Various
International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 7, August 12, 1850
WOMEN AND LITERATURE IN FRANCE
From a sprightly letter from Paris to the Cologne Gazette, we translate for The International the following account of the position of women in the French Republic, together with the accompanying gossip concerning sundry ladies whose names have long been quite prominently before the public:
"It is curious that the idea of the emancipation of women should have originated in France, for there is no country in Europe where the sex have so little reason to complain of their position as in this, especially at Paris. Leaving out of view a certain paragraph of the Code Civile—and that is nothing but a sentence in a law-book—and looking closely into the features of women's life, we see that they are not only queens who reign, but also ministers who govern.
"In France women are engaged in a large proportion of civil employments, and may without hesitation devote themselves to art and science. It is indeed astonishing to behold the interest with which the beautiful sex here enter upon all branches of art and knowledge.
"The ateliers of the painters number quite as many female as male students, and there are apparently more women than men who copy the pictures in the Louvre. Nothing is more pleasing than to see these gentle creatures, with their easels, sitting before a colossal Rubens or a Madonna of Raphael. No difficulty alarms them, and prudery is not allowed to give a voice in their choice of subjects.
"I have never yet attended a lecture, by either of the professors here, but I have found some seats occupied by ladies. Even the lectures of Michel Chevalier and Blanqui do not keep back the eagerness of the charming Parisians in pursuit of science. That Michelet and Edgar Quinet have numerous female disciples is accordingly not difficult to believe.
"Go to a public session of the Academy, and you find the 'cercle' filled almost exclusively by ladies, and these laurel-crowned heads have the delight of seeing their immortal works applauded by the clapping of tenderest hands. In truth, the French savan is uncommonly clear in the most abstract things; but it would be an interesting question, whether the necessity of being not alone easily intelligible but agreeable to the capacity of comprehension possessed by the unschooled mind of woman, has not largely contributed to the facility and charm which is peculiar to French scientific literature. Read for example the discourse on Cabanis, pronounced by Mignet at the last session. It would be impossible to write more charmingly, more elegantly, more attractively, even upon a subject within the range of the fine arts. The works, and especially the historical works, of the French, are universally diffused. Popular histories, so-called editions for the people, are here entirely unknown; everything that is published is in a popular edition, and if as great and various care were taken for the education of the people as in Germany, France would in this respect be the first country in the world.
"With the increasing influence of monarchical ideas in certain circles, the women seem to be returning to the traditions of monarchy, and are throwing themselves into the business of making memoirs. Hardly have George Sand's Confessions been announced, and already new enterprises in the same line are set on foot. The European dancer, who is perhaps more famous for making others dance to her music, and who has enjoyed a monopoly of cultivated scandal, Lola Montes, also intends to publish her memoirs. They will of course contain an interesting fragment of German federal politics, and form a contribution to German revolutionary literature. Lola herself is still too beautiful to devote her own time to the writing. Accordingly, she has resorted to the pen of M. Balzac. If Madame Balzac has nothing to say against the necessary intimacy with the dangerous Spanish or Irish or whatever woman—for Lola Montes is a second Homer—the reading world may anticipate an interesting, chapter of life. No writer is better fitted for such a work than so profound a man of the world, and so keen a painter of character, as Balzac.
"The well-known actress, Mlle. Georges, who was in her prime during the most remarkable epoch of the century, and was in relations with the most prominent persons of the Empire, is also preparing a narrative of her richly varied experiences. Perhaps these attractive examples may induce Madame Girardin also to bestow her memoirs upon us, and so the process can be repeated infinitely."
Authors and Books
Parke Godwin has just given to the public, through Mr. Putnam, a new edition of the translation made by himself and some literary friends, of Goethe's "Autobiography, or Truth and Poetry from My Life." In his new preface Mr. Godwin exposes one of the most scandalous pieces of literary imposition that we have ever read of. This translation, with a few verbal alterations which mar its beauty and lessen its fidelity, has been reprinted in "Bohn's Standard Library," in London, as an original English version, in the making of which "the American was of occasional use," &c. Mr. Godwin is one of our best German scholars, and his discourse last winter on the character and genius of Goethe, illustrated his thorough appreciation of the Shakspeare of the Continent, and that affectionate sympathy which is so necessary to the task of turning an author from one language into another. There are very few books in modern literature more attractive or more instructive to educated men than this Autobiography of Goethe, for which we are indebted to him.
John Randolph is the best subject for a biography, that our political experience has yet furnished. Who that remembers the long and slender man of iron, with his scarcely human scorn of nearly all things beyond his "old Dominion," and his withering wit, never restrained by any pity, and his passion for destroying all fabrics of policy or reputation of which he was not himself the architect, but will read with anticipations of keen interest the announcement of a life of the eccentric yet great Virginian! Such a work, by the Hon. Hugh A. Garland, is in the press of the Appletons. We know little of Mr. Garland's capacities in this way, but if his book prove not the most attractive in the historical literature of the year, the fault will not be in its subject.
The Scottish Booksellers have instituted a society for professional objects under the title of the "Edinburgh Booksellers' Union." In addition to business purposes, they propose to collect and preserve books and pamphlets written by or relating to booksellers, printers, engravers, or members of collateral professions,—rare editions of other works—and generally articles connected with parties belonging to the above professions, whether literary, professional, or personal.
D'Israeli abandons himself now-a-days entirely to politics. "The forehead high, and gleaming eye, and lip awry, of Benjamin D'Israeli," sung once by Fraser are no longer seen before the title-pages of "Wondrous Tales," but only before the Speaker. It is much referred to, that in the recent parliamentary commemoration of Sir Robert Peel, the Hebrew commoner kept silence; his long war of bitter sarcasm and reproach on the defunct statesman was too freshly remembered. Peel rarely exerted himself to more advantage than in his replies, to D'Israeli, all noticeable for subdued disdain, conscious patriotism, and argumentative completeness. For injustice experienced through life, the meritorious dead are in a measure revenged by the feelings of their accusers or detractors, when the latter retain the sensibility which the grave usually excites, and especially amid such a chorus of applause from all parties, and a whole people, as we have now in England for Sir Robert Peel—the only man in the Empire, except Wellington, who had a strictly personal authority.
Dr. Dickson, recently of the Medical Department of the New York University, and whose ill-health induced the resignation of the chair he held there, has returned to Charleston, and we observe that his professional and other friends in that city greeted him with a public dinner, on the 9th ult. Dr. Dickson we believe is one of the most classically elegant writers upon medical science in the United States. He ranks with Chapman and Oliver Wendell Holmes in the grace of his periods as well as in the thoroughness of his learning and the exactness and acuteness of his logic. Like Holmes, too, he is a poet,
