DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0274
WHY HER “SOUVENIRS” ARE DULL
139
not a scandal-monger. She knew all the gossip of Baron de Breteuil, for
example, who was at the head of the Government when the Bastille fell.
Recalling the last sitting that Marie Antoinette gave her for the big
picture at Versailles, Madame says : “I remember that the Baron de
Breteuil, then Minister, was present, and that, during the whole time of
the sitting, he never ceased to talk scandal about all the women of the
Court. He must have supposed that I was rather deaf or a particularly
good person, if he did not fear that I should repeat some of his wicked
stories to the people most concerned. As a matter of fact, I have never
repeated a single one, although I have not forgotten any of them.”
Here we have the chief reason for the “dullness” of which many
readers of Vigee-Lebrun’s Souvenirs complain. The Baron de Breteuil
himself must have omitted most of these scandals from his memoirs, but
she left them all out of hers. There is nothing more creditable in her
history than that she kept for ever locked in her memory nearly every
tale that could have damaged the reputation of any one of her contem-
poraries. This fact alone would be sufficient to establish that, whatever
her merits or defects, she was a woman of admirable instincts. When we
think of the reminiscences she could have written, and those she did
produce, we can measure the detestation in which scandal was held by one
who herself had suffered so much from its poison.
As soon as she had recovered fiom the immediate shock of finding
the Paris of her youth so changed, she began to resume her old way of
life. She went out to evening parties, she gave suppers herself, with music
as of old. Still looking out with an artist’s eye for lovely women, she
enjoyed the sight of such beauties as Madame de Canisy, who was “ made
like a model,” Madame de Bassano, who was very proud but very pretty,
and Madame Tallien, in whose appearance the artist sought vainly for a
single defect. “ She was at once beautiful and pretty; for the regularity
of her features did not detract from that which is called the physiognomy.
Her smile, her look, had something ravishing in them, and her figure, her
arms, her shoulders, were admirable.” Madame Lebrun goes on to say
that this new acquaintance of hers “ joined to her beauty an excellent
heart; it is well known that during the Revolution a crowd of victims,
condemned to death, owed their safety to the empire that she had over
Tallien, and that such unfortunate people called her notre dame de bon
secour s.”
This account of Madame Tallien would alone show how over-favourable
139
not a scandal-monger. She knew all the gossip of Baron de Breteuil, for
example, who was at the head of the Government when the Bastille fell.
Recalling the last sitting that Marie Antoinette gave her for the big
picture at Versailles, Madame says : “I remember that the Baron de
Breteuil, then Minister, was present, and that, during the whole time of
the sitting, he never ceased to talk scandal about all the women of the
Court. He must have supposed that I was rather deaf or a particularly
good person, if he did not fear that I should repeat some of his wicked
stories to the people most concerned. As a matter of fact, I have never
repeated a single one, although I have not forgotten any of them.”
Here we have the chief reason for the “dullness” of which many
readers of Vigee-Lebrun’s Souvenirs complain. The Baron de Breteuil
himself must have omitted most of these scandals from his memoirs, but
she left them all out of hers. There is nothing more creditable in her
history than that she kept for ever locked in her memory nearly every
tale that could have damaged the reputation of any one of her contem-
poraries. This fact alone would be sufficient to establish that, whatever
her merits or defects, she was a woman of admirable instincts. When we
think of the reminiscences she could have written, and those she did
produce, we can measure the detestation in which scandal was held by one
who herself had suffered so much from its poison.
As soon as she had recovered fiom the immediate shock of finding
the Paris of her youth so changed, she began to resume her old way of
life. She went out to evening parties, she gave suppers herself, with music
as of old. Still looking out with an artist’s eye for lovely women, she
enjoyed the sight of such beauties as Madame de Canisy, who was “ made
like a model,” Madame de Bassano, who was very proud but very pretty,
and Madame Tallien, in whose appearance the artist sought vainly for a
single defect. “ She was at once beautiful and pretty; for the regularity
of her features did not detract from that which is called the physiognomy.
Her smile, her look, had something ravishing in them, and her figure, her
arms, her shoulders, were admirable.” Madame Lebrun goes on to say
that this new acquaintance of hers “ joined to her beauty an excellent
heart; it is well known that during the Revolution a crowd of victims,
condemned to death, owed their safety to the empire that she had over
Tallien, and that such unfortunate people called her notre dame de bon
secour s.”
This account of Madame Tallien would alone show how over-favourable