Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 - Various
The eccentric personage we have just spoken of--the Duchesse
d'Abrantes--died in the year 1838, in a garret, upon a truckle-bed,
provided for her by the charity of a friend. The royal family paid the
expenses of her funeral, and Chateaubriand, accompanied by nearly
every celebrity of the literary world, followed on foot behind her
coffin, from the church to the burying-ground.
Madame d'Abrantes may be considered as the inventor, in France, of
what has since become so widely spread under the name of _les salons
picaresques_, and of what, at the present day, is famous under the
appellation of the _demi-monde_. Her example has been followed
by numberless imitators, and now, instead of presuming (as was the
habit formerly) that those only receive who are rich enough to do so,
it is constantly inquired, when any one in Paris opens his or her
house, whether he or she is ruined, and whether the _soirees_
given are meant merely to throw dust into people's eyes. The history
of the tea-spoons--so singular at the moment of its occurrence--has
since been parodied a hundred times over, and sometimes by mistresses
of houses whose fortune was supposed to put them far above all such
expedients. Madame d'Abrantes, we again say, was the founder of a
_genre_ in Paris society, and as such is well worth studying. The
_genre_ is by no means the most honorable, but it is one too
frequently found now in the social centres of the French capital for
the essayist on Paris _salons_ to pass it over unnoticed.
The _salon_ of Mme. Recamier is one of a totally different order,
and the world-wide renown of which may make it interesting to the
reader of whatever country. As far as age was concerned, Mme.
Recamier was the contemporary of Mme. d'Abrantes, of Gerard, nay,
almost of Mme. Lebrun; for the renown of her beauty dates from the
time of the French Revolution, and her early friendships associate her
with persons who even had time to die out under the first Empire; but
the _salon_ of Madame Recamier was among the exclusively modern
ones, and enjoyed all its lustre and its influence only after
1830. The cause of this is obvious: the circumstance that attracted
society to Mme. Recamier's house was no other than the certainty of
finding there M. de Chateaubriand. He was the divinity of the temple,
and the votaries flocked around his shrine. Before 1830 the temple had
been elsewhere, and, until her death, Mme. la Duchesse de Duras was
the high-priestess of the sanctuary, where a few privileged mortals
only were admitted to bow down before the idol. It is inconceivable
how easy a certain degree of renown finds it in Paris to establish one
of these undisputed sovereignties, before which the most important,
highest, most considerable individualities abdicate their own merit,
and prostrate themselves in the dust. M. de Chateaubriand in no way
justified the kind of worship that was paid him, nor did he even
obtain it so long as he was in a way actively to justify it. It was
when he grew old and produced nothing, and was hourly more and more
rusted over by selfishness, churlishness, and an exorbitant adoration
of his own genius, that the society of his country fell down upon its
knees before him, and was ready to make any sacrifice to insure to
itself the honor of one of his smiles or one of his looks. In this
disposition, Madame Recamier speedily obtained a leading influence
over Paris society, and when it was notorious that from four to six
every day the "Divinity" would be visible in her _salons_, her
_salons_ became the place of pilgrimage for all Paris. As with
those of Mme. d'Abrantes, there was a certain mixture amongst the
guests, because, without that, the _notoriety_, which neither
Chateaubriand nor Mme. Recamier disliked, would have been less easily
secured; but the tone of the _reunions_ was vastly different, and
at the celebrated receptions of the Abbaye aux Bois (where
Mme. Recamier spent her last quarter of a century) the somewhat
austere deportment of the _siecle de Louis XIV._ was in
vogue. All the amusements were in their nature grave. Mlle. Rachel
recited a scene from "Polyeucte" for the author of "Les Martyrs," and
for archbishops and cardinals; the Duc de Noailles read a chapter from
his history of Mme. de Maintenon; some performance of strictly
classical music was to be heard; or, upon state occasions,
Chateaubriand himself vouchsafed to impart to a chosen few a few pages
of the "Memoires d'Outre-Tombe."
In her youth Mme. Recamier had been reputed beautiful, and her sole
occupation then was to do the honors of her beauty. She did not dream
of ever being anything else; and as she remained young marvellously
long,--as her beauty, or the charm, whatever it was, that
distinguished her, endured until a very late epoch of her life,--she
was far advanced in years before the idea of becoming famous through
any other medium save that of her exterior advantages ever struck
her. Madame Recamier had no intellectual superiority, but,
paraphrasing in action Moliere's witty sentence, that "silence, well
employed, may go far to establish a man's capacity," she resolved to
employ well the talent she possessed of making other people believe
themselves clever. Mme. Ancelot, whose "good friend" she is supposed
to have been, and who treats her with the same sincerity she applies
to Mme. d'Abrantes, has a very ingenious and, we have reason to fancy,
a very true parallel, for Mme. Recamier. She compares her to the
mendicant described by Sterne, (or Swift,) who always obtained alms
even from those who never gave to any other, and whose secret lay in
the adroit flatteries with which he seasoned all his beggings. The
best passages in Mme. Ancelot's whole Volume are those where she
paints Mme. Recamier, and we will therefore quote them.
"The Recluse of the Abbaye aux Bois," she says, "had either read the
story of the beggar, or her instinct had persuaded her that vanity and
pride are the surest vulnerable points by which to attack and subject
the human heart. From the first to the last of all the orators,
writers, artists, or celebrities of no matter what species, that were
invited to Mme. Recamier's house, _all_ heard from her lips the
same admiring phrases, the first time they were presented to her. With
a trembling voice she used to say: 'The emotion I feel in the presence
of a superior being does not permit me to express, as I should wish to
do, all my admiration, all my sympathy;--but you can divine,--you can
understand;--my emotion tells the rest!' This eulogistic sentence, a
well-studied hesitation, words interrupted, and looks of the most
perfect enthusiasm, produced in the person thus received a far more
genuine emotion than that with which he was met. It was no other than
the artifice of wholesale, universal flattery,--always and invariably
the same,--with which Mme. Recamier achieved her greatest conquests,
and continued to draw around her almost all the eminent men of our
epoch. All this was murmured in soft, low tones, so that he only to
whom she spoke tasted the honey poured into his ear. Her grace of
manner all the while was infinite; for though she had no talent for
conversation, she had, in the highest degree, the ability which
enables one to succeed in certain little combinations, and when she
had determined that such or such a great man should become her
_habitue_, the web she spun round him on all sides was composed
of threads so imperceptibly fine and so innumerable, that those who
escaped were few, and gifted with marvellous address."
Mme. Ancelot confesses to having "studied narrowly" all
Mme. Recamier's manoeuvres, and to having watched all the thousand
little traps she laid for social "lions"; but we are rather astonished
herein at Mme. Ancelot's astonishment, for, with more or less talent
and grace, these are the devices resorted to in Paris by a whole class
of _maitresses de maison_, of whom Mme. Recamier is simply the
most perfect type.
But the most amusing part of all, and one that will be above all
highly relished by any one who has ever seen the same game carried on,
is the account of Mme. Recamier's campaign against M. Guizot, which
signally failed, all her small webs having been coldly brushed away by
the intensely vainglorious individual who knew he should not be placed
above Chateaubriand, and who would for no consideration under heaven
have been placed beneath him. The spectacle of this small and delicate
vanity doing battle against this vanity so infinitely hard and robust
is exquisitely diverting. Mme. Recamier put herself so prodigiously
out of her way; she who was indolent became active; she who was
utterly insensible to children became maternal; she who was of
delicate health underwent what only a vigorous constitution would
undertake. But all in vain; she either did not or would not see that
M. Guizot would not be _second_ where M. de Chateaubriand was
_first_. Besides, she split against another rock, that she had
either chosen to overlook, or the importance of which she had
undervalued. If Mme. Recamier had for the idol of her shrine at the
Abbaye aux Bois M. de Chateaubriand, M. Guizot had also _his_
Madame Recamier, the "Egeria" of the Hotel Talleyrand,--the Princess
Lieven. The latter would have resisted to the death any attempt to
carry off "her Minister" from the _salons_ where his presence was
the "attraction" reckoned upon daily, nay, almost hourly; and against
such a rival as the venerable Princess Lieven, Mme. Recamier, spite of
all her arts and wiles, had no possible chance. However, she left
nothing untried, and when M. Guizot took a villa at Auteuil, whither
to repair of an evening and breathe the freshness of the half-country
air after the stormy debates of the Chambers, she also established
herself close by, and opened her attack on the enemy's outposts by a
request to be allowed to walk in the Minister's grounds, her own
garden being ridiculously small! This was followed by no end of
attentions directed towards Mme. de Meulan, M. Guizot's sister-in-law,
who saw through the whole, and laughed over it with her friends; no
end of little dancing _matinees_ were got up for the Minister's
young daughters, and no end even of sweet biscuits were perpetually
provided for a certain lapdog belonging to the family! All in vain!
We may judge, too, what transports of enthusiasm were enacted when the
Minister himself was _by chance (!)_ encountered in the alleys of
the park, and with what outpourings of admiration he was greeted, by
the very person who, of all others, was so anxious to become one of
his votaries. But, as we again repeat, it was of no use. M. Guizot
never consented to be one of the _habitues_ of the _salon_
of the Abbaye aux Bois. It should be remarked, also, that M. Guizot
cared little for anything out of the immediate sphere of politics, and
of the politics of the moment; he took small interest in what went on
in Art, and none whatever in what went on in the so-called "world"; so
that where a _salon_ was not predominantly political, there was
small chance of presenting Louis Philippe's Prime-Minister with any
real attraction. For this reason he was now and then to be met at the
house of Mme. de Chatenay, often at that of Mme. de Boigne, but
_never_ in any of the receptions of the ordinary run of men and
women of the world. _His own salon_, we again say,--the
_salon_ where he was what Chateaubriand was at the Abbaye aux
Bois,--was the _salon_ of the Princess Lieven; and to have ever
thought she could induce M. Guizot to be in the slightest degree
faithless to this _habit_ argues, on the part of Mme. Recamier,
either a vanity more egregious than we had even supposed, or an
ignorance of what she had to combat that seems impossible. To have
imagined for a moment that she could induce M. Guizot to frequent her
_reunions_ shows that she appreciated neither Mme. de Lieven, nor
M. Guizot, nor, we may say, herself, in the light of the
high-priestess of Chateaubriand's temple.
However, what Mme. Recamier went through with regard to the arrogant
President du Conseil of the Orleans dynasty, more than one of her
imitators are at this hour enduring for some "lion" infinitely
illustrious. This kind of hunt after celebrated persons is a feature
of French civilization, and a feature peculiarly characteristic of the
French women who take a pride in their receptions. A genuine
_maitresse de maison_ in Paris has no affections, no ties, save
those of her _salon_. She is wholly absorbed in thinking how she
shall render this more attractive than the _salon_ of some other
lady, who is her intimate friend, but whose sudden disappearance from
the social scene, by any catastrophe, death even, would not leave her
inconsolable. She has neither husband, children, relatives, nor
friends (in the genuine acceptation of the word);--she has, above all,
before all, always and invariably, her _salon_. This race of
women, who date undoubtedly from the famous Marquise de Rambouillet in
the time of the Fronde, are now dying out, and are infinitely less
numerous than they were even twenty years ago in Paris; but a few of
them still exist, and in these few the ardor we allude to, and which
would lead them, following in Mme. Recamier's track, to embark for the
North Cape in search of some great celebrity, is in no degree
abated. Madame Recamier is curious as the arch-type of this race, so
purely, thoroughly, exclusively Parisian.
Perhaps to a foreigner, however, no _salon_ was more amusing than
that of Charles Nodier; but this was of an utterly different
description, and all but strictly confined to the world of Literature
and Art. Nodier himself occupied a prominent place in the literature
that was so much talked of during the last years of the Restoration
and the first years of the Monarchy of July, and his house was the
rendezvous for all the combatants of both sides, who at that period
were engaged in the famous Classico-Romantic struggle. Nodier was the
Head Librarian of the Arsenal, and it was in the _salons_ of this
historic palace that he held his weekly gatherings. He himself was
scarcely to be reputed exclusively of either party; he enjoyed the
favors of the Monarchy, and the sympathies of the Opposition; the
"Classics" elected him a member of the Academie Francaise, and the
"Romantics" were perpetually in his intimacy. The fact was, that
Nodier at heart believed in neither Classics nor Romantics, laughed at
both in his sleeve, and only cared to procure to himself the most
agreeable house, the greatest number of comforts, and the largest sums
of money possible.
"By degrees," says Mme. Ancelot, "as Nodier cared less for other
people, he praised them more, probably in order to compensate them in
words for the less he gave them in affection. Besides this, he was
resolved not to be disturbed in his own vanities, and for this he knew
there was one only way, which was to foster the vanities of everybody
else. Never did eulogium take such varied forms to laud and exalt the
most mediocre things. Nowhere were so many geniuses whom the public
never guessed at raised to the rank of _divinities_ as in the
_salons_ of Charles Nodier."
The description contained in the little volume before us, the manner
in which every petty scribbler of fiftieth-rate talent was transformed
into a giant in the society of Nodier, is extremely curious and
amusing, and the more so that it is strictly true, and tallies
perfectly with the recollections of the individuals who, at the period
mentioned, were admitted to the _reunions_ of the Arsenal.
Every form of praise having been expended upon persons of infinitely
small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority
entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms
of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of
slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the
genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of
demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the
adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate into Olympus, and the
strange, misapplied terms whereof seemed to the uninitiated the
language of insanity. For instance, if, after a dozen little unshaved,
unkempt poetasters had been called "sublime," Victor Hugo vouchsafed
to recite one of his really best Odes, what was the eulogistic form to
be adopted? Mme. Ancelot will tell us.
"A pause would ensue, and at the end of a silence of some minutes,
when the echo of Hugo's sonorous voice had subsided, one after another
of the _elect_ would rise, go up to the poet, take his hand with
solemn emotion, and raise to the ceiling eyes full of mute enthusiasm.
The crowd of bystanders would listen all agape. Then, to the surprise,
almost to the consternation, of the uninitiated, one word only would
be spoken,--loudly, distinctly, and with strong, deep emphasis spoken;
that word would be:
"_Cathedral!!!_
"The first orator, after this effort, would return to the place whence
he had come, and another, succeeding to him, after repeating the same
pantomime as the former, would exclaim:
"_Ogive!!!_
"Then a third would come forward, and, after looking all around, would
risk the word:
"_Pyramid-of-Egypt!!!_
"And thereat the whole assembly would start off into frenzies of
applause, and fifty or sixty voices would repeat in chorus the
sacramental words that had just been pronounced separately."
The degree of absurdity to which a portion of society must have
attained before such scenes as the above could become possible may
serve as a commentary and an explanation to half the literature which
flooded the stage and the press in France for the first six or eight
years after the Revolution of 1830. However, to be just, we must, in
extenuation of all these absurdities, cite one passage more from
Mme. Ancelot's book, in which, in one respect, at all events, the
youth of twenty years ago in Paris are shown to have been superior to
the youth of the present day.
"Nodier's parties were extremely amusing," says our authoress; "his
charming daughter was the life of the whole; she drew around her young
girls of her own age; poets, musicians, painters, young and joyous as
these, were their partners in the dance, and every one was
full of hope and dreaming of glory. But what brought all the
light-heartedness, all the enthusiasm, all the exultation to its
utmost height was, that, in all that youth, so trusting and so
hopeful, _no one gave a single thought to money!_"
Assuredly, it would be impossible to say as much nowadays.
Taken as a whole, Mme. Ancelot's little volume is, as we said, an
amusing and an instructive one. It is not so from any portion of her
own individuality she has infused into it, but, on the contrary, from
the entire sincerity with which it mirrors other people. We recommend
it to our readers, for it is a record of Paris society in its
successive transformations from 1789 to 1848, and paints a class of
people and a situation of things, equally true types whereof may
possibly not be observable in future times.
Footnote 1: _Les Salons de Paris.--Foyers Eteints_. Par
Mme. Ancelot. 12mo. Paris.
Footnote 2: It will be remembered that on field-days Murat had
adopted a hat and feathers of a most ridiculous kind, and that have
become proverbial.
THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE.
A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S "OROSIUS."
Othere, the old sea-captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right-hand.
His figure was tall and stately;
Like a boy's his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay,
But threads of a silvery gray
Gleamed in his tawny beard.
Hearty and hale was Othere,
His cheek had the color of oak;
With a kind of laugh in his speech,
Like the sea-tide on a beach,
As unto the King he spoke.
And Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Had a book upon his knees,
And wrote down the wondrous tale
Of him who was first to sail
Into the Arctic seas.
"So far I live to the northward,
No man lives north of me;
To the east are wild mountain-chains,
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.
"So far I live to the northward,
From the harbor of Skeringes-hale,
If you only sailed by day,
With a fair wind all the way,
More than a month would you sail.
"I own six hundred reindeer,
With sheep and swine beside;
I have tribute from the Fins,--
Whalebone, and reindeer-skins,
And ropes of walrus-hide.
"I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then
With their sagas of the seas,--
"Of Iceland, and of Greenland,
And the stormy Hebrides,
And the undiscovered deep;--
I could not eat nor sleep
For thinking of those seas.
"To the northward stretched the desert,--
How far I fain would know;
So at last I sallied forth,
And three days sailed due north,
As far as the whale-ships go.
"To the west of me was the ocean,--
To the right the desolate shore;
But I did not slacken sail
For the walrus or the whale,
Till after three days more.
"The days grew longer and longer,
Till they became as one;
And southward through the haze
I saw the sullen blaze
Of the red midnight sun.
"And then uprose before me,
Upon the water's edge,
The huge and haggard shape
Of that unknown North Cape,
Whose form is like a wedge.
"The sea was rough and stormy,
The tempest howled and wailed,
And the sea-fog, like a ghost,
Haunted that dreary coast,--
But onward still I sailed.
"Four days I steered to eastward,
Four days without a night:
Bound in a fiery ring
Went the great sun, O King,
With red and lurid light."
Here Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Ceased writing for a while;
And raised his eyes from his book,
With a strange and puzzled look,
And an incredulous smile.
But Othere, the old sea-captain,
He neither paused nor stirred;
And the King listened, and then
Once more took up his pen,
And wrote down every word.
"And now the land," said Othere,
"Bent southward suddenly,
And I followed the curving shore
And ever southward bore
Into a nameless sea.
"And there we hunted the walrus,
The narwhale, and the seal:
Ha! 'twas a noble game,
And like the lightning's flame
Flew our harpoons of steel!
"There were six of us altogether,
Norsemen of Helgoland;
In two days and no more
We killed of them threescore,
And dragged them to the strand!"
Here Alfred the Truth-Teller
Suddenly closed his book,
And lifted his blue eyes
With doubt and strange surmise
Depicted in their look.
And Othere, the old sea-captain,
Stared at him wild and weird,
Then smiled, till his shining teeth
Gleamed white from underneath
His tawny, quivering beard.
And to the King of the Saxons,
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand, and said.
"Behold this walrus-tooth!"
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.
[The schoolmistress came down with a rose in her hair,--a fresh June
rose. She has been walking early; she has brought back two
others,--one on each cheek.
I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could muster for the
occasion. Those two blush-roses I just spoke of turned into a couple
of damasks. I suppose all this went through my mind, for this was what
I went on to say:--]
I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers our mothers and
sisters used to love and cherish, those which grow beneath our eaves
and by our doorstep, are the ones we always love best. If the
Houyhnhnms should ever catch me, and, finding me particularly vicious
and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy me, I'll tell you what
drugs he would have to take and how he would have to use them. Imagine
yourself reading a number of the Houyhnhnms Gazette, giving an account
of such an experiment.
"MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY.
"The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured was subjected to the
art of our distinguished man-tamer in presence of a numerous
assembly. The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely confined
by straps to prevent his sudden and dangerous tricks of
shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. His countenance expressed the
utmost degree of ferocity and cunning.
"The operator took a handful of _budding lilac-leaves_, and
crushing them slightly between his hoofs, so as to bring out their
peculiar fragrance, fastened them to the end of a long pole and held
them towards the creature. Its expression changed in an instant,--it
drew in their fragrance eagerly, and attempted to seize them with its
soft split hoofs. Having thus quieted his suspicious subject, the
operator proceeded to tie a _blue hyacinth_ to the end of the
pole and held it out towards the wild animal. The effect was
magical. Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips trembled
as it pressed them to the flower. After this it was perfectly quiet,
and brought a measure of corn to the man-tamer, without showing the
least disposition to strike with the feet or hit from the shoulder."