Who was "Madame Geoffrin"? If you search the encyclopedias of today or the web sites, you come away with the feeling that here was a woman worthy of note who somehow has slipped through the cracks of recorded history and her contributions to society, as we know it, are lost. So I would like to make a small contribution in revisiting this remarkable woman.
Marie Therese Rodet was the daughter of a valet-de-chambre, a native of Dauphine, France. She was born in Paris on the 26th of June, 1699. Not much noteworthy has been written of her early years and it was her marriage late in life, when she was 50, to a very rich manufacturer in Faubourg St Antoine which permitted her to gain a place in history. She is said to have been imperfectly educated (Whatever that means? But I take it that she, as all women of the day, was not permitted to attend the places of learning reserved for men.), but had a genuine love of learning She gathered about her the philosophers and litterateurs of Paris. A seat in her salon was coveted, as here you had an audience for your views, artistic expression and the comradre, overseen by Madame Geoffrin. And, when she died in October 1777, she left legacies to her friends so that their work could continue.
One has to return to critics of the period to fully appreciate M. Geoffrin. Sainte-Beuve in his series of articles that appeared each Monday in the "Constitutionnel" wrote of M. Geoffrin, the full text of his essay on the Madame having translated by William Mathews in his book; Monday-Chats, which is the translation of Causeries du Lundi. In the chapter, which is quoted in its entirety, one gathers a view of M. Geoffrin. However, I feel the most striking aspect of this remarkable woman was her ability to succinctly encapsulate a thought in a homily that bears repeating. In these instances, I have bolded her statements as they were certainly bold.
C. A. Sainte-Beuve wrote:
"After all that I have said of the women of the eighteenth century, there
would be too great a lacuna (literally a hole in the ground) if I did not
speak of Madame Geoffrin, who was one of the most celebrated, and whose
influence was greater than that of any other. Madame Geoffrin wrote only four
or five letters that have been published; many true and piquant sayings were
here are quoted; but this would not be enough to keep here memory alive; that
would properly characterizes here and entitles her to the recollection of
posterity, is the fact that she had the completest, the best organized and, if
I may say it, the best managed, the best appointed salon (not a bar, but an
assemblage of notables, who probably were there because in addition to food
for the mind was also provided a generous table of food and drink) there has
been in France since salons came in vogue, that is to say, since the hotel
Rambouillet. The salon of Madame Geoffrin was one of the institutions of the
eighteenth century.
There are persons, perhaps, who imagine that, to form a salon, it is sufficient to be rich, to have a good cook, a comfortable house situated in a good neighborhood, a great desire to see people, and affability in receiving them. Such a lady, however, only succeeds in crowding people together pell-mell, in filling here salon, not in creating it; and if she is very rich, very active, and strongly inspired with the kind of ambition that seeks to shine, and if she is at the same time well informed regarding the list of invitations that should be made, and determined at whatever cost to draw to her house the kings or queens of the season, she may attain to the glory which some Americans win in Paris every winter: they have brilliant routs (here all of Webster's definitions are applicable, to wit, 1) a tumultuous or disorderly crowd of persons, 2) to root as in the case of swine (to find or get, by searching or rummaging, 3) to bellow or roar)), people attend them, hurry through them, and the next winter forget them. How far from this way of crowding people together, is the art of a legitimate establishment! This art was never better understood or practiced than in the eighteenth century, amidst the regular and quiet society of that time, and no one pushed it farther, had a greater conception of it, or employed it to more perfection and finish in all its details, than Madame Geoffrin (Eat your hearts out, "Renaissance" people. This was after all the standard fare of our country's elite, Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson and others who delighted in being hosted by France's knowing ones (See also Timothy Dexter ))). A Roman cardinal could not have lavished upon it more shrewdness, a greater degree of fine and quiet skill, than she expended upon it for thirty years. It is especially while studying this art, that one becomes convinced that a great social influence always has an adequate cause, and that, underlying these celebrated successes, which, after a long lapse of time, are summed up in a simple name which one repeats, there have been much labor, study and talent; in the case of Madame Geoffrin, it must be added, much good sense.
Madame Geoffrin appears only as an old person at the start, and her youth
steals away from us into a distance which we shall not attempt to penetrate.
Plebeian and very plebeian by birth, born in Paris in the last year of the
seventeenth century, Marie-Therese Rodet was married on the nineteenth of
July, 1713, to Pierre-Francois Geoffrin, an influential citizen, who was one
the lieutenant-colonels of the National Guard at that time, and one of the
founders of the glass manufacture. (Here I skip forward in C. A. Sainte-
Beuve's account of this strange and amazing woman to capture her remarks on
her husband, "One day a stranger asked Madame Geoffrin what had become of that
old gentleman who formerly was always present at here dinners, but was no
longer seen there, ""It was my husband; he is dead."" ) A letter of
Montesquieu's written in March, 1746, shows us Madame Geoffrin gathering at
that date very good company at her house, and already the centre of that
circle which was to continue to increase for twenty-five years. Whence sprang
this person who was so distinguished and so clever, and who seems by no means
to have been destine to such a role, either by her birth or by her worldly
position? What had been her early education? The empress of Russia,
Catherine, put that question one day to Madame Geoffrin, and was answered by a
letter which must be joined to all that Montaigne has said upon education:
"I lost my father and my mother while I was yet in the cradle. I was brought
up by an old grandmother, who had much talent and a well-formed head (note
phrenology was regarded as a most important index as to an individual's
ability). She had received very little education; but her mind was so
enlightened, so adroit, so active, that it never failed her; it always
supplied the place of knowledge. She spoke so agreeably of things which she
was unacquainted with that nobody wished that she understood them better, and
when her ignorance was too evident, she extricated herself by pleasantries
which disconcerted the pedants (those perhaps educated beyond their ability)
who would have humiliated her. She was so content with her lot, that she
regarded knowledge as something very useless to a woman. She would say; " I
have done so well without it, that I have never felt the want of it. If my
granddaughter is a fool, knowledge would make her presuming and insupportable;
if she has mind and sensibility , she will do as I have done, she will supply
her lack of knowledge by address and tact; and when she becomes wiser she will
learn for what she is best fitted, and she will learn it very quickly,: She
therefore, in my childhood, made me learn only to read; but she made me read a
good deal; she taught me how to think by making me reason; she taught me to
tell what I thought of them, and by telling me also her opinion of them. She
obliged me to give her an account of all my impulses and al my sentiments, and
she corrected them with so much sweetness and indulgence, that I never
concealed from her any of my thoughts or feelings; my inner self was as
visible to her as my outer. My education was unremitting ...."
I have said that Madame Geoffrin was born at Paris: she never left it, except to make in 1766, at the age of sixty-seven, her famous journey to Warsaw. Beyond this, she had never quitted the suburbs; and even when she went into the country to visit a friend, she habitually returned at evening, and did not sleep away from home. She believed that there is no better atmosphere than that of Paris, and wherever she might have been, she would have preferred her Saint-Honore street gutter, as Madame de Stael regretted that of Bac street. Madame Geoffrin adds one name more to the list of Parisian geniuses who have been gifted with affable and social qualities in so high a degree, and who are easily civilizers.
Her husband appears to have been of little account in her life, beyond securing to her the fortune which was the starting-point and the prime instrument of consideration which she knew how to acquire. M. Geoffrin is represented to us as old, and sitting in silence at the dinners which were given at his house to literary people and savants. It is related that attempts were made to get him to read some work of history or travels, and as a first volume was always given to him without his noticing it, he was pleased to find that "the work was very interesting, but that the author repeated himself a little." It is added that when reading a volume of the Encyclopedia, of Bayle, which had been printed in double columns, he would read a line of the first column and then the corresponding line of the second, which made him say that "the work appeared to him well enough, but a little abstract." These and such stories as we should expect to be told of a husband who was eclipsed by a famous wife.
Madame Geoffrin had a daughter, who became the marchiones of La Ferte-Imbault,
an excellent woman, it is said, but who lacked the calm good sense and the
perfect propriety of her mother, and of whom the latter said when showing her:
Madame Geoffrin, then, resembled her grandmother and, with this exception, she appears to have been unlike any of her family. Her talent, like all talents, was entirely personal. Madame Suard represents her as easily commanding respect "by her lofty stature, by her silvery hair covered with a cap tied under the chin, by her dress, so dignified and so becoming, and her looks in which judgement was mingled with goodness." Diderot, who had just played a game of piquet with her at the house of Baron Holback, in Grandval, where she had gone to dine (October, 1760), wrote to a friend: "Madame Geoffrin was very well. I notice always the noble and simple taste with which that woman is dressed: it was, that day, in a simple stuff, of a sober color, with large sleeves, -- with the smoothest and finest linen, and the most fastidious neatness in every respect." Madame Geoffrin was then sixty-one years old. This lady's dress, so exquisitely modest and simple, was peculiar to her, and recalls a similar art of Madame Maintenon. But Madame Geoffrin did not have to husband and to preserve the remains of a beauty which still shone forth by gleams in twilight; at an early day she frankly acknowledged herself to be old, and suppressed the after-season. Whilst the majority of women are busy in beating a retreat in good order, and in prolonging their yesterday's age, she voluntarily got the start, of time, and installed herself without grudging in her to-morrow's age. "All other women," said a person, in speaking of her, ":dress as it were, the day before; it is only Madame Geoffrin who is always dressed, as it were, to-morrow."
Madame Geoffrin is supposed to have taken her lessons in high life at Madame
Tencin's and to have been formed in that school. People quote that saying of
Madame de Tencin, who, seeing Mme. G., not long before Madame T.'s death,
assiduously visiting here, said to her visitors: "De you know what Madame
Geoffrin comes here for? She comes to see what she can gather from my
inventory." That inventory was worth the trouble, since it was composed at
the very beginning of Fontenelle, Montesquieu, and Mairan. Madame de Tencin
is much less remarkable as the author of sentimental and romantic stories, in
writing which she had, perhaps, the assistance of her nephews, than for her
intriguing spirit, her adroit management, and the boldness and
comprehensiveness of her judgements. Though she was not a very estimable
person, and some of her actions border on criminality, one found himself
captivated with her look of sweetness and almost of goodness, if he approached
her. Even when her own interest were by no means concerned, she would give
you unerring practical advice, by which you might profit in life. She knew the
end of the game in everything. More than one great politician would have done
well, even in our days, to have kept in mind this maxim, which she was
accustomed to repeat:
Madame Geoffrin, then, inherited, to some extent, the salon and method of Madame de Tencin; but, in confining her abilities to a private sphere, she enlarged them to a remarkable degree and in a way entirely honorable. Madame de Tencin moved heaven and earth to make her brother a prime minister; Madame Geoffrin laid politics aside, never intermeddled with religious matters, and, by her infinite art, by her skill in following and leading, became herself a kind of clever administrator and almost a great minister of society, one of those ministers who are the more influential because they are not such titularly, and are more permanent.
She had at the beginning a complete conception of that machine which is called a salon, and knew how to organize it completely with its smooth, imperceptible wheel-work, skillfully put together and kept agoing by continual care. She not only comprehended in her solicitude literary people, properly so called, but she looked after artist, sculptors, and painters, to bring them all into communication with each other and with the people of the world; in a word, she conceived the idea of the Encyclopaedia of the age acting and conversing around her. She had every week two regular dinners, that of Monday being for artist: there one saw the Vanloos, the Vernets, the Bouchers, the La Tours, the Veins, the Lagrenes, the Soufflots, the Lemoines, distinguished amateurs and patrons of the arts, and litterateurs like Marmontel to keep up the conversation, and promote mutual intercourse. On Wednesday was the dinner of the men of letters: one saw the D'Alembert, Mairan, Marivaux, Marmontel, the chevalier Chastelleux, Morellet, Saint-Lambert, Helvetius, Raynal, Grimm, Thomas, D'Holbach, and Burigny, of the Academy of Inscriptions. One woman only was admitted with the mistress of the house; it was Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Madame Geoffrin had observed that several women at a dinner distract the guest, disperse and scatter the conversation: she loved unity and to be herself the centre. At evening, Madame Geoffrin's house was still kept open, and the entertainment ended with a little supper, very simple and very elegant, given to five or six intimate friends at most, including this time some women who were the flower of the great world. Not a stranger of distinction lived in or passed through Paris without aspiring to be admitted to madame Geoffrin's. Princes came there simply as private persons; ambassadors did not budge from the place when once they had set foot there. Europe was represented there in the persons of the Caracole, the Crentzes, the Galianis, the Gattis, the Humes, and the Gibbons.
It is seen already that of all the salons of the eighteenth century, it is Madame Geoffrin's which is completest. It is more so than that of Madame Du Deffand, who, since the defection of D'Alembert and others in the train of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, has lost nearly all of the men-of-letters. The salon of Mademoisele Ldesinasse, with the exception of five or six friends who formed its base, was itself made up of people who had little mutual intimacy, who had been taken here and there, and whom that witty and intelligent woman assorted with infinite art. The salon of Madame Geoffrin, on the contrary, represents to us the great centre and resort of the eighteenth century. In its pure influence and in its lively regularity, it forms a counterpoise to the little dinners and licentious suppers of Mademoiselle Quinault, Mademoiselle Guimard, and the financiers, the Pelletiers, the la Popelinieres. Toward the end of its existence, this salon sees formed, in emulation and a little in rivalry of it, the salons of Baron D'Holbach and of Madame Helvetius, partly composed of the flower of Madame Geoffrin's guest, and partly of some heads which Madame Geoffrin had found too lively for admission to her dinners. The age became weary, at last, of being restrained and led in leading-strings by her; it wanted to speak of everything in loud tones and to its heart's content.
The spirit which Madame Geoffrin carried into the management and the economy
of that little empire which she had so liberally planned, was a natural,
precise, and shrewd spirit, which descended to the smallest details, a spirit
that was at once ingenious, active, and gentle. She had the carvings in her
rooms planed off: it was the same with her morally, and Nothing in relief
seemed to be her motto.
Such was the writing of Sainte-Beuve in his Monday-Chats. William Mathews in selecting these writings gave new breath and scope to the eighteenth century.
Her pithy sayings are reminiscent of Maggie Elizabeth Shelton Wortham's
ability to observe and summarize. One of Maggie's, I remember so well
was;
When one considers the roles of the "hostess" in presiding over formal (and informal) gatherings, it is a great loss that in this country we have dispensed with ladies who possess this talent; Perle Mesta represented our country when Eisenhower was President and Barbara Hower served equally well during Johnson's administration. Unfortunately when the First Lady tries to assume this role, she can only fail, for she is exposed. She neither can act as a shield for the President or as a spokesman.
***
Monday Chats, Sainte-Beuve, translation and commentary by William Mathews, S. C. Griggs and Company, 1882.
It is of note that Sainte-Beuve wrote of Alex de Tocqueville in volume ten of his works, Monday Chats. Thus one can gain a second "opinion" of Tocqueville and his "Democracy in America."
****