DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0209
100
VIGEE-LEBRUN
friends among leading artists and actors and musicians, and also among
poets and critics, but there is no reason to suppose that she often supped
or spent her Sundays in houses where friendship alone, without “ illustra-
tion,” was the reigning spirit.
To judge her own character by the men and women of whom she
herself speaks with the greatest kindness would, in many cases, be detri-
mental to her fame. For example, she can never find a word of blame,
and readily finds many of praise, for that “ excellent Prince ” the Comte
d’Artois, the future Charles X, of whom it was to be said after the
Restoration, in a phrase now commonly applied to all the Bourbons, that
“ he had learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing.” Whatever he may have
learnt or forgotten by 1825, there is no doubt that, before the Revolution,
he was a mauvais sujet. We need not (and should not) believe a tithe of
the stories told about him by the enemies of his family ; but his life at
Bagatelle was that of a sensualist of very loose principles, and he was one
of the worst of the Queen’s advisers. The first fact was notorious, and
must have been known to Madame Lebrun; the second, in the days before
the fall of the Monarchy, was perhaps still a matter of opinion. Another
member of the Bourbon world of whom she always speaks kindly, so far
as her personal knowledge goes, is Madame du Barry; yet, putting all
questions of morals aside, she must have been aware that no one had been
a worse enemy to Marie Antoinette in those early years of extravagance
which the Queen could never live down. Madame Lebrun’s mental attitude
towards persons who, wilfully or not, did serious harm to her beloved
patroness, both in her peace of mind and reputation, is again exemplified
by her eulogistic references to the Comte de Vaudreuil. His share in
damaging the Queen’s cause was seen, incidentally, in the production of
Beaumarchais’ Manage de Figaro in the Comte’s country-house at Gene-
villiers. In that play a deliberate insult to Marie Antoinette was conveyed
in the character of the Comtesse Almaviva; at least nearly every one who
saw the play seems to have so thought.
The truth is, that a Bourbon prince or a favourite courtier of a Bourbon,
or of the Queen (a Bourbon by marriage who held the chief place among
Madame Lebrun’s divinities) could hardly do wrong in her eyes, even when
they wronged one another. She never seems to have thought it possible
that there was another side to the conflict between the Bourbon admini-
stration and the French people than that on which she herself, by all her
interests and associations, stood, up to the opening of the year 1789.
VIGEE-LEBRUN
friends among leading artists and actors and musicians, and also among
poets and critics, but there is no reason to suppose that she often supped
or spent her Sundays in houses where friendship alone, without “ illustra-
tion,” was the reigning spirit.
To judge her own character by the men and women of whom she
herself speaks with the greatest kindness would, in many cases, be detri-
mental to her fame. For example, she can never find a word of blame,
and readily finds many of praise, for that “ excellent Prince ” the Comte
d’Artois, the future Charles X, of whom it was to be said after the
Restoration, in a phrase now commonly applied to all the Bourbons, that
“ he had learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing.” Whatever he may have
learnt or forgotten by 1825, there is no doubt that, before the Revolution,
he was a mauvais sujet. We need not (and should not) believe a tithe of
the stories told about him by the enemies of his family ; but his life at
Bagatelle was that of a sensualist of very loose principles, and he was one
of the worst of the Queen’s advisers. The first fact was notorious, and
must have been known to Madame Lebrun; the second, in the days before
the fall of the Monarchy, was perhaps still a matter of opinion. Another
member of the Bourbon world of whom she always speaks kindly, so far
as her personal knowledge goes, is Madame du Barry; yet, putting all
questions of morals aside, she must have been aware that no one had been
a worse enemy to Marie Antoinette in those early years of extravagance
which the Queen could never live down. Madame Lebrun’s mental attitude
towards persons who, wilfully or not, did serious harm to her beloved
patroness, both in her peace of mind and reputation, is again exemplified
by her eulogistic references to the Comte de Vaudreuil. His share in
damaging the Queen’s cause was seen, incidentally, in the production of
Beaumarchais’ Manage de Figaro in the Comte’s country-house at Gene-
villiers. In that play a deliberate insult to Marie Antoinette was conveyed
in the character of the Comtesse Almaviva; at least nearly every one who
saw the play seems to have so thought.
The truth is, that a Bourbon prince or a favourite courtier of a Bourbon,
or of the Queen (a Bourbon by marriage who held the chief place among
Madame Lebrun’s divinities) could hardly do wrong in her eyes, even when
they wronged one another. She never seems to have thought it possible
that there was another side to the conflict between the Bourbon admini-
stration and the French people than that on which she herself, by all her
interests and associations, stood, up to the opening of the year 1789.