The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1893-04-10

MODERN FRENCH SALONS
How Successful Aspirants
to ACademical Honors
Are There Selected.
LITERARY AWARDS TO WOMEN.
A Prize for The .'Silver Skates
An English Poctess Rewarded
Where zoia Is Most at
Home.
LITERARY AWARDS TO WOMEN.

If women are not allowed to be-
ON members of the Academy they
share to a degree in the honors it dis
tributes. says a Paris letter to the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Women are
allowed to contend for the prizes and
for some time n or more women
have had books crowned.
Among the literary awards of 1892
nine were to women, and n was
for a thoroughly brilliant piece
of work. 1t is a prize which
will please all English readers,
since it is to the we'll known
English poetess, Mary Robinson, now
Madame James Darmesteter. The
book which received the prize is a col
lection of short stories written in
French. Its title is s'Old Time Dais-
ies,n and the prize was 500. The
prizes usually run between $500 and
800.
Another woman writer whom the
Academy has recognized is known
personally to many Americans, Mad
anne Henry Greville. Her early writ
ing was done in Russia, and for a long
time she was unable to secure any
French publishers. at last she LETT
St. Petersburg, where her husband
and father were both professors, and
came to Paris with her manuscripts.
She was soon before the public, and
in 1878 the Academy gave her a first
prize.
While no American woman has re-
ceived a prize from the Academy. Mrs.
Mary Mapes Dodge has been indirect
ly crowned. A French adaptation of
her world-famous silver Skates" was
presented to the Academy in 1876 and
the work received a prize, Mrs. Dodge
being recognized as the original
author.
IN THE FRENCH SALONS.
The real point at which the French
woman has always in the past touched
the Academy-and to a lesser degree
does so today-is the salon.
II women have never filed the COW
eted easy chairs they generally have
said who shall sit in them. Before the
end of the seventeenth century the
trade of academician making was
established by Madame de Lambert,
and up to her death she carried it on
successfully.
1t was useless to try for the Acade-
my in Madame Lambert's day unless
received in her salon and supported
by her. One of the best authorities
on the period declares that she made
half of the Academicians of the time.
But the women who founded salons
after Madame de Lambert soon belit-
tied the business. She had been, on
the whole, an honorable woman and
had pushed merit; but the wo-
men of the later salons were
many of them mere intri-
guers. They plotted and combined
TO push mobiles and abbes whom they
wished TO please, and, as a rule, sue
ceeded. Men were elected sometimes
whose sole claim to literary work was
a collection of very doubtful society
verses.
V~oltaire's conclusion was just, if
liable to be ON good terms with the
dred volumes
However, Mesdames Geoffrin, De-
ffand and Necker and Mademoiselle
Lespinasse exercised powerful sway
among learned and literary men with
Oul COLADIOL4lOlA |
MADAME ADAMS SALON.
Among the few famous salons where
Influence is exerted on the political
and social life of Paris as well as on
the academic-exerted, too, in per-
fectly legitimate ways. for all I know
or have the right to intimate-is that
of Madame Adam.
Republican in politics and liberal in
literature Madame Adam keeps open
house for nearly all the world. From
her salon she directed the campaign
of Pierre Lott, how successfully the
world knows, he having taken his
easy chair among the immortals in
April of last year
Madame Adams field of influence
includes her loge at the Coincide
Franchise, where, between acts. she
receives everybody from the President
of the Chamber of Deputies to the
newspaper paragrapher.
THE SALON OF MADAME BULoz.
A thoroughly academic salon is that
of Madame Charles Buloz, wife of the
director of the Revue DIES Deux
Mondes.
Madame Buloz has, to begin with,
most beautiful rooms and she sets a
most inviting table; everything is * /
quisitely simple, but exquisitely re-
fined and dignified. The habitues are, !
OF course, the same as appear in the
table of contributors to the revie W,
but that only means that the men best
worth knowing in France appear
there. Taine, the historian, theDuke de
Brogue, d'AuInale, d'Haussonville,
de Vogue, are Academicians always to
be found there. Then there are a
host of professors, literary men, edi-
tors, publishers and the like. 1t is. in
fact, a purely Academic and severely
intellectual company. No place could
be more suitable for d who wants
to prove to the Academy that he is
fitted to occupy one of its easy chairs.
The salon which perhaps has best
deserved the title formerly given to
that of Madame de Lambert-an