CHRONICLER OF AN AGE

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 4

CHRONICLER OF AN AGE

Historical Memoirs: Volume 1; 181-17C9, Due de Saint - Simon. Hamish Hamilton. 536 pp. The reign of Louis XIV is one of history’s most brilliant periods, and the Due de Saint-Simon one of its most interesting characters. Although the Sun King’s sky

was fast becoming overeast during Saint-Simon's lifetime, enough of the glory had remained for these memoirs to capture the vibrant spirit of one of France’s, and Europe’s, great epochs. Saint-Simon divided his

e time between Versailles and a the King's busy army; most I of his memoirs are of the personalities of the court and . the conduct of battles. He , had little contact with the B groat writers of the period, tHe tells one story about . Racine’s death, considered by ' his translator to be apochry- ' phal, and mentions La Fontaine—“a dull man”— only because he died. Indeed, births, deaths and marriages occupy a considerable place in the memoirs; Saint-Simon was a sort of high-brow gossip columnist. Gossip about the lords and ladies of the courts is itself interesting, for it is by listening tat to the everyday concerns of the aristocracy that we find out so much about their attitudes and habits that no later reconstruction can match. The memoirs are valuable just because they exist, but there is much more to it than that. Saint-Simon did not chatter about the affairs of, the day; he discussed them. There is never any suggestion' of the gratuitous in Saint-Simon’s approach to the scandals of the court. He mentions them because the essence of Versailles society lay in the constant manoeuvr-

ing! for the prestige that was so often dependent on the King’s patronage, and the power that many declining noble families could secure only by arranging marriages with the rich. When Saint-

I Simon discusses a duke's mart riage plans he is revealing s the dynamics of feudal I society. When he describes : the King’s reactions to the : latest gossip he is not tadulg- . ing in at all the same activity t as the name-droppers of the r women's magazines; he is ■ providing a sneak preview of i history. - Saint-Simon is commonly , regarded as the greatest of 1 the French memoir writers. *He wrote proliflcally, and i always, it seems, he was conscious of an audience. These are not the diaries of a nobleman that some enterprising researcher has brought' to public notice, but the attempt to chronicle an age. SaintSimon’s unorthodox style has been recognised as a significant literary achievement in its own right, and has earned the warm admiration of Stendhal and Proust, along with English writers from Macaulay to Winston Churchill. Much of the eccentricity of Saint-Simon’s manner has been lost—deliberately —in translation. Lucy Norton (who was also responsible for the English publication of “Saint-Simon at Versailles”), points out that the irregular nature of the syntax and the long, chaotic sentences in which the Duke delighted would be confusing to z a modern audience. The product we are offered is, in fact, only a small part of tl originally 9000 closelywritten pages thai SaintSimon left Miss Norton was forced to cut out vast sections, and, by omitting many lengthy digressions and repetitions, has managed her task skilfully. Unless he knows the original French, the reader will not notice any

incoherence in this edition. It reads as a single account; the editing process has not diminished the book’s strange, hypnotic power. The Duke was a keen observer, and a man of strong personality. The tone throughout is one of passionate partisanship; Saint-Simon was deliberately interpreting events in the light of his own Mgh-minded principles. It could be argued that the polemical nature of high memoirs was as important to him as his desire to create what Lytton Strachey called an “enormous panorama, magnificent, palpitating, alive.” The result is a gallery of lavish portraits, adorned by SaintSimon’s peculiar blending of extravagant description and caustic wit Here, for example is his assessment of one great family:

Madame d'Heudieourt had grown old and hideously ugly, but In her time no-one was more agreeable or bettor informed, more cheerful, witty, and unaffectedly diverting On the other hand, there was no-one more gratuitously, continually, and' intentionally malicious, and therefore more dangerous on account of her familiarity with the King and Madame de Maintenon. Thus everyone, favourites, nobles, officers of State, ministers, members of the royal family, even the bas. tarda, bent the knee to that old bitch, who enjoyed doing harm and never had the faintest wish to oblige. . . . Her husband took advantage of her favour to be thoroughly Insolent. He was repellently ugly, debauched, and altogether horrible. . .He was a heavy gambler and the most choleric and ill-tempered of card-players, always taking offence and furious. It was as good as a play to see him at Marly, dealing for “lansquenet,” and suddenly jerking 6ack his “tabouret” so as to break the shins of an onlooker behind him. At other times he would turn and spit ever his shoulder to catch the noses of any peeping Toms,

Saint-Simon was quite unabashed in his attempts to seek the King’s favour, but unlike many of his fellows he did not do so entirely for personal reasons. He saw the King's authority as being cheapened by a succession of adulterous relationships and illegitimate children. The royal bastards were lowering the tone of the court as much as the desire of many aristocrats to marry off their daughters to rich bankers. Saint-Simon was often critical of the King and earned considerable unpopularity in Versailles for his obstinate refusal to partipate, or at least acquiesce, in the general round of mendacity and corruption. Louis; for his part, seems to have appreciated int-Simon’s honesty, and although more than once his desires were ignored, he seems to have recognised that the Duke’s motives were of the best kind. Looking back, it is easy enoug: to see that SaintSimon's causes were inevitably lost ones, but it is difficult not to admire the tenacity with which he advocated them. The process of decay that the memoirs catches so vividly may now be seen as the first stirrings of the movement that was to plunge France so violently into the modern world in 1789.

Lucy Norton notes in her preface that it is the rich portraits of the aristocracy and those aspects of the memoirs that best capture the author's personality that she has been most anxious to keep, but there are as many references to the great events of the period as to these more directly personal reminiscences. The turn of the century was the time of the War of the Spanish Succession. Foreign affairs were beginning to go wrong, and although Saint-Simon does not attempt a historical narrative as such, he provides a commentary on the campaigns that is full of perception. There is, for example, a particularly good study of Marlborough whose victories were due as much to the ineptitude of the French generals as to his own strategic brilliance.

The defeat at Blenheim was probably the single most disastrous events for Louis's Franco but “everything was visibly deteriorating. The nation was exhausted, the troops unpaid, disheartened by bad leadership and therefore never successful; the finances were bankrupt, the generals and ministers incapable, promotions came only by favour or intrigue, no faults Were punished, no inquiries held, no councils of war. ...” By 1709 when this first volume finishes, “confidence and good faith were shattered. The King thus left with no resource but terror and the exercise of his supreme power.” Saint-Simon was still a young man, but the King's sun was fast setting. The Golden Age was over.