1300 K S.

THE SALON.*

• The Salon : a Study of _Preset Society and Personalities in the Eighteenth Century. By Llelen gierras., Illu.strated. Loudon.: G. P. Putnam's Sons. [12e. 6d.] Arthenice " did not die till 1665. In 1750 Madame du Deffand was already entertaining' her friends in Paris, in the Convent of St. Joseph; in 1764 the separation between her and Mlle. de Lespinasse had taken.pla.ce,.anfl, that remarkable young woman bad opened her own famous salon in.the same street. In 1750, too, the -marvellous bourgeoise. .Madame Geoffrin had lately been freed by death from her undesirable patroness, Madame de Tencin, as well 'as from the good old husband who was-a dull and. incongruous, element .among her pet philosophers, and her reign of .benevolent despotism had begun in earnest. These women of the eighteenth- century, their talk and their letters, seem almost to belong to our own day.

Between Madame de Rambouillet, far more original than any of her successors, and far more unselfish in her mission of softening manners and honouring literature in -its many queer incarnations, comes the good and literary :Madame de Lambert, the friend of Fenelon and of .Fontenelle, whose salon, was called the "ante-room of the Academy," and who imposed, as Mrs. Clergue says, "a high ethical standard" iii the midst of a society ruled by Philippe d'Orleans. We may point out here a slight historical slip in the comparison of Madame de Lambert under the Regent with Madame de Rambouillet .under Henry IV. The Hotel. de Rambouillet opened its doors in 1620, when Henry had been ten years dead.

'The book, however, is chiefly concerned with the more familiar story of the salons of the eighteenth century, in the varied character of which it is so easy to study the many- sided public opinion of the time. These rjunions of clever or would-be clever people differed from each other • with the differences of the women in whose drawing-rooms they were held. The generic term "the salon" includes a good many specific salons, and a system of generalising may be more than usually foolish when applied to such contrary atmospheres as those of Madame du Deffand and Madame Geoffrin. Madame du Deffand was no friend to the philosophers, who were fed, clothed, and deified by Madame Geoffrin. In her salon, the Eneyelop6die would never have been born, though in its earlier years d'Alembert was a personal favourite ; the "agitating questions" discussed by its authors "were brought up only as subjects of ridicule" :— :

"Genius alone was not a passport to her favour. It was imperative that her standard be reached in every particular, and elegant manners, gaiety and good sense were necessary qualifica- tions. Of Marmontel she said: 'How much trouble he takes, hew he exerts himself to be witty. He is only a vagabond clothed in rags !' Neither was she complimentary to Diderot,

who never crossed the threshold but once Grimm sho never would receive at all."

Voltaire was her delight and her admiration. "For Rousseau," says Mrs. Clergue, "she bad the contempt and scorn which she felt for the philosophers and all their work, whose destructive tendency she was one of the few to under. stand" :— "She never interested herself about Rousseau nor admired him," wrote Horace Walpole. "Her understanding is too just not to be disgusted with his paradoxes and affectations; and his eloquence could not captivate her, for she hates eloquence. She asked no style but Voltaire's, and has an aversion to all moral

philosophers She was born and had lived in the age of true taste and had allowed no-one but Voltaire to belong to it."

Here we have one kind of intolerance. Another reigns in the salons of Madame,Geoffrin and of the intense, pedagogio Madame d'Epinay, that of which Rousseau himself, wrote —even if, as M. Lemaitre suggests, he was mad at the time-- " l'intolerance philosophique des missionnaires du materialisme et de Tatheisme." Still another tone, a more political one, is to be heard in the salon of Madame Necker; while the old Court world on its liberal side is represented in that of the Marechale de Luxembourg, Madame du Deffand's lifelong friend, who took part against her, however, in the famous quarrel with Mlle. de Lespinasse. Madame de Luxem- bourg, after a fairly scandalous youth, had known how .to become an, infallible leader of "the Fashion" (audistinguished from "the fashions ") of her day, when society was fast losing its old peculiar charm under the invasion. of " l'anglomanie. ayes see clubs, sea frees. et sa rudesse." She was,. says the . Due de. Levis, who knew her at an advanced age, "arbitre souveraine. des bienseances, du bon ton et de cea formes qui compoaent le fond.de la politesse." Stern as a Roman censor, her perfect self:confidence, sure taste, and sharp tongue made

her a terror to the younger half of society. Her disapproval banished its unlucky objects from.those delightful little suppers to, which only "amiable persons" were invited.

The above, of course, is only.a suggestion of the immense variety of manners and doctrines which was to be found in these daily or weekly assemblies, those purely conversational parties, each under its own separate discipline, which the French have always loved, and which English and Americans can never manage or completely understand. Certainly, in

their several ways, the salons had a great deal to do with

forming public opinion. Whether their influence was alto- gether for good is a question to which there may be different

answers. Mrs. Clergue has no doubt on the matter. Speaking of "the salon" as an institution, she says : "A high ideal of truth and beauty was its constant aim." This seems to us extravagant praise, for, after all, the parts make up the whole, and an unbiassed study of the separate salons of the eighteenth century, the women who. ruled them, and the men who dis-

coursed in them hardly suggests any such aim or ideal. Sometimes the aim is amusement and brilliant chatter ; some- times the destruction of existing society and religion in theoretic flights of which the Terror was the direct con- sequence ; sometimes the forming of a new literary opinion which appeared much more valuable then than it does now ; sometimes distinction in society; often merely escape from boredom, the terrible dread of which weighed so heavily on poor, blind, discontented Madame du Deffa.nd.

On the other hand, it does not seem too much to say that the salon was "the instigator of original thought and the

arbiter of taste and manners," even if the former was not always wise and the latter were not invariably good. As to literary influence, let us turn for a moment to the late Ferdinand Brunetiere, whose opinion on the subject is at least worth knowing. Mrs. Clergue quotes him several times, though she leaves this particular passage unnoticed

"Las a-t-on assez loues, celebres et vantes, ces salons du XVIII. siècle nous n'avons encore aujourd'hui meme qu'indulgence et quo complaisance pour taut d'aimables personnes qui surent, comme lea Tencin at comme lea d'gpinay, si bien allier ensemble lo desordre des mceurs at lo pedantisme de la

philosophie Mlle. de Lespinasse, cette grande amoureuse,' et Mine. Geoffrin, cette grande bourgeoise,' de quelle atmosphere de sympathie, pour ne pas dire de quelle aureole de respect, leurs moms ne sont-ils pas entoures ! None cependant, qu'elles n'ont pas entretenns—je yew( dire heberges, meubles et nourris,—et qui no leur doyens done pas la memo reconnaissance quo d'Alembert et MarmonteL nous oserons dire quo leur role, puisqu'il faut bien convenir qu'elles en out keg vraiment un, a te desastreux. C'est dans lours bureaux d'esprit tontes quo s'est fond& la reputation de taut de mediocrites litteraires, co Marmontel que nous nommions, un Morella, un Thomas, un M. Suard. Elles out fait croire a rEarope at au monde quo touts in France on hommes ' n'etait quo le pen qu'on en rencontrait I, lour table on dans leur salon."

Madame du Defraud would have clapped her hands. As we already know, this clever woman's opinion of Mar montel and

his brethren was that of M. Brunetiere.