MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIRS.*

MEMOIRS, as compared with those curious specimens of fine writing and false reasoning which pass under the name of "histories," are a decided step in literary civilization. The earlier historical compositions, with their ready-made orations and indiscriminate collections of probable and improbable events, and the more recent and elaborate productions, having some show of criticism as to the details, but stamped in their ensemble with the brand of system,-belong more to the class of belles-lettres, than to morality and political philosophy; and they are much better adapted to form part of a College course, than to afford the statesman or philosopher an insight into the human heart, and enable him to regulate the future by the experience of the past.

It has been objected to memoirs, that they reflect too faithfully the passions and prejudices of the times in which they are written, to admit of their being received with confidence as historical; or rather, it is insinuated that they are mere registers of the lie of the day, and worthy of consideration only as a species of romance. Yet it is in this very particular and distinctive characteristic that the superior utility of such compositions consists-namely, that they are reflections of the passing hour, that they are fac-similes of the society of which they speak, and, as it were, dried preparations of the anatomy of the times. A single memoir, it is true, may exhibit individual facts in false colours; may detail anecdotes that are defective, embroidered, or wholly untrue; but the entire work will rarely fail to exhibit so faithful a transcript of the author's mind, so complete an exposure of his prejudices, leanings, credulity, means of information, and capability of using them, that his credibility may be estimated like that of a living man; while the testimony of contemporary writers will confirm or contradict any particular statements which may appear questionable and uncertain. The superiority of memoirs over the cold digests of chronicles and state papers is marked in this single circumstance; that while we know little more of general history than a few leading events, of which we only guess at the remote and predisposing causes, without any acquaintance with the personal trifles which are the immediate springs of the greatest, as of the smallest actions,-while we remain in ignorance of all the humanity of events, and are presented only with the abstractions and generalities of the history of other nations,-we appear to live and breathe in the court of France; and to have a personal acquaintance with all the leading personages who have figured in that corrupt and intriguing, but active and enterprising arena of conflicting interests. In the memoirs with which French literature abounds, there is to be found not only "le dessous des cartes," the little causes which produce great events, but we have an encyclopedia of the current ideas of the day, of the mental fashions that prevail,-the forms and qualities of the "walking gentlemen" of society, no less than of its heroes, the average of prevailing virtues and vices, ignorance and knowledge,-the materials with which statesmen work, the mass

* Mémoires sur la Vie privée de Marie Antoinette, &c. &c.

they have to move, the resistances by which they are opposed-in one word, the "very mirror of the time, its form, and pressure." The lights and shades are not purposely distributed to produce effect; words are not artfully arranged to balance a sentence; the mock majesty of dramatic character, and the forced parade of a tragic unity of action, are not supported with poetic dexterity; but we are admitted at once to that levelling intimacy and familiarity which give events and personages their natural dimensions and proper colours: while an intelligent reader gets as much information by what escapes from his author, as by what is intentionally set down on the subject.

It is a characteristic of the bustling and inquisitive age in which we live, to bring compositions of this species to immediate light. Families are no longer content to let the papers of their distinguished members rot in obscurity, subject to the chances of literature and the accidents of life; but, duly appreciating their pecuniary value in the market, they hasten at once to realize this part of the deceased's property, as they would settle a partnership or foreclose a mortgage. Thus the French Revolution has been laid fully open to its contemporaries: and though as yet we are but at the end of the second act of the drama, we are rich in abundant materials for judging the characters and assigning the occasions of its events. We pass freely, not only from the disappointed ambition and iron despotism of Louis XIV. to the corrupting and debasing tyranny of his successor;-from the stern religious persecutions of the former, to the ridiculous squabbles concerning the bull Unigenitus of the latter, and thence forward to the embarrassed finances and vacillating character of Louis XVI. ;—but we are enabled to trace step by step, and day by day, the regular march of causes and consequences, from the canting piety and real intrigue of the prudish Maintenon, down to the infamies of the Duc de Richelieu, the bankruptcy of Guémenée, the transaction of the diamond necklace, the profligacy of Egalité and Mirabeau, and the fatal double-dealing, which brought the unfortunate inheritors of so many false and vicious combinations to a bloody and degrading death.

The papers of Madame Campan, though last in the series of published memoirs, are by no means least in interest; and if they do not add much to the stock of positive information concerning the great events which have been so often illustrated, they derive an intense interest from the author's nearness to the illustrious personages of the eventful drama; and from the many anecdotes which she presents under other aspects than those in which we have been accustomed to see them.

Madame Campan was placed in the court of Louis XV. towards the latter end of his reign, as reader to Mesdames his daughters; from whose service she afterwards passed into that of the Dauphine, Marie Antoinette. Her memoirs commence from the first epoch of her existence as a courtier, and they terminate with her last separation from that unfortunate queen, on her confinement in the Temple. Madame Campan paints with much felicity and fidelity that vicious, corrupt, but ennuie monarch, Louis XV. such as we see him in the generality of contemporary writers,-indolent and melancholy,-harassed with the fatigue of royal representation, and escaping from it by an indulgence of the lowest habits, both of conversation and morals,-unequal himself to the labours of governing, yet occupied in an inces

sant surveillance of his ministers, of whose secrets, by force of espionage, he possessed himself with much dexterity. The insolent contempt of public opinion of Dubarry, and the horrors of the parc aux cerfs are, unequivocally admitted by Madame Campan, if any confirmation were now wanting to authenticate the total overthrow of morality of that degenerate period. But by far the most curious part of her picture of the court is that which relates to the four maiden ladies to whose service she was in the first instance attached. It is impossible to conceive any thing more melancholy than the, worse than claustral, life to which those wretched women were condemned. Their education had been wholly neglected, and they were cut short from the pleasures of rational occupation; while a rigid and relentless etiquette watched over every moment of their lives, and interfered with their most trifling amusements. The King himself treated them with unfeeling indifference; and so little were "the daughters of France" possessed of the comforts of life, that they had not even a garden at their disposal, and were obliged to gratify a taste for flowers, like a London citizen, by placing pots in the balconies of their windows. The royal intercourse between the parent and his children exhibits in striking colours the hideous annihilation of the charities of life, which the vanity of high station too often tends to produce.

"Louis XV. saw very little of his family; he came every morning by a private staircase into the apartment of Madame Adelaide. He often brought and drank there, coffee that he had made himself. Madame Adelaide pulled a bell, which apprised Madame Victoire of the king's visit; Madame Victoire on rising to go to her sister's apartment, rang for Madame Sophie, who in her turn rang for Madame Louise. The apartments of the princesses were of very large dimensions. Madame Louise occupied the farthest room. This latter lady was deformed and very short; the poor princess used to run with all her might to join the daily meeting, but, having a number of rooms to cross, she frequently, in spite of her haste, had only just time to embrace her father before he set out for the chase.

"Every evening at six, the ladies interrupted my reading to them, to accompany the princesess to Louis XV.; this visit was called the king's debotter,* and was marked by a kind of etiquette. The princesses put on an enormous hoop, which set out a petticoat ornamented with gold or embroidery; they fastened a long train round their waists, and concealed the undress of the rest of their clothing, by a long cloak of black taffety which enveloped them up to the chin. The gentlemen ushers, the ladies in waiting, the pages, the esquires, and the ushers bearing large flambeaux, accompanied them to the King. In a moment the whole palace, generally so still, was in motion; the King kissed each princess on the forehead, and the visit was so short, that the reading which it interrupted was frequently resumed at the end of a quarter of an hour: the princesses returned to their apartments, and untied the strings of their petticoats and trains; they resumed their tapestry, and I my book."

From the intolerable restraints of this royal life, Madame Louise, one of the four sisters, took shelter in a convent, where she passed the rest of her days, contented in having exchanged, for voluntary rigours and self-imposed mortifications, the enjoined restraints of heartless representation. In the hour of her death, however, this princess did not wholly forget her rank and dignity. Louis the XVIth related to Madame Campan that her last words were, "Au paradis vite, vite, au

* Debotter meaning the time of unbooting.—Tr.

grand galop ;"—the formula usual with the royal family in giving orders to their grooms.

Marie Antoinette is introduced to the reader by a short account of the court of her mother, such as Madame Campan received it, probably, from her royal mistress; it differs considerably from our received notions on that subject. Notwithstanding the bigotry and the ambition of the Empress, she appears to have neglected the education of her children no less than the indolent and demoralized monarch of France. Totally occupied with the affairs of government, she scarcely saw her offspring oftener than once in eight or ten days. Yet such was her diplomatic cunning, or hypocrisy, that she used the meanest artifices to impose upon strangers a belief that she herself superintended their instruction

"As soon as the arrival of a stranger of rank at Vienna was made known, the empress brought her family about her, admitted them to her table, and by this concerted meeting induced a belief that she herself presided over the education of her children."

With a mind thus neglected, Marie Antoinette arrived in France to be submitted to an etiquette the most minutely interfering with all the privacies of life; while she was exposed to the corruptions of a profligate court. On the first night of her arrival, Louis the XVth made her sup with his last and worst mistress, Madame Du Barry. If to these circumstances it be added that the Dauphin, during many years, treated his wife with a neglect that originated in physical malady, and in a constitutional coldness, which even her matchless beauty could not overcome, and that she was the victim of the daily intrigues of the anti-Austrian faction, anxious to procure her divorce, it would not be a subject for wonder, had her conduct not only been marked with the levities which have been laid to her charge, but even with all that odious criminality which malice and credulity have too perseveringly imputed to her as queen and wife.

It is, indeed, consolatory to humanity to find her kindlier feelings so frequently struggling into activity, notwithstanding the false combinations by which they were repressed: to behold the sympathies and charities of our common nature escaping, like a winter's sunbeam, through the murky atmosphere of a court; feeble indeed, and shorn of their splendour, yet perhaps the more gracious by the force of contrast. Marie Antoinette had every thing against her,—birth, station, education, seductions without, mortifications and disappointed affections within, power almost boundless to indulge her caprices, and flattery for ever active to encourage their extravagance!

The death of Louis the XVth is described by Madame Campan with great liveliness of portraiture. The manner in which the entire body of courtiers fled from the dead monarch to court the first rays of the rising sun, is admirably adapted" to point a moral." To add to the effect, it must be remembered, that Louis the XVth died of the smallpox; and that even the danger of infection could not restrain the eagerness of the nobility to crowd his bed-room even to suffocation, while there was yet a hope of getting any thing by the connexion.

"A dreadful noise, absolutely like thunder, was heard in the outer apartment: it was the crowd of courtiers who were deserting the dead sovereign's anti-chamber, to come and bow to the new power of Louis XVI. This ex

traordinary tumult informed Marie Antoinette and her husband that they were to reign; and, by a spontaneous movement, which deeply affected those around them, they threw themselves on their knees; both pouring forth a flood of tears, exclaimed, O God! guide us, protect us, we are too young to govern.'"

The powerful and striking sentiment of piety, and of the weight of the kingly obligations in Louis XVI. and his Queen, at this awful moment, contrasts, almost to a burlesque effect, with the petty artifice employed in the midst of their grief to reconcile their leaving the infected palace with the decorum and immutable etiquette which environed their minutest actions.

"The Dauphin had settled that he would leave it with the royal family, the moment the king should breathe his last sigh. But, upon such an occasion, decency forbade that positive orders for departure should be passed from mouth to mouth. The keepers of the stables, therefore, agreed with the people who were in the king's room, that the latter should place a lighted taper near a window, and that at the instant of the king's decease, one of them should extinguish it.

"The taper was extinguished. On this signal, the body-guards, pages, and equerries, mounted on horseback, and all was ready for setting off."

The details which Madame Campan gives of the interior of the royal family, during the early part of the new reign, are often curious, and always interesting. They almost uniformly shew in the King great personal amiability, combined with utter nullity as a sovereign. The Queen they exhibit as a thoughtless and gay young woman, such as a queen and a beauty at her age might be expected to be, before the dreadful contingencies of the Revolution had called into activity the prejudices and the apprehensions of her maturer life. This part of Madame Campan's volumes is also occupied with a developement of the court intrigues and petty jealousies, by which the aristocracy engendered and nurtured into consistency those odious calumnies, of which the terrorists afterwards availed themselves, in decrying the Queen, and repressing the sympathies of the people in the hour of her trial and execution.

The object of the author in dwelling upon this part of the life of her royal mistress is to excuse her levities, and to refute the graver charges brought against her. Marie Antoinette is, however, already in the hands of an impartial posterity, and we are more interested in the narrative, as it tends to throw light on the great political struggle in which we ourselves engaged.

The feelings of the King and Queen respecting the American revolution appear to have been rather different from what has been imagined, and by no means coincided with the conduct pursued by the French government. In attacking the British interests, by encouraging the Americans, the royal family of France certainly sinned against legitimacy with their eyes open. Both Louis and Marie Antoinette seemed to have been heartily ashamed and afraid of their republican allies. On this subject Madame Campan observes:

"Franklin appeared at court in the dress of an American cultivator. His straight unpowdered hair, his round hat, his brown cloth coat, formed a contrast with the laced and embroidered coats, and the powdered and perfumed heads, of the courtiers of Versailles. This novelty turned the enthusiastic heads of the French women. Elegant entertainments were given to Doctor