The character of La Fayette has suffered chiefly from his own aloofness
towards his contemporaries on the one hand, and from his rigid adherence
to principle upon the other. Both these causes are clearly connected.
The same quality in him which made him so tenacious of principle made
him contemptuous of the run of men about him. Fundamentally, he was
nearer the extreme Republicans than any other class, from the very fact
of his possessing a clear political creed and a determination to follow
it out to its logical consequence. But there was no chance of his
comprehending the concrete side of the movement or the men engaged upon
it, for his great wealth, inherited in very early life, had cut him off
from experience. His moral fault was undoubtedly ambition. It was an
ambition which worked in the void, as it were, and never measured itself
with other men’s capacities or opportunities. He made no plans for
advancement, not because he would have despised the use of intrigue in
reason, but because he was incapable of working it. He was exceedingly
attached to popularity, when it came he thought it his due; unpopularity
in its turn seemed to him a proof of the vileness of those who despised
him. He made himself too much the measure of his world.
Undoubtedly a very great part in the moulding of his character proceeded
from his experience in the United States of America. He was then at the
most impressionable and formative period of human life, little more than
a boy, or at least just entering early manhood. He had just married, he
had just come into the administration of his vast fortune. At such a
moment he took part in the victorious rebellion of the English colonies,
and it may be imagined how powerful was the effect of this youthful
vision upon the whole of the man’s future life; because there was no
proletariat in the colonies, he never saw or comprehended the
dispossessed classes of Paris--for that matter he never saw or
comprehended the French peasantry upon his own lands; because a chance
and volunteer soldiery had, under the peculiar conditions of the
half-populated Atlantic seaboard in conjunction with the French fleet
and with the aid of French money and arms, got the better of the small
and heterogeneous forces of George III, he believed that a military
nation like the French, in the midst of powerful enemies, could make
something of an amateur civic force; because a certain type of ease in
social relations was the ideal of many, perhaps of most, of those with
whom he had served in America, he confused so simple and mundane an
ideal with the fierce crusading blast and the sacred passion for
equality which was stirring his own nation when his opportunity for
leadership came.
It may be said of La Fayette with justice that he never upon a single
occasion did the right thing. It may also be said with justice that he
never did politically any major thing for which his own conscience would
later reproach him. It is noticeable that the Queen held him in
particular odium. He had been a wealthy young noble about the Court, the
friend of all her women friends, and his sympathy with the revolutionary
movement at its inception therefore seemed to her nothing better than
treason. There was also undoubtedly something in his manner which
grievously repelled her; that it was self-sufficient we cannot doubt,
and that it was often futile and therefore exasperating to women, events
are sufficient to show. But Marie Antoinette’s violent personal
antagonism towards La Fayette was not common, though several ardent
spirits (Danton’s, for instance) shared it. The mass of those who came
across La Fayette felt in connection with him a certain irritation or a
certain contempt or a certain rather small and distant respect; he
inspired no enthusiasms, and when he timidly attempted a rebellion
against the new Government after the fall of the monarchy, no one would
sacrifice himself or follow him.
It may be affirmed of La Fayette that if he had not existed the
Revolution would have pursued much the same course as it did, with this
exception: that there would not have been formed a definitely middle
class armed guard to provoke friction in Paris: the National Guard would
have been more open to all ranks.
In religion the man was anodyne, Catholic of course by baptism, but
distinctly Protestant in morals and in general tone, in dogma (until the
end of his life) freethinking, of course, like all his contemporaries.
He was personally courageous but foolishly despised the duel. One
anecdote out of many will help to fix his nature in the mind of the
reader. Mirabeau, casting about as usual for aid in his indebtedness,
sent urgently to him as to a fellow noble, a fellow politician and a
fellow supporter of the Crown, begging a loan of £2000. La Fayette
accorded him £1000.