Madame Mohl, Her Salon and Her Friends: First Paper

THERE are some words that have a charm about them which never fades, and an interest which never flags. To those who care for France, her literature, her history, the little word salon has an irresistible fascination. It conjures up everything that is clever, charming, piquant, most characteristic of the women of France. The salon is essentially a French institution. No other nation ever produced it ; no other society contains the elements for producing it. We say “ a pleasant house ” when we speak of a social centre. In France they say “ a pleasant salon.” The different terms both express and explain the different ideas they represent. A house is a home where material hospitality is exercised ; where friends are entertained with more substantial fare than the feast of reason and the flow of soul. A pleasant house is suggestive of snug, convivial dinners and sociable, unceremonious lunches, of bread broken at various hours between the owners of the house and their friends. Another nice distinction is that it implies a master, as well as a mistress. A salon calls up a totally different order of ideas. It supposes a mistress, but by no means necessarily a master ; and it suggests no more substantial fare than talk, flow of words, and liberal interchange of ideas. It is simply a centre where pleasant people are to be met and good conversation is to be had. It may have — indeed, it generally has — its particular tone and color ; it may be literary, religious, political, artistic, or philanthropic ; but it remains always a place for talking, — a place where intellectual nectar replaces material beverages.

When we consider how much pleasure, amusement, even downright happiness, is to be got out of talk, the wonder is that so little is done towards cultivating it. Formerly, the French understood this, and gave as much time and care to the cultivation of talk as to that of any other fine art. Their salons were schools where the art of conversation was taught, arenas where its adepts and pupils exercised themselves in the game. To say of a woman, “ Elle cause bien” was to pay her a far more delicate and flattering tribute than to praise her beauty, or even her dress. Paris is the birthplace and natural home of the salon. It is a growth indigenous to the soil of the lively city, and an empire which has been respected there ever since it was first founded by Madame de Rambouillet for tbe purification and perfecting of the French language. The throne has been left vacant at various periods, sometimes for long intervals; but there it has stood, ready for any prétendante who could take possession of it. The right of conquest was the only right recognized, or necessary. There was no hereditary law which transmitted the sceptre from one queen to another. There was no dynastic code to which she was compelled to conform once she had grasped it. Like Cæsar, she had only to come, to see her empire, and to conquer it. Every woman who held in her own individuality the power to do this might, under the most elastic restrictions, aspire to a sovereignty, at once elective, absolute, and democratic.

These queens have sometimes been women not born in the purple of “ society,” or even promoted to it by marriage. It is characteristic of the supreme position conceded by the French to mere personal charm and esprit in women that even in the eighteenth century, in those relatively feudal ages before the Revolution had leveled the barriers between classes, a woman endowed with these qualities might, without being well or even decently born, throw down the high barricades of social prejudices, and reign triumphantly as queen of a salon.

There was Madame Geoffrin, for instance. Madame Geoffrin may be considered one of the earliest and most remarkable successors of Madame de Rambouillet, whose blood was so " darkly, deeply, beautifully blue.” Madame Geoffrin was a bourgeoise by birth and by marriage ; she had no roots in society,— no links, even, with it, except those that she afterwards forged herself; yet after a long interregnum the sceptre of the beautiful marquise passed to her, and she wielded it with a grace and power that have never since been surpassed, if indeed they have ever been equaled. Madame de Rambouillet, with her beauty and rank, had remained the head of a coterie, — a fastidious and exclusive coterie; while Madame Geoffrin, by mere force of personal charm, of wit, — or rather esprit, for the terms are by no means synonymous, —of sound sense and clear judgment, formed a salon to which not only men of letters, but all the aristocratic women of the day, in their powder and hoops, crowded eagerly. So supreme was the position attained by the manufacturer’s wife that no distinguished person from any part of Europe visited Paris without seeking to be presented to her. Even royalty paid its court to her, and was flattered by her civility. Gustavus of Poland, one of the habitues of her salon, on coming to the throne, wrote to the old lady, — a very old lady then, — “ Your son has become a king ; you must come and see him in his kingdom.” And she did go, entertained by the Emperor at Vienna, and by all the great folks on the way from Warsaw to Paris, as if she had been a sovereign going to visit another sovereign.

Yet this venerable old lady had done nothing in any department of human enterprise to entitle her to this worldwide homage. She had, it is true, given petits soupers that were admitted to be excellent, and in later days she had been a kind of mother to the Encyclopædists, with whose advanced doctrines she sympathized; her salon had become a sort of tribune, where these doctrines were expounded, and the applause they awoke there was echoed beyond these tapestried walls to the city outside, and to the nations beyond that, again. But this alone could not have secured to Madame Geoffrin wide social influence, though it would have entitled her to a high place amongst the Blue Stockings of the period. The secret of her influence lay in the combination of personal charm with perfect mastery in the art of talking and receiving.

Another curious example of the ascendency of esprit in France is the salon of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Poor, plain, nobly but not honorably born, tolerated in the château of a mother who was ashamed to own her, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse attracted the notice of Madame du Deffand, who instantly detected a kindred spirit in the neglected Cinderella, and offered her a home. It must have been like an episode in a fairy tale to the young country girl when her mother’s guest said, " Come and live with me ! ” To live with Madame du Deffand meant to live with all that was distinguished in European society. What a dream fora young girl, with a passionate soul and a bright, ambitious mind, to be transported suddenly from a dull provincial home to this intellectual Eldorado ! The dream lasted ten years, and then they quarreled violently, and parted.

The cause of the quarrel was characteristic both of the age and of its women.

Visitors, in those days, came from five to eight. Madame du Deffand, now blind and infirm, rose late, and never appeared in the drawing-room till six. Meantime, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse had been receiving all the clever people since five, skimming the cream of the talk, and lapping it up all to herself. She went on committing this systematic theft for a whole year before Madame du Deffand found it out! No wonder the old lady boiled over with rage, and ordered the unprincipled thief out of her house. If it had been money, or jewels, or any such trash, that she had pilfered, some extenuating circumstances might have been found, and the culprit recommended to mercy ; but to steal the cream of the talk, to gobble up the bons mots and the epigrams and the anecdotes, fresh and crisp, — what mercy could be found for such wickedness as this!

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was turned out of the house. Her accomplices, however, stood manfully by her. D’Alembert, a host in himself, was already her devoted admirer, and now became her stoutest champion, leading the force of the Encyclopædists with him. They deserted Madame du Deffand, noble, rich, and splendidly lodged, and followed Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to a small apartment, which they insisted on jointly furnishing for her, and where, thanks to a small annuity from her mother (as recently discovered documents have established), she was able to live, and form a salon which soon rivaled that of her late protectress and now her deadly enemy. It was a strange sight,— this woman, without a single social advantage, without even a pretty face (she was ugly), coolly snatching the sceptre from the hands of a legitimate sovereign, usurping a portion of her empire, and ruling it with as high a hand as any autocrat to the manner born. So omnipotent, at this period, was the ascendency of the femme d'esprit, and so essential the salon of such a one to the thinking men of the day.

None of these three women published anything on any subject. They wrote letters, -— burning love-letters and brilliant gossiping letters ; but they did no work, literary, scientific, or philanthropic. They simply had salons ; they talked and received beautifully, and by doing this they achieved immortality. It is true, a salon in those days was no sinecure ; it was an important rôle, and the woman who undertook it gave her whole mind to succeeding in it, as a painter or musician strives to achieve excellence in his art. Sainte-Beuve says of Madame Geoffrin that no Roman cardinal could have exercised “ more diplomacy, more delicate and gentle cleverness,” in the management of the most difficult affairs than did this remarkable lady during the thirty years that her salon was a centre of intellectual interest and social enjoyment.

No woman creates such a centre, or exercises this kind of personal sway, unless she possesses certain requisite qualifications. Envy or ignorance may attribute her popularity to luck, to a series of happy circumstances, to the blind tendency of the crowd to follow the crowd ; but this does not suffice to account for it. There is always a primary, intrinsic reason which explains this attraction. Some periods have been especially favorable to the development of these personal influences. The latter part of the eighteenth century was preëminently so. It saw the apotheosis of the salon. Its salous were laboratories, where the Revolution was being prepared. Here new ideas were discussed, new doctrines enunciated, new theories put into form, and in a certain measure into practice ; in fact, all the elements that were soon to culminate in the explosion that shook France to her centre were here analyzed and experimentalized with in dilettante fashion. The members never dreamed that they were

manufacturing the dynamite that was to blow up themselves and society ; they did not foresee what all this playing with fire was to lead to; but, though unconsciously, they were none the less certainly getting ready the Revolution. When it came, they and their laboratories vanished. The social throne fell with the national one, swallowed up in that terrific convulsion. The very foundations on which every throne had rested seemed shattered beyond the possibility of ever rebuilding them; and yet as soon as the throes subsided, and despotism had crushed anarchy and restored order, society began to cast about for queens to come and rule over it. It had tired of conquests, as it had tired of revolution ; it had had enough of slaughter, of the rumbling of the tombereau bearing “ batches” to the guillotine, and of the roll of drums announcing “famous victories. It wanted to be soothed and amused, just as an audience longs for a good farce after it has been harrowed and excited by some tremendous tragedy. The salon could never again be what it had been before the close of the century ; the same raison d'être for it no longer existed. Those who had opinions to proclaim, or views to expound, now found ready opportunities in public life. They did not look about for a salon to get a hearing ; there was one to be had every day in the press, in parliament, in public life generally. But if its old rôle was played, there was already a new one prepared for it. Politics and war were at a discount; society was sick of them, so it turned to art. Artists came and took the vacant thrones, and society went to court and did homage to them. With the exception of some few political ones, whose tone was strictly defined, the most brilliant salons of the Restoration were chiefly artistic. The beautiful Madame Lebrun, who had narrowly escaped paying with her head for the honor of painting the portrait of Marie Antoinette, had come back. She had queened it in all the capitals of Europe during her exile, and now reigned in Paris. Diderot, D' Alembert, Marmoutel, La Harpe, and all the now aged Encyclopædists, all the great ladies and the grands seigneurs, crowded round her, and for thirty years met every Saturday evening in her salon, saying,

“ Do you remember ? ” — talking over old times and the gay court where she had been the honored guest of their king and queen. The little courtly court was broken up in 1830 ; but the salon lived on till 1842, when Madame Lebrun died, at the age of ninety, charming, and even beautiful, to the last.

Mademoiselle Contat’s salon was another illustration of the change that society had undergone. The beautiful actress, with her stream of song, drew all the world to her salon, where, besides herself, people heard such song-birds as Mulibran and Sontag, and the music of Rossini and Donizetti before it was given to the world outside. Society was intoxicated with music, and frantic about art; a not unnatural reaction towards melody and beauty after the hideous din of revolution and war. But it was, at the same time, something more than this. Art was not only a fashion ; it was a harbor of refuge, towards which many were making in the event of a storm overtaking them again. The noblesse had been impoverished, in innumerable cases beggared, by the Revolution, and many of these sufferers, who had learned at home in the atrocities of ’93, or abroad in the miseries of emigration, the need of possessing an inheritance that no political catastrophe could take from them, determined to secure some such provision for their children. Thus, the daughters of the Faubourg St. Germain were frequently to be met in the studios of the great painters and sculptors, working with the steadiness of professional students. Others studied music with the same ardor. The result was a generation which counted numbers of highly accomplished women, whose competition raised artists in the social scale. Society, after being ruthlessly invaded by democracy, was now making a generous peace with it, and voluntarily opening its ranks to the principle of equality which the Revolution had vainly tried to force upon it. The reign of the old noblesse, as a political power, was now virtually at an end. A whole era had come and gone since Napoleon bad asked, after the battle of Austerlitz, “ What does the Faubourg St. Germain think ? ” It mattered little now to the head of the state what that once powerful section thought! Except as a clan, a distinction, a fine historic legend, it had practically passed away. Those who had profited by its decay, and supplanted it, were, nevertheless, uneasy. They could not rest with full content in their new possessions, in the titles and domains conferred on them by the empire ; they lived in daily terror of being dispossessed by a decree of parliament, or some political enactment. The Charte eventually reassured them, and proved that the monarchy had both the will and the power to maintain the concessions and grants of the empire. But though the king might sanction irregular coats-of-arms and dubious territorial titles, he could not confer on their holders the distinction born of inherited instincts and long ancestral traditions, nor the chivalrous sentiments and courteous manners that are a part of these things; neither could he legislate against vulgarity and bad grammar, nor prevent society from laughing when the ladies of these new lords proclaimed their triumph and its origin by declaring, like their successors of ’48, " C’est nous qui sont les vraies princesses ! ”

But society had to look the fact in the face that its old structure was hopelessly destroyed, and that it had now to build itself up out of new materials. It was a grand opportunity for science, art, and intellect to take the lead, and to a certain extent they availed themselves of it. The Canapé Doctrinaire on which the king sat, surrounded by Cuvier, Guizot, Villemain, Arnaud, De Jouy, Royer-Collard, etc., may have been hard and stiff enough to justify the remark of a wit who was never offered a seat on it: “ One may go to sleep on the canapé, but one is certain to have only bad dreams there.” All the same, the canapé was a power in its way. It left its mark on the times. It made talent the fashion, and created a brilliant intellectual society ; it lifted men of science to the highest places in the synagogue, and while it lasted the reign of plutocracy was kept at bay. Never, perhaps, did that reign seem farther off than under the Restoration, when it was bien parté to be poor, and when every gentleman was proud to boast of being “ ruined by the Revolution.”

There is a tide in the affairs of woman, which, taken at the flood, floats her up to social eminence and power. These tides occur oftenest at the close of those political convulsions that recur periodically in France. When society is recovering from the pangs of a revolution, or the shock of a coup d'état, then comes the opportunity of a clever woman. While the waters are still heaving after the storm, then is the moment for her to launch her boat, and rise with it on the mounting wave.

A great deal of Madame Récamier’s unrivaled social success was undoubtedly due to the chance which placed one of these opportunities at her disposal, and to her rare tact in taking advantage of it. When Paris had got rid of the guillotine and washed itself clean of blood, and had begun to breathe and to thirst for pleasure after tasting pain in its most hideous and terrifying forms, Napoleon arrived, a hero and a demigod, to rejoice the cowed and suffering people, and Madame Récamier rose like a vision of grace and sweetness to gladden and enchant them. To see this lovely woman dance the shawl dance with the voluptuous grace of a Greek beauty intoxicated them like new wine. Wherever she went, the crowd rushed and pushed to see her. Even in church they stood up on chairs to get a glimpse of her. The hero, who was being fêted and worshiped by the whole nation, came to pay his court to this reigning beauty, and the beauty snubbed him. This snub increased considerably the splendor of her position ; but she paid dearly for it. Napoleon never forgave it. When he was master of Europe Madame Récamier’s rebuff rankled in his wounded vanity, and he pursued her with a malignant spite which is in itself a striking testimony to the influence of women in France. Madame Récamier had nothing to do with parties or politics ; she never meddled with them, and she never wrote a line ; but she was beautiful and fascinating, and she had a salon, and so Cæsar in all his glory reckoned with her. He had tried to win her, but had failed, and he treated her ever after with the bitterest rancor. He turned her out of Paris, and then out of France. His pitiless hate hunted her farther still, to the countries where she took refuge, so that it was no small act of courage for other sovereigns to befriend, or even tolerate, her in their dominions; any act of kindness to the disgraced exile being liable to be visited on the offender by some swift and formidable vengeance. All this petty persecution of the great Emperor mightily increased Madame Récamier’s importance ; and when, after his fall, the lovely, unoffending victim came back to Paris, she was received like an exiled queen, returning with a little martyr’s crown set on her beautiful head.

The Restoration offered her a new opportunity. After the gorgeous vulgarities of the empire, simplicity and good manners again came into fashion.

Madame Récamier inaugurated a new reign, totally different from her former one. Time, suffering, and solitude had matured her mind, and softened, rather than dimmed, the radiance of her beauty. The loss of her fortune, mainly due to that snub that cost her so dear in every way, made it impossible for her to resume her old manner of life, with its splendid hospitalities and receptions; so she retired to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, and settled herself down there in an almost conventual simplicity. Her salon, in the true sense of the word, dates from this period. It was no longer her wealth and beauty that drew the world around her; it was her esprit, her sympathetic charm and personal influence. All that was distinguished in society now came to Madame Récamier, in her small drawing-room, with its tiled floor and plain furniture, and felt proud of being admitted to her circle. Men of all parties and shades of opinion laid aside their animosities in that sweet presence, and smiled on one another for her sake. In the dim, religious light of her drawingroom, there was something of the atmosphere of a sick-room. People spoke in subdued voices, as if they were considering the nerves of an invalid, as in fact they were. Châteaubriand was the sick god who sat enthroned there, tended by the loving hands of the suave beauty, whose mission for the future was to soothe and amuse him. The business of her life, henceforth, was to désennuyer the selfish, petulant, blasé man of genius. He had been fighting against ennui all his life, and now that the weariness of age clogged his sated and still insatiable vanity he gave up the battle, and expected others to carry it on for him. Any one who could assist Madame Récamier in this irksome warfare conferred on her the highest obligation. Her devotion to Châteaubriand was entire. Her whole day was given up to him. He wrote to her in the morning, and she wrote back an answer. In the afternoon, he came and talked an hour with her alone, before any other visitors were admitted. For many years he also spent several hours with her in the evening. A certain number of elect friends, all chosen with a view to his pleasure, were also regular and assiduous in their daily visits at the Abbaye.

What most strikes us busy people of the nineteenth century, in this kind of intercourse, is the leisure, not to say pure, unadulterated idleness, that it suggests, as well as the inexhaustible capacity for talk. What could these clever folk, who had no work in common, have had to say to one another and Madame Récamier every day and all day long ? Lovers are the only class of persons who are supposed to have always something new and important to say to each other, while the oftener they say it the newer and more important it is ; though even these happy maniacs, after a more or less lengthened phase of madness, come to their right minds, and having said their say possess their tongues in peace ; but these habitués of Madame Récamier’s salon seem never to have reached that point. Long after her ardent adorers had calmed down into devoted friends, they still came and talked, day after day, for hours. It is clear that they could have had nothing else to do, and that Madame Récamier had nothing else to do but sit at home and receive them and listen to them.

This power of sitting at home was more common then than it is at the present day. The incapacity for sitting at home is, no doubt, one cause, amongst others, why there are no salons now. Madame Benoiton could no more have a salon than a sieve could carry water; but fifty years ago Madame Benoiton was not such a universal type as she has since become. Frivolous the women of that period may have been, — “ uncultured,” too, in the modern sense of the word ; but whatever their shortcomings, they had one virtue which the women of to-day lack, — they stayed at home. The habitués who, day after day, rang at their door did not fear to be met with the inevitable formula, “ Madame est sortie ! ”

Madame Récamier not only selected her company, but took pains to direct their conversation with a view to amusing M. de Châteaubriand ; and yet, in spite of that perfect art, which M. de Tocqueville says “ (alle portait jusqu’à l'iafini,” her efforts sometimes failed to lift the cloud from the brow of the tired god. No one, therefore, could do her a greater service than to coax the worried poet to smile, while to rouse his fastidious languor to the vulgar relief of a laugh was to call out her deepest gratitude. This feat was one day performed with signal success by an English girl, Mary Clarke, afterward Madame Mohl, whose position as a favorite with the hostess and a welcome recruit to her brilliant circle was forthwith definitively established. After her first triumph at the Abbaye, Miss Mary Clarke’s arrival was looked for by all with more or less eagerness, according to the degree of ennui visible in M. de Châteaubriand. When he came to the dangerous point of stroking Madame Récamier’s cat, eyes were turned anxiously to the door ; but when he reached the psychological crisis of playing with the bell-rope, impatience increased to nervousness, and the entrance of “ la jeune Anglaise ” was greeted with a general gasp of satisfaction.

She used also to relate that, when a “very little girl,” she had been perched on the back of a trooper’s horse to see the Allies enter Paris. It was rather like her to have occupied this unconventional position, and as she said she remembered it, it was undoubtedly true; hut the assertion that she was a “ very little girl ” at the time is open to doubt, seeing that she was born in 1790, and consequently was a very mature little girl in 1815. This point of her age was the single one on which her veracity was not to be trusted.

She was a singularly lively child, and grew up to girlhood with a sort of mercurial activity of mind and body that kept every one about her in perpetual motion. She had great taste for music, and still more for drawing, and both these gifts were carefully cultivated. She had a remarkable facility for taking portraits: she took one of herself, which was said to be an admirable likeness in her young days ; indeed, the likeness remained distinctly visible after a lapse of nearly three quarters of a century. She studied pastels, which were then the rage, with Mademoiselle Clothilde Gérard, and copied very assiduously at the Louvre. She used to go there in the morning, and work away without intermission till the gallery closed. She went a good deal into society at the same time, and in order to avoid having to go home to dress she invented an apron, as more convenient than a basket, with two large pockets, in one of which she carried her lunch, and in the other a wreath of flowers. When the gallery was cleared out, she would start off to a dinner party, — in those days people kept early hours, — and perform her toilet in the anteroom. Sometimes it was a hall, with fine flunkies in attendance; but their presence made not the slightest difference to Mary Clarke. She tangled out her locks, and planted her wreath on the top of them, rolled up her apron, and made her entry. We can readily believe those who declare that it was always a triumphal one. A few still remember the effect la jeune Anglaise produced in the drawing-room of the Princess Belgiojoso, where she was a constant guest, and where this wonderful head-gear was always greeted with delight.

Eleanor Clarke, Mary’s elder sister, married in 1808 Mr. Frewen Turner, of Cold Overton, Leicestershire. Mary used to pay her visits occasionally. During one of these visits she had an adventure that she often related with great satisfaction. Madame de Staël was in London, and Mary, who had heard a great deal of the celebrated authoress, grew enthusiastic about her, and was dying with curiosity to see her. It came to her knowledge that Madame de Staël was looking for a governess for her little son ; so she determined to go and offer herself for the situation. She found out Madame de Staël’s address, stole out one morning, unbeknown to the household, invested her whole stock of ready money in a “ coach,” and drove off to the hotel. Madame de Staël received her very graciously, but declined her services on the ground that she looked too young. Mary was very proud of this exploit, which she kept a profound secret for a long time.

Mrs. Clarke, on coming first to Paris, took up her residence in the Rue Bonaparte. She had been there many years, when she had a quarrel with her landlord, — “ They were always a pestilent set, the Paris landlords,” was Mary’s comment, half a century later, — and Mrs. Clarke determined to leave. It happened just at this time that Madame Récamier was anxious to get rid of her large apartment at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, and take a smaller and quieter one looking on the garden. M. Fauriel and J. J. Ampère, who were intimate friends of the Clarkes, had frequently spoken of them to Madame Récamier, and now suggested that her rooms might suit them. Mrs. Clarke and her daughter came to see the rooms, and were introduced to Madame Récamier. They at once agreed to take the apartment. The drawing-room in Madame Récamier’s new suite was too small for her numerous visitors, and it was agreed that she should have the use of her old one, now Mrs. Clarke’s, for her evening receptions. This arrangement quickly drew the ladies into an intimacy which soon warmed into friendship, — a friendship that was never clouded.

Mary conquered Madame Récamier’s good graces from the very first, by her power of amusing M. de Châteaubriand ; but a genuine personal liking soon followed on this impersonal sense of gratitude. The young English girl became enthusiastically attached to her beautiful friend ; for, though past fifty at the time, Madame Récamier was still quite beautiful enough to fulfill the expectations raised by her extraordinary fame, while her grace and charm were as fascinating as ever. “ She was the most entertaining person I ever knew,” was Mary’s testimony to a friend fifty years afterwards. “ I never knew anybody who could tell a story as she did, — des histoires de société ; she had a great sense of humor, and her own humor was exceedingly delicate ; but she never said an unkind thing of any one. I loved Madame Récamier.”

Mary Clarke evidently looked much younger than she was, for every one called her “la jeune Anglaise,” and spoke of her as quite a young girl. She must have been thirty at this time ; but there is wisdom as well as wit in the French proverb, “ A woman is the age she looks,” and it is clear that Mary had in her face and manner what constitutes the essential character of youth,—its freshness and its charm. Her childlike naturalness, her mercurial gayety, and her sparkling wit must have been in Madame Récamier’s circle like fresh air let into an overheated, heavily scented room. Her audacious fun, combined with an originality amounting, even at this early date, to eccentricity, must have been a most refreshing element in a milieu where high-strung sentiment was liable now and then to that inevitable recoil which follows overstrain in any direction. Mary’s presence was death to ennui. One could not be dull where she was ; she might displease or exasperate, — she very often did both, — but she was incapable of boring any one. Many of the distinguished men who frequented Madame Récamier’s salon were already friends of the Clarkes, more especially, as has been shown, Fauriel and Ampère. Describing these pleasant days at the Abbaye, Ampère says of Mary Clarke, “ She is a charming combination of French sprightliness and English originality ; but I think the French element predominates. She was the delight of the grand ennuyé her expressions were entirely her own, and he more than once made use of them in his writings. Her French was as original as the turn of her mind, exquisite in quality, but savoring more of the last century than of our own time.”

The personal appearance of la jeune Anglaise completed with singular fitness the effect of her bright, bold, and humorous talk. Without being positively pretty, she produced the effect of being so. She had a pink-and-white complexion ; a small turned-up nose, full of spirit and impudence ; round, big, exceedingly bright and saucy blue eyes ; a small head, well set on her shoulders, crowned with short curls that, even in these young days, had a trick of getting tangled into a fuzz on her white forehead, escaping very early in the morning from the bondage of combs and pins. Her figure was slight, and full of a spirited grace peculiar to itself. Some persons spoke of her as very pretty ; others denied her all claim to the compliment. But whatever difference of opinion may have existed as to her beauty, there was none as to her charm. Even those who disliked her — and such a minority always existed — agreed that she was fascinating. A good deal of this fascination lay in her entire naturalness ; she said everything that came into her head, and just as bluntly to a prince or a poet as to a school-boy or an apple-woman. If that saucy head had been examined by a phrenologist, it would assuredly have been found wholly wanting in the organ of veneration. It bowed down to nothing but intellectual greatness. Châteaubriand was to her the highest living representative of this sovereignty, and to him she yielded ungrudging homage. He accepted it most graciously, and seems to have been really fond of the bright young English girl.

M. Lenormant, who was a good reader, read the Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe aloud once a week at the Abbaye from four till six, when dinner interrupted the reading, which was resumed again from eight till eleven. No one was admitted but those who were certain to admire and applaud up to the desired point. No one fulfilled these conditions more satisfactorily than Mary Clarke, who was sometimes so moved by the glowing, high-flown narrative that the tears would steal down her cheeks, — a tribute which, undoubtedly, helped to warm the author’s heart towards her.

Mrs. Clarke’s residence at the Abbaye was altogether delightful. Everything that was interesting in literature was known and enjoyed there before it was given to the world outside. Young authors took their manuscripts there for judgment, as to a power behind the throne ; celebrities, already known to the world, were glad to taste the fame of a new work in the delicate praise of that fastidious audience. When Rachel was about to appear in a new rôle, she would test her success by declaiming it in Madame Récamier’s salon before challenging public judgment on the stage.

All these influences contributed in their degree to form Mary’s taste and cultivate her intelligence. During this time she also contracted a friendship which absorbed her very much while it lasted, and left its impress on her mind and character. Louise S— was sev-

eral years younger than Mary Clarke, and in every respect as different from her as one clever girl can be from another. She was so extraordinarily beautiful that one who knew her in that fresh blossoming time describes his first sight of her as “ seeing a vision.” To this personal loveliness she added an indescribable charm of modesty and womanly grace, a mind of masculine solidity, and a highly poetic imagination. Mary Clarke, bewitched by this combination of endowments, became passionately attached to their possessor, who returned her affection with equal sincerity, but without the jealous warmth that was peculiar to Mary’s feelings. Louise S—’s influence was in all ways beneficial ; her calm judgment and strong sense steadied, and in a measure directed, the wayward and excitable character of her friend. The friendship prospered admirably until there appeared on the scene another young lady, Adelaide de Montgolfier, a young French girl, who was deformed, but whom nature had endowed with every other grace and charm to make up for this one unkindness. She and Louise formed a friendship which Mary Clarke shared at first, and then grew jealous of, declaring finally that her friend must choose between her and Adelaide. Louise was much too strong a character to bend to this tyranny, and the result was a violent quarrel and estrangement. In course of time Louise married, and was known to the world of letters by some delicate and charming works for the young, which bore the stamp of her own artistic grace and refined purity of taste. Her life drifted away from that of her more worldly and ambitious friend. They retained, however, a deep-rooted regard for each other, and when both were old women Mary sought out Madame—, and proved, as we shall see, that time and separation had left the old affection unchanged. This fidelity to her friends was one of the salient and admirable points in her character.

After a stay of seven years at the Abbaye, the Clarkes removed to the apartment 120 Rue du Bac, which both mother and daughter were destined to occupy for the rest of their lives. They made a striking contrast, these two. Mrs. Clarke was handsome, dignified, quiet, by no means wanting in intelligence, but entirely eclipsed by her brilliant daughter. Not that Mary intentionally assumed any superiority over her mother ; it fell to her lot naturally. They were tenderly attached to each other. Mary was devoted to her mother, and used to say of her, in after years, that she had the sweetest temper she had ever known, and that she had never said a harsh word, or caused her to shed a tear in her childhood.

Mary’s taste for society had developed considerably during her long and close companionship with Madame Récamier. Society had, in fact, now become her one absorbing interest, her vocation ; she adopted it as one adopts art, politics, philanthropy, or any other calling. She determined to have a salon, and henceforth this salon became the business of her life.

If the question here suggests itself, “ Was this a worthy business to devote a life to?” we must beg those who ask the question to answer it according to their respective lights. However, before dismissing Mary Clarke’s pursuit as utterly vain and foolish, we may charitably remember that in her time the salon was a sort of benevolent institution, a refuge for homeless literary men, who, as a rule, are bachelors, and generally poor, especially the noblest of them, those who devote themselves to the service of science and humanity. These studious men, after a long day’s brain-work, have no bright hearth to turn to for relaxation and companionship. Clubs, so numerous now, and so seductive to the majority, do not attract this class of cultivated, thoughtful men, addicted to high thinking and plain living ; but sixty years ago they had not even the option of this resource. Clubs, which are accused of being one of the chief causes of the ruin of salon life, help, in a degree, to explain and justify the importance attached to it at this period.

Mary Clarke opened her benevolent asylum under peculiarly favorable conditions. In the first place, the external situation was well chosen. The Rue du Bac was, for her and her principal habitués, the men of the Institute, central; and though the apartment was rather high perched, it was roomy and bright, looking over a vast stretch of gardens at the back, and quiet even on the front then. Of late years “ that rascally Bon Marché,” as its tenant would say, had made the street very noisy, but half a century ago it was tranquil enough.

The social elements were of the best, being drawn for the most part from the circle of the Abbaye. Mrs. Clarke’s fortune, though by no means large, admitted of her exercising the more substantial form of hospitality of giving dinners to her friends ; or, rather, of sharing her dinner with them, for she never gave “ dinner parties.” Fauriel, Roulain, and Julius Mohl were in the habit of dining with her several times a week, as well as spending nearly every evening with her.

Mary had, no doubt, profited intellectually by her training at the Abbaye, and had become highly accomplished in conversation ; but its refined manners and stately courtesies had not proved contagious, or corrected her waywardness and natural inclination to Bohemianism. She had no manners to speak of, and it evidently no more occurred to placid, dignified Mrs. Clarke to try to give her any, or to check her wild ways, than to control the vagaries of her quicksilvery brain.

It was the habit, for instance, when those three amis de la maison, Fauriel, Mohl, and Roulain, dined at the Rue du Bac for everybody to take forty winks after dinner. To facilitate this, the lamp was taken into an adjoining room, the gentlemen made themselves comfortable in armchairs, Mary slipped off her shoes and curled herself up on the sofa, and by and by they all woke up refreshed, and ready to talk till midnight. Usually other visitors did not arrive till the forty winks were over; but one evening it chanced that some one came earlier than usual, and was ushered into the drawing-room while the party was fast asleep. The tableau may be imagined. The gentlemen started up and rubbed their eyes; Mrs. Clarke fetched the lamp; Mary fumbled for her shoes, but could not find them, and, afraid of catching cold by walking on the oak floor, hopped from chair to chair looking for them.

This sans gêne did not, however, prevail at all times. The afternoon receptions, though perfectly simple and unceremonious, were conducted quite decorously. Very pleasant and interesting they must have been. Sometimes Madame Récamier came in, in her favorite visiting dress of dark blue velvet, close fitting like a pelisse, according to the fashion of the day, and a white satin bonnet — or hat, we should now call it — with long white marabou feathers, curling to her shoulder. Another picturesque figure was the Princess Belgiojoso, looking like some Leonora of the Renaissance, with her clinging draperies, and great dark eyes, and wonderful pallor. A story is told of the princess arriving late one evening when music was going on. Not to interrupt the singer, she stood in the doorway, quite motionless, her arms hanging by her side. She was dressed in white silk, and were jet ornaments,— an attire which, with her immobility and her extraordinary marble-like pallor, made more intense by her lustrous black eyes and hair, gave her the appearance of a beautiful ghost. Some one whispered, “ How lovely she is ! ” “ Yes,” replied some one else, " she must have been very beautiful when she was alive.”

Kathleen O’Meara.