A Daughter of the Seine, The Life of Madame Roland

Front matter

A DAUGHTER OF THE SEINE

MARIE-JEANNE ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE, NEE PHILIPON

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Chapter 1

A DAUGHTER OF THE SEINE

Chapter One

T wind was lively that March day in Paris. It whistled past the great square towers of Notre-Dame and whisked purple clouds across the fitful sunshine which tried to make the river sparkle. Then it shook and tossed the tall trees which lifted their heads over the Pont-Neuf at the end of the Cité. Suddenly with a mischievous gust it almost brought to a halt the three people who were making their way down one of the narrow muddy streets which cross the island.

“Diable! What a wind!” cried the sturdy man who was walking ahead of the other two, and he folded his cloak more closely about him.

As a matter of fact, there was a fourth person in the group. She was, indeed, the sole reason why the other three were on the street in the middle of the afternoon instead of being about their regular business. True, in appearance she was no more than a small bundle in the arms of the stocky old woman spryly hastening behind the leader. But now she advertised her presence by a loud wail of protest against the wind’s rough play. Whereupon she was hugged a little tighter and given a brief pat. The caress was meant to remind her that she was on her way to a most important ceremony where she was expected to be as good as gold whether she were comfortable or not. It was the only language she could understand. For this individual, having been born only the day before, was almost as young as she could be.

Soon the baby’s three escorts had mounted a short flight of steps, pushed open a green baize door, and entered the cold darkness of a small church. There a smell of incense trickled through the dampness and a few candles burned before an altar. At the sound of their footsteps on the stone floor a bat-like figure glided from the shadows. It was Monsieur Roger, the priest.

Approaching the group with a smile of welcome, he said: “So you have brought the little one? You have certainly lost no time. That is well.”

He conducted them across the church where in a recess stood a stone pedestal. For this occasion was, of course, the baby’s baptism, the first of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The child’s sponsors were Gatien Philipon, the father; his uncle, the kind old Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Bernard; and his mother, Marie-Génevieve Rotisset, widow of Monsieur Philipon, the wine merchant. These two had walked all the way over from the parish of St. Eustache, far across the bridge, to be godfather and godmother to the new member of the family. And they beamed with satisfaction as the priest proceeded with the simple ceremony.

So it was that on the parish record the baby’s name which was to designate one of the great and tragic figures of France first appeared in the written annals of Paris. Marie-Jeanne Philipon. The document exists to this day, although the Church of St. Croix where she was baptized has long since disappeared. For this was on the eighteenth day of March, 1754, in the reign of Louis Fifteenth.

After the ceremony, little Marie was welcomed back by her mother and warmly snuggled into the great canopied bed in the little house on the near-by street of the Lanterne. Madame Philipon had already lost one baby and was to lose six others. From the first moment she poured over this only child the devotion of a simple and ardent nature.

Therefore it was all the more strange that in a few weeks the cherished infant was sent away to the country to be cared for by a nurse. But such was the custom in France and it still is. Besides, the nurse was very carefully chosen and supervised by Aunt Bernard, wife of Marie-Jeanne’s godfather, who knew the young woman well. The nurse loved the baby quite as if it had been her own. Under her care, little “Manon,” as she was called, grew strong and rosy and in due time was toddling about the pretty garden and lisping her first syllables. Shortly after she was two years old she was brought back to her mother and father in Paris.

It is generally supposed by those who have traced the history of this celebrated little girl that by this time her father and mother had moved into a house facing the Pont-Neuf. That famous bridge, which spans the Seine at the very end of the island of the Cité, was, despite its name, an old, old bridge even in little Marie’s time. Across it passed the life of the great city. There were shops upon it where crowds gathered. Grand coaches rolled over it, carrying fine ladies and gentlemen to the Palace of the Louvre or to the Opéra. Now and then a fashionable dame would be carried by in a gilt chaise, borne by two lackeys in livery. Groups of rollicking students from the colleges on the left bank romped along the cobblestones on the way to see the world at the Tuileries Gardens. Monks and priests from the many monasteries padded soberly to and fro. And high over all these motley passers-by, with his mighty back to the river, sitting majestically on his prancing horse of bronze, stood the great statue of Henri Quatre, the glorious king who had lived a century and a half before this period.

No wonder his statue was placed there. He had completed this famous bridge. Moreover, he had embellished its middle section by building the Place Dauphine with its blocks of gabled houses all of rosy brick with trimmings of white stone. It was in one of these houses on the corner of the quai, facing the river and the statue of the builder, that Monsieur and Madame Philipon had taken up their abode. That section of the block stands there to this day, and although it is altogether different on the inside, the outside has been restored by the present owner just as it was first built three hundred years ago. People come from ever so far now to stand upon the Quai d’Horloge beside the river and look at the little house. They do so not because of its charm, not because it was built by Henri Quatre, but because little Marie Philipon, who became the great Madame Roland of history, lived there as a child.

THE PHILIPONS’ HOUSE ON THE PONT-NEUF, SHOWING, ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE HOUSE AT LEFT, MARIE’S APARTMENT

PLAN OF PHILIPON APARTMENT. C—DRAWING-ROOM; D—SALON, CALLED “RETREAT”; E—BEDROOM; F—WORKSHOP

Nobody in the Cité then, however, would ever have dreamed that such would be the case. They were humble people, the Philipons. Marie’s father was an engraver, and a good workman he was, too. Unfortunately, he did not know how to push his business. He thought he might make more money by dealing also in jewels. But, inasmuch as he knew no rich people and inasmuch as his shop had none of the elegance of the shops they liked to frequent, he never made his fortune and remained always a poor man.

Marie’s mother was patient about all this. Indeed, she was patient and sweet about everything and accepted her lot without protest. She was helped by her deep religious feeling and her equally deep devotion to her little daughter, which devotion Marie returned fervently. She basked only in her mother’s smile. Once when she had vexed Madame Philipon by some baby prank, she was addressed coldly by that beloved voice as “mademoiselle” and, stabbed to the heart by the icy blast of disapproval, she did her utmost to prove her contrition and to regain the confidence she had momentarily lost.

With her father Marie was by no means in such harmony. At a very early age she estimated him as a rough, commonplace man who had but a crude appreciation of his sensitive and precocious daughter. For at no time did our heroine underrate herself and seldom was she inclined to think herself in the wrong. Nevertheless, her estimate of Gatien Philipon was correct and she would be quite justi- fied in modern eyes in her defiance of him on two momentous occasions.

The first battle occurred when she was about six years old. The child had been ill and her mother wished her to take a certain medicine. It smelled so vile that whenever it was thrust under her nose she felt her stomach turn over. “I am so sorry, maman,” she wailed as she saw the look of weariness and worry on her mother’s face, “but I just can’t swallow that terrible stuff.”

At this moment her father entered the room. “You will take it!” he shouted, and picking up a little switch from the fireplace he gave the rebel several sharp blows. She cried with indignation and pain, but still refused the nauseous draught. More blows and threats followed. Suddenly Marie’s sobs ceased. She looked at her father with great dignity. “You may beat me as much as you like,” she said, coolly, “but I shall never yield.” Then pulling up her brief chemise to facilitate the punishment, she turned her face to the wall and waited in silence. At so early an age did this future heroine of France recognize that spirit can dominate the flesh and all the ills it is heir to. It became a ruling principle of her life.

Utterly distressed by this scene, Madame Philipon managed to get her fuming husband out of the room. She pulled the covers over her obdurate offspring and left her undisturbed for two hours. Then once more the mother, with tears in her eyes, begged the child to disobey no more, but to take the medicine at once. This she did. But to her immense satisfaction she could not keep it on her stomach and grew immediately very much worse.

Her grown-up comment about the outcome of this incident shows an unchanged opinion of its significance. “I had then to be cured,” she wrote, complacently, “by other means than by bad drugs and beatings. From that instant my father never laid hand upon me, hardly reproved me. He caressed me frequently, taught me to draw, took me for walks, and treated me with a goodness which made him more respected in my eyes and assured him of my entire submission.”

Yes, there was always something of the self-satisfied little prig in Marie Philipon. But even great heroines must be permitted a few faults. Moreover, that very belief in her own convictions, her hatred of tyranny, and her austere judgment of others were elements in a character the force of which was to lift the future Madame Roland to heights unattainable by the weak and colorless. Furthermore, she really tried hard to be good and was ambitious, industrious, and clever. She never had to be taught to read, but in her eagerness of mind she learned all by herself. Soon she was poring over the Old and New Testaments and pondering their treasures of wisdom.

It is hard to imagine the quietness of the life pursued by a little French girl of lower middle-class family in that era. Marie’s existence was typical. She had few friends of her own age, never went to children’s parties, knew no games or sports, and never played on the street. Indeed, she never went out alone except to the corner to buy fruit or groceries for her mother. Sent on such errands, she took pride in being exceedingly polite. For she soon discovered that not only did good manners assure her immediate and satisfactory service in the shop, but to have them was the very best way to demonstrate her superiority over the rough little gamins of the neighborhood. “Lively without being noisy,” as she said of herself, she shared the housework with her mother, mastered the art of making soup and flaky omelettes, helped the cook scrub the pots, learned to sew, and spent the rest of the time in reading and dreaming at the window.

The Paris she looked down upon was in some ways more different from the city of today than it was from the Gallic settlement once occupied by the Romans of Cæsar’s time. For Marie lived before the mechanical inventions and discoveries which have made the modern world. Nobody had yet found out how to use steam or gas, gasoline or electricity. Houses were lighted by candles and lamps filled with vegetable or whale oil. Oil-filled lanterns, hung on posts, redeemed the streets from the utter blackness brought by nightfall. One of Marie’s baby memories was of these lights along the streets, which she called “pretty bottles.” On the river below her window, where now the little steamers ply, she saw only sailboats or rowing-skiffs, For in those days one could travel on the water only under canvas and on the land by horse-drawn vehicles.

Practically everything people used was made by hand-tools. And they were well made, too. Furniture was never more elegant, silks and cloth never finer, jewels never more perfectly set. As for the houses, despite the fact that they had no running water or any form of modern plumbing except drain pipes, they were solidly constructed and—could the owner but afford it—superbly finished with woodwork and decorations. There were great artists in those days, and philosophers, scientists, and statesmen. But because books and travel were expensive, because most people had to work very hard and usually with their hands to earn money enough to live, there was a greater gap between social groups and more illiterate people even in Paris then than now you could find the whole country over. There were three main classes—the nobles, the middle class or bourgeoisie, and the peasants. The last named worked in the fields and were closely bound by law to the owners of the land. In the cities this group had no special name, but consisted of workmen employed in printshops and on silk and cotton looms. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, had many social grades. A butcher with a tiny shop belonged to one of the lower ranks of the middle class. At its top stood wealthy farmers, great silk merchants, and jewelers of international reputation. Somewhere in between came the craftsmen who made furniture and bric-à-brac and the professional men—doctors, lawyers, clerks, notaries, apothecaries. All but rich folk lived in a very restricted fashion, and in this respect the parents of little Manon were no exception.

Had they been moneyed people Marie might have been taught to ride a horse, she might have played at archery or had a garden in which to romp. But she had to content herself with what her family could provide and it was little enough. They probably occupied but one floor of the small three-story house, and since it stood on the corner of two thoroughfares it possessed no garden at all. So it was very fortunate that Marie had not only a happy disposition, but a passion for using that active mind of hers.

If only she’d had the opportunities of a certain little boy who had been born the same year that she was, how much she would have made of them! For this child had everything he wished to play with, gardens in which to roam, ponies to ride, great libraries at his disposal, fencing masters and tutors galore. He wore fine clothes of silk and satin. He had ladies-in-waiting to amuse him. But, although he was a good little boy and sat through tiresome ceremonies with great patience, he looked at everything with a dull eye. He liked to eat and sleep a great deal, hated to be dressed up, and felt superior to nobody. This was a great pity. For the little boy was the eldest grandson of the ruling king and was to be king himself when he was twenty.

Yes, Louis the Sixteenth was born the same year as Marie-Jeanne Philipon. And whereas her coming was welcomed by only her parents and relatives, the arrival of tiny Louis had rejoiced the whole nation. Guns boomed and couriers on horseback dashed to Paris to spread the news. For Louis was born at Versailles, the vast palace which his great-great-great-grandfather, Louis the Fourteenth, had built some ten miles from the capital. All the court gathered there and it was the most gorgeous royal mansion in the world.

But the beauty of its gardens, terraces, and fountains, the majesty of the great salons with their ceilings painted by noted artists, their exquisite chandeliers, handsome furniture and tapestries only served as a setting for the wickedest frivolities. Gambling, intrigue, irregularities of every kind went on continually. Money was squandered with utter heedlessness by people who lived only to amuse themselves. Why not? Didn’t the king, Louis’ grandfather, set the pace by leading a life as selfish and dissolute as it could possibly be?

To look back upon those times is ever to find it strange that the hard-working people of France, who had to pay taxes to support those courtiers and that palace, made no protest. True, there were a number of great writers who dared to cry out against the corruption. But the general sentiment was indifference and hopelessness. Peasants, farmers, and the good, stupid artisans like Monsieur Philipon were simply too busy with their own affairs to pay much attention to national issues. Besides, as long as people actually believed that the king’s power came directly from God and had no idea they possessed any right to change conditions, they naturally submitted to every royal outrage. Thus it was that Prince Louis and Marie Philipon, ten miles apart, began to grow up in a France which was getting poorer and more wretched every minute. And because of this general misery and injustice the two children were destined to contend with each other thirty years hence and to perish of the contest.

One curious difference between that time and ours was that children had to be privileged characters to go to school. Instead of free schools there were private tutors or boarding-schools connected with convents and monasteries. Only because so naturally ambitious and intelligent a race as the French put learning above pleasure were children of the middle and lower classes given the benefit of education.

Marie Philipon was tutored in geography, history, and penmanship. She had a number of lessons on the guitar, was taught to dance, and was given instruction by her father in drawing. It was a course of study decidedly hit-or-miss. But Marie took it very seriously. She always woke up about five in the morning, before anyone else was astir. Slipping on a little jacket and not even stopping to put on her shoes, she would tiptoe noiselessly into her mother’s room, where on a small table her work was laid out. There, as still as a mouse, she would copy out her lessons and repeat her examples till the sun rising over the Hôtel de Ville across the river and the carts rumbling over the bridge to market waked the household.

One day when she was nearly seven years old her mother said to her, “Mignonne, you are going to begin a new kind of lesson today. I’m going to take you to the Church of Saint Barthélemy for instruction before your confirmation.”

And so they set out along the quai, walked past the Conciergerie, that grim old prison behind the Palais de Justice which one day Marie was to know so well, and finally arrived at the old church in its wide garden. She had often been there with her mother on Sunday. This time, however, they went no farther into the building than one of the tiny chapels near the door. There they found a number of benches in rows facing each other across a wide space in the middle of which on a low platform was placed a red velvet chair. Already a number of children were wriggling about on their seats, the little boys on one side and the girls on the other.

“What’s the chair for, maman?” whispered Marie.

“For the priest who is going to teach you,” replied Madame Philipon. And disengaging her hand from the tiny one within it, she indicated where Marie was to sit. She herself withdrew among the bonnes and the other mamans to the back row to share with them the instruction of the children.

This consisted, as Marie soon discovered, of learning by heart some of the Gospels and Epistles, the daily prayers and the doctrine of the Church which is called the catechism. The teacher explained the meaning of the lesson and talked over the new assignment. Now and then the curé of the church would come in to see how the young priest was succeeding with his pupils. The moment he ap- peared all the pupils rose and bowed. Then he would single out a few individuals and ask them questions—a procedure which made their mothers squirm with anxiety.

One day Monsieur Garat, the curé of Saint Barthélemy, came in with that look in his eye which revealed a hope to catch somebody napping. He pounced upon Marie. “Tell me, little one,” he demanded, “how many orders of spirits are in the heavenly hierarchy?”

But Marie was not perturbed. With the calm smile of one who knows the answer, she replied, “There are only a few of them mentioned in the preface of the mass, monsieur le curé, but I have seen somewhere else that there are altogether nine.” And she proceeded to recite them all. From this moment her reputation as the most studious child in the Cité was established.

Soon she was placed under the instruction of a young uncle who was a priest of her own parish. And she made such progress that, much to the entire family’s delight, she had soon carried off first prize. As a result the proud young man offered to give her private lessons in Latin. Marie was enchanted. She conjugated and declined with the greatest possible ardor. Unfortunately, however, the teacher’s enthusiasm was less constant than his pupil’s. Uncle Bimont was very busy with his church offices and when not on duty the gaiety of his warm nature impelled him rather to relaxation than to further effort. He much preferred to play with his niece than to cram her with Latin constructions and was always begging off from his determined small taskmaster.

The child adored this young uncle and the hope of his presence always gleamed on the horizon of the trying Sunday she frequently spent at the house of her maternal grandmother. Madame Bimont had been paralyzed many years ago and sat helpless in her chair, querulous and unreasonable as a sick child. If Marie was gay and full of dancing movements, as she often was, her grandmother would begin to cry. If, on the other hand, she fell and hurt herself, the old woman would burst into cracked laughter. It was certainly very vexing.

True, there was the good old housekeeper to pet her and give her a delicious luncheon. Marie loved going into the dark old kitchen with its great oaken beams hung with onions and long sausages and the vast stove where copper pots gleamed and where over the snapping fire the chicken was turned on the spit. She would have crusty bread, also, and fresh cheese, and sometimes, as a great treat, strawberries. After she had finished the meal, however, there was nothing amusing to do. She wearied of listening to the stories the housekeeper repeated to her grandmother and wearied of telling stories herself. There were no books to read except the psalter which she had conned over and over. No wonder she rejoiced on those rare occasions when the young priest could dash home between services to see his little niece. Then he would play with her, make her dance and sing, and fill the gloomy rooms with sudden sunshine.

One Sunday Marie rebelled at staying with her grandmother. They had gone as usual after morning mass to the house. But when Madame Philipon was. about to leave Marie burst into tears. “Don’t make me stay, maman!” she begged. “It’s so dull and stupid here.”

Her mother looked at her gravely. “Very well, Manon. You may go home and see that your father’s dinner is well served. I shall stay in your place.”

At first the child was delighted. To be sure, she found her father rather grumpy. But there were her books and the panorama of the river and there was no strange old creature to startle her with imbecile cackles and groans. As evening drew on, however, and her mother did, not return Manon began to feel a strange sense of guilt. Even the lamplighters finally appeared to fill, trim and light the lanterns on the quai and still Madame Philipon had not come.

Finally Marie heard the bell of the concierge ring in the street below. She opened the door into the hall and stood at the head of the narrow stairs to watch her mother come up. Madame Philipon looked pale with fatigue, but possessed of a sort of holy calm. Marie, uneasy and contrite, envied her mother that look and did not know why. A few days later this was explained to her. “To spend the day with a helpless old lady who belongs to you,” said her mother gently, “is a rigorous and touching duty which does you honor. No true daughter of France shirks her duty.” The words fell softly on Marie’s heart and melted away the sense of rebellion that had filled it. The lesson built another sturdy stone into the foundation of her character.

Utterly different in kind were the weekly visits to her father’s mother. Madame Philipon senior was a lively old lady who, as a nurse and governess in a great household, had seen in her youth something of the world. Her grandchild later described her as “a little woman of excellent spirit and fine disposition, whose agreeable manners, gracious laugh and mischievous glance announced the claim of pleasing still or—at least—the memory of having once pleased. She was then sixty-five or sixty-six years old, dressed with care and appropriateness for her age and prided herself above all on feeling and observing the conventions of good form.” She and her grandchild were tremendous friends.

To understand clearly how little Marie Philipon became the great Madame Roland of history you must take well into account the books she read between the ages of six and eleven years. Remember that there were few books for children in those days, no children’s libraries—indeed only one or two libraries in all of Paris, and these were for the use of scholars. But that eager youngster could smell the presence of a book as a cat smells a mouse in its hole. Prowling about the apartment one day she made a thrilling discovery. One of the young men who worked in her father’s shop was bringing books to read in odd moments and although he hid them away with his coat in a little alcove outside the shop, it was not from Manon. The first time she chanced upon this treasure trove she chose a volume at random, made off with it, and devoured it on the spot.

After this she perfected a system of reading while the young man was at work and returning the booty in time to avoid detection. Luckily the unconscious purveyor of literature was a person of taste. He brought travel books, a few plays, Plutarch’s Lives which Marie simply adored. Thus she also came to know Télémaque, the famous book by Fénelon which fifty years before this time offered so clear a criticism of the extravagant reign of Louis Fourteenth that the author was publicly disgraced. Despite the youth of the reader, the book conveyed to her the significant fact that a wise man had dared to criticize a ruling king and without a doubt it proved a seed which was later to bring forth fruit.

Translations of the Italian poet, Tasso, excited her imagination to the point of trembling and weeping over the fate of his characters. Indeed, the romantic child, who felt that now she understood what love meant, fancied herself for some weeks enamored of a shy young painter who sometimes came to work with her father. As soon as she heard his voice in the shop she would find herself absolutely obliged to search there for a pencil. But once in his presence she became so uncomfortably embarrassed that immediately she would have to retreat in order to hide her blush and quiet her breathing.

Manon sometimes wondered what her mother would say to her book-borrowing propensities. And one day she received a most surprising enlightenment. On the way to filch another book she met her mother coming out of the alcove. In her hands was one of the young man’s volumes. Stopping face to face, the two exchanged a long look. Manon’s heart gave a bound. So! Her mother, also, was hungry for learning. She, too, had joined the secret circulating library. Neither said a word about this mutual discovery either then or later. Their tacit understanding was only admitted by Madame Philipon’s subsequent requests that Marie should read aloud to her as she sat fashioning a petticoat beside the fire. And you may believe that, like every other daughter who is careful about her mother’s upbringing, Marie chose only the most sober works for these occasions and reserved such descriptions as that of Calypso’s isle for her own consumption.

She had a glorious place to read. It was in the little salon where she received instruction from the visiting tutors. The room was decorated with mirrors and several pictures and was lighted by a little window. Under this stood a bed so crowded back into the space that to mount to it she had to climb over a chair, a table, and several benches. This was her retreat. Here she could listen to the carillons from La Samaritaine. Here she could look up from her book to see the clouds sail over the Pont-au-Change and dream of the wonderful life she was going to lead when once she was grown up.