Eh bien! manger moutons, canaille, sotte espèce,Est-ce un péché? non, non; vous leur fîtes, Seigneur,En les croquant, beaucoup d’honneur.What wonder if the Roi-Soleil, surrounded by so many adoring satellites, came almost to believe in his own divinity?In this worship of the King Saint-Simon was very far from taking part, but on the other hand he entered with zest into all the futilities of precedence and etiquette which formed the most serious business of the Court. Theright to wear one’s hat, or, in the case of a woman, to be seated in the royal presence (calledle droit du tabouret), the right to be kissed by royalty, the right to a chair with arms, or merely to a folding-chair—all these were privileges which were claimed and contested with the utmost keenness, and which figure largely in the pages of our chronicler. It is with the utmost gravity that he relates the visit of the Elector of Cologne, Prince Clement of Bavaria, brother-in-law of Monseigneur, to Versailles in 1706; how the King, “standing and uncovered, received him with all the grace imaginable”; how he was presented to the Duchess of Burgundy, who received him standing, but did not kiss him, “because in the King’s presence she kisses nobody”; how he was next conducted to the bedroom of Madame, who kissed him and had a long conversation with him in German; and how finally he visited in her bed the Duchess of Orleans, who also kissed him. “Il ne s’assit nulle part.”A good instance of the passionate tenacity with which Saint-Simon took part in controversies on the most trivial questions of etiquette is what he callsl’affaire de la quête, to which he devotes no less than ten pages. On certain great festivals of the Church, when the King attended mass or vespers, it was the practice for the Queen, or, after her death, the Dauphine, to appoint one of the court-ladies to take round the bag. But the Lorraine princesses, who, according to Saint-Simon, the life-long enemy of their house, were always trying to usurp the privileges of princesses of the blood, quietly avoided this duty. Hence a long and bitter altercation, largely fomented by Saint-Simon, which resulted in the little Duke, on the advice of his friend Chamillart, obtaining an audience with the King, at which, according to his own account, he put the matter before him with great boldness and complete success. Saint-Simon apologises for the length of his narrative, but says with perfect truth that it is from the circumstantial account of such affairs that we get a knowledge of the Court and especially of the King, "so difficultto reach, so formidable to his intimates, so full of his despotism,... and yet capable of understanding reason when it was put forcibly before him, provided only the speaker flattered his love of despotism and seasoned his remarks with the most profound respect[9]."Other questions of privilege loom even larger in Saint-Simon’s narrative. The "monstrueuse usurpation du bonnetor the claim ofMessieurs du Parlement" to address theducs et pairswithout uncovering fills two whole chapters[10], while the famous account of thelit de justiceof August 26, 1718, which records the triumph of the dukes and peers over two of the chief objects of Saint-Simon’s detestation, theParlementand the Duc du Maine, occupies from first to last more than half a volume[11]. The narrative has not the same interest as that of the death of Monseigneur, but the passage in which Saint-Simon literally gloats over his triumph is one of the most remarkable in his whole memoirs.Ce fut là où je savourai avec tous les délices qu’on ne peut exprimer le spectacle de ces fiers légistes, qui osent nous refuser le salut, prosternés à genoux, et rendre à nos pieds un hommage au trône, tandis qu’assis et couverts, sur les hauts sièges du côté du même trône, ces situations et ces postures, si grandement disproportionnées, plaident seules avec tout le perçant de l’évidence la cause de ceux qui, véritablement et d’effet, sontlaterales Regiscontre cevas electumdu tiers état. Mes yeux fichés, collés sur ces bourgeois superbes, parcouroient tout ce grand banc à genoux ou debout, et les amples replis de ces fourrures ondoyantes à chaque génuflexion longue et redoublée, qui ne finissoit que par le commandement du Roi par la bouche du garde des sceaux, vil petit gris qui voudroit contrefaire l’hermine en peinture, et ces têtes découvertes et humiliés à la hauteur de nos pieds....Moi cependant je me mourois de joie. J’en étois à craindre la défaillance; mon cœur dilaté à l’excès, ne trouvoit plus d’espace à s’étendre. La violence que je me faisois pour ne rien laisser échapper étoit infinie, et néanmoins ce tourment étoit délicieux.At the point of laying down his pen Saint-Simon asks indulgence for his style in favour of the truth and exactitudewhich are “the law and the soul” of his memoirs. We have seen that in the matter of truth and exactitude theMemoirsleave something to be desired, but the style needs no apology. The negligences, the repetitions, the occasional obscurity arising from the length of the sentences, to which Saint-Simon pleads guilty, are nothing compared with the general impression of individuality and life.Je ne fus jamais un sujet académique.There is certainly nothing academic about Saint-Simon’s style. It is the style of a man who does not stop to consult a dictionary as to the propriety of his words or the correctness of his constructions, but who is content to use the current language of his day. It is the style of a man who writes under the stress of strong emotion and vivid imagination. We seem to see the pen quivering in the writer’s fingers as he urges it across the paper in a vain endeavour to keep pace with the rapidity of his thought. There are passages, as for instance, the one just cited, which literally vibrate with passion, and the wonder is that while the passion of the orator or the pamphleteer or the satirist is but a transient outburst, that of Saint-Simon, writing, as he often does, years after the event, still glows at a white heat. Moreover, the more violent his passion the better he writes. Nowhere is his style more vivid than when he is recounting theaffaire du bonnet. He is equally vigorous and impressive in his attack on Villars at the time of his appointment to the command in Flanders in 1710[12], and in that on Père Tellier in connexion with the bullUnigenitus[13]. His favourite words to express eagerness—pétiller,sécher,griller—are all suggestive of the extreme nervous tension under which he habitually wrote.Further, it is the style of one who observes closely, and visualises clearly. Some of his portraits stand out as if bitten into metal by the burin of an engraver. A good example of the lively force of his writing is the account of his conversation with the Duc de Beauvillier about theDuc de Bourgogne and Vendôme. Though the sentence in which he contrasts the characters of the two commanders runs to nearly five hundred and fifty words, it is not in the least involved. It reads like the outpouring of a brilliant talker to whom intense hate has given a lucidity and a power of just expression which is little short of miraculous. The vividness and the colour which help to make Saint-Simon’s style so arresting are greatly helped by his use of homely but pregnant similes, as when he speaks of Mme de Maintenon as seeing the worldpar le trou d’une bouteille, or describes Mme de Castries asune espèce de biscuit manqué. Nor does he shrink from coining a word, if necessary, though doubtless some of his words, which appear unusual to the modern reader, were current in the conversation of his day.It must not be imagined that the interest of theMemoirsis always sustained at the same high level. The minor squabbles about etiquette and precedence, the whisperings of contemporary gossip have not the same relish for the modern reader as they had for Saint-Simon. There are certain genealogical chapters, notably the long one on the Rohan family, which will deter all but the stoutest genealogist. But when these deductions have been made the residue is of unsurpassing interest. “With Shakespeare and Saint-Simon,” says Taine, “Balzac is the greatest storehouse of human documents that we possess,” and the claim which he makes on behalf of Saint-Simon is not exaggerated.WORKS OF SAINT-SIMONMémoires, ed. A. Chéruel, 20 vols. 1856-1858; ed. A. Chéruel and Ad. Régnierfils, 22 vols. 1873-1881; ed. A. de Boislisle, 1879-1919, vols.I.-XXX.—vol.XXIX.consists of an index to all the preceding volumes (Grands Écrivains de la France).Écrits inédits, ed. P. Faugère, 8 vols. 1880-1893.A selection from theMémoireshas been made by C. de Lanneau under the title ofScènes et portraits, 2 vols. 1876; 1914. There is another, under the title ofLa Cour de Louis XIV, in the Collection Nelson.There are two English abridged translations, one by Bayle St John, 4 vols. 1857 (and New York, 1902), the other, with notes, by Francis Arkwright, 6 vols. 1915-1918.BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIESA. Chéruel,Saint-Simon considéré comme historien de Louis XIV, 1865;Notice sur la vie et les mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon, 1876.Sainte-Beuve,Causeries du Lundi, III (slight) and XV;Nouveaux Lundis, X.Taine,Essais de critique et d’histoire.G. Boissier,Saint-Simon, 1892 (Les grands écrivains français).É. Faguet,Dix-septième siècle.A. Le Breton,La “Comédie Humaine” de Saint-Simon, 1914.C. W. Collins,Saint-Simon, Edinburgh, 1880.E. Cannan,The Duke of Saint-Simon, Oxford, 1886 (Lothian Prize Essay).ILOUIS XIV[14]
Eh bien! manger moutons, canaille, sotte espèce,Est-ce un péché? non, non; vous leur fîtes, Seigneur,En les croquant, beaucoup d’honneur.
Eh bien! manger moutons, canaille, sotte espèce,
Est-ce un péché? non, non; vous leur fîtes, Seigneur,
En les croquant, beaucoup d’honneur.
What wonder if the Roi-Soleil, surrounded by so many adoring satellites, came almost to believe in his own divinity?
In this worship of the King Saint-Simon was very far from taking part, but on the other hand he entered with zest into all the futilities of precedence and etiquette which formed the most serious business of the Court. Theright to wear one’s hat, or, in the case of a woman, to be seated in the royal presence (calledle droit du tabouret), the right to be kissed by royalty, the right to a chair with arms, or merely to a folding-chair—all these were privileges which were claimed and contested with the utmost keenness, and which figure largely in the pages of our chronicler. It is with the utmost gravity that he relates the visit of the Elector of Cologne, Prince Clement of Bavaria, brother-in-law of Monseigneur, to Versailles in 1706; how the King, “standing and uncovered, received him with all the grace imaginable”; how he was presented to the Duchess of Burgundy, who received him standing, but did not kiss him, “because in the King’s presence she kisses nobody”; how he was next conducted to the bedroom of Madame, who kissed him and had a long conversation with him in German; and how finally he visited in her bed the Duchess of Orleans, who also kissed him. “Il ne s’assit nulle part.”
A good instance of the passionate tenacity with which Saint-Simon took part in controversies on the most trivial questions of etiquette is what he callsl’affaire de la quête, to which he devotes no less than ten pages. On certain great festivals of the Church, when the King attended mass or vespers, it was the practice for the Queen, or, after her death, the Dauphine, to appoint one of the court-ladies to take round the bag. But the Lorraine princesses, who, according to Saint-Simon, the life-long enemy of their house, were always trying to usurp the privileges of princesses of the blood, quietly avoided this duty. Hence a long and bitter altercation, largely fomented by Saint-Simon, which resulted in the little Duke, on the advice of his friend Chamillart, obtaining an audience with the King, at which, according to his own account, he put the matter before him with great boldness and complete success. Saint-Simon apologises for the length of his narrative, but says with perfect truth that it is from the circumstantial account of such affairs that we get a knowledge of the Court and especially of the King, "so difficultto reach, so formidable to his intimates, so full of his despotism,... and yet capable of understanding reason when it was put forcibly before him, provided only the speaker flattered his love of despotism and seasoned his remarks with the most profound respect[9]."
Other questions of privilege loom even larger in Saint-Simon’s narrative. The "monstrueuse usurpation du bonnetor the claim ofMessieurs du Parlement" to address theducs et pairswithout uncovering fills two whole chapters[10], while the famous account of thelit de justiceof August 26, 1718, which records the triumph of the dukes and peers over two of the chief objects of Saint-Simon’s detestation, theParlementand the Duc du Maine, occupies from first to last more than half a volume[11]. The narrative has not the same interest as that of the death of Monseigneur, but the passage in which Saint-Simon literally gloats over his triumph is one of the most remarkable in his whole memoirs.
Ce fut là où je savourai avec tous les délices qu’on ne peut exprimer le spectacle de ces fiers légistes, qui osent nous refuser le salut, prosternés à genoux, et rendre à nos pieds un hommage au trône, tandis qu’assis et couverts, sur les hauts sièges du côté du même trône, ces situations et ces postures, si grandement disproportionnées, plaident seules avec tout le perçant de l’évidence la cause de ceux qui, véritablement et d’effet, sontlaterales Regiscontre cevas electumdu tiers état. Mes yeux fichés, collés sur ces bourgeois superbes, parcouroient tout ce grand banc à genoux ou debout, et les amples replis de ces fourrures ondoyantes à chaque génuflexion longue et redoublée, qui ne finissoit que par le commandement du Roi par la bouche du garde des sceaux, vil petit gris qui voudroit contrefaire l’hermine en peinture, et ces têtes découvertes et humiliés à la hauteur de nos pieds....Moi cependant je me mourois de joie. J’en étois à craindre la défaillance; mon cœur dilaté à l’excès, ne trouvoit plus d’espace à s’étendre. La violence que je me faisois pour ne rien laisser échapper étoit infinie, et néanmoins ce tourment étoit délicieux.
Ce fut là où je savourai avec tous les délices qu’on ne peut exprimer le spectacle de ces fiers légistes, qui osent nous refuser le salut, prosternés à genoux, et rendre à nos pieds un hommage au trône, tandis qu’assis et couverts, sur les hauts sièges du côté du même trône, ces situations et ces postures, si grandement disproportionnées, plaident seules avec tout le perçant de l’évidence la cause de ceux qui, véritablement et d’effet, sontlaterales Regiscontre cevas electumdu tiers état. Mes yeux fichés, collés sur ces bourgeois superbes, parcouroient tout ce grand banc à genoux ou debout, et les amples replis de ces fourrures ondoyantes à chaque génuflexion longue et redoublée, qui ne finissoit que par le commandement du Roi par la bouche du garde des sceaux, vil petit gris qui voudroit contrefaire l’hermine en peinture, et ces têtes découvertes et humiliés à la hauteur de nos pieds....
Moi cependant je me mourois de joie. J’en étois à craindre la défaillance; mon cœur dilaté à l’excès, ne trouvoit plus d’espace à s’étendre. La violence que je me faisois pour ne rien laisser échapper étoit infinie, et néanmoins ce tourment étoit délicieux.
At the point of laying down his pen Saint-Simon asks indulgence for his style in favour of the truth and exactitudewhich are “the law and the soul” of his memoirs. We have seen that in the matter of truth and exactitude theMemoirsleave something to be desired, but the style needs no apology. The negligences, the repetitions, the occasional obscurity arising from the length of the sentences, to which Saint-Simon pleads guilty, are nothing compared with the general impression of individuality and life.Je ne fus jamais un sujet académique.There is certainly nothing academic about Saint-Simon’s style. It is the style of a man who does not stop to consult a dictionary as to the propriety of his words or the correctness of his constructions, but who is content to use the current language of his day. It is the style of a man who writes under the stress of strong emotion and vivid imagination. We seem to see the pen quivering in the writer’s fingers as he urges it across the paper in a vain endeavour to keep pace with the rapidity of his thought. There are passages, as for instance, the one just cited, which literally vibrate with passion, and the wonder is that while the passion of the orator or the pamphleteer or the satirist is but a transient outburst, that of Saint-Simon, writing, as he often does, years after the event, still glows at a white heat. Moreover, the more violent his passion the better he writes. Nowhere is his style more vivid than when he is recounting theaffaire du bonnet. He is equally vigorous and impressive in his attack on Villars at the time of his appointment to the command in Flanders in 1710[12], and in that on Père Tellier in connexion with the bullUnigenitus[13]. His favourite words to express eagerness—pétiller,sécher,griller—are all suggestive of the extreme nervous tension under which he habitually wrote.
Further, it is the style of one who observes closely, and visualises clearly. Some of his portraits stand out as if bitten into metal by the burin of an engraver. A good example of the lively force of his writing is the account of his conversation with the Duc de Beauvillier about theDuc de Bourgogne and Vendôme. Though the sentence in which he contrasts the characters of the two commanders runs to nearly five hundred and fifty words, it is not in the least involved. It reads like the outpouring of a brilliant talker to whom intense hate has given a lucidity and a power of just expression which is little short of miraculous. The vividness and the colour which help to make Saint-Simon’s style so arresting are greatly helped by his use of homely but pregnant similes, as when he speaks of Mme de Maintenon as seeing the worldpar le trou d’une bouteille, or describes Mme de Castries asune espèce de biscuit manqué. Nor does he shrink from coining a word, if necessary, though doubtless some of his words, which appear unusual to the modern reader, were current in the conversation of his day.
It must not be imagined that the interest of theMemoirsis always sustained at the same high level. The minor squabbles about etiquette and precedence, the whisperings of contemporary gossip have not the same relish for the modern reader as they had for Saint-Simon. There are certain genealogical chapters, notably the long one on the Rohan family, which will deter all but the stoutest genealogist. But when these deductions have been made the residue is of unsurpassing interest. “With Shakespeare and Saint-Simon,” says Taine, “Balzac is the greatest storehouse of human documents that we possess,” and the claim which he makes on behalf of Saint-Simon is not exaggerated.
Mémoires, ed. A. Chéruel, 20 vols. 1856-1858; ed. A. Chéruel and Ad. Régnierfils, 22 vols. 1873-1881; ed. A. de Boislisle, 1879-1919, vols.I.-XXX.—vol.XXIX.consists of an index to all the preceding volumes (Grands Écrivains de la France).
Écrits inédits, ed. P. Faugère, 8 vols. 1880-1893.
A selection from theMémoireshas been made by C. de Lanneau under the title ofScènes et portraits, 2 vols. 1876; 1914. There is another, under the title ofLa Cour de Louis XIV, in the Collection Nelson.
There are two English abridged translations, one by Bayle St John, 4 vols. 1857 (and New York, 1902), the other, with notes, by Francis Arkwright, 6 vols. 1915-1918.
A. Chéruel,Saint-Simon considéré comme historien de Louis XIV, 1865;Notice sur la vie et les mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon, 1876.
Sainte-Beuve,Causeries du Lundi, III (slight) and XV;Nouveaux Lundis, X.
Taine,Essais de critique et d’histoire.
G. Boissier,Saint-Simon, 1892 (Les grands écrivains français).
É. Faguet,Dix-septième siècle.
A. Le Breton,La “Comédie Humaine” de Saint-Simon, 1914.
C. W. Collins,Saint-Simon, Edinburgh, 1880.
E. Cannan,The Duke of Saint-Simon, Oxford, 1886 (Lothian Prize Essay).