What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

But his every word and movement were characterised by that exquisite courtesy which was the inalienable, and it would seem incommunicable, specialty of the seigneurs of the ancien régime. And in his case the dignified bearing of the grand seigneur was tempered by a bonhomie which produced a manner truly charming.

And having said all this, it may seem to argue want of taste or want of sense in myself, to own, as truthfulness compels me to do, that I did not altogether like him. I had a good deal of talk with him, and that to a youngster of my years and standing was in itself very flattering, and I felt as if I were ungrateful for not liking him. But the truth in one word is, that he appeared to me to be a “tinkling cymbal.” I don’t mean that he was specially insincere as regarded the person he was talking to at the moment. What I do mean is, that the man did not seem to me to have a mind capable of genuine sincerity in the conduct of its operations. He seemed to me a theatrically-minded man. Immediately after making his acquaintance I read the Génie du Chrétienisme, and the book confirmed my impression of the man. He honestly intends to play a very good and virtuous part, but he is playing a part.

He was much petted in those days by the men, and more especially by the women of the ancien régime and the Quartier St. Germain. But I suspect that he was a good deal quizzed, and considered an object of more or less good-natured ridicule by the rest of the Parisian world. I fancy that he was in straitened circumstances. And the story went that he and his wife put all they possessed into a box, of which each of them had a key, and took from day to day what they needed, till one fine day they met over the empty box with no little surprise and dismay.

Chateaubriand thought he understood English well, and rather piqued himself upon the accomplishment. But I well remember his one day asking me to explain to him the construction of the sentence, “Let but the cheat endure, I ask not aught beside.” My efforts to do so during the best part of half an hour ended in entire failure.

He was in those days reading in Madame Récamier’s salon at the Abbaye-aux-Bois (in which building my mother’s friend, Miss Clarke, also had her residence), those celebrated Mémoires d’Outretombe, of which all Paris, or at least all literary and political Paris, was talking. Immense efforts were made by all kinds of notabilities to obtain an admission to these readings. But the favoured ones had been very few. And my mother was proportionably delighted at the arrangement that a reading should be given expressly for her benefit. M. de Chateaubriand had ceased these séances for the nonce, and the gentleman who had been in the habit of reading for him had left Paris. But by the kindness of Miss Clarke and Madame Récamier, he was induced to give a sitting at the Abbaye expressly for my mother. This arrangement had been made before I reached Paris, and I consequently to my great regret was not one of the very select party. My mother was accompanied by my sisters only. I benefited however in my turn by the acquaintance thus formed, and subsequently passed more than one evening in Madame Récamier’s salon at the Abbaye-aux-Bois in the Rue du Bac.

My mother, in her book on Paris and the Parisians, writes of that reading as follows:—“The party assembled at Madame Récamier’s on this occasion did not, I think, exceed seventeen, including Madame Récamier and M. de Chateaubriand. Most of these had been present at former readings. The Duchesses de Larochefoucauld and de Noailles, and one or two other noble ladies, were among them. And I felt it was a proof that genius is of no party, when I saw a grand-daughter of General Lafayette enter among us. She is married to a gentleman who is said to be of the extreme coté gauche.” The passage of the Mémoires selected for the evening’s reading was the account of the author’s memorable visit to Prague to visit the royal exiles. “Many passages,” writes my mother, “made a profound impression on my fancy and on my memory, and I think I could give a better account of some of the scenes described than I should feel justified in doing, as long as the noble author chooses to keep them from the public eye. There were touches that made us weep abundantly; and then he changed the key, and gave us the prettiest, the most gracious, the most smiling picture of the young princess and her brother that it was possible for pen to trace. And I could have said, as one does in seeing a clever portrait, ‘That is a likeness, I’ll be sworn for it.’”

It may be seen from the above passage, and from some others in my mother’s book on Paris and the Parisians, that her estimate of the man Chateaubriand was a somewhat higher one, than that which I have expressed in the preceding pages. She was under the influence of the exceeding charm of his exquisite manner. But in the following passage, which I am tempted to transcribe by the curious light it throws on the genesis of the present literary history of France, I can more entirely subscribe to the opinions expressed:—

“The active, busy, bustling politicians of the hour have succeeded in thrusting everything else out of place, and themselves into it. One dynasty has been overthrown, and another established; old laws have been abrogated, and hundreds of new ones formed; hereditary nobles have been disinherited, and little men made great. But amidst this plenitude of destructiveness, they have not yet contrived to make any one of the puny literary reputations of the day weigh down the renown of those who have never lent their voices to the cause of treason, regicide, rebellion, or obscenity. The literary reputations both of Chateaubriand and Lamartine stand higher beyond all comparison than those of any other living French authors. Yet the first, with all his genius, has often suffered his imagination to run riot; and the last has only given to the public the leisure of his literary life. But both of them are men of honour and principle, as well as men of genius; and it comforts one’s human nature to see that these qualities will keep themselves aloft, despite whatever squally winds may blow, or blustering floods assail them. That both Chateaubriand and Lamartine belong rather to the imaginative than to the positif class cannot be denied; but they are renowned throughout the world, and France is proud of them. The most curious literary speculations, however, suggested by the present state of letters in this country, are not respecting authors such as these. They speak for themselves, and all the world knows them and their position. The circumstance decidedly the most worthy of remark in the literature of France at the present time is the effect which the last revolution appears to have produced. With the exception of history, to which both Thiers (?)[B] and Mignet have added something that may live, notwithstanding their very defective philosophy, no single work has appeared since the revolution of 1830 which has obtained a substantial, elevated, and generally acknowledged reputation for any author unknown before that period—not even among all the unbridled ebullitions of imagination, though restrained neither by decorum, principle, nor taste. Not even here, except from one female pen, which might become, were it the pleasure of the hand that wields it, the first now extant in the world of fiction,” (of course, Georges Sand is alluded to,) “has anything appeared likely to survive its author. Nor is there any writer, who during the same period has raised himself to that station in society by means of his literary productions, which is so universally accorded to all who have acquired high literary celebrity in any country.

“The name of Guizot was too well known before the revolution for these observations to have any reference to him.” (Cousin should not have been forgotten.) “And however much he may have distinguished himself since July, 1830, his reputation was made before. There are, however, little writers in prodigious abundance.... Never, I believe, was there any period in which the printing presses of France worked so hard as at present. The revolution of 1830 seems to have set all the minor spirits in motion. There is scarcely a boy so insignificant, or a workman so unlearned, as to doubt his having the power and the right to instruct the world.... To me, I confess, it is perfectly astonishing that any one can be found to class the writers of this restless clique as ‘the literary men of France.’... Do not, however, believe me guilty of such presumption as to give you my own unsupported judgment as to the position which this ‘new school,’ as the décousu folks always call themselves, hold in the public esteem. My opinion on this subject is the result of careful inquiry among those who are most competent to give information respecting it. When the names of such as are best known among this class of authors are mentioned in society, let the politics of the circle be what they may, they are constantly spoken of as a pariah caste that must be kept apart.

“‘Do you know ——?’ has been a question I have repeatedly asked respecting a person whose name is cited in England as the most esteemed French writer of the age—and so cited, moreover, to prove the low standard of French taste and principle.