A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux | Page 4

went to see a man from whom he had received many letters, which were almost in his own style, and, which, as one may well imagine, had seemed to him very ingenious. Not finding him, he determined to wait. He noticed, by chance, on the desk of this man, the rough draughts of the letters which he had received from him, and which he supposed had been written off-hand. Here are rough draughts, said he, which do him no credit: henceforth, he may make minutes of his letters for whomsoever he likes, but he shall receive no more of mine. He left the house instantly, and never returned."[15]
At the age of eighteen[16] (1706), and shortly after leaving college, Marivaux made his d��but in literature as the result of a discussion in which he maintained that a comedy was not a difficult thing to write. Upon being challenged to prove his point, he set to work, and, a few days later, brought to the company a comedy in one act, entitled _le P��re prudent et ��quitable, ou Crispin l'heureux fourbe_. It is the only one of Marivaux's comedies written in verse, which form of composition he adopted the better to test himself and to demonstrate his claim; but he took good care not to give to the public his comedy, "pour ne pas perdre en public," he said, "le pari qu'il avait gagn�� en secret,"[17] and it was not until nearly fifteen years later, when he had reached the age of thirty-two, that he entrusted a work to the stage. He did well to keep this comedy from the public, for it contained little that gave promise of genius, being juvenile in character, dull and faulty in versification, and largely, though poorly, imitated from Moli��re and Regnard.
It must have been shortly after this that Marivaux returned to Paris to continue his studies, and possibly to prepare himself for the life of a literary dilettante. His means were sufficient to enable him to indulge his taste in this way. Here we find him admitted to the salon of Mme. de Lambert, held in her famous apartments, situated at the corner of the rue Richelieu and the rue Colbert, and now replaced by a portion of the Biblioth��que Nationale. It was a rendezvous of select society on Wednesdays, and particularly of the literary set on Tuesdays, and among its habitu��s may be mentioned such men as Fontenelle, d'Argenson, Sainte- Aulaire, La Motte, and President H��nault. "It was," says Fontenelle, "with few exceptions, the only house which had preserved itself from the epidemic disease of gambling, the only one in which one met to converse reasonably and even with esprit upon occasion."[18] Its influence was inestimable upon literary questions of the time, and it might be considered almost as the antechamber of the French Academy. The envious dubbed it _un bureau d'esprit_, and its form of _pr��ciosit��_, lambertinage.
That Mme. de Lambert had a great influence in forming the mind of the young author no one can read his works and doubt. A "_pr��cieuse_ in the most flattering and most exact acceptation"[19] of the term, she promoted a similar turn of mind in Marivaux. His dislike for Moli��re may have received its encouragement from her, as she was never quite willing to forgive that great genius for his attack upon les femmes savantes. Marivaux, too, had, as Palissot expresses it, "un faible pour les pr��cieuses,"[20] and for the author of those famous attacks, a contempt as unfeigned as absurd. The high moral character of his writings and his ideas on marriage and children may readily have found their origin with Mme. de Lambert.
Mme. de Tencin, to whose salon of the rue Saint-Honor�� Marivaux was likewise welcomed, was as different a character from the kindly, serious, upright, and judicious Mme. de Lambert as can well be imagined, and it was only after the death of the latter, in 1733, that her salon was particularly brilliant. Her youth had been most disorderly. At an early age she had assumed the veil, but, through the efforts of her brother, the abb�� de Tencin, and later cardinal, who, doubtless, saw in her a powerful factor for his own promotion, she obtained her secularization. Coming to Paris a short time before the death of Louis XIV, she was ready to welcome the gross immorality of the Regency, and, for personal advancement, entered into a series of liaisons with Prior, the friend of Lord Bolingbroke, Ren�� d'Argenson, the Regent himself, Dubois, and the Chevalier Destouches. The latter was the father of her son, whom she abandoned on the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond, and who, reared by a glazier's wife, became the celebrated d'Alembert. Another lover, Lafresnaye, whom she had induced to put all of his property in her name, shot