The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

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V. HAPPINESS.

What constitutes happiness in the 18th Century. - The fascination
of display. - Indolence, recreation, light conversation.

One can very well understand this kind of pleasure in a summary
way, but how is it to be made apparent? Taken by themselves the
pastimes of society are not to be described; they are too ephemeral;
their charm arises from their accompaniments. A narrative of them
would be but tasteless dregs, does the libretto of an opera give any
idea of the opera itself? - If the reader would revive for himself
this vanished world let him seek for it in those works that have
preserved its externals or its accent, and first in the pictures and
engravings of Watteau, Fragonard and the Saint-Aubins, and then in the
novels and dramas of Voltaire and Marivaux, and even in Collé and
Crébillon fils;[52] then do we see the breathing figures and hear
their voices, What bright, winning, intelligent faces beaming with
pleasure and with the desire to please! What ease in bearing and in
gesture! What piquant grace in the toilet, in the smile, in
vivaciousness of expression, in the control of the fluted voice, in
the coquetry of hidden meanings! How involuntarily we stop to look and
listen! Attractiveness is everywhere, in the small spirituelle heads,
in the slender hands, in the rumpled attire, in the pretty features,
in the demeanor. The slightest gesture, a pouting or mutinous turn of
the head, a plump little wrist peering from its nest of lace, a
yielding waist bent over an embroidery frame, the rapid rustling of an
opening fan, is a feast for the eyes and the intellect. It is indeed
all daintiness, a delicate caress for delicate senses, extending to
the external decoration of life, to the sinuous outlines, the showy
drapery, and the refinements of comfort in the furniture and
architecture. Fill your imagination with these accessories and with
these figures and you will take as much interest in their amusements
as they did. In such a place and in such company it suffices to be
together to be content. Their indolence is no burden to them for they
sport with existence. - At Chanteloup, the Duc de Choiseul, in
disgrace, finds the fashionable world flocking to see him; nothing is
done and yet no hours of the day are unoccupied.[53] "The Duchess has
only two hours' time to herself and these two hours are devoted to her
toilet and her letters; the calculation is a simple one: she gets up
at eleven; breakfasts at noon, and this is followed by conversation,
which lasts three or four hours; dinner comes at six, after which
there is play and the reading of the memoirs of Mme. de Maintenon."
Ordinarily "the company remains together until two o'clock in the
morning." Intellectual freedom is complete. There is no confusion, no
anxiety. They play whist and tric-trac in the afternoon and faro in
the evening. "They do to day what they did yesterday and what they
will do to-morrow; the dinner-supper is to them the most important
affair in life, and their only complaint in the world is of their
digestion. Time goes so fast I always fancy that I arrived only the
evening before." Sometimes they get up a little race and the ladies
are disposed to take part in it, "for they are all very agile and able
to run around the drawing room five or six times every day." But they
prefer indoors to the open air; in these days true sunshine consists
of candle-light and the finest sky is a painted ceiling; is there any
other less subject to inclemencies or better adapted to conversation
and merriment? - They accordingly chat and jest, in words with
present friends, and by letters with absent friends. They lecture old
Mme. du Deffant, who is too lively and whom they style the "little
girl"; the young Duchesse, tender and sensible, is "her grandmamma."
As for "grandpapa," M. de Choiseul, "a slight cold keeping him in bed
he has fairy stories read to him all day long, a species of reading to
which we are all given; we find them as probable as modern history. Do
not imagine that he is unoccupied. He has had a tapestry frame put up
in the drawing room at which he works, I cannot say with the greatest
skill, but at least with the greatest assiduity. . . . Now, our
delight is in flying a kite; grandpapa has never seen this sight and
he is enraptured with it." The pastime, in itself, is nothing; it is
resorted to according to opportunity or the taste of the hour, now
taken up and now let alone, and the abbé soon writes: "I do not speak
about our races because we race no more, nor of our readings because
we do not read, nor of our promenades because we do not go out. What,
then, do we do? Some play billiards, others dominoes, and others
backgammon. We weave, we ravel and we unravel. Time pushes us on and
we pay him back."

Other circles present the same spectacle. Every occupation being an
amusement, a caprice or an impulse of fashion brings one into favor.
At present, it is unraveling, every white hand at Paris, and in the
chateaux, being busy in undoing trimmings, epaulettes and old stuffs,
to pick out the gold and silver threads. They find in this employment
the semblance of economy, an appearance of occupation, in any event
something to keep them in countenance. On a circle of ladies being
formed, a big unraveling bag in green taffeta is placed on the table,
which belongs to the lady of the house; immediately all the ladies
call for their bags and "voilà les laquais en l'air"[54] It is all the
rage. They unravel every day and several hours in the day; some
derive from it a hundred louis d'or per annum. The gentlemen are
expected to provide the materials for the work; the Duc de Lauzun,
accordingly, gives to Madame de V - a harp of natural size covered
with gold thread; an enormous golden fleece, brought as a present from
the Comte de Lowenthal, and which cost 2 or 3,000 francs, brings,
picked to pieces, 5 or 600 francs. But they do not look into matters
so closely. Some employment is essential for idle hands, some manual
outlet for nervous activity; a humorous petulance breaks out in the
middle of the pretended work. One day, when about going out, Madame de
R - observes that the gold fringe on her dress would be capital for
unraveling, whereupon, with a dash, she cuts one of the fringes off.
Ten women suddenly surround a man wearing fringes, pull off his coat
and put his fringes and laces into their bags, just as if a bold flock
of tomtits, fluttering and chattering in the air, should suddenly dart
on a jay to pluck out its feathers; thenceforth a man who enters a
circle of women stands in danger of being stripped alive. All this
pretty world has the same pastimes, the men as well as the women.
Scarcely a man can be found without some drawing room accomplishment,
some trifling way of keeping his mind and hands busy, and of filling
up the vacant hour; almost all make rhymes, or act in private
theatricals; many of them are musicians and painters of still-life
subjects. M. de Choiseul, as we have just seen, works at tapestry;
others embroider or make sword-knots. M. de Francueil is a good
violinist and makes violins himself; and besides this he is
"watchmaker, architect, turner, painter, locksmith, decorator, cook,
poet, music-composer and he embroiders remarkably well."[55] In this
general state of inactivity it is essential "to know how to be
pleasantly occupied in behalf of others as well as in one's own
behalf." Madame de Pompadour is a musician, an actress, a painter and
an engraver. Madame Adelaide learns watchmaking and plays on all
instruments from a horn to the jew's-harp; not very well, it is true,
but as well as a queen can sing, whose fine voice is ever only half in
tune. But they make no pretensions. The thing is to amuse oneself and
nothing more; high spirits and the amenities of the hour cover all.
Rather read this capital fact of Madame de Lauzun at Chanteloup: "Do
you know," writes the abbé, "that nobody possesses in a higher degree
one quality you would never suspect of her, that of preparing
scrambled eggs? This talent has been buried in the ground, she cannot
recall the time she acquired it; I believe that she had it at her
birth. Accident made it known, and immediately it was put to test.
Yesterday morning, an hour for ever memorable in the history of eggs,
the implements necessary for this great operation were all brought
out, a heater, some gravy, some pepper and eggs. Behold Madame de
Lauzun, at first blushing and in a tremor, soon with intrepid courage,
breaking the eggs, beating them up in the pan, turning them over, now
to the right, now to the left, now up and now down, with unexampled
precision and success! Never was a more excellent dish eaten." What
laughter and gaiety in the group comprised in this little scene. And,
not long after, what madrigals and allusions! Gaiety here resembles a
dancing ray of sunlight; it flickers over all things and reflects its
grace on every object.

VI. GAIETY.

Gaiety in the 18th Century. - Its causes and effects. - Toleration
and license. - Balls, fêtes, hunts, banquets, pleasures. - Freedom of
the magistrates and prelates.

The Frenchman's characteristic," says an English traveler in 1785,
"is to be always gay;"[56] and he remarks that he must be so because,
in France, such is the tone of society and the only mode of pleasing
the ladies, the sovereigns of society and the arbiters of good taste.
Add to this the absence of the causes which produce modern dreariness,
and which convert the sky above our heads into one of leaden gloom.
There was no laborious, forced work in those days, no furious
competition, no uncertain careers, no infinite perspectives. Ranks
were clearly defined, ambitions limited, there was less envy. Man was
not habitually dissatisfied, soured and preoccupied as he is nowadays.
Few free passes were allowed where there was no right to pass; we
think of nothing but advancement; they thought only of amusing
themselves. An officer, instead of raging and storming over the army
lists, busies himself in inventing some new disguise for a masked
ball; a magistrate, instead of counting the convictions he has
secured, provides a magnificent supper. At Paris, every afternoon in
the left avenue of the Palais-Royal, "fine company, very richly
dressed, gather under the large trees;" and in the evening "on leaving
the opera at half-past eight, they go back there and remain until two
o'clock in the morning." They have music in the open air by moonlight,
Gavat singing, and the chevalier de Saint-George playing on the
violin.[57] At Moffontaine, "the Comte de Vaudreuil, Lebrun the poet,
the chevalier de Coigny, so amiable and so gay, Brongniart, Robert,
compose charades every night and wake each other up to repeat them."
At Maupertuis in M. de Montesquiou's house, at Saint-Ouen with the
Marshal de Noailles, at Genevilliers with the Comte de Vandreuil, at
Rainay with the Duc d'Orléans, at Chantilly with the Prince de Condé,
there is nothing but festivity. We read no biography of the day, no
provincial document, no inventory, without hearing the tinkling of the
universal carnival. At Monchoix,[58] the residence of the Comte de
Bédé, Châteaubriand's uncle, "they had music, dancing and hunting,
rollicking from morning to night, eating up both capital and income."
At Aix and Marseilles, throughout the fashionable world, with the
Comte de Valbelle, I find nothing but concerts, entertainment, balls,
gallantries, and private theatricals with the Comtesse de Mirabeau for
the leading performer. At Chateauroux, M. Dupin de Francueil
entertains "a troop of musicians, lackeys, cooks, parasites, horses
and dogs, bestowing everything lavishly, in amusements and in charity,
wishing to be happy himself and everybody else around him," never
casting up accounts, and going to ruin in the most delightful manner
possible. Nothing arrests this gaiety, neither old age, exile, nor
misfortune ; in 1793 it still subsists in the prisons of the Republic.
A man in place is not then made uncomfortable by his official coat,
puffed up by his situation, obliged to maintain a dignified and
important air, constrained under that assumed gravity which democratic
envy imposes on us as if a ransom. In 1753,[59] the parliamentarians,
just exiled to Bourges, get up three companies of private theatricals
and perform comedies, while one of them, M. Dupré de Saint-Maur,
fights a rival with the sword. In 1787,[60] when the entire parliament
is banished to Troyes the bishop, M. de Barral, returns from his
chateau de Saint-Lye expressly to receive it, presiding every evening
at a dinner of forty persons. "There was no end to the fêtes and
dinners in the town; the president kept open house," a triple quantity
of food being consumed in the eating-houses and so much wood burned in
the kitchens, that the town came near being put on short allowance.
Feasting and jollity is but little less in ordinary times. A
parliamentarian, like a seignior, must do credit to his fortune. See
the letters of the President des Brosses concerning society in Dijon;
it reminds us of the abbey of Thélème; then contrast this with the
same town today.[61] In 1744, Monseigneur de Montigny, brother of the
President de Bourbonne, apropos of the king's recovery, entertains the
workmen, tradesmen and artisans in his employ to the number of eighty,
another table being for his musicians and comedians, and a third for
his clerks, secretaries, physicians, surgeons, attorneys and notaries;
the crowd collects around a triumphal car covered with shepherdesses,
shepherds and rustic divinities in theatrical costume; fountains flow
with wine "as if it were water," and after supper the confectionery is
thrown out of the windows. Each parliamentarian around him has his
"little Versailles, a grand hotel between court and garden," This
town, now so silent, then rang with the clatter of fine equipages. The
profusion of the table is astonishing, "not only on gala days, but at
the suppers of each week, and I could almost say, of each day." -
Amidst all these fête-givers, the most illustrious of all, the
President des Brosses, so grave on the magisterial bench, so intrepid
in his remonstrances, so laborious,[62] so learned, is an
extraordinary stimulator of fun (boute-entrain), a genuine Gaul, with
a sparkling, inexhaustible fund of salacious humor: with his friends
he throws off his perruque, his gown, and even something more. Nobody
dreams of being offended by it; nobody conceives that dress is an
extinguisher, which is true of every species of dress, and of the gown
in particular. "When I entered society, in 1785," writes a
parliamentarian, "I found myself introduced in a certain way, alike to
the wives and the mistresses of the friends of my family, passing
Monday evening with one, and Tuesday evening with the other. And I was
only eighteen, and I belonged to a family of magistrates."[63] At
Basville, at the residence of M. de Lamoignon, during the autumnal
vacation and the Whitsuntide holidays, there are thirty persons at the
table daily; there are three or four hunts a week, and the most
prominent magistrates, M. de Lamoignon, M. Pasquier, M. de Rosambo, M.
and Mme. d'Aguesseau, perform the "Barber of Seville " in the chateau
theater.

As for the cassock, it enjoys the same freedom as the robe. At
Saverne, at Clairvaux, at Le Mans and at other places, the prelates
wear it as freely as a court dress. The revolutionary upheaval was
necessary to make it a fixture on their bodies, and, afterwards, the
hostile supervision of an organized party and the fear of constant
danger. Up to 1789 the sky is too serene and the atmosphere too balmy
to lead them to button it up to the neck. "Freedom, facilities,
Monsieur l'Abbé," said the Cardinal de Rohan to his secretary,
"without these this life would be a desert."[64] This is what the good
cardinal took care to avoid; on the contrary he had made Saverne an
enchanting world according to Watteau, almost "a landing-place for
Cythera." Six hundred peasants and keepers, ranged in a line a league
long, form in the morning and beat up the surrounding country, while
hunters, men and women, are posted at their stations. "For fear that
the ladies might be frightened if left alone by themselves, the man
whom they hated least was always left with them to make them feel at
ease," and as nobody was allowed to leave his post before the signal
"it was impossible to be surprised." - About one p.m. "the company
gathered under a beautiful tent, on the bank of a stream or in some
delightful place, where an exquisite dinner was served up, and, as
everybody had to be made happy, each peasant received a pound of meat,
two of bread and half a bottle of wine, they, as well as the ladies,
only asking to begin it all over again." The accommodating prelate
might certainly have replied to scrupulous people along with Voltaire,
that "nothing wrong can happen in good society." In fact, so he did
and in appropriate terms. One day, a lady accompanied by a young
officer, having come on a visit, and being obliged to keep them over
night, his valet comes and whispers to him that there is no more room.
- " 'Is the bath-room occupied?' - 'No, Monseigneur!' - 'Are
there not two beds there?' - 'Yes, Monseigneur, but they are both in
the same chamber, and that officer. . . ' - 'Very well, didn't they
come together? Narrow people like you always see something wrong. You
will find that they will get along well together; there is not the
slightest reason to consider the matter.' " And really nobody did
object, either the officer or the lady. - At Granselve, in the Gard,
the Bernardines are still more hospitable.[65] People resort to the
fête of St. Bernard which lasts a couple of weeks; during this time
they dance, and hunt, and act comedies, "the tables being ready at all
hours." The quarters of the ladies are provided with every requisite
for the toilet; they lack nothing, and it is even said that it was not
necessary for any of them to bring their officer. - I might cite
twenty prelates not less gallant, the second Cardinal de Rohan, the
hero of the necklace, M. de Jarente, bishop of Orleans, who keeps the
record of benefices, the young M. de Grimaldi, bishop of Le Mans, M.
de Breteuil, bishop of Montauban, M. de Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux,
the Cardinal de Montmorency, grand-almoner, M. de Talleyrand, bishop
of Autun, M. de Conzié, bishop of Arras,[66] and, in the first rank,
the Abbé de Saint-Germain des Prés, Comte de Clermont, prince of the
blood, who, with an income of 370,000 francs succeeds in ruining
himself twice, who performs in comedies in his town and country
residences, who writes to Collé in a pompous style and, who, in his
abbatial mansion at Berny, installs Mademoiselle Leduc, a dancer, to
do the honors of his table. - There is no hypocrisy. In the house of
M. Trudaine, four bishops attend the performance of a piece by Collé
entitled "Les accidents ou les Abbés," the substance of which, says
Collé himself, is so free that he did not dare print it along with his
other pieces. A little later, Beaumarchais, on reading his "Marriage
of Figaro" at the Maréchal de Richelieu's domicile, not expurgated,
much more crude and coarse than it is today, has bishops and
archbishops for his auditors, and these, he says, "after being
infinitely amused by it, did me the honor to assure me that they would
state that there was not a single word in it offensive to good
morals"[67] : thus was the piece accepted against reasons of State,
against the king's will, and through the connivance of all those most
interested in suppressing it. "There is something more irrational than
my piece, and that is its success," said its author. The attraction
was too strong. People devoted to pleasure could not dispense with the
liveliest comedy of the age. They came to applaud a satire on
themselves; and better still, they themselves acted in it. - When a
prevalent taste is in fashion, it leads, like a powerful passion, to
extreme extravagance; the offered pleasure must, at any price, be had.
Faced with a momentary pleasure gratification, it is as a child
tempted by fruit; nothing arrests it, neither the danger to which it
is insensible, nor the social norms as these are established by
itself.

VII. THEATER, PARADE AND EXTRAVAGANCE.

The principal diversion, elegant comedy. - Parades and
extravagance.

To divert oneself is to turn aside from oneself, to break loose and
to forget oneself; and to forget oneself fully one must be transported
into another, put himself in the place of another, take his mask and
play his part. Hence the liveliest of diversions is the comedy in
which one is an actor. It is that of children who, as authors, actors
and audience, improvise and perform small scenes. It is that of a
people whose political régime excludes exacting manly tasks (soucis
virile) and who sport with life just like children. At Venice, in the
eighteenth century, the carnival lasts six months; in France, under
another form, it lasts the entire year. Less familiar and less
picturesque, more refined and more elegant, it abandons the public
square where it lacks sunshine, to shut itself up in drawing-rooms
where chandeliers are the most suitable for it. It has retained of the
vast popular masquerade only a fragment, the opera ball, certainly
very splendid and frequented by princes, princesses and the queen; but
this fragment, brilliant as it is, does not suffice; consequently, in
every chateau, in every mansion, at Paris and in the provinces, it
sets up travesties on society and domestic comedies. - On welcoming
a great personage, on celebrating the birthday of the master or
mistress of the house, its guests or invited persons perform in an
improvised operetta, in an ingenious, laudatory pastoral, sometimes
dressed as gods, as Virtues, as mythological abstractions, as operatic
Turks, Laplanders and Poles, similar to the figures then gracing the
frontispieces of books, sometimes in the dress of peasants,
pedagogues, peddlers, milkmaids and flower-girls like the fanciful
villagers with which the current taste then fills the stage. They
sing, they dance, and come forward in turn to recite petty verses
composed for the occasion consisting of so many well-turned
compliments.[68] - At Chantilly "the young and charming Duchesse de
Bourbon, attired as a voluptuous Naiad, guides the Comte du Nord, in a
gilded gondola, across the grand canal to the island of Love;" the
Prince de Conti, in his part, serves as pilot to the Grand Duchesse;
other seigniors and ladies "each in allegorical guise," form the
escort,[69] and on these limpid waters, in this new garden of
Alcinous, the smiling and gallant retinue seems a fairy scene in
Tasso. - At Vaudreuil, the ladies, advised that they are to be
carried off to seraglios, attire themselves as vestals, while the
high-priest welcomes them with pretty couplets into his temple in the
park; meanwhile over three hundred Turks arrive who force the
enclosure to the sound of music, and bear away the ladies in
palanquins along the illuminated gardens. At the little Trianon, the
park is arranged as a fair, and the ladies of the court are the
saleswomen, "the queen keeping a café," while, here and there, are
processions and theatricals; this festival costs, it is said, 100,000
livres, and a repetition of it is designed at Choisy attended with a
larger outlay.

Alongside of these masquerades which stop at costume and require
only an hour, there is a more important diversion, the private
theatrical performance, which completely transforms the man, and which
for six weeks, and even for three months, absorbs him entirely at
rehearsals. Towards 1770,[70] "the rage for it is incredible; there is
not an attorney in his cottage who does not wish to have a stage and
his company of actors." A Bernardine living in Bresse, in the middle
of a wood, writes to Collé that he and his brethren are about to
perform "La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV," and that they are having a
small theater constructed "without the knowledge of bigots and small
minds." Reformers and moralists introduce theatrical art into the
education of children; Mme. de Genlis composes comedies for them,
considering these excellent for the securing of a good pronunciation,
proper self-confidence and the graces of deportment. The theater,
indeed, then prepares man for society as society prepares him for the
theater; in either case he is on display, composing his attitude and
tone of voice, and playing a part; the stage and the drawing room are
on an equal footing. Towards the end of the century everybody becomes
an actor, everybody having been one before.[71] "We hear of nothing
but little theaters set up in the country around Paris." For a long
time those of highest rank set the example. Under Louis XV. the Ducs
d'Orléans, de Nivernais, d'Ayen, de Coigny, the Marquises de
Courtenvaux, and d'Entraigues, the Comte de Maillebois, the Duchesse
de Brancas, the Comtesse d'Estrades form, with Madame de Pompadour,
the company of the "small cabinets;" the Due de la Vallière is the
director of them; when the piece contains a ballet the Marquis de
Courtenvaux, the Duc de Beuvron, the Comtes de Melfort and de Langeron
are the titular dancers.[72] "Those who are accustomed to such
spectacles," writes the sedate and pious Duc de Luynes, "agree in the
opinion that it would be difficult for professional comedians to play
better and more intelligently." The passion reaches at last still
higher, even to the royal family. At Trianon, the queen, at first
before forty persons and then before a more numerous audience,
performs Colette in "Le Devin de Village," Gotte, in "La Gageure
imprévue," Rosine in "Le Barbier de Seville," Pierette in "Le Chasseur
et la Laitière,"[73] while the other comedians consist of the
principal men of the court, the Comte d'Artois, the Comtes d'Adhémar
and de Vaudreuil, the Comtesse de Guiche, and the Canoness de
Polignac. A theater is formed in Monsieur's domicile; there are two in
the Comte d'Artois's house, two in that of the Duc d'Orléans, two in
the Comte de Clermont's, and one in the Prince de Condé's. The Comte
de Clermont performs serious characters; the Duc d'Orléans represents,
with completeness and naturalness, peasants and financiers; M. de
Miromesnil, keeper of the seals, is the smartest and most finished of
Scapins; M. de Vaudreuil seems to rival Molé; the Comte de Pons plays
the "Misanthrope" with rare perfection.[74] "More than ten of our
ladies of high rank," writes the Prince de Ligne, "play and sing
better than the best of those I have seen in our theaters." By their
talent judge of their study, assiduity and zeal. It is evident that
for many of them it is the principal occupation. In a certain chateau,
that of Saint-Aubin, the lady of the house, to secure a large enough
troupe, enrolls her four chambermaids in it, making her little
daughter, ten years old, play the part of Zaire, and for over twenty
months she has no vacation. After her bankruptcy, and in her exile,
the first thing done by the Princess de Guéménée was to send for
upholsterers to arrange a theater. In short, as nobody went out in
Venice without a mask so here nobody comprehended life without the
masqueradings, metamorphoses, representations and triumphs of the
player.