Part 13

“O man of consequence and many affairs,” he says to _Clitiphon_, “when you in your turn have need of my good offices, walk into my lonely study. The philosopher is at your service, and will not put you off to another day. You will find him there, deep in Plato’s dialogues, dealing with the spiritual nature of the soul, distinguishing its essence from that of the body; or, pen in hand, calculating the distance from us of Jupiter or Saturn. I am adoring God in those books of his, seeking by knowledge of the truth to conduct my own spiritual part into better ways. Nay, come in, the door is open; there is no ante-chamber in which to be wearied while you wait. Come straight in, without announcement. You are bringing me something more to be desired than gold and silver if it is a chance of serving you. Speak then, what do you desire me to do for you? Am I to leave my books, studies, work, the very line which I am now penning? Happy interruption, which is to make me of service to you!”

Overwhelming invitation! The butter, you will agree, is spread too thick. On another page he quotes the saying of the Roman patriarch, that he had rather people should inquire why there was no statue to Cato, than why there was one. But it had perhaps not occurred to Cato as calculable that he might have to erect a statue to himself.

“Voilà de quoi vous attirer beaucoup de lecteurs, et beaucoup d’ennemis,” said M. de Malezieu to La Bruyère on perusing _Les Caractères_. There was no doubt about that. Although he set out with a translation of Theophrastus, in going on to be a Theophrastus himself the temptation to draw from nature was obvious, and not resisted. Theophrastus generalised; he wrote of abstractions, Stupidity, Brutality, Avarice and what not. If he had had instances in his head, nobody knew what they were, and nobody cared. But La Bruyère did not write of qualities: he wrote of things and of people--women, men, the Court, the sovereign; and by his treatment of them in examples, in short paragraphs, with italicised names, with anecdotes, snatches of dialogue and other aids to attention, provided the quidnuncs with a fascinating game. “Keys” sprang up like mushrooms in a night. The guess-work was dangerously unanimous. The instances he had chosen were recent: there could not be much doubt who were _Menalcas_ and _Pamphilius_, _Clitiphon_ and _Arténice_. Three editions were called for in 1688, a fourth in 1689, and then one a year until 1694. On the whole he came off very lightly. The _Mercure Galant_ and its supporters furiously raged together. But the King had been elaborately flattered, and no harm came to La Bruyère.

_Les Caractères_ is a book both provocative and diverting, written in the clear, sinewy, reasonable language of Pascal and Fénélon: by no means without malice, but with a malice robbed of its virus by the air of detachment which La Bruyère has been careful to give it. When he pleases to be severe he uses the dramatic method. The portraits interspersed with his judgments enable him to move more freely than La Rochefoucauld. He is better, because livelier, reading, and the effect is not so depressing. However, his debt cannot be denied. He would be an acute critic who knew which was which in these:

“A woman with but one lover believes that she is not a coquette: she who has several that she is only that.

“A woman forgets of the man she no longer loves even the favours he has had of her.

“In her first passion a woman loves her lover. In the others she loves love.”

Here is La Rochefoucauld at his best: “Hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue”; and here is La Bruyère when he chooses to sting: “There is wanting nothing to an old lover from the woman who claims him except the name of husband; but that is much. If it were not for that he would be a thousand times lost.” As a rule he is more of a moralist than the Duke, as here where his reflection flows from his axiom:

“A woman unfaithful, if the interested party knows it, is just faithless; if he believes her true, she is false. This advantage at least accrues from a woman’s falsity, that you are cured of jealousy.”

The reflection flows, I say--but is it true? It is safe to say that the man who generalises about women is as often wrong as right. “Women,” he says, “are always in the extreme, better or worse than men”; and again, “The generality of women have no principles. Their hearts direct them; they depend for their conduct upon those they love.” I should say that there were as many exceptions to those rules as examples of them. Then, what of this: “It costs a woman very little to say something which she does not feel; and a man still less to say something which he does”? It needs La Bruyère himself to determine from that which of the sexes is the more sentimental; but he leaves it there. I like the following, and believe it to be entirely true:

“It is certain that a woman who writes with transport is carried away, less so that she is touched. It would seem that a tender passion would render her mournful and taciturn; and that the most urgent need of a woman whose heart is engaged is less to persuade that she loves than to be sure that she is loved.”

The second term of that aphorism is an enlargement of the first. A woman, he would say, really in love would hide it by instinct. Her need is rather to be loved.

Try him on another tack. Here is a parallel with La Rochefoucauld. The Duke says, “Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console themselves for being no longer able to set bad examples.” La Bruyère’s is equally sharp:

“A modern writer will generally prove to you that the ancients are inferior in two ways--by reason and example. The reason will be drawn from his own taste, and the examples from his own works.” Very neat both, but I think La Bruyère’s has the more comic turn. If the Duke had had less prudence, or more bitterness (with as much reason for it), we might have been able to compare his treatment of _la Cour_. But he hardly touches it. La Bruyère cannot leave it alone. “Let a favourite,” he says, “have a sharp eye on himself; for if he keep me in his ante-chamber a shorter time than usual; if his look be more open; if he frown less, listen more willingly, show me a little further from the door, I shall be thinking him in the way of losing credit; and I shall be right.” Then he breaks into this bitter reflection: “A man can have little resource in himself if he must fall into disgrace or be mortified in order to become more human, more tractable, less of a brute and more of a good fellow.”

There is a note very familiar to us in this:

“How comes it about that _Alciopus_ bows to me this morning, smiles, throws himself half-way out of the carriage window for fear of missing my eye? I am not a rich man--and I am on foot. By all the rules he ought not to have seen me. Is it not rather so that he himself may be seen in the same coach with a lord?”

Thackeray all over; but I don’t think Thackeray had it straight from _Les Caractères_. The first translation into English was in 1699, and by “Eustace Budgell, Esq.” There were many others--two, anonymous, in 1700 and 1702, one by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, one by “H. Gally” in 1725. Was not Budgell one of the _Spectator’s_ men? Steele and Addison both may have quarried in his version. Here is a specimen _Spectator_ paragraph:

“_Narcissus_ rises in the morning in order that he may go to bed at night. He takes his time for dressing like a woman, and goes every day regularly to mass at the _Feuillants_ or the _Minims_. He is an affable fellow, who may be counted on in a certain quarter of the town to take a _tierce_ or a _cinquième_ at Ombre or Reversi. So engaged you will see him in his chair for hours on end at _Aricia’s_, where every evening he will lay out his five gold pistoles. He reads punctually the _Gazette de Hollande_ and the _Mercure Galant_; he will have read his Cyrano, his des Marete, his Lesclache, Barbin’s story books, assorted poetry. He walks abroad with the ladies; he is serious in paying calls. He will do to-morrow what he does to-day and did yesterday; and after having so lived, so he will die.”

The sting in the tail is perhaps too sharp for Steele, though it is not for Addison. You will find the former more exactly foreshadowed in the fable of _Emira_, an insensible beauty of Smyrna, who finds that she cannot love until she has first been jealous, and finds that out too late. Style and handling are the very spit of Steele’s. I have not seen the suggestion anywhere, and put it forward for what it may be worth, that Budgell’s translation inspired our pair of essayists to hit off friends and foes under the stock names of _Belinda_, _Sacharissa_, _Eugenio_ and the like. The “portrait” had been a popular literary form in France from the days of Richelieu; but it was new to England when Addison and Steele went into journalism. Are there “keys” to the _Spectator_ and _Tatler_? I suppose so.

Not all his portraits are malicious, not all of them so simple as that of Narcissus; but some of them are really malignant. It is safe to say that a man of whom Saint-Simon had nothing but good to report, had nothing but good to be reported. Such a man was the Duc de Beauvilliers. La Bruyère says of him that he was greedy after office--exactly what he was not. The Comte de Brancas, who figures as _Menalcas_, is very good fun. Brancas was the George Dyer of Paris and his day, _distrait_ in ways which a knowledge of his time will excuse. The best story of him, when he failed to see the Queen Mother using a certain _prie-dieu_, and knelt on her, has been told. Another shows him at home, putting down his book to nurse a grandchild; then, when a visitor was announced, jumping to his feet, and flinging the baby on to the floor, where he had just flung the book. There are dozens of such tales, none of them ill-natured. Probably even La Bruyère could not have been unkind to Brancas.

He is certainly more severe than Tallemant, but that is because he will always introduce himself into the story, and always to his own advantage. Tallemant never does that, but uses the historical method invariably. A good example of La Bruyère’s intrusion is in his dealing with a Lord Strafford of ours, a peer whom Saint-Simon calls “une espèce d’imbécile,” and accuses of having 50,000 _livres de rentes_ in England and spending them in Paris. La Bruyère calls him Philémon, and strikes the attitude of Diogenes in his regard:

“Gold, you tell me, glitters upon _Philémon’s_ coat? It glitters as keenly at the tailor’s. He is clothed in the finest tissue? Is it less well displayed in shop-lengths? But the embroideries, the enrichments make him splendid! I praise the needlewoman. But ask him the time, and he will pull out a masterpiece of a watch: the guard of his sword is of onyx; there is a diamond on his finger of a water ...! You have managed to make me curious at last. I must see these priceless things. Send me Philémon’s clothes and gimcracks. You may keep Philémon.”

That is the better part of it. In the next paragraph he turns to scold the old lord, and calls him a fool in so many words. That is a mistake of his. It is not playing the game of satire, but the kind of game which is played at the street corner. On the same page is Harlay, the very unepiscopal Archbishop of Paris, but only a part of him. He leaves the bishop out of the question (as assuredly he was), and gives us the courtier. Harlay was famous for his manners. _Theognis_, as he calls him,

“is careful of his appearance, goeth forth adorned like a woman. He is hardly out of doors before he has composed his looks and countenance so that he may appear all of a piece when he is in public, the same thing to all men. Passers-by are to find him graciously smiling upon them; and nobody must miss it. He goes into the corridor, turns to the right where everybody is, or to the left where there is no one: he will salute those who are there, and those who are not. He will embrace the first man he comes across and press his head to his bosom; then he will ask you who it was he was greeting. Perhaps you have need of him in some little business or other, you go to him, ask him to help. _Theognis_ lends you a ready ear, is overjoyed to be of use, implores you to find him other chances of serving your occasions. Then, when you urge your immediate affair, he will tell you that he cannot manage that; he will ask you to put yourself in his place, judge for yourself. So you take your leave, escorted to the door, caressed, and puzzled, but almost gratified to have been refused.”

That is excellent, done with a light-hearted malice worth all the _coquins_, _fats_ and _sots_ in the world. But of all his “portraits” by far the most agreeable is that of Madame de Boislandry, whom he calls _Arténice_. It appears as a fragment in the section _Des Jugements_, but I don’t think really belongs there. There is nothing else like it; it has a gusto and charm of its own. Steele comes to mind again, with his Lady Elizabeth Hastings. It must be my last example:

“ ... He was saying that the mind of that beautiful person was like a well-cut diamond; and continuing his talk of her, ‘There is,’ he added, ‘a ray of reasonableness and charm in it which engages at once the eyes and the hearts of those who converse with her. One hardly knows whether one loves or admires: she has that in her to make her a perfect friend, and that too which might lead you beyond friendship. Too young and too lovely not to please, too modest to dream of it, she makes little account of men but upon their merits, and looks for no more from them than their friendship. Brimming over with life and quick to feel, she surprises and attracts; and while perfectly aware of the delicate shades and subtleties of the best conversation, she is yet capable of happy improvisations which among other charms have that of inspiring repartee. Her intercourse is that of one who, without learning of her own, is aware of it, and desires to inform herself; and yet she listens to you as one who, after all, knows a good deal, can appraise the worth of what you say and will lose nothing that you may choose to impart. Far from seeking to contradict you, she takes up your points, considers them as her own, enlarges and enhances them. You find yourself gratified to have thought them out so well and to have put them forward better than you had supposed....’”

There is more in that strain of intense appreciation, done by a writer who knows that what he says of you is worth having, even if it be flattery. La Bruyère had his reasons for flattering _Arténice_: it is agreed that he was very fond of her. So were many others: she had her adventures, though he did not share them. Evidently he knew that she was not for him; for there is no tarnish of jealousy upon his praise. He was one whom there were few to love, and he found very few to praise. But he praised and loved Madame de Boislandry.

Although he became a person of consequence from the day his book was out, he was not chosen to the Academy until 1693, and then not without several postponements, considerable effort on the side of his friends and strenuous opposition from Fontenelle and his partisans, whom he had fustigated as Les Théobaldes in his _Caractères_. When he was in fact chosen it was a very near thing. A M. de la Loubère, who blocked his road, retired in his favour and transferred to him the suffrages of his own supporters. For that generous act La Bruyère paid him a handsome and a happy compliment in his address of reception:

“A father,” he said, “takes his son to the theatre: a great crowd, the door besieged. But he is a tall man and a stout. He breaks a way to the turnstile, and as he is on the point of passing in, puts the lad before him, who, without that foresight, would either have come in late or not come in at all.”

A pretty turn to give his gratitude! Apart from that he was unnecessarily provocative. He went out of his way to praise Racine at the expense of Corneille, which, seeing that Thomas Corneille was a brother, and Fontenelle a nephew of the great man, and that both were present was asking for trouble. Trouble there was--efforts to refuse him inscription in the archives, a foaming attack in the _Mercure Galant_, a plot to print and publish separately the address of his co-nominee, and so on. But the Abbé Bignon stood by him; both addresses were published together, La Bruyère’s with a fighting preface, and inscription in the records followed.

In his preface he girds at his critics for not having seen what he was driving at in _Les Caractères_. They had taken it, he says, for a collection of aphorisms and sentences loosely assorted under headings, with portraits here and there of distinguished persons, scandalous or malicious as might be. They took it, in short, for a nosegay of flowers of speech, selected more for their pungency than their fragrance, relieved by foliage luxuriant enough, but beset with thorns. That was not at all his own idea of it.

“Have they not observed,” he asks, “that of the sixteen chapters comprised in it, there are fifteen which, applied to the discovery of what is false and absurd in the objects of the passions and attachments of mankind, aim only at breaking down the growths which first enfeeble and presently extinguish the knowledge of God in men--nothing therefore but preliminary to the sixteenth and last, in which atheism is attacked, and possibly routed.”

I confess that if the critics had not detected all that in the plan or content of Sections I-XV, there is much excuse for them. I am in the same condemnation. It is true that those sections may be said to attack false gods in general: folly, ostentation, vainglory, evil concupiscence and such like. It is true that La Bruyère is a _censor morum_, like many a man before him and since. But it is not at all obvious that he is clearing a way by his analytic philosophy for a synthetic which will seat the true God firmly on his throne in the heart. Nor is the effort to do that conspicuous. “I feel that there is a God,” he says in his sixteenth section, “and I do not feel that there is no God. That is enough for me; all the reasoning in the world is beyond the purpose: I conclude that God is.” Very good; but then, why all the reasoning in the book? Pascal said the same thing, rather better. “It is the heart that feels God, not the reason. That is faith: God sensible to the heart, not to the reason.” It is probably as near as one can go. But how does La Bruyère make it more pointed by what has gone before? If you prove to demonstration that the goods of this world are but vanity, does that of itself imply, first that there is another world, whose goods (secondly) are not vain? Not at all. My impression is that La Bruyère had no such large intention when he began, and that if he had had it, he would have declared it in his opening observations. He was moralist and satirist both; but as much of one as the other. Character rather than characteristics attracted him, as I think, and the sharp sentences he aimed at were more literary than ethical. As for maxim-drawing, although he drew plenty, he expressly disavowed it. “I ought to say that I have had no desire to write maxims. Maxims are the laws of morality, and I own that I have neither the authority nor the genius which would fit me to legislate.... Those, in a word, who make maxims desire to be believed. I, on the other hand, am willing that anyone should say of me that I have not always well observed, provided that he himself observe better.”

And the last sentence in the book is this: “If these _Caractères_ of mine are not relished I shall be surprised; and if they are I shall be equally so.”

There is a pose in that; but it is a literary pose.

He did not live long to enjoy his academic dignity. He made but one appearance at the table, and then supported the candidature of somebody whose name was not before the assembly. His proposal was of Dacier the classic, but he owned that he should prefer to see Madame Dacier chosen. On the 10th of May 1696, just a month after Madame de Sévigné, he died of apoplexy at Versailles. He had rooms in the Chateau opening on to the leads--bedroom, book-closet, and dressing-room. The inventory of his effects shows him to have been possessed of some three hundred books. Very few of his letters exist: one to Ménage about Theophrastus, one to Bussy, thanking him for his vote and sending him the sixth edition of _Les Caractères_, others to Condé, of earlier date, about the progress of his grandson. Two letters to him from Jérôme Phélypeaux, the son of Pontchartrain, survive, which hint at a happy relationship between the scholar and the young blade. Phélypeaux, who was just one-and-twenty, chaffs the philosopher; calls him a “fort joli garçon,” suspects him of being “un des plus rudes joueurs de lansquenet qui soit au monde.” La Bruyère’s solitary letter to his young friend is in a light-hearted vein too, chiefly about the weather.

It is so hot, he says, that yesterday he cooked a cake on his leads, and an excellent cake. To-day it has rained a little. Then he plays the fool very pleasantly. “Whether it will rain to-morrow, or whether it won’t, is a thing, sir, which I could not pronounce if the health of all Europe depended upon it. All the same, I believe, morally speaking, that there will be a little rain; that when that rain shall have ceased it will leave off raining, unless indeed it should begin to rain again.” It is evidence of a sound heart that a learned man can write so to a young friend; and as it is much better to love a man than not, I close upon that frivolous, but happy note. La Bruyère was to live a year more in his attic on the leads. Let us hope that he baked some more cakes and wrote many more letters to young M. Phélypeaux.

COULEUR DE ROSE

Sainte-Beuve, in one of his early _Lundis_, tells a touching story of Madame de Pompadour, the frail and pretty lady who was forced by circumstances rather than native bent into becoming a Minister of State, and one, at that, who had to measure swords with the great Frederick of Prussia. At one stage of her career she had hopes of a match between a daughter of her married state and a natural son of Louis. There seemed to be the makings of a Duc du Maine in the lad, of a Duchess consequently for her family. And that was the simple objective of those of her faction who favoured the scheme. But her own was simpler still. She spoke her real mind about it to Madame de Hausset, her lady-in-waiting, from whose Mémoires Sainte-Beuve quotes it.

“Un brevet de duc pour mon fils,” she said, “c’est bien peu; et c’est à cause que c’est son fils que je le préfère, ma bonne, à tous les petits ducs de la Cour. Mes petits enfants participeraient en ressemblance du grand-père et de la grand’-mère, et ce mélange que j’ai l’espoir de voir ferait mon bonheur un jour.”