A comparative view of the social life of England and France, from the restoration of Charles the Second, to the French Revolution

Front matter

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Preface

While the great moral principles upon which all social order in an advanced state of civilisation is necessarily formed, remain at all times nearly the same, the modifications imposed by law, or induced by custom, in different eras of society — the duties exacted by the one, and the licence often obtained by the other — produce occasional, accidental ebbs and flows in the morals as well as in the manners of private life. These form an interesting and not unuseful subject of contemplation to such minds as, in society, by an intimate acquaintance with their contemporaries, have been enlightened, not contracted; who have learnt, in and from the world, indulgence to its follies without participation in its thoughtlessness, and a severe adherence to general principles, with great lenity to individual deviations from them. It is of such characters that La Bruyere says, " lis peuvent hair les " hommes en general ou il y a si peu de vertu,

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" mais ils excusent les particuliers ; ils les aiment " meme par des motifs plus releves, et ils s'etu- " dient a meriter le moins qu'ils peuvent une " pareille indulgence." (1)

Some considerations are here ottered on the changes which have taken place, and the fluctuations observable in the two countries which, for above a century, may be said to have divided between them the social world of Europe. The period chosen is one from authentic sources, still within our observation. Details of more distant times, from the great scarcity of materials, would be rather addressed to the curiosity of the antiquary, than to the feelings and reflection of the general observer of human nature. Individual characters are sometimes brought forward, as the best authority for the sentiments and conduct of the period to which they belong ; and sketches sometimes given of the biography of such as have been distinguished in social life, although little noticed in history.

(1) Caracteres de la Bruy^re, torn. ii. p. 8'

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In the instance of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, their political importance and superiority was too closely interwoven with the whole tissue of their lives, to be separated from them ; but in the following pages their characters are touched on, not as the leaders of political parties, but, as to the effect which those characters produced on their associates, and on the times in which they lived.

The Author has endeavoured to avoid all recapitulations of well-known circumstances, anecdotes, and characters belonging to a period so familiar to the reading world, or at least to that part of it here addressed.

All great political speculations, all military and financial details, are left to more important and more voluminous works. Nothing is here attempted but a review of social life and manners, from materials open to every one as well as to the Author, and therefore supposed to be possessed by them. To this are added some observations suggested by a long intercourse with society in both countries.

A First Volume is now offered to the public :

vin should it amuse the leisure of those whose more enlarged and more profound knowledge of the times recorded gives them an interest in their social details ; should it assist in suggesting those associations of ideas always an agreeable exercise to the human mind, the aim of the Author is fulfilled. A Second Volume, attempting to record the changes produced, and the altered spirit prevailing in both countries subsequent to the French Revolution, might perhaps prove more interesting, from approaching nearer to our contemporaries. But if only a series of insignificant circumstances are found to be here related, all previously familiar to the reader; if these circumstances are found unaccompanied by any comment which may lead to greater and more general views of human life and character ; and if they produce no speculations beyond the mere matter of fact recorded ; if such is the unerring decision of that portion of the public into whose hands the following pages may fall, then the future amusement of the Author will not be further intruded on the public.

Contents

Introduction .... Page I

Chapter I

Conduct of the Royal Family at the Restoration. — Duke of Buckingham. — Inferiority of the Taste, Manners, Literature, and social Habits of England, to those of France at this Period. — Reasons for it. — Effects of the bad Taste of the Times on Morals and on Society.

— Lord Rochester Excessive Drinking. — King's bad

Example Memoires de Grammont, Atalantis, Duchess

of Cleveland - - - - -53

Chapter II

Effects of the Restoration on Female Manners and social Existence. — Marriages of the young Nobility. — The Talents of Women entirely neglected in their Education. — Lady Falkland. — Duchess of Newcastle. — Infrequency and Dulness of Private Letters. — Diary of the first Lady Burlington. — Letters of Lady Russell and Lady Sunderland. — Cards and Play confined to the Court. — False Idea of the Manners of England given by the Writers of the Day - - - - 98

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Chapter III

French Memoirs and Private Correspondence, their Advantages over our early Chronicles. — State of Society in France during the Regency of Anne of Austria. — Character of her Court. — Madame de Chevrcuse. — Mademoiselle de Hautefort. — Mademoiselle de la Fayette. — Cardinal Mazarin. — Contrast between the Motives and Conduct of the contemporary Civil Wars of France and England. — The Fronde, and its Effects on the Social Life and Manners of France. — The Duchesse de Longueville ..... Page 125

Chapter IV

Much Purity of Conduct and Excellence of Female Character contemporary with the Heroines of the Fronde. — Madame de Sevigne. — Mademoiselle de Vigean. — The Duchesse de Navailles. — The Amusements of Society

in England and in France. — The Theatre Comparison

of that of France with that of England - - 162

Chapter V

Influence of the first Years of the Majority of Louis the Fourteenth on the Society and social Habits of France.

— St. Evremond. — Duchesse de Mazarin. — Ninon de l'Enclos. — Hotel de Rambouillet. — Fetes at Versailles.

— Change which took Place during the Reign of Louis the Fourteenth. — State of Society at the Time of his Death --._.. 206

CHAPTER VL

The Change of Manners which took Place in England after the Revolution of 1688. — King William. — Queen Mary. — The Amusements and Habits of social Lite during the Reigns of King William and of Queen Anne.

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— Duchess of Norfolk's Divorce. — Duchess of Marlborough. — Lady Masham. — Queen Anne. — Lady Betty Germaine. — Duchess of Queensbury. — Lady M. W. Montague. — Bolingbroke. — Pope. — Swift. — Steele.

— Gay. — Prior. — Congreve. — Degraded State of the Fine Arts - - Page 259

Chapter VII

Ignorance of the Government of Louis the Fourteenth. — Theological Disputes. — Suspicions of Poison. — Madame de Brinvilliers. — Jesuits and Jansenists. — Voltaire. — Regent's Government hurried on the Revolution Conduct of the French Nobility and of the Popular Party at the Beginning'of the Revolution.— State of the public Mind in Europe. — Rousseau, Effects produced by his Writings in France. — Absence of all Regard to Moral Truth. — Madame du Chatelet. — St. Lambert. — Madame de Grafigny. — Madame d'Epinay, her Society, Rousseau's Conduct in it. — Madame d'Houdetot - - 330

CHAPTER VIII. The Tribunals of France, their disgraceful Conduct. — The

Pretensions of the Parliaments Political Discussion

becomes general in Society. — Effects produced by the Genius and Writings of Voltaire on the Character of his Country. — State of Society at Paris immediately preceding the Revolution. — The Influence of Women on the Opinions and Circumstances of the Times. — Remarkable Difference in the Conduct of England and France under Circumstances of popular Excitation. — Execution of Foulon. — Mixture of Atrocity and Folly in the successive Demagogues of French Liberty. — Chaumette. — Trial of the Queen. — Hebert. — Couthon. — St. Just.

— Collot D'Herbois Strange Insensibility to Death.

— Frivolous Discussions of the Convention - -381

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Chapter IX

State of England from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the Beginning of the French Revolution. — Accession of George the Third. — His early Character and Conduct. — Prosperous State of the Country. — American War, its Effects. — Mr. Pitt. — His Conduct respecting the French Revolution. — Its Social and Political Effects on England. — Mr. Fox. - - - Page 434

Introduction

In considering and comparing the manners and habits, the opinions and prejudices, of England and France, it is remarkable that two nations so contiguous, so long and so intimately connected, and having always, either as friends or as enemies, seen so much of each other, should still continue so essentially dissimilar.

Like country neighbours, of uncongenial characters, we have never, during our hereditary and necessary intercourse with each other, continued long upon good terms, and have generally fallen out when any attempts have been made to increase our intimacy or unite us more closely.

Even when upon the most friendly footing, we have neither of us disliked hearing our neighbours abused, their peculiarities laughed at, and their weaknesses exaggerated, and have

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seldom been disposed to do them justice, except when we conceived that we had humbled and worsted them.

The two nations may be considered as having been in a state of the most entire alienation from each other at the period of the restoration of Charles the Second. A space of twenty years, joined to bur insular situation, would be more than enough, at any time, to wear out almost every vestige of foreign fashions or manners ; but these intervening years had, besides, been marked by political struggles, which, in calling forth our national peculiarities, exhibited them in the greatest possible contrast to the French character of that period, not only as to religion and politics, but as to every public and private sentiment, both national and individual.

The intermediate events which took place in both countries, mutually fortified and increased all these distinctive differences. The great and decisive stand made by the English nation, first in the senate, and then in the field, against the arbitrary plans of the misguided Charles, plans, which, whether of resistance or accommodation, were always (and too truly) connected in public opinion with foreign counsels and foreign aid. The temporary settlement which took place under Cromwell ; the abortive and ill-concerted attempts subsequently made for the establishment of a republic, — all these national exertions were equally grounded upon a determined resistance to foreign interposition, and to any change in the laws and customs considered as peculiarly English. Indeed it is a circumstance which must strike all those who have looked much into our earliest annals, not in compiled histories, but in contemporary writers, and in the still subsisting records of the time, that the English seem always to have been a chosen people, for the deposit of political truth and civil liberty ; not of romantic visions, impossible from the nature of man to be realised, but of plain practical doctrines, long acted upon, often opposed, sometimes reversed, always ultimately triumphant. No regularly constructed constitution of government subsisted in the times here referred to ; but the common law of England, the unwritten record of time immemorial, proves that this principle of civil liberty, of individual independence, of resistance to all oppression at home, and all intervention from abroad, existed long before ; and what is more remarkable, during, and in defiance ofi the alternate rule of the Yorks and the Lancasters, the succession of Tudors and

b 2 of Stuarts. (1) It was, in fact, kept alive, by their successive efforts to subdue it ; was enlightened, strengthened, and systematised, by the effects of the civil war, and by all the energy of mind, and excellence of understanding, which those times called forth, and was permanently established at the Revolution, which secured the throne to the house of Brunswick.

The aversion the people of England ever evinced to foreign connections was by no means shared by their princes, especially those of the race of Stuart.

The short-sighted policy, and puerile eagerness with which James the First sought the alliance, first of Austria, and then of France, by the marriage of his son, seems rather to have been the effect of early prejudice, imbibed in

(1) This is sufficiently proved by many of the public papers in the curious selection made by the late Mr. Lysons, while keeper of the records in the Tower, where we find (among many other similar facts) Henry the Fifth, during his victorious campaign in France, receiving and answering petitions from the meanest of his subjects, complaining of encroachments on their property or rights. His letter missive to his chancellor is there preserved, desiring him to see immediate justice done to a miller, who had complained to the king of a neighbouring convent of monks having obstructed his mill-stream, and otherwise oppressed and injured him.

Scotland, which taught him always to look to a powerful connection on the Continent for support, than to any decided project for introducing the Roman Catholic religion, which in those days formed too much an Imperiam in Imperio, to have been relished by his weak, self-sufficient, and despotic mind.

Even the letter of his son Charles to Pope Gregory the Fifteenth, which has been so frequently cited against its writer, appears rather a measure of formal civility in those punctilious times, than an intimation of that early bias, in favour of the religion of the pontiff he addresses, which was afterwards supposed to be detected in it.

In the early part of his subsequent reign there are many particulars recorded in the memoirs of the times, which exhibit the incongruity of the habits and feelings of the two nations, even while immediately connected by the marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria. (1)

A year had not elapsed after this marriage, when the whole train of French attendants, who had accompanied the Queen from Paris, were suddenly dismissed from her service ; a large

(1) She was married by proxy at Notre Dame, at Paris, on the 31st of May, 1626.

B 3 sum of money and magnificent presents (1) were distributed among them, but their immediate departure insisted on and enforced.

The letter or declaration of Charles to his brother-in-law, Louis the Thirteenth, justifies, in a very spirited and sensible manner, the conduct he had been obliged to adopt, both towards his queen and her attendants. (2) Their impertinence and arrogance, the meddling insolence of their priests, and the pretensions and complaints which they all combined in suggesting to their mistress, had become intolerable, not only to the English court, but to the King himself; to that king, the subsequent strength and unshaken constancy of whose attachment to his wife forms so conspicuous a part of his disastrous history, and an interesting excuse for some of his misconduct. (3)

(1) They received above 11,000/. in money, and 20,000/. worth of jewels.

(2) A copy of this declaration was first published with the letters found in the king's cabinet, taken at the battle of Nasby. Whether this paper was really among them may admit of a doubt; but the parliament having it, by whatever means, in their possession, no doubt can exist of their reasons for publishing what coincided so entirely with all the popular prejudices against the queen.

(3) " The king's affection to the queen was of a verv " extraordinary alloy, a composition of conscience and lo\o.

The Marechal de Bassompierre, it is known, came as ambassador extraordinary to England, to settle these differences, or rather to insist on the re-establishment of the Queen's French household and priests. Lord Carleton, who had carried to France the letter from Charles, announcing their dismissal, was very ill received by Louis ; and Montagu, who was sent soon after with a compliment on the marriage of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, the King's brother, was ordered to leave Paris immediately, without being even admitted to an audience.

The detailed account which Bassompierre

" and generosity and gratitude, and all those noble affec- " tions which raise the passion to the greatest height ; in- " somuch as he saw with her eyes, and determined by her "judgment; and did not only pay her this adoration, but " desired that all men should know that he was swayed by " her, which was not good for either of them. The queen " was a lady of great beauty, excellent wit and humour, " and made him a just return of noblest affections, so that " they were the true idea of conjugal affection in the age " in which they lived. When she was admitted to the " knowledge and participation of the most secret affairs 11 (from which she had been carefully restrained by the " Duke of Buckingham whilst he lived), she took delight in " the examining and discussing them, and from thence in a making judgment of them, in which her passions were " always strong." — Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, vol. i. p. 155.

B 4 gives in his memoirs of his first interview with Charles, shows how much the King was irritated at the conduct of the court of France on this occasion, and how determined he was to maintain his own dignity, and resist any foreign intervention in his affairs.

He had insisted on Bassompierre's not entering on the subject of his mission at his first public audience at Hampton Court, where the Queen was at his side, and, as the ambassador tells us, " la compagnie etoit superbe et Pordre " exquis," but admitted him to a private interview of two hours, within three days afterwards, at the same place ; " en laquelle," Bassompierre reports to Louis the Thirteenth, "j'ai " trouve tant de rudesses, et si peu de desir de " contenter votre majeste, que je ne m'en S9aurois " assez estonner, car apres m'avoir longuement " escoute, il me dit que je n'accomplisois pas la " charge que Pon lui avoit mande, que j'avois " de lui declarer la guerre de votre part. Je " luy dit que je n'avois pas Poffice de herault, " pour luy aim oncer la guerre, mais bien celuy " de Marechal de France, pour Pexecuter quand c< votre majeste Pauroit resolue, et que jusques a " present, vous fustes avec lui com me avec un " frere. II me dit, que si cela etoit, votre majeste " devoit le laisser en repos et en liberte en sa

♦maison, en laquelle, ni vous, ni personne, n'avez 1 qu'a voir que la religion de votre sceur, etoit « assuree, que directement ni indirectement il ' ne tacheroit de luy faire changer, et qu'au 1 reste, il ne vouloit pas que la reyne sa femme at- ( tendist protection d'aucun autre que de luy ; ' qu'il avoit este force de chasser ses officiers 1 Francois, pour leur mauvais deportement, et ' les brigues et monopoles qu'ils faisoient en « l'etat, qu'ils luy divertissoient le cceur et ' 1'affection de la reyne sa femme, laquelle ils 1 obsedoient pour l'empecher de faire cas des

* Anglois et Angloises, la destournant d'ap-

* prendre la langue, et faisant qu'elle ne se 6 portoit envers luy comme elle devoit, dont il 1 avoit auparavant fait donner avis a votre ' majeste et a la reyne mere. Que maintenant, ' etdepuis qu'il les a esloignes,la reyne sa femme,

* vit mieux avec lui, et qu'il a l'esperance 1 qu'a l'avenir, elle luy donnera toute sorte de ' contentement. Qu'il n'est pas resolu de

* rentrer en la meme peine ou il a ete pour le 6 passe, et dont il est sorty, et que si votre ' majeste aime son repos comme son beau ' frere qu'elle ne le doit point presser a cela, ' et qu'il ne le fera point. Qu'il a donne e a la reyne votre sceur un train digne de sa 6 qualite, ou il y a quelques catholics, qu'il la

* traitera en reyne, mais qu'il veut qu'elle se

" comporte avec lui comme elle doit, et qu'elle " luy defere et obeisse comme sa femme."

In addition to this account given directly to Louis the Thirteenth, a part of Bassompierre's Memoirs contains a journal of his iife day by day, which embraces the whole period of his embassy to England, from the 2d of October to the 18th of December, 1626.

In this we find a remarkable instance of the familiar footing, which the Duke of Buckingham maintained with the king, and of a lesson of etiquette given to the Duke by the ambassador, of which he seems to have been too little aware to have much profited.

Bassompierre, describing this his first interview with Charles in a gallery at Hampton Court, says, " Je vis la line grande hardiesse, pour ne " pas dire efFronterie, du Due de Boukingham, " qui fut, que lorsqu'il nous vit les plus echauffes, " il partit de la main, et se vint mettre en " tiers avec le roy et moy, disant je viens faire le " holaentrevousdeux. Lors, j'ostaymonchapeau, " et tant qu'il fust avec nous, je ne le voulus re- " mettre quelqu'instances que le roy et luy m'en " fissent. Puis, quand il fust retire, je le remis " sans que le roy me le dit. Quand j'eus acheve, " et que le due put parler a moy, il me dit, " pourquoi je ne m'etois pas voulu couvrir luy " y-etant, et que luy n'y-etant pas, je m'etois si

" franchement couvert? Je luy repondis que je " l'avois fait pour luy faire honneur, et par ce " qu'il ne le fust pas couvert, et que je Feusse " ete, dont il me S9Ut bon gre, et le dit depuis " plusieurs fois, en me louant. Mais j'avois encore n une autre raison pour le faire, qui etoit, que ce " n'etoit plus audience, mais conversation par- " ticuliere, puis ce qu'il l'avoit interrompue se " mettant en tiers." Buckingham, however, it seems was the mediator in this whole business. He professed to Bassompierre an aversion to all the severities of the Puritans against the Catholics, and the greatest desire to satisfy the Queen by the recall of her French household, although he had hitherto been on no very friendly terms with her, and she was supposed to dread his influence with the King. He now, however, (as Madame de Motteville tells us,) seconded an imprudent scheme, which the Queen's ill humour at the dismissal of her French servants had suggested, of making a visit to her mother, accompanied by Buckingham. To this, however, neither Mary of Medicis nor Louis the Thirteenth would consent. Buckingham was now in the height of his romantic passion for Anne of Austria, and was equally averse to war between the two countries, or, to their settling their differences without his immediate interference ; he therefore announced himself to Bassompierre as the person intended to be sent ambassador from Charles to Paris, and in his quality of lord high admiral to settle the maritime disputes between the two countries. Bassompierre was obliged to deter him by every means in his power from seeking the appointment of ambassador on this occasion ; having received positive instructions from Louis the Thirteenth to prevent his coming, and even to tell him he would not be received, till every point, both with respect to the Queen's household, and to the maritime disputes, was settled. Louis, in his letter to his ambassador on the subject, says, " Je remets a votre prudence et adresse, de luy " escrire sur ce sujet, en telle sorte qu'il ne " puisse pas dire, comme il a fait en Hollande, " que je luy ai fait defendre de venir en France, " et en tout cas, s'il arrivoit que par ces cooside- " rations le dit Due de Buckingham ne fut arret£ " de faire le dit voyage, j'entens que vous luy " faisiez scavoir par homme expres et de creance, " que vous envoyerez vers luy, qu'il reculera les « affaires de son maitre, plutot que de les avancer " en cette sorte, et que je n'aurois point agre- *' able de le voir que toutes choses ne soient " entitlement accommodees entre nous."(l) It was pique at this aversion of the court of France to receiving him, which made Buckingham in-

(1) Mt'moires de Bassompierre.

sist on the command of the unfortunate expedition to La Rochelle, where he had flattered himself, he was first to have humbled the arms of France, and then, as a conqueror, to be sent to Paris to negotiate a necessary peace.

Happy had it been for Henrietta Maria and her family, if, along with her French attendants, she could have dismissed the mistaken ideas she had received from her French education ; or that the misfortunes and disgrace of the latter part of her mother's life(l) had taught

(1) Mary of Medicis, the widow of Henry the Fourth, died in exile and neglect at Blois, after having long maintained against the Cardinal de Richelieu an unequal combat for that power, which they were both equally disposed to abuse. She had been three years in England on a visit to her daughter, from the year 1638 till 1641. Her arrival and her departure is thus mentioned by a contemporary writer : —

" In anno 1638, the queen-mother of France and mother " unto the English queen, widow of Henry the Fourth, King " of France, landed in England, and came unto London the " 31st of October. She was very meanly accompanied, " and had few persons of quality attending her. The King " most humanely and generously receives and entertains " her, though all men were extremely against it ; for it was " observed, that wherever or unto whatever country this " miserable old queen came, there followed immediately " after her either the plague, war, famine, or one misfortune " or other. *****

" In the same month of August, 1641, I beheld the " old queen-mother of France departing from London, in her the dangers of political intrigue and political power, even in France, already long accustomed to the influence of women in the most serious affairs. (1) From the time of the dismissal of her French attendants, we find her living in perfect harmony with Charles, and from the death of the Duke of Buckingham two years afterwards, in 1628, exercising such unbounded influence over him, that his subsequent fortunes must

" company of Thomas, Earl of Arundel ; a sad spectacle " of mortality it was, and produced tears from mine eyes " and many other beholders, to see an aged, lean, de- " crepit, poor queen, ready for her grave, necessitated " to depart hence, having no place of residence in this " world left her, but where the curtesy of her hard fortune " assigned it. She had been the only stately and mag- " nificent woman of Europe, wife to the greatest king " that ever lived in France, mother unto one king and unto " two queens." — Several Observations on the Life and Death of King Charles the First, by William Lilly, first published, July, 1651.

(1) Sir Edward Stafford ambassador at Paris in 15S8, gives a curious account to Queen Elizabeth of the ladies who had the most political influence in the court of Henry the Fourth, in the following words : — " For Your Majesty " may assure yourself that there are four women in the " court, Mesdames de Villeroy, Retz, Princesses of Condi lt and Nevers, that have all the news and most secretest " devices of the court ; for there is not one of these, or at " least among these four, that hath not either a lover, an " honourer, or a private friend of the secretest council of " the court, that will almost hide nothing from them."

necessarily have much depended on her character. Unfortunately for them both, her ideas of government and religion, of the rights of princes, and of the means to be employed to maintain or retrieve them, were no less contrary to our laws, than foreign to our habits, and obnoxious to our dispositions.

This was so well understood by the nation, that Clarendon tells us from the first public demonstrations of discontent, the universal prejudice was against the queen (1); and as early as the year 1641 in the memorable petition and remonstrance which was presented to the King at Hampton Court, immediately after his return from Scotland, he is requested to let such persons only near him, in places of trust, as his parliament may confide in, and that in his princely goodness to his people, he will " reject " and refuse all mediation and solicitation to the " contrary, how powerful and near so ever."

(1) Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. 109.

She was so aware of this herself, that in a letter to the King, of March 29. 1644-, she says, " If you make a peace " and disband your army before there is an end to this " perpetual parliament, I am resolved to go to France, not " being willing to fall again into the hands of those people, " being well assured, that if the power remain with them, " that it will not be well for me in England." — Kings Cabinet opened, p. 28.

These early expressed suspicions, her subsequent conduct was too well calculated to confirm and increase. Her ill-timed visit to France, in the year 1642, her binding her husband by a solemn promise to make no peace, nor any compromise with his discontented subjects during her absence (1 J, and the difficulties which it is known she afterwards threw in the way of any attempts at accommodation, were the acts of a mind as incapable of rising above the prejudices of her own country, as of estimating the force and effect of those of the country she wished to govern. It is recorded that when she returned after the Restoration to take possession of Somerset House, her former residence, she exclaimed, that if she had known the temper of the people of England some years past, as well as she did then, she had never been obliged to leave that house. (2) During the first fifteen peaceable years of Charles's reign, we must suppose that her influence was not entirely confined to her husband. Beautiful in her person, lively in her manners and conversation, brought up in a court around which the popular character of her father Henry the Fourth had thrown a