Woman's Club Work and Programs Part 24

1. _Manners of the Time_--Court etiquette. Excessive fondness of the king for it, and his strict insistence on it. Quote from the numerous memoirs of the time, descriptions of the palace ceremonial (Madame de Sevigne, Saint Simon, etc.).

2. _Amus.e.m.e.nts of the Court_--Receptions and functions. Fetes. Hunting.

Theatricals. Card games and gambling.

3. _Women of the Court_--The Queen, La Grande Mademoiselle, Madame de la Valliere, Madame de Montespan, Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Sevigne and her circle. Dress of the time.

4. _Social Morals_--Distinction between the morals of the court and those of the common people. Growing popular dissatisfaction, and its later tragic consequences.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Ha.s.sall: Louis XIV. and the Zenith of the French Monarchy. Voltaire: The Age of Louis XIV. Guizot: History of France (Vol. IV., particularly the last chapter).

A most interesting short paper might be prepared on the odd people of the time: Scarron; The Man in the Iron Mask; famous fortune-tellers.

Show pictures of some of the court beauties, to ill.u.s.trate the dress of the women of the period, and also a cut of Louis in his wig and high-heeled shoes, taken from any history of France.

III--PARIS UNDER LOUIS XIV

1. _The City_--Area and population as compared with those of to-day.

Show maps of both periods. Colbert: story of his life and his remaking of Paris. The destruction of the old walls and the beginning of the boulevards. Lenotre and his landscape-gardening (the garden of the Tuileries). Laying out of the Places Vendome, des Victoires, du Carrousel.

2. _Public Buildings_--The architects Perrault and Mansart and their work. Description of buildings erected under Louis: the Invalides, Bibliotheques du Roi and Mazarin, Academie, Gobelins, Comedie Francaise, etc. Gates: St. Denis, St. Martin, etc. Quai d'Orsay.

3. _Churches of the Day_--Val-de-Grace and the birth of Louis. St. Roch: its erection and later connection with French history. Notre Dame and its ceremonies. St. Denis and the royal tombs.

4. _Great Events in Paris under Louis_--Royal spectacles, executions, mobs.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Larousse (under the word Paris, for those who read French). Hamerton: Paris in Old and Present Times. Hare: Walks in Paris.

De Amicis: Studies in Paris.

The subject of the dwellings of the common people of this time deserves study: their bareness, absence of sanitation, water-supply, lack of conveniences and utensils. Also, the people's employments, food, dress, amus.e.m.e.nts, doctors and medicine and care of the sick and the relation of the priest to the family: christenings, weddings, and funerals.

Material may be found in the histories, the encyclopaedias (particularly Larousse), memoirs, the novels of Dumas, Dumas's Paris, etc.

IV--THE WARS OF LOUIS XIV

1. _The Foreign Relations of the Reign_--Mazarin and the Peace of Westphalia. Death of Philip IV. of Spain and Louis's claim to the Netherlands. League with Charles II. of England. Discuss the question whether Charles was in Louis's pay. Opposition from William III. of England.

2. _Enlargement of Army and Navy_--Harbors and ships of Brest, Toulon, etc. Constructive work of Louvois and Vauban. Their theories of war. Are they still held?

3. _The Foreign Wars of Louis_--Against Holland: Peace of Nymwegen. In the Palatinate: Peace of Ryswick. War of the Spanish Succession: Peace of Utrecht. Territories won and lost by Louis in these wars.

4. _The Two Wars of the Fronde_.

5. _The Great Generals of Louis XIV._--Turenne, Conde, Luxembourg, Vendome.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Martin: History of France. Ha.s.sall: Louis XIV. and the Zenith of the French Monarchy. Mahon: History of the War of the Succession in Spain. Fitzpatrick: The Great Conde and the Period of the Fronde.

An interesting supplementary paper could be added to this program on The Art of Warfare in the Seventeenth Century; describe the formation of the army lines for battle; the equipment of the soldiers, the discipline, the tents, the commissariat, the cannon, swords, and other arms; the pay of the soldiers; their manners and morals; the relation of the officers to the men. Some one battle may be described in detail to ill.u.s.trate the methods employed on the field.

V--LITERATURE (PART I)

1. _The Academy_--Unofficial founding by Conrart in 1629. Official standing six years later. Relation of Richelieu to it. Its dictionary.

Total effect of this distinguished society on French literature.

2. _Romances of Chivalry_--Give an account of Madame de Scudery and a description of Clelie and the Grand Cyrus. Discuss also Honore d'Urfe and the Astree. Note the probable influence of the English writer, Lyly.

3. _Moralists_--La Fontaine. Saint Evremond. La Rochefoucauld. La Bruyere.

4. _Philosophers_--Descartes. Pascal. Malebranche. Bayle. Readings from Pascal's Pensees. (Many translations.)

5. _Great Preachers_--Bossuet. Fenelon. Ma.s.sillon. Bourdaloue. Readings from translations, especially the famous introduction to Ma.s.sillon's funeral oration on Louis XIV.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Brunctiere: Manual of French Literature. Dowden: History of French Literature. Van Laun: History of French Literature.

The material for this meeting is very great, especially on the biographical side. Interesting brief papers might be prepared on any of the names mentioned. Sainte-Beuve, considered by many to be the greatest of critics, has essays on all of the writers named, and readings from his Causeries de Lundi (translated now) would be delightful.

VI--THE DRAMA UNDER LOUIS XIV

1. _Corneille_--Story of his life. Readings from the Cid, Horace, and Polyeucte. (Translation by Nokes.)

2. _Racine_--Relation to Port-Royal. Ode on the marriage of the king.

Cla.s.sical subjects. Esther and Athalie, his masterpiece, written at the request of Madame de Maintenon for her young ladies at St. Cyr. Readings from Andromaque, Phedre, and Athalie. (Bohn's translation.)

3. _Moliere_--Early life as a strolling player. Rescue of his company from failure by his own writings. Paris and the favor of the Duc d'Orleans. Failure in tragedy; success in comedy. Taken up by the king.

Royal fetes. Limitations of this work. First characteristic play: L'Ecole des Femmes. Moliere as the greatest of comedy-writers. Readings from Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Le Medecin Malgre Lui. Les Femmes Savantes. (Many translations. Curtis Hidden Page's is fine.)

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Guizot: Corneille and His Times. Trollope: Corneille and Racine. Hatton: Life of Moliere. Brander Matthews: Great Plays (French and German), with notes. (Contains Le Cid, Horace, Polyeucte, and Tartuffe.)

As Moliere is unquestionably the great dramatist of the period, devote the day largely to him. Read from Chatfield-Taylor's Pathway to Fame, which gives the dramatist's life as a strolling player. Describe one of the fetes for which he wrote his little farces and ballets. Have a brief talk on the advance in stage-setting at this time, due to the unlimited sums Louis spent on his fetes, and the employment of the greatest artists for the scenery. Compare this with the setting of the stage in Shakespeare's theater.

VII--ART

1. _Architecture_--Mansart, Perrault, Lemercier. Some of the great public buildings built during this reign. Show photographs.

2. _Painting_--Lebrun (foundation of the Louvre collection). Lesueur, Mignard, Philippe de Champaigne, Largilliere, Watteau. Portraits of the King.

3. _Sculpture_--Puget, Sarazin, Coysevox. Photographs of surviving examples.

4. _Music_--Founding of modern musical drama by Mazarin (Strozzi's opera-bouffe in the Louvre, in 1645). Cambert, L'Abbe Perrin, Lulli.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Louis Hourticq: Art in France. R. G. Kingsley: History of French Art. Bourgeois: France under Louis XIV. W. H. Ward: Architecture of the Renaissance in France. Esther Singleton: French and English Furniture.

Louis was a wonderful art patron, and spent enormous sums upon artistic objects. He brought from Antwerp a group of three great engravers. He established the Beauvais and Gobelins manufactories of tapestry.

Porcelain was made at Saint Cloud. Furniture was designed by Ballin and Boule. Lenotre led the world in the art of landscape-gardening.

VIII--THE KING AND THE CHURCH