His “pleasant” saying of Dangeau, as Saint-Simon calls it, that he was not a grandee, but “after a grandee,” is typical of him, at once acute and direct. It says more exactly what Dangeau was than a page. The page is there too, but the few words shine out of it like an electric light. It is as if he was talking round about his subject, seeking the best aspect of it, and then, suddenly, with a pointing finger, you get “Pamphilius in a word desires to be a great man, and believes himself to be one; but he is not; he is after a great man.” The rest of the page goes for little. It is Thackerayan, as we should say. Whether Thackeray owed anything directly to La Bruyère I am not able to determine; but he owed a fair amount to Steele, who assuredly did.
If La Bruyère had desired to learn the worst of mankind he could not have been trained in a better school than that which he found for himself. He had been one of the Accountants-General in the Bureau of Finance at Caen for a few years when M. le Prince—le Grand Condé—called him to Chantilly to be tutor—one of several—to his grandson the Duc de Bourbon. There, and at Versailles, he remained for the rest of his life, and at Versailles he died. Of Condé, of Henri-Jules, his terrible son, and of the grandson, “very considerably smaller than the smallest of men,” as Saint-Simon declares him, and very considerably more of a degenerate than most men, this learned, accurate, all-observant, deeply-meditating man was content to be the servant and the butt. When his pupil left his hands he stayed on as “gentleman” to the father, who was in his turn M. le Prince. Prince as he was, he was also, quite simply, a wild beast, biting mad; and his son was little better: a pervert and proud of it, crafty, malicious, tyrannical, and “extremely ferocious.” One does not know how life with such masters can have been tolerable. La Bruyère was both neglected and despised. He had nothing to do, for even as “gentleman” he was a supernumerary—yet he must be there. To understand it you must accept the sang royal in its fullest implications. His book, which yielded eight editions in his lifetime, went for nothing at Chantilly, though the King himself had heard of it, and had his harangue at the Academy read to him at Marly. Yet one of the inmates of Chantilly (Valincourt), while admitting that “La Bruyère meditated profoundly and agreeably, two things which are rarely found together,” went on to say that “he was a good fellow at bottom, whom, however, the fear of seeming pedantic had thrown into its ridiculous opposite ... with the result that during all the time he spent in the household of M. le Duc, in which he died, he was always held for a figure of fun.” It seems that he tried to be sprightly, would dance, put on airs and graces, make jokes, and walk on his toes. We may regard all that as protective colouring, the instinct of the creature to hide his continual mortifications. Elsewhere—in Paris, naturally—he had made himself a personage. His book sold, if not to his profit, very much to his credit; he had made himself imposing enemies, and had the better of them at every turn; Bossuet was his friend, Pontchartrain, Racine and the like. He still held his sinecure office at Caen. Why, then, did he hang about Chantilly, and lodge in an attic at Versailles when M. le Prince was there? Who is to say? That particular prince was a human tiger—but in his service he lived on, and died. I think he ought to have put himself into his own book—and perhaps he did:
“I see a man surrounded, and followed—he is in office. I see another man whom all the world salutes—he is in favour. Here is one caressed and flattered, even by the great—he is rich. There is another, observed curiously on all hands—he is learned. Here is another whom nobody omits to greet—a dangerous man.”
At any rate, his experiences provided that one of the shrewdest sections of Les Caractères is that headed “Of the Court.”
“The Court does not satisfy; it prevents you from satisfaction anywhere else.
“It is like a house built of marble: I mean that it is made up of men, very hard, but polished.
“One goes there very often in order to come away again and be therefore respected by one’s country gentry, or the bishop.
“The most honourable reproach which can be made against a man is to say of him that he knows nothing of the Court. In that one remark there are no virtues unimputed to him.
“You speak well of a man at Court for two reasons: the first, that he may learn that you have done so; the second that he may so speak of you.
“It is as dangerous at Court to make advances as it is awkward not to make them.”
The man who penned those caustic little sentences knew what he was talking of. Yet La Bruyère’s portrait of himself sets him forth as a creature apart, pointedly distinguishes him from Clitiphon, who has been too busy to heed him.
“O man of consequence and many affairs,” he says to Clitiphon, “when you in your turn have need of my good offices, walk into my lonely study. The philosopher is at your service, and will not put you off to another day. You will find him there, deep in Plato’s dialogues, dealing with the spiritual nature of the soul, distinguishing its essence from that of the body; or, pen in hand, calculating the distance from us of Jupiter or Saturn. I am adoring God in those books of his, seeking by knowledge of the truth to conduct my own spiritual part into better ways. Nay, come in, the door is open; there is no ante-chamber in which to be wearied while you wait. Come straight in, without announcement. You are bringing me something more to be desired than gold and silver if it is a chance of serving you. Speak then, what do you desire me to do for you? Am I to leave my books, studies, work, the very line which I am now penning? Happy interruption, which is to make me of service to you!”
Overwhelming invitation! The butter, you will agree, is spread too thick. On another page he quotes the saying of the Roman patriarch, that he had rather people should inquire why there was no statue to Cato, than why there was one. But it had perhaps not occurred to Cato as calculable that he might have to erect a statue to himself.
“Voilà de quoi vous attirer beaucoup de lecteurs, et beaucoup d’ennemis,” said M. de Malezieu to La Bruyère on perusing Les Caractères. There was no doubt about that. Although he set out with a translation of Theophrastus, in going on to be a Theophrastus himself the temptation to draw from nature was obvious, and not resisted. Theophrastus generalised; he wrote of abstractions, Stupidity, Brutality, Avarice and what not. If he had had instances in his head, nobody knew what they were, and nobody cared. But La Bruyère did not write of qualities: he wrote of things and of people—women, men, the Court, the sovereign; and by his treatment of them in examples, in short paragraphs, with italicised names, with anecdotes, snatches of dialogue and other aids to attention, provided the quidnuncs with a fascinating game. “Keys” sprang up like mushrooms in a night. The guess-work was dangerously unanimous. The instances he had chosen were recent: there could not be much doubt who were Menalcas and Pamphilius, Clitiphon and Arténice. Three editions were called for in 1688, a fourth in 1689, and then one a year until 1694. On the whole he came off very lightly. The Mercure Galant and its supporters furiously raged together. But the King had been elaborately flattered, and no harm came to La Bruyère.