The Women of the French Salons [15]
burden of the race. "Mon Dieu!" wrote Mme. de Maintenon, in the height of her worldly success, "how sad life is! I pass my days without other consolation than the thought that death will end it all."
Mme. de Rambouillet had worked unconsciously toward a very important end. She found a language crude and inelegant, manners coarse and licentious, morals dissolute and vicious. Her influence was at its height in the age of Corneille and Descartes, and she lived almost to the culmination of the era of Racine and Moliere, of Boileau and La Bruyere, of Bossuet and Fenelon, the era of simple and purified language, of refined and stately manners, and of at least outward respect for morality. To these results she largely contributed. Her salon was the social and literary power of the first half of the century. In an age of political espionage, it maintained its position and its dignity. It sustained Corneille against the persecutions of Richelieu, and numbered among its habitues the founders of the Academie Francaise, who continued the critical reforms begun there.
As a school of politeness, it has left permanent traces. This woman of fine ideals and exalted standards exacted of others the purity of character, delicacy of thought, and urbanity of manner, which she possessed in so eminent a degree herself. Her code was founded upon the best instincts of humanity, and whatever modifications of form time has wrought its essential spirit remains unchanged. "Politeness does not always inspire goodness, equity, complaisance, gratitude," says La Bruyere, "but it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man seem externally what he ought to be internally."
It was in this salon, too, that the modern art of conversation, which has played so conspicuous a part in French life, may be said to have had its birth. Men and women met on a footing of equality, with similar tastes and similar interests. Different ranks and conditions were represented, giving a certain cosmopolitan character to a society which had hitherto been narrow in its scope and limited in its aims. Naturally conversation assumed a new importance, and was subject to new laws. To quote again from LaBruyere, who has so profoundly penetrated the secrets of human nature: "The esprit of conversation consists much less in displaying itself than in drawing out the wit of others . . . Men do not like to admire you, they wish to please; they seek less to be instructed or even to be entertained, than to be appreciated and applauded, and the most delicate pleasure is to make that of others." "To please others," says La Rochefoucauld, "one must speak of the things they love and which concern them, avoid disputes upon indifferent maters, ask questions rarely, and never let them think that one is more in the right than themselves."
Many among the great writers of the age touch in the same tone upon the philosophy underlying the various rules of manners and conversation which were first discussed at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and which have passed into permanent though unwritten laws--unfortunately a little out of fashion in the present generation.
It is difficult to estimate the impulse given to intelligence and literary taste by this breaking up of old social crystallizations. What the savant had learned in his closet passed more or less into current coin. Conversation gave point to thought, clearness to expression, simplicity to language. Women of rank and recognized ability imposed the laws of good taste, and their vivid imaginations changed lifeless abstractions into something concrete and artistic. Men of letters, who had held an inferior and dependent position, were penetrated with the spirit of a refined society, while men of the world, in a circle where wit and literary skill were distinctions, began to aspire to the role of a bel esprit, to pride themselves upon some intellectual gift and the power to write without labor and without pedantry, as became their rank. Many of them lacked seriousness, dealing mainly with delicate fancies
Mme. de Rambouillet had worked unconsciously toward a very important end. She found a language crude and inelegant, manners coarse and licentious, morals dissolute and vicious. Her influence was at its height in the age of Corneille and Descartes, and she lived almost to the culmination of the era of Racine and Moliere, of Boileau and La Bruyere, of Bossuet and Fenelon, the era of simple and purified language, of refined and stately manners, and of at least outward respect for morality. To these results she largely contributed. Her salon was the social and literary power of the first half of the century. In an age of political espionage, it maintained its position and its dignity. It sustained Corneille against the persecutions of Richelieu, and numbered among its habitues the founders of the Academie Francaise, who continued the critical reforms begun there.
As a school of politeness, it has left permanent traces. This woman of fine ideals and exalted standards exacted of others the purity of character, delicacy of thought, and urbanity of manner, which she possessed in so eminent a degree herself. Her code was founded upon the best instincts of humanity, and whatever modifications of form time has wrought its essential spirit remains unchanged. "Politeness does not always inspire goodness, equity, complaisance, gratitude," says La Bruyere, "but it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man seem externally what he ought to be internally."
It was in this salon, too, that the modern art of conversation, which has played so conspicuous a part in French life, may be said to have had its birth. Men and women met on a footing of equality, with similar tastes and similar interests. Different ranks and conditions were represented, giving a certain cosmopolitan character to a society which had hitherto been narrow in its scope and limited in its aims. Naturally conversation assumed a new importance, and was subject to new laws. To quote again from LaBruyere, who has so profoundly penetrated the secrets of human nature: "The esprit of conversation consists much less in displaying itself than in drawing out the wit of others . . . Men do not like to admire you, they wish to please; they seek less to be instructed or even to be entertained, than to be appreciated and applauded, and the most delicate pleasure is to make that of others." "To please others," says La Rochefoucauld, "one must speak of the things they love and which concern them, avoid disputes upon indifferent maters, ask questions rarely, and never let them think that one is more in the right than themselves."
Many among the great writers of the age touch in the same tone upon the philosophy underlying the various rules of manners and conversation which were first discussed at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and which have passed into permanent though unwritten laws--unfortunately a little out of fashion in the present generation.
It is difficult to estimate the impulse given to intelligence and literary taste by this breaking up of old social crystallizations. What the savant had learned in his closet passed more or less into current coin. Conversation gave point to thought, clearness to expression, simplicity to language. Women of rank and recognized ability imposed the laws of good taste, and their vivid imaginations changed lifeless abstractions into something concrete and artistic. Men of letters, who had held an inferior and dependent position, were penetrated with the spirit of a refined society, while men of the world, in a circle where wit and literary skill were distinctions, began to aspire to the role of a bel esprit, to pride themselves upon some intellectual gift and the power to write without labor and without pedantry, as became their rank. Many of them lacked seriousness, dealing mainly with delicate fancies