Moi cependant je me mourois de joie. J’en étois à craindre la défaillance; mon cœur dilaté à l’excès, ne trouvoit plus d’espace à s’étendre. La violence que je me faisois pour ne rien laisser échapper étoit infinie, et néanmoins ce tourment étoit délicieux.
At the point of laying down his pen Saint-Simon asks indulgence for his style in favour of the truth and exactitude which are “the law and the soul” of his memoirs. We have seen that in the matter of truth and exactitude the Memoirs leave something to be desired, but the style needs no apology. The negligences, the repetitions, the occasional obscurity arising from the length of the sentences, to which Saint-Simon pleads guilty, are nothing compared with the general impression of individuality and life. Je ne fus jamais un sujet académique. There is certainly nothing academic about Saint-Simon’s style. It is the style of a man who does not stop to consult a dictionary as to the propriety of his words or the correctness of his constructions, but who is content to use the current language of his day. It is the style of a man who writes under the stress of strong emotion and vivid imagination. We seem to see the pen quivering in the writer’s fingers as he urges it across the paper in a vain endeavour to keep pace with the rapidity of his thought. There are passages, as for instance, the one just cited, which literally vibrate with passion, and the wonder is that while the passion of the orator or the pamphleteer or the satirist is but a transient outburst, that of Saint-Simon, writing, as he often does, years after the event, still glows at a white heat. Moreover, the more violent his passion the better he writes. Nowhere is his style more vivid than when he is recounting the affaire du bonnet. He is equally vigorous and impressive in his attack on Villars at the time of his appointment to the command in Flanders in 1710[12], and in that on Père Tellier in connexion with the bull Unigenitus[13]. His favourite words to express eagerness—pétiller, sécher, griller—are all suggestive of the extreme nervous tension under which he habitually wrote.
Further, it is the style of one who observes closely, and visualises clearly. Some of his portraits stand out as if bitten into metal by the burin of an engraver. A good example of the lively force of his writing is the account of his conversation with the Duc de Beauvillier about the Duc de Bourgogne and Vendôme. Though the sentence in which he contrasts the characters of the two commanders runs to nearly five hundred and fifty words, it is not in the least involved. It reads like the outpouring of a brilliant talker to whom intense hate has given a lucidity and a power of just expression which is little short of miraculous. The vividness and the colour which help to make Saint-Simon’s style so arresting are greatly helped by his use of homely but pregnant similes, as when he speaks of Mme de Maintenon as seeing the world par le trou d’une bouteille, or describes Mme de Castries as une espèce de biscuit manqué. Nor does he shrink from coining a word, if necessary, though doubtless some of his words, which appear unusual to the modern reader, were current in the conversation of his day.
It must not be imagined that the interest of the Memoirs is always sustained at the same high level. The minor squabbles about etiquette and precedence, the whisperings of contemporary gossip have not the same relish for the modern reader as they had for Saint-Simon. There are certain genealogical chapters, notably the long one on the Rohan family, which will deter all but the stoutest genealogist. But when these deductions have been made the residue is of unsurpassing interest. “With Shakespeare and Saint-Simon,” says Taine, “Balzac is the greatest storehouse of human documents that we possess,” and the claim which he makes on behalf of Saint-Simon is not exaggerated.
WORKS OF SAINT-SIMON
Mémoires, ed. A. Chéruel, 20 vols. 1856-1858; ed. A. Chéruel and Ad. Régnier fils, 22 vols. 1873-1881; ed. A. de Boislisle, 1879-1919, vols. I.-XXX.—vol. XXIX. consists of an index to all the preceding volumes (Grands Écrivains de la France).
Écrits inédits, ed. P. Faugère, 8 vols. 1880-1893.
A selection from the Mémoires has been made by C. de Lanneau under the title of Scènes et portraits, 2 vols. 1876; 1914. There is another, under the title of La Cour de Louis XIV, in the Collection Nelson.
There are two English abridged translations, one by Bayle St John, 4 vols. 1857 (and New York, 1902), the other, with notes, by Francis Arkwright, 6 vols. 1915-1918.