SALON. MADAME ADAM AND THE FRENCH SALON.

Otago Witness, Issue 1824, 5 November 1886, Page 34

SALON.

MADAME ADAM AND THE FRENCH

The sudden collapse of Madame Adam illustrates the flimsy basis upon which mere notoriety is built, and illustrates also the vast gulf between the notoriety which is the one aim and object of life, and the notoriety, or rather fame, which is the natural and inevitable result of actual gifts and splendid achievements. A ;handsome, clever woman, with a strong will, who, chafing at the fact that Nature has been niggardly of her more brilliant mental endowments, sets her teeth and says " I will have notoriety," is pretty Bure, one way or another, to get it. The trouble is that it does not last. Out of its very nature it is forced and unhealthy, and soon crumbles to pieces. The world wants to be amused, and eagerly accepts each new sensation, but if the sensation is of a quality inclined to rapid evaporation, the world quickly loses sight of it and turns to something fresher and seemingly more substantial. The world, in spite of its caprice and its selfishness, is discriminating, and sooner or later penetrates the shams. A woman who is weak enough to care for notoriety has generally a slender stock of ideas and resources stored away in tne cells of her brain ; consequently the world soon tires of her. Had she remained on her natural level ! without pretention, "the millionth woman in superfluous herds," the world would overlook her, withhold its criticism, and perhaps over-rate her slender abilities. But let her spread her wings and fly to the topmost plane, with its scorching, searching light, with its scanty population, where individuality stands out so strongly and is so mercilessly and helplessly analysed, where Bhe is subjected to daily, hourly comparison with the great and famous of earth, and she will gradually shrivel up and tumble off and down to a far lower level than that from •which she started, and where she will lie, for ever forgotten. Women of this sort rarely have mental gifts of a high order, and they fling themselves into a field where unusual mental gifts are expected. Having invested themselves with something of the brilliancy of the meteor, brilliant men and prominent men seek them out and expect to be understood. They make a desperate effort, they •' read up," but their brains are not equal to the effort, and the work bores them besides. They are restless and constantly craving excitement, and they are disinclined for anything which savours of solid work. They whip the cream off, however, gain a superficial knowledge of politics, art, literature, or whatever it may be, and in a measure atone for their lack of depth by a certain easily acquired brilliancy of expression and charm of manner. But when the novelty of their personality has worn off. the farce is appreciated, and the rery men whose adulation they most want, and whose attention would most infallibly augment their notoriety, drop off and seek another idol. Madame Recamier was not a brilliant woman, or a remarkably well-read woman, or a talented woman. Even though she possessed great personal attractions, she was not more lovely than many other women of her day and of the present. Her empire over men consisted in her deep, unfeigned, and wonderful powers of sympathy. With a kind heart, a marvellous power of adaptability, a great human interest, and a faculty of absolute subordination of self, she drew all men to her, because there are few things which give men a keener delight than to be understood and sympathised with by a beautiful and charming woman. If Madame Recamier was not endowed with remarkable mental gifts, she was an intelligent woman, and she listened divinely. "Elle ecoitte," said St. Beure, "aveo seduction." Therefore, while in no way seeking it or forcing herself upon the pubiic, she became the most famous woman in Europe. Moieover, she did not merely attract men — she kept them. Chateaubrand met her when she was 40, and was devoted to her until the day of his death, some 25 years later. Ampere met her when she was nearly 70 and blind, and loved her until she died. With all her other gifts — a matter of tradition — neither time nor change could take from her her tact and intense sympathy of nature.

The mere seeker of notoriety, naturally, has no more time or inclination for sympathy than to cultivate and water the pretty but rank flower garden of her mind. She is madly pursuing an object ; consequently she is absorbed in self and has no room for sympathy in the hopes and aspirations, the joys and sorrows of another. Her mind is occupied to overflowing with her own thousand little schemes and plans and restless cravings: not for one moment could she merge her individuality into that of another. She may sit with eyes upraised and rapt, but she is thinking of the impression she is making, not of the forces which lie below, and which have impelled the words of the person who is talking to her. To forget hw individuality for a mqment would be as

literal an impossibility as to take up a brush and paint a picture which would give her the right to scrawl R.A. after her name. Consequently men sigh and leave her, and wonder why anything so pretty and so bright must necessarily be so vain and so flimsy.

Madame Adam was the most brilliant of the latter-day notorieties, because she was the only woman in France who in any approximated the famous Frenchwomen of another day. She had a great deal to begin on, and if there had really been anything in the woman she would have immortalised herself like her predecessors. She had great wealth, an irreproachable position in the society of the Republic, good looks, and the favour of Gambetta. Gambetta could have made any woman, and he took a great fancy to the pretty and clever Parisienne, and quickly made her the fashion. She was ambitious, and with Gambetta at her back she installed herself the head of the most famous salmi in Paris. The Parisians are like sheep, and they go mad over notoriety. Consequently everyone who could effect an entrance to Madame Adam's salon effected it, and every distinguished foreigner wished to be presented. The salon, political and literary, is exclusively, from brilliant precedent, a French institution, and the French were very proud of its perpetuation and very grateful to Madame Adam. Madame Adam's career at that time was very brilliant. Politicians and Ministers of State met in her beautiful rooms and discussed the questions that shook the world over her famous suppers. Crowds of aspirants to Gambctta's favour besieged her doors, and the world knew it. Then literary ambition took possession of her, and she began to write novels. They were very weak, bub they were by Madame Adam, and they sold like the works of aDe Stael. Then<she soared still higher, and founded and edited a magazine. Her own productions on matters of art, literature, and state — to the latter she dedicated herself particularly — were little better than the productions of an amateur, but she had plenty of money, and the best writers in France did the rest of the work. Then misfortunes began. Gambetfca died. Whether he would have been of much further benefit to her had he lived is a question, for rumour has it that he was beginning to tire. At all events he died, and her backbone, so to speak, was gone. She could not regularly exhibit the greatest man in France in her salon, and crowds necessarily could not besiege her doors and beseech her to sound their pleas in Gambetta's distracted ears. Still she continued to give good suppers, and men will go where they are well fed. She dressed beautifully, and so commanded the respect of her country-women. She was rich, and she entertained the world occasionally in an original fashion, which kept society gaping for the proverbial nine days. Then misfortune number two befell her. She lost her fortune. She could no longer feed her admirers ; she could no longer set the fashion ; she could no longer startle the world. Then — alas for the mutability of earthly things 1 — people began to discover that she was a pretender to the throne, that" real abilities she had none, that in mental capacity she was not the equal of half the women who had but shone dimly as satellites while the sun, so assiduously fed, was blazing, that she could not write, that in politics she was of no real weight and value. The men who had surrounded her had been attracted and dazzled by her extrinsic merits purely. When their eyes were enabled to see with clear vision, they found they had given all and received nothing. The idea of consulting Madame Adam on any question involving subtlety, or brain, or a deep knowledge of politics, would have made them smile. A pretty, brilliant, butterfly, no one would have followed her into exile as their compeers followed Madame de Stael. To be what Madame Adam aspired to bej a woman must have the mind of a man, and this Madame Adam had not. She was clever — nothing more. Now, as a climax, comes the news that she has been forced to retire from the editorship of La Nouvelle Revue, and of Madame Adam, it is to be feared, we shall hear no more. It is to be feared also, that the salon of France is a thing of the past.