DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0071
STATE OF SOCIETY
25
and when the French King and his family fled, with such disastrous results,
to Varennes. In that same year of the Madrid revolt there were serious
outbreaks in France, which, for the time being, the Government was strong
enough to suppress. Sixteen years earlier Lord Chesterfield had noted
that the “ germ of reason ” which Du Clos, the historian, had about
that time declared to be developing itself in France, must prove fatal to
the monarchy and the church as they then existed. Every warning,
however, was lost on the people whose manner of life was a principal
source of discontent. Had the whole nation shared in hardships that
were borne for the common welfare, the suffering of the toilers could more
easily have been endured. Most of the army of courtiers, sons and grand-
sons of those whom, for reasons of policy, Louis XIV had compelled to
spend their time at Versailles, lived in idle luxury.
The nobility was as distinct from the people without the particle
“de,” as the officers of a big ship are distinct from the crew. A nobleman
was treated as a being set apart by Providence to enjoy the Court and
its pleasures; the rest of the people were born into the world to produce
the food and raiment and other wealth which he and his class required,
or to minister to his needs by keeping shops or lending money.
Between the nobles and the shopkeepers came a vaguely defined class,
largely made up of men of letters and artists, whose powers of entertaining
or otherwise pleasing made them welcome in the houses of the courtiers
and even attracted the courtiers into their dwellings.
If everything was roturier to the noble outside his own class, the
typical bourgeois, or plain citizen possessed of substantial means, was
often more antipathetic to the working-class than were the nobles them-
selves. He had no “ Divine Right,” and his airs of superiority were harder
to excuse than those from which they were imitated. Yet it was chiefly
through the advance in political influence of the wealthy middle-class that
the nobles were losing power in the state, wherein the position, both of
themselves and (parodoxically as it may at first sight seem) of their sup-
planters who were not “noble,” was rapidly becoming untenable.
All this is the commonplace of history. Yet, in the days when
Madame Vigee-Lebrun was painting the belles of Paris and Versailles,
scarcely a fear troubled their minds, or hers, save that of scandalous
tittle-tattle.
Sincere love, which at most periods of recorded history has been one
of the chief social forces at work, was never less powerful in any civilised
25
and when the French King and his family fled, with such disastrous results,
to Varennes. In that same year of the Madrid revolt there were serious
outbreaks in France, which, for the time being, the Government was strong
enough to suppress. Sixteen years earlier Lord Chesterfield had noted
that the “ germ of reason ” which Du Clos, the historian, had about
that time declared to be developing itself in France, must prove fatal to
the monarchy and the church as they then existed. Every warning,
however, was lost on the people whose manner of life was a principal
source of discontent. Had the whole nation shared in hardships that
were borne for the common welfare, the suffering of the toilers could more
easily have been endured. Most of the army of courtiers, sons and grand-
sons of those whom, for reasons of policy, Louis XIV had compelled to
spend their time at Versailles, lived in idle luxury.
The nobility was as distinct from the people without the particle
“de,” as the officers of a big ship are distinct from the crew. A nobleman
was treated as a being set apart by Providence to enjoy the Court and
its pleasures; the rest of the people were born into the world to produce
the food and raiment and other wealth which he and his class required,
or to minister to his needs by keeping shops or lending money.
Between the nobles and the shopkeepers came a vaguely defined class,
largely made up of men of letters and artists, whose powers of entertaining
or otherwise pleasing made them welcome in the houses of the courtiers
and even attracted the courtiers into their dwellings.
If everything was roturier to the noble outside his own class, the
typical bourgeois, or plain citizen possessed of substantial means, was
often more antipathetic to the working-class than were the nobles them-
selves. He had no “ Divine Right,” and his airs of superiority were harder
to excuse than those from which they were imitated. Yet it was chiefly
through the advance in political influence of the wealthy middle-class that
the nobles were losing power in the state, wherein the position, both of
themselves and (parodoxically as it may at first sight seem) of their sup-
planters who were not “noble,” was rapidly becoming untenable.
All this is the commonplace of history. Yet, in the days when
Madame Vigee-Lebrun was painting the belles of Paris and Versailles,
scarcely a fear troubled their minds, or hers, save that of scandalous
tittle-tattle.
Sincere love, which at most periods of recorded history has been one
of the chief social forces at work, was never less powerful in any civilised