The Romance of Biography Volume II Part 23

Quelques plaisirs dans la jeunesse, Des soins dans la maternit, Tous les malheurs dans la vieillesse, Puis la peur de l'ternit.

She was first dissipated; then an _esprit fort_; then _trs dvote_. In obedience to her confessor, she discarded, one after the other, her rouge, her ribbons, and the presents and billets-doux of her lovers; but no remonstrances could induce her to give up Voltaire's picture. When he returned from exile in 1778, he went to pay a visit to his old love; they had not met for fifty years, and they now gazed on each other in silent dismay. _He_ looked, I suppose, like the dried mummy of an ape: _she_, like a withered _sorcire_. The same evening she sent him back his portrait, which she had hitherto refused to part with. Nothing remained to shed illusion over the past; she had beheld, even before the last terrible proof--

What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.

And Voltaire, on his side, was not less dismayed by his visit. On returning from her, he exclaimed, with a shrug of mingled disgust and horror, "Ah, mes amis! je viens de pa.s.ser l'autre bord du Cocyte!" It was not thus that Cowper felt for his Mary, when "her auburn locks were changed to grey:" but it is almost an insult to the memory of true tenderness to mention them both in the same page.

To enumerate other women who have been celebrated by Voltaire, would be to give a list of all the beautiful and distinguished women of France for half a century; from the d.u.c.h.ess de Richelieu and Madame de Luxembourg, down to Camargo the dancer, and Clairon and le Couvreur the actresses: but I can find no name of any _poetical_ fame or interest among them: nor can I conceive any thing more revolting than the history of French society and manners during the Regency and the whole of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] Madame de Tencin used to call the men of letters she a.s.sembled at her house "mes btes," and her society went by the name of Madame de Tencin's mnagerie. Her advice to Marmontel, when a young man, was excellent. See his Memoirs, vol. i.

[138] Correspondence de Grimm, vol. ii. 421.

[139] Je ris plus que personne aux marionettes; et j'avoue qu'une boite, une porcelaine, un meuble nouveau, sont pour moi une vrai jouissance.--_Oeuvres de Madame du Chtelet_--_Trait de Bonheur._

[140] The then fashionable game at cards.

[141] Voltaire once said of her, "C'est une femme terrible, qui n'a point de flexibilit dans le coeur, quoiqu'elle l'ait bon." This hardness of temper, this _volont tyrannique_, this cold determination never to yield a point, were worse than all her violence.

[142] The t.i.tle which Voltaire gave her.

[143] "Vie prive de Voltaire et de Madame du Chtelet," in a series of letters, written by Madame de Graffigny during her stay at Cirey. The details in these letters are exceedingly amusing, but the style so diffuse, that it is scarcely possible to make extracts.

[144] Epitre Saint-Lambert.

[145] Madlle. de Launay: it has become necessary to distinguish between two celebrated women bearing the same name, at least in sound.

[146] "Les principes de la philosophie de Newton."

[147] V. Correspondence de Madame de Deffand. In another letter from Seaux, Madame de Stael adds the following clever, satirical,--but most characteristic picture:--

"En tout cas on vous garde un bon appartement: c'est celui dont Madame du Chtelet, aprs une revue exacte de toute la maison, s'tait empare.

Il y aura un peu moins de meubles qu'elle n'y en avait mis; car elle avait dvast tous ceux par o elle avait pa.s.s pour garnir celui-l. On y a trouv six ou sept tables; il lui en faut de toutes les grandeurs; d'immenses pour taler ses papiers, de solides pour soutenir son necessaire, de plus lgers pour ses pompons, pour ses bijoux; et cette belle ordonnance ne l'a pas garantie d'une accident pareil celui qui arrive Philippe II. quand, aprs avoir pa.s.s la nuit crire, on rpandit une bouteille d'encre sur ses dpches. La dame ne s'est pas pique d'imiter la moderation de ce prince; aussi n'avait-il crit que sur des affaires d'tat; et ce qu'on lui a barbouill, c'etait de l'algbre, bien plus difficile remettre au net."

CHAPTER XIX.

FRENCH POETRY CONTINUED.

MADAME D'HOUDETOT.

Saint-Lambert, who seemed destined to rival greater men than himself, after carrying off Madame du Chtelet from Voltaire, became the favoured lover of the Comtesse d'Houdetot, Rousseau's Sophie; she for whom the philosopher first felt love, "_dans toute son energie, toutes ses fureurs_,"--but in vain.

Saint-Lambert is allowed to be an elegant poet: his _Saisons_ were once as popular in France, as Thomson's Seasons are here; but they have not retained their popularity. The French poem, though in many parts imitated from the English, is as unlike it as possible: correct, polished, elegant, full of beautiful lines,--of what the French call _de beaux vers_,--and yet excessively dull. It is equally impossible to find fault with it in parts, or endure it as a whole. _Une pet.i.te pointe de verve_ would have rendered it delightful; but the total want of enthusiasm in the writer freezes the reader. As Madame du Deffand said, in humorous mockery of his monotonous harmony, "Sans les oiseaux, les ruisseaux, les hameaux, les ormeaux, et leur rameaux, il aurait bien pen de choses a dire!"

Madame d'Houdetot was the _Doris_ to whom the Seasons are dedicated; and the opening pa.s.sage addressed to her, is extremely admired by French critics.

Et toi, qui m'as choisi pour embellir ma vie, Doux rpos de mon coeur, aimable et tendre amie!

Toi, qui sais de nos champs admirer les beauts: Drobe toi, Doris! au luxe des cits, Aux arts dont tu jouis, au monde o tu sais plaire; Le printemps te rappelle au vallon solitaire; Heureux si prs de toi je chante son retour, Ses dons et ses plaisirs, la campagne et l'amour!

Sophie de la Briche, afterwards Madame d'Houdetot, was the daughter of a rich _fermier general_; and destined, of course, to a marriage de convenance, she was united very young to the Comte d'Houdetot, an officer of rank in the army; a man who was allowed by his friends to be _trs peu amiable_, and whom Madame d'Epinay, who hated him, called _vilain_, and _insupportable_. He was too good-natured to make his wife absolutely miserable, but _un bonheur faire mourir d'ennui_, was not exactly adapted to the disposition of Sophie; and there was no principle within, no restraint without, no support, no counsel, no example, to guide her conduct or guard her against temptation.

The power by which Madame d'Houdetot captivated the gay, handsome, dissipated Saint-Lambert, and kindled into a blaze the pa.s.sions or the imagination of Rousseau, was not that of beauty. Her face was plain and slightly marked with the small-pox; her eyes were not good; she was extremely short-sighted, which gave to her countenance and address an appearance of uncertainty and timidity; her figure was _mignonne_, and in all her movements there was an indescribable mixture of grace and awkwardness. The charm by which this woman seized and kept the hearts, not of lovers only, but of friends, was a character the very reverse of that of Madame du Chtelet, who would have deemed it an insult to be compared to her either in mind or beauty:--the absence of all _pretension_, all coquetry; the total surrender of her own feelings, thoughts, interests, where another was concerned; the frankness which verged on giddiness and imprudence; the temper which nothing could ruffle; the warm kindness which nothing could chill; the bounding spirit of gaiety, which nothing could subdue,--these qualities rendered Madame d'Houdetot an attaching and interesting creature, to the latest moment of her long life. "Mon Dieu! que j'ai d'impatience de voir dix ans de plus sur la tte de cette femme!" exclaimed her sister-in-law, Madame d'Epinay, when she saw her at the age of twenty. But at the age of eighty, Madame d'Houdetot was just as much a child as ever,--"aussi vive, aussi enfant, aussi gaie, aussi distraite, aussi bonne et trs bonne;"[148] in spite of wrinkles, sorrows, and frailties, she retained, in extreme old age, the gaiety, the tenderness, the confiding simplicity, though not the innocence of early youth.

Her _liaison_ with Saint-Lambert continued fifty years, nor was she ever suspected of any other indiscretion. During this time he contrived to make her as wretched as a woman of her disposition could be made; and the elasticity of her spirits did not prevent her from being acutely sensible to pain, and alive to unkindness. Saint-Lambert, from being her lover, became her tyrant. He behaved with a peevish jealousy, a petulance, a bitterness, which sometimes drove her beyond the bounds of a woman's patience; and when ever this happened, the accommodating husband, M. d'Houdetot would interfere to reconcile the lovers, and plead for the recall of the offender.

When Saint-Lambert's health became utterly broken, she watched over him with a patient tenderness, unwearied by all his _exigeance_, and unprovoked by his detestable temper; he had a house near her's in the valley of Montmorenci, and lived on perfectly good terms with her husband. I must add one trait, which, however absurd, and scarcely credible, it may sound in our sober, English ears, is yet true. M. and Madame d'Houdetot gave a fte at Eaubonne, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage. Sophie was then nearly _seventy_, but played her part, as the heroine of the day, with all the grace and vivacity of seventeen. On this occasion, the lover and the husband chose, for the first time in their lives, to be jealous of each other, and exhibited, to the amus.e.m.e.nt and astonishment of the guests, a _scene_, which was for some time the talk of all Paris.

Saint-Lambert died in 1805. After his death, Madame d'Houdetot was seized with a sentimental _tendresse_ for M. Somariva,[149] and continued to send him bouquets and billets-doux to the end of her life.

She died about 1815.

To her singular power of charming, Madame d'Houdetot added talents of no common order, which, though never cultivated with any perseverance, now and then displayed, or rather _disclosed_ themselves unexpectedly, adding surprise to pleasure. She was a musician, a poetess, a wit;--but every thing, "par la grce de Dieu,"--and as if unconsciously and involuntarily. All Saint-Lambert's poetry together is not worth the little song she composed for him on his departure for the army:--

L'Amant que j'adore, Prt me quitter, D'un instant encore Voudrait profiter: Felicit vaine!

Qu'on ne peut saisir, Trop prs de la peine Pour tre un plaisir![150]

It is to Madame d'Houdetot that Lord Byron alludes in a striking pa.s.sage of the third canto of Childe Harold, beginning

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,[151] &c.

And _apropos_ to Rousseau, I shall merely observe, that there is, and can be but one opinion with regard to his conduct in the affair of Madame d'Houdetot: it was abominable. She thought, as every one who ever was connected with that man, found sooner or later, that he was all made up of genius and imagination, and as dest.i.tute of heart as of moral principle. I can never think of his character, but as of something at once admirable, portentous and shocking; the most great, most gifted, most wretched;--worst, meanest, maddest of mankind!

Madame du Chtelet and Madame d'Houdetot must for the present be deemed sufficient specimens of French poetical heroines;--it were easy to pursue the subject further, but it would lead to a field of discussion and ill.u.s.tration, which I would rather decline.[152]

Is it not singular that in a country which was the cradle, if not the birth-place of modern poetry and romance, the language, the literature, and the women, should be so essentially and incurably _prosaic_? The muse of French poetry never swept a lyre; she grinds a barrel-organ in her serious moods, and she sc.r.a.pes a fiddle in her lively ones; and as for the distinguished French women, whose memory and whose characters are blended with the literature, and connected with the great names of their country,--they are often admirable, and sometimes interesting; but with all their fascinations, their charms, their _esprit_, their _graces_, their _amabilit_, and their _sensibilit_, it was not in the power of the G.o.ds or their lovers to make them _poetical_.

FOOTNOTES:

[148] Mmoires et Lettres de Madame d'Epinay, tom. 1. p. 95.

[149] M. Somariva is well known to all who have visited Paris, for his fine collection of pictures, and particularly as the possessor of Canova's famous Magdalen.

[150] See Lady Morgan's France, and the Biographie Universelle.

[151] Stanza 77, and more particularly stanza 79.

[152] In one of Madame de Genlis' prettiest Tales--"Les preventions d'une femme," there is the following observation, as full of truth as of feminine propriety. I trust that the principle it inculcates has been kept in view through the whole of this little work.

"Il y a plus de pudeur et de dignit dans la douce indulgence qui semble ignorer les anecdotes scandaleuses ou du moins, les revoquer en doute, que dans le ddain qui en retrace le souvenir, et qui s'rige publiquement en juge inflexible."