THE STORY OF TWO SALONS.*

Miss SICHEL has lived in imagination in the drawing-room of the olden time—drawing-rooms in that especial sense in which the French have stamped their very language upon the word, so that a " salon " has its own marked historic meaning, and is a tribute to the especial charm which brilliant French- women have always exercised throughout the world. " Elle sait tenir un salon" was the highest praise a hostess could win ; and it is very rarely indeed that it has been vouchsafed out- side Paris. And alas ! more than that; for, "search as we will," our authoress writes, "the secret of the art of society lies hidden in France, in the Paris of the eighteenth century, in the graves of tender ladies and frilled philosophers, as sparkling as they were profound." The mystery of Greek beauty, guarded by marble gods and goddesses ; the colour and sunlight of the old Italian masters, buried beyond reach in Venetia and Tuscany ; the "devout science which made austerity lovely in Fugue and Prelude" (there is a slight suspicion of tall-talk here, but it may pass), are among the other lost arts to which Miss Sichel compares her vanished salons. It was in fact the art of conversation, cultivated to its best, which made these salons live ; the sister-arts of good talking and good listening, the bright and ready give-and-take of wit and grace in arms, always kept keen and polished ; the delightful interchange of thought which made of society something very different from the weary round which takes refuge in recitations and skirt- dancing to hide its inner barrenness. Society nowadays really means very little but collections counted by heads, though it is just a few days since we heard a devotee say, quite in good faith, that "nobody finds fault with society except those who have tried to get on in it and failed." The epigram sounded quite effective ; but it was clear that the speaker had really no idea of the existence of people who can find ample occupation, and distraction too, in their own pursuits, and books, and friends, without ever casting the wistful corner of an eye upon the odd medley of unassorted worlds who write and read about each other, and meet each other, and bore each other, in a daily succession of labours. The salons were something very different from this; and well can one understand the delight and pride of the aspirant who first gained entrance within such sacred precincts. A few women there were, adds Miss Sichel, who carried the tradi- tion of the last century into this one, to be finally chased away only by the "ponderous spirit of the Forties," railways and regular education. Very well, too, does she point out the vital difference between the French salon and the English at its best,—those of Lady Holland or Lady Blessington, for instance, where the practical English character influenced everything, and politics, not wit, were the moving theme ; where Bills were passed and duties removed before they were heard of in Parliament, and business was the prominent feature rather than emotion or romance. She might have added that such dictatorial fashions as Lady Holland's would have excluded her in France from holding a "salon" at all. The delightful intimacies between the wits and the beauties which gave to the French salon its essential charm were pre- cluded by northern morals as well as insular reserve, and Miss Burney, who, as Miss Sichel neatly puts it, kept a "parlour" but not a "salon," could not go beyond it. We can hardly agree with the writer that Dr. Johnson came neaxest to Paris with the help of Mrs. Thrale. Johnson was surely " nnsaloonable " to the last degree ; and his literary dictatorship, in which he resembled Dryden, was a distinction of purely English growth. In our own experience, the last approach to what was called a salon (since the days of the Miss Berry%) in this country, existed not in London, but at Brighton, in the house of the Miss Horace Smiths, the daughters of the author of _Rejected Addresses. There was much in their little Sunday gatherings, some years ago, to recall in miniature what we read of easier and more graceful days than ours.

The two salons specially selected for commemoration by the authoress of this volume are those of the Snards—" now seldom mentioned, who began humbly, loved culture, and lived simply, gaining reputation by their simplicity, so that they were known amongst the great as `the little household" —and of Pauline de Beaumont, who seems their own die-

• The Story of Two Seen*. By Edith Sichel, Author of "Worth Bytom Junio." Loudon 1 Edwarl Arnold. 1E95.

covery to the few who really knew her, compared to Madame Recamier or any other more famous lady of French society. With a pleasant literary touch of her own which imparts a great charm to her companionable and attractive book, Miss Sichel makes comparison of herself here to Charles Lamb, who "somewhere confesses that the name of Michael Drayton has a finer relish to his ear than that of Shakespeare, because Drayton was his own discovery and Shakespeare was not." Not many, it is quite true, know much of the two subjects which the lady has chosen, and they therefore will read her book with the greater curiosity and interest. The quaint face, attractive rather than pretty, which looks at us out of its engraving of Madame de Beaumont from a portrait by Madame Lebrun, suggests the frail little woman who was called" the Swallow" by her friends, and "the aerial soul," by Joubert, and is set forth in choice description by Chateaubriand when she was thirty years old, before the "terrible Revolution, which de- prived her of almost every relation she had, destroyed her health, and for ever saddened her soul." To Chateaubriand she was at once the adorer and the adored, and the inspirer of the "Genie du Christianisme," which everybody connects with his name without, we fear, having read it. The poet who was born in the gloomy and unsanitary room well known to visitors to St. Maio, and not unnaturally buried on the little island within sight of it, is one of those whose name comes glibly to the general tongue, without the smallest familiarity with his writings "being left amongst the general." Inquire, even of a Frenchman of the present day, and that "he knows a man who has read Chateaubriand," is all at which you are likely to arrive. He reigned as king, however, between 1798 and 1802, in Pauline de Beaumont's little salon in the Rue Neuve du Luxembourg. When M. de Sa,bran, at one of Madame de Steel's parties at Coppet, denied that women's friendships could be deep, or dis- interested, or lasting, the hostess exclaimed: "Ever since I came into the world, I have admired and loved a most noble character. Never have I met one more generous, more grate- ful, or more passionately sensitive. It was a woman's. All

my roots were bound up in her. I should have made her my

lifelong friend. I mean Pauline de Beaumont, the daughter of the unfortunate Montruorin, my father's faithful col- league." This Montmorin had been tutor to the Dauphin who became Louis XVI., and afterwards Foreign Minister in tronblous times, until the year before the breaking-out of the Revolution. The most interesting of Madame de Beaumont's friends was Joubert, and the charm of their talk they carried into their correspondence on subjects of all kinds, especially

upon the interesting topic of Voltaire, for whom, except in his letters, Joubert had no liking :— "God keep me from ever possessing a complete Voltaire ! " he says. "I can well fancy Bossuet, Finelon, Plato, carrying their works before God ; even Pascal and La Bruyere, or Vauvenargues, and La Fontaine, for their works paint their souls, and can be reckoned to that account in heaven. But it seems to me that Jean Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu could not have dared to present their books ; they have only put into them their wit, their temper, and their efforts. As for Voltaire, his works also paint him, and will be reckoned to his account, I believe, but at his own expense."

For Madame de Beaumont had a very sceptical side, but was always "deeply attracted to the devout and austere aspects of life." The combination is not an uncommon one, and her sceptic's love for the severe and controlled in religion, con- trasted strongly with the "radiant Catholic philosophy" of

Jonbert, who required less strict rules of moral guidance. Plato's Phsedo—La Brny ere—Don Quizote—and above all Tristram Shandy—formed the favourite reading of the two

together. And their letters supply constant proof of the Anglomania in letters which at the end of the last century

was so prevalent in France. Allusions to Uncle Toby, and jokes from cc cher Yorick, strewed their correspondence through- out. As for Romance, then entering on its day, Pauline de Beaumont and Joubert welcomed it with delight. "Nymph and grottoes were on the wane," Miss Sichel says, "Nature and peasants—or common savages—in the ascendant," and such

different people as Oasian and Werther and Captain Cook delighted the students of the day as much as, in a later rush of reaction towards pure romance, Rider Haggard and Stevenson were to be welcomed by the fugitives from Mudie's three-volumed desert.

But we must fairly abandon the effort of following the writer through the fancies and adventures of Madame de

Beaumont and her friends. There is really not a page in the book that ought not to be read, and neither skimmed nor

quoted from ; and as we turn its pages over, we can only feel that there might well be more of it. As for the Snards, who form the subject of the first essay—if essay is a right name to give it—they are another delightful addition to the list of

friends of great men who might form an inexhaustible subject for a tempting book. Saud was— "A born editor, and as such far more beloved by writers and thinkers than they were by each other. An excellent listener, he had also an express Dower of making and keeping good friends both amongst men and women,—a power in nowise lessened by a certain address which prevented his taking offence, or seeing people too closely. Rapidly becoming a universal counsellor, he certainly exercised more power in that way than as Permanent Secretary to the Academy. Itlarmontel was his affectionate colleague ; Holbach and Helvetius were his admirers Grimm, Diderot, and D'Alembert his enthusiastic friends; Voltaire approved of him ; Buffon was devoted to him ; Condorcet lived for years with him and his wife ; and last, but not least, he kept the peace with Rousseau. As a confidant of stormy-hearted ladies, specially of the witty Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, he had quite a reputation; whilst his love for English books and constitutional methods attracted to his house all the English and Seotch in Paris. He translated the histories of Robertson, and corre- sponded constantly with him ; he was intimate with David Hume, Horace Walpole, and the Edgeworths ; Garrick adopted him as his crony, and did not like parting with him for a single hour during his stay in Paris."

The pretty companion-picture of "little Madame Suard" we must leave to the reader of the book,—and delight in reading how once, and once only, this "Edwin and Angelina of the literary world," who instituted search-parties after each other if either was out after the appointed time, had a conjugal tiff. "She told him she had ceased to love him.

'That will come back,' he coldly replied. But it is because I love another,' she cried.''That will pass," was all his

answer. At another time a man friend, at whose feet she confessed she sat and who had taken possession of her mind, turned out to be Seneca. But she was always in a flatter, and her husband always calming her. Protected by Madame Necker, the young people became general favourites, and the

welcome hero and heroine of Miss Sichel's book. We will not rob her by extracting any more of their flavour; but for a last consolation to our insular incapacity we may quote from Riecoboni, the chief dramatic critic of that day, that the most

perfect dramatic talent, of both kinds, was to be found in London ; though even there it is amusingly characteristic to find that, according to Suard, England especially breathed the

tragic spirit, and only used its comedy to relax its spleen. No one better than Miss Siebel may help us further to relax that foggy organ. We have merely aided the reader to dip into her pages, but they make a kind of little salon in them-