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ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SALON 16

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SALON 30

THE EARLIER ENGLISH SALON 83

CONVERSATION PARTIES AND LITERARY ASSEMBLIES 102

THE BLUESTOCKING CLUB 123

THE LONDON SALON 134

MRS. MONTAGU AS A PATRON OF THE ARTS 189

RESULTS 209

JOHNSON AND THE ART OF CONVERSATION 217

WALPOLE AND THE ART OF FAMILIAR CORRESPONDENCE 236

FANNY BURNEY AND THE ART OF THE DIARIST 254

BOSWELL AND THE ART OF INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY 268

INDEX 285

Hannah More 157

Johnson pointing out Mrs. Montagu as a Patron of the Arts 199

Samuel Johnson 217

Boswell the Journalist 268

Boswell Haunted by the Ghost of Johnson 277

PART I

THE FRENCH BACKGROUND

INTRODUCTION

It is with this borderland, this territory where literature and society meet in mutual respect, and presumably to their mutual advantage, that I propose to deal in this volume. I shall trace as well as I can the attempt made in England between 1760 and 1790 to emulate the literary world of Paris by bringing men of letters and men of the world into closer relations, and by making the things of the mind an avocation of the drawing-room; and thereafter I shall endeavour to show the results of this movement as they appear in the improved artistry of three or four types of writing.

So long as letters and society retained this intimate relation and men and manners were deemed the all-sufficient study of poets, it was natural that authors should gather in the metropolis. The city was to them 'the true scene for a man of letters'; 'the fountain of intelligence and pleasure,' the place for 'splendid society,' and the place where 'a man stored his mind better than anywhere else.' When the old ideal of letters was displaced by a wider and perhaps nobler, the supremacy of the metropolis as a literary centre fell with it; but in the Age of Johnson London was still the land of promise, at once a workshop and a club, a discipline and an opportunity. 'A great city is, to be sure,' said Johnson, 'the school for studying life.' Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Sheridan, Beattie, Chatterton, Crabbe, Boswell, and many another went up thither, as their predecessors for generations had done, to seek their literary fortune or to enjoy their new-established fame.

The authors' clubs, hardly less popular than in the days of Anne, indicate an even closer centralization. A theory of literature squarely based on reason and the tradition of the classics produced a solidarity of sentiment among men of letters which was of great use in making their aims intelligible to society at large. Books were not meant to be caviare to the general. Poets did not strive to be nebulous. The ever growing democracy of readers honoured what it felt that it understood. King, Church, women of society, women of no society, painters, actors, and universities joined in paying respect to a literature that had not yet shattered into the confusion of individualism. The world of letters was, in a word, still a kingdom.

As in Paris, an alliance could, accordingly, be effected. The salon was the natural outgrowth of the intelligent interest of the reading world; it exhibited the same community of sentiment in readers that we have noticed in writers, and writers accordingly honoured it. In London, as in Paris, it became possible to find the men of light and leading gathered in a few places of favourite resort, in drawing-room or club. 'I will venture to say,' remarked Johnson to a group of friends, 'there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit than in all the rest of the Kingdom;' and once, when the boasting fit was on him, he asserted that the company sitting with him round the table was superior to any that could be got together even in Paris.

It was to an ideal thus frankly educational that the salon and the club responded. The passion for such society was like that which many serious souls to-day feel for the society of a university. To breathe the air of it was to grow in the grace of wisdom. In such an idealization of the social life, we may find the explanation of many so-called 'deficiencies' of the age, its indifference to Nature , its preference for city life, its common sense, its dread of the romantic and the imaginary, and of all that seems to repudiate the intellectual life and its social expression.

Such was the delight in society felt by Hannah More and Fanny Burney in their younger days. Such was Boswell's delight. The greatness of the latter, so ridiculously aspersed, reposes entirely upon his realization of the importance of the social instinct. Boswell was not merely a social 'climber.' He was a man who had the sense to see a short-cut to education. To call him toad and tuft-hunter may be an ingenious display of one's vituperative gifts, but evinces a surprising ignorance of the fact that a man may educate himself by living contact with great minds.

It would be a simple explanation of all this respect for the salon and its discussions to observe that England was now enjoying an age of free speech. It is even simpler to point out that there was much discussion because there was much to discuss. There were problems confronting the public which were no less important than novel. This is all true, but somewhat lacking in subtlety. The peculiar adaptability of these problems to conversation was due to the fact that they were, in general, still problems of a remote and idealistic kind. They did not yet demand instant solution, for better or for worse. Exception must of course be made of questions purely political, but the rest of them--the theory of equality and the republican form of government, the development of machinery, the education of the masses, humanitarianism, the problem of the dormant, self-satisfied, aristocratic Church, romanticism, and the whole swarm of theories popularized by Rousseau--had been stated and widely discussed, but they had not yet shaken society to its foundations. They were still largely theoretical. Men's thoughts were engaged, and their tongues were busy, but their hearts were not yet failing them for fear.

We may cite as a significant example the position of the lower classes. There had been as yet no serious disturbance of what Boswell loved to call 'the grand scheme of subordination.' Now Boswell was no fool. He was, in truth, singularly broad-minded; yet in such a matter as this his notions hardly rose above a benevolent feudalism. Despite his interest in Rousseau, despite his sympathy with Corsica and with America, he could record with bland approval Johnson's denunciation of a young lady who had married with 'her inferior in rank,' and the Great Moralist's wish that such dereliction 'should be punished, so as to deter others from the same perversion.' Democracy could be little more than a theory to Johnson when he asserted that 'if he were a gentleman of landed property he would turn out all his tenants who did not vote for the candidate whom he supported,' contending that 'the law does not mean that the privilege of voting should be independent of old family interest.' Again, when he explained to Mrs. Macaulay 'the absurdity of the levelling doctrine' by requesting her footman to sit down and dine with them, he conceived of himself as smashing a delusion with a single blow. Such 'levelling' notions being, for the moment, doctrinaire, might no doubt be put down by a sally of wit. With the fall of the Bastille they took on a different aspect.

Even Hume and Gibbon, the darlings of the Parisian salon, conceived of the problems they themselves had helped to raise as largely speculative. Gibbon, for example, plumes himself on having vanquished the Abb? Mably in a discussion of the republican form of government--and this but a few years before the foundation of the two great republics of modern times. The irony of his triumph must, presently, have been clear to him, for on September 9, 1789, he wrote to Sheffield: 'What a scene is France! While the assembly is voting abstract propositions, Paris is an independent republic.' In the previous August he had expressed his amazement 'at the French Revolution.' We may perhaps reserve a portion of our amazement for the historian who had failed to realize that the theories with which he had been long familiar in the salons would one day cease to be mere matters of discussion.

Les pr?cepteurs du monde ? Londres out pris naissance. C'est d'eux qu'il faut prendre le?on. Aussi je meurs d'impatience D'y voyager. De par Newton Je le verrai, ce pays o? l'on pense.

All this of course is farcical; but the author, a member of the French Academy, had a serious purpose. He was attacking an attitude which was expressed in Voltaire's well-known eulogy,

Le soleil des Anglais, c'est le feu du g?nie.

Saurin, in his preface, announces his esteem for England and her authors, but declares that the popularity of the 'cult' is due to the jealous dislike by Frenchmen of their own authors--a conclusion not quite obvious. In any case, the academician felt that he had a duty to the nation. In 1772 he revised his comedy, and it was again performed.

But Anglomania lived on. English authors were still graciously received in the salons. Madame du Deffand dared to assert that they were completely superior to the French in all matters of reasoning. The English language was increasingly studied, and English novelists and philosophers continued popular. Madame Necker records an anecdote of a lady who went to England 'pour renouveler ses id?es.' The lady was perhaps fulfilling Montesquieu's famous advice, to travel in Germany, sojourn in Italy, and think in England.

The pupil had thus outrun his master, and had indeed become the master. In the earlier decades of the century, Voltaire and Montesquieu had gone to England to enjoy the privilege of thought: in the later decades Englishmen visited Paris for a precisely similar purpose. From the middle of the century until the outbreak of war in 1778, Englishmen could discover in the conversations of the salons what a nation, always radical at heart, had made of the theories of free thought, liberty, and equality before the law, which they had, through Voltaire and Montesquieu, derived long since from England. English authors were received with a cordiality and a deference which had never been shown them in their own country. They found in Paris a social system conducted in honour of authors and of the philosophies which they were disseminating. It was the salon, the forcing-bed of the new ideas.

ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SALON

The one unfailing characteristic of the salon, in all ages and in all countries, is the dominant position which it gives to woman. It is woman who creates the peculiar atmosphere and the peculiar influence of salons; it is she, with her instinct for society and for literature, who is most likely to succeed in the attempt to fuse two ideals of life apparently opposed, the social and the literary. The salon is not a mere drawing-room and not a lonely study, but mediates between the promiscuous chatter of the one and the remote silence of the other. The aims of the salon are well shown by the ridicule of those enemies who accuse the hostess of attempting to transform a school of pedants and hacks into a group of courtiers. The social world is likely to laugh at the salon because it suggests the lecture-hall, and scholars sneer at it because it pretends to the distinction of a literary court.

If it be objected that Castiglione's description of court life is too radiant to be quite true to fact, if it be a society fairer than any whose existence can be demonstrated, I reply that it is so much the better suited to our purpose. It is ideals that we would be at. We are spared the attempt to reconstruct them for ourselves. There is nothing to be gained by reminding ourselves that courts attracted the parasite, the flatterer, and the opportunist; it is the finer aims of the men of genius and of the noble women who patronized them that will reward our attention. Castiglione knew these aims, and we cannot do better than quote his words as they were given to Elizabethan England in Hoby's beautiful translation. The first quotation refers to Frederick, first Duke of Urbino:

This man emong his other deedes praisworthy, in the hard and sharpe situation of Urbin buylt a Palaice, to the opinion of many men, the fayrest that was to be founde in all Italy, and so fornished it with everye necessary implement belonging thereto, that it appeared not a palaice, but a Citye in fourme of a palaice, and that not onlye with ordinarie matters, as Silver plate, hanginges for chambers of verye riche cloth of golde, of silke and other like, but also for sightlynesse: and to decke it out withall, placed there a wonderous number of auncyent ymages of marble and mettall, verye excellente peinctinges and instrumentes of musycke of all sortes, and nothinge would he have there but what was moste rare and excellent. To this with verye great charges he gathered together a great number of most excellent and rare bookes, in Greke, Latin and Hebrue, the which all he garnished wyth golde and sylver, esteaming this to be the chieffest ornament of his great palaice....

We turn now to the court of his son Guidobaldo, who carried on the traditions of his father:

He sett hys delyte above all thynges to have hys house furnished with most noble and valyaunte Gentylmen, wyth whom he lyved very famylyarly, enjoying theyr conversation wherein the pleasure whyche he gave unto other menne was no lesse, then that he receyved of other, because he was verye wel seene in both tunges, and together with a lovynge behavyour and plesauntnesse he had also accompanied the knowleage of infinite thinges.... Because the Duke used continuallye by reason of his infirmytye, soon after supper to go to his rest, everye man ordinarelye, at that houre drewe where the Dutchesse was, the Lady Elizabeth Gonzaga. Where also continuallye was the Lady Emilia Pia, who for that she was endowed with so livelye a wytt and judgement as you knowe, seemed the maistresse and ringe leader of all the companye, and that everye manne at her receyved understandinge and courage. There was then to be hearde pleasaunte communication and merye conceytes, and in every mannes countenaunce a manne myght perceyve peyncted a lovynge jocundenesse. So that thys house truelye myght well be called the verye mansion place of Myrth and Joye. And I beleave it was never so tasted in other place, what maner a thynge the sweete conversation is that is occasioned of an amyable and lovynge companye, as it was once there.... But such was the respect which we bore to the Dutchesse wyll, that the selfe same libertye was a verye great bridle. Neither was there anye that thought it not the greatest pleasure he could have in the worlde, to please her, and the greatest griefe to offende her. For this respecte were there most honest condicions coupled with wonderous greate libertye, and devises of pastimes and laughinge matters tempred in her sight.... The maner of all the Gentilmen in the house was immedyatelye after supper to assemble together where the dutchesse was. Where emonge other recreations, musicke, and dauncynge, whiche they used contynuallye, sometyme they propounded feate questions, otherwhyle they invented certayne wytty sportes and pastimes, at the devyse sometyme of one sometyme of an other, in the whych under sundrye covertes, often tymes the standers bye opened subtylly theyr imaginations unto whom they thought beste. At other tymes there arrose other disputations of divers matters, or els jestinges with prompt inventions. Manye times they fell into purposes, as we now a dayes terme them, where in thys kynde of talke and debating of matters, there was wonderous great pleasure on all sydes: because the house was replenyshed wyth most noble wyttes.

Such conversational 'pastimes' were enjoyed almost every night:

And the order thereof was such, that assoone as they were assembled where the Dutches was, every man satt him downe at his will, or as it fell to his lot, in a circle together, and in sittinge were devyded a man and a woman, as longe as there were women, for alwayes the number of men was farr the greater. Then were they governed as the Dutchesse thought best, whiche manye times gave this charge unto the L. Emilia.

This ideal, diffused over Europe, had a long and brilliant history. We shall encounter it again in the courtly salons of Elizabethan England, and even in the comedies of Shakespeare. The tradition passed over into France and there became the formative influence in the great type and parent of the Parisian salon, the H?tel de Rambouillet.

In tracing the H?tel de Rambouillet back to the earlier Italian court, two facts stand out as of first importance. In the first place, that salon was established by a woman who was herself half Italian, had passed many years in Italy, and knew the traditions of the old nobility. In the second place, the H?tel de Rambouillet originated in protest against the crudities of the Gascon court at Paris, and represented an attempt to realize a worthier society.

The salon must retain an aristocratic tone, but without submitting to the unyielding formality of the aristocracy. It sets up a standard of recognition based on talent, and neither courts nor rejects the nobility. It was even possible for the bourgeois to obtain admission to the H?tel de Rambouillet and to have a career there. Vincent Voiture, known as 'Chiquito,' the son of a wine-merchant, became the leading spirit in all the amusements. His position reminds us now of the mediaeval jester, now of Beau Nash, the King of Bath.

Such are, then, the permanent marks by which we may detect that interplay of the social and the literary life in what, for want of a better term, we call the salon. There are two features of the life manifested only at certain times which it is not proper to include, though they are more generally attributed to the salons than any that have been mentioned. They are transitory phases; but they must be briefly considered, if only by way of avoiding false assumptions.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SALON

A salon is not a mere literary club. It is something other than a group of men and women gathered in a drawing-room to discuss literature or meet a poet. It aims to exert a creative influence in the literary world. It does not concern itself with literature as a finished product to be studied, but with literature as a growing thing that may be trained. Hence it gets behind the product to the producer, and seeks to influence the characters and ideas out of which books are formed. It is an informal academy. Its aim is private in that it is directly concerned with improving the condition of authors, and public in that it attempts to mould public opinion.

Thus it is, at bottom, a system of patronage. It offers to the author that aid, advertisement, and protection which he had once sought from a patron. Patronage of literature was, as we have seen, an essential feature of the court life of the Renaissance. It had lived on through the seventeenth century at courts and in noble houses. During its rapid decline in the eighteenth century, many of its duties were taken over by the salons. In the person of the hostess, the salon made gifts of money, granted unofficial pensions, paid printers' bills, and even gave authors a home. Walpole was amused at the number of authors who were 'planted' in the homes of French ladies. Madame Geoffrin in Paris, like Mrs. Montagu in London, was recognized as a patron of all the arts, and both gave of their wealth to the support of indigent or improvident authors.

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