SAINT-SIMON 



99 



is deemed most convenient to give an account of 

 their views under the article SOCIALISM. 



An admirable edition of the works of Saint-Simon and 

 Enfan tin was issued by survivors of the school ( 36 vols. 

 Paris, 1865-74 ). See also Keybaud, Etudes sur les Heform- 

 ttteurs Modernet ; Paul Janet, Saint-Simon et le Saint- 

 Simtnitime ; A. J. Booth, Saint-Simon and Simonism. 



Saint-Simon, Louis DE ROUVROY, Due DE, a 

 great French writer, was born at Paris, January 

 16, 1675. His father, who was sixty-eight at his 

 birth, had been a page and favourite of Louis 

 XIII., and had risen rapidly at court, becoming 

 First Equerry in 1627, and finally duke and peer in 

 1636, but soon after fell into disgrace, and passed 

 much of his time thereafter at the castle of Blaye 

 on the Gironde, which as governor he kept for the 

 crown throughout the Fronde. The boy was given 

 the title of Vidame of Chartres, as those of marquis 

 and count hat! become too common. He received 

 a careful education at home and at ttie academy 

 of Rochefort, entered the service in the king's 

 household troops in 1691, and behaved with spirit 

 at Neerwinden ( 1693 ) under the eye of Luxem- 

 burg. He succeeded his father in the title, as 

 well as in all his appointments, in 1693, married 

 in 1695, and served in the army of the Rhine under 

 his father-in-law, the Marshal de Lorges, from 

 lil'.ll till the peace of Ryswick, having offended 

 Luxembourg by championing the action of the 

 dukes in Parlement against his claim in a question 

 of privilege. Dissatisfied with his promotion, he 

 left the service in 1702, and repaired to Versailles, 

 where he studied the 'insects of the court,' and 

 conformed to all the tedious etiquette of Louis 

 XIV., without for some years enjoying any 

 measure of the royal favour. He embroiled him- 

 self in an endless series of disputes with members 

 of the peerage aliout points of precedence and 

 privilege, such as the carrying round the alms-plate 

 in the chapel, which the ladies of the ducal family 

 of Lorraine had refused to do. He made bitter 

 enemies of the powerful Marquis d'Antin, as well 

 88 the Due de Maine, the eldest of the king's bas- 

 tards by Madame de Montespan, who had been, to 

 his great displeasure, given in 1694 a special rank 

 below the princes but above the other peers ; and 

 be was disliked by the Dauphin and the whole 

 'cabal of Meudon ' which surrounded him. Indeed 

 he left Versailles for a time, and passed most of the 

 year 1709 in the country at La Ferte. But he re- 

 covered the king's favour by his efforts to bring his 

 friend Orleans to a more reputable life, and by his 

 successful intriguing in the project to marry the 

 Dauphin's favourite son, the Due de Berry, to the 

 daughter of Orleans. The marriage took place in 

 July 1710, and the Duchess de Saint-Simon was, 

 to his great regret, made lady-in-waiting to the 

 young Duchess die Berry, and passed nine uncom- 

 fortable years of attendance upon her half-maniac 

 mistress. The death of the Dauphin (April 1711) 

 relieved him of all anxiety for the future, for his 

 son, the Duke of Burgundy, Fenelon's pupil, was 

 hi* warm friend. But his joy was short-lived, for 

 the virtuous young Dauphin and Dauphiness were 

 l>tli carried off by fever in February 1712. An- 

 other mortification was the elevation of the two 

 bastards in 1714 to be princes of the blood. The 

 king's death on 1st September 1714 opened up a 

 liittiT struggle between Orleans and Maine, in 

 which Saint-Simon supported his friend with 

 equal warmth and boldness. It ended in the 

 complete triumph of Orleans; but, though Saint- 

 Simon liad a seat on the council of the regency, he 

 found Orleans indifferent to his schemes of finan- 

 cial reform, and the restoration to the peers of a 

 paramount position in the work of government; 

 ami IK; (ailed to prevail upon him even to decide the 

 iiii>ii'iit<iii~ ' Allaire du Bonnet,' as to whether the 



president should keep his cap on his head or before 

 him on the table when addressing the peers in 

 Parlement. But he had at least the gratification 

 of seeing ' the bastards ' degraded from the princely 

 rank, and the proudest day of his life was that of 

 the Bed of J_ustice (August 26, 1718), in which his 

 hated enemies, the members of the Parlement, were 

 called in to hear the decree and witness the fall of 

 their patron Maine to this day alone lie devotes 

 seventy -seven pages of his Memoires. His influ- 

 ence decreased as that of Dubois rose ; but he was 

 sent to Spain in 1721 on a splendid special embassy 

 to demand the hand of the Infanta for the young 

 king, Louis XV. The death of Orleans in Decem- 

 ber 1723 closed his public career, and he spent the 

 next thirty years in calm retirement at his 

 chateau of La Ferte Vidame near Chartres, 77 

 miles distant from Paris. He lost his Butch- 

 loved wife in 1743 ; three years later, his eldest son, 

 who left only a daughter behind him. His second 

 son died childless in 1754 ; his only remaining 

 child, a daughter, was ugly and deformed, yet 

 married the Prince of Chimay in 1722, although 

 she never left her father's house. Saint-Simon died 

 in his house at Paris, 2d March 1755. He had 

 struggled all his days with colossal debts, and he 

 sank at last into sheer insolvency. 



.Saint-Simon amused himself, between the years 1734 

 and 1738, in making notes in an interleaved copy of 

 Uangeau's dry and servile Journal (written 1684-1720) ; 

 but he seems to have begun his own journal before 1699. 

 Finally, about 173'.', he began to prepare the MGmoircs in 

 their final form, and this task he completed about 1752. 

 This precious MS. was claimed by his cousin, the Bishop of 

 Metz, but it was finally impounded in 1761 by the Due de 

 Choiseul for the Foreign Office. It was read to furnish 

 amusement for Madame de Pompadour ; Madame du 

 Deffand speaks of it in a letter to Horace Walpole ; and 

 it had undoubtedly been seen by Duclos, Marmontel, and 

 Voltaire. A volume of garbled extracts appeared at 

 Brussels in 1780, but it was not till 1830 that the first 

 authentic edition appeared, the MS. having been given 

 to General de Saint-Simon by Louis XVIII. The firat 

 adequate edition was that in 20 volumes, edited by 

 CheVuel in 1856, which at once attained an extraordinary 

 popularity. But the final edition of the inimitable 

 Itfmoires is that in Les Grands crirain>, by M. de 

 Boislisle (30 vols. vol. i. 1871; vol. viii. 1891). There 

 is an abridged English translation by Bayle St John 

 ( 4 vols. 1857 ). The additions to Dangeau had been pub- 

 lished along with the Journal in 19 volumes, 1854. The 

 rest of Saint-Simon's voluminous MSS. were locked up 

 till 18*0, when 11. de Freycinet opened them up. M. 

 Prosper Faugere published the Merits Inedits (8 vols. 

 1880-92). Ihe Lettres et Dep'ches of the Spanish em- 

 bassy were edited by M. E. Uruinont (1880) ; the Projets 

 de Uouvtrnement du Due de Bouryoyne in 1860. 



Saint-Simon's Memorials on Precedent and 

 Privilege are not interesting, nor yet his Letters, 

 but his Memoires remains a consummate master- 

 piece of literary art, in its kind absolutely alone. 

 His knowledge of military affairs was inadequate ; 

 his fondness for a striking story was a stand- 

 ing snare to him ; and other inaccuracies are 

 plentiful enough ; while his narrative is constantly 

 marred by defective information and by prejudice, 

 never by deliberate falsehood. In the introduction 

 he claims himself, and with justice, as 'straight 

 forward, truthful, candid, and inspired with honour 

 and integrity.' He was an honest hater 'all my 

 life,' he says, ' I have known only too well how to 

 love and how to hate ' but if he heaps his hatred 

 upon Vemldme, Villars, Madame de Maintenon, 

 Maine, Noailles, and Dubois, he has no less intense 

 a love for Beauvilliers, for his spiritual adviser the 

 Abbot Ranc<S of La Trappe, and for his young hero 

 the Duke of Burgundy. His life was pure in an 

 impure age ; he had an on-French dislike to all 

 such frivolities as cards and frequenting play- 

 houses ; there is but one instance even or his 



