CHILDHOOD.
Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, renowned as Madame Roland, was born in Paris, March 17, 1754, in a house on the Quai de l'Horloge, near the Pont Neuf. She was thus just the same age as Louis XVI., and about a year older than Marie Antoinette. It would be difficult to find more common-place surroundings than those amidst which one of the greatest of Frenchwomen was ushered into the world.
That a daughter of shepherds and rustics should have become the saviour of her country is not surprising. For the primitive simplicity of those occupations seems the proper nursery of heroism. But it is surprising that in the Paris of Louis XV., from the unimaginative class of small shopkeepers, there should suddenly spring a child, in soul the heiress of the great men of antiquity.
But the actual parents were far from suspecting the native land of the little traveller that was born to them. They had probably never heard of Aristides the Just and Brutus the Tyrannicide. Gatien Phlipon, a chaser and worker in enamel, carried on a pretty thriving business; for this was the time when elaborately engraved watches, snuff-boxes, and shoe-buckles were so much sought after, the designs often being works of art in their way. M. Phlipon employed several apprentices, and was successful as long as he applied himself steadily to his calling. A restless wish to make money and rise in the world was, however, attended with the opposite results. Constantly engaged in speculation, such as buying diamonds to resell at a profit, he neglected his business only to lose money in that as also in his other ventures. He was tall and good-looking, proud of his personal advantages, and in every way a gay, vain, quick-witted and pleasure-loving Parisian.
Marguerite Bimont, his wife, in most respects his exact opposite, was a woman of the highest rectitude, and of an almost saintly purity of life. Firm yet gentle, of reserved and dignified manners, her retiring habits formed a strong contrast to those of her neighbours. She rarely received visitors, and never stirred from home except to visit her aged mother or her husband's relatives, or to go to church. No doubt that her example exercised a powerful influence on her daughter's character.
Marie-Jeanne, or Manon, as she was familiarly called, was the second of seven children, of whom all but herself died in infancy. According to French custom she was put out to nurse, and the first two years of her life were passed in the neighbourhood of Arpajon, in the care of a buxom, kindly young country-woman, who conceived the greatest affection for her charge, and never lost sight of her in after life. At the age of two Manon was taken home by her parents, a thorough little rustic brimming over with health and spirits. She was never taught to read, but had mastered that accomplishment at the mature age of four, when, according to her, the chief business of her education might be regarded as finished, so assiduously did she thenceforth devote herself to study. Let her only have books and flowers, and she wanted nothing else. She was a thoughtful, affectionate child, lively without being boisterous, and easily amenable to reason; but, however tractable, violence or threats made her proportionately obstinate. The severest punishment her mother ever found it necessary to inflict was to address her as "Mademoiselle," accompanying the word by a certain look and tone of voice. Not so her father. A man of hasty and violent temper, he sometimes had recourse to physical chastisement, which never failed to raise a spirit of intense resistance in his daughter.
One such scene made an indelible impression on the future Madame Roland. She was then six years old, and happened to be suffering from some childish ailment. Her mother had poured out the prescribed dose of physic, and was holding it to her lips. Disgusted by the smell, the child involuntarily drew back, but, at the mother's gentle remonstrance, made ineffectual efforts to swallow the unsavoury draught. In the meanwhile the father had come in, and taking Manon's aversion for obstinacy, he got very angry, seized hold of the whip, and began beating her. From that moment she lost all desire to obey, and declared that she would not take the medicine. Her father administered whipping the second; uttering loud screams, she now tried to upset the glass. A movement betraying this intention, enraged her father completely, and he threatened to whip her for the third time. From that moment a sudden and violent revulsion of feeling took place in Manon. Her sobs ceased, she dried her tears, all her faculties became concentrated in an intense effort of will. She rose from her bed, turned to the wall, and nerved herself to receive the blows in silence. "They might have killed me on the spot," she says in her famous Memoirs, penned in a prison within a stone's-throw of the scaffold, "without my uttering so much as a sigh; nor will it cost me more to-day to ascend the guillotine than it did then to yield to a barbarous treatment which might have killed but not conquered me."
This was her father's last effort at education. Not that he was habitually unkind or cruel in his treatment of his only child. On the contrary, he idolized his daughter, especially in her early girlhood, when his susceptible vanity was flattered by the attention she attracted. His method of dealing with her must be laid to the charge of the manners of the times, severe and harsh to children, where not modified by exceptional refinement of nature. However, as we have said, M. Phlipon henceforth wisely avoided pitting his will against his daughter's, and entirely left her guidance to the wise and loving hands of his wife. But he was very proud of the child's precocious intelligence, and for her station and years she had an array of masters which goes far to prove that her parents must have considered hers a very exceptional nature.
At seven years of age Manon was sent every Sunday to attend catechism, as it was called, in order to prepare her for confirmation. This examination was commonly held in a church or chapel where a few benches were placed in a corner, and was principally held for children of the poorer classes; but as her uncle, the Abbé Bimont, an amiable, kind-hearted priest, was at that time in charge of this class, her mother judged it well for her to attend, especially as she felt sure that her daughter's memory would always secure her the first place.
On one of these occasions the rector put in an appearance; and in order to show off his superior theological learning, he asked Manon, with ill-concealed triumph, how many orders of spirits there were in the celestial hierarchy. And the terrible child answered, nothing daunted, that there were nine—as might be learned from the preface to the Missal—as angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, &c. She was already deeply versed in the Bible, as well as in the psalter, the only books to be found at her grandmother's house. This old lady, whom her mother took her to see every Sunday after vespers, was in her dotage, to the poor child's bewilderment. She invariably sat in the same chair, by the window in summer and in winter near the fire-place, and gave no signs of animation except such as might emanate from a vindictive old fairy. For instance, when her grandchild, in high spirits, skipped about the room, she invariably burst into tears; but no sooner did she have a fall or knock herself than the palsied dame showed her merriment by a hoarse chuckling laugh. Such conduct was naturally calculated to hurt Manon's feelings; but her mother eventually made her understand that these visits were a duty not to be dispensed with.
Manon's love of reading and thirst for knowledge used to hurry her out of bed at five in the morning. Barefooted, she would steal to her mother's room where her books lay on a table, and do her lessons with such eagerness that her progress took her masters by surprise. Among these we hear of an anomalous sort of personage who had successively figured as chorister-boy, soldier, deserter, capuchin, and discharged clerk, and had come up penniless from the country with a wife and three children. This Jack-of-all-trades, who rejoiced in a fine falsetto voice, was employed to teach her singing, freely borrowing money of her parents the while, and finally disappearing in Russia. Her dancing master, a Savoyard, was wizened, snub-nosed, frightfully ugly, and with a wen on his cheek which showed to advantage as with his chin he nipped his pocket viol. Fourthly, there was a gigantic Spaniard, with hairy hands like Esau, who gave her lessons on the guitar; and, finally, a timid man of fifty, with rubicund face, who taught her to play on the violoncello. As the latter only instructed her for a short time, a Reverend Father Colomb enters on the scene who, to console her, occasionally used to send over his violoncello to accompany her guitar. Besides all this, her uncle used to teach her some Latin; while her father, to complete the curriculum, made her learn drawing and the use of the graving tool.
But the real business of education, as before mentioned, consisted not so much in these lessons as in her insatiable reading of all the books she could find, consisting chiefly of standard works, few in number but of excellent quality. After having devoured all those belonging to her parents, she came one day, while ferreting about the house, on a fresh store which lasted her for a long while. This happy find belonged to one of her father's apprentices named Courson, who in the course of time became tutor to the pages at Versailles. This studious young man always kept a certain number of volumes in a little hiding-place of his own in her father's atelier. Now this atelier adjoined a good-sized room, resplendent with looking-glasses and pictures, where Manon was in the habit of having her lessons. A recess on one side of the mantel-piece admitted of a closet being fenced off from the main room, furnished with bedstead, table, chair, and a few shelves, which till within a year of her marriage served her at once for bedroom and study. From this nook, as a mouse from its hole, the child would noiselessly sally forth when work was at a stand-still, and, seizing one of the precious books, would quickly dart back to her retreat. Here, elbow on table and cheek resting on her left hand, what wonderful voyages of discovery did she not make into far lands and backward centuries! Descriptions of travel were her delight, pathetic stories deeply touched her; but one day there fell into her hands a book that kindled in her a new life.
This book was Plutarch. The humble little closet on the Quai de l'Horloge was changed into a temple where the best and bravest of men again became incarnate in the shaping imagination of a visionary child. Who can precisely explain or define that strong historic grasp, which is almost like a sixth sense, and seems inborn with some children. Give to such a one a history of Rome, and it comes with a power and a passion and a haunting reality as of memories called up from an obliterated past. Plutarch became a landmark in the life of Manon Phlipon. She carried the volume about with her everywhere; she absorbed its contents; she took it to church with her. This was in Lent 1763, when she was barely nine. Without knowing it she had become a Republican, and would often weep at not being a native of Sparta or Rome. Henceforth she was ripe for the Revolution.
By-and-by she became absorbed in Telemachus and in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. She used to put herself in the place of the fictitious heroines; and while fancying herself Eucharis or Erminia, her heart used to beat and her voice to falter with emotion. Sometimes her mother would request her to read from one or other of these books, but there were certain passages which she felt so acutely that no entreaties would have prevailed on her to utter them aloud. Having on one occasion observed her mother reading one of the identical works which she had previously perused with considerable inward misgivings, she now went more openly to work in her studies, and the obliging young apprentice seemed to buy books on purpose for her to read.
Voltaire followed next in order; and on one occasion the little girl was discovered by a stout, forbidding old lady, who had come to call on her mother, deeply engrossed in Candide! Solemn remonstrances being addressed by this officious visitor to Madame Phlipon, the child was ordered to put the book back in its place. In spite of this momentary prohibition, her parents never in any way interfered with her reading, unless the mother kept Rousseau out of her reach, which Madame Roland thought possible, as, with the former's deep knowledge of her daughter, she would apprehend no really bad influence from the writings of Voltaire, while dreading that of Rousseau on her susceptible temperament. Whether from design or accident, Manon only became acquainted with the latter's works after her mother's death, and they made as great an epoch in her life at one-and-twenty as Plutarch had done at nine.
These grave studies were occasionally varied by a walk in the Tuileries Gardens on Sunday afternoons. Her mother loved to dress her as if she had been a doll. Though herself very simply attired, she spared no expense in the little girl's bravery, and would deck her out in a fashionable silk corps-de-robe, fitting tightly and displaying the figure to advantage, while made full below the waist and sweeping in a long train behind. These gala days were anything but festive to the studious Manon; for she used to shrink from the hair-dressing operations which often forced tears from her eyes. On such occasions her dark abundant locks would be pulled about and put into curl-papers, and frizzed and burned with hot irons according to the custom of the day. These silken splendours and hair-crimpings were only displayed on Sundays, holidays and birthdays; on ordinary occasions Manon wore a plain linen frock, in which she frequently accompanied her mother to market, or was even sent across the way to buy a little salad or parsley. And the future heroine of the Gironde would infuse so much courtesy and dignity into her manner of making these purchases, that the astonished fruiterer always served her before his other customers. She was also at times called into the kitchen, where her mother taught her to make omelettes and other dishes, an acquirement which proved useful afterwards, when her husband's delicate digestion frequently induced her to prepare with her own hands the food he took.
Madame Phlipon, who was pious without being a bigot, had unobtrusively instilled her religious principles into her daughter's mind. Although Manon's infant reason had been troubled by the idea that God should have permitted the transformation of the Devil into a serpent, her feelings were gradually touched by the moral beauty of Christianity; and after her first confirmation, the teachings of the New Testament took deep and deeper hold of her. She now began to meditate on the mysteries of faith and eternal salvation, and felt that she was but ill-prepared for her first communion. Thereupon she became convinced that she ought to enter a convent, where her devotion would be entirely untrammelled; and while daily studying the folio Lives of the Saints, she deplored those happy days of martyrdom when persecuted Christians triumphantly proclaimed their creed in the very fangs of death. Alas! the child's wish was granted to the woman: to her was indeed given the martyr's death and the martyr's crown. Nor did she, in the fulness of time, falter in her new faith beneath the knife of the guillotine.
In this solemn state of mind she at last, one evening, took courage to proffer her request to her parents. "I fell at their feet," she says, "shedding at the same time a torrent of tears which almost deprived me of speech. Troubled and surprised, they asked me the reason of my strange excitement. 'I am going to beg of you,' I said, sobbing, 'to do something which grieves me sorely but which conscience demands. Send me to a nunnery.' They raised me from the ground. My good mother was much moved. While it was pointed out to me that I had never been refused any reasonable request, they asked me what had put me into this frame of mind. I replied that I wished to prepare for my first communion in the deepest possible seclusion." As her parents expressed themselves ready to comply with her desire, she was presently placed in the Sisterhood of the Congregation, in the Rue Neuve St. Étienne, Faubourg St. Marceau. This happened on the 7th of May 1765, when she was eleven years old. By a curious coincidence, the convent where she then passed one of the happiest years, of childhood was touching the prison where she came to be confined in her prime.