HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES PORTRAY ROYAL FRANCE

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27920, 17 March 1956, Page 5

HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES PORTRAY ROYAL FRANCE

[Reviewed by

H.L.G.]

La Grande Mademoiselle. By Francis Steegmuller. Hamish Hamilton. 251 pp. The Sunset of the Splendid Century. The Life and Times of Louis Auguste de Bourbon, Due du Maine, 1670-1736. By W. H. Lewis. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 320 pp.

These two admirable historical biographies have much in common. Both are written by experienced authors who have, in addition to the historian’s sense of responsibility toward his subject, something of the novelist’s insight into character and of the stylist’s grace and wit. Both offer, on sound evidence, an original, discerning ‘ and sympathetic interpretation of the historical personage under consideration. And both illuminate, through the study of the personage, the character of the period—a period which of course overlaps in the two books, since La Grande Mademoiselle, niece of Louis XIII, lived from 1627 to 1693, and the Due du Maine, the oldest of Louis XlV’s illegitimate children, was 23 when she died. < In a sense Mr Lewis’s book is a sequel to his study of “The Splendid Century,” published in 1953. But where in “The Splendid Century” he analysed the France of Louis XIV on broad general lines, dealing with classes rather than individuals, and with problems of government and policy rather than those of private life, in “The Sunset of the Splendid Century” he supplements the picture by telling the personal story of the Due du Maine against a lightly sketched background showing the rise, triumph and decline of Louis XIV, and the repercussions that followed on his death.

The Due du Maine, generally regarded as a weak and undistinguished figure, has been chosen by Mr Lewis “precisely for his ordinariness,” and because his life—in spite of his peculiar status as Bastard of France—was that of any typical rank and file member of Louis XlV’s aristocracy. The ordinariness of the Due du Maine however, does not make him an uninteresting figure—at any rate, not in Mr Lewis’s hands. He was certainly weak but far from featureless, the victim of frustration and of circumstance. rather than the combination of knave and fool that tradition — guided by St. Simon —has painted him. As the favourite eldest child of the King and Madame de Montespan and beloved charge and protege of the most distinguished of all nurserygovernesses, Madame de Maintenon, Maine started life with every possible advantage. But he lacked the qualities necessary to maintain his usurped role of prince of the blood; and the swagger and panache required for the traditional part played by a Bastard of France under the “ancient regime” were equally alien to his shy and diffident temperament. “In how much pleasanter places would his lines have fallen,” comments Mr Lewis, “if his father, recognising the weakness of his body and character, had found him a more appropriate niche in life, in the Church for instance.” Instead Louis, by his policy of treating his bastards as* princes of the blood, forced him into the centre of public controversy, and married him to a daughter of the House of Conde, who kept him involved in an enormously expensive and tedious round of stilted pastoral revels, and whose childish and irresponsible intriguing with Spain after Louis’ death resulted in the arrest of both husband and wife on a charge of treason. The successive stages of Maine’s degradation during the Regency make a tale of considerable pathos, especially as it is impossible not to agree with Mr Lewis’s verdict that Maine’s own deficiencies of character were not entirely responsible for his misfortunes, and that his potentialities in other circumstances might have been considerable. Mr Lewis’s championship of the Due du Maine involves him necessarily in an attack on St. Simon and the general reliability of his memoirs. ’ Both in detail and in the general assessment of St. Simon’s character, it is a most effective attack. Mr Lewis never attempts to deny the literary value of St. Simon’s portraits and sketches of life at Versailles. (“How exquisitely drawn, how they glow with colour, and how valuable they would be to the historian, if only they happened to be true!’’) But in general he accepts the judgment of Spanheim, the Brandenburg resident at Paris, whose severely detached diplomatic reports on the character and position of everyone at the Court of France accord only three lines to St. Simon: “Peer of France. Governor of Blaye, Governor of Senlis. Captain of Pont Ste. Maxence. Colonel of Cavalry—to whom no-one pays any attention.’’ St. Simon habitually misrepresented the Due du Maine as a crafty, limping hypocrite, a version which has too often been accepted by posterity, just as. in the mind of the general public, his famous portrait of Madame de Maintenon as the King’s evil genius “redeeming a youth of debauchery by a malevolent prudery and sham de-, votion’’ has so unjustly persisted. Mr Lewis neglects no opportunity to coun-

teract St. Simon’s work and make a truer assessment of this remarkable woman who, born in a prison, became the wife of a King of France, and ended her days as head of a girls’ school. This portrait, difficult to execute because of Madame de Maintenon’s own reserve, is one of the triumphs of a book full of similar successes, which will be enjoyed as much by the scholar as by the general reader.

Francis Steegmuller in his book on La Grande Mademoiselle has had a simpler task than Mr Lewis set himself. For he has had to hand not only the lovely and charming letters of Madame de Sevigne (more reliable than the memoirs of St. Simon), but also the brilliant memoirs of Mademoiselle herself, documents of great interest hitherto unused in English. And he is interpreting a character much more forceful and colourful than the Due du Maine. But it is a story that has its points of similarity with Mr Lewis’s, for La Grande Mademoiselle, like the Due de Maine, had a life more full of frustration and unhappiness than the vast promise of her birth seemed to suggest. Born Anne-Marie-, Louise d’Orleans, she was “a baby of almost inconceivable importance’’—a Bourbon on both sides, daughter of Marie Duchesse de Montpensier and of Gaston d’Orleans, brother of Louis XIII, a niece of both the King and his Queen, Anne of Austria, and. the richest woman in France to boot. Her opportunities in marriage were the most distinguished in the world; but she never married. Her celebrated activities in the Fronde put an end 1o her hopes of becoming the wife of Louis XIV, Charles II of England and Phillippe, younger brother of Louis, she rejected; and all other possible marriages fell through owing either to her own proud scruples or to shifts in the manoeuvres of European politicians. Then, when she was on the verge of middle age, mademoiselle feli m love well below her station with the Due de Lauzun. The King at first consented, then withdrew his consent, to their union, imprisoning Lauzun and leaving mademoiselle to the miseries of her thwarted and slightly ridiculous—but nonetheless painful—infatuation. She was harassed, too, all her life by the unnatural persecutions of “monsieur’’ her father, a rattle-brained man capable of the basest treacheries, and bent only on cheating his daughter of as much of her fortune as possible. And not only monsieur, but her cousin the King himself, whom she dearly loved, joined in the game of extorting properties from her. In order to secure the Due de Lauzun’s release from imprisonment she was forced to make over to the young Due du Maine two of her choicest possessions: the principality of Dombes and the county of Eu. No wonder that she wrote: “Though I was born to great rank and wealth, though I have never harmed anyone, God has allowed my life to be afflicted by a thousand scourges.’’ A woman of generous and affectionate temperament, mademoiselle suffered deeply, but she met all her misfortunes with great spirit and courage. She had her moment of great public triumph during the Fronde, when she moved in the centre of the contemporary current; there followed the period of banishment from court and eclipse: and later came her second sensational entry into the public eye with the drama of her mature life, when her desire to marry Lauzun became an affair of state and a cause of universal excitement.

It is an interesting story in itself, made even more so by mademoiselle’s own high intelligence and the gift of reflection and self-expression revealed in the memoirs. Francis Steegmuller. until now best known as an authority on nineteenth century literature and on Flaubert in particular, has here found an ideal subject for a venture into history, for mademoiselle is both a historical and a literary figure. His biography offers a fresh and lively interpretation of her character, and makes excellent and imaginative use of her memoirs.

We have come across a delightful review of the brilliant Lancelot Hogben’s “Man Must Measure” in the Children’s Christmas Number of Time and Tide. It was written by Elizabeth Fay (13), who turns out to be the daughter of Gerard Fay, London editor of the “Manchester Guardian.” Writes Miss Lizzie:

“I am sorry to say that “Man Must Measure” did not interest me very much. In fact it rather bored me, but some people would enjoy it immensely. Mathematics has never been a very popular subject with me because I can’t even do arithmetic, so geometry and algebra are out of the question. The best point of the book is the illustrations. On every page there are at least two dearly drawn and beautifully coloured pictures. Lots of children from 11 y?ars might enjoy this book. I say 11-year-olds because althought it deals with such an unbecoming subject every sentence is easily understood but I warn all maths haters to keep away unless you are interested irt art.”—Harvey Breit, in the “New York Times.”