DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0158
70 VIGEE-LEBRUN
Calonne again ; he came no more to see her ; he had paid for his picture.”
Where, asks Lebrun, are the people who benefited by the Citoyenne’s
interest with Calonne ? It had been spread about that the Controller-
General had paid for a house which the Lebruns had built in the Rue
du Gros-Chenet, where the Citoyen Lebrun was now residing. So far was
this from being true, that a good part of the bills for that house had not
yet been settled. In any case, it, and the other house in the Rue de Clery,
were the only property his wife possessed, though she had long been earning
plenty of money—as much, indeed, as five-and-twenty thousand francs
(£1,000) a year, while he also had made a good deal by “ a very active and
very extensive ” trade in works of art.
He did not say that the plenty of money his wife had earned had
largely been expended in his own pleasures, in which she had no share.
And it may also be noted again, in passing on, that a thousand a year then
meant very much more than it would mean at the present day. Even
Gainsborough, as Mr. James Greig shows in his admirable monograph on
Madame Lebrun’s great contemporary, did not expect to have more than
a thousand a year to spend when, at forty-seven years of age, and in high
repute as a portrait-painter, he left Bath for London.
The naturally anxious Citoyen Lebrun further stated, in proof of his
wife’s innocence of dipping in the public Treasury, that there had been no
lavish expenditure in his house—that at most four servants (three women
and one man) had been kept, and asked why it was so difficult to believe
that he and his wife had enough money for so modest a household, and for
building another house, if they desired so to invest their savings ?
It is not to be supposed that Calonne, intelligent, agreeable, and
unprincipled, would have had any more scruples in making love to the
charming woman who was painting his portrait than did the Choiseuls
and Bries of fifteen years earlier; when, as we know from herself, adven-
turous young men used to “sit” to her with the deliberate intention of
seducing her. In those days of her maidenhood her mother acted as
chaperon; now the artist was a married woman with no affection for her
husband. She was a protegee of the Queen, and it was to the Queen’s
influence with the King that Calonne himself—said the foes of Marie
Antoinette—owed his appointment to the control of the Finances, so that
in devotion, chiefly selfish on his part, to the cause of the Queen, artist
and sitter had a certain kind of sympathy at the outset. It may be illogical
to say that a man who is dishonest in money matters would be unscrupulous
Calonne again ; he came no more to see her ; he had paid for his picture.”
Where, asks Lebrun, are the people who benefited by the Citoyenne’s
interest with Calonne ? It had been spread about that the Controller-
General had paid for a house which the Lebruns had built in the Rue
du Gros-Chenet, where the Citoyen Lebrun was now residing. So far was
this from being true, that a good part of the bills for that house had not
yet been settled. In any case, it, and the other house in the Rue de Clery,
were the only property his wife possessed, though she had long been earning
plenty of money—as much, indeed, as five-and-twenty thousand francs
(£1,000) a year, while he also had made a good deal by “ a very active and
very extensive ” trade in works of art.
He did not say that the plenty of money his wife had earned had
largely been expended in his own pleasures, in which she had no share.
And it may also be noted again, in passing on, that a thousand a year then
meant very much more than it would mean at the present day. Even
Gainsborough, as Mr. James Greig shows in his admirable monograph on
Madame Lebrun’s great contemporary, did not expect to have more than
a thousand a year to spend when, at forty-seven years of age, and in high
repute as a portrait-painter, he left Bath for London.
The naturally anxious Citoyen Lebrun further stated, in proof of his
wife’s innocence of dipping in the public Treasury, that there had been no
lavish expenditure in his house—that at most four servants (three women
and one man) had been kept, and asked why it was so difficult to believe
that he and his wife had enough money for so modest a household, and for
building another house, if they desired so to invest their savings ?
It is not to be supposed that Calonne, intelligent, agreeable, and
unprincipled, would have had any more scruples in making love to the
charming woman who was painting his portrait than did the Choiseuls
and Bries of fifteen years earlier; when, as we know from herself, adven-
turous young men used to “sit” to her with the deliberate intention of
seducing her. In those days of her maidenhood her mother acted as
chaperon; now the artist was a married woman with no affection for her
husband. She was a protegee of the Queen, and it was to the Queen’s
influence with the King that Calonne himself—said the foes of Marie
Antoinette—owed his appointment to the control of the Finances, so that
in devotion, chiefly selfish on his part, to the cause of the Queen, artist
and sitter had a certain kind of sympathy at the outset. It may be illogical
to say that a man who is dishonest in money matters would be unscrupulous