DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0072
26
VIGEE-LEBRUN
society than among the courtiers and their parasites in the thirty years
preceding the Revolution. The human butterflies that fluttered in the
bowers and coppices of Versailles and Marly had no longer that
capacity for ardent passion which had existed among their grandparents.
Galanterie had indeed usurped the place of E Amour, and fidelity to
one lover at a time was somewhat out of fashion. It must in fairness be
recognised that, so far as we may judge from the memoirs of the age, there
was a good deal of platonic affection left, and that it was not always less
possible in Paris than in Edinburgh for “ affairs of the heart ” to run such
a painful course as that which is displayed for our analysis in the letters
of “Clarinda” MacLehose and “Sylvander” Burns. It was, however,
much more improbable, seeing how widely the example of Versailles and
the Court during many years had spread. Men and women “ of fashion ”
certainly took their pleasures gaily in the Paris of Madame Lebrun’s youth,
and for the most part acted strictly in accordance with the Roman poet’s
advice : “ Carpe diem,” of which the best-known and very free rendering
is “ Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
There were plenty of sober-minded people to be met with among
the middle classes, not excepting the artists and authors; but artists and
authors lived then, as they must in most cases, by producing what was
agreeable to the people with money to spend. All of them had not even
so much self-respect as Doyen, whose refusal to paint an undignified
picture was recalled on an earlier page, and the frivolity and superficiality
which ruled in the Court often ruled also in the studio, the library and
the shop.
In their morals, the frivolous class—which unhappily included most
of those, bourgeois as well as noble, who came to high office in the state-
were in some ways much less careless than their forbears. They were
usually careful in keeping up appearances, and it required the habits of a
Paul Pry, or even the cunning of a clever detective, to find out any of
the truth about half the scandals of the day. To display a liaison was an
offence against etiquette; people who behaved after the candid fashions of
the Restoration in England or the Regency in France would, until chaos had
established its power at Versailles, have been sent to their country houses
very speedily. Outwardly, therefore, there was little, so far as morals were
in question, to offend the most honest prude. Nothing in this respect had
changed much since Walpole, in a letter to his old friend Gray (the author
of the Elegy), wrote in 1766 from Paris: “ It requires the greatest curiosity,
VIGEE-LEBRUN
society than among the courtiers and their parasites in the thirty years
preceding the Revolution. The human butterflies that fluttered in the
bowers and coppices of Versailles and Marly had no longer that
capacity for ardent passion which had existed among their grandparents.
Galanterie had indeed usurped the place of E Amour, and fidelity to
one lover at a time was somewhat out of fashion. It must in fairness be
recognised that, so far as we may judge from the memoirs of the age, there
was a good deal of platonic affection left, and that it was not always less
possible in Paris than in Edinburgh for “ affairs of the heart ” to run such
a painful course as that which is displayed for our analysis in the letters
of “Clarinda” MacLehose and “Sylvander” Burns. It was, however,
much more improbable, seeing how widely the example of Versailles and
the Court during many years had spread. Men and women “ of fashion ”
certainly took their pleasures gaily in the Paris of Madame Lebrun’s youth,
and for the most part acted strictly in accordance with the Roman poet’s
advice : “ Carpe diem,” of which the best-known and very free rendering
is “ Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
There were plenty of sober-minded people to be met with among
the middle classes, not excepting the artists and authors; but artists and
authors lived then, as they must in most cases, by producing what was
agreeable to the people with money to spend. All of them had not even
so much self-respect as Doyen, whose refusal to paint an undignified
picture was recalled on an earlier page, and the frivolity and superficiality
which ruled in the Court often ruled also in the studio, the library and
the shop.
In their morals, the frivolous class—which unhappily included most
of those, bourgeois as well as noble, who came to high office in the state-
were in some ways much less careless than their forbears. They were
usually careful in keeping up appearances, and it required the habits of a
Paul Pry, or even the cunning of a clever detective, to find out any of
the truth about half the scandals of the day. To display a liaison was an
offence against etiquette; people who behaved after the candid fashions of
the Restoration in England or the Regency in France would, until chaos had
established its power at Versailles, have been sent to their country houses
very speedily. Outwardly, therefore, there was little, so far as morals were
in question, to offend the most honest prude. Nothing in this respect had
changed much since Walpole, in a letter to his old friend Gray (the author
of the Elegy), wrote in 1766 from Paris: “ It requires the greatest curiosity,