DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0210
HER LOYALTY
ioi
Indeed, she stood there always. Her rival, Madame Labille-Guiard (who
had been the favourite artist of the King’s sisters) stayed in France
throughout the Terror, and painted portraits of Robespierre and several
other members of the National Convention. Vigee-Lebrun’s association
—whatever its extent—with the detested Minister Calonne would almost
certainly have made it impossible for her to keep her head on her
shoulders in Paris. In any case, she had the merit of consistency, and
never wavered in her adherence to the Queen and the Bourbons, from her
first meeting with Marie Antoinette in the park at Marly to her death in
the reign of the last of the Bourbons who have sat on the French throne.
Her chief virtue, we may fully believe, was loyalty, not merely in the
narrower sense of fidelity to a Prince, but in the nobler sense of fidelity to
her friends. It was only when they turned bitter against her or her Queen
that she would give up her belief in them, and even then she could never
find it in her heart to be altogether unkind. Her conduct with respect to
David, the painter, is a case in point. He was a Jacobin by instinct as
well as interest. It is true that, after being imprisoned in the days following
the 9th Thermidor, he was less violently J acobin, but he never got nearer
to Bourbon sentiments than in painting huge pictures of the glorious
exploits of Napoleon, who paved the way, without intending it, for the
return of the Bourbon monarchy.
David could not forgive his old friend Madame Lebrun for having
been so loyal to the King and Queen whose ruin he had cordially helped
to complete. He retailed, as she was assured by acquaintances common
to both of them, the old scandal about her connection with Calonne, and
that was an unpardonable offence. Equally unpardonable, perhaps more
hopelessly so, was the fact that he was a regicide. Yet she could still in
her old age bear witness to the fact that no personal or political dislike
had prevented David from being just to her talent as a painter. She
admits the probability that, but for his atrocious conduct during the Terror
—when, among his many offences, he got Hubert Robert arrested and
kept in harsh confinement—she might have forgotten, “ sooner or later,”
his attacks on her own character.
Madame Lebrun’s constant association with members of the nobility,
and courtiers in particular, did not make her (in the sense in which she
can never have heard the word, even in London) a snob. She was too
simple-hearted for that. When she declares that for her “ titles are perfectly
indifferent,” there is no reason to suppose that this assertion, superficially
ioi
Indeed, she stood there always. Her rival, Madame Labille-Guiard (who
had been the favourite artist of the King’s sisters) stayed in France
throughout the Terror, and painted portraits of Robespierre and several
other members of the National Convention. Vigee-Lebrun’s association
—whatever its extent—with the detested Minister Calonne would almost
certainly have made it impossible for her to keep her head on her
shoulders in Paris. In any case, she had the merit of consistency, and
never wavered in her adherence to the Queen and the Bourbons, from her
first meeting with Marie Antoinette in the park at Marly to her death in
the reign of the last of the Bourbons who have sat on the French throne.
Her chief virtue, we may fully believe, was loyalty, not merely in the
narrower sense of fidelity to a Prince, but in the nobler sense of fidelity to
her friends. It was only when they turned bitter against her or her Queen
that she would give up her belief in them, and even then she could never
find it in her heart to be altogether unkind. Her conduct with respect to
David, the painter, is a case in point. He was a Jacobin by instinct as
well as interest. It is true that, after being imprisoned in the days following
the 9th Thermidor, he was less violently J acobin, but he never got nearer
to Bourbon sentiments than in painting huge pictures of the glorious
exploits of Napoleon, who paved the way, without intending it, for the
return of the Bourbon monarchy.
David could not forgive his old friend Madame Lebrun for having
been so loyal to the King and Queen whose ruin he had cordially helped
to complete. He retailed, as she was assured by acquaintances common
to both of them, the old scandal about her connection with Calonne, and
that was an unpardonable offence. Equally unpardonable, perhaps more
hopelessly so, was the fact that he was a regicide. Yet she could still in
her old age bear witness to the fact that no personal or political dislike
had prevented David from being just to her talent as a painter. She
admits the probability that, but for his atrocious conduct during the Terror
—when, among his many offences, he got Hubert Robert arrested and
kept in harsh confinement—she might have forgotten, “ sooner or later,”
his attacks on her own character.
Madame Lebrun’s constant association with members of the nobility,
and courtiers in particular, did not make her (in the sense in which she
can never have heard the word, even in London) a snob. She was too
simple-hearted for that. When she declares that for her “ titles are perfectly
indifferent,” there is no reason to suppose that this assertion, superficially