A Short History of French Literature
literary talent, and his sermons deepened the impression. His Memoirs,
however, are different in style from both. They are addressed to a lady
friend, and contain a most extraordinary mixture of anecdote,
description, personal satire, moral reflection, and political
portraiture. In the three points of anecdote, portrait-drawing, and
maxim-making, Retz has no rival except in the acknowledged masters of
each art respectively.
The Memoirs of Guy Joly, a lawyer and the friend and confidant of Retz,
in a manner supplement this latter's work. Joly was faithful to his
master even in exile, but at last they quarrelled, and the Memoirs do
not always throw a very favourable light on the proceedings of the
turbulent cardinal. They are very well written. Claude Joly, the uncle
of Guy, an ecclesiastic, has also left anti-Mazarin writings of less
literary worth.
[Sidenote: Mademoiselle.]
Of very great importance historically, and by no means unimportant as
literature, are the Memoirs of Pierre Lenet, a man of business long
attached to the house of Conde. These memoirs are, in fact, memoirs of
the great Conde himself, until the peace of the Pyrenees. Personal and
literary interest both appear in a very high degree in the Memoirs of
Anne Marie Louise de Montpensier, commonly called La Grande
Mademoiselle. The only daughter of Gaston of Orleans and of the Duchess
de Montpensier, she inherited enormous wealth, and a position which made
it difficult for her to marry any one but a crowned head. In her youth
she was self-willed, and by no means inclined to marriage, and prince
after prince was proposed to her in vain. During the Fronde she took an
extraordinary part--heading armies, mounting the walls of Orleans by a
scaling ladder, and saving the routed troops of Conde, after the battle
of the Faubourg Saint Antoine, by opening the gates of Paris to them,
and causing the cannon of the Bastille to cover their flight. Mazarin
never forgave her this, nor perhaps did Louis XIV. When she was past
middle age, Mademoiselle conceived an unfortunate affection for Lauzun,
then merely a gentleman of the South named Puyguilhem. By dint of great
entreaties she obtained permission from the king to marry him, but the
combined efforts of the queen and the princes of the blood caused this
to be rescinded, and Lauzun was imprisoned in Pignerol. After many years
Mademoiselle purchased his release by making over a great part of her
immense possessions to Louis' bastard, the Duke du Maine, and secretly
married her lover, who was not only younger than herself, but a
notorious adventurer. He was basely ungrateful, and she separated from
him before her death. Her memoirs, which are voluminous, contain a
minute history of her singular life, written with not a little egotism,
but with all the vivacity and individuality of savour which characterise
the best work of the time. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about them
is that, although entirely occupied with herself and her fortunes,
Mademoiselle does not appear either to exaggerate her own merits, or to
disguise her faults. She photographs herself, which is not common.
Valentin Conrart, a man of letters, who figures repeatedly in the
history of the time, who was the real founder of the Academy, who
published but little in his lifetime, and who has only recently been the
subject of a sufficient study, left memoirs of no great length, but of
value in reference to the Fronde. The Marquis de Montglat, of whom not
much is known, wrote important military memoirs of the latter portion of
the Thirty Years' War, and of the campaigns between France and Spain,
which continued until the peace of the Pyrenees.
[Sidenote: La Rochefoucauld.]
The Memoirs of La Rochefoucauld[257] would have assured him a
considerable place in the history of literature, even had he never
written the _Maxims_, and the singular fate of these Memoirs would have
deserved notice even had they been far less intrinsically interesting in
matter and style than they are. The seventeenth century was the palmy
time of literary piracy, and this piracy was facilitated not merely by
the absence of any international copyright, but by the common habit of
circulating books in manuscript long before their appearance in print.
They were thus copied and re-copied, and the number of unauthorised
duplicates made it impossible for the author to protect his work. Not
unfrequently the difficulties of authors were increased by the custom
(inherited from the middle ages) of simultaneously or rather
continuously transcribing different works in the same large notebook,
without any very scrupulous attention to their separate origin, plan,
and authorship. When La Rochefoucauld, after the conclusion of the
Fronde and the triumph of Mazarin, retired in dudgeon and disgrace to
his estates, he devoted himself to the writing of memoirs, and the fact
soon became known. He succeeded once in preventing an unauthorised
publication at Rouen. But the Elzevirs (who were as much princes of
piracy as of printing) were beyond his reach, and in 1662 there appeared
a book purporting to be the Memoirs of M. L. R. F. This book excited
much indignation in the persons commented upon, and La Rochefoucauld
hastened to deny its authenticity, alleging that but a fraction was his,
and that garbled. His denial was very partially credited, and has
remained the subject of suspicion almost to the present day. Probably,
however, he was warned by the incident of the danger of this sort of
contemporary criticism, and no authentic edition was issued. After his
death a new turn of ill-luck befell him. A fresh recension of the
Memoirs was published, not indeed quite so incorrect as the first, but
still largely adulterated, nor was the injustice repaired until 1817,
and then not entirely. It is only within the last few years that the
publication of the Memoirs from a manuscript in the possession of his
representatives has finally established the text, and that laborious
enquiries have demonstrated the conglomerate character of the early
editions (which were made up of the work of La Rochefoucauld, of La
Chatre, of Vineuil, and of several other people, even such well-known
writers as Saint Evremond being laid under contribution), and the
justice of the author's repudiation. The genuine Memoirs are, however,
extremely interesting; they are less full, and perhaps less absolutely
frank than those of Retz, but they yield to these alone of the Fronde
chronicles in piquancy and interest, while their purely literary merit
is superior. The strange bird's-eye view of conduct and motives which
characterises the Maxims is already visible in them, as well as the
profundity of insight which accompanies width of range. The form is less
finished, but its capacities are seen.
Jean Herault de Gourville stood to La Rochefoucauld in something like
the relation which Guy Joly bore to Retz, but was far more fortunate.
Born at La Rochefoucauld, without any advantages of family or fortune,
he began as a domestic of its seigneur. He passed from this service to
that of Conde and Mazarin, held public employments which enriched him,
became the friend of Fouquet, and escaped the general ruin which fell on
the superintendent's friends at his fall, married, it is said, secretly
a daughter of the house where he had served in a menial capacity, was
recalled honourably to his country, discharged important political and
diplomatic offices, lived on equal terms with the greatest nobles of the
court, and died full of years, riches, and honours, in 1703. His
Memoirs, which were written but a short time before his death, were
dictated to a secretary. They are of a somewhat gossiping character, but
full of curious information. The so-called memoirs of Omer Talon are
really accounts, written in a stilted and professional style, of the
proceedings of the Parliament of Paris. Henri de Guise, the last, the
least fortunate, but not the least remarkable of his famous family, has
left an account of the wild expedition which he made to Naples at the
time of the revolt of Masaniello, which is somewhat too long for the
subject. The Memoirs of the Marechal de Grammont were composed from his
papers by his second son, Louvigny, afterwards Duke de Grammont. The
eldest son, Count de Guiche, the most accomplished cavalier of the
earlier court of Louis XIV., died before his father. Guiche left a
brilliant relation (written some say on the spot and at once) of the
passage of the Rhine, an exploit much exaggerated by the king's
flatterers, but which was really a brilliant feat of arms, and was
mainly due to Guiche himself. Like those of Grammont, the Memoirs of the
Marechal du Plessis are not the work of the hero, but in this case a
professional man of letters--it is thought Segrais--seems to have been
called in. Their somewhat stilted regularity contrasts with the
irregular vigour of most of the work mentioned in this chapter. Some
anonymous _Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du XVII'eme Siecle_,
though evidently a compilation, are not destitute of literary merit.
They seem to be extracted for the most part from works already
mentioned. The Memoirs of La Porte, the valet de chambre of Anne of
Austria and the youthful Louis XIV., are rather important to history
than to literature. Madame de la Fayette wrote Memoirs of Henrietta, the
daughter of Charles I., and the first wife of the Duke of Orleans, but
they are not equal to her novels in merit. The poet-Marquis La Fare
began memoirs on an extensive plan, but only completed a small part of
them. Those of the Duke of Berwick are justly considered models of
simple straightforward writing, of clear judgment, and of accurate
statement. The _Souvenirs_ of Madame de Caylus had the honour of having
Voltaire for their first editor, and deserved it. They are purely
personal, and might even be called frivolous, were it not for the
interest and historical importance of the society whose manners they
depict. The memoirs of Torcy give a clear and lucid account of the
negotiations in which that diplomatist was engaged. Last of this long
list come three works of value, the memoirs of Villars, Forbin, and
Duguay Trouin. The last two are among the somewhat rare records of
French prowess on sea. Both are somewhat boastful, and the memoirs of
Forbin, which are the longer and the more amusing of the two, are
suspected of some inaccuracy. They were not, it appears, the unaided
work of their nominal authors. The memoirs of Villars are of greater
historical importance, and of much literary interest.
[Sidenote: Saint Simon.]
A few authors, not included in the collection the order of which has
been followed, have now to be mentioned. Bussy Rabutin, cousin of Madame
de Sevigne, and one of the boldest, most unscrupulous, and most unlucky
of aspirants after fortune, has left a considerable number of letters
and memoirs in which he exposes his own projects and wrongs, and, above
all, a kind of scandalous chronicle called the _Histoire Amoureuse des
Gaules_, in which gossip against all the ladies of the court, not
excepting his own relations and friends, is pitilessly recorded. Bussy
had many of the family qualities which show themselves more amiably in
the cousin whom he libelled. His literary faculty was considerable, his
brain fertile in invention, and his tongue witty in expression; but he
made no very good use of his powers. The Marquis de Dangeau[258] has
left an immense collection of memoirs, describing in the minutest detail
the etiquette of the court of Louis XIV. and all that happened there for
years; but he had hardly any faculty of writing, and his work, except
for its matter, is chiefly remarkable because of the contrast which it
presents to a book which deals with much the same subject, and which has