"Your letter, Sir, did indeed surprise Madame Grimod and me,
who believed ourselves among the number of your friends, after
the many years we have had the honour to know you. We do not
know the motives for so sudden a quarrel; if you were pleased
with our society, we were no less so with yours. The number of
true friends we retain, does not hinder us from regretting
those we lose, in you and Madame Lebrun, to whom we beg you
will express our regret. We have the honour," &c.
After two such polite epistles, the reader would naturally expect that
the Sieur Lebrun and the Sieur Grimod, with their respective wives,
would toss their heads at each other when they met in the street, and
give the cut direct with the utmost unanimity. But another glance into
the _Memoire_ will soon convince him of his mistake. The Sieur Lebrun
may probably look vastly majestic, and pass the Sieur Grimod with a
contemptuous jerk; but sorry are we to say that Madame Lebrun joins in
no such dignified proceeding. She cuts the magnanimous Lebrun instead;
she stirs up against him the wrath and indignation of all his friends
and relations; she continues her intimacy with the Sieur Grimod; and, as
a finish to her connubial obedience, she goes one morning with three
hackney coaches, and carries off every article of furniture the unhappy
little man possesses. A pleasant specimen of a wife of the middle class
in the year 1774! A duchess could scarcely be more sublime. Now, who was
this Sieur Grimod, and what manner of rank was his considered? He had
nothing to do with the noblesse; he kept no shop; he had no private
fortune; but he was one of the true causers of the French Revolution,
the rascally collectors of taxes, the underlings of the atrocious
_fermiers generaux_, who wrung the last farthing from the already
oppressed peasant, and made the whole realm of France as sterile,
hopeless, and wretched, as a nation must inevitably become, if it is
allowed to be the prey of an O'Connell in every parish. His nominal
salary was under a hundred a-year; but we shall see the style he lives
in, as we get on in the account--his country-houses--his carriages, and
even his politenesses to Madame Lebrun; and we shall hear in every one
of these luxurious enjoyments the sharpening of the guillotine axe.
Madame Lebrun the wife, Madame Lebrun the mother, and Mademoiselle the
sister, are all in the same story. The old lady, whose virtuous
indignation towers above her sex, has no patience for the insufferable
tyrant who won't let his wife see her best friends, ("qui vouloit
l'empecher de voir ses bons amis.") They trump up all manner of stories
against him; and even maintain, in their first paper of accusation, that
he threshed and kicked his tender-hearted spouse, and put her in bodily
fear. But when the magistrate looked at our diminutive friend, and
compared his powers of threshing and kicking with the tall majestic
figure and full chest of the complainant, he dismissed the charge "avec
une sorte d'indignation," as the Sieur Lebrun triumphantly declares; and
we think the magistrate was quite justified in so doing. No, no--the
Sieur Lebrun was bad enough, as you shall hear in the sequel; but he
never had the cruelty, not to mention the courage, to attack so stately
a woman as his wife. But, alas! from the magistrate's decision there lay
a power of appeal. The three ladies--with the help, no doubt, of the
irresistible Sieur Grimod--carried the cause into a higher court. They
brought it before the bailliage of the Temple; but the Sieur Lebrun had
some misgivings as to the impartiality of the court, and he carried it
before the judges at the Chatelet. In this court, Grimod and his party
knew they had no chance, suffered the case to go against them by
default, and finally appealed to the Grande Chambre. And the Sieur
Lebrun did all this to get back a woman that had robbed, and pillaged,
and slandered him, and preferred her _bon ami_ the Sieur Grimod, and her
_bonne amie_ the Dame Grimod, to her Misis, in spite of his ode on the
earthquake at Lisbon, and his being ranked by the Parisian critics as a
little above Pindar.
Well, to it they go, reply, replication, rejoinder--till at last we are
verily persuaded the little man tried to get her into his power again
for the express purpose of murdering her at his leisure. And what our
verdict in such a case, if we had been upon the jury, would have been,
we are not prepared to say.
The lady, in the course of her accusations, proved too much. She brought
witnesses to state, that for the whole fourteen years of her wedded life
she had been thumped and bullied worse than Cinderella; accused of
trying to poison her lord and master; and, in short, had led a life of
perfect misery. Oho! cries the Pindar of the reign of Louis the
Fifteenth, you are a pretty woman to talk of misery and ill-treatment
for fourteen years! Why, never was such a merry, happy, careless being
in France. For fourteen years you did nothing but amuse yourself and
worship me, as a good wife ought. I buried myself in my books, and wrote
astonishing odes and epigrams, corresponded with Voltaire, and
discovered grand-daughters of Corneille, and got up subscriptions for
their benefit; and all the while you attended every party, went to all
the theatres, and never missed a single masquerade. No, 'twas when I
forbade the visits of Grimod----But at that name his eloquence leaves
him, and he descends to facts. There is one fact, he says, against which
the whole plot of this separation will fall to pieces. It is the harmony
which always reigned between man and wife till about six weeks before
she went away. The witnesses of the Sieur Lebrun to this fact are
indubitable. They are her own letters--those, be it understood, which
she left behind, or rather, which she was not able to carry away with
her. By the perusal of some of her notes before marriage, we have seen
the vivacity of sentiment which united the Demoiselle de Surcourt to the
Sieur Lebrun. That vivacity is traceable, in all its force, in a letter
she wrote to him after the marriage, when he had left her for a short
time in the August of 1760.
"I heard yesterday from my dear Misis. I have not heard to-day. It
brings back all my uneasiness. Has he slept well to-night? is he not
fatigued? I hope he has nothing else to complain of but ennui. My dear
Misis, I do not doubt that you think of your dear Fanny, of her grief,
her love, her impatience. Tell me the day, then, the day I so long for,
that is to bring you back to me again. All my thoughts turn only to you.
Nothing has any interest for me that is not in some way or other
connected with you. I rejoice in seeing the fine weather, for I think
you can now enjoy a walk. I hate the heat, for it keeps you from
exercise, and may make you ill. The moment I feel the slightest zephyr,
I long to send it to you. I wish there was even a tempest for your sake.
I would make the very elements do your bidding. I wish that every thing
in nature may only serve to make you happy, my dear Misis. How much does
she not owe him, since he has painted her so well? He makes her still
more beautiful by the light of his own soul--that soul fired at once by
genius and by love. You write such beautiful things, and I can't see
them! I have no pleasure in life. I have no consolation left, but the
hope of our meeting soon. To-day I passed the morning with your mother.
She pities me. We spoke of nothing but you. She told me some anecdotes
of your childhood that amused me much. You must have been interesting
even then. At four years old, I really believe I should have fallen in
love with you. I like every thing that belongs to you; I feel as if they
brought me nearer to yourself. She and your sister send you a thousand
loves, and your brother also, who supped here this evening. They talked
a great deal of Homer, Greek, Latin, &c. My dear aunt and uncle were
delighted with him, and think him very clever. It is now midnight. I am
in my couch--my solitary couch--far from thee. Alas! nothing which you
see where you now are can remind you of love. Love dwells not in
palaces. I have nothing but your heart to rely on to recall me to your
mind. Adieu, my dear Misis--adieu, my little man! I send you a thousand
kisses. Ah! Why am I not in your arms?
"This morning, when I was just going to seal my letter, Murgi brought me
yours. Ah, how sorry I am! I feel more than ever that my heart is not
made for these lengthened separations. No, I can't exist absent from
what I adore. I tried to reason myself into submission for five days;
but how am I to endure the fifteen that it will be now? Pity me, dear
Misis. It is delightful to me to see that your regret is equal to mine;
but the more you make me love you, the greater is my grief. If any thing
could lessen the sorrow caused me by your letter, it is to hear that you
are well. The assurance of that gives me one grief less. Take care of
yourself, for my sake. I can't understand how the letter I wrote you on
Sunday has not reached you yet. Write to me often, if 'tis but one word.
I embrace you again--Your Fanny."
Thanks to the wise precaution of Madame Lebrun, there is a blank of
seven years in her correspondence with her husband. But if we lose the
pleasure of reading a multitude of letters worthy of those we have
transcribed, the cause of the Sieur Lebrun is no loser by the omission;
for we find, at the end of those seven years, the Dame Lebrun still
unchanged--a clear proof that no change has, in the interval, taken
place in the Sieur Lebrun. _Voici_, continues the _Memoire_--behold the
letter she wrote to him on the 17th September 1767, from the
country-house of--who do you think?--the Sieur Grimod.
"I flatter myself, my dear little man, that I shall have a good report
of your health. I am told you started in first-rate condition; no doubt
the open air, and the pleasures of such agreeable society, will keep you
in good case. I need not wish you any new enjoyments. I have only to
congratulate you on those you possess. Let me enter into them, for the
description of yours will make me more fully appreciate my own. I hope,
at the same time, you will perceive that there is a something wanting,
and that you will have the same feelings on the subject as I have. The
country agrees with me admirably, and I am in wonderful health. We walk
a great deal, and musicate ('musiquons') a great deal more. We lay all
the elements under contribution for our amusement. We have a gondola for
our water parties, a swing for the air, and we only want Torraeus and his
Acheron to take a trip through fire. We have made parties to go fishing,
and we intend making one to go fowling with nets and looking-glasses, as
it is so beautifully described by a poet of my acquaintance, (the Sieur
Lebrun himself.) I hope the same accident won't happen to us that befell
the bird-catcher in the fable. It is for you to be on your guard, if you
enter into such amusements; for love keeps constantly prowling in the
scenes frequented by the Graces. We are, therefore, in safety here, in
spite of his wings. We expect the family of M. and Madame Grimod at the
beginning of next month. They have charged me to invite you to come, and
take your place on the famous jonquil sofa. They send you a thousand
compliments, and expect you early next month. We have half made up our
minds to go and see the king hunt at St Hubert. Adieu, my dear little
man! I embrace you with all my heart. Write me immediately. My respects
to the ladies, and a thousand remembrances to M. le Comte de Turpin, and
M. le Comte de Brancas. Tell him that I was highly flattered by his
indignation, though it was altogether unjust. We return you your
brilliant 'epistle.' We have answered it with a song; don't lose it. The
invalid (Julia) sends you a lot of messages."
Poetry itself was employed by the Dame Lebrun to paint the feelings with
which her husband had the happiness to inspire her.
The proofs brought of this latter assertion are very convincing; but
before we give extracts from the poetical declarations of her connubial
bliss, let us see what a curious insight this gives us, into the style
of life among French poetasters and their wives in the middle of last
century. We have seen that the irate Lebrun had a settled income of
about a hundred and eighty pounds a-year, equal, with little pickings
and stealings, to perhaps three hundred pounds at the present time. His
wife, evidently a clever, brisk coquette, sends friendly messages to two
of the first nobles in France, the Count de Turpin and the Count de
Brancas, and in the house of the latter nobleman the Sieur Lebrun is
domiciled at the time she writes. In the meanwhile, she is spending
months at a time in the country mansion of the too fascinating Grimod,
whom we have presented to the reader as a sub-collector of taxes. A
sub-collector of taxes! Wait till the next payments are due for the
income-tax, and watch the countenance of the respectable individual who
will give you his receipt. Is that a man to awake jealousy in the soul
of Pindar, or get up private theatricals, or even take a prominent part
in an acted charade? His soul is set upon a hot beefsteak, and he thinks
strong ale. He wouldn't give twopence for all the poets in England, and
still less for their wives. But the Sieur Grimod is made of different
metal. Less lead, but a great deal more brass--more polished, but less
useful--a pinchbeck imitation of the lords and ladies who were waltzing,
flirting, acting proverbs, and writing pasquinades, at the very moment
when the first great throes of the "portentous doom" were beginning to
shake France to her foundations, and the cloud was gathering that was to
fall down in the blood and horror of the Revolution. A sub-collector of
taxes! in his country-house--with his friends' wives about him, in
addition to his own--giving parties of the most gorgeous
magnificence--splendid masques in honour of a birthday, like _Comus_ at
Ludlow Castle--bird-huntings, where ladies, with attendant squires,
sallied forth in fanciful array, armed with silken nets to catch the
prey, after having wiled them from the trees by blinding them with
polished mirrors--horns sounding, and music stationed in woody
dells--and all carried on with a grandeur like the cavalcades of the
duke and duchess in _Don Quixote_. A sub-collector of taxes, we say,
doing all this, shows very clearly that some change or other was
needed; and we will only say, that the moment we see similar proceedings
going on in the same rank of life in England, we shall emigrate to some
happy island--not Tahiti--where poets and poetesses, and sub-collectors
of taxes, are utterly unknown. We shall extract from the
_memoire_--which, we again remind the reader, is a strictly legal
document, though rather different from the dull concerns our Solons in
Lincoln's Inn are the authors of--at some length; for we shall gain a
very tolerable idea of the interior arrangements of a _maison de
campagne_, on a fete-day in 1768.
The day of St Denis was usually chosen by the Dame Lebrun for a charming
party, to which she lent all the charms of her muse. In that which she
gave on the eve of St Denis, at the house of the Sieur Grimod, she had
introduced all the deities of Olympus to pay compliments to her husband.
First appeared Love and the Graces; then Flora, then Diana--who all sang
songs in character. Apollo followed, who presented his lyre to the Sieur
Lebrun, and said--
"The suffrages of all you claim,
The gods themselves your talents prize;
Through endless ages may your name
Partake their immortalities!
Take from Apollo's hand this lyre,
To sound upon the sacred hill;
And while your finger wakes its fire,
They'll say, 'it is Apollo's still.'"[3]
After Apollo, Pomona immediately came; it was the character which the
Dame Lebrun had reserved for herself; and her couplet would have been
out of place in any person's mouth but her own--
"Let gods their crowns bestow--
An orchard is my all:
Yet poor gifts richer grow,
When from the heart they fall.
If of Pomona's store
To taste you kindly deign,
Trust me, I'll give you as much more
When autumn comes again."[4]
The divertisement ended with a dance of Bacchus and Bacchantes. The
Sieur Grimod enacted the part of Bacchus in full costume, with his head
ornamented with a cap and bells!
We suspect the head of the counsel assisting in getting up this memorial
had been so long surmounted with a wig, that he did not remark upon the
absurdity of the masquerade of the Sieur Grimod. A cap and bells on the
head of wild Bacchus! It is evident, even from the couplet chanted by
the fascinating sub-collector of taxes, that he appeared in a very
different character from the youthful conqueror of India; though we
confess that heads, of which a cap and bells would be the fittest
covering, are not altogether unknown among the heroes and conquerors of
the gorgeous East. It is clear, from the verses, that the great Grimod
appeared, "for this night only," in the character of Folly.
"To set every thing right,
'Tis on that I am bound;
To put sorrow to flight
The true secret I've found!
All these poor silly gods,
With their bouquets held so,
With their songs and their odes,
Without me are no go!
Folly flings
From its wings
A new light on each day.
It incites,
It invites,
To be happy and gay."
Well may the learned barrister close his account of this festival with
the remark--that the life of the Dame Lebrun was a continued series of
amusements; and this cruel husband, when he was not the object or the
cause of her pleasures, was at least made the confidant of them all. As
a proof of this confidence, a history is given of certain proceedings in
the ninth year of their marriage, in which it will be seen that the
Bacchus of the divertisement is not kept entirely in the background. In
the month of February, in 1769, she paid a visit to Havre to see the
sea. To show the terms they were on, it would be necessary to quote the
letters of the Dame Lebrun at full length. It will be seen how
unreservedly she entered into the pleasures of the place, and how
minutely she recorded them all to a man, whom she well knew that her
descriptions would enable to share them as if he had been at her side.
But in the absence of the entire correspondence, which it would be
tedious to transcribe, we content ourselves with copying out the
passages, where the friendship and intimacy that then united the husband
and wife are most strongly marked.
"We arrived in perfect health, my dear friend, on Tuesday, at two
o'clock. I trust you also are flourishing. Take care of yourself, and
write me how you are. M. and Madame Grimod, as also M. Sieuve, charge me
with a thousand messages. M. Grimod insists on your coming as soon as
possible, that you may see the sea. I also wish you could see it. In
looking at it, I have often thought on the effect it would have on you;
and I should be delighted if you could enjoy the prospect along with me.
I tell you I now eat fish as you do. This very day I have eaten a dozen
oysters, a bit of skate, some smelts, and some fresh cod--I think I
shall finish by devouring all the fish in the sea. I wish I could send
you some of the oysters of this place: they are as large as your hat.
Adieu, my dear friend; I embrace you from my heart. I have told you all
I have seen, and I will tell you all that may occur worth talking of
when I arrive. _Friendly regards to Julia. I hope to find her in good
health, and that she has taken care of yours._"
With a wonderful knowledge of the effects of small type, the poetical
Lebrun and his counsellor have printed the "Advice to Julia" in italics.
What! the Dame Lebrun send friendly regards ("bien des amities") to
Julia! Why, isn't this the woman they trump up a story about, as having
been a perpetual source of jealousy to the neglected wife, and
monopolizing all the tenderness and pretty speeches of the once faithful
and still too conquering Misis? For our own part, we think it is a
shocking instance of female audacity, for the devourer of such
boat-loads of fish, and the visiter of M. and Madame Grimod, to affect
jealousy of Julia or any one else. Let her be contented with her Grimods
and oysters, and leave Julia to listen to the harpings of Apollo in
peace. We have another letter, dated a few days after the first, and
still from Havre.
"I received your letter, my dear friend, when I was on board a ship, and
read it on deck. We laughed amazingly at your epigrammatic witticisms;
your reputation is already established here. You are known as a man of
genius; so you may judge if they listened to your letter. M. Grimod,
from the first, has been the trumpeter of your talents and wit; and the
best of the joke is, that on the strength of his descriptions of you,
they insist on believing that I am a person of infinite cleverness as
well. I am delighted to hear such good accounts of your health. I was
anxious to hear how you were. M. Grimod insists that I travel merely for
curiosity, and not for the sake of health; and this moment, let me tell
you in a parenthesis, he interrupts me to say he is sure I am writing my
best, I look so pleased in writing to you. To-morrow we are going to
breakfast in a ship, where the captain gives us a collation of all fine
things, among others chocolate; then we prepare to go to Rouen where we
shall stop two or three days to see the lions. We do nothing but go out,
change the scene, dress ourselves, and pack up our trunks. It is a
delightful life; we have scarcely time to breathe. But in spite of that,
I am grown very fat. I eat like four, and can't do without oysters. I
wished to bring you some present from this part of the country, but
there is nothing remarkable except the fish. Adieu, my dear friend! I
shall be delighted in relating all my experiences when we meet. I hope
some day you will visit these beautiful scenes, or others as beautiful;
and that the house-dove will take its flight to see all the beauties of
nature, which he knows so well how to paint. You will see that there is
no danger, and that I shall come back to you without any accident to my
wings."
Now, be it known that the last sentence is an allusion to an incident in
Lebrun's poem, _De la Nature_, of which some specimens had been
published before this time, but which the grief brought on him by his
wife's behaviour prevented his finishing--a great loss, says the
disinterested author, to the world, for it was a transcendant work! In
the month of April of the same year, the house-dove also took its
flight. The Sieur Lebrun took a journey to Marseilles, and the tender
solicitudes of his wife accompanied him.
After a few of her usual enquiries about his health, and recommendations
to enjoy himself as much as he could among "les habitans aimables de
cette ville," she pays him a few compliments.
"I beg you to say in rhymed prose, to M. Menier, a thousand things for
me, which will become beautiful spoken by your lips, and heard by his
ears. I am as much astonished as pleased with your punctuality in
writing. Every post-day we are all on the look-out. Madame Grimod begs
her compliments--and so do all the family, whom I delight with the
reading of your letters. They are so witty and clever! If you employ
much of your time in writing them, we spend a great deal of ours in
reading them."
But the trips of the year 1769 are not over yet. Scarcely, says the
_Memoire_, had the Sieur Lebrun returned from Marseilles, when the Dame
Lebrun set off, in company with M. Grimod, to visit it. She spent six
weeks there, during which she wrote several letters to her husband, and
cherished his answers as before. But we shall not follow the example of
the _Memoire_, in repeating all these tit-for-tat endearments, but
pursue our own object, which is to trace the style of occupation of
people of their rank. And here we must observe, that, as far as we see
in this process, the whole occupation of the Grimods and others was to
make tours for their pleasure, and get up fetes for their amusement.
Wherever they are, there is always something or other going on--a
breakfast, a dance, or a masquerade; and in spite of the protestations
of the Dame Lebrun, of her sorrow at being separated from her little
man, it is evident she never allows her grief to have any effect upon
her appetite. It rather seems as if, in all her distresses, she applied
to the cook, and measured the extent of her sufferings by the quantity
she could dispatch at a meal.
"How delighted I should be with but one quarter of an hour of your
charming conversations with Madame la Comtesse de Brancas! But from
intellectual feasts like that, I am doomed here to the most rigorous
abstinence; and, to make up for it, I am forced to throw myself on the
mullets, sardines, sprats, and tunnies, with the wines of Cyprus and
Syracuse; so that I have always the body full and the mind empty. You
sent me an admirable piece of wit. I laughed at it amazingly, and wished
to read it to some of the people here; but I soon perceived that their
appreciation of letters is limited to letters of exchange. In spite of
that, they are never tired of praising you, and holding forth about your
talents."
In a letter of the 25th October, after a very spirited description of a
marriage-feast, and a dance to the sound of tambourines, she says:--
"We have been oppressed with the innumerable kindnesses of all this
amiable family. One after another, every body was full of regrets that
you were not of the party, declaring that a man of such wit and genius
as you was exactly made for society. If ever you return to this country,
you will be splendidly received....
"Amuse yourself as much as you can. Go and dine often with your friends.
I should be sorry if I thought you were alone. Don't be surprised at my
scrawl. I danced all last night, and had got to bed very late. It is now
eleven o'clock, and I am obliged to be dressed by one so, you see, I
have not much time to spare."
And her letter of the 22d November brings us to the end of the year '69,
and also of her residence at Marseilles. Even the _Memoire_ grows tired
of the gaieties of the Dame Lebrun, and passes over a long detail of
dinners, suppers, balls, and fetes, to tell us that, "fatiguee de bonne
chere," and "lassee de plaisirs," she wrote to her husband, who was
contenting himself with a Welsh rabbit and Julia at home--"One would
need four stomachs in this county. I envy your frugality, and long for
the little, quiet suppers we used to have at the fireside."
Now, this regret for the domestic broiled bones--though evidently caused
by a momentary surfeit--is dwelt upon by the enraptured Lebrun as a
triumphant disproof of the accusations of cruelty and violence, brought
against him by the Grimods and his charming wife. "She regrets their
quiet suppers! And yet we are told by the Dame Lebrun, and some of her
witnesses, that these quiet suppers never passed off without the most
horrible altercations, or nearly being stained with blood from murderous
blows!" From all we can make out, this accusation of the "petit homme"
attempting to pummel the lady with four stomachs, and capacity for
oyster-eating that must have thrown the late Mr Dando into despair, is
nothing more than an attempt to make the whole affair ridiculous, and
allow the conduct of the defendant to escape the obloquy it deserved,
under cover of the laughter excited by so ludicrous an image. If there
were any "coups meurtriers" in the case, we will venture the long odds
that the mark of them was left in the ogles, or other undefended
portions of the countenance of the Sieur Lebrun. She is constantly
complaining of delicate health; and yet undergoes more fatigue than a
washerwoman. We have now traced her for nearly ten years. She must by
this time be two or three-and-thirty; and yet, we will venture to say,
no girl of eighteen ever panted so earnestly for her first ball, as the
Dame Lebrun did for six or seven of those entertainments every week. We
can imagine no greater misery to her, than one of the quiet suppers she
talks of; and if, in the agony of her disgust, she occasionally gave the
Sieur Lebrun a slap in the face, we have not the slightest doubt he
deserved it, and that she enjoyed the rest of the evening with the
soothing conviction in her own mind that she was a much-injured woman,
and had vindicated the honour of her sex. We have seen, from one of her
letters, that it took her two hours to dress--that she thought nearly as
much of eating and drinking as even of Monsieur Grimod; and we shall
shortly perceive, that clothes, and love, and gluttony, don't interfere
with the powers of poetical compliment, and that her husband--perhaps on
the principle of poetry succeeding best in fiction--is still the object
of them.
The St Denis's Day of 1770, says the _Memoire_, was celebrated, like the
former ones, by a fete, designed and composed by the Dame Lebrun. The
room represented a lawn, with a grove, fountains, &c. Naiads, hidden in
the reeds, chanted these lines in honour of her husband:--
"Ye naiads smiling round,
Sing Nature's poet in your lays!
Let echoes, till they're tired, resound
With his harmonious praise!
Oh, let your fountains flow
On the greensward below;
And with their notes prolong
The birds' full-throated song!
"Thou, Flora! spread thy mantle round
All this enchanted ground!
Pour blessings on these happy, happy hours!
Laurels, and you, ye myrtles, amorous flowers!
With loving hand I pluck you now,
Stripping your leaves adown,
To be a glorious crown,
Of a new god to decorate the brow!"
In the next year, another fete owed its _eclat_ to the talents of the
Dame Lebrun; but the object of it was no longer the Pindaric poet, but
the sub-collector of taxes. But as it was impossible to keep the Sieur
Lebrun entirely away from any of the haunts of the Muses, he was
enlisted in the corps of subject personages, and performed the Co-too to
the Sieur Grimod in the character of a satyr! And this was the more in
keeping, as the scene was a wood, and the hero of the entertainment
enacted the part of a sort of Orson, under the name of Sylvanus. In
1772, the gaieties of the Dame Lebrun suffered no abatement, except from
an attack of illness; and, for the recovery of her health, she spent the
greater portion of the year at the country-house of the Sieur
Grimod--sometimes with her husband, says the _Memoire_, and sometimes
without. The following spring was passed, as usual, in balls and
masquerades. The house of the Sieur Grimod was again the scene of a
splendid entertainment; but, on this occasion, the object of the fete
was neither the Sieur Bacchus, nor the Sieur Sylvain, but Madame Lebrun
herself. The indefatigable Bacchus, however, if not the principal
personage of the day, was the chief performer. There was a procession in
boats. The Sieur Lebrun did the honours of the enchanted island to his
wife. Dressed as a sailor, he conducted her, disguised as Flora, in an
ornamented barge, all festooned with garlands, and illuminated with
coloured lamps. It was a truly fairy scene, and the Dame Lebrun did not
at that time look on the composer of the spectacle as a malignant
cobold, the enemy of her repose.
In January 1774, she wrote letters to her husband as full of gaiety, and
as expressive of affection, as any of the others; and on the 5th of
March she sued for a separate maintenance! Such is the history,
contained in a lawyer's brief, of fourteen years of the wedded life of a
French family of the middle rank, or rather below it. And from incidents
contained in the account, we perceive that this actual labour of
enjoyment, these balls, and fetes, and entertainments of all kinds, were
the usual mode of life of most of the people they associated with.
Imagine the same scenes going on in England;--women, after thirteen or
fourteen years of marriage, going dressed up as heathen goddesses in
boats, and being attended round enchanted isles by Bacchuses and Orsons,
dressed in shaggy skins, and chanting doggerel till echo was dead beat!
Bacchus, a secretary, at a salary of a hundred a-year--Orson, a
sub-collector of taxes! But more than all--let us think that the fault
of the Sieur Lebrun does not seem to have consisted, in the eyes of his
mother and sister, in allowing the intimacy between his wife and the
friends, but in putting a stop to it. When such things are the fashion
in England, let us prepare for the National Convention.
The demand of the Sieur Lebrun for restitution of conjugal rights, was
rejected; he appealed against the decision, wrote bitter epigrams on the
judges, and celebrated his wife in some elegies worthy of Tibullas,
under the name of Fanny. From court to court he carried his cause, his
epigrams, and his elegies; till finally, in 1781, the Parliament decided
against him, and the Dame Lebrun was freed for ever from the matrimonial
claim, and the little suppers beside the garret fire. But not for ever
was Grimod free from the vengeance of the virtuous Lebrun. And not for
the last time was heard the shrill voice of the complaining husband by
the fastidious ears of Fanny. A few years passed on--Louis the Sixteenth
was hurried to the scaffold--the golden locks of Marie Antoinette were
defiled with the blood and sawdust, which Young France regarded as the
most acceptable offering to the goddess of liberty; and who is that
sharp-featured little man, sitting in the front row of the spectators of
those heaven-darkening murders, with a red cap on his head, and a
many-stringed harp in his hand, chanting the praises of the murderers,
and exciting the drunken populace to greater horrors? Lebrun. Yes, the
French Pindar is appointed poet-laureate to the guillotine, and has
apartments assigned him at the national cost in the Louvre. Whenever an
atrocity is to be committed, an ode is published, "by order of
authority," to raise the passions of the people to the proper pitch.
When the atrocity is over, another ode is ordered to celebrate the
performers, and congratulate the people on their triumph. When Grimod
was brought before the Convention as one of the oppressors of the
people, and parasites of the aristocracy--a woman, old and trembling,
was leaning on his arm--his personal crimes, if any, were so little
known, that he was on the point of being dismissed from the bar for want
of an accuser. Pindar, in his red cap, with his many-stringed harp in
his hand, was there; and all Helicon glowed like molten lead in his
vindictive heart when he looked at the miserable pair. "What sentence
shall we pass on the person called Grimod, ci-devant sub-collector of
taxes, and the woman beside him, who has aided and abetted him in
several attempts to escape from the censorship of the Committee of
Public Safety?" The accused looked timidly round, in hopes that no
answer would be returned to this routine enquiry, in which case their
safety would have been assured; but red-capped Pindar struck his hand
hurriedly over the chords, and cried, in the shrill sharp tones, that
both the prisoners remembered too well, "A la mort! a la mort!" and in
ten minutes their bodies were lying headless, side by side, amidst the
hootings and howlings of ten thousand demons, exemplifying to astonished
Europe the perfection of civilization and philanthropy. Little more
needs to be said of the Sieur Lebrun. He lived through the dangers of
the Revolution; wrote odes and satires indiscriminately on friend and
foe; worshipped power to the last, and was the sycophant, and would have
been the murderer, of Napoleon, as he had been of Louis and Robespierre;
and died at last in receipt of a pension from the state, member (like
Lord Brougham) of the National Institute of France; and had his
panegyric pronounced on him by his successor, as if he had united the
virtues of Aristides to the genius of Homer. Whereas, we take him to
have been the true type of the Frenchman of his time--a monkey, till he
got the taste of blood, and then a tiger.