International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art, and Science — Volume 1, No. 4, July 22, 1850
LITERARY COTERIES IN PARIS IN THE LAST CENTURY
The revolutions of society are almost as sure if not as regular as those of the planets. The inventions of a generation weary after a while, but they are very likely to be revived if they have once ministered successfully to pleasure or ambition. The famous coteries in which learning was inter-blended with fashion in the golden age of French intelligence, are being revived under the new Republic, and women are again quietly playing with institutions and liberties, perhaps as dangerously as when Mesdames de Tencin, Pompadour, Geoffrin, Deffant, Poplinière and L'Espinasse assembled the destinies nightly in their drawing rooms.
The tendency to such associations is displayed also in most of our own cities. The Town and Country Club of Boston, the Wistar Parties in Philadelphia, the Literary Club in Charleston, the recent converzaziones at the houses of President Charles King of Columbia College, and others, and the well-known Saturday Evenings at Miss Lynch's, where literature and art and general speculation have for some seasons had a common center, all illustrate the disposition of an active and cultivated society, not engrossed by special or spasmodic excitements, to cluster by rules of feeling and capacity: and clusters of passion and mind are rarely for a long period inert. When they become common they are apt to assume the direction of private custom and public opinion and affairs.
In view of these things, we are sure that the readers of the International will be interested in the following translation of Professor Schlosser's brilliant survey of those bureaux d'esprit which so much distinguished society and influenced its history in Europe, from the beginning to the middle of the last century. Schlosser is a Privy Councillor and Professor of History in the University of Heidelberg. He is chiefly known in continental Europe by his great work, the History of the Eighteenth Century, and of the Nineteenth till the overthrow of the French Empire, a work which derives its value not merely from the profound and minute acquaintance of the author with the subject, from the new views which are presented and the hitherto unexamined sources from which much has been derived, but from his well-known independence of character—from the general conclusions which he draws from the comparative views of the resources, conduct, manners, institutions and literature of the great European nations, during a period unparalleled in the history of the world for the development of the physical and mental powers of mankind, for the greatness of the events which occurred, for the progress of knowledge, for the cultivation of the arts and sciences, for all that contributes to the greatness and prosperity of nations.
If we venture to bring the Parisian evening, dinner and supper parties into connection with the general history of Europe, and the ladies also at whose houses these parties took place, we can neither be blamed for scrupulous severity, nor for paradoxical frivolity. It belongs to the character of the eighteenth century, that the historian who wishes to bring the true springs of conduct and sources of action to light, must condescend even so far. It must also be borne in mind, when the clever women and societies of Paris are spoken of, that the demands of the age and progressive improvement and culture were altogether unattended to at the court of Louis XV., as well before as after the death of Cardinal Fleury, and that all which was neglected at Versailles was cultivated in Paris. The court and the city had been hitherto united in their wants and in their judgment; the court ruled education, fashion and the general tone, as it ruled the state; now, however, they completely separated. Afterward the voice of the city was raised in opposition, and the voice of this opposition became the organ of the age and of the country; but it was felt and recognized in Versailles only when it was too late. How easy it would have been then, as Marmontel had shown very clearly in his memoirs, to fetter Voltaire, who was offensive to the people, and how important this would have been for the state, will appear in the following paragraphs, in which we shall show that even the Parisian theatre, whose boards were regarded as a model by all Europe, freed itself from the influence of the court, became dependent on the tone-giving circles of Paris, and assumed a decidedly democratic direction.
As early as the time of Louis XIV., the court had separated itself from the learned men of the age; and at the end of the seventeenth century the houses and societies could be historically pointed out, in which judgments were pronounced upon questions of literature in the same manner as the pit became the tribunal to which plays and play-actors must appeal; we shall not, however, go back so far, but keep the later times always in our view. In those associations in which the Abbé de Chaulieu and other friends of Vendome and Conti led the conversation, literature was brought wholly under the dominion of audacious pretension and immorality, in the time of the Regency and during the minority of Louis XV. In reference to the leaders there needs no proof. What could a Philip of Orleans or his Dubois take under his protection, except what corresponded with his ideas and mode of life?
The time of the minority of Louis XV. and that of the administration of Cardinal Fleury was for several reasons highly favorable to the formation of private societies, which entertained themselves with wit and satire, and carried on a quiet but continual contest with the persons and systems which were protected by the government and the clergy. Fleury regarded everything as sinful which had the appearance of worldly knowledge, or partook of the character of jests, novels, or plays; Louis, as he grew up, showed himself quite indifferent to everything which had no connection with religious ceremonies, hunting, or handsome women. Fleury spoke and wrote in that ecclesiastical phraseology which was laughed at in the world: he favored the clergy, school learning, the tone of the times of Louis XIV.; but the spirit of the age demanded something different from this. All that was regarded with disfavor by Fleury assembled around those celebrated men, who held their reunions in Paris, and this court soon became more important to the vain than the royal one itself, and it was proved by experience that reputation and glory might be gained without the aid or protection of the court at Versailles. This no one could have previously believed, but the public soon learnt to do homage to the tone-giving scholars, to the ladies and gentlemen who fostered them, as it had formerly paid its homage to the ministers of the court. This gave to the ladies, who collected around them the celebrated men of the time (for reputation was much more the question than merit,) and who protected and entertained them, a degree of weight in the political and literary world, which made them as important in the eighteenth century as Richelieu and Colbert had been in the seventeenth.
The queen, on her part, might have been able to exercise a beneficial influence, however little power she had in other respects, when compared with the mistresses of the king; but the daughter of Stanislaus Leckzinski was a gentle, admirable woman, although somewhat narrow-minded, and wholly given up to irrational devotional exercises and bigotry. Like her father, she was altogether in the hands of the Jesuits, blindly and unconditionally their servant; such an attachment to a religious order, and such blind devotedness as hers would be quite incredible, if we did not possess her own and her father's autograph letters, as proofs of the fact. We shall present our readers with some extracts from these letters, which are preserved in the archives of the French empire, when we come to speak of the abolition of the order of Jesuits.
As to the enlightened mistresses who had much more power and influence than the queen, Pompadour seemed, as we learn from Marmontel, desirous of participating in the literature of the age and of doing something for its promotion, when she saw how important writers and the influence of the press had become; but partly because both she and the king were altogether destitute of any sense for the beautiful in literature or art, and partly because the better portion of the learned men at the time neither could nor would be pleased with what a Bernis, Düclos and Marmontel were disposed to be, who undoubtedly received some marks of favor from her. Voltaire is therefore quite right when he lays upon the court the blame of allowing the influence which literature then exercised upon the people, to be withdrawn altogether from king and his ministers, and to be transferred to the hands of the Parisian ladies and farmers-general, &c. Voltaire, in his well-known verses,1 admits, with great openness and simplicity, that he attached much importance to the applause of a court, although it neither possessed judgment nor feeling for the merits of a writer, nor for poetical beauties; and he complains at the same time that this court had neither duly estimated