Letters of Madame de Sevigne
• age of French Literature, is information to no one. But • perhaps it might be said without offence that a great part of %the present reading public has not read the famous -Letters, • however well they are aware of the part they have played as a source" for writers of French social history. Many people - overrate the ease with which they read French, and many "-others instinctively avoid the books which they." learned about at school." Mr. Richard Aldington has destroyed all excuse for such wilful ignorance in giving us this meist charming and • representative collection of the Letters selected from the edition in nine volumes brought out in England in 1811. His " introduction is only too short, a defect unusual in any form of . preface.
- Madame de Sevigne's work should be read for the first thne, we think, not for its historic value, but for pure pleasure, for - the sense of relief from serious thought and superficial care such as we get from Jane Austen's easy narrative and aromatic satire. Miss Austen's miniatures represent plain people living . a plain life. Madame de Sevigne worked in a similar medium • on the same scale, but she took as her models the " finest " ladies and gentlemen living in the most ornate society which .has ever existed—neither writer had skill to depict tragedy ; consequently the heavenly powers were also outside their 'artistic ken. The Englishwoman of the middle class gave the • go-by to this side of life—the Frenchwoman of rank could not • avoid its mention, but when forced to record it or leave her 'correspondent in ignorance of the news she deliberately faced .her paper with the eyes-of-the-heart shut. Even where her • friends are concerned she will not look.
. The death of La Rochefoucauld is a scene in a comedy. - When Fouquet goes to the Bastille and it has to be said that "the gossips speak of his life as in danger, "I take care not to :despond," we read. "We must follow the example of our -poor prisoner, he is tranquil and gay." An even more striking 'example of the same attitude of mind is given in the following incident. The Comte de Guiche has died—Madame de Grignan in far away Provence will want to know all about it, she is always anxious for detail and for words repeated as spoken. Madame de Guiche, she is told, behaved exactly is she should. She listened with patient tears to all that could be said in his favour, and then put in her own word. "He was a very amiable man. I should have loved him passion- ately if he had cared for me in the slightest degree." There is in that sentence all the material for a tragic drama. Madame de Sevigne simply says : "He has ended the comedy well, ana left a rich and happy widow."
Court ceremonials and church functions, balls and marriages and bits of sly gossip Whispered from mouth to mouth are described or repeated in manner to make the reader feel that he himself has been in the ballroom or--it must be confessed—stood upon the back stairs. It is all vivid, all amusing. Something of humanity is lacking, but in certain moods we do not want that something. We are entertained to hear of the devout Huguenot ladies who "sang each other deaf" and of the parents who quarrelled so much over marrying their daughter that they finally pushed her into a convent and made it up.
We are properly shocked to know that Ninon de l'Enclos had a most unorthodox influence and that the Pere So-and-so preached so badly as to make religion nearly impossible.
This great Parisian lady was more at home on her estates than most of her friends, but Nature with whom she held a little intercourse for the good of her health had no serious fascination for her, not even when she was "half-way up her legs in dew" gardening We do not always want to see life either steadily or whole-; that is why to certain temperaments farce is a necessary recreation. Miss Austen and Madame de Sevigne wrote for those for whom the distorted picture of life beloved by the farceur is distasteful. They said nothing but what is true, but by a process of elimination they offered nothing but what is recreating to their readers—an offering for which the most serious are inclined to give the most thanks.
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