Scott on Zélide: Portrait of Zélide by Geoffrey Scott. Richard Holmes
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to his happiness.’ Then followed arguments calculated to allay the prejudice of religion, and Mademoiselle de Tuyll concluded, ‘If you think well to add a few words as to the eagerness and passion evinced by the Marquis’ (the Marquis, it may be observed, was far from evincing these inducements), ‘you must do that for yourself. I have already suffered enough in this ridiculous self-praise.’
It may be supposed that such expressions as these could not fail to gratify the paternal pride of Monsieur de Tuyll; the reception of the letter was, nevertheless, icy. Silence reigned at Zuylen. The unfortunate family, always formal, became rigid with constraint. Monsieur de Tuyll pronounced that the religious obstacle was, for him, insuperable; that his daughter would be of age in two years and might then choose for herself without regard to her parents’ judgment, which must remain adverse. Belle at once replied that she could not desire, or obtain, her happiness at the expense of theirs. There were long conferences up and down the quiet corridor, long letters written from her locked room, and agitated pour-parlers in the garden. Belle shows herself at her best in this diplomacy; she abounded in admirable arguments, daughterly duty, and ingenious appeals to the ideal of tolerance which Monsieur de Tuyll, like so many unbending persons, believed to be his rule of life. But her efforts were unavailing: the frontal attack had failed, and the two conspirators fell back upon the strategy of attrition.
Bellegarde was urged to bestir himself, to move the Vatican for the necessary dispensations, and to put a little more passion into his suit. Alas, he has reached the middle time of life ‘when he can no longer flatter himself with the hope of evoking the ardour of love’; ‘the solid sentiments to which I aspire,’ he writes, ‘lead me to look for a better happiness than can be procured by such transitory intoxication – (cette agréable ivresse toujours passagère)’; he trusts to these ‘substantial feelings’ to replace ‘those of a Corydon.’ He also trusts that her dowry will be sufficient to pay his debts.
It is on record that Belle read this letter three or four times with great pleasure. The fact is she was entirely free from vanity, and readily admired in others the frankness which she claimed for herself. Nevertheless the feelings which Mademoiselle de Tuyll proposed to herself were not precisely the ‘substantial’ ones of the Marquis. She was entirely explicit on this point. She despatched to Hermenches an immense dissertation – a very masterpiece of frankness – on the exact gradation of ardour which her husband must maintain in order to enjoy a reasonable hope of her fidelity. Nothing could be more just, or more businesslike than her observations. The romantic movement was not yet astir, and Mademoiselle de Tuyll’s self-knowledge was veiled in no misty half-lights. There is a quality of truth and goodwill in this honest letter which is of finer style than all the draperies of sentiment.
Monsieur de Bellegarde, on his part, was far less exercised as to his bride’s eventual fidelity than upon the score of her formidable intellect. ‘Those talents which heaven has showered upon your daughter’ were far from giving the satisfaction attributed to him by Belle in her draft of proposal; her sense of fact alarmed, her subtleties distressed him; he was in mortal terror of marrying a blue-stocking; he wished she would not write him such long letters. ‘Shorter letters, above all, shorter!’ is the anxious advice of Hermenches. ‘If I have too much wit by half for the Marquis,’ is Belle’s rather crestfallen reply, ‘let him marry a woman with half my wit. If I am neither to see nor to write to Monsieur de Bellegarde, why does he not take an heiress out of Africa, and leave me to make a marriage by proxy with the Grand Mogul?’
But here, too, she can be sympathetic with the alarm of her suitor. ‘I find it entirely fitting that the Marquis cannot endure me in the ro? le of prodigy. Nothing in the world is more detestable. My intellectual pretensions were a kind of childhood which I have left behind. I have no longer any desire to exhibit a quality which, if it exists, is sure to show itself sufficiently, and loses half its charm in being advertised. I do not spend ten minutes a month in speculating on what I do not understand, and have come to rest in a very humble and quite contented scepticism. If I am on excellent terms with my own wits, it is because I find they serve so well for every day use, because they can discover amusement in anything and amuse everybody, because they make the happiness of those around me. The Marquis will have no complaints to make on this score. I am laughed at every day, and do not mind anything so long as I am allowed to go my own way with my studies and my writings. But I would not for a throne renounce the occupations of my own room. If I ceased to learn I should die of boredom in the midst of every pleasure and grandeur in the world. If the Marquis cares to read aloud I will learn history while I embroider his waistcoats.’ ‘If I bewilder him he has only to tell me to hold my tongue. He will find me now a musician, now a geometer, now a so-called poet, now a frivolous woman, now a passionate one, and now a cold and equable philosopher. Perhaps the diversity will amuse him. The background of my heart he will find always the same.’ ‘After all, it is necessary, is it not, to know where Archimedes placed his lever to lift the world?’
Not necessary, certainly, to Monsieur de Bellegarde. His wits did not move in the abstract: they were not even at all serviceable ‘for everyday use.’ After a year of courtship he had not yet found out whether Mademoiselle de Tuyll, with her Protestant faith, could become his legal wife, or her children his legal heirs. When Monsieur de Tuyll politely suggested that a little light on this point was to be desired, the Marquis sent him his mother’s marriage contract, a hundred pages long, which had no bearing whatever on the subject. This incompetence rather favoured his suit by provoking the mirth of the orderly parent. ‘When one laughs one is half way to being pleased, and the spectacle of the entire incapacity of a man with whom we are doing business leads one to think of him affectionately and to desire that the affair should reach the conclusion he desires: his incapacity seems to compel us to take charge of his interests.’ And, in fact, Belle, who makes this observation, took charge of Bellegarde’s interests to such purpose that we find her escaping to pay a visit, incognito, to the Bishop of Utrecht in order to settle these technical matters for herself; and – after a fall – she carries a letter for the Pope about her person until it becomes so infected with the balms of a poultice ‘that it could only serve the Holy Father for a medicament if he should chance to tumble from the Holy See.’
The Marquis came to pay his court. He was stiff and polite. ‘I am on the tight rope with him, we are very upright, very measured in our movements; point de gambades hasardées.’ He had, as Belle remarked later, ‘the least persuasive manner in the world; his conscience should be easy – seduction cannot be numbered among his sins.’ Yet she excused his awkwardness, his coldness, his incompetence; she pleaded his suit, she managed his business. What was the motive of this persistence, one might almost say of this pursuit?
It is most certain the motive was not a worldly desire to become Madame la Marquise. No one was ever more genuinely democratic, by instinct, taste, and conviction than Mademoiselle de Tuyll. All her life she detested the constraints of society. She loved simplicity, and sought to surround herself with simple folk. When the gay Hermenches described to her the delights of a country house party of seventy guests she replied with horror; a dance of Dutch peasants was more to her taste. She held the tenets of Rousseau with the assurance of a grande dame. Her brilliance and her reputation would have secured her a great place in the world of Paris: it was precisely the position she did not want. ‘My desire to see Paris might be chilled, if I were Bellegarde’s wife, by the fact that he is too grand seigneur, and his family have too many great names. I might have to conform to their grand manner, and I do not like the great, nor the grand manner, nor to conform. My chief wish would be to see Paris on foot, or in a cab; to see the arts, the artists, and the artisans; to hear the talk of the crowd and the eloquence of Clairon. I would make some chance acquaintances whom I should like and some others who would make me laugh. I would pay a big price for the lessons of Rameau, and a week before I left, for the sake of completeness, I would make acquaintance with the hairdresser and the world of fashion.’
But if the motive was not worldliness, neither, certainly, was it passion. With the best will in the world she failed to fall in love with Bellegarde. At most, and very precariously, this difficult task might be achieved (so she hoped in her more facile moods) with sufficient encouragement from the Marquis; the encouragement was not forthcoming. Yet passion was eminently part of her scheme. ‘If I did not love my husband, he