GODEY's LADY's BOOK
Philadelphia, February 1850

LETTER-WRITING AND MADAME DE SEVIGNE.

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.

PART I.

ONE of the most intimate and oldest friends of Madame do Sevigne, remarkable no less for excellent judgment than religious sincerity, tells her, in a letter, " Votre ame est grande, noble, propre a dispenser des tresors et incapable de s " abasser au soin d " en amasserr." M. de Grignan, her son-in-law, writes, after her death, "Ce n " est pas seulement une belle-mere que je regrette; c " est une amie aimable et solide, une socicte delicieuse;" and his wife declared, in her bitter grief, "je n " ai pas la force de lever les yenx assez haut pour trouver le bien d " on doit venir le secours." These expressions, fresh from living hearts, are worth pages of analysis in unveiling the secret of her epistolary success. Too noble to hoard up an idea, a feeling, or a grace that could give pleasure to another; —a kind of spirituelle Lady Bountiful, whose society, even to those most familiar with it, was pronounced delicious; and the object of an affection that gave birth to such profound regret —– do we not, at once, see that it was the generous instinct of her heart that bore along with its free title the musical current of words, the playful bubbles of wit, and the alternating undlulations of sense and sensibility?

The spirit of love which "casteth out fear," made her pen frank and bold; the desire to make another participate in all she enjoyed, gave a life-like vivacity to her narrative, whether describing a royal interview, the effect of the announcement of Mademoiselle d " Orleans's proposed marriage, a fashionable scene, a country landscape, or a French cook's suicide from wounded amour-propre. She excites our sympathies by her confidence, " and we share her amusement at court, her relish of literary society, her anxiety on account of her son's devotion to Ninon, and the sublime resignation of her dying hour, as we should those of a truly estimable and lovely woman personally known and cherished. It may be, as some critics have asserted, that the idiomatic purity of her style is not immaculate; and it is true that quite an unequal interest attaches to the numerous letters ascribed to her; it may be, also, that the recondite felicities of unstudied yet perfect art some of them display, cannot be fully appreciated by any but those "to the manner born;" and that the esprit, for which we have no English synonym, is the great charm of her letter-writing; – yet its frankness, vivacity, and naivete; its piquant, easy, and varied grace, if they do not originate in, at least owe their felicitous combination to essential traits of womanly character; and it is as s genuine literary development of these, that the letters of Madame de. Sevigne are permanently interesting.

Letters unendeared by personal affection are acceptable to public taste in proportional they catch the spirit. arid embody the attractions of good society. Tact, vivacity, and agreeability, are as essential to the one as the other; and great earnestness equally incompatible with both. Hence the rarity of excellence. in this department of literature; such a blending of nature and cultivation as constitutes the epistolary art, being quite as uncommon as the same thing in a companion. The very nature of a letter is egotistical; it is literally printed tall,–—a communication such as we should utter orally, if the person addressed were by. Accordingly, the transfer of a letter from domestic and social life to literature, is always a hazardous experiment. They are either too unreserved to be read by a third party without indelicacy, too strictly private to interest the world, or so sacred in their revelations and tone that the glance of a careless eye would be profanation. On the other hand, stript of all individuality of feeling, devoted wholly to generalizations, conveying no echo from the heart and animation from the real life of the writer, published letters are vapid. It is from these intrinsic difficulties, that a collection of letters seldom answers any other purpose than that of reference for the facts and opinions appertaining to celebrated men.

The eloquence of indifference, as Hazlitt calls wit, is an uncommon gift, and it is the charm of all renowned letter-writers. A favorable social position, too, to afford materials of general interest, and give the habit of spirited and pleasing expression, fine powers of observation, and that kind of sympathetic curiosity that loves to note and communicate what the panorama of life reveals, are quite as needful to a good correspondent. These advantages were possessed, in an eminent degree, by Horace Walpole His ruling passions were anecdote and vertu; had they been either more human or more spiritual, he would have been more noble and interesting as a writer, and more lovable as a man, but far less successful as s correspondent. If we open any one of the many volumes of letters from his pen, we find some familiar allusion to a renowned character, that brings it nearer to us than any history or memoirs, however circumstantial; an amusing bit of court gossip, which yields an instant glimpse into the whole. comedy of life; or a graceful compliment that, artificial as it is, for the moment, gratifies our taste, as would a mosaic or a miniature in the author's cabinet.

The lofty and exquisite creations of literature which captivate the reason and enlist the heart, are not always wholesome; and us the gravest statesman is bettor for an occasional tea-table chat, the enthusiast and the student find in the elephant trifling of such letters an unexciting table-land, in the field of literature, whereon to enjoy the requisite luxury of social pastime. Letters thus conceived are an epitome of external life – not in its philosophy or its sentiment, but in its scenic phases. Such an exhibition to an imaginative reader becomes dramatic; and often yields the historian and novelist invaluable suggestions. The sixty years thus chronicled by Walpole, are made known to us, so to speak, in their atmospheric character; what was evanescent yet of peculiar significance, when viewed in relation to the grave aspects of the period, is thus caught and preserved. How otherwise should we have known definitely of the style of a Vauxhall party, the particular claims of the celebrated beauties, the table-talk of the traditional wits? – what people said of "She Stoops to Conquer," the day after it was brought out,– how each successive volume of Tristram Shandy was received,– the zest of a fresh joke by Garrick, and the costume of Lady Wortley at Florence? Pitt's oratory and Gray's fastidiousness, we can easily discover in their literary remains; but an instance or two of the former's covetous disposition, and the fact that the latter sat apart and eat ices at a Roman ball, incidentally recorded in a letter, bring their proper humanity distinctly before us. So a more vivid reality attaches in the mind to the horrors of the Lisbon earthquake, and the early achievements of Clive, when the original impression they produced reappear in a familiar epistle of the day. It is the same with the mention of Lady Coventry's vanity and Churchill's death, Voltaire's new poem and the current talk about the American war. Only writers with an uncommon stock of impudence, can address the public without a certain respect, that leads thorn to suppress details and qualify expressions. The letter-writer, in the easy, frank, lively manner of a pleasant colloquy, narrates what he sees and hears. From him we derive what we seek- in society without the trouble of going there. The intrigues, political and amorous, the state-trials, the battles, suicides, elopements, rumored marriages, doings of belles and beaux, court gossip, and literary animosities, recorded by Walpole, reflect the same busy, discontented, changing world as that around us now, only modified by conventional peculiarities; and he does this well, because he is neither serious nor enthusiastic, because he has no private feeling sufficiently ardent either to blind his eyes with tears or deaden observation by the intensity of consciousness; because he looks on without having his sympathies so much enlisted as to divert attention from the passing drama; and because his mind was of so desultory a kind, that concentration was painful and variety necessary to him. Hence there is no deep emotion, no profound insight, no thrilling surmise in the view of life unfolded, All is fresh, vivacious, and familiar; and we feel, as we read, that it is the absence of great qualities, and the felicitous balance of ordinary ones that render the agreeable a predominant trait of character; and this it is which is the characteristic attraction of all popular letters.

The direct, unequivocal, and familiar style of epistolary address, renders letters a most available form of authorship when it is intended to unfold a special theme. Two of the most remarkable controversial books in existence are thus written – Junius, and the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Landor availed him elf of the same method to picture a classic era, and some of his best "imaginary conversations," occur in the supposed correspondence of Pericles and Aspasia. Southey, in Espriella's Letters, gives, with admirable skill, a Spaniard's impressions of England; and in a similar way many works of modern travel have successfully appeared. Foscolo, in his "Ultime Lettere d " Jacopo Ortis," gave expression to his sentiment and political faith in language so tersely eloquent, that the volume has become a standard example of Italian prose; and novelists, from time to time, make efficient use of the same favorite medium, to trace out the intricacies of a plot, and indicate the fluctuations of impassioned feeling. More or less of art, however, necessarily modifies the development of this most natural of all forms of writing, when from a private it becomes a public channel of expression. Too much study in the phrases, an absence of playful candor, and often something formal in the tone, rob it of that air of confidence and abandon which is the secret charm of a genuine letter.

It is highly probable that some of the most popular books have grown out of letters, wherein a scope of fancy and individuality of thought have found attractive utterance, that a more formal expression would have thwarted. One of the most solid results of the kind may be found in the celebrated Essays of John Foster, weighty with thought and vigorous in argument, yet originating, as his biographer assures us, in the conversation and correspondence of friendship. In our own literature, that graphic and amusing picture of life in the West, entitled a New Home, was suggested in the same manner. The most pleasing memorial of Wirt's genius is found in the "Letters of the British Spy," and the best of American classic romances is acknowledged to be the "Letters from Palmyra;" while " Letters from Under a Bridge" contain numerous highly finished and picturesque descriptive sketches, and dainty bits of coloring most agreeably mingled.

Napoleon is said to have charged Madame de Stael with having a vagabond imagination; perhaps the capricious wandering of that faculty is the prerogative of genius; and certain it is that a vagabond observation, that has an eye for every curious phase of character and all the phenomena of social life, and keeps roaming in search of the grotesque, the novel, and the significant, is one of the great requisites of a letter-writer whose epistles have any permanent attraction. The materials thus gleaned may revolve about incidents quite domestic, but they must form the staple of the argument. A good letter for general perusal, is a catalogue raisonnee of fashion, politics, and literature artfully combined; it must be wall sprinkled with on dits; the opera, or the races, the most fresh philosophical speculation, the turns of the wheel of fortune, the latest lion, death, play, book, engagement, speech, assembly, and bon-mot must be duly chronicled; with just enough sprightliness to malice the record vital, just enough sensible commentary to give it impressiveness, and just enough sentiment to add a pleasing light and shade to the sketch. Piquant secrets and public affairs should be equally mingled. The diamonds in a lady's hair and the gems of rhetoric in a minister's speech, a note on the weather and a description of a mood, a hint of practical wisdom and s dash of winsome humor, should alternate, in the letter, as they do in the talk of intelligent, genial, and communicative people.

The inability thus to express one's self with the pen from the self-distrust inspired by the sight of a blank sheet of paper, is the cause of the wonderful discrepancy between the letters and conversation of many individuals. Yet there is no revelation of the spirit of an age like that afforded by the unstudied and frank letters of friends who have lived in the midst of society and affairs, without being too much involved in them. Events deemed by biographers and historians too trivial for record, there find a memorial; and personages who, in other books, move before us with the stately reserve of a theatrical pageant, become almost boon companions. In a volume * recently published, the life of the French metropolis just before the last revolution, is thus aptly mirrored. From the advent of a mouchoir de caprice to the result of a scientific experiment, from the gay assembly at the opera to the grave sessions of the Academy, from a critical estimate of Balzac or Rossini to an account of the ravages of la gripe, we are carried with something of the bewildering transition that life itself yields to the sensitive recipient of its Parisian excitements. It is this alternation of subject and half-in-earnest manner, this fluent, easy, and colloquial sportiveness – this telling everything and attaching importance to nothing, in which consists the genius of this kind of literature.

Apart from their direct utility, letters are chiefly interesting as exponents of character. In this view, the correspondence of literary men is highly suggestive. In England, it is customary to publish the papers of distinguished generals and statesmen; and the biographers of poets wisely connect the narrative of their usually uneventful lives with letters chronologically arranged. The vanity and worldliness of Pope, the artificial cleverness of his muse, and the never-lapsing over-consciousness which marked his existence, are plainly evident in his letters; while those of Cowper, overflowing with gentleness and modesty, reveal, by their affectionate sportiveness, the attempt to beguile himself of the thing he was, and thus ward off the morbid state of mind to which he was liable. Byron's inconsistent directions to Murray, his reckless avowal of opinions wholly at variance with the enthusiasm that inspired him, the constant alternation of generous sentiment, wayward fancies, and perverse judgments, let us into the tumult, caprice, and fervor of his mind more readily, and, not infrequently, altogether as effectively, as his poems. The mood enveloping the fact, now flippant and now serious, the professed contempt for fame and the evident care of reputation, apparent indifference and real deference to public opinion, the longing for content and the assertion of independence, assure the most thoughtless reader of a pitiable state of self-dissatisfaction, growing out of the want of harmony between an aspiring soul and unsustained integrity of life. Franklin's homely sense and prudential ideal, are singularly manifest in his familiar epistles; and Lord Chesterfield's directions to his son, as preserved in his correspondence, evince how completely external accomplishments and polite learning embodied his standard of a gentleman's education. Pedantry, as an attribute of character, has wearied many a fresh heart in the letters of Pliny; and the intelligent kindliness of Ganganelli is finely developed in the same way. The wit, knowledge of the world, masculine grasp of the material, and womanly insight into conventionalities; the coarseness, talkative, and spirited disposition, occasional benevolent impulse, and lively conversational powers of Laxly Montagu, as displayed in her letters, are as indicative of her character as the quarrels, repartees, and indelicate bearing recorded of her by cotemporaries. Scott's letters are as manly and kind as was his behavior; Shelley's as noble and philanthropic as his faith. It is well known that Lamb's quaint humor first exhibited itself in letters; not a few are equal to his essays, and, in some instances, were their origin and basis. It is remarkably characteristic, of Washington, that his letters exhibit a gradual improvement, not only in verbal aptness, realized by the constant substitution of words more definite than those first adopted, but also in orthography and general correctness of diction. The terseness of masterly dispatches is the acknowledged trait of brave commanders; of which there are signal examples among our own chiefs; and Webster's official correspondence, lately published, is as impressive, though a less eloquent proof of a clear, far-reaching, and forcible intellect as his orations. To an analytical reader, the difference in the characters of Goethe and Schiller is most expressively indicated in their correspondence. We perceive that the former exacts tribute from every field of human experience as the material of his creations, while the latter earnestly strives to reach an ideal of intellectual and moral grandeur; there is universality in the spirit of the one, and concentration and an uncompromising idealism in that of the other; the one appears in his letters a gifted egotist, the other a noble friend; their respective inquiries, criticisms, suggestions, and plans, as there unfolded, utter the same voice as the more artistic writings of each, and proclaim Goethe many-sided and reserved and Schiller exalted and self-denying. The sentimentalism of Metastssio, the practical intelligence of Swift, and the scholarlike refinement of Gray, are conspicuous in their letters. It is quite appropriate that among the very earliest published writings of Voltaire, should be a dozen epistles in a collection of Lettres Gallnntes; and I have seen an autograph letter of Burns, written to accompany a present of game, which, though hastily scribbled, contained vivid traces of his love of nature, his tenderness, his manly pride, and his zest for pleasure; written, too, as the chirography and his own confession at the end prove, when he was in a convivial state.

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