“To appreciate his frankness you must have known him as thoroughly as we did. He was too honest not to leave his keys always in the locks, even in politics.”
La Fayette’s conversation was graceful, easy, full of good humor, and peculiarly charming, without descending to frivolity. He was quick at repartee, and apt in uttering bon mots, as the following incidents will illustrate:—
“When he was arrested by the Austrians in 1792, an aide-de-camp of Prince de ——, the enemy’s general, came to him, on behalf of his superior, to demand the money of the army which he had been obliged to leave. La Fayette, astonished at the demand, laughed heartily; and when the aide-de-camp advised him to take the matter more seriously, ‘How can I help laughing?’ said he; ‘for all that I can understand of your demand is, that had your prince been in my place he would have run away with the military chest.’ The aide-de-camp had nothing to say in reply, took leave of the prisoner, and departed as he came.”
When he joined the nobles of Brittany, in 1788, in their movement against the government, the queen impatiently asked him why he, who was from Auvergne, meddled with the affairs of the Bretons. “I am a Breton, Madam,” replied La Fayette, “just as your Majesty is of the house of Hapsburg.”
As La Fayette’s mother was from Brittany, so the queen was descended from the house of Hapsburg by the female line.
None of the speeches pronounced by La Fayette in the Chamber of Deputies were prepared. His extempore addresses were eloquent, dignified, and clear. His language was persuasive and pleasing, and his speeches were intelligible to all classes, on account of their simplicity and the directness of their appeal.
A friend of La Fayette one day overheard the conversation of several French artisans, who were discussing in the street the merits of the articles in a newspaper they were reading, and after criticising with warmth many of the writers, the leader exclaimed, “Come, this man La Fayette at least speaks French: we can understand what he wishes to say.”
The English language was as familiar to La Fayette as the French, and he wrote both with great facility. His style was simple, concise, and clear-cut, forceful and elevated; his ideas were well defined, his principles and opinions decided and frankly avowed. Regarding the English correspondence of La Fayette with his friend Masclet, an Englishman thus comments:—
“La Fayette has happily avoided the two principal dangers to which the majority of those who attempt to write in a foreign language are exposed. His style is as free from servile imitation as from grammatical errors or faults of idiom: in a word, it is peculiar to himself; it displays the man, though under another costume. It is simple without meanness, concise without obscurity, dignified without affectation; and often contains those happy turns of expression which infuse such a charm into letters written in French. Scarcely ever does it contain one of those little particles which betray the foreign origin of the writer. His letters, it is true, present some inversions not authorized perhaps by modern custom, but by no means at variance with the genius of the language. On the contrary, they establish a sort of link between the writer and the old English authors. Such inversions are admirable for their delicacy and naïveté; without shocking the ear, or proving injurious to clearness of expression, they arrest the attention of the reader, deck themselves, as it were, in the smile resulting from his agreeable surprise, and prevent monotony of style. La Fayette writes English with much facility. His letters present no trace of painful effort or labored composition. He seems never to hesitate in his choice of a suitable word or turn of expression, though he sometimes forgets that the English language can with difficulty bend to that nervous and even elliptic concision of which a skilful French writer often avails himself with so much advantage. This forgetfulness occasionally gives an appearance of roughness and even abruptness to La Fayette’s style.
“His letters are irreproachable, as presenting a faithful picture of his mind; in reading them we feel irresistibly inclined to love the writer; and perhaps in this respect they are inferior to nothing ever composed by him in his own language. Amongst the English, and others who speak that language, such expressions as are employed to depict different degrees of friendship are certainly less numerous and less graceful than amongst the French; but, on the other hand, such expressions have been less frequently subject to the encroachments of gallantry or exaggerated politeness, and are consequently more candid and sincere. In the mouth of such a man as La Fayette, it will be readily imagined that all these qualities acquire new force.”