MADAME D'EPINAY.*
Tun critic who called the entertaining Memoirs of Madame d'Epinay "the rough material of a romance" did them less than justice. For the pages in which this most vivacious of bluestockings tells the story of her early life possess pre- cisely that sentimental quality which makes Clarissa a master- piece for all time. Madame d'Epinay, in fact, before she was overtaken by philosophy, cultivated all the exquisite emotions 110 which were characteristic of her age. Her sensibility recalls
the pictures of Greuze ; she might well have bewailed on canvas a broken jar or a dead sparrow ; tears coursed down her cheek at the first assault of joy or grief; and the drama, in which she played a part, was exactly suited to her peculiar talent. She was not beautiful, yet she was irresistible; she was small, she was short; her jet-black hair did not increase the unhealthy pallor of her complexion, yet in her circle none (save her husband) could withstand the charm of her tears. " Her sensitiveness comes very near the ridiculous," wrote a minx called Mlle. d'Ette ; "the idea of not being able to speak to her friends without tears in her eyea! However, it suits her. There is no doubt that she is a fascinating creature. She is not at all pretty ; she is surrounded by fair women famous for their beauty ; and yet she effaces them all." And she effaced them by the gift of sympathy, which melted the hardest heart, and which kept such men as Diderot, Grimm, and Voltaire her friends unto the end. Nor was she the only well-realised character in the romance of her own making. The dissipated husband, the intriguing friend, the lofty-souled lover, are sketched one and all with a very pretty skill, and the story is so well composed that in its excellence the reader is easily persuaded to forget its truth.
Bnt Madame d'Epinay was not the mere heroine of a
romance. She was a woman of wit and intelligence, and to boot the friend of many a famous man. Though she never lost the genius of sensibility, she presently added to it a rare talent in literature and philosophy. Her head was full of the popular ideas, and yet her good sense always permitted her to dis- tinguish prejudices from principles. Despite the influence of Rousseau, she knew that mere reason could never bring back man to a state of nature, and even in her youth she could defend her principles with a certain timidity perhaps, but with a convinced resolution. Rousseau, who treated her with all the bitterness of a man placed beneath the obligation of kindness, said she was vraie sans etre franche. But her book reveals a woman of frank simplicity, who did not distort the truth by exaggeration. Had she lived in the seventeenth century, she would have been among the precieuses ; she would have helped to purify the noble language of France at the Hotel Rambouillet ; she would have composed little poems and recited them to a small, devoted audience. For not even her tears could wash the tinge of blue from her stockings, or dim the glance of under- standing that sparkled in her eye. But there was no Salon open for her reception, and so she became the patroness of Rousseau, the Egeria of the Encyclopedists. And thus her Memoirs have a double character : in one aspect they rival Clarissa, or at least Valerie, in the other they preserve for us the wit and folly of great men.
She was born in 1728, and at seventeen made an indiscreet, unhappy marriage with a spendthrift cousin. Her illusion, while it lasted, was complete, but even her sensibility could not endure the indifference of her callous, unfaithful husband. In due time a separation followed, but not before Mlle. d'Ette, a crafty, clever adventuress, sketched by Madame d'Epinay with a rare perception, had thrown her friend into the arms of M. de Francueil, who ultimately proved as hard-hearted as her husband. But henceforth she was able to live her own life, and to cultivate her own friend- ships; and though her later years were disturbed by poverty, she bore her misfortunes with a noble gaiety, and pre- served an indomitable spirit to the very end. A life spent in the society of philosophers is not adventurous, for all its quarrels and uncertainty; nor was the career of Madame d'Epinay perplexed by more than one serious crisis. But that crisis affected her honour, and the credit wherewith she emerged from it belonged to her champions as well as to her- self. On the death of her sister-in-law, Madame d'Epinay, to
• The Memoirs and Correspondence of Madame d'Epinay. Translated by J. H. Freese. 3 vols. London : H. S. Nichols. fulfil a dying request, destroyed a packet of letters, and when she could not explain the nature of the correspondence, the tongue of slander asserted that she had destroyed the proof of a debt owed by her husband to M. de Jnlly. The idle world of Paris took up the scandal, which lost nothing in the canvassing, and it was not until the missing proof was discovered that Madame d'Epinay's character was completely cleared. But the incident, squalid as it was, served to turn what was a mere acquaintance with Grimm into a lifelong friendship. For Grimm would not patiently hear the dispraise of a lady whom he knew, and he took up the cudgels for her with courage and good sense. "Gentlemen," said he in an adverse company, "I have no intimate acquaintance with either Monsieur or Madame d'Epinay. I do not know whether they are guilty or not ; but upon my honour it makes me feel a sovereign contempt for those who are in a hurry to believe it." Thereupon a certain Baron d'E. answered that a man must have an astoundingly good opinion of himself to threaten others with his contempt, to which M. Grimm replied that a man must have little honourable feeling to think it necessary to call others dishonourable at such short notice. The result was a duel fought there and then, in which both were wounded. But Madame d'Epinay never forgot the championship of Grimm, whom from that day she dubbed her knight with all the coquetry of a precieuse.
For the rest, her life is a record of distinguished friend- ship. Rousseau it was who first attracted her, and it was Rousseau, of coarse, who behaved with the bitterest dis- loyalty. Her early impression, though favourable, is intelli- gent. "He is complimentary," she wrote, "without being
polite He appears to be ignorant of the usages of society ; but it is easy to see that he is exceedingly intel- lectual. He has a dark complexion; his features are lighted up by eyes full of fire. When he has spoken, and one looks at him, he seems nice-looking; but, when one recalls him to mind, it is always as an ugly man." Thereafter she loaded Rousseau with kindness ; she lent him the Her- mitage wherein he lived ; she did her utmost to keep him on good terms with Diderot and Grimm. And he rewarded her after his fashion with treachery and bad temper. At a later time she described him with complete justice as "a moral dwarf upon stilts," and in the end she was forced to put the police upon him. Rousseau showed his gratitude by reading passages from his Confessions from house to house, that he might compromise his benefactress, who had no other means of compelling silence than the law.
So she watched over all three—Rousseau, Diderot, and Grimm—with exquisite tact and admirable temper. And she has recorded in her diary many a brilliant discussion between Rousseau and Saint-Lambert and the rest. Nor did years and trouble dull her vivacity. To her last correspondent, the Abb6 Galiani, she wrote some of her beat and most engaging letters. To him she describes how her coach broke down, and how, being a true woman, she ground her teeth in fury, and put out her tongue at the passers-by. To him also she con- futes Buffon's argument that animals are above men. " So, then," says she, "the first rhinoceros, if he had cared to give himself the trouble, would have drawn more accurate conclu- sions as to his existence than Buffon." But truly the intelligence of Madame d'Epinay was many-sided. In her youth she managed to live through a novel of smiles and tears ; in her maturer years she wrote Les Conversations d'Emilie, and won a Monthyon prize ; and all the while she cultivated the society of the men who made the opinion of their age. Above all, if you would see Rousseau and Saint.. Lambert, Diderot and Grimm, in dressing-gown and slippers. it is to the lively, entertaining volumes of Madame d'Epinay that you must look.
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