MADAME GEOFFRIN AND THE PHILOSOPHERS
Cradles of the New Philosophy--Noted Salons of this Period--
Character of Mme. Geoffrin--Her Practical Education--Anecdotes of her Husband--Composition of her Salon--Its Insidious Influence--Her Journey to Warsaw--Her Death During the latter half of the eighteenth century the center of social life was no longer the court, but the salons. They had multiplied indefinitely, and, representing every shade of taste and thought, had reached the climax of their power as schools of public opinion, as well as their highest perfection in the arts and amenities of a brilliant and complex society. There was a slight reaction from the reckless vices and follies of the regency. If morals were not much better, manners were a trifle more decorous. Though the great world did not take the tone of stately elegance and rigid propriety which it had assumed under the rule of Mme. de Maintenon, it was superficially polished, and a note of thoughtfulness was added. Affairs in France had taken too serious an aspect to be ignored, and the theories of the philosophers were among the staple topics of conversation; indeed, it was the great vogue of the philosophers that gave many of the most noted social centers their prestige and their fame.
It is not the salons of the high nobility that suggest themselves as the typical ones of this age. It is those which were animated by the habitual presence of the radical leaders of French thought. Economic questions and the rights of man were discussed as earnestly in these brilliant coteries as matters of faith and sentiment, of etiquette and morals, had been a hundred years before. Such subjects were forced upon them by the inexorable logic of events; and fashion, which must needs adapt itself in some measure to the world over which it rules, took them up. If the drawing rooms of the seventeenth century were the cradles of refined manners and a new literature, those of the eighteenth were literally the cradles of a new philosophy.
The practical growth and spread of French philosophy was too closely interwoven with the history of the salons not to call for a word here. Its innovations were faintly prefigured in the coterie of Mme. de Lambert, where it colored almost imperceptibly the literary and critical discussions. But its foundations were more firmly laid in the drawing room of Mme. de Tencin, where the brilliant wit and radical theories of Montesquieu, as well as the pronounced materialism of Helvetius, found a congenial atmosphere. Though the mingled romance and satire of the "Persian Letters," with their covert attack upon the state and society, raised a storm of antagonism, they called out a burst of admiration as well. The original and aggressive thought of men like Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, and Diderot, with its diversity of shading, but with the cardinal doctrine of freedom and equality pervading it all, had found a rapidly growing audience. It no longer needed careful nursing, in the second half of the century. It had invaded the salons of the haute noblesse, and was discussed even in the anterooms of the court.
Mme. de Pompadour herself stole away from her tiresome lover-king to the freethinking coterie that met in her physician's apartments in the Entresol at Versailles, and included the greatest iconoclasts of the age. If she had any misgivings as to the outcome of these discussions, they were fearlessly cast aside with "Apres Nous le Deluge." "In the depth of her heart she was with us," said Voltaire when she died.
There were clairvoyant spirits who traced the new theories to their logical results. Mme. du Deffand speaks with prophetic vision of the reasoners and beaux esprits "who direct the age and lead it to its ruin." There were conservative women, too, who used their powerful influence against them. It was in the salon of the delicate but ardent young Princesse de Robecq that Palissot was inspired to write the satirical comedy of "The Philosophers," in which Rousseau was represented as entering on all fours, browsing a lettuce, and the Encyclopedists were so mercilessly ridiculed. This spirited and heroic daughter-in-law of the Duchesse de Luxembourg, the powerful patroness of Rousseau, was hopelessly ill at the time, and, in a caustic reply to the clever satire, the abbe Morellet did not spare the beautiful invalid who desired for her final consolation only to see its first performance and be able to say, "Now, Lord, thou lettest thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen vengeance." The cruel attack was thought to have hastened her death, and the witty abbe was sent to the Bastille; but he came out in two months, went away for a time, and returned a greater hero than ever. There is a picture, full of pathetic significance, which represents the dying princess on her pillow, crowned with a halo of sanctity, as she devotes her last hours to the defense of the faith she loves. One is reminded of the sweet and earnest souls of Port Royal; but her vigorous protest, which furnished only a momentary target for the wit of the philosophers, was lost in the oncoming wave of skepticism.
The vogue of these men received its final stamp in the admiring patronage of the greatest sovereigns in Europe. Voltaire had his well-known day of power at the court of Frederick the Great.
Grimm and Diderot, too, were honored guests of that most liberal of despots, and discussed their novel theories in familiar fashion with Catherine II, at St. Petersburg. The reply of this astute and clear-sighted empress to the eloquent plea of Diderot may be commended for its wisdom to the dreamers and theorists of today.
