Part 2 — Part II.

If our visit to Saint-Cyr had been paid in the year 1689, we might have been in time for a rehearsal of “Esther,” or even (thrilling thought!) for the famous “fifth” performance, where Madame de Sévigné sat between Madame de Bagnols and the Maréchal de Bellefonds, in “the second bench behind the Duchesses,” and showed her appreciation by an absorbed attention and “certaines louanges sourdes et bien placées” which had their reward. For the King was so gratified that he actually came and spoke to her. “Madame, I am told you like it.” “Sire, what I feel is beyond expression.” “Said his Majesty to me: ‘Racine is very clever.’ Said I to him: ‘Indeed, Sire, he is very clever, but these young people are very clever, too.’” And off she goes for the torchlight drive to Paris, thinking less, one suspects, of Racine and the “very clever young people” who acted his piece, than of her own clever self, and the triumph she had scored over her friends, who were merely fashionable or pretty.

Alas! Dates are stubborn things, and the date of Marie Jeanne’s arrival at Saint-Cyr (1690) precludes all possibility of her having been (for instance) the “youngest of the Israelites” on this occasion, and peeping out from behind the curtains to see that brilliant audience. There were many people in France who, if they had been questioned about the matter, would have said it was just as well for herself. For it was not the sturdy good sense of the Curé of Versailles, alone, that was now awake to the danger of turning the heads of the young actresses; almost everybody who gave any thought to the matter saw how much justice there was in his blunt criticism that this was the way to train up theatrical “stars,” not “novices.” The fact that Saint-Cyr did not primarily set itself to train up “novices,” but rather good wives and mothers, lessened in no way the force of M. Hébert’s strictures. And Madame de Maintenon was not slow to perceive her mistake, and to repair it energetically.

It happened, accordingly, that it was into a very quiet Saint-Cyr—a very dull Saint-Cyr, according to the girls, who had lived through the excitement of the “Esther” performances of the year before—that Marie Jeanne found herself. Now, one day was exactly like another, and anybody who knew the time-tables could tell, exactly, what every little girl in the place was doing at a given hour.

That makes it all the easier for us, who have left Marie Jeanne and her companions, the Rouges, at their morning lessons, and must now come back to finish the day with them. The classes are nearly ended now, and there is a general, and not unpleasant feeling, that it is getting near dinner-time.

But before going to dine there is something to be done. A little girl must examine her conscience “to see in what she may have offended God during the morning, to ask His pardon, and to form the resolution of doing better, with His help, during the rest of the day.” The work she has offered to Him, when she awoke in the morning, is now examined by her, before she hands it in, so to speak; and the faults and blemishes are, if not repaired, at least apologised for. “Most particularly does she examine herself to see if she has fallen into the principal fault from which she has undertaken to rid herself.” At Saint-Cyr, nobody is considered too young to be allowed to forget the responsibility she has, as between her own soul and God.

Dinner-hour is twelve o’clock; and again, as at breakfast, a little girl is expected to really enjoy her food, and every care is taken to have it both appetizing and abundant. It is instructive, in this regard, to find Madame de Maintenon taking the Superior to task when an occasional retrenchment is attempted. In 1696, she wrote to Madame du Peron: “Madame, I have always forgotten to ask you why you continue to give rye bread to the children at a time when wheat is not dear. It is well for them to learn by their own experience the ups and downs of life, and they ought to take their share in the nation’s reverses. But they must go back to their ordinary régime when there is nothing to prevent it. The tendency of communities is to retrench in the matter of food rather than in things that show.” Again speaking to Madame de Glapion, she returns to the subject, giving her a lesson in true economy, which not nuns alone, but all housewives, might read with profit. It would appear that the nuns had not only been pushing their spirit of saving (in what concerned the girls) to the extreme, but that the work-mistresses had allowed a certain spirit of commercialism to creep into their direction of the needlework classes. “Are your girls sempstresses?” she asks, angrily. “Is it for that the King has entrusted them to you?” It is far better for them to learn to turn their hand to all kinds of sewing and mending—family sewing one might call it—than to be expert mantua-makers. She protests against the “economy” which savours of meanness and stupidity. “Indeed, ma sœur, when the big girls have worn their dresses more than a year, it is too much to expect the same dresses to last as long again with the little ones. The same remark applies to ever so many other things, where ‘economy’ has been pushed to such an extreme that I don’t know where you get material for mending. This is what it comes to: you keep mending, and darning, and patching, continually, without reflecting, that if, on the one hand, you save something, you waste so much silk, and thread and time, on the other, that there is really nothing gained.” With these liberal sentiments on the part of its foundress, we may expect to find the “table” at Saint-Cyr abundant and excellent. It is true it had not a great name for hospitality to strangers. “Be sure to take your dinner before you go,” said Madame de Maintenon’s brother one day to Bourdalone, who was to preach at Saint-Cyr. “Saint-Cyr is, in very truth, a House of God. One eats not, neither does one drink.” “It is true,” said Madame de Maintenon, gaily, “our ‘fort’ is education, and our ‘faible’ is hospitality.” But, it is only fair to Saint-Cyr to add that what it saved on its guests, it spent very profitably on its inmates. To one guest it was hospitable, at all events—the little Duchess of Burgundy. Would you like to know what she had for dinner one day she spent there? Lobster soup (it was a fast day), eggs, “sur le plat,” baked sole, gooseberry jelly, cream cakes, brown and white bread, and fresh butter. It sounds appetizing.

Dinner was followed by recreation; and to be a “reasonable” little girl, a little girl after Madame de Maintenon’s own heart, one had to put as much good will into one’s recreation as into anything else. She loved to see her girls run about, and dance, and play, and help their companions to enjoy themselves. But a strange thing had been reported to her. When they were in the garden, nobody could get them to move; and when they were in the class-rooms, they were always complaining of having to sit still so long. “Everything in its own place, and the garden was the place to run about.”

Such a charming garden, and park, as Saint-Cyr possessed—designed by the great Mansard, and with the King himself as sponsor for its poetically-named groves and alleys: Allée de Réflexions; Allée Solitaire; Allée du Cœur; Cabinet de Recueillement, and Cabinet Solitaire. If it were not the Comte d’Haussonvilles from whom I draw this curious piece of information, I should have inevitably credited Mademoiselle de Scudéry with the choice of these names. They seem so utterly unlike what we would expect from Louis XIV. One fancies Madame de Maintenon must have only accepted them with a sort of resigned amusement. Certainly she had no intention of allowing the names to justify themselves; for, instead of the sentimental meditation which they seemed to suggest, she was all for filling these groves and alleys with the gay laughter and games of healthy and happy little girls.

In her system of education, recreation played a very important part—in the first place for its hygienic value. “Let the children run about in the open air as much as possible,” she is always preaching to her nuns, “nothing will help them so much to grow tall and strong.” But, more important still, at no time more frequently than during recreation does a girl get an opportunity of sacrificing her own inclinations in order to give pleasure to others—and this is a lesson no woman can learn too early for her own happiness, if for nothing else. Moreover, proficiency in games of skill was important from a social point of view. Everybody—from the Royal Family down—played those games, and a girl would feel herself at a disadvantage afterwards if she had not attained some proficiency in them. Games like “I love my love” had, according to Madame de Maintenon, the combined merits of making a girl quick-witted, and giving her subject for reflection. It seems to me that Madame de Maintenon showed an even greater amount of commonsense than usual in the answer she gave a nun, who wished to know whether she approved of the little ones making rag-dolls at recreation, in the two-fold design of making them handy and amusing them. “Anything is better than keeping them unoccupied,” is her reply; “but you will succeed better in making them handy, by employing them at something genuinely useful. Little girls,” continues this keen student of girl nature, “usually love to be working, and you cannot make them happier than by giving them something useful to do. Show them how to do this right, and you are not only amusing them, but training them.” I wish every mother would take that lesson to heart. A little girl of three or four usually develops all of a sudden a great taste for sweeping, and baking, and washing (washing, particularly). Now, instead of sending her out to play, a wise mother will seize the opportunity of showing the little one how to do these things right. I saw the prettiest sight the other day; it was a laundry lesson to a tiny girl of three-and-a-half. You never saw such a happy little girl as the pupil; no game ever invented could hold half the interest for her, and I am bound to say that she displayed more aptitude than many a poor girl who came to the work after her ’teens. For my part, I am convinced that sewing, and sweeping, and washing, are far better instruments for hand-and-eye training than paper-folding, and mixing and modelling dough into cakes and scones, while quite as interesting to children as modelling in clay, has the educational advantage which anything woven into the genuine web of life has over what is extraneous to it. And here I may be allowed to remark that much of the educational unrest, so keenly diagnosed by Dr. Starkie, is due to the fact that parents, the first and natural teachers, have in these days a tendency to turn over their children, body and soul to a professional class—shirking their own duties. Everything nowadays, is supposed to be taught at school; and the only part parents take in their children’s education is to criticise the teachers, and grumble at the results of the system. If parents did their own share, things would be more satisfactory. And I include among the parents’ share the duty of teaching cooking, etc., and training the willing little hands to turn themselves to useful account in the busy family life around them.

But we have got far away from Marie Jeanne and the “Rouges” of Saint-Cyr, who, after a jolly recreation in the park, are trooping into their class-room for the two o’clock “instruction,” which as often as not, Madame de Maintenon gave herself.

What did she talk about at these “instructions”? “Of everything under the sun,” one is tempted to exclaim at first, when one turns over the list of subjects drawn up by Madame de Berval. Books were rare at Saint-Cyr, especially after the “Reform” of 1691, and it was from these “instructions” that the girls laid in their provision of general information. “Do not accustom them to a great diversity of reading; the seven or eight books which are in use in your house would do them for all their lives, if they only read for edification. Curiosity is dangerous and insatiable.” But there are books for which she makes an exception: “Try to make them love Saint Francis de Sales; his books are solid and show one how to attain the greatest perfection, with the utmost courtesy and refinement.” As for herself, one always feels that the “Introduction à la Vie Dévote” was never long out of her hands; and she comes to her girls with some of its chapters fresh in her memory. If to understand the “pedagogy” of Saint-Cyr, one must have studied Fénélon’s “Education des Filles,” to understand the whole spirit of the institution, the union of “Religion and Commonsense,” on which it was founded, one must re-read Saint Francis de Sales. Sometimes, especially for the bigger girls, the “Instruction” began with a reading from the “Introduction.” We find an interesting example in an “Instruction à la Classe Bleue” of March, 1712.

Madame de Maintenon interrupted the reading to ask Mademoiselle du Mesnil what she understood by the good-humoured and generous humility of which St. Francis de Sales spoke. “I believe,” said the young lady, “that, in this case, the good-humour would consist in not allowing oneself to be discouraged by the faults, of which one’s humility forced one to convict oneself; and the generosity in setting oneself, with all the courage and goodwill possible, to correct them.” Madame was delighted with the answer, and went on to point out to the girls the perfection and solidity of the Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, “his straightforwardness, gentleness, and the attractive way he had of leading souls to God.” “Do you know him well, this Saint, my dear children?”

It appears they did, and Mademoiselle de Conflans proceeds to show her knowledge (and a fine literary taste, too, it seems to me) in the quotation she chooses from him, at Madame de Maintenon’s request. It is from that admirable chapter on “the manner of practising true poverty in the midst of riches” (Part III., Chapter XV.), and Mademoiselle de Conflans quotes it almost literally: “Tell me, are not the gardeners of great princes more concerned to cultivate and beautify the gardens they have in charge, than if they were their own? And why is that? Because, doubtless, they look on those gardens as belonging to the kings and princes, with whom they wish to gain favour by their services. My Philothea, the possessions we have are not ours.” (At this point, Mademoiselle de Conflans ceases to quote but paraphrases admirably.) “They are but given to us by God, to be managed for His glory, for our salvation, and for the good of our neighbour. As long as these ends are kept in view, we please God by looking well after our worldly possessions....”

“Suppose, Mademoiselle,” continues Madame, “then that you were married (she taught them, as we shall see presently, not to be afraid to mention the word marriage at Saint-Cyr), and that you had plenty of money, what would you do?” “I should feed and clothe my children well,” says Mademoiselle (who had not studied her Francis de Sales for nothing); “I should pay my debts; I should help my poor neighbours; I should take care of people who were ashamed to ask assistance; and I should visit and assist the sick poor in the hospitals.” “All that is excellent,” comments Madame, approvingly, “but among all these different kinds of charity, preference is to be given to that exercised towards your own poor tenants and poor relations. But if you met with some financial reverses, would it be right to borrow money to keep up your charities?” Mademoiselle de Chaunac gives it as her opinion that it would. “If you really think it would be right to borrow money to keep up one’s charities you are very much mistaken. One’s first duty is towards one’s own children and servants.”

That is good sense and justice, and the religion that was taught in Saint-Cyr was never separated from one or the other. “Make them see that true piety consists in the fulfilment of one’s duties; let them learn those of a wife and of a mother, their obligations towards their servants, the edification they owe to their neighbours, and what sort of a life they can and ought to lead in the world.” She was never tired, when talking to the girls, of contrasting true devotion with wrong-headed “voteenism.” She defined the latter by its manifestations: leaving the Blessed Sacrament to go to pray before a statue; leaving one’s class to say extra prayers; putting one’s head against the wall, for fear of allowing one’s devotion to evaporate, and being quite annoyed if one is interrupted, for something quite necessary; waiting an hour outside the confessional for “contrition” to fall from heaven, and then saying you don’t feel like going to confession, for you have not the proper sorrow for your sins; spending a lot of money on ornaments for the chapel and leaving your sisters in want; employing at prayer much more time than is marked out, and thereby neglecting the duties of your charge. “True piety, ‘devotion in the spirit of Saint François de Sales,’” as she calls it somewhere, “is, on the contrary, solid, simple, good-humoured, sweet, and free, consisting rather in innocence of life than in austerities and frequent retreats. When an educated woman misses vespers to stay with her sick husband, everybody will approve; when she holds the principle that we must honour our father and mother, however bad they may be, nobody will laugh; when she maintains that it is better for a woman to rear her children well, and train her servants, than to pass the whole morning in her oratory, people will easily accommodate themselves to that religion, and she will make it loved and respected.”

To prepare her girls for that exact fulfilment of duties which, according to her (and Saint Francis), is the best sign of true piety, she adopted two great means. The first was to train them to an exact observance of present duties. She was always preaching to them the honour and glory of work well done. It is a matter of pride to be able to sweep, and dust, and mend well, and, far from being ashamed of doing these things, a girl ought to be proud to be seen by everybody at them. But what of a girl who does not care in the least how her work is done, provided she gets through it some way or other? Madame de Maintenon has an ugly name for such little girls, and she does not hesitate to apply it: Coward! There was surely a terrible sting in the word, for girls of noble birth, with a long tradition of soldierly honour in their families. One fancies the lash of it made them turn to their sweeping, and dusting, and polishing with more zeal than the fear of punishment would have done. She likes her girls to remember they are noble, provided they show themselves worthy of their birth. “In the world, nobility is recognised by its true politeness; it loves to give pleasure, to spare trouble, to relieve pain. If one of you were forced to take a position with some individual, and could not bring yourself to do it, preferring to spend the whole day working to earn the necessaries of life, I could not blame her. If another received a proposal of marriage from a man of low birth, and she answered me, ‘I cannot overcome the disinclination I feel to it,’ I would pity her for refusing a match which might make her happy, but I should not find it strange, for these are inclinations common to the nobility. If I should hear a girl say, ‘I would rather a thousand times see my brother dead than hear that he had run away from the enemy, and is a coward’—a noble heart spoke there, and I feel the same as you. If some of you said, ‘I would rather wear homespun all my life than receive presents,’ I should say, ‘these are girls who feel their nobility, and are true to it.’” In the meantime, they can prove their nobility in no way better than the care they take to fulfil their daily duties exactly. In interesting their sense of honour, Madame de Maintenon shows her knowledge of girl nature, grafted on a good stock.

For the future, she looks forward, picturing vividly the life that awaits them. What matter if the picture be not very gay? It is well to face the truth, and teach her girls to be prepared for it. Most of them will marry; she hopes so, at all events, and in some cases goes out of her way to provide them with husbands. “What Saint-Cyr wants,” she says on one occasion, “is sons-in-law.” To all of them she repeats the advice she gave a girl, on leaving: “Either marry, or become a nun; don’t be an old maid.” She was more angry than ever her nuns remembered having seen her, one day she heard that they would not mention the word “marriage,” and that when they came to it in the Catechism, they passed it over. “What! a Sacrament, instituted by Jesus Christ, which He has honoured by His presence, the obligations of which are detailed by His apostles, and must be taught by you to your girls, cannot be named! That is what turns into ridicule the education given in convents. There is far more immodesty in this affectation than there is in talking of what is really innocent. When they have passed through matrimony, they will find there is nothing to laugh at in it. You must accustom them to speak of it very seriously, even sadly; for I believe it is the state of life in which one experiences the most tribulations, even in the happiest marriage.”

She herself speaks of it to the girls often, and seriously—and, if the truth must be told, too sadly. It was not quite fair to take her own experience as typical. Shall I be accused of a frightful heresy, too, if I judge her teaching that a woman should yield her taste and her judgment in all things to a husband (no matter how absurd and fanatical he may be) as extremely unwholesome?

The needlework lesson which followed the “Instruction” was considered among the most important of the day’s programme. “Try to give the girls a taste for work,” is a recommendation which is always recurring in Madame de Maintenon’s letters. Nor was it only for its direct practical application that she valued it for her girls. She wanted them, it is true, to be able to turn their hands to anything: “to pass from new to old, from fine to coarse, from dresses to underwear, caps and coifs.” But she knew, long before Lady Henry Somerset, the extraordinary comfort there is in the use of the hands. In a wonderfully suggestive article by Maude Egerton King in the “Vineyard,” Lady Henry Somerset’s discovery is recorded: “Who has not heard of Lady Henry Somerset and the help she has discovered for poor women drunkards in the use of their hands? She tells us how domestic grief brings desire for forgetting, and how this is most easily bought in poisonous drink—poor substitute, indeed, for the keen interest of handwork and the consolation found in its conquest of things.” “There was comfort in carding the wool, solace in the spinning-wheel, decision in the exacting shuttle as it flew to escape the batten and reed.” Madame de Maintenon had tasted in many hours of spirit weariness the solace of the busy hand: “nothing is more necessary for our sex than the love of work; it calms the passions, it occupies the mind, and filling up the time pleasantly, leaves one no leisure for evil thoughts. What is a woman to do who cannot bear to stay at home, or find pleasure in her household employments, or interest in a bit of needlework. What can she do but seek it at the theatre, or the card-table?” No wonder that next to piety, and reason, she values needlework as an instrument of education.

There is a singing lesson yet to be gone through, and a catechism lesson, before the supper and recreation, night prayers and examination of conscience which end the day at Saint-Cyr. Whether the girls have a voice or not, she likes them to join the singing-class. “Even if they cannot sing, they will know something about it, and take pleasure in it,” she tells the “Vertes” on one occasion, and goes on to impress them with the necessity of letting slip no opportunity of learning anything likely to be useful. “Look at me,” she says, “who found no talent so useful at Court as to be able to do hair well!”

At the Catechism Classes she likes the girls to question one another, but she had no patience with budding casuists, who made difficulties to show their own cleverness. Did she scold the little Duchess of Burgundy who, one day, doing Catechist to the “Bleues,” on being asked, “Where is the Valley of Jehosaphat?” covered her own ignorance by the scorn she poured on the questioner? “That’s a sensible question, indeed, Mademoiselle; and you have great need of knowing it in order to get to Heaven.” I do not think so. With Fénélon (whose precept in this particular was so much better than his practice) she held that women have not the brains for the subtleties of Theology or Philosophy. “Women only know things by halves” (here she repeats Fénélon’s very words), “and the little they know renders them proud, disdainful, talkative, and disgusted with common things.” “I would much prefer to see your girl occupied with your house-steward’s accounts than with the disputes of the Theologians,” Fénélon had said, and Madame de Maintenon (especially after the Quietist troubles, when even the “Rouges” talked of nothing else but “pure love,” “holy indifference,” “simplicity,” and all the other jargon of Madame Guyon’s letters) took the lesson to heart.

And now to conclude. In a letter to the “Dames de Saint Louis” of February, 1706, she sums up the whole aim of the education of Saint-Cyr, and nothing gives a more faithful picture of its ideal than her words:—

“Let all your instructions, conversations, reprimands, punishments, rewards, relaxations, be employed to make your girls virtuous, pure, modest, discreet, silent, reliable, kind, just, generous, lovers of honour, of good faith and probity, giving pleasure in all that is possible, hurting no one’s feelings, bearing peace everywhere, never repeating aught but what will please and reconcile. Thirteen years are not too long, my dear sisters, to train them up, and form them to so many good things.”

Thirteen years are certainly not too long—nor a whole life!