A star of the salons, Julie de Lespinasse

Introduction

' I 'HE remarkable woman whose name stands on ^ the title-page of this book has for several years exercised a singular fascination over me. My ideas concerning her, derived in the first instance mainly from the standard edition of her " Letters to Guibert" by M. Eugene Asse (supplemented by his little book, '* Mademoiselle de Lespinasse et la Marquise du Deffand," and by M. Charles Henry's " Lettres In^dites de Mademoiselle de Lespinasse), have been of course enormously enlarged since the appearance of the Marquis de Segur's invaluable study, " Julie de Lespinasse." It would be impossible for me adequately to express the gratitude which, in common with all admirers of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, I feel towards M. de Segur for the discoveries due to his research (notably as regards the de Vichy family and the Marquis de Mora), and also for the extraordinary insight and sympathy with which he has treated the whole subject. The subsequent republication of the " Letters," by the Comte de Villeneuve-Guibert has been also an event of much importance, as this revised edition includes many passages previously omitted, and further, a considerable number vi A STAR OF THE SALONS

of Guibert's replies, hitherto supposed to be irretrievably lost.

I have ventured to hope that the story of Julie de Lespinasse, as seen by a biographer of her own sex and of different nationality, may reveal some aspects of the case hitherto unnoticed and not without interest. I have also endeavoured to give some idea of the background against which she moved, and the strange transitional epoch in which her life was cast.

In conclusion, I would fain offer my earnest thanks to M. Charles Henry, M. le Marquis d'Albon, M. le Marquis de Segur, M. Pierre de Nolhac and M. Gruyer for the personal kindness they have shown to me, a stranger and an alien, and the many valuable suggestions with which they have helped me.

The principal authorities consulted, apart from those which I have already enumerated, are, the memoirs, correspondence and writings generally of d'Alembert, Madame du Deffand, Turgot, Condorcet, Marmontel, Diderot, Morellet, Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Argenson, Due de Lauzun, Horace Walpole, Duclos, Madame de Genlis, Madame Roland, Madame d'Epinay, Madame de Tencin, Madame Suard, Madame de Staal-Delaunay ; the works of the Brothers Goncourt, Taine, de Tocqueville, Sainte Beuve, Mr John Morley and Lady Dilke ; Grimm's " Correspondance Litteraire," Mercier's "Tableau de Paris"; Restif de la Bretonne's "Nuitsde Paris"; Arthur Young's "Travels in France" ; John Hill Burton's " Letters of Eminent Persons addressed to David Hume" and " Life and Correspondence of David Hume"; " Lettres de

INTRODUCTION vii

Mademoiselle Aisse " (ed. Eugene Asse) ; M. de Segur's "Gens d' Autrefois " ; M. de Haussonville's "Salon de Madame Necker"; M. Guillois' "Salon de Madame Helvetius" ; M. Maugras' "Les comediens hors la loi " ; " Le President Henault et Madame du Deffand," by Lucien Perey ; " Les Encyclopedistes," by L. Ducros; "Mesdames nos Aieules," by A. Robida.

c. J.

CONTENTS dHAPTER

I. A Strange Family History

II. The Heroine as Instructress ,.

III. French Country Life in the Eighteenth Century

IV. A Notable Visitor

V. In Convent Walls

VI. An Opening in Life .

VII. "The Flaunting Town" .

VIII, New Friends ....

IX. The Foundling of Saint Jean le Rond . X. Philosophy and Music . . .

XI. The New Theology and its Exponents . XII. Outlaws by Profession ....

XIII. The Root of Bitterness ....

XIV. " Like Water sprinkled on the Plain " . XV. A New Departure

XVI. The Destroyer of Beauty XVII. A Woman's Kingdom

PAGE I

65 78

187 203 214

CHAPTER

XVIII. Friends in Council

XIX. The Coming of Love .

XX. A Pinchbeck Hero XXI. The Tenth of February .

XXII. For One, Despair ; for Many, Hope

XXIII. Politics and a Pretty Wedding

XXIV, Two Literary Enterprises XXV. Requiescat . .

PAGE

238 252 266

292 306 322

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Julie DE LeSPINASSE .... Frontispiece

From a water-colour sketch by Carmontelle in the Musie de Chantilly.

FACING PAGE

Mademoiselle de Bethisy et Son Frere . . . 22

From a tainting by A. S. Belle in the Must'e de Versailles.

La Marquise du Deffand . . . . .44

By Forshel, after Carmontelle.

La Duchesse du Maine (in childhood) . . . 48 '

From the painting by Mignard in the Musie de Versailles.

Cardinal de Tencin , . . . , 62 y

From an engraving after the painting in the Mus^e de Versailles.

Les Chats de Madame du Deffand (showing her bedroom

at St Joseph) . . . . . . 80 '

From an engraving by Cochin in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

Le President Renault . . . . . 90 '

From a drawing in the Bibliothhjjte Nationale.

Madame de Tencin ...... 108

From an engraving in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

From the original by Latour in the Musee de Saint Quentin. (Photo. Mons. f. E. Bulloz. )

After Greuze.

Mademoiselle Clairon ..... 156

From an engraving hy Cochin in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

La Duchesse de Chatillon .... 182

From a painting by Kosalba Carriera in the Louvre.

xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Madame Geoffrin . . . . . .192

From the portrait by Chardin in the Musee de Montpellier. {Photo. Mans. A, Giraudon.)

La The a L'Anglaise Chez Monsieur le Prince de Conti 224 From a painting by M. B. Ollivier in the Louvre. {Madame de Luxembourg, the Comtesse de Boufflers, the Prince de Conti, Pont de Veyle and Henault appear in this group. ^ {Photo. Mons. Neurdein.)

Le Marquis de Condorcet . . . . .230

School of Greuze in the Mus^e de Versailles.

Le Comte de Guibert ..... 258 '

From an engraving after the painting by Lan^on in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

From the painting in the Musee de Versailles.

Mademoiselle de Courcelles, afterwards Comtesse

From the painting by Greuze. {Photo. Mons. Braun, Clement et Cie.)

The Temple. Residence of the Prince de Conti, where

Guibert gave readings of T/ie Constable . . . 316

From a painting in the Musde Carnavalet.

Marie Antoinette . . . . . . 320 '

Chapter I

ON the 9th of November 1732, in a modest house at Lyon, long since demolished, there came into the world a little girl destined to be hereafter distinguished by a remarkable character and a career equally remarkable. No rejoicings welcomed her birth, for it was the direct evidence of her mother's shame, and public opinion, even in that tolerant age, required that so palpable a fact should be shrouded by a veil of decent mystery.

The mistress of the house above-mentioned was by profession a midwife, while her husband practised the calling, then esteemed almost equally humble, of surgeon. The lady who, probably under an assumed name, had sought shelter and assistance from this respectable couple was Julie d'Albon, the heiress of an ancient and illustrious family represented at the present day by a lineal descendant of this very Countess. Her relations, naturally wishing to keep the ancestral estates which had fallen to her lot in the family name, had married her, at the age of sixteen, to the Comte d'Albon, her cousin. In spite of all the excellent arguments which are nowadays urged in defence of such fnariages de convenance, it is an incontestable fact that this union was not a happy one.

For over twelve years the young people lived an outwardly united life in the ancient feudal chateau of Avauges, which formed part of Julie d'Albon's inheritance. They had four children (of w^hom only two survived), but soon after the birth of the last — the son and heir — the Comte d'Albon quitted Avauges, never apparently to return, and withdrew to his native town of Roanne, where he spent the rest of his life.

The causes of this rupture are matter of conjecture only, but it seems almost certain that, up to that time, the balance of wrongdoing had lain on the side of the man. Otherwise it would be difficult to account for the humble and effaced role which he henceforward sustained. He long survived his wife, but seems to have been all along ignored by his children, who were left in their mother's care. The French husband was then armed by law with formidable powers against an offending wife. If legal evidence of her faithlessness was forthcoming he could imprison her for life in a convent and appropriate all her money, subject to a bare maintenance of some jfifty pounds a year. Such rigour was indeed little in accordance with the spirit of the age, but the statutes authorising it remained in force, and instances of their revival occurred at a much later period than that at present in question. If the Comte d'Albon did not, in the light of his wife's subsequent behaviour, attempt even to deprive her of the guardianship of the children or the control of her estates, of which she was left mistress, it must have been from a consciousness that his own conduct had not been such as would bear the light of publicity.

The exact nature of the conditions under which the young couple parted is also uncertain. Divorce, in the proper sense of the term, was then unknown in France, as in other Roman Catholic countries. D'Argenson, it may be observed, though a student of law, appears surprised at discovering its existence amongst Protestants. Judicial separations, on the contrary, were in this century of common occurrence, and, as in a modern police court, were nearly always at the suit of the wife, the husband being very properly disqualified as a plaintiff by the ample, or rather excessive, privileges which he already possessed. La demanderesse en separation was a prominent figure in the social life of the period. At one time as many as three hundred women were carrying on suits of this kind — an enormous proportion when we remember that they must have been drawn wholly from the upper and middle classes of society. These revolting wives — who, it may be observed in passing, had generally excellent reasons for their revolt — were required by decorum to retire while their suits were pending to certain convents set apart to receive them, and lived by no means in conventual seclusion, receiving visits from their friends and lawyers, and spending hours daily in court, for it was a point of honour for each to be present at the cases of all the others.

Judicial separation was of two kinds — of the person and of property. The first, which sanctioned the living apart of the couple, was granted only in case of great cruelty or extraordinary profligacy on the side of the husband. The second, by which the wife was given control of her own money, could be obtained if sufficient evidence were produced to show that the husband was likely to squander her fortune. This kind of separation could be arranged privately, and in some cases the marriage contract was from the first drawn up on the basis of separate estates, much as, in England, a woman's dowry was sometimes settled on her for her own use. Probably this last arrangement was that which existed between the Comte and Comtesse d'Albon. At anyrate it is almost certain that there could have been no formal " separation of the person," or Madame d'Albon would not, as she at one time did, have contemplated the possibility of legitimatising the daughter born some years after she had ceased to live with her husband.

We must not judge the conduct of the young wife, thus left practically a widow, by the standard of our own times. From the point of view of most of her contemporaries it was inevitable that a woman in such circumstances should take a husband informally. It would seem, however, that she must have acted with unusual caution ; for, though all her acquaintance knew that she had a lover, nobody knew who he was, and it is only quite recently that his identity has been revealed by the patient research of M. de Segur, concerning whose discovery more will be said presently. When her legitimate son, Camille, was six years old, Madame d'Albon gave birth to another boy, of whom scarcely anything is known. He was educated, apparently, in a monastery at Lyon, ,and in due time professed as a monk. Twenty months later was born his sister, the subject of the present memoir, whom a far different lot awaited.

The little girl was baptised the day after her birth in a neighbouring church — still, we believe, existing, at Lyon — and received the names of Julie-Jeannej^l^onore, being entered in the parish register as the child of "Claude Lespinasse, bourgeois de Lyon, and dame Julie Navarre, his wife." Both of these are purely fictitious personages, the name of Lespinasse being derived from one of the d'Albon estates. Of the years which immediately followed little is known beyond the fact that Madame d'Albon could not bring herself to renounce her daughter as she had, in effect, renounced her son. The childhood of the little Julie was almost certainly passed in the ancient chateau of Avauges, which stood on the road between Lyon and Tarare. A photograph now before me represents the chateau as it has existed since 1765, a long threestoreyed edifice, in the style of Louis XV., but at the period of the story at which we have so far arrived the site was occupied by a genuine feudal castle, with moat and battlements ; a fitting abode for a family which traces its descent backward through at least eight centuries. Hither, no doubt, the girl was brought after a year or more spent, as was then the custom even with legitimate children, in the cottage of some humble foster-mother. She was known always under the name of Lespinasse, and some transparent pretext of adoption was probably invented to account for her presence at the castle ; for just as it was necessary that her birth, though its approach was doubtless known to all the neighbourhood, should not take place at her mother's house, so the convenances forbade that she should be explicitly owned, though she might be treated as a daughter.

Her early childhood was certainly happy. She was brought up with the same care as the two legitimate children, and probably treated with equal respect. But when she was seven years old an event occurred which was destined to exercise a most unfavourable influence upon her future — the marriage, namely, of her half-sister, Diane d'Albon, with Gaspard de Vichy- Champrond, a neighbour, and an old friend of the family. In order to explain how the fortunes of Julie were affected by this alliance it will be necessary here to consider the question of her descent on the father's side, a question much debated by the gossips of her own day, and in later times by litUratetirs who have interested themselves in her history. The secret, as has been already said, was preserved with such extraordinary care that, in spite of various obviously untenable conjectures, it has remained unknown till within the last year or two, when the key to the mystery was found by M. de Segur in some hitherto unpublished manuscripts. The father of Julie de Lespinasse was, he thinks, no other than that very Gaspard de Vichy who, seven years after her birth, became the husband of her elder sister. The situation — a sufficiently familiar one to students of modern French fiction — is not pleasant to contemplate. We can imagine the suitor, level-headed, hard-natured, bent, at all costs, upon an advantageous establishment for himself, and careless of the means by which it is obtained ; the girl knowing nothing of the horrible complication, and fascinated, perhaps, as girls have often been fascinated, by the finished manners and ripe experience of a lover twenty-one years older than herself ; the mother heart-wrung, conscience-stricken, yielding reluctantly to the pressure brought from both sides to bear upon her. It must have been plain enough to her that no good could come of such a marriage for any of the persons concerned, but it is doubtful whether she at first foresaw the full extent of the calamity thus entailed upon the poor child whose interests should have been as sacred to Gaspard as they were to herself.

This strange and sinister son-in-law was fully resolved that the portion of his wife, the only legitimate daughter, should not be diminished by any provision for her unacknowledged sister. He offered a determined resistance to every measure attempted for this purpose by Madame d'Albon. Diane, who had now been instructed of the true state of affairs, seems, to her credit, to have proved herself less obdurate, but her husband's authority was with her supreme, and she dared offer no resistance to his will. His influence extended even to Camille d'Albon, who had at first shown much affection for his little sister, but was now led to consider his own rights as incompatible with hers, and hence to take sides against her. It was, doubtless, in the hope of placing the girl on a footing which should render her independent of these hostilely disposed relatives that her mother conceived the idea of obtaining recognition for her as a lawful descendant of the house of d'Albon. In view of Madame d'Albon's long alienation from her husband, this seems to us moderns an utterly chimerical project, but there was not much limit in those days to the things that could be accomplished by people of rank and wealth, and that the plan had every chance of success is proved by the intense alarm which it inspired in Gaspard de Vichy. So fierce was the opposition made by him, and, at his prompting, by his wife and brother-in-law, that the Countess found herself obliged to give way.

All that she ventured openly to do was to insert in her will a clause bequeathing to " Julie-Jeanne- Eleonore Lespinasse, daughter of Claude Lespinasse and Julie Navarre," an annuity of 300 francs, with a further legacy of 6000 francs to be paid in case she either married or entered religion. Bequests of a like nature, but somewhat smaller in amount, were also made in favour of Hilaire- Hubert, Julie's brother by the full blood, who two years after the death of Madame d'Albon did in effect "enter religion," and presumably received the scanty portion assigned him in that event. But the daughter, who had been from infancy her mother's companion, could not be so lightly set aside as the son, whom she had, perhaps, never seen since his birth. Unknown to Gaspard and Camille, the Countess had contrived to lay by a large sum of money in a desk in her room, and on the eve of her death, which occurred about a year and a half after the above will was drawn, she called the girl, then aged fifteen, to her bedside, and secretly gave the whole amount into her possession, with injunctions to keep it for herself. The poor child, unfitted alike by age, temperament and education for that grim "struggle for existence" which was henceforth to be her portion, handed over the money intact to her brother^ Camille (who made no hesitation about taking it), and never benefited to the extent of a single penny by her mother's dying gift. It was a dreary prospect indeed which lay before the hapless girl, now worse than orphaned.

She had been passionately attached to her mother, whose name, as she wrote long afterwards, was "dear and venerable" to her. It would indeed appear from many strong indications that the terms on which the two stood to each other were far more affectionate and familiar than was then usual between parents and children. Instead of being banished, like the great majority of her contemporaries, to a convent school, she was brought up at the side of her mother, who herself superintended her education, and "endeavoured by double tenderness to make amends for having bestowed upon her the fatal gift of life." Evidently the years passed brightly and peacefully for the child until the ill-omened marriage of Diane and the unrelenting attitude of Julie's father reduced Madame d'Albon to an extremity of distress which she was unable to conceal from the innocent object of her anxiety. She terrified the little girl by vague hints concerning the dire misfortunes awaiting her in the future, the cruel enemies besetting her path ; "often," we are told, "she bathed her secretly with her tears." The effect upon a sensitive and affectionate child might easily be imagined, even if we had not the after-testimony of Julie herself. "Strange irony of fate ! " she writes, not long before her death, to her friend Condorcet, " my childhood was rendered unhappy by the very care and affection which increased my sensitiveness. I was familiar with terror and dismay before I had the power of reasoning or understanding." There would be the less to distract her from these gloomy impressions, as Camille, who had made her his pet and playfellow, must now have left Avauges to enter the army, and she remained alone with her mother in a solitude only broken by occasional visits from country neighbours or expeditions to the provincial town of Lyon, where Madame d'Albon had a house.

Up to the time of her mother's death, the girl, beyond a general conviction that there was something very much wrong indeed, does not seem to have understood the true nature of her position. She must certainly have been far from realising the state of Ishmael-like isolation to which she was now reduced when she confided to her treacherous brother the lo A STAR OF THE SALONS

money designed to secure for her some measure of Independence. Perhaps it was the reading of Madame d'Albon's will, perhaps the uncompromising explanations of her relatives, which revealed to this petted daughter of a wealthy house the existence of poverty and humiliation awaiting her. Perhaps, as one authority asserts, she did not, even then, understand that she had any other cause for sorrow than the sufficient one of having lost her best friend. However this may be, her anguish of grief aroused the sympathy of Diane de Vichy, who had come, of course, to attend her mother's funeral. Even Gaspard's heart was touched with something like pity for the daughter whom he had done his best to render destitute. They proposed to the desolate girl that she should make her home with them, an offer which she accepted almost with joy — she had indeed no other resource. Camille, though much hardened by contact with the world, had not as yet lost all affection for his young sister, but, as a soldier and a bachelor, it would have been impossible for him, even had he been so minded, to take her personally under his protection. So late as 1760, Madame de Genlis notes that it was not considered decorous even for the wives of officers to accompany their husbands when on military duty. Garrison towns had then a bad name ; to make them taboo for all women of good reputation was not perhaps the best expedient for improving it, but for a girl of Julie's age to break through such a convention was plainly out of the question. Accompanied therefore by her sister and her brother-in-law, whose true position towards herself was still probably unknown to her, she set out for their country house at Champrond in the adjoining province.

Chapter II

CHAMPROND, the estate from which Gaspard de Vichy derived his title of count, was situated on the northern frontier of the old province of the Lyonnois, in what is now the department of Saone-et- Loire. The chateau belonging to the estate exists no longer, but Monsieur de Segur has published, from manuscript sources, an interesting description of it dating from 1735, or thirteen years before Julie de Lespinasse took up her abode there. Its large square tower, its moat and drawbridge, indicated the troubled period in which it was originally built, while the two great terraces facing north and south respectively, the flower-garden, the aviary and the park with its winding rivulet and long alleys of hornbeam are suggestive of later and more peaceful times, and of such scenes as we find idealised in the pictures of Watteau.

In surroundings of this kind were passed the next four years of Julie's life. The duties which occupied her were, in the main, those of governess to the children of Gaspard and Diane. The position was not, in those days, one of much dignity or importance, and was, in fact, not widely differentiated from that of an upper servant. The modern distinction between a gouvernante, who takes general charge of children, but does not necessarily teach them, and the institutrice or instructress proper, was sometimes, as we learn from a passage in Madame Roland's memoirs, theoretically recognised, but in practice we find the two constantly confounded, and the one office was scarcely held of more account than the other. Setting aside royal and semi-royal households, the most aristocratic specimen of a private governess whom I can remember having come across in the memoirs of that period is Mademoiselle de Mars, the organist's daughter, who taught the harpsichord to F6licit6 de Saint-Aubyn, afterwards Madame de Genlis, and read novels with her when their history book proved too intolerably dull for the taste of either — a trait which recalls Becky Sharp at Queen's Crawley. To be relegated to such a position, therefore, might well, to a girl brought up as Julie had been, have seemed a bitter humiliation, but it is probable that she was never actually governess en titre, and from a playmate grew insensibly into a teacher. Perhaps it was from motives of delicacy that her sister and brother-in-law forbore, as it is pretty certain they did, to accentuate the change by any offer of payment.

In the spring of 1748, when Julie became an inmate at Champrond, the family circle consisted of Gaspard J himself, his wife, and two sons, aged respectively eight " and five, and in the month of May of that same year a third child, a girl, was born. For the eldest of the three, Abel, an amiable boy, who grew up into a worthy and kind-hearted man, Julie had a strong and entirely sisterly affection. Their friendship continued unbroken until the end of her life, and she always looked back upon his companionship as one of the few cheerful memories associated with her stay at Champrond. The second brother was of a less lovable character, and indeed turned out badly, and died, not much regretted, at the age of twenty-seven. The little girl above-mentioned survived her birth for some years, but did not live to grow up. That the relations of all three with their aunt, or rather their elder sister, were of the pleasantest kind is proved by the anguish of regret with which, as Madame du Deffand declares, they witnessed her departure four years later. We know that she was always fond of children, and it was only natural that, in her loneliness and desolation, she should find comfort in the society of these young brothers, who were nearer her own age than the mistress, much more the master, of the house. Their liveliness and caressing ways would contrast pleasantly with the cold and constrained attitude maintained towards her by their parents. Her complaints of the unhappiness which she suffered at Champrond never refer to what the ill-used governess of Jane Austen's and Charlotte Bronte's days was wont to style the "drudgery" of teaching. Probably she was too intelligent to make it a drudgery either for herself or her pupils.

In this age, when the number and nature of the items which should be, must be, or can be included in the school time-table provides an eternal theme for discussion, we are naturally curious to know what were the "subjects" in which Mademoiselle de Lespinasse instructed her young relatives. Latin was then, as now, " a necessary part of every gentleman's education." Indeed, if we may judge by Monsieur d'Epinay's naive remark that his son must learn Latin but need not understand the authors he reads because "they lead to nothing," the attitude of the French eighteenth-century parent towards classical instruction would seem to have borne a touching resemblance to that of the British paterfamilias in our own times. The teaching of Latin is certainly much simplified if we start on both sides with a clear understanding that it is not necessary for the pupil to have any comprehension of what he reads ; but even under these conditions it is not likely that Julie would have been considered equal to the task. Had she possessed the slightest smattering of classical lore, Guibert in his eulogium written after her death, would scarcely have omitted to mention so extraordinary a circumstance. Frenchwomen do not often learn Latin now, but a Frenchwoman who did so then was considered by herself and all her social circle a marvel and a portent indeed. Madame Roland has acquired the reputation of a knowledge of the "learned laneuaofes" on the score of some intermittent lessons in Latin grrammar bestowed on her in childhood by a priest uncle. Madame de Genlis, though, like Miss Edgeworth, she affected to depreciate the study of classics, is equally careful to inform the world of an equally scrappy course of instruction imparted by her brother's tutor. Madame du Chatelet, the "sublime Emilie " of Voltaire, was really at the age of fifteen capable of construing Virgil with more or less correctness, but then Madame du Chatelet was the wonder of her day, the typical new woman whose example was held up as an awful warning to any misguided girl who might show a tendency to become savante.