The theatre—Raincy—Chantilly—Calonne—Attempt to ruin the
reputation of Mme. Le Brun—Two deplorable marriages—Fate of Mme.
Chalgrin—Under the shadow of death—Mme. Du Barry.
The theatre was a passion with Mme. Le Brun, and all the more
interesting to her from her friendships with some of the chief
actors and actresses, and her acquaintance with most of them, from
the great geniuses such as Talma, Mlle. Mars, and Mlle. Clairon to
the _débutantes_ like Mlle. Rancourt, whose career she watched with
sympathetic interest. For Mme. Dugazon, sister of Mme. Vestris and
aunt of the famous dancer Vestris, she had an unmixed admiration; she
was a gifted artist and a Royalist heart and soul. One evening when
Mme. Dugazon was playing a _soubrette_, in which part came a duet with
a valet, who sang:
“_J’aime mon maître tendrement_,”
to which she had to answer:
“_Ah, comme j’aime ma maîtresse_;”
as she sang these words she laid her hand upon her heart and, turning
to the Queen’s box, bowed profoundly. As this was in the beginning
of the Revolution, there were many who wished to revenge themselves
in consequence, and tried to force her to sing one of the horrible
revolutionary songs which were then to be heard constantly upon the
stage. She refused indignantly, and left the theatre. Her husband,
Dugazon, the comic actor, on the contrary, played an atrocious part
during the Revolution. Although he had been loaded with benefits by
the royal family, especially the Comte d’Artois, he was one of those
who pursued them to Varennes. Mme. Le Brun was told by an eye-witness
that he had seen this wretch at the door of the King’s carriage with a
gun upon his shoulder.
It was impossible to spare much time to be absent from Paris, but Mme.
Le Brun often spent two or three days at the magnificent _châteaux_ to
which she was invited, either to paint a portrait or simply as a guest.
For the former reason she spent some time at Raincy,[25] then the
residence of the Duke of Orléans, father of Philippe-Égalité, where
she painted his portrait, and that of his morganatic wife, Mme. de
Montesson. While she was there the old Princesse de Conti came one day
to see Mme. de Montesson, and much to her surprise always addressed
Mme. Le Brun as “Mademoiselle.” As it was shortly before the birth of
her first child, this rather startled her, and she then recollected
that it had been the custom in former days for grandees of the court
so to address their inferiors. It was a survival that she never met
with but upon this occasion, as it had quite come to an end with
Louis XV. Mme. Le Brun never cared to stay at Raincy, which she found
uncongenial; but she delighted in several of the other _châteaux_
where she stayed, above all in Chantilly, where the Prince de Condé
gave the most magnificent _fêtes_, and where the grandeur of the
_château_ and the beauty of the gardens, lakes, and woods fascinated
her.
Another place at which she liked staying was Gennevilliers, which
belonged to the Comte de Vaudreuil, a great friend of hers, and one of
the subjects of malicious gossip about her. Gennevilliers was not so
picturesque as the other places, but there was an excellent private
theatre. The Comte d’Artois and all his society always came to the
representations there.
The last at which Mme. Le Brun was present was the _Mariage de
Figaro_, played by the actors of the Comédie Française; but, as she
observes in one of her letters, Beaumarchais[26] must have intolerably
tormented M. de Vaudreuil to induce him to allow the production of
a piece so improper in every respect. Dialogue, couplets, all were
directed against the court, many belonging to which were present,
besides the Comte d’Artois himself. Everybody was uncomfortable and
embarrassed except Beaumarchais[27] himself, who had no manners and
was beside himself with vanity and conceit, running and fussing to and
fro, giving himself absurd airs, and when some one complained of the
heat, breaking the windows with his stick instead of opening them.
Shortly after this he called upon the Comte de Vaudreuil at Versailles
one morning just after he was up, and confided to him a financial
scheme by which he expected enormous profit, ending by offering M.
de Vaudreuil a large sum of money if he would undertake to make it
succeed.
The Count listened quietly to all he said, and then replied—
“Monsieur de Beaumarchais, you could not have come at a more
favourable moment; for I have had a very good night, I have a good
digestion, and I never felt better than I do to-day. If you had made
me such a proposal yesterday I should have had you thrown out of the
window.”
Another of the people declared to be in love with Mme. Le Brun, and
about whom there was so much gossip as to cause her serious annoyance,
was M. de Calonne, the brilliant, extravagant, fascinating Finance
Minister of Louis XVI.[28]
What made this all the more provoking was that M. de Calonne was not
even, like M. de Vaudreuil, a great friend of hers. She did not know
him at all intimately, and in fact only once went to a party given by
him at the _Ministère des finances_, and that was because the _soirée_
was in honour of Prince Henry of Prussia, who was constantly at her
house. The splendid portrait she painted of Calonne was exhibited in
the Salon of 1786. Mlle. Arnould remarked on seeing it, “Mme. Le Brun
has cut his legs off to keep him in the same place,” alluding to the
picture being painted to the knees.
All sorts of preposterous stories were circulated about it and about
them. Some said M. de Calonne had given Mme. Le Brun a number of
bonbons, called _papillottes_, wrapped up in bank-notes; others that
she had received in a pasty a sum of money large enough to ruin the
treasury: the truth being that he had sent her, as the price of his
portrait, four thousand francs in notes in a box worth about twenty
louis, and this was considered by no means a high price for the
picture. M. de Beaujon had given her eight thousand francs for a
portrait of the same size a short time before, without anybody finding
the least fault. The character of Calonne was such that no woman who
cared about her reputation would wish her name to be connected with
his.
The first step in his rapid rise he is said to have owed to having
left about some compromising papers of his friend Chalotais on a
bureau, where they were found, and the disclosure of their contents
caused the ruin and imprisonment of Chalotais and others, about
the year 1763. After this he continued to prosper financially,
politically, and socially, until another intrigue raised him to the
height of power.
[Illustration:
_Madame Vigée Le Brun_
CHARLES ALEXANDRE DE CALONNE]
He was deeply in love with Mme. d’Harvelay, whose husband was the
banker and intimate friend of M. de Vergennes, then Foreign Minister.
Mme. d’Harvelay, who returned his passion and carried on a secret
_liaison_ with him, used her influence with her husband to induce
M. de Vergennes to push him on. The husband, who was fascinated by
Calonne and did not know or suspect what was going on, was persuaded
by his wife one day to write a confidential letter to Vergennes on
the subject of the general alarm then beginning to be felt about
the disastrous state of the finances and the peril threatening the
Monarchy itself, in which he declared Calonne to be the only man who
could save the situation. The Court was then at Fontainebleau, and
it was contrived that this letter should be shown to the King in the
evening, after he had retired to supper with his family.
Next day the destinies of France were in the hands of Calonne.
Dissipated, unscrupulous, with no money and owing 200,000 _écus_, the
new _Contrôleur-général des Finances_ found an empty treasury, an
enormous mass of debt, alarm and perplexity in the Government, and
gathering fury and suspicion amongst the populace.
As to the plans he proposed to meet this grave state of affairs, Louis
Blanc declares that his frivolity was only upon the surface,[29] and
that his designs were wise, bold, and strongly conceived. Other
historians assert that he had no plan at all except to borrow money,
spend it, and then borrow more.
However that might be, he spent enormous sums, lavished money upon the
Princes and the Queen, for whom Saint Cloud was bought, and to whom he
said upon one occasion—
“Madame, si c’est possible c’est fait; si c’est impossible, cela ce
fera.”[30]
He and Vergennes were said to have wasted the revenues of France, but
at any rate he spent money like a gentleman, and when, in 1787, he was
dismissed from office, he did not possess an _écu_.
He was one of the earliest to emigrate, and at Coblentz he met his
old love, Mme. de Harvelay, now a rich widow and willing to marry
him. He spent her fortune, and later on tried to get employment under
Napoleon, who would have nothing to do with him, and he died in
comparative obscurity.
The royalist sympathies and associations of Mme. Le Brun made her
particularly obnoxious to the Radical party, to whom lies and
calumnies were all welcome as weapons to be used against political
opponents. She was therefore assailed by shoals of libels, accusing
her of a _liaison_ with M. de Calonne, by people who were absolutely
unknown to her.
One Gorsas, a violent Radical whom she had never seen or heard of,
was especially violent in the atrocities he poured forth against her
for no reason whatever. He was a political writer and afterwards a
Jacobin, but met with his due reward, for he was arrested by the
Revolutionists he admired so greatly, and guillotined.
M. Le Brun was just then building a house in the _rue Gros-Chenet_,
and one of the reports spread was that M. de Calonne paid for it,
although both M. and Mme. Le Brun were making money enough to afford
themselves much greater expenditure than that.
Lisette complained bitterly to her husband, who only told her to let
them talk, and treated the matter with indignant contempt.
But Lisette fretted and made herself unhappy, especially when a
deliberate attempt was made to destroy her reputation by a certain
Mme. S——, who lived in the _rue Gros-Chenet_, to which she herself had
not yet removed.
Mme. S—— was carrying on a _liaison_ with Calonne, who was very much
in love with her and very often at her house; she was also sitting for
her portrait to Mme. Le Brun, who looked upon her as a pretty, gentle,
attractive woman, but thought the expression of her face rather false.
One day, while she was sitting to Mme. Le Brun, Mme. S—— asked her
to lend her carriage to her that evening to go to the theatre. Mme.
Le Brun consented, but when she ordered the carriage next morning
at eleven o’clock she was told that neither carriage, horses, nor
coachman had come back. She sent at once to Mme. S——, who had passed
the night at the _hôtel des Finances_ and had not yet returned.
It was not for some days that Mme. Le Brun made this discovery by
means of her coachman, who had been bribed to keep silent, but had
nevertheless told the story to several persons in the house.
It was, of course, obvious that this was done in order that the
carriage and servants of Mme. Le Brun being seen at night at the
_hôtel des Finances_, the scandal might be diverted from Mme. S—— to
the innocent owner of the carriage.
Whether this dastardly trick was done out of mere spite and envy,
or only in order to save the reputation of the guilty woman at the
expense of the innocent one, Mme. Le Brun never knew, and of course
had no more communication with the person in question.
Mme. Vigée, or rather Mme. le Sèvre, had certainly, by her obstinate
folly, succeeded in ruining first her own life, then her daughter’s;
for the two deplorable marriages she had arranged, both of them
entirely for mercenary reasons, had turned out as badly as possible.
Her own was the worst, as the husband she had chosen was the more
odious of the two men, and she had no means of escaping from him; but
Lisette’s was disastrous enough.
M. le Brun, though neither disagreeable nor ill-tempered, was
impossible on account of the dissipated life he led. Always running
after other women, always gambling and in debt, spending not only his
own money but all his wife’s earnings, another woman would have left
him or led a miserable life. Not so Lisette. She lived in his house on
friendly terms with him, though their marriage had long been one only
in name.
She cared so little for money, and her dress, her entertainments and
requirements were so simple, that she let him spend all she earned;
whilst her occupations, professional and social, were so engrossing,
and her life so full of interest, excitement, and enjoyment, that she
was content to make the best of things and let her husband go his way,
while she followed her own career among the friends and pursuits she
loved.
Besides the immense number of her friends and acquaintance of later
years, she kept up faithfully those of her early days. Her old fellow
student, Mlle. Boquet, had given up the profession in which she was
getting on so well, and married a M. Filleul, whom the Queen had made
her _concièrge de la Muette_.[31]
With the Vernet family, too, she was on intimate terms. The landscape
painter, Joseph Vernet, was always a kind friend to her. His son
Charles, or Carle, as he was called, was also an artist, and his
daughter Émilie, the wife of M. Chalgrin, was constantly at her house.
The Vernet[32] were staunch Royalists, and watched with horror and
dread only too well justified the breaking out of the Revolution.
Carle was a captain in the _garde nationale_, and lodged with his
family in the Louvre when, on the 10th of August, 1792, the mob
attacked the Tuileries. As the windows began to break and the shots to
rattle round them it was evident that they were all in great danger.
Carle caught up in his arms his youngest child, Horace,[33] then
three years old, and mounted his horse, his wife accompanying him
carrying their little daughter.
As he rode across the Carrousel Carle was a conspicuous mark for the
mob, who took him for one of the Swiss guards, as he had unfortunately
taken off his uniform, and not having time to put it on, was wearing
a white vest with a red collar. He was several times fired at, and
wounded in the hand, but succeeded in reaching a place of safety with
his wife and children.
His sister Émilie was not so fortunate. Arrested upon some frivolous
pretext, she was thrown into prison. In desperate anxiety Carle flew
to David, who, though a terrorist himself, was a comrade and friend of
his, and would surely use his influence to help them. David, however,
either could or would do nothing; Mme. Chalgrin was dragged before
the revolutionary tribunal, convicted of having corresponded with the
princes, condemned, and executed.
One of David’s most rising pupils before the Revolution was young
Isabey, son of a peasant of Franche Comté, who had made money and was
rich.
Old Isabey had a passion for art, and having two boys resolved to make
one a painter, the other a musician; and as Louis, the elder one, was
always scribbling upon walls and everywhere figures of all sorts, his
father, regardless of the fact that the drawings were not at all good,
assured his son that he would be a great artist, perhaps painter to
the King; and as the younger boy, Jean-Baptiste,[34] was constantly
making a deafening noise with trumpets, drums, castagnettes, &c., he
decided that he should be a musician.
As the lads grew older, however, their talents developed in exactly
opposite directions, so that their father found himself obliged to
consent to a change of plans with regard to their education. Louis,
in fact, became ultimately first violinist to the Emperor Alexander
of Russia, while Jean-Baptiste, casting aside his noisy musical
instruments, studied painting with enthusiasm, went to Paris in
1786, and with much difficulty succeeded in getting into the studio
of David, from which he was shortly afterwards on the point of
being expelled, because he made a picture of David as a wild boar,
surrounded by his pupils in the form of little pigs; all excellent
likenesses.
Having no money young Isabey supported himself at Paris by making
designs for snuff-boxes and buttons. The Comte d’Artois saw the
buttons, which had become very much the fashion, admired them, and
desired that Isabey should be presented to him. He was also presented
to the Comtesse d’Artois, rapidly got commissions, painted portraits
of different members of the royal family and court, and was becoming
more and more prosperous when the Revolution broke out, and he was
apparently ruined.
One day he and other pupils of David had the fancy to spend an idle
hour in listening to the debates in the _Assemblée_, where every one
went in and out at their pleasure.
But they were very little edified by what they heard and saw. The
Abbé Maury was speaking, and the outrageous behaviour, the rows and
quarrels, the discreditable manner in which the discussions were
carried on, so shocked them that they allowed their disgust to be more
apparent than was prudent.
Presently they observed a strange, ugly-looking man, who was watching
them with a mocking smile.
“What gives you the right to laugh at us, Monsieur?” asked one of
them, with irritation.
“Your youth, _mes amis_; and above all your _naïveté_. Laws are like
sauces: you should never see them made.”
He bowed and turned away; it was Mirabeau.
The acquaintance thus begun was a fortunate one for Isabey. In despair
at the disappearance of the court and apparently of his own chance
of getting on with his profession, he was thinking of giving it up.
Mirabeau advised him to stick to it and gave him the commission to
paint his own portrait.
He persevered accordingly, passed safely through the Revolution, and
was a favourite court painter during the Empire and Restoration.
One dark, gloomy day, during the height of the Terror, he was sitting
in his studio early in the morning, busily making up the fire in his
stove, for it was bitterly cold. There was a knock at the door, and a
woman wrapped in a large cloak stood on the threshold, saying—
“You are the painter, Isabey?”
“Yes. What do you want of me?”
“I want you to do my portrait at once.”
“_Diable!_ At once? You are in great haste,” said he, smiling.
“It is not I who am in haste; it is the guillotine,” replied the
stranger. “To-day I am on the suspected list, to-morrow I shall
no doubt be condemned. I have children. I wish to leave them a
remembrance of me, that is why I come to ask you to paint my portrait.
Will you?”
“I am ready, Madame,” he said, beginning at once to prepare his
palette and brushes. “In what costume do you wish to be painted?”
“In this,” she answered; and throwing off her hood and cloak, he saw
a woman still young and pretty, her hair powdered and covered with a
simple little cap, a grey silk dress, green apron, high-heeled shoes,
and a _carton_ in her hand.
“I am Mme. Venotte,” she went on. “I had the honour to be _marchande
de dentelles_ to _la sainte reine_ whom they have sent to God. I wish
my children always to see me in the costume I used to wear when Marie
Antoinette deigned to admit me to her presence.”
Though he painted this portrait in haste, with tears in his eyes, it
was one of the best ever done by Isabey.[35]
In 1786 Mme. Le Brun received an invitation to paint the portrait of
Mme. Du Barry, the once lovely and all powerful favourite of Louis XV.
With great curiosity she went down to the _château_ of Louveciennes,
given to his mistress by the late King, where she still lived in
luxury but almost in solitude, for of the courtiers and acquaintances
who had crowded round her in the days of her prosperity scarcely any
remembered her now.
Louveciennes[36] was near Marly and Versailles. The _château_ built by
Louis XV. was in a delightful park, but there was a melancholy feeling
about the whole place.
The career of Jeanne Vaubernier, Comtesse Du Barry, was a most
extraordinary one. Her father was a workman, and she, after being a
milliner’s apprentice for some years, lived under the name of Mlle.
Lange, in a house of bad fame, where she became the mistress of Count
Jean Du Barry, who in 1769 presented her to Louis XV., who was deeply
fascinated by her wonderful beauty, and over whom, after having gone
through the form of marriage with the brother of Jean Du Barry, she
reigned supreme during the remainder of his life. But her day of power
and splendour was only a short one, for the King died five years
afterwards (1774), when she was, of course, immediately obliged to
leave the court and live in retirement; probably much sooner than she
expected, for Louis XV. was only sixty-three when he fell a victim to
small-pox. The twelve years had been spent in her _château_, where the
Duc de Brissac took the place of his royal predecessor.
Mme. Du Barry received Mme. Le Brun with the greatest politeness and
attention; she was now about forty-two, and still extremely handsome.
The brilliant beauty of her complexion had begun to fade, but her
face was still charming, her features beautiful, her figure tall and
well-made, and her hair fair and curled like that of a child.
Her way of living was very simple; she walked about the park summer
and winter, visited the poor, to whom she was most kind and generous,
wore muslin or cambric dresses, and had very few visitors. The only
two women who came much to see her were Mme. de Souza, the Portuguese
Ambassadress, and the Marquise de Brunoy. M. de Monville, a pleasant,
well-bred man, was frequently there, and one day the Ambassador of
Tippoo Sahib arrived to visit her, bringing a present of a number
of pieces of muslin richly embroidered with gold, one of which she
gave to Mme. Le Brun. The Duc de Brissac was of course there also,
but, though evidently established at the _château_, there was nothing
either in his manner or that of Mme. Du Barry to indicate anything
more than friendship between them. Yet Mme. Le Brun saw plainly enough
the strong attachment which cost them both their lives.
Under her own room, which looked out towards Marly, Mme. Le Brun
discovered a gallery in which were huddled together all sorts of
magnificent marbles, busts, vases, columns, and other costly works of
art, the relics of former grandeur.
Every day after dinner, they had their coffee in the splendid pavilion
of Louis XV. It was decorated and furnished with the greatest luxury
and magnificence, the chimney-piece, doors, and locks were precious
works of art.
The first time they entered it Mme. Du Barry said, “It was in this
room that Louis XV. used to do me the honour to dine. There was a
tribune above for the musicians who played and sang during dinner.”
Mme. Le Brun generally spent the evening alone with Mme. Du Barry by
the fireside. The latter would sometimes talk of Louis XV. and his
court, always with respect and caution. But she avoided many details
and did not seem to wish to talk about that phase of her life. Mme. Le
Brun painted three portraits of her in 1786, 1787, and in September,
1789. The first was three-quarters length, in a _peignoir_ with a
straw hat; in the second, painted for the Duc de Brissac, she was
represented in a white satin dress, leaning one arm on a pedestal and
holding a crown in the other hand. This picture was afterwards bought
by an old general, and when Mme. Le Brun saw it many years later, the
head had been so injured and re-painted that she did not recognise it,
though the rest of the picture was intact.
[Illustration:
_Painted by herself_
MADAME LE BRUN ET SA FILLE]
The third portrait Mme. Le Brun retained in her own possession—for she
had begun it in September, 1789, when the terrors of the Revolution
were beginning. As she painted at Louveciennes they could hear the
thunder of the cannonades, and the unfortunate Mme. Du Barry said to
her—
“If Louis XV. were alive all this would certainly not have happened.”
When she had painted the head and sketched out the arms and figure,
Mme. Le Brun was obliged to go to Paris. She intended to come back to
finish her work, but she found the murder of Foulon and Berthier had
just taken place, and the state of affairs was so alarming that her
one object was to get out of France. The portrait fell into the hands
of Count Louis de Narbonne, who restored it to her on her return—when
she finished it.
The fate of Mme. Du Barry is well known. She escaped to England where
she was kindly received, and where the great value of her diamonds
enabled her to live quite well herself, and also to help many of the
_emigrés_, to whom she was most generous. But the Duc de Brissac had
remained concealed at Louveciennes, and she insisted on going back to
him. The friends she made in England pointed out the danger of doing
so, and did all they could to dissuade her—they even unharnessed the
horses of her travelling carriage. It was all useless, she would go.
Soon after her return to Louveciennes the Duc de Brissac was seized
and carried away from her to be taken to Orléans. On the way he and
his companions were attacked and murdered by the mob and his head
brought to Mme. Du Barry. Then she herself was betrayed and denounced
by a little negro named Zamore, who was in her service, and had been
loaded with benefits and kindness by Louis XV. and by herself. In
consequence of the denunciation of this wretch she was thrown into
prison, tried, and executed at the end of 1793.
In all those terrible days she was the only woman whose courage failed
at the last. She cried and entreated for help from the crowd around
the scaffold, and that crowd began to be so moved by her terror and
despair that the execution was hurried on lest they should interfere
to prevent it.
Mme. Le Brun, alluding to this circumstance, remarks that in all
probability the very heroism and calmness of the victims helped to
prolong this horrible state of things.
“I have always been persuaded,” she says in one of her letters, “that
if the victims of that time of execrable memory had not had the noble
pride to die with courage, the Terror would have ceased much sooner.
Those whose intelligence is not developed have too little imagination
to be touched by silent suffering, and it is much easier to arouse the
compassion than the imagination of the populace.”
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Raincy was afterwards bought by Junot, Duc d’Abrantès, who sold
it again to Napoleon.
[26] The author of the play.
[27] Beaumarchais was the son of a watchmaker born at Paris 1732. His
talent for music led to his giving lessons to _Mesdames de_ _France_.
He made a fortune by his financial talents, and was famous as an
author. He wrote “The Marriage of Figaro,” “The Barber of Seville,”
&c., was a freethinker, revolutionist, and at first member of the
Commune of Paris; but he fell out of favour, was ruined, imprisoned in
the Abbaye during the Terror, narrowly escaped with his life, and died
some years afterwards.
[28] Son of the President of the Parliament of Flanders. He rose, it
is said, by questionable means to a high position in finance.
[29] “Histoire de la Révolution Française” (Louis Blanc).
[30] Alluded to in letter from the Queen to Mercy d’Argenteau, in the
Archives of Vienna.
[31] One of the royal _châteaux_.
[32] “Les Trois Vernet.”
[33] Afterwards the celebrated painter.
[34] Jean-Baptiste Isabey, b. at Nancy, 1767.
[35] “Salons d’Autrefois” (Ctsse. de Bassanville).
[36] Or Luciennes.