FLIGHT TO THE CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE.
While all sorts and conditions of men were thus courting the hand of the magnificent Marie Phlipon, was her life so sweet a one as to make her averse to exchange it for a home of her own? On the contrary; the serenity of her studious days became more and more clouded by anxieties, cares, and fears for the future. Her father, the vain-glorious, fickle Parisian, had loved his daughter as long as their interests seemed identical; but they no sooner began to clash than he was ready to sacrifice her future to his caprice. In spite of Manon's efforts to make the house pleasant to him, and to while away his evenings by taking a hand at cards, he found these pleasures tame to those that awaited him abroad. He began absenting himself more and more, formed connections at coffee-houses, lost his business habits, contracted a passion for gaming, and began by spending not only his own savings, but the money which, according to French law, belonged of right to his daughter. Manon, with her shrewd common-sense, saw that, as her father's custom fell off, he tried to retrieve himself by gambling; she suspected, besides, that he was squandering his money on an illicit connection. To add to her perplexities, she feared that she herself was the innocent cause of his demoralisation, and that, but for her, he might marry again, and once more take to orderly habits.
The event was not one to be desired for her own sake, for she was mistress of the house and herself, in a way quite unusual for French girls; but the hope of rescuing her father from profligacy, improvidence, and an indigent old age decided her. There is something not a little comic in this reversal of the mutual relations of parent and child—the wise daughter pondering how she may suitably marry the flighty papa of fifty-five, and not daring to let him guess her plans, lest he should set himself tooth and nail against them. A suitable woman was discovered, too, and the parties seemed mutually willing; but, the lady being of an undecided turn of mind, nothing came of the affair.
Her uncles, more especially her great-uncle and god-father who was devoted to her, found it necessary to insist on M. Phlipon's taking an inventory of his property, previous to letting his daughter have the share which rightfully belonged to her; but they did it in such a bungling and dilatory fashion that months and years elapsed before any effective steps were taken, and in the meanwhile he had not only frittered away his capital, but come to regard Manon as the cause of these troubles, so that sometimes he hardly came near his house, or, if he did, avoided speaking to her. Her life, however, was an exceedingly busy one, for, while persistently carrying on her studies, she was a most punctilious housekeeper, looked after her fathers, diminishing custom in his absence, was frequently engaged on some charitable errand or other, and at one time, in order to procure a holiday for a hard-worked cousin, she offered to serve behind the counter of the husband's shop in her absence. Behold, then, the woman who was to play so momentous a part in one of the most momentous periods of history, trudging backwards and forwards between her house and the Rue Montmartre, in the dusty August weather, diligently selling spectacles and watch-glasses, with a head stuffed full of Socrates and Plato.
Her position was no doubt a unique one; for, while sometimes relegated to the servants' hall when she went visiting with her relatives, she was at others the friend and correspondent of men of high rank and abilities. She took it all very philosophically, and attached herself to right action, she says, "with the zeal and desperation of a man who, in a ship-wreck, clings with all his might to the only plank that is left him." But what wrung a cry from that strong soul was neither unkindness, nor loneliness, nor impending destitution; it was the sense of a great force wasted, of potential powers doomed to perish unused. Once only she bursts forth with, "In truth I am not a little annoyed at being a woman. I ought either to have had another sex, another soul, or another country. I ought to have been a Spartan or a Roman woman, or at least a Frenchman. As the latter I should have chosen the Republic of Letters for my country, or one of those States where one may dare be a man and obey the law only. My displeasure looks very insane; but I feel as if riveted to a manner of existence not properly my own. I am like those animals transplanted to our menageries from the torrid soil of Africa, who intended to develop in a tropical climate, are shut up in a narrow cage hardly able to contain them. My mind and heart are hampered on all sides by the obstacles of custom and the chains of prejudice, and I exhaust my strength in vainly shaking my fetters. To what use can I turn my enthusiasm for the public good, when I can do absolutely nothing to serve it?"
Yes; in spite of stoicism, philosophy, and a wise reflection on the noble functions of wifehood and motherhood, was it possible for such a nature as that not to rebel against the tyranny of petticoats? One cannot but be surprised that, with such a sense of native power, predilection for literary pursuits, and facility of expression, Manon should not have turned her pen to practical account. Michelet somewhat captiously makes it a reproach, both to Madame Roland and to Robespierre, that they were born scribblers, and were unable to see, think, feel anything without straightway pulling out their "tablets." It was so, no doubt, and from a very tender age Madame Roland had begun, in her letters to Sophie, chronicling every incident in her inner or outer life. On first opening the two bulky volumes of this correspondence (carefully edited by M. Dauban), written by a young girl leading an uneventful life amid seemingly common-place surroundings, the prospect of their perusal is rather appalling. But this strong nature, through which life continually rushes with a torrent of thoughts, sensations, and feelings, invests the most trivial incidents with fresh dramatic interest. A Sunday afternoon walk to the Jardin du Roi becomes an idyll; midnight vigils, passed in the study of some ancient philosopher, grow astir with action; girlish friendship is invested with the glamour of romance. The more one reads, the more fully does this powerful nature unfold itself, and such as she is at fourteen shall we find her still at thirty-eight.
Besides her letters to Sophie and Henriette Cannet, often complete little essays in themselves, Marie Phlipon wrote a number of detached pieces, entitled, Mes Loisirs, "Leisure Hours." Most of these have been published in her collected works. They are short prose essays, of a reflective and elegiac character, "On the Soul," "On Melancholy," "On Friendship," "On the Close of Day," "Reverie in the Wood of Vincennes," "On the Multiplication of Men being the Cause of Despotism, and of the Corruption of Morals," and so forth. They possess less biographical and even literary interest than the letters, then her favourite style of composition.
But a young lady who was capable of expressing herself clearly and concisely on some of the questions which have exercised the powers of the most robust thinkers, questions which lay at the very root of the approaching crisis, should have been in no perplexity as to her future vocation. Nature had endowed her with a great gift; the trammels of opinion forbade her to make use of it. She rattled her chains and yet had no heart to break them asunder. It was only when by an unforeseen concurrence of circumstances fate had cast her in the very focus of action, when by her daily contact with men at the head of affairs she gradually learned to measure her powers with theirs, that she came fully to realise the extent of her own abilities. But, indeed, at this time she held avowed authorship in horror; and, on being urged by a friend to devote herself seriously to composition, her outburst was that she would sooner cut off her right hand than turn authoress. If a woman writes a good book, she said, a male writer invariably gets the credit of it; if a bad one, she incurs the full ridicule of failure. She did not perceive that she was one of the few women who could have vindicated the claims of her sex, and in this respect she showed less originality than Mary Wollstonecraft and Madame de Staël, her juniors by a decade or so. In later life she considerably modified her views, and bitterly regretted having no time left to write, as, "if she could not be the Tacitus, she might, perhaps, have aspired to be the Mrs. Macaulay of the French Revolution."
At the same time we must bear in mind that it was not the literary or æsthetic, but the moral side of life which possessed the greatest attraction for Madame Roland. In her judgment the life of woman as wife and mother always appeared the highest and best. She perceived that every concentrated effort of the imagination tends to isolate the individual, and to disturb that equilibrium of the faculties which essentially constitutes the harmony of life. She considered no function more important than that of the woman of fine nature and cultivated faculties regulating a household or estate, with many people depending on her care and management, bringing up children in the consciousness that in them her soul is moulding the future of the race. Because, in the exercise of these duties, the most diversified attributes are called into play, love itself being its guiding principle. This was Manon's ideal of life for a woman, and it is practically that of the statesman and ruler in miniature.
But the very strength of her convictions as to the duties of wifehood and motherhood rendered marriage more difficult to her. Her decided views as to the bringing up of children nade her very critical as to the partner who wished to share this responsibility. About all this she spoke in the frankest way to her friends. It seemed, therefore, that she would soon be reduced to teaching or needlework, that last resource of destitute women. Her father's dishonest waste had now reduced the savings of thirty years' labour to about five hundred and eighty pounds. Worse than this, M. Phlipon had lost all his custom, and, what was a greater affliction to his daughter, his honesty into the bargain. "I don't know how it is," she tells Sophie, "but every time my father gives me a fresh cause of annoyance, I feel an impulse of tenderness towards him, which seems to be there on purpose to enhance my suffering." Her friend, in trying to comfort her, remarks that the faults of our children are more humiliating to us than those of our parents, but added a remark calculated to cut Manon to the quick, that "from our birth we are destined to wear the moral liveries of our parents!"
Poor Manon's best anodyne was an increase of benevolent activity. She was always at this time engaged in some active work of charity or other; now visiting some destitute woman or spending her dress-money on some deeply-indebted father of a family. She was now approaching the time of her majority, fixed at twenty-five by the French law. Even her dilatory relatives felt it necessary to take some decisive steps to bring about a division of property in favour of the daughter. But these steps, by humiliating M. Phlipon, only aggravated the position of affairs. In consequence of this he became so irritated, that at last, in June 1779, he bade his daughter leave his house once and for ever.
This violent threat was not a little calculated to upset Manon's equanimity. Practical and sagacious as she was, she could not help seeing the insurmountable obstacles which confronted a young unmarried woman the moment she should be cut adrift from her family. For such an one there seemed to be no inch of standing room on her native soil, and she must either be prepared to bow her neck beneath the yoke, or seek shelter in the tomb-like isolation of conventual life. Englishwomen, even at that time, were already acting with considerably more independence, and the brave and beautiful Mary Wollstonecraft, not many years from the present date, settled as a female author in London, "to be the first of a new genus." But Madame Roland's heroism did not consist in braving public opinion; on the contrary, she considered a certain conformity to it as part of the duty which the individual owed to the social compact—duty to which was, from first to last, the motive spring of her actions.
A reconciliation having been effected between M. Phlipon and his daughter, the latter wrote to Sophie:—"The cares and worries of housekeeping are not repugnant to me. With a lively taste for the acquisition of knowledge, I yet feel that I could pass the remainder of my life without opening a book or being bored by not doing so. Let only the home I live in be embellished by order, peace, and harmony, let me only feel that I have helped towards making it so, and be able to tell myself at the close of each day that it has been usefully spent for the good of a few, and I shall value existence and daily bless the rising of the sun."
With her high conception of the responsibilities of marriage, it cannot surprise us that Marie Phlipon could not make up her mind to accept one of the many wooers who had asked for her hand, in spite of her forlorn position, feeling, as she did, a stumbling-block in her father's way. Yet outlet, save in a makeshift marriage, there seemed none for this grandly organized creature. At first, as we have seen, she had been ready to take the conventional middle-class French view of marriage. Provided that positions were suitable, parents agreed, the man not too repulsive, it seemed as if, in spite of inward misgivings, she must subordinate her own wishes in the matter to what was expected of her. But the more she reflected on the marriage state, the more clearly she came to see that no one had a right to demand of her that she should enter into so close and life-long a union with any person for whom she did not feel love, or at least entertain the highest regard; and, after a while, she was convinced that her duty lay, not in contracting such a marriage, but in opposing it, and then she stood firm as a rock, determined to do the humblest work, the most menial drudgery, to take service if need be, rather than sell herself in marriage for a mess of pottage. At the same time, in spite of her admiration of the Nouvelle Héloïse, which had made her realise the exquisiteness of domestic joys, she was not haunted by visions of romantic love, and had but few illusions in regard to men. According to the severe Roman ideal, she regarded marriage as a union to be entered into from duty more than passion, and from a high devotion to the family, because on the family depended the welfare of the State. But nothing seemed more improbable than that in her circle of acquaintances she should ever have a suitor to meet so stern an ideal.
One day, however, there presented himself, with a letter of introduction from the faithful Amiens friend, a tall, meagre, rigorous gentleman, of a sallow complexion, already worn-looking, and scant of hair about the temples, but with the unmistakable stamp of character about him. He had the air and manners of a scholar, was careless in his dress, and spoke in an unmodulated voice—Manon was peculiarly susceptible to the sound of voices—with chopped-up sentences, as if he were scant of breath. But as he warmed up in conversation, a benevolent smile lit up his countenance, and the range and thoroughness of his acquirements lent a keen interest to his society. This was Roland de la Platière, of whom Lavater, who saw him some years afterwards in Zurich, exclaimed warmly: "You reconcile me to French travellers." Inspector of Manufactures at Amiens, he had often heard the Cannets speak of their remarkable friend at Paris, had seen her portrait hanging up in the drawing-room, and at last volunteered to play the postman to this phœnix of girls. On the other hand, Roland's praises had frequently been sung by Sophie, who said in introducing him—"You will receive this letter by the hand of the philosopher of whom I have spoken to you already, M. Roland, an enlightened man of antique manners; without reproach, except for his passion for the ancients, his contempt of his age, and his too high estimation of his own virtue."
The first interview took place as early as January 1776, and Manon was impressed by the dignity, uprightness, and pride which stamped his individuality, while his erudition inspired her with admiration. But the dogmatic narrowness and pedantry of his nature did not escape her. He awoke in her neither the tenderness which she had felt for Lablancherie, not the intellectual enthusiasm Sainte Lette had done. As compared with the latter, she told her friend some weeks later, "M. Roland is a mere savant." Nevertheless, she was not altogether indifferent, and a certain feminine preoccupation peeps out from the following lines, sent to Amiens immediately after this visit:—"Our conversation touched on a thousand interesting topics. I stammered a little, without being too shy; I received him unceremoniously in my baigneuse and white camisole, in that negligé which you used to like in the summer mornings. (This was in January.) He may have seen from my manner that I was charmed by his visit; and has asked my leave to come again, which was willingly granted."
The leave was not neglected. M. Roland presented himself again before the fair stammerer within the month. This time she was quite convinced that she had made the most unfavourable of impressions on the critical Roland. Of all the disenchanting accidents that beauty is liable to, she was then suffering from a violent cold in the head, which, next to seasickness, has, perhaps, the most sobering effect on the raptures of love. To add to her discomfort, her father, who never left her on such occasions, if he could help it, and to whom these philosophical talks were caviare, fidgeted about the room, till she felt so teased that she had not even sense enough left to put any questions to M. Roland. Everyone knows that the great art of conversation is to ask people the right kind of questions. Only give a man the opportunity of bringing out his pet theories and favourite stories, and he will pronounce you the most admirable talker he ever met. Manon, who possessed the talent of listening, was, no doubt, mistress of the art of drawing people out; but whether she failed on this occasion or not, Roland not only gave free vent to his opinions, but he startled and shocked her by his contemptuous mention of some of her favourite authors.
On the whole this visit left an uncomfortable impression behind it, and Marie was convinced that it would be the last. Nevertheless, M. Roland repeated his calls, undismayed by disfiguring colds and fuming fathers; possibly, with the obliviousness of men to such sublunary trifles, he had remained in blissful ignorance of them. In May 1776, Manon wrote to her friend that on this occasion she has learned to appreciate M. Roland better. "I have been charmed by the solidity of his judgment, the interest of his conversation, and the variety of his acquirements."
In the summer of this year Roland left France for Italy, where he remained until 1778. He corresponded with Mademoiselle Phlipon during his absence, and these letters, afterwards corrected and revised by both, were published under the title Letters written from Switzerland, Italy, Sicily, and Malta in 1776, 1777, 1778. This book of Italian travel is, in Michelet's estimation, the best work on that subject produced in France during the eighteenth century.
The manuscripts of which Roland had made his young friend the depositary, and which consisted in descriptions of travel, sketches of projected works, and personal anecdotes, gave her a better opportunity of becoming acquainted with his mind than a number of personal interviews would have done. They increased her regard for Roland, and on his return from Italy, she found a genuine friend in him. Their relations towards each other were apparently purely those of friendship, and the fact of Manon classing Roland with Sainte Lette and a certain Boismorel, two seniors whom she venerated for their wisdom and knowledge, shows that the idea of looking at him in any other light was far from her thoughts. Yet the staid philosopher could not come thus frequently in contact with the glowing nature of this magnificent girl without experiencing a stronger emotion than friendship. His feelings insensibly changed, and in the beginning of 1779 he made Manon an offer of his hand. She, who respected and honoured him more than any man she had met, felt highly gratified by this mark of affection. The prospect it opened of passing her life with one guided by the same lofty notions of duty and patriotism as herself, had always been the limit of her aspirations. True, this woman of five-and-twenty, in the full energy of life, would have been capable of a very different feeling from that inspired in her by the grave middle-aged Roland, more than twenty years her senior; nevertheless, it was a marriage in harmony with her preconceived views, and the consideration which prevented her from accepting him at first was not one of sentiment but of pride.
The French custom of the woman bringing a dowry to her husband is so general, that to a proud nature, such as Manon's, the idea of entering the marriage state empty-handed, owing everything to the man she wedded, was almost intolerable. Shrinking from the idea of marrying into a family who would consider M. Roland's choice as one beneath his name and expectations, she put all these objections before her wooer, with the cool impartiality of a third party, and advised him to desist from his suit. To advise a man to desist usually has the opposite effect of making him persist the more obstinately. This happened in Roland's case, rather more self-willed and obstinate than the generality of men. He, no doubt, told her that he did not wish to wed her dowry or her father, but herself alone; and, at last, he obtained her consent formally to write to her father. But M. Phlipon's conduct on this occasion showed that whatever good humour and geniality might have originally been his, had now turned into the most unmitigated scoundrelism. Not content with beggaring his daughter, his baseless spite now begrudged her this prospect of a settled home: probably the idea of finding a censor in this virtuous son-in-law galled his vanity. At any rate, after having vainly tried to tease her and flatter her and scold her into taking a husband, he now wrote a rude and humiliating refusal to Roland, of which he only informed his daughter after the event.
This last drop filled her cup to overflowing. She considered that her father might possibly pay more attention to his business if left entirely to his own devices, and that it would be more becoming in herself to make some kind of livelihood than drift into helpless destitution along with him. No sooner had she come to this resolution than she informed Roland that, fearful of becoming the source of fresh humiliations to him, she begged him to desist from his suit. Thus, without an open rupture, she, at the age of five-and-twenty, left the home which had been such a scene of "carking cares" since her mother's death.
With her vigorous health and robust frame, Manon could laugh at privations, and there would have been nothing very painful in her lot, but that all the avenues to the nobler kinds of work were closed to her, and that, with her incomparable powers, there yet seemed nothing for her to do but, if possible, to teach "the use of the globes," and a little feeble music to half a dozen pupils—provided always that she could get them in her rather anomalous position. Young and unprotected, there seemed no course open but refuge in a nunnery. To a nunnery she went, therefore, the same where she had passed such moments of religious ecstasy in her childhood, but now in how different a mood and mental attitude! Permitted to become an inmate without sharing in the conventual life, she, for twenty écus a year, hired a small apartment, which was perched under the roof like a swallow's nest.
In the beginning of November 1779 she took possession of this dwelling-place, and her poverty was so great that some potatoes, a dish of rice, or a few haricot beans, prepared by herself with a little butter and a pinch of salt, were her sole fare. Insufficiently nourished, poorly clad, and solitary, she neither lost her courage, nor her gaiety, and, curled up on a high school desk to look out over the snow-covered roofs of Paris, she, from her lofty perch, could see the people moving like midges through the white, narrow thoroughfares, or at times would seem very near to the beatified calm when the great, still, winter moon flooded her little garret with a solemn splendour. The narrow street in which she lived, the Rue Neuve Saint Étienne, was canonised by the memories of such men as Pascal, Rollin, and Bernardin de St. Pierre, and here, with the clear chant of the young novices, and the loud-resounding organ-peals, sometimes floating up to her, she passed the short bleak days and long cold nights, "armed with her pen, surrounded by scattered papers, in the company of a Jean Jacques and a grand Xenophon," and knew such thoughts as are only given to strong souls fearlessly breasting adversity.
Only twice a week did she emerge from the convent walls; once to call on her father, whose linen she took away to mend, and once to pay a visit to her aged relatives. For months she never varied the monotonous tenour of her life, but trusted that in the course of time she would get some pupils and be able to reconcile the nuns to such an unusual proceeding. In the meantime she tried to fit herself more thoroughly for this task. Her friends in Amiens entreated her in vain to come and make her home with them. They had advanced her a little sum, sufficient to enable her to move at all, and she was delighted to owe this to their friendship. But, imperceptibly, her confidences to Sophie and Henriette had grown less expansive. She, who had been wont to descant so freely on everybody and everything, was grown somewhat reticent, and Sophie felt and fretted under the change, in spite of Manon's assurances of her unaltered feelings.
Her tongue was tied in regard to Roland. She intuitively felt that his proud nature would resent her enlarging too freely on him in her letters. She was in honour bound to keep the secret of his offer and rejection. For months now he had made no further advances, though he knew of her retirement to the convent, and continued writing to her. A very ardent lover, guessing, one would imagine, that the lady he wished to marry had left her father's house on his account, would, without a moment's hesitation, have presented himself at the convent gates, and, similar to the knight in the ancient ballad, have lustily knocked thereat till his love had perforce come out to him. Not so M. Roland. No doubt he would have considered it undignified to do anything in a hurry, or from an impulse of passion. He had waited four years before he made up his mind to ask Manon to marry him, and now he coolly waited six or seven months more to reconsider his resolution. Her letter had, perhaps, too ably put before him all the disadvantages of such a connection. The fatal cogency of Manon's arguments seems to have had a sobering effect on her suitors generally. But certainly Roland would have been more lover-like if, scattering all arguments to the winds, he had at once pressed his suit more hotly than before. The six months' delay did him an irreparable mischief, Madame Roland confesses "that it stripped every illusion from such sentiments as she had entertained for him." He came at last, however, conversed with the recluse behind the grating of the convent, saw her looking more blooming and brilliant than ever in her sober garb, and felt all his old feelings reviving with increased force at sight of her.
On the 27th of January 1780, Manon wrote informing her friends of her engagement. Her letter, devoid of any vibration of passion, breathes a spirit of calm content. "A succession of sweet and manifold duties will henceforth fill my heart and every moment of my life; I shall no longer be this isolated creature, lamenting her uselessness and striving to prevent the ills of a morbid sensitiveness by incessant activity." In her Memoirs she says: "If marriage, as I considered, were a stringent tie, an association where the woman undertakes to make the happiness of two people, was it not possible that I should practice my courage and abilities in this honourable task rather than in the solitude wherein I lived?"
These reflections were, no doubt, wise and sensible enough, but, concerning this marriage, one might say, in the words of Lord Beaconsfield: "It was not in the nature of things that she could experience those feelings which still echo in the heights of Meillerie, and compared with which all the glittering accidents of fortune sink into insignificance." Not for any glittering accidents of fortune, certainly, did Marie-Jeanne Phlipon wed the austere Roland, but from a sense of devoting herself to the happiness of an honourable man and of making his life sweeter to him. She was a Julie making an offering of her life's happiness to Volmar, and yet—she had never loved!