Godey's Lady's Book

GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK
Philadelphia, March 1850

LETTER-WRITING AND MADME DE SEVIGNE.

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.

PART II.

LOVE LETTERS are proverbially insipid and devoid of interest, except to the parties immediately concerned. Those of Steele are an exception. One of his critics has observed of him and Fielding, that they seemed so made for happiness, that it is a pity they were not immortal on earth. In Steele's letters, we find this peculiar relish of life yet keen; we read his amatory epistles with pleasure, because they indicate such a natural enjoyment of the affections. There is no sentimentality or undue extravagance, no over-refinements or weak self-distrust, but au earnest, manly, and rational love, uttering itself with the ardor and frankness of a warm and honest heart; and, at the same time, with good sense and a noble spirit. Nothing, indeed, can be more characteristic of Steele's impulsive and generous nature, precarious fortunes, and improvident habits, than these off-hand letters, written often in the heat of the moment, and always with the careless freedom of e brave lover and man of wit. The very dates are significant of the vicissitudes of his career; ranging from Bloomsbury Square to a sponging house; , now bearing the equivocal locality of "solitude," and now the convivial one of "Will's." The fond epithets, sweet counsels, and appreciative remarks in these billet-doux are never mawkish. Those written after his marriage bring us singularly near; especially where he writes his wife that he is about to dine with Addison, and cannot see her until night; that he is seeking for a place just vacant at court, and must lunch in the city; bids her, one day, send some clean linen, and another, call for him in a coach; and adds, "put my best wig and new shoes in the box, that I may be dressed well to enjoy a conference with so sweet a person." The same familiarity is induced by his, affectionate directions to "take care and wrap yourself very warm to-morrow;" and to "be cheerful and beautiful;" and after what he .calls their "little heats," to receive him good-humoredly. From his watch by the body of the Prince of Wales, from Lord Sunderland's office, from St. James's, or the Gentleman's Coffee-house, from the country-seat he is visiting, and the desk where he is penning a Spectator, these loving missives were habitually sent; many of them, perhaps worthless in utilitarian eyes, have been preserved; and they convey the most authentic and fresh impression of Sir Richard's disposition and habits, and form an essential means of estimating his character. Of English letter-writers, we doubt if any excel him in frankness and geniality. All of the man desirable to know, might be readily inferred from his letters – his intelligence, generosity, lapses from right, affection, piety, want of system, magnanimity, and bon-hommie. " I am very sick," he says in one instance, " with too much wine last nught;" and in another "I have broke my rest, because I knew you would be such a fool as not to sleep;" and again, "I am going, this morning, to a most solemn work – to invoke the Almighty's blessing on you and the little ones." "Send me a book which is upon the escritoire, in the dining-room, many leaves of it turned down. and paper in it." In answer to his wife's remonstrances, he calls her his "dun," and his "dear, little, peevisk, wise governess;" and asks her, "how can you let your spirits sink so as to mind what people say whom you do not esteem?" His literary propensities are occasionally revealed; thus he says, "I was last night so enamored of an author I was reading, and some thoughts which I put together on that occasion, that I was up till morning, which makes me s little restive to-day." Such casual light into daily life posterity can only learn through letters; and when they are natural, we seem almost to hear the voices of the departed. In more elaborate letters, Steele exhibits the sweet and noble feelings of his heart with grave beauty. Thus he writes to Prue: –

"You are as beautiful, as witty, as prudent,. and as good-humored as any woman breathing; but, I must confess to you, I regard all these excellences as you will please to direct them for my happiness or misery. With me, madam, the only lasting motive to love, is the hope of its being mutual.

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" I am now under your own roof while I write; and that imaginary satisfaction of being so near you, though not in your presence, has in it something that touches me with such tender ideas, that it is impossible for me to describe their force. All great passions make us dumb.

"You cannot imagine the gratitude with which I meditate on your obliging behavior to me, and bow much improved in generous sentiments I return from your company.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

" The union of minds in pure affection is renewing the first state of man. Beauty, my fairest creature, palls in the possession; but I love also your mind; your soul is dear to me as my own; and if the advantage of a liberal education, and as much contempt of the world, joined with endeavors towards a life of strict virtue and religion, can qualify me to raise new ideas in a breast so well disposed as yours is, our days will pass away with joy, and instead of introducing melancholy prospects of decay, give us hope of eternal youth in a better life.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

" My books are blank paper, and my friends intruders.

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".Love animates my heart, sweetens my humor, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life.

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" To pass my evenings in so sweet a conversation, and have the esteem of a woman of your merit, has in it a particularity of happiness no more to be expressed than returned.

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" Let us go on, to make our regards to each other mutual and unchangeable, that, while the world around us is enchanted with the false satisfactions of vagrant desires, our persons may be shrines to each other, and sacred to conjugal faith, unreserved confidence, and heavenly society."

Certain forms of literature have what may be termed an indigenous interest, that is, they attract from their essential relation to the country of their birth, precisely as fruits and flowers peculiar to a special latitude are identified with the region of their nativity; thus, independent of its graceful altitude, we love the palm-tree as the symbol of oriental landscape, the elm as an American, the oak as an English, and the cocoa-nut as a tropical product. We recognize a charm in what is native not only in character and physical resources, but in literature; and although invention and perseverance may naturalize every form of writing and art, yet those always retain an exotic aspect which are not the spontaneous and appropriate offspring of national life. We see this in the comparative excellence or fecundity of the various types of intellectual development, in the different countries of the world. The lyrical drama seems artificial out of Italy; the phases of human sentiment, in its introspective refinements, find natural expression chief among the Germans; the best specimens of the domestic novel and the didactic poem, have been created by English genius; while school-books and newspapers typify the busy, civic, and educational existence of the United States. It is doubtless true, that the delicate significance of literary masterpieces is seldom realized in a foreign language; but an intelligent mind, when possessed of the vocabulary of e nation, is certainly adequate to comprehend and appreciate the spirit of its literature; and such a one will scarcely fail to distinguish between what is adapted to the language and genius of a people., and what is grafted from abroad upon the parent-stock. Few English readers can possibly relish Racine or Corneille as dramatists, or find any poetic impressions in the flow of French verse; but in their comedies, memoirs, scientific treatises, and letters, none can hesitate to 'acknowledge a natural superiority. This is easily accounted for by the fact that, in France, society is the main-spring, the atmosphere, the vital principle of mental activity and national taste. Marmontel says the genius of a language is embodied in society; and this is emphatically true of the French; and hence it follows that the most authentic revelations of their literature must be sought in the least formal and most social kinds of writing, such as familiar biographies and epistles. The letters of Madame de Sevigne have become classic. Perhaps in no other country would it be possible for a species of literature so accidental and superficial to attain such a rank. Yet these letters are as legitimately an exponent of the French mind, in its characteristic phase, as are the plays of Shakespeare of the English, the songs of Burns of the Scotch, or the epics of Tasso and Ariosto of the Italian.

Doubtless the celebrity of Madame de Sevigne's letters is, in part, to be referred to the era and the society they illustrate, and the influence of the latter upon her powers of expression. Habitual intercourse with such people as Rochefoucald, Madame de la Fayette, and all the wits, heroes, and states men of Louis XIV., naturally trained to rare excellence her colloquial ability, and, at the same time accustomed her to rapid and keen reflection. With men so identified with the public interests of the kingdom as Fouque, Colbert, the Prince de Conde and Cardinal Retz, for frequent companions, her views were unavoidably quickened and enlarged; while the ladies of that gay and profligate court afforded exhaustless materials for daily gossip. Yet it would be unjust to her real merit not to ascribe the permanent fame of her letters to intrinsic qualities of mind and heart. It is these, indeed, which prevent the domestic affairs and strictly personal details which often form the entire subject of en epistle, from being wearisome. Whether she extols the resignation of her dying aunt, harps upon some unimportant incident connected with the Coulange family, describes the monotony of provincial or, the variety of metropolitan life, Madame de Brissac's colic and Madamoiselle Louvois's nuptials, or announces a choice bit of news with elaborate zest, there is a certain esprit, a naturalness and purity, of style, and an affable brilliancy in her letters, the secret of which lies at the very basis of character.

It is therefore useless to propose Madame de Sevigne as an epistolary model, to be carefully imitated. Nothing is more characteristic of her pen than in its spontaneity; she declares that she jots down tout ce que trouve au bout de la plume; and that when she commences, she knows not if the letter will be long or short. It must ever be remembered, if we would learn the origin of her facility, that she wrote with no consciousness of the public or of fame. To divert one whom she loved, and from whom she was separated, and to keep alive, by communion of thought and feeling, the habitual as well as the instinctive sentiment that united them, was her single object. For this she looked with interest on the drama of life, treasured the clever sayings of the conversazione, watched her own impressions, and afterwards gathered them with the fresh hand of affection, to scatter lovingly in her daughter's pathway.

The inspiration of her letters was maternal love. Hence she strove to elicit from La Fontaine, Moliere, or Racine, ideas that would gratify Madame de Grignan's philosophical taste; recorded the minute events of her daily life, her vigils by the sick couch, her interviews with mutual friends, the little nothings of the fashionable world, and the fore-shadowings of national changes; hence, too, she insinuated gentle counsel, indulged in speculation, and breathed, in graceful and sweet language, the longings, aspirations, and comfort derived from the ruling sentiment of her heart. Well may she exclaim, to this idolized child, " je voudrois bien que mon caeur fut pour Dieu comme il est pour vous!"

But warmth and constancy of feeling does not explain the charm of Madame de Sevigne's letters; it only accounts for their voluminous details and genial spirit. Her active intelligence and integrity of character gave them sprightliness and vigor. That her mental resources were rare, may be inferred from the cheerful occupation of her time when in the provinces, where a promenade, books, occasional directions to the farmers, and writing letters, was all her life afforded in exchange for the social attractions of Paris. In this capacity to retire from the most gifted of society of the day, and find content in solitude, she resembled her English prototype. Lay Montagu used to be glad of an occasional illness to escape company; and long resided in a lonely palace in the Venetian territory, where she received the few visitors who sought out her retreat, in a domino; – enacting Lady Hester Stanhope on a small scale.

Principle and good sense also underlie Madame de Sevigne's winning vivacity of manner, as pearls and coral rest beneath the sparkle of the playful waves. Her biographers hint rather than explain her early domestic history; but it' requires little acumen to infer from the few circumstances revealed, combined with what her letters assure us were her prominent traits, that she resolved, after one venture in love, to keep the passions in abeyance, to live for her children, and maintain a systematic, tranquil, and benevolent existence. That she succeeded in so doing, amid the temptations of such an age and associations, evinces an independent rectitude which accounts for the peculiar esteem with which she inspired, not only contemporaries, but her countless readers of succeeding time. " Il falloit," she writes, "un liberte douce, une vie tranquille, une esprit calm;" and it was this fixed destiny that enabled her to look abroad so peacefully and note, with such an air of enjoyable observation, the passing events of the hour. It made her attitude contemplative, and kept from her letters those extremes of rapture and despair, which is a principal cause of the universal pleasure they yield.

The self-imposed isolation of Madame de Sevigne, adopted in order to gratify her sense of right and the claims of her family, caused the affection she did indulge to become intense, and even romantic. It partook of the character both of a sentiment and a passion; and although its object does not appear fully to have recognized the devotedness and self-sacrifice of which she was the occasion, we are inclined to think that the fervor of this love is one of the great though least recognized charms of these letters. It is certainly that which distinguishes them from those of Lady Montagu and Walpole; for the former, independent of her talent, is chiefly remembered for having introduced inoculation for the small-pox into England, quarreled with Pope, and been equally notorious for satire and slovenliness; while Madame de Sevigne's character as a mother, a friend, and a lady, was as preeminent during her life, as her epistolary genius is at this day. A large part of her estate, many of her social advantages, and fianally, her life, were given up to the absorbing interest for her child. " Non seulement," she writes, "je lis vos lettres avec plaisir, ma je les relis, avee une tendresse qui m'occupe et qui me fait aimer mes promenades solitaires." Such maternal emotion finding utterance, here and there, amid descriptions of court frivolities and social incidents, imparts that glow of the heart, without which her letters would have been only brilliant. Like all genuine love, too, it seems to awaken for the world itself a charity which blunts the edge of ridicule, and, under the liveliest sarcasm, keeps fresh a thorough amiability of disposition. This is what has occasioned Madame de Sevigne to be regarded with a warmer sympathy than her two English rivals can ever inspire – Walpole, because he is in earnest about nothing; and Lady Mary, because she is severe without being, at the same time, genial. The latter expressed a confident opinion that, in forty years after her death, her' letters would be as interesting as those of her French precursor; but, besides being deficient in the balm of an immortal sentiment – one of the greatest of conservative principles,. not only in life, but in literature – their main attraction lies in descriptive talent, and that chiefly employed on Oriental scenes – then a novel theme, but since rendered familiar by a score of able works, from Anastasius to Eothen.

But it is to the indirect rather than the positive effect of this attachment, that we are disposed to refer much of the rare literary excellence of Madame de Sevigne. The paucity of interesting correspondents is not so much owing to the fact that epistolary talent is rare, as to the stilt more usual fact that the entire confidence and receptive ability, which alone can be successfully addressed, is wanting. Some one has acutely said that, if we would judge of a man's real character, we should inspect not the letters he writes, but thee he receives – in other words, discover the sentiments he inspires in others, not those he professes himself. To estimate the difficulty we would suggest, let us recall the state of mind induced by the mere act of writing a letter. Does not the image of him or her to whom we are about to utter ourselves, rise, with a kind of imposing individuality, before us ? Are we not haunted by a keen sense of the peculiar tastes and idiosyncrasies with which we are communing? Do we not 'sometimes picture to ourselves the very expression of countenance with which each sentence of our epistle will be read'? And are we not thus insensibly led to adapt our pen-craft to the pride, the taste, the humor, the curiosity, or the approbativeness of our correspondent – in other words, to write what we think will give pleasure to the particular individual'? Now this is the great obstacle to a good letter – that is, as an exponent of the heart and mind of the writer. The necessity of consulting the fastidious taste, the iron prejudice, or the morbid sensitiveness of another; the hopelessness of being understood either in our humorous mood or our grave sentiment, chills, limits, and modifies that free and wayward utterance which is the peculiar grace of a letter. Imagine Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton, on the occasion of Fontleroy's execution, addressed to a man of liberal mind; or one of Walpole's telegraphs of fashionable life, sent to the deacon of a village church in New England!

There is, indeed, no act of life into which enters a more delicate sense of the appropriate, than that of letter-writing. It requires the skill, tact, refinement, and sympathetic address of personal.. intercourse, without affording any of the excuses for their deficiency which the latter, gives; for we cannot forget that letter-writing is a deliberate act; it allows of time to think, arrange ideas, and choose expressions; and, at the same time, repudiates all traces of study, and must be impulsive to yield pleasure. Fine talkers know how to appreciate a good listener; and good writers only want the right kind of relations – the felicitous influence of a noble companionship or true affinity, to elicit letters imbued with their best intelligence and feeling.

The confidence between Madame de Sevigne and her daughter was entire; the tastes of both were reined, and the minds of both were highly educated; nature allied them by her most sacred tie; and habit had rendered their intercourse, to one at least, a necessity, and to both a source not only of heartfelt. enjoyment, but intellectual satisfaction. Hence the mother was free from that most fatal check to epistolary excellence – reserve; she could indulge every gush of feeling, every vagary of imagination, every passing mood in writing to one so thoroughly known and so profoundly dear; she could write what she chose and how she chose; – hence, the only artificial thing in her letters is the style, which is sometimes too elegant to appear natural, an inference we dismiss at once, however, when we consider that its refinements were caught from a social culture which made the habit a second nature. The abandon of her letters is owing, in no small degree, to the person to whom they. were addressed, who elicited her nature freely; To this we are indebted for their vitality; and, therefore, while agreeing with one of her critics, that l'affection, le plus legitime a besoin de se contenir et de se regler, we congratulate ourselves upon that unrestrained exercise of maternal love, which led Madame de Sevigne to talk so frankly upon paper to her daughter, that the cordial echo of her voice reached posterity.

The superiority of women in the epistolary art has often been noticed; and may be readily accounted for. No form of literary development is so natural, so directly the offspring of feeling and observation, and so akin to and associated with the interests and diversions of home. The objection to a blue-stocking is that she has yielded a greater to a less attraction, that the graces of female character and influence, more beautiful and efficient than all philosophy or fame can yield, are sacrificed to mere attainment,; and that the solace and inspiration of a woman's nature are overlaid by intellectual hardihood. And this perverse substitution of acquired for spontaneous charms, is seldom unattended with exacting vanity or repulsive pretension. It is, too, the consciousness of a reputation for authorship or wit, on the part of literary ladies, that causes men of earnest feeling to turn from female celebrities to the less hackneyed and more natural intelligence, that expands only in the atmosphere of personal and retired sympathy. The advantage of the letter as an exponent of a woman's nature, is that it is, after all, only written conversation, the artless play of her mind, the candid utterance of her sentiment, designed only to be interpreted by one she loves; it does not impeach her delicacy, or render worldly her aspirations; the sacred privacy of her life is preserved, while the fancy and the thought active in her bosom, find vent.

The great attraction of the letters of Madame de Sevigne is, that they constantly exhibit the woman; noble without arrogance, intelligent without pride, gentle and tender, yet unsubdued and hopeful; now naively capricious, now seriously fond; vivacious one moment, and earnest the next; often childlike in emotion, and ever imbued with good sense in practical affairs; full of tact, variety, clearness of perception, quickness and warmth of sympathy, disinterested zeal, admiration for talent, and bravery, and habitual religious trust –"Je ne," she says, "je ne me pique ni de fermete, ni de philosophie; mon caeurme mene et me conduit." In other words, she feels, acts, and writes like a true woman; whether breathing a solemn inquiry as to the eternal future. thoughtfully contemplating the death of Turenne, or gayly informing her darling child that some friend has sent her a pair of the plus jolis souliers du monde; whether entirely yielding to an ardent impulse, or gradually re-asserting her rationality and conscientiousness with the sober second thought. Even her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, though at first her detracteur, like the rest of her acquaintance, ended in being her sincere admirateur. The literary value of her letters consists in their being souvenirs and examples of style; their moral worth lies in the lively and sweet reflection of sustained yet gentle womanhood they contain; – making us feel what refreshment and inspiration female society, when elevated by right sentiments, and " touched to finer issues'! by mental cultivation, can legitimately impart.

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