BOOKS.
A FRIEND OF MARIE ANTOINETTE,* A Friend of the Queen. Translated by Mrs. Cashel Ilooy from the Franca of Paul Gaulot. Lonoon : W. Heinemann. 1894. To say that a book is translated by Mrs. Cashel Hoey is to say that it is well done; and a work by M. Paul Gaulot ought to be profitable to students of Count Fersen's real relations with Marie Antoinette. M. Gaulot has written, more than one book crowned by the French Academy, and he is quoted with respect by M. de la Rooheterie in his exhaustive Life of the Queen of France as a writer specially acquainted with the obscure plots for her escape in 1793.
We do not know if Baron Klinckenatriirn's production of some of his great-uncle Count Fersen's private papers in the year 1878 was followed by their translation into English. If the book entitled Le Comte do Fersen et la Cour de France has been so translated, this volume is superfluous. It is made up of extracts from fuller and more interesting documents, and we do not think that M. Gaulot has added to their value by continual innuendo and supposition in support of his theme. His theme is, indeed, in itself contradictory. To make a saleable French novel out of facts from which no certain conclusion is foregone, M. Gaulot is obliged continually to contradict himself. Count Axel Fersen is not a paladin according to the ideals of the Bonk- yards. M. Gaulot had to adapt him to his rae of the Queen's lover. Marie Antoinette has been so generally acquitted, by historians of anything more than frivolity and passion for amusement, that the author is driven to his wits'-ends to supply materials for any fresh suspicions of the invisible intrigue which he supposes from 1774 to 1793. He has to do this, moreover, under cover of extreme respect and admiration for the Queen, whose trust in her devoted servant was, and. with good reason, unbounded.
M. Gaulot is doubtless particularly well informed, but it is possible to select information with ultimate purposes, and to dress it in notes of admiration, in the emphasis of italics, and in such phrases as "we may well imagine," or "it is impossible to doubt," so that the reader is ready to believe the contrary of the fact stated. Whatever the Academy may think of M. Gania's merits, we find him in English dress unmistakably vulgar, vulgar in thought, and sometimes in expression, "in- capable of the Court," to use the German idiom, incapable even of duly appreciating Louis XVI., and absolutely blind to . Fersen's chivalrous and ascetic character.
All that M. Gaulot tells us of Madame du Barry and of the Court of Marie Antoinette, is familiar to the least literate reader. To what taste does he pander when he reproduces the insolent slang by which Louis XV. in his ennui was amused ? It jars as a discord in a book that concerns Count Fersen. "He, la, France ! ton cafe f— le camp" is in any case untranslatable, and Mrs. Hoey need not have attempted it. From the first page of physical admiration to the last description of Count Fersen's murder by a Stockholm mob, M. Gaulot never hits the right and noble note of Fersen's un- selfish knight-errantry. Of a family already known and valued in European Courts, John Axel Fersen, making the tour of Europe when he was nineteen, was presented to the Dauphiness, herself nineteen, in 1774. Portraits of him repre- sent him as extremely good-looking, of a calm and serious countenance, with grave eyes, ‘nd a mouth that looked better fitted for sadness than laughter. His nostrils were finely cut, indeed every feature expressed the dignified pride and refine- ment which were traits of his friendship for Marie Antoinette. "Notwithstanding the pleasant manner of the Dauphinees, and her frank and familiar reception of him, Count Fersen maintained the perfect reserve of a great gentleman," M. Gaulot writes; and it was so. Why then does he observe,— " We may guess how glad the enemies of the Queen were, when distinct indications and real facts enabled them to speed their darts with a truer aim" P When he reappeared at Versailles in 1778, Marie Antoinette was Queen. She was just then in her "maddest, merriest time." Again M. Gaulot does his best to emphasise Court trifles, which he weaves into the tissue of his theme. Marie Antoinette wants to see Fersen in his Swedish regimentals. She sings to her friends some lines from an opera :— "Ah quo je fus hien inspire% Quand je vous recus dans ma cour."
Her husband was cold. She was Austrian. The vicious courtiers straightway gave Fersen credit for a royal love. affair. M. Gaulot attributes the young Swede's expedition under Rochambeau in aid of the United States entirely to his chivalrous wish to stop the gossip which was prevalent. Poor Queen I his going could not silence a dozen other libels on her, and even Fersen's dignified denial that she regretted him was but turned into a proof of prudence on his part. And M. Gaulot, triumphantly resuscitating these old stories, exclaims : "We admire Titus and Berenice for immolating their love to a policy which prohibited it." Their "love," used in the Gaulot sense, has yet to be proved, and no word in Fersen's undoctored correspondence admits of any but that true love which accompanied daily-growing respect.
Not only Fersen, but a flight of Versailles courtiers, betook themselves to win their spurs in America. We will not follow them in their campaign, except to say that Count Fersen behaved well, and returned after three years to the coloneley of the Royal Smidois Regiment, bestowed by Louis XVI. at his own King's request, a request backed by Marie Antoinette with the frankness which neutralises all suspicion of her motives.
M. Gaulot does his best for his hero, but in his wish to praise him he altogether misses the really fine characteristics of the finished gentleman, who would have been the last to boast of English reverses in which he took little part, or of Washing- ton's Order of Cincinnatus to which Fersen was admitted. If he allowed his friend and countryman, M. de Steel, to outrun him in the pursuit of Mademoiselle Necker, it was not neces- sarily because of his passion for the Queen. Fersen was of Scandinavian temperament. Not once do we bear of his being mixed up in any intrigue. He is incomprehensible by X. Gaulot. The story of his double life, now attending on Gustavus, whose confidence he entirely possessed, now at Valenciennes in command of his French regiment, drags on through a slow stream of political commonplaces, among threadbare anecdotes of the faults and follies enacted on the stage of Versailles. Of course, the Queen's friends, Mes- dames de Lamballe and de Polignac, are among the badly sketched figures on it. M. Gaulot is nothing if not severely critical, and the translator in a note adds her pebble to the stones heaped on the poor Duchesse de Polignac's memory, and quotes Madame de Remusat as a witness to the ingratitude of the quiet, indolent, beautiful creature, whose chief sins were that she gained injudicious friendship from the Queen, and that her hus- band's family traded on it. The Duchene de Polignao was a misfortune in Marie Antoinette's life, for the Queen set her up as an idol in what was, unhappily, a vacant shrine before her children filled it ; but as for her "treachery and in- gratitude," she had the Royal orders for her emigration in 1789, and once in the Coblentz atmosphere, so placid and unheroic a nature drifted with the emigrant Princes. We do not think Madame de R6musat sufficient authority to prove Madame de Polignae's "base nature in all vicissitudes." Fersen did not find her sufficiently sympathetic ; but Fersen Was not easily satisfied. Perhaps because of the multiplicity of his know- ledge, M. Gaulot does not single out his hero as the chief contriver of the Royal escape on the 20th of June, 1791; yet the figure whose every nerve and muscle were strained to secure success as no other man's were, has a beauty of statuesque energy which other personages of that unsteady time do not possess. Fersen, however often he is mentioned, is never really present in these pages,—not even so impor- tant as in half-a-dozen narratives in which he is but a secondary figure. And yet nearly a hundred pages are spent in a tepid hash of the dramatic story. It is usual in relating Petion's fancies about Madame Elisabeth to omit the more revolting of them ; but M. Gaulot gives them with a relish certainly not derived from any sympathy with the outraged memory of the admirable woman who is libelled afresh in this repetition. We know that she was passionately opposed to the King's liberal concessions, that she was much in sympathy with her other brothers ; why does M. Gaulot give the reader to think that a chance phrase of the Queen's, who said that discussion was impossible, and their family circle was " hell " in consequence, was to be set against Elisa- beth's loyal devotion and proved affection P It seems to no but a hint of his private dislike of both women.
To political readers the true importance of Count Fersen's papers lies chiefly in his report of the intrigues and conduct of the European Powers in 1791-92. No doubt Fersen's master, the King of Sweden, was ready to make war in behalf of the imprisoned Royalties of France. The other more immediate neighbours feared the contagion of revolution, and desired the dismemberment and humiliation of Franc*. So half-hearted were the measures that corresponded to the pretentious scoldings of the Powers, that it would be easy to doubt of their sincerity at any time. The Duke of Brunswick's celebrated manifesto, which drove Paris to bay, is said to have been composed by Fersen. In it all the passion of his failures to save the Royal Family breaks out, and in it we can see the fierce anger of his personal loyalty. The imprudent document gains interest as the challenge of a paladin to a world of misbelievers ; but why was it treated as a serious summons to a sensitive and inebriate nation ? What Power was to blame!) Fersen was accredited privately in 1791 as the King of Sweden's real representative behind M. de Stain, his nominal ambassador. His papers and journal, when given at length, are of extreme value. Treated senti- mentally by M. Gaulot, they become insincere; for his wish to persuade us, while be protests the contrary, that Fersen's loyal and almost one-idead devotion to the King and Queen of France had at least its origin in a common intrigue, core.; pels the author to a continual search for mares'-nests. He makes much of blotted and suppressed lines in Fersen's journals and in the letters to him of the Queen. His use of italics is unfair, and always calculated to mis- represent Marie Antoinette. For instance, he quotes a letter of hers to her mother, written in 1778, concerning the affair of the Bavarian succession. "The glory of the King and the good of France arelconcerned in this, without reckoning the welfare of my dear country;" and M. Gaulot exclaims,—" Her dear countryj! Austria." After Fersen's services on the flight to; Varennes, the Queen writes with affectionate concern for his anxiety, and concludes her note of a dozen lines,—" Adieug shall no longer be able to write to you " In it M. Gaulot "discerns a sentiment that is not gratitude [only." That friend who grieves " for all he suffers in having no news of them," well knows the heart to which she speaks, and how sad is that " adieu " and her intimation that she " willIno longer be able to write to him whose love consoles and sustains her l" As a matter of history, the Queen's farewell to M. de Jarjayes, when she refused to escape from the Temple, if it were to separate her from her children, is even more simply touching. Will M. Gaulot insinuate another "Friend of the Queen" on the strength of it ?
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