Part 2
We have seen that Saint-Simon began to make notes for his _Memoirs_ in July, 1694. Probably these took more or less the form of a diary and consisted of personal impressions, information that he had picked up from various sources, and so forth. Then in 1729 his friend the Duc de Luynes procured for him the journal which the Duke’s grandfather, the Marquis de Dangeau, had kept with extraordinary regularity and accuracy from 1684 down to his death in 1720. Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau, had come to the Court of Louis XIV with no particular advantages of birth, or wealth, or interest. But by his readiness to oblige, his adaptability, and his honesty he made himself indispensable. Among his accomplishments was that of writing _vers de société_ with great facility, which procured his election to the _Académie française_ at the age of thirty. But his chief passport to favour and fortune was his skill and success, coupled with perfect probity, in all kinds of card-games. This is Mme de Sévigné’s account of a game of _reversi_ at Versailles in 1676, in which the King, the Queen, Mme de Montespan, Mme de Soubise, Dangeau, and others took part:
Je voyais jouer Dangeau; et j’admirais combien nous sommes sots auprès de lui. Il ne songe qu’à son affaire, et gagne où les autres perdent; il ne néglige rien, il profite de tout, il n’est point distrait: en un mot, sa bonne conduite défie la fortune; aussi les deux cent mille francs en dix jours, les cent mille écus en un mois, tout cela se met sur le livre de sa recette.
Dangeau’s memoirs are little more than a Court journal, in which he seldom allows himself a comment. But the regularity with which it is noted up day by day, the accuracy of its information, and the multitude of small details in which it abounds, make it a useful and valuable authority, as Sainte-Beuve has shewn in the five _causeries_ which he devoted to it[1]. A couple of citations from the year 1688, complete for the day to which they refer, will give an idea of its character:
[1] _Journal_ du Marquis de Dangeau, ed. Soulié, Dussieux, De Chennevières, Mantz, De Montaiglon, 19 vols. 1854; Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du Lundi_, XI.
_Lundi, 26 [janvier] à Versailles._ Le roi alla tirer; Monseigneur courut le loup; le soir, il y eut appartement.--Le roi dit qu’il vouloit recommencer à Marly de courre le cerf à cheval. Depuis sa maladie il ne l’avoit couru qu’en calèche. On dit que M. de Noirmoustier, qui est aveugle, va épouser la veuve de feu M. de Brémont qui est fort riche.
_Lundi, 1er mars, à Versailles._ Le roi dîna à son petit couvert, et alla tirer. Monseigneur courut le loup, qui le mena fort loin d’ici; il n’arriva qu’à onze heures du soir.--Il y eut comédie.--Après souper M. le Duc donna bal en masque chez lui, où Monseigneur demeura jusqu’à la fin, malgré la fatigue de la journée; les officiers de la garde prétendent qu’il a fait plus de quarante lieues aujourd’hui.
It is but fair to add that the average entry for the day is rather longer than this, and not so wholly devoid of interest. Saint-Simon is superb in his contempt:
La bassesse d’un humble courtisan, le culte du maître et de tout ce qui est ou sent la faveur, la prodigalité des plus fades et des plus misérables louanges, l’encens éternel et suffoquant jusque des actions du Roi les plus indifférentes, la terreur et la fadeur suprême qui ne l’abandonnent nulle part pour ne blesser personne, excuser fort, principalement dans les généraux et les autres personnes du goût du Roi, de Mme de Maintenon, des ministres, toutes ces choses éclatent dans toutes les pages, dont il est rare que chaque journée en remplisse plus d’une, et dégoûtent merveilleusement.
But Saint-Simon recognised that this commonplace and uncritical Journal, with its accurate chronology and its orderly arrangement, could be of great service to anyone who wished to write true memoirs[2]. Accordingly he had a copy made of the work and during the years 1729-1738 busied himself with adding notes. Some of these were of considerable length, such as the original draft of the _tableau_ or long digression on the character of Louis XIV and his reign, and an elaborate portrait of Louvois, which was not inserted in the _Memoirs_. About the year 1739 he began to arrange his materials which consisted of the Journal with the notes, other notes which he had accumulated during the last forty-five years, portraits, detailed descriptions, and various essays on the history and genealogy of certain families. He was now able to begin writing out his _Memoirs_ in full. In 1740 he was dealing with the events of 1701. In 1741 or 1742 he had reached the year 1709. By September, 1745, he had come to the end of the reign of Louis XIV, and the _tableau_ in its final form was written between that date and March, 1746. The whole work, which ends with the death of the Regent, was completed in 1751.
[2] XVII. 142. The account of Dangeau and his memoirs which Saint-Simon here gives on the occasion of his death (pp. 134-144) is fuller than the earlier portrait in vol. I. 343-346. La Bruyère’s Pamphile (_Des Grands_) is evidently meant for Dangeau, and Saint-Simon so accepts it.
On Saint-Simon’s death his _Memoirs_ with his other papers were claimed by his creditors, but the Government took possession of them, and they were read in manuscript by various persons, including Mme du Deffand, who recognised their remarkable merit. Extracts were printed by the Abbé de Voisnenon, and incomplete editions appeared in 1788, 1791, and 1818. But it was not till 1829-1830 that the first authentic and complete edition was published in 21 volumes by General de Saint-Simon. It was, however, badly edited and in 1856-1858, the manuscript having been sold by the General to MM. Hachette for 100,000 francs, Chéruel published a new edition in 20 volumes. This was followed by another edition under the same editorship, with the assistance of Ad. Régnier _fils_ (23 vols. 1873-1886). Neither of these editions was furnished with notes, and before the later one was completed M. de Boislisle had begun to edit for the same firm a noble annotated edition, which is now in progress. The first volume appeared in 1879 and it has now reached the thirtieth. The twenty-eighth contains the famous _tableau_ of the reign of Louis XIV, and the twenty-ninth (1918) consists of an index to all the previous volumes.
The materials which Saint-Simon had accumulated for his great design were derived from many sources, written and oral. His written sources included, besides the Journal of Dangeau, numerous memoirs and histories which were his favourite reading, the great genealogical work of Père Anselme, published in 1674, the _Grand Dictionnaire Historique_ of Moreri, which appeared in the same year, and the work of the German genealogist Imhof, _Excellentium in Gallia Familiarum Genealogiae_ (1687), all of which no doubt had a place in his own library of 6000 volumes.
His oral sources are fairly well known to us, for he generally indicates the quarter from which he derives his information. First in importance were the three ministers, Pontchartrain, Chamillart, and Beauvillier, with all of whom he was very intimate. But both Beauvillier and Chevreuse knew how to be reticent with their young friend when occasion required, and he says that they gave him much less information than either Pontchartrain or the Maréchal de Boufflers. Another useful _liaison_--to use his favourite term--was that with the Duc and Duchesse de Villeroy, both of whom were great friends of Mme de Caylus, Mme de Maintenon’s cousin. The Duc was a son of the Maréchal de Villeroy and the Duchesse was a daughter of Louvois. Mme de Levis, a daughter of the Duc de Chevreuse, was also of some service, for she was intimate with Mme de Maintenon. The young Duchesse de Lorges, Mme de Saint-Simon’s sister-in-law, was a daughter of Chamillart, and her sister was married to that ardent courtier, the Duc de La Feuillade. Saint-Simon tells us that he generally ended his day with a visit to these ladies, from whom he often learnt something. More suspicious sources of information were the Maréchale de Rochefort, bedchamber-woman to the Dauphine, and friend in succession to all the royal favourites-in-chief; her daughter, Mme de Blansac; and the celebrated Lauzun who married another sister-in-law of Saint-Simon. A Gascon by birth and a _farceur_ by temperament, he evidently enjoyed pulling his brother-in-law’s leg, and the long chapter which Saint-Simon devotes to him just before the close of the _Memoirs_, though full of amusing and interesting matter, must not be accepted as gospel truth.
One of the most curious figures at the Court was Mme de La Chausseraye, at one time lady-in-waiting to Madame. Thanks to her _esprit_ and her talent for intrigue, she acquired great influence with various ministers and became very rich, losing large sums at cards, but recouping herself by the good things which the King and the Controller-General put in her way. The King was much diverted by her amusing conversation, and she declared that she had won and kept his favour by the sole method of hiding her intelligence and leaving him with a sense of his intellectual superiority. When it is added that she had also great credit with the royal valets, it may be imagined how useful she was to Saint-Simon, and how eagerly he cultivated her society. “J’étois sur elle sur un pied d’amitié et de recherche[3].” One can also imagine his feelings when many years after her death he learnt from her confessor that she had written “very curious” memoirs, but that by his advice she had committed them to the flames.
[3] See _Mémoires_, IV. 222-224; XIII. 90-97.
Saint-Simon’s curiosity was unbounded and he left no channel of information untapped. “Je me suis toujours instruit journellement de toutes choses par des canaux purs, directs et certains, et de toutes choses grandes et petites[4].” And among his more lowly channels were the royal valets. For, as he says, “le hasard apprend souvent par les valets les choses qu’on croit bien cachées.” He was on excellent terms with Bontemps, the King’s chief valet, who died in 1701 at the age of eighty, a man of high character, thoroughly honest and disinterested, and with Bloin, who was in the King’s service at the time of his death. Another serviceable informant, in a somewhat higher position, was Georges Maréchal, who was appointed first royal surgeon in 1703, “l’honneur et la probité même.”
[4] _Mémoires_, VII. 19. The page and a half which precedes this throws considerable light on Saint-Simon’s sources of information.
Whenever any chance occasion offered of obtaining special information Saint-Simon pounced upon it with eager avidity. He describes, for instance, how he travelled from Fontainebleau to Paris with the Marquis de Louville, head of the French household of the King of Spain, and how he put so many questions to him that the poor man arrived _sans voix et ne pouvant plus parler_. Later he records a conversation with the Princesse des Ursins, who had also just returned from Spain. It lasted eight hours, “which seemed to him eight minutes.”
In the concluding chapter of his _Memoirs_ he claims for them accuracy and veracity. He says that the greater part is based on his own personal experience, and that the rest comes to him at first hand from the actors in the events that he narrates. “I give their names, which, as well as my intimacy with them, are beyond all suspicion. When my information comes from a less sure source I call attention to it, and when I am ignorant, I am not ashamed to avow it.”
This claim is made in all good faith, and as far as the sources of information go it is not far from the truth. But when one goes on to inquire how Saint-Simon has dealt with his sources, the result is not quite so satisfactory. For he suffers from the three failings which are the chief sources of error in a historian. Firstly, he is careless--chiefly, indeed, about figures and dates, but he sometimes copies Dangeau incorrectly. Secondly, he is uncritical. Though he does not retail mere gossip, he readily believes current stories. The ministers, the court-ladies, the valets from whom he obtained his information may have told him what they believed to be the truth, but Saint-Simon did not cross-examine them or otherwise control their statements. Moreover, some of his witnesses are evidently untrustworthy, whether from self-interest, or whether, like Lauzun, they were given to drawing upon their own invention. Thus Saint-Simon’s account of some of the events narrated in his _Memoirs_ has been disproved by modern criticism. The death, for instance, of Monsieur’s first wife, Henrietta of England, was certainly due to natural causes, and not, as Saint-Simon says, to poison.
The third and chief disturbing element which must be taken into account in judging of Saint-Simon’s veracity is prejudice--and that no mere ordinary prejudice, but rather a bundle of prejudices, all intensified to the height of passion. As we have seen, his father had instilled into him the dislike of certain families and of all Secretaries of State. It was probably too his father who implanted in him that excessive estimate of his importance as a _duc et pair_ from which sprang his contempt for the whole _bourgeoisie_, including the _noblesse de robe_, and his prejudice against the monarch who chose his ministers almost exclusively from that class. It was the same aristocratic prejudice which inspired his hatred of “the widow Scarron,” and his dislike of Villars, whom as the great-grandson of a _greffier_ he could not forgive for being made a Duke. Some, however, of his prejudices were due to nobler motives. It was Vendôme’s sloth and debauchery that blinded him to that commander’s high qualities in the field. It was his righteous indignation at the “double adultery” of Louis XIV and Mme de Montespan that filled him with hatred against their bastards. It was the scandal of the official recognition of the royal harem that still further prejudiced him against the King.
But there were also less worthy prejudices, inspired by more personal feelings. The malignant portrait of Achille de Harlay is partly a reprisal for that magistrate’s supposed partiality in the matter of Luxembourg’s dispute with his fellow dukes and peers. The estimate of the _grand_ Dauphin might have been less contemptuous but for Saint-Simon’s enmity with that _cabale de Meudon_ of which the Dauphin was the centre. Other portraits coloured by the passion of a strong antipathy are those of Père Tellier, the Cardinal de Bouillon, the Duc de Noailles, and the Maréchal de Villars. Blackest of all is the famous portrait of Cardinal Dubois. But though it shews evident signs of personal resentment and class prejudice, and though it has been alleged on the Cardinal’s behalf that an honest woman like Madame and a saint like Fénelon gave him their friendly esteem[5], Saint-Simon’s reading of his character may be mainly due to a deeper insight and a more searching analysis.
[5] Madame changed her opinion later. See below, p. 198, n. 253.
But Saint-Simon was a good lover as well as a good hater, and many of his portraits are coloured by the promptings of warm affection. His estimate of the Duc de Bourgogne is, as Sainte-Beuve has pointed out, more favourable than Fénelon’s. His finished picture of Cardinal d’Estrées and his slighter sketch of Cardinal Janson are admirable examples of kindly portraiture. To the Maréchal de Boufflers and to the Chancellor Pontchartrain and his wife he pays noble tributes of admiring friendship. His praise of Catinat, that able commander and disinterested patriot, reads like a page of Plutarch. Memorable too are the portraits of the two Dukes, Beauvillier and Chevreuse, for whom he reserved his deepest affection. He is not blind to their limitations or their failings, but he praises them with the sympathetic comprehension of one who, honest and high-minded himself, can appreciate these qualities to the full when they are displayed in the persons of his friends. The portrait of the Duc de Montfort, the son of his friend the Duc de Chevreuse, is a masterpiece of admiring sympathy[6].
[6] IV. 143.
To these two classes of favourable and unfavourable portraits, the former softened by affection, the latter exaggerated by hate, must be added a large number of portraits in which good and bad are intermingled, and which bear throughout the stamp of an impartial estimate. One of the finest of these is the Prince de Conti; less elaborate but hardly less skilful is the Cardinal de Rohan. But the palm for this class of portrait must be awarded to that of the Duke of Orleans. As one of the protagonists in Saint-Simon’s drama he is naturally a prominent figure and the general impression that we get of his character is deepened by numerous touches. But just before the close of Louis XIV’s reign he is presented in a long and leisurely digression, which forms one of the great chapters in Saint-Simon’s narrative. At the other end of the scale to this full-length and elaborately drawn portrait are the little miniatures of minor personages with which the work is interspersed. Among the most notable are Mme de Castries, the Duchesse de Gesvres, M. du Guet, Le Haquais, Toussaint Rose, one of the King’s secretaries, and Bontemps, his chief valet.
But whether the portraits are finished works of art or mere sketches, whether they are inspired by hatred or by admiration, whether they are partial or impartial, they all alike have this virtue that they are intensely alive. We know the originals both in their outward semblance and in their inmost being. While Racine is concerned only with souls, while La Bruyère’s main interest is in habits and manners as an index to character, Saint-Simon, who began his survey of humanity just before his two older contemporaries finished theirs, gives us body and soul alike. In this he resembles Balzac, but he has this advantage over the great novelist that dealing with real men and women, and not with the creatures of his imagination, he is never tempted to make the outward appearance match the inner character. Nor, as superficial judges are apt to do in real life, does he hastily infer the character from the outward appearance. He deals with both on their merits; he first calls up before us the outward man, and then he gives us his character from an independent study of his idiosyncrasies and actions. “The features of the portrait,” to borrow Montaigne’s phrase, “may go astray,” but we have before us a living man, drawn by a supreme artist. Thus the whole work, if not like Balzac’s, a complete _comédie humaine_, may be fitly called the _Comédie de Versailles_.
For Saint-Simon does not merely give us living men and women, he shews them to us in action, he reproduces their movements, their gestures, their tricks of speech. There is nothing more wonderful in the whole of French literature than his account of the _spectacle de Versailles_ after the death of Monseigneur. It is not in the literal sense a drama, for it lacks a plot to give it unity, but it is a superb dramatic _tableau_, glowing with life and throbbing with a passionate intensity.
The best commentary on this comedy is La Bruyère’s chapter _On the Court_, the essence of which is distilled in the following passage:
Il y a un pays où les joies sont visibles, mais fausses; et les chagrins cachés, mais réels. Qui croirait que l’empressement pour les spectacles, que les éclats et les applaudissements aux théâtres de _Molière_ et d’_Arlequin_, les repas, la chasse, les ballets, les carrousels, couvrissent tant d’inquiétudes, de soins et de divers intérêts, tant de craintes et d’espérances, de passions si vives et des affaires si sérieuses?
When La Bruyère printed this _remarque_ in the first edition of _Les Caractères_ (1688), the Court of Louis XIV, partly under the influence of Mme de Maintenon and partly as the result of the King’s serious illness in 1686, had begun to wear that aspect of seriousness and gloom which overshadowed it during the remaining years of the reign. The conversion of the King to the regular observance of Catholic practices, and the general atmosphere of piety which this conversion diffused shewed itself in various ways, and amongst others in the repression of pleasures to which with advancing years he was becoming less inclined. In the very year 1694 in which Saint-Simon began to make notes for his _Memoirs_ Bossuet attacked the stage in his well-known _Maximes et Réflexions sur la Comédie_. In 1696 the police made a sudden descent on the Hôtel de Bourgogne and summarily suppressed the Italian actors. From this time for many years the only theatre in Paris was the _Comédie Française_.
Versailles became more and more serious and gloomy. “La vie de la cour est un jeu sérieux, mélancolique,” says La Bruyère in the _remarque_ which follows that quoted above. A far worse feature was the inevitable growth of hypocrisy. “Un (faux) dévot est celui qui, sous un roi athée, serait athée.” A good story in illustration of this hypocrisy is told by Saint-Simon. On Thursday and Sunday evenings during the winter it was the King’s habit to attend the service of benediction in the chapel at Versailles, which in consequence was always filled with the ladies of the Court. But, if it became known that the King was not going to attend, the chapel was nearly empty. One evening M. de Brissac, major of the body-guard, an honest man who hated shams, came into the chapel just before the service and announced that His Majesty was not coming, whereupon all the ladies except three or four quietly withdrew, and when the King arrived he was much surprised to find the chapel empty. On Brissac’s telling him after the service what had happened, he laughed heartily, but the ladies, says Saint-Simon, would gladly have strangled Brissac. This anecdote well illustrates the hypocrisy of the age. Beneath the outward veneer of piety free thought and immorality reigned unchecked. Memoirs, letters, and sermons all confirm the truth of Saint-Simon’s picture. In his funeral oration on the Prince de Conti, who died in 1707, Massillon speaks of “un siècle, où la religion est devenue le jouet, ou de la débauche, ou d’une fausse science.” In a well-known letter written by Mme de Maintenon to the Princesse des Ursins in the same year she says, “Je vous avoue, Madame, que les femmes de ce temps-ci me sont insupportables: leur habillement insensé et immodeste, leur tabac, leur vin, leur gourmandise, leur grossièreté, leur paresse, tout cela est si opposé à mon goût, et, ce me semble, à la raison, que je ne puis le souffrir.” There was no worse specimen of her sex than the Duchesse de Berry, whose marriage Saint-Simon had done so much to promote, and of whom he says in his portrait of her, drawn at the close of Louis XIV’s reign, that “except for avarice, she was a model of all the vices[7].”
[7] _Mémoires_, ed. Chéruel, XI. 198-204.
The men were naturally no better than the women, and at the _hôtel_ in the Temple of the Grand Prior of Vendôme he and his brother, the Duc de Vendôme, especially during the years between the Peace of Ryswick (1697) and the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701), gave cynical displays of drunkenness and debauchery.