The Learned Lady De Gournay

IN the sixteenth century women were becoming a power in literature and politics as well as in society, yet it was the fashion to ridicule and depreciate them even when their talents and moral qualities might have exempted them from disparaging criticism. Montaigne, the father by adoption of the Lady de Gournay, went out of his way to satirize ladies, and to make droll or harsh and contemptuous remarks about them ; beginning with his wife, who, though his marriage was wholly one of convenience, contracted in obedience to his prudent father’s wishes, must have made his home comfortable, or so self-indulgent a man would have lived in Paris, instead of retiring, at the early age of thirty-eight, from the court and the literary and social life of the city, though a favorite in both circles, to his secluded chûteau.

He tells us he was thinking of his wife when he wrote, “ I have known hundreds of women — and Gascony is famous for such examples — whom you could sooner have forced to bite red-hot iron than made give up an opinion conceived in anger.” He admits that his wife was an excellent, virtuous woman, but would not always listen to his advice, and to her he wholly trusted the training of his only surviving child, Leonora, for whom, though she was not like the Lady Marie de Gournay, his “intellectual child,” nor remarkable in any way, he felt a natural fatherly affection. Yet he was not unaware of her deficiencies, nor unwilling to reveal them to his readers.

It has been said that probably no author of his day, except writers of poems and romances, had ladies more in view when he wrote than the caustic Gascon essayist, — not, however, as a rule, because he valued their literary judgment; he was paradoxical and contradictory in this as in all else. He was not ambitious to have his work become a “ book for a parlor window,” the breviary not of worthies, but of belles and beaux. So far from desiring feminine readers was he that he often strove to disgust and repel them, but circumstances were too strong for him. The Reformation and the Renaissance opened the world of books to women, and great readers are learned in the art of selection and judicious skipping. Who cares to gather nauseous crown imperial, with a neighboring bank of violets perfuming the air ? It was perhaps a little galling to the pride of the Sieur Michel de Montaigne that his first disciple was a woman, “ the virgin de Gournay, that learned lady,” if, as is just as likely as not (so difficult is it to discover his real sentiments), it were not principally a love of fun and teasing and a desire to give piquancy to the essays that led him to quote all he could collect of the tart sayings and witty or ill-natured stories of ancients and moderns in dispraise of women.

Bayle St. John remarks that Montaigne tried to resist the influence of women on literary style which began in the sixteenth century, said coarse things in order to show his independence, but yielded, nevertheless, in a great degree to this new force in literature ; and readers of his works soon discover that not one of his essays is dedicated to a man, though he knew many men of noble and distinguished character. The essays were dedicated or addressed to Madame d’Elissac, to the Comtesse de Gurson, or to Madame de Duras, and his collection of La Boëtie’s Sonnets was inscribed to Madame de Grammont. He informs us that his translation of the work of Raymond de Sebonde, who endeavored to reconcile reason and faith, was read by many ladies, who, troubled by Sebonde’s arguments, and uncertain that they understood his meaning, came to his translator for enlightenment. He therefore wrote for their use the apology for Sebonde, inscribing it to Marguerite de Navarre.

Montaigne, though his works found many readers, was not content with the fame he had won. There was a certain feminine quality in his nature, which would not permit him to remain satisfied with unknown readers. He could not be content to sit at home unappreciated. and unread, his country neighbors merely amused to see so familiar a companion in print, while the world was praising him afar off. He wanted the personal love and devotion of his disciples as well as their admiration and acceptance of his philosophy, and was disappointed that congenial minds had not been incited by the publication of the essays to “ offer themselves to his friendship.” But for Marie Le Jars de Gournay. his “ adopted daughter,” who, after the death of her mother, settled in Paris to devote herself to literary work, and was for fifty years the editor of his writings, “ he who doubted so much might have died doubting his own value.”

Marie Le Jars de Gournay was born at Paris, in 1566, and was the daughter of a Picard gentleman, of small fortune, but good social position, who was in the king’s service. After his death, his widow returned to her native Picardy, and here Marie grew up in comparative poverty and seclusion. She was fond of study from her childhood, and though her mother disapproved of her taste for learning, and wished her to occupy herself wholly with sewing and housework, she managed in early youth secretly to acquire a knowledge of Latin and Greek, and in her girlhood translated the life of Socrates from the latter language, to please an unlearned neighbor. Before she was twenty Montaigne’s essays fell into her hands, and from that time she became his disciple, and the most ardent desire of her heart was to meet him. “A sort of passion, a fatal sympathy, took possession of her.” All other friends and interests were crowded out of her heart by a platonic affection for an author whom she had never seen, and who was known to her only by his published works. It has been said that this “learned virgin” never, after her twentyfifth year (her parents and Montaigne were dead), loved anything but letters, her maid Jasmyn, and her cat Piallon. But for the companionship of these two humble friends, she would have lived entirely alone ; yet of so intense and passionate a nature was she in earlier youth that it is supposed (though he does not say so, nor explain the cause of her agitation) that Montaigne alludes to her when he speaks of meeting a young girl in Picardy, who, having made a vow, or promise, to prove her courage, resolution, and constancy, “ drew out a bodkin she wore in her hair, and gave herself four or five good stabs in her arms, which made the skin crack in good earnest.”

After three years of impatient waiting for a personal acquaintance with Montaigne, Marie, in 1588, visited Paris (where he happened to be) with her mother, and had the satisfaction of meeting him. She sent him an enthusiastic note. Her flattery pleased him, and he went to see her and her mother, the day after he received her letter. He became as warmly attached to her as if he had been her father, and the filial reverence of his “ intellectual child ” surpassed the affection felt by most own daughters for their parents. It is probable that her clear brunette complexion, oval face set off with chestnut hair, and intellectual expression rendered her personal appearance attractive ; for from what we know of Montaigne’s fastidious taste, we think his biographer was right when he asserted that not even adulation could have reconciled the essayist to an ugly disciple, — that he would as soon have had an ugly doctor! He says in one of his essays that the conversation of beautiful and well-bred women was very agreeable to him, and that he had “ a great esteem for wit, provided the person was without bodily exception ; for to confess the truth, if the one or the other of these two perfections must of necessity be wanting, I should rather have quitted that of the understanding.”

Montaigne was so pleased with both Marie and her mother that when they left Paris he accompanied them to their home at Gournay, and spent three months there. This was the only time they met, but they corresponded, it is supposed, till his death in 1592. Their friendship lasted four years. He forgot to leave his precious books to her, and his library was soon removed from the famous round room in the tower of his château, and dispersed by his unappreciative daughter Leonora; but just before he died he pointed out to his wife two MS. copies of his essays, exactly alike, and the text elaborately prepared for the press, but with marginal notes. One of these he directed her to submit to Marie de Gournay, “ the only person he knew in whose literary judgment and devotion to his memory he could confide.” He was sure she would print them exactly as he left them; his learned friend Pasquier “ would have erased his Gascon phrases and polished his periods,” and taken all the salt and originality out of the book.

Montaigne’s choice of a woman as the editor of his works cannot fail to recall to our memory the tirade in his essays against the scholarly ladies of his day, who tampered, he says, with things so improper and unnecessary to their business as rhetoric, law, logic, and the like drugs ; and in discourse upon all sorts of subjects, how mean and common soever, spoke and wrote after a new and learned way, quoting Plato and Aquinas in things which the first they met could determine as well; for

He would have women, he declared, confine themselves to poetry, “ a dissembling and prattling art, — all show, like themselves; ” to a few selections from history ; and to the moral parts of philosophy, which will teach them self-control. “ This is the utmost,” he concludes, “ of what I would allow them in the sciences.”

Immediately after his death, his wife sent for Marie, who at once hastened alone across France to the château, though war was raging and she was exposed to many dangers. She met with a kind reception from Montaigne’s wife and daughter, her “ sister by alliance,” whom affection and imagination even enabled her to believe “somewhat touched by love of the Muses ; ” and the three women, superior in some respects as Marie was to Leonora and her mother, drawn together by a common affection for him, became warm friends. Marie remained for fifteen months at Montaigne, translating quotations from the classics, writing notes, and preparing prefaces. She worked, no doubt, at his desk, his one thousand folios surrounding her; glancing up occasionally at the rafters, inscribed with black-letter sentences from his favorite Greek and Latin authors or from the Bible, or gazing out of the three windows at the rich, wide view he loved so well, — at the farmyard and family life seen through opposite lower doors ; feeling herself wrapped the while in the sociable silence which he had considered one of the attractions of his study ; seeing and knowing all that was going on, but hearing only faint murmurs of sound, if voices of people and animals floated up at all. On the frontispiece of her first edition of his works she inscribed the words, “ Montaigne wrote this book ; Apollo conceived it.” “ Who can refuse,” says Bayle St. John, ”to love this delightful young woman, engaged in such work ? Her enthusiasm is contagious. The essayist rises in our estimation, when we find him the object of such posthumous worship ! ”

She lived to be aged, and the indefatigable editor for more than fifty years fought for Montaigne’s reputation, defended him against all attacks, made his essays known, and really did much to secure his fame. Though “ the wits and débauchés of another age, understanding neither her nor Montaigne, satirized her, slandered her, and played off practical jokes on her,” Marie’s life was happy and successful; for Montaigne’s literary reputation was preserved, and to preserve that was the one desire of her heart. Her conversations with him at Paris and Gournay and a probably succeeding correspondence were a means of intellectual culture and training, stimulating her imagination and exciting her ambition ; his praise and encouragement giving her confidence to attempt literary work. Her most original production was inspired by him, and was the result of their talks during sunset strolls “ between the tall trees on the green plains of Picardy.” It was a sentimental romance, ending in a suicide and two projected murders, unattractive to readers with nineteenth-century ideas of taste and morality, and dedicated to her “ second father; ” and though some serious critics condemned the book, it was very popular, and at least proved that Montaigne had not overestimated the intellectual gifts of his fille d’alliance.

In the essay on Presumption, he gratifies us with this charming portrait of Marie : “ I have taken delight to publish in several places the hopes I have of Marie Le Jars de Gournay, my adopted daughter, beloved by me with more than a paternal love, and treasured up in my solitude and retirement as one of the best parts of my own being ; I have no regard for anything in this world but her. If a man may presage from her youth, her soul will one day be capable of very great things, and amongst others of the perfection of that sacred friendship to which we do not read that any of her sex could ever yet arrive ; the sincerity and solidity of her manners are already sufficient for it; her affection towards me is more than superabundant, and such as there is nothing more to be wished, if not that the apprehension she has of my end, from the five and fifty years I had reached when she knew me, might not so much afflict her. The judgment she made of my first essays, being a woman so young, and in this age, and alone in her own place, and the notable vehemence wherewith she loved and desired me upon the sole esteem she had of me before she ever saw my face, are things very worthy of consideration.”

We cannot read this noble eulogy of Marie without a glow of affection and respect for Montaigne, and a feeling that we have caught a glimpse of the real man, stripped of the affectations, faults, and foibles (some of them perhaps assumed from a mischievous love of mystifying and shocking his readers) which are so aggravatingly prominent in the autobiographical parts of the essays and travels. Marie was not so fortunate as to win from all the authors of her day the enthusiastic admiration and affection which her adopted father lavished upon her. It has been said that she “ made the mistakes of remaining simple and virtuous, of living with a humble friend as a servant, and of having a cat. Consequently she was fit to be a butt.” The fact that she “remained nothing,” as they say of unmarried women in some parts of the United States, seems to have been the principal reason that she was ridiculed. But probably, had it not been for her literary work and the warfare she waged for Montaigne against his detractors, — her enthusiasm leading her, it is supposed, in spite of her poverty, to print her first folio edition of his works at her own expense, and to brave any difficulty for the sake of her dead friend, — her eccentricities, which she shared with many another poor, lonely, good . old Frenchwoman, would have passed unnoticed.

Bayle tells us in his famous Dictionary that the fidelity of her cat, which was immortalized in prose by the Abbot de Morelles, would have been celebrated by poets, if this illustrious and ingenious maiden had been young and beautiful; for though not homely, her beauty was of the mind rather than of the body, and she knew many things which persons of her sex seldom know. The Abbot de Morelles, Bayle tells us, esteemed this good lady, as he calls her, highly for her upright and generous soul, and like Sorel. another of her literary friends, valued her more for her generosity, goodnature, and other incomparable qualities than for her learning ; visited her often in private ; and thought that those who ridiculed her had little reason to boast of their wit. Thus the kind-hearted abbot writes of her cat: “ Mademoiselle de Gournay’s Piallon (it was her cat), during the ten years it lived with her, would never leave her room for one night to go and ramble on the tiles or in the gutters, as other cats used to do.”

Marie was so unfortunate as to have many literary quarrels beside her controversies about Montaigne. Her “blind side,” Bayle tells us, was her resentment against the new generation of authors ; nor was it without reason, for they took delight in continually playing her some trick or another. Her taste and style were old-fashioned and formed in the days of their grandparents, and she could not enjoy nor estimate at its true value the new school of literature, which she considered affected and effeminate. She was passionately opposed to the changes which the young writers were endeavoring to make in the French language, polishing and refining away all its strength, as she thought. The poet Ménage further exasperated her by turning her violent opposition to new words and defense of ancient ones into ridicule. She also engaged in what was called the Anti-Cotton Controversy, in defense of the Jesuits, and brought down on herself two outrageous libels and satires, called the Anti-Gournay and the Thanks of the Butter-Women.

Many of the most learned and distinguished men of her day were her intimate friends, and wrote and spoke in her praise, both during her life and after her death. Cardinal Richelieu assisted her to publish her most splendid edition of Montaigne’s works, and offered to secure her a large yearly pension in exchange for the small one already paid to her regularly by the king ; but as it was offered on condition that she would keep a coach, she declined to accept it. She preferred to continue the plain and unostentatious mode of life to which she was accustomed. One of her best friends was the Marquis de Racan. They were in the habit of meeting for the purpose of freely criticising each other’s verses, and not only did not quarrel, but both took the advice given, whatever its nature, as a favor, and acted in accordance with it. A satire called The Three Racans celebrated their first meeting. A wit, knowing that the Demoiselle de Gournay wished to make the acquaintance of the marquis, persuaded the latter to call on her, but before the nobleman started to make his visit sent a friend, who personated Racan, to her house; this man had hardly gone before the wit presented himself, claiming that he was the marquis; and shortly after he left the angry and mystified lady, the real Racan made his appearance. Marie’s enemies, the young writers, declared that her excitable temper now rose to fury, and that she drove the marquis, who thought the learned lady had suddenly gone crazy, out of the house, berating him with loud and furious words, and beating him with her slipper ; but Bayle seems to think the story false and slanderous, and made up out of whole cloth, to tease her, by the wits about town.

Marie was perhaps no more fastidious in her choice of associates than other respectable women of her own day, or a Vittoria Colonna of an earlier date, who overlooked in others what they themselves avoided. She was not merely attractive to literary persons, but associated on intimate terms with many gay and fashionable people. Among her friends was the eldest son of the Duke de Nevers. The Lady de Gournay, we are told, was one of his greatest diversions; and though he was a young man of a very courtly and gallant temper, yet he would leave any other lady to converse with her, whenever he met her at his sister’s or aunt’s. Ladies, too, loved her well, and she was very popular with the princesses and with Madame de Longueville and the Comtesse de Soissons, whom she often visited. Montaigne’s adopted daughter justified his enthusiastic prophecies concerning her. She collected and published in one folio volume seven works by herself, in prose and verse, with the title The Lady de Gournay’s Gifts. She died in 1645, aged eighty years.

Mary D. Steele.