his ears.

If such things were done by the aristocracy—and the spiritual aristocracy at that!—in the green tree, what might not be expected in the dry? The writer makes no comment—draws no moral. "Adieu, my dear, delightful child. I cannot express my eagerness to see you," are her next words. She rattles along, three short sentences more, and finishes her letter.

We should still not have done with these letters, were we to go on a hundred pages, or two hundred, farther. Readers have already seen truly what Madame de SÉvignÉ is. They have only not seen fully all that she is. And that they would not see short of reading her letters entire. Horace Walpole aspired to do in English for his own time something like what Madame de SÉvignÉ had done in French for hers. In a measure he succeeded. The difference is, that he was imitative and affected, where she was original and genuine.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must, of course, also be named, as, by her sex, her social position, her talent, and the devotion of her talent, an English analogue to Madame de SÉvignÉ. But these comparisons, and all comparison, leave the French woman without a true parallel, alone in her rank, the most famous letter-writer in the world.

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