Part 1
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4
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SELECTIONS FROM
SAINT-SIMON
EDITED BY ARTHUR TILLEY, M.A.
FELLOW AND LECTURER OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1920
PREFACE
It is not every lover of French literature who has the leisure or the courage to read the whole of Saint-Simon’s _Mémoires_, the text of which fills eighteen and a half volumes of the edition of MM. Chéruel and Ad. Régnier _fils_. Nor is it all of equal interest. I thought, therefore, that a selection might prove acceptable to the busy or faint-hearted reader, and perhaps even whet his appetite for the work itself. In making the selection I have practically confined myself to the first two-thirds of the _Mémoires_, that is to say, to the reign of Louis XIV, and I have chosen the passages with a view to illustrating that reign during the period of its declining splendour. In the first four chapters we have the Roi-Soleil and Mme de Maintenon presented to us in their daily life. There follows the account of the review at Compiègne, which gives us some measure of Louis’s boundless extravagance, and the greater part of the famous chapters on the death of Monseigneur, surely one of the greatest things in literature. Lastly there are thirteen portraits, including such masterpieces as Conti, Cardinal d’Estrées, Fénelon, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, and the Duke of Orléans. In my notes I have confined myself to the modest task of illustrating Saint-Simon from himself, and of supplying such other biographical details as seemed necessary. No one can annotate Saint-Simon without being indebted to M. de Boislisle’s masterly edition now in progress, but for my purpose the full and careful index of MM. Chéruel and Régnier has been of even greater service. The index to vols. I.-XXVIII. of M. de Boislisle’s edition appeared after my work was practically finished.
A. T.
CAMBRIDGE, _December, 1919_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
I. LOUIS XIV 1
II. MME DE MAINTENON 42
III. THE DAILY LIFE OF LOUIS XIV 69
IV. MADAME AND MME DE MAINTENON 90
V. THE REVIEW AT COMPIÈGNE 93
VI. THE DEATH OF MONSEIGNEUR 106
VII. PORTRAITS: 1. ACHILLE DE HARLAY 140 2. MME DE CASTRIES 142 3. LE NOSTRE 143 4. VENDÔME 144 5. VAUBAN 146 6. D’ANTIN 152 7. LE PRINCE DE CONTI 157 8. LE DUC ET LA DUCHESSE DE BOURGOGNE 160 9. CARDINAL D’ESTRÉES 172 10. BEAUVILLIER 177 11. FÉNELON 180 12. VILLEROY 189 13. LE DUC D’ORLÉANS 191
VIII. THE ABBÉ DUBOIS AND THE SEE OF CAMBRAI 210
APPENDIX A. THE COUNCILS AND THE SECRETARIES OF STATE 215
APPENDIX B. EXTRACTS FROM VAUBAN, _Projet d’une dîme royale_ 217
INDEX OF PERSONS MENTIONED IN THE NOTES 219
PLAN OF THE CHÂTEAU DE VERSAILLES 66
INTRODUCTION
“People who are old enough to write memoirs have usually lost their memory.” This epigrammatic remark with which a recent writer, not old enough to have lost his memory, opens his reminiscences, has considerable truth in it. Historians now recognise that “memoirs do not supply the certainty of history,” for if the writers have dim memories, they have also lively imaginations. Saint-Simon, the prince of memoir-writers, did not, it is true, begin to transcribe his memoirs till he was well past sixty, but from the age of twenty he had collected materials and made systematic notes. His memoirs were not merely the pastime of his old age but the serious business of his whole life. The result is that he has left us a picture of the Court of Versailles at the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth which is unsurpassed in interest. This interest is above all things human. The men and women who fill his canvas are vividly alive. With a few powerful and incisive strokes he first sketches their lineaments and then with merciless penetration proceeds to lay bare their souls. But his memoirs are also coloured by his own alert and energetic personality. They not only portray his age, but they reveal himself; to judge of the fidelity of the picture, we must know something of the man.
Saint-Simon came of an ancient stock, being descended in the direct male line from Matthieu de Rouvroy, surnamed Le Borgne, who fought at Crécy and Poitiers, and Marguerite de Saint-Simon. His immediate ancestors, a branch of the family which dropped the name of Rouvroy for that of Saint-Simon, if not exactly illustrious, followed their monarchs loyally in war and administered their estates successfully in peace. His father, Claude de Saint-Simon, who was born in 1607, chiefly owing to his address in the hunting field rose into high favour with Louis XIII, who created him a _duc et pair_ in 1636. But he fell into disgrace soon afterwards and was ordered by Richelieu to retire from the Court to the fortress of Blaye on the Gironde, of which he was governor. His vacillating attitude on the outbreak of the Fronde made him acceptable neither to Mazarin nor to the rebellious princes, and he did not return to Paris till after the troubles were over. In 1672 he married as his second wife Charlotte de l’Aubespine, by whom he had an only son, born on January 16, 1675, and christened Louis after his royal godfather. At the age of seven, the young Vidame de Chartres, according to the custom of many noble families, was put under the charge of a governor, but his character and opinions were largely moulded by his father and mother. The latter, a highly virtuous woman of method and good sense, applied herself assiduously to the development of his mind and body. From his father he imbibed a profound antipathy for Mazarin, the families of Lorraine, Bouillon, and Rohan, and all Secretaries of State.
In December, 1691, when he was nearly seventeen, he was formally presented to the King, and enrolled as a cadet in the regiment of the Grey Musketeers. In this capacity he took part in the siege of Namur, which is the first event recorded in his memoirs. In 1693, having been given the command of a company of cavalry, he fought at Neerwinden, and at the end of the campaign bought the colonelcy of a regiment. Shortly before this he had succeeded his father as governor of Blaye and Senlis. He was only nineteen, when he gave a signal proof of his energy and of the importance which he attached to matters of precedence, by helping to organise a resistance to the claim of the Maréchal de Luxembourg to take precedence of all _ducs et pairs_ except the Duc d’Uzès. The Dukes lost their case, largely, Saint-Simon alleges, owing to the partiality of the First President of the _Parlement_, Achille de Harlay.
In the following year (1695) he married Gabrielle de Durfort, the eldest daughter of the Maréchal-Duc de Lorges, a nephew of Turenne. She was a blonde with a fine complexion and figure, and being a modest and excellent woman made him an admirable wife. He on his side was a devoted husband, and he always speaks of her in his _Memoirs_ with the greatest affection and esteem.
After the Peace of Ryswick (1697) his regiment was disbanded, and, on the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, five years later, failing to receive a nomination as Brigadier, he retired from the service on the plea of ill-health. “Voilà encore un homme qui nous quitte,” said the King, and he looked coldly on Saint-Simon in consequence. It was characteristic of the little Duke’s overweening sense of his own importance that before taking this step he held a solemn consultation with six distinguished friends, the Chancellor Pontchartrain, and five Dukes, Lorges, Durfort-Duras, Choiseul, Beauvillier, and La Rochefoucauld, of whom the first three were Marshals of France.
The loss to the army was not irremediable, and the gain to literature was immense. Henceforth Saint-Simon could devote himself with singleness of purpose to the real business of his life. It was in July, 1694, in the camp of Germersheim on the Old Rhine, that “he began to write his memoirs,” by which expression we must understand, not that he began to write a continuous narrative, but that from this time he systematised his observations and inquiries and made careful notes of the results. We learn from a letter to his friend, M. de Rancé, the famous reformer of La Trappe, that his original intention was to relate in detail all personal matters and merely to touch superficially on general events. But he soon abandoned this idea and in his account of the years immediately succeeding his retirement from the army there is little mention of himself.
His chief friends and allies at this period were all men considerably older than himself--the two inseparables, the Duc de Beauvillier and the Duc de Chevreuse, who had both married daughters of Colbert, the Maréchal de Boufflers, the Chancellor Pontchartrain, and Chamillart, the Secretary of State for War. It was through the good offices of Chamillart and Maréchal, the King’s surgeon, that “he became reconciled,” as he characteristically expresses it, with Louis XIV. But he had his enemies as well as his friends, and chief among them were the members of the _coterie_ which, as so often happens towards the end of a long reign, the common hope of favours to come had attracted round the heir to the throne. An important member of this “Cabale de Meudon,” as Saint-Simon calls it, was the Duc de Vendôme, and when in 1708 Louis XIV made the mistake of associating his grandson, the Duc de Bourgogne, with him in the command of the army of Flanders, and dissensions arose between the two commanders, the Cabal warmly espoused Vendôme’s cause. Their unscrupulous intrigues against the Duc de Bourgogne roused the wrath of Saint-Simon, who as the ally of M. de Beauvillier, the young Prince’s former governor, was well disposed in his favour. Throughout the years 1708 and 1709 he threw himself into the contest with his accustomed vigour, and in the following year he helped to achieve a notable victory over the hated Cabal in another field, that of the marriage of the Duc de Berry, Monseigneur’s youngest son. The candidate of Monseigneur’s party was Mlle de Bourbon, while the Duchesse de Bourgogne, well served by Saint-Simon and his friends, favoured the daughter of the Duc d’Orléans. Saint-Simon’s organisation of the “Cabale de Mademoiselle” was a masterpiece of skilful intrigue, and he conducted the campaign with a passionate energy which is faithfully reflected in his narrative. When, however, the coarse and depraved character of the new Duchess revealed itself he bitterly regretted his success.
But the marriage had one beneficial, if unlooked for, result. The Duchesse de Saint-Simon, greatly against her inclination and that of her husband, was appointed lady-in-waiting to the new Duchess, and had assigned to her a set of apartments at Versailles, consisting of an antechamber and five rooms, each with a dark little cabinet opening out of it. In one of these Saint-Simon established himself with his books and his _bureau de travail_. It was an unrivalled post of observation, which his friends christened appropriately “his workshop.” Meanwhile his intimacy with Beauvillier and Chevreuse brought him into relations with the Duc de Bourgogne, and the only thorn in his felicity was the Cabale de Meudon, which he believed to be bent on his destruction. But from this he was delivered by the Dauphin’s death from small-pox in April, 1711. The next ten months were the happiest of his whole life at Court. His relations with the new Dauphin became more intimate, and in numerous private conversations he discussed with him projects of political reform. Then in 1712 the French Marcellus, the star of noble hopes and aspirations, followed his father to the grave. The blow hit Saint-Simon almost as hard as it did Fénelon. “The sense of my personal loss, the immeasurably greater loss of France, and above all the vanished figure of that incomparable Dauphin pierced my heart and paralysed my faculties.”
Two years later he refers in melancholy accents to his changed position. Chevreuse, Beauvillier, and Boufflers were dead, Pontchartrain had retired from office, Chamillart was in disgrace. The one link left to him with the Court was the Duc d’Orléans, who by the death of the Duc de Berry in May, 1714, was marked out as the future regent of the kingdom. In spite of his unpopularity Saint-Simon, who had for some years now been on friendly terms with him, drew to him more closely. He reprobated his licentious and scandalous life, but he defended him against the false accusations of his enemies, and effectively countermined the intrigues of the party that was plotting against him in favour of the Duc du Maine.
On Louis XIV’s death it was partly owing to Saint-Simon’s vehement and energetic insistence that Orléans roused himself from his habitual indolence and persuaded the _Parlement_ to set aside the testament of the late King, which, while it conferred on him the Regency, had put the real power in the hands of the Duc du Maine. Saint-Simon was made a member of the Council of Regency, and the introduction of departmental Councils, in place of the Secretaries of State, was more or less in accord with his own proposals.
The new form of administration, however, was not a success and after a trial of two years was abandoned. Nor did Saint-Simon himself shew any political capacity. He was wanting in tact and adaptability, and worse than this he frittered away on futile questions of precedence and etiquette the time and energy that might have been given to really important matters. Such influence as he had with the Regent came to an end with the rise to power of Dubois, who gladly furthered his request to be sent on a special mission to Spain (1721).
On the death of the Regent (1722) he left the Court and lived for some time with his family in a house which he rented in the Rue Saint-Dominique. But after the marriage of his two sons he resided for at least half the year at his _château_ of La Ferté-Vidame, about 30 miles north-west of Chartres. The _château_ itself, which, as we know from engravings, had the air of a feudal fortress, and in every room of which hung a portrait of Louis XIII, no longer exists. But the park, enclosed by a wall of nearly nine miles, and the forest beyond have preserved their original character.
Here Saint-Simon began and completed the definitive version of his _Memoirs_, and here in 1743, to his overwhelming grief, he lost his wife, his faithful companion of nearly fifty years. Other misfortunes followed; his two sons preceded him to the grave, and he was driven by his debts to make over the whole of his property to his creditors. He died at Paris in 1755 at the age of eighty. The lives of his father and himself cover between them nearly a century and a half.
Saint-Simon, as we see him in Rigaud’s portrait, was small and delicate--a typical old man’s child--with an extremely alert and eager face. It has been observed that he is seldom mentioned in contemporary memoirs, but these are not numerous for the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV, while three of the chief memoir-writers of the Regency, when Saint-Simon was most prominent, Barbier, Buvat, and Marais, did not belong to Court circles. When he is mentioned it is in no complimentary terms. D’Argenson attacks him for advocating severe measures against the Duc du Maine after the conspiracy of Cellamare. “Mark,” he says, “the odious and bloodthirsty character (_anthropophage_) of this little saint without genius.” But then Saint-Simon in his on the whole highly favourable portrait of D’Argenson’s father, the celebrated head of the Paris police, had said that his character was supple, and that his terrifying appearance resembled that of the three judges of Hades.
It was inevitable that Saint-Simon’s irascibility, intractability, and aristocratic pretensions should arouse considerable enmity, and in the songs and satires of the day he is attacked under the name of _boudrillon_ (_bout d’homme_) and _petit furibond_. Mme de Maintenon declared that he was “glorieux, frondeur et plein de vues,” and we have an interesting commentary on this remark in his report of a conversation which took place between the Duchesse de Bourgogne and his wife. The Duchess told her that he had many powerful enemies and that the King had conceived a strong prejudice against him. His intelligence, she said, and his knowledge and capacity for ideas were recognised as far above the ordinary, but everybody was afraid of him, and they could not endure his arrogance and his outspoken criticisms on persons and institutions.
These criticisms would have been more valuable if they had been less concerned with futilities, and less biased by aristocratic prejudices. But Saint-Simon was at heart a true patriot, and was keenly alive to the evils which were sapping the forces of his country. He agreed with reformers like Fénelon and Chevreuse and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre in regarding the absolutism of the King as the chief source of danger, and he shared their dislike of the Controller-General and the four Secretaries of State as the agents of this absolutism. He strongly reprobated the King’s love of war and glory, and the boundless extravagance, which he not only practised himself but encouraged in others. Like La Bruyère and Fénelon, Saint-Simon saw with a compassionate eye the wide-spread misery by which all this glory and magnificence was purchased. He has drawn a moving picture of the terrible winter of 1708-1709, when famine stalked through the land and crushing taxation on the top of high prices “completed the devastation of France.”
Mme de Maintenon further complained that he was “plein de vues,” by which she doubtless meant much the same thing as Louis XIV, when he called Fénelon chimerical. For in Saint-Simon’s schemes for reform, as in Fénelon’s, there was a strong Utopian element, which did not sufficiently take into account the hard facts of political life and the shortcomings of human nature. They both looked back too fondly on the past, they both exaggerated the value of the nobles and the Estates General--Saint-Simon laying more stress on the former, Fénelon on the latter--as checks to absolutism. That there should be a certain similarity between their ideas is only to be expected, for though they were not personally acquainted, they had a common link in the Duc de Bourgogne, and it was just at the time that Saint-Simon was having frequent conferences with the latter that his two great friends, the Duc de Beauvillier and the Duc de Chevreuse, held long conversations on affairs of state with Fénelon at Chaulnes (November, 1711). From the conferences of Saint-Simon and the Duc de Bourgogne sprang the _Projets de gouvernement_, the manuscript of which was found among Saint-Simon’s papers, and which is undoubtedly from his pen. The conversations at Chaulnes were summarised in the series of short maxims, known as the _Tables de Chaulnes_, which represent Fénelon’s nearest approach to practical politics.
However deserving of consideration Saint-Simon’s views may have been, his insistence on them in season and out of season cannot have helped to commend them or to make him popular at Court. In his old age he is said to have been a delightful talker, but at Versailles he must have sometimes proved an intolerable bore. “Il faut tenir votre langue,” said Louis XIV to him when he accepted the appointment for his wife. One wonders at the patience with which the Duke of Orleans endured his moral lectures and political disquisitions. But the Duke was too indolent to escape them, and while he must have derived considerable amusement from the peculiarities of his friend’s character he evidently appreciated his transparent honesty. For with all his faults and prejudices, his vanity, his hate, and his vindictiveness, Saint-Simon was essentially honest. It is true that in his intercourse with some men, as for instance Père Tellier, the Duc de Noailles, and Cardinal Dubois, he did not act up to the character which he claims for himself of “droit, franc, libre, naturel, et beaucoup trop simple,” but if his curiosity and thirst for information led him sometimes to assume a friendliness which he did not feel, or if in the slippery days of the Regency he had to meet duplicity with duplicity, he was honest at heart, and he had no lack of moral courage.
He carried this sincerity into his religion. D’Argenson may sneer at him as a _petit dévot_, but his piety was at any rate perfectly genuine. It was the fruit, partly of a careful religious education, and partly of the influence of the Abbé de Rancé. For the monastery of La Trappe was only fifteen miles from La Ferté-Vidame and Saint-Simon often visited it as a child in company with his father. When he came to man’s estate he regarded his father’s friend with that deep and whole-hearted admiration which was one of the finer traits of his character. Every year during the Abbé’s life-time--he died in 1700--Saint-Simon went into retreat at the monastery during Passion-week, and he often consulted the Abbé on matters of conscience. From the Abbé he learnt to look with disfavour on Jansenism, but, as he came to judge more for himself, he was impressed by the noble lives of “Les Messieurs de Port-Royal,” and he declared that recent centuries had produced nothing more saintly, more pure, more learned, more practical, and more elevated, than that famous society. With the Jesuits he was on good terms all his life, and his portrait of Père La Chaise is kindly and appreciative. But in his later volumes he often speaks of them in a hostile spirit, and though he was outwardly on good terms with Père Tellier he cordially disliked him, and his portrait of him is one of the most unflattering in his gallery. In questions of ecclesiastical policy he was, as might be expected from one who was a patriot before he was a Churchman and who did not pretend to theological learning, a convinced Gallican. It was as such, and not as an upholder of Jansenism, that he was strongly opposed to the bull _Unigenitus_.