French Memoirs in English

EVERY additional volume of the Versailles Historical Series — a series now extending in time from Brantôme’s Book of the Ladies to the Memoirs of the Prince de Ligne and Count Fersen — deepens the reader’s impression of the excellent manner in which the translator and editor and the publishers have worked together to produce in English a social and, in certain aspects, a political history of seventeenth and eighteenth century France drawn from the memoirs and correspondence of those who were a part of the tale they told. Brantôme’s Dames Illustres is in truth somewhat too early to fit naturally into the scheme, yet no one will be likely to wish it away. The books, attractive in their make - up, are really embellished and enriched by a generous number of well-selected and admirably reproduced portraits, — pictures often pleasingly unhackneyed. Of course Miss Wormeley’s most important and difficult task was in dealing with the greatest of all French memoir writers. To reduce Saint-Simon to one fourth of his true size called not only for large omissions, but for much condensation as well. The reader may think that at least one or two volumes more might have been allowed him, but, as it is, Miss Wormeley has done wonders in retaining so many of the indispensable passages and in keeping the continuity of the narrative. Her merits as a translator no longer need to be dwelt upon; her editorial notes are concise and to the purpose, and more of them would have been welcome. No one, for instance, will be likely to read even an abridgment of Saint-Simon without wishing for some more definite knowledge of his later life than is to be gleaned from scattered hints, for some account of his children and their children, — in short, the after history of the house. And such information can be put in very small compass.

One of the latest volumes of the series is devoted to a selection from those papers of Count Fersen, collected and published by his grandnephew.¹ There is no figure so noble in the court of the last days of old France as the young Swede, in describing whom the much misused word “ chivalrous ” in its best meaning is instinctively used. As modest as brave, as unassuming as accomplished, honorable, upright, true, in that atmosphere of falsehood and self-seeking, he must have seemed to the girlqueen, the object of his romantic but profoundly respectful admiration, and whose most loyal and devoted friend he was to remain till her life’s end, something very like a visitant from another sphere. To the attractive stranger with “ the handsomest face, the quickest intelligence ” Parisian society showed its most amiable and engaging aspect, but that he “ thought nobly and with singular loftiness ” was beyond its ken. That a gracious word from the queen was sufficient excuse for calumniating her in a court where all gossip was vile Fersen soon learned, and was thereby strengthened in his resolve to join the expedition to America. As an aide-de-camp to the Comte de Rochambeau he served till the end of the war, and the letters of so clear-sighted an observer have a special interest, when we remember how often the French element in the Revolutionary War has been a subject to treat romantically rather than historically. On parting with his chief, he says, “ M. de Rochambeau was the only man capable of commanding us here, and of maintaining that perfect harmony which has reigned between two nations, so different in manners, morals, and language, and who at heart do not like each other.” Count Axel, himself, did not learn greatly to like his allies, but he could also view his comrades from the outside.

It is a matter for regret that the fear of a domiciliary visit impelled the friend to whom Fersen had entrusted his diary from 1780 to 1791 to destroy it. Thus were lost his daily notes during the American war, and his observations in the last years of the old order and the first of the great upheaval, — observations of a very competent and sane looker-on, sharing neither the illusions nor the frenzies of the time. Early in 1791 he writes to his father, and after recalling the favors shown him by the king and queen in happier days, he says : “ I should be vile and ungrateful if I abandoned them now when they can do nothing more for me, and while I have still the hope of being useful to them. To all the many kindnesses with which they loaded me they have now added a flattering distinction— that of confidence.” How well he deserved that trust need not be said. He organized the flight to Varennes, successful so long as he controlled it; later he revisited Paris, at the risk of his life, with new plans; as the representative of his own sovereign, the one disinterested royal friend of the hapless prisoners, he traveled from court to court doing everything that absolute devotion could inspire in a man both wise and capable, fully conscious of the all but treachery of the French princes, the follies of the émigrés, the madness in Paris, yet hoping against hope till the longdrawn tragedy ended. And little but disappointment and sorrow were to mark his later years, though he rose to high honor in his own country. But Sweden was torn by dissensions, and the question of the royal succession was the cause of virulent animosities. While Count Fersen was officially superintending a state function, on June 20, 1810, he was torn from his carriage by a body of rioters and tortured to death, — one of the most senseless and brutal of all mob murders. It was the nineteenth anniversary of the flight to Varennes.

All the other works in this collection, whatever may be their biographic interest, are distinctly historical, but the Letters of Mlle, de Lespinasse² are emphatically, it may be said poignantly, personal in their appeal. They give us scarcely a glimpse of that salon, where daily gathered encyclopædists, academicians, philosophers, churchmen, distinguished strangers, most brilliant but diverse elements held and harmonized by a woman without beauty, name, or fortune, but with measureless charm, exquisite tact, delicate insight, quick sympathy, and, above all, never failing power of drawing forth the best in every guest. Those of her letters which chanced to be preserved are the record, still palpitating with life, of the passion, or, it may be said, the two passions, which like consuming fires burnt away the writer’s life. They belong to the little group of the great love-letters of the world, and as in the century that has passed since thenpublication no earlier attempt has been made to translate them, the volume can be accepted thankfully, even if it stands somewhat by itself among its present companions. The story of this brilliant and most unhappy woman, vivified by her letters, impresses itself so strongly upon some readers, that they feel a peculiar interest in following the career, yet incomplete, of a contemporary heroine, who appears to be in the intention of her gifted creator a reincarnation in another country and century of Julie de Lespinasse. In considering the degenerate state into which the noble art of historic fiction has fallen, this method of restoring a distinguished figure of the past has much to commend it.

S. M. F.