The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 29, March, 1860. Various
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ancienne galanterie qui vivait d'esprit et d'infidélités est comptlètement dénaturée."
It is curious how municipal, economical, and social life are thus simultaneously daguerreotyped and indicate their mutual and intricate association in the French capital. Its history involves that of churches, congresses, academies, prisons, cemeteries, and police, each of which represents domestic and royal vicissitudes. What other city furnishes such a work as the Duchess D'Abrantes' "Histoire des Salons de Paris"? The salons of Madame Necker, Polignac, De Beaumont, De Mazarin, Roland, De Genlis, of Condorcet, of Malmaison, of Talleyrand, and of the Hôtel Rambouillet, etc., embrace the career of statesmen and soldiers, the literary celebrities, the schools of philosophy, the revolutions, the court, the wars, diplomacy, and, in a word, the veritable annals of France. Society, according to this lively writer, in the proper acceptation of the term, was born in France in the reign of the Cardinal de Richelieu; and thenceforth, in its history, we trace that of the nation.
Throughout the most salient eras of this history, therefore, is visible female influence. Cousin has just revived the career of Madame de Longueville, which is identified with the cabals, financial expedients, and war of the Fronde; tournaments, which formed so striking a feature in the diversions of Louis XIV.'s court, owed their revival to the whim of one of his mistresses; Montespan fostered a brood of satirists, and Maintenon one of devotees, while that extraordinary religious controversy which initiated the sect of the Quietists had its origin in the example and agency of Madame Guyon. Even now, although, as a late writer has quaintly observed, "no lady brings her distaff to the council-chamber," the influence of the sex on political opinion, in its operation as a social principle, is recognized. A friend of mine, returning from a dinner-party, described the free and witty sarcasm with which a fair Legitimist assailed the Imperial rule; a week afterwards, meeting her at the same table, she related, that, a few days after her imprudent conversation, she received a courteous invitation from the chief of police. "When they were seated alone in his bureau,—Madame," said he, "you have position, conversational talent, and wield the pen effectively; are you disposed to exert this influence, henceforth, in behalf of, instead of against the government?" Before her indignant negative was fairly uttered, he opened a drawer that seemed full of Napoleons, and glanced at them and her significantly. Thus Montesquieu's observation continues true:—"The individual who would attempt to judge of the government by the men at the head of affairs, and not by the women who sway those men, would fall into the same error as he who judges of a machine by its outward-action, and not by its secret springs"; and the old base system of espionage is revived under the new despotism.
It has become proverbial in France, that the life of woman has three eras,—in youth a coquette, in middle-life a wit, and in age a dévote,—which is but another mode of expressing that economy of personal gifts, that shrewd use of the most available social power, which distinguishes the Gallic from the Saxon woman, the worldly from the domestic instincts. There only can we imagine a royal favorite admitting her indebtedness to a royal wife. "To her," wrote Madame de Maintenon of the Queen of Louis; "I owe the King's affection. Picture a sovereign worn out with state affairs, intrigues, and ceremonies, possessed of a confidante always the same, always calm, always rational, equally able to instruct and to soothe, with the intelligence of a confessor and the winning gentleness of a woman." It is peculiar to the sex there to escape outward soil, whatever may be their moral exposure; for one instinctively recognizes a Frenchwoman by her clean boots, even in the muddiest thoroughfare, her spotless muslin cap, kerchief, and collar. She retains also her individuality after marriage better than the fair of other nations, not only in character, but in name, the maiden appellative being joined to her husband's, so that, although a Madame, she keeps the world informed that she was née of a family whose title, however modest, she will not drop. The maxims, so prevalent in France, which declare matrimony the tomb of love, are the legitimate result of a superficial theory of life and the mutual independence of the sexes thence arising; accordingly we are assured, "C'est surtout entre mari et femme que l'amour a le moins de chance de succès. Ils vieillirent ensemble comme deux portraits de famille, sans aucune intimité, aucun profit pour l'esprit, et arrivés au dernier relais de leur existence, le souvenir n'avait rien à faire entre eux."
It is a curious illustration at once of the mobility and the isolation of the French mind, that, while it assimilates elements within its sphere which in other nations are kept comparatively apart, it rejects the process in regard to foreign material. Thus, in no other capital are politics and literature so interwoven with society; the love-affairs of a minister directly influence his policy; the tone of the salon often inspires and moulds the author; the social history of an epoch necessarily includes the genius of its statesmanship and of its letters, because they are identified with the intrigues, the bon-mots, and the conversation of the period; more is to be learned at a lady's morning reception or evening soirée than in the writer's library or the official's cabinet. On the other hand, how few threads from abroad can be found in this mingled web of civic, literary, and social life! The vicinity of England and the influx of Englishmen have scarcely brought the ideas or the sentiment of that country into nearer recognition at Paris than was the case a century ago. Notwithstanding an occasional outbreak of Anglomania, the best French authors spell English proper names no better, the best French critics appreciate Shakspeare as little, and the majority of Parisians have no less partial and fixed a notion of the characteristics of their insular neighbors, than before the days of journalism and steam. The attempts to represent English manners and character are as gross caricatures now as in the time of Montaigne. However apt at fusion within, the national egotism is as repugnant to assimilation from without as ever. The stock seems incapable of vital grafting, as has been remarkably evidenced in all the colonial experiments of France.
The excellence of the French character, intellectually speaking, consists in routine and detail. How well their authors describe and their artists depict peculiarities! how exact the evolutions of a French regiment, and the statements of a French naturalist! how apt is a Parisian woman in raising gracefully her skirts, throwing on a shawl, or carrying a basket! In loyalty to a method they are unrivalled, in the triumph of individualities weak; their artisans can make a glove fit perfectly, but have yet to learn how to cut out a coat; their authors, like their soldiers, can be marshalled in groups; means are superior to ends; manners, the exponent of Nature in other lands, there color, modify, and characterize the development of intellect; the subordinate principle in government, in science, and in life, becomes paramount; drawing, the elemental language of Art, is mastered, while the standard of expression remains inadequate; the laws of disease are profoundly studied, while this knowledge bears no proportionate relation to the practical art of healing; the ancient rules of dramatic literature are pedantically followed, while the "pity and terror" they were made to illustrate are unawakened; the programme of republican government is lucidly announced, its watchwords adopted, its philosophy expounded, while its spirit and realization continue in abeyance: and thus everywhere we find a singular disproportion between formula and fact, profession and practice, specific knowledge and its application. The citizen of the world finds no armory like that which the institutions, the taste, and the genius of the French nation afford him, whether he aspire to be a courtier or a chemist, a soldier or a savant, a dancer or a doctor; and yet, for complete equipment, he must temper each weapon he there acquires, or it will break in his hand.
In every epoch a word rules or illustrates the dominant spirit: citoyen in the Revolution, moustache during the Consulate, victoire under the Empire, to-day la Bourse. "To a Frenchman," says Mrs. Jameson, "the words that express things seem the things themselves, and he pronounces the words amour, grâce, sensibilité, etc., with a relish in his mouth as if he tasted them, as if he possessed them. They talk of "le sentiment du métier"; in travelling, Paris is the eternal theme. A sagacious observer has remarked in their language the "short, aphoristic phrase, the frequent absence of the copulative, avoidance of dependent phrases, and disdain of modifying adverbs. Naiveté, abandon, ennui, etc., are specific terms of the language, and designate national traits. When Beaumarchais ridiculed a provincial expression, the Dauphiness, we are told, composed a head-dress expressly to give it a local habitation and a name."
The mania for equality, in the first Revolution, De Tocqueville shows was not so much the result of political aspiration as the fierce protest against those exclusive rights once