A Short History of French Literature
yet to be noticed. This book, with grave defects and inequalities,
exhibits in the highest degree the merits of the class and period of
literature which is now under review. These are the skill shown by
writers in no respect professional, but trained to expression only by
literary amusements and the conversation of the salons; the keen insight
into motive and character; the intense interest and power of reflection
with which contemporary events are taken in and represented.
Louis de Rouvroy, Duke de Saint Simon[259], was born at La Ferte
Vidame, the family seat, in 1675. The family was of very great antiquity
and unblemished _noblesse_, claiming descent from Charlemagne; the
dukedom and the peerage--it is to be remembered that peerage in France
has, or rather had under the old regime, an entirely different sense
from the modern English sense, referring not in the least to the
ennobling of the persons enjoying it, but to their admission into a kind
of great council of the kingdom which had indeed long lost its active
functions, but retained its dignity--were conferred only on Saint
Simon's father, a favourite and a faithful servant of Louis XIII. His
mother was Charlotte de l'Aubespine, of a family which had much
distinguished itself for several generations since the days of Francis
the First. Saint Simon was brought up by the Jesuits, went to the wars
in Flanders at the age of seventeen, and a year later succeeded to the
title and estates by the death of his father. Thus at the age of
eighteen he found himself in a position theoretically superior to every
man in France except the princes of the blood, and his few brother
peers--theoretically, for the rule of Louis did not admit of any real
exercise of the privileges of the peerage. Saint Simon, however, began
at once to show his devotion to the idol of his whole life--the status
of his order--by going to law with Luxembourg, the famous Marshal, on a
question of precedence and title of the most intricate kind. At the
Peace of Ryswick he left the army, to the displeasure of the king; but
he was none the less constant at court, though he could hardly be called
a courtier, and though his inveterate stickling for precedence
frequently brought down the king's wrath on his head. In 1705 he was
made ambassador to Rome, but the appointment was almost immediately
cancelled. Many years later, however, a similar, but greater, honour
fell to his lot. The death of Louis put power into the hands of Philippe
d'Orleans, who was a friend of Saint Simon's, and the latter enjoyed the
greatest triumph of his life by bringing about the degradation of the
'Bastards' (the illegitimate sons of Louis), on whom, to the indignation
of the peers, the king had bestowed the rank and precedence of princes
of the blood. In 1721 Saint Simon went on a special embassy to Spain to
arrange the double marriage of Louis XV. to the Infanta, and of the
Prince of the Asturias to the Regent's granddaughter. There he was made
a grandee of the first class. Soon after his return he gave up
interference in public affairs, but he lived for thirty years longer,
writing incessantly, and died in 1755.
The history of his enormous literary productions is curious enough.
Nothing was published, and, from the personal nature of most of his
work, nothing could well be published, during his lifetime. He died
intestate, and with no immediate heirs, and opportunity was taken to
impound the whole of his manuscripts, amounting to hundreds of volumes.
Extracts from the memoirs were surreptitiously published from time to
time during the eighteenth century, but it was not till 1839 that the
whole was fully and faithfully given to the world. These memoirs,
however, form relatively but a small part of the vast mass of Saint
Simon's manuscripts, though they fill twenty printed volumes. Until very
recently obstacles of a not very intelligible character have been thrown
in the way of publication by the French Foreign Office, to which the
MSS. belong; but at length these seem to have been overcome, and three
different workers, M. de Boislisle, M. Drumont, and M. Faugere, have
been engaged in editing or re-editing different parts of the total. The
minor works, however, from the specimens already published, would seem
to be of less interest than the memoirs; most of them bearing on the, to
Saint Simon, inexhaustible subject of the privileges of the peerage, and
its place in the hierarchy of government. To discuss these subjects
would lead us out of our way. It is sufficient to say that it is a great
mistake to regard Saint Simon as a mere selfish aristocrat in the cant
sense. He would have had the kingdom justly and wisely governed for the
benefit of the whole nation, but he regarded the nobility, and, above
all, the peers, as the pre-destined instruments of government. 'Much for
the people, but nothing by the people,' was his political motto.
The importance of Saint Simon in literature is, however, entirely
independent of his standpoint as a politician, though that standpoint
was not without influence on his literary characteristics. He is
valuable to us as, without exception, the most vivid and graphic painter
of contemporary history of the anecdotic kind in French or any other
language. His style is incorrect, and sometimes barely grammatical, and
all his work bears the character of notes, hurriedly dashed off, rather
than of a finished and regularly arranged history. Opinions differ as to
his trustworthiness in matters of fact, but it is certain, from his
positive manner of recounting the incidents and the actual words of
interviews at which he could not have been present, and as to which he
is not likely to have had more than hearsay information, that his
testimony is to be received with caution. His prejudices, too, were
extraordinarily strong, and he is in the habit of representing
everything and everybody that he does not like in the blackest possible
colours. His furious denunciation thus makes a curious contrast to the
good-humoured malice of the author with whom he is most likely to be
compared--Madame de Sevigne. But all these drawbacks affect only the
matter, not the manner of his work. The picture which he has given of
the inner life of the court of Versailles during the later years of
Louis XIV. is unrivalled in history. Still more extraordinary is the
power of single passages, such especially as the famous one describing
the Dauphin's death. Saint Simon has often been compared to Tacitus, but
his torrent of words very little resembles the laconic incisiveness of
the Roman. A much nearer parallel, though with remarkable differences,
might be found in the late Mr. Carlyle.
Some memoirs of great extent and interest, valuable as checking Saint
Simon and Dangeau (whom Saint Simon annotated), have recently appeared
for the first time, at least in a form that is to be complete. They are
the work of the Marquis de Sourches[260], a great court officer, and
they cover the last thirty years of Louis's reign. Their chief literary
peculiarity is the formal and almost official character of the text
contrasted with the greater freedom of the numerous notes.
[Sidenote: Madame de Sevigne.]
The most famous and remarkable of all the letter-writers of the
time--perhaps the most famous and remarkable of all letter-writers in
literature--was Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne[261]. She
was born at Paris on the 6th of February, 1626, and died at Grignan, of
small-pox, on the 10th of August, 1696. Her family was a distinguished
one both in war and other ways. Her grandmother was the well-known
Sainte Chantal, the pupil of St. Francois de Sales, and her first
cousin, as has been mentioned, was Bussy Rabutin. Her father and mother
both died when she was very young, and an uncle, not more than twenty
years older than herself, the Abbe de Coulanges, took charge of her,
remaining, for the greater part of her life, her chief friend and
counsellor. She soon became a great beauty, and something of a scholar,
though not of a blue-stocking. Menage and Chapelain had, among others,
much to do with her education, and she was a member of the celebrated
_coterie_ of the Hotel Rambouillet, though her satirical humour saved
her from being a _precieuse_. At the age of eighteen she married the
Marquis de Sevigne, of a good and wealthy Breton family. Her husband
was, however, a selfish profligate, who wasted her substance with Ninon
de l'Enclos, and such-like persons,--though Ninon herself, to do her
justice, never plundered her lovers,--and did not pretend the slightest
return for the affection she gave him. He was killed in a duel in 1651,
leaving her with two children, a daughter, Francoise Marguerite, and a
son Charles. After a few years of seclusion she returned to the world,
being then in the full possession of her beauty, and only twenty-eight
years old. She continued for more than forty years to form part of the
best society of the capital, without suffering the least stain on her
reputation. The selfish vanity of the superintendent Fouquet made him
keep certain of her letters; but though they were discovered in a casket
which was fatal to many of his friends of both sexes, Madame de Sevigne
came scathless out of the ordeal. In 1669 her daughter, then twenty-two
years old, married the Count de Grignan, a Provencal gentleman of the
noblest birth, of great estate, rank, and fortune, but already twice a
widower, past middle age, plain, and of somewhat embarrassed means,
considering the great expenses which, as Governor of Provence, he had to
meet. He was, however, a man of good sense and probity, and his wife
seems to have been sincerely attached to him. The great bulk of Madame
de Sevigne's voluminous correspondence was addressed to her daughter,
for whom she had an almost frantic fondness; Charles de Sevigne, though
apparently far the more lovable of the two, having but an inferior share
of his mother's affection. The letters to Madame de Grignan are for the
most part dated either from Paris (in which case they are full of court
news and gossip), or from Les Rochers, the country seat of the Sevignes,
near Vitre, in which case they are full of social satire and curious
details of the provincial life of that time. One very interesting series
describes the habits and regimen of Vichy, which Madame de Sevigne
visited in consequence of a severe attack of rheumatism. The
correspondence thus serves as a minute and detailed history of the
author for the last thirty years of her life, except during her rare
visits to Grignan, in one of which, as has been mentioned, she caught
the illness which proved fatal to her.
It has been said that Madame de Sevigne's letters are very numerous.
Those to her daughter especially were garbled in the earlier editions by
omissions, and by the substitution of phrases which seemed to the 18th
century more suitable than the fresh nature of the originals. The
edition cited gives the extant MSS. faithfully. The enthusiastic
affection lavished by the mother on the daughter naturally commends
itself differently to different persons. It is certain that if it is not
tedious, it is only due to the extraordinary literary art of the writer,
an art which is at once the most artful and the most artless to be
anywhere found. The only other faults of the letters are an occasional
crudity of diction (which, however, is, when rightly taken, perfectly
innocent and even valuable as exemplifying the manners of the time,) and
a decided heartlessness in relating the misfortunes of all those in whom
the writer is not personally interested. Madame de Sevigne has been
blamed for not sympathising more with the oppression of the French
people during her time. This, however, is an unfair charge. In the first