The following is a reaaallly long discursion on what I've been reading in the way of historical source material, and if the boredom becomes overpowering, please feel free to skip it!
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Les prérogatives du Tiers-Etat is an oddity, its stated author being an anonymous duchess who had been elevated from low birth to her title by virtue of fortune, and its actual author apparently being Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli. Published apparently in 1789, in the thick of the Estates-General, it is a heated defense of the Third Estate and its right to political representation. It begins with the narrating duchess's indignant statement that many noble houses have contracted marriages to commoners so that their dignity and possessions and lifestyle are shored up by the wealth which they previously did not possess, and that therefore the aristocracy has no right to distance itself from the supposed lower class.
In History 120, I think, we were told that while in the English aristocracy the law of primogeniture governed inheritances — which means that the property and title would pass on to the eldest son, while the younger sons had to become clergymen, officers, or something else respectable to earn their living, as any Jane Austen reader will know well —, in France the property was divided among the children. I had difficulties understanding how the French system works until I remembered fairy tales where for example the eldest son gets the house, the middle son the mill, and the youngest the donkey. So it may be absurdly untrue, but I'm guessing that over time properties were divided up until the parcels of inherited land were too little to generate much revenue to live upon. But I hadn't heard of marriages between aristocrat males and plutocrat females in this century and country at all, and at first found it difficult not to feel as if I had hopped into an Edwardian satire (or tediously lachrymose portrait à la Henry James) of marriages between crude but loaded Americans with useless but titled Britishers.
At times I found the Duchess character far too strident, but I did laugh at this scene:
[M. le Duc, mon cher époux] apprit dès ce moment à me connoître. Je commençai par lui prouver, d'un ton encore plus fier que le sien, qu'il n'y a de vraie grandeur que celle de l'ame; que nous sommes tous égaux dans le premier principe, & que l'incomparable Métastase n'a jamais mieux parlé que lorsqu'il a dit il nascere e caso, & non virtu: la naissance est une chose fortuite & non une vertu : je terminai la leçon par me faire apporter des sacs d'or, par en répandre les rouleaux avec profusion sur la table & les remuer à grand bruit, tout en disant, voilà mon aïeul, mon bisaïeul, mon quadrisaïeul, &c.In English: "[The Duke, my dear spouse] learned to know me from this moment. I began by proving to him, in tones prouder still than his, that there is no true grandeur but that of the soul; that we are all equal in the foremost principle, & that the incomparable Metastasio has never spoken better than when he said il nascere e caso, & non virtu: birth is a fortuitous thing and not a virtue. I concluded the lesson by having sacks of gold fetched, by profusely spreading the rolls on the table and stirring them with great noise, whilst saying, here is my grandsire, my great-grandsire, my great-great-grandsire, &c. The stratagem succeeded, as I had expected [. . .]."
Le stratagème réussit, comme je m'y attendois [. . .].
After this the booklet, the author shedding the lusty persona of the duchess, takes a detour into a gentle allegory. A king is contemptuous of commoners (roturiers) until the day when he lands in a pool and is on the point of drowning, the gentlemen of the court standing about impotently since they cannot swim, until a couple of low-born men dive in and fish him out.
Much surprised to find that his valiant courtiers had not come to the rescue, he listens with interest as his jester suggests that the Third Estate does quite as much for him as the nobility, and decides to test this idea the following day. Of course the moment he awakens the servants are already pulling open the curtains, lighting the fire, bringing his clothes, cooking his breakfast, etc., and when all dressed he goes to conduct business with his two secretaries, of course these are commoners. Later he reads books and wanders in the gardens tended by, and hunts with the assistance, basks in the art and architecture and theatre, and listens to the music of commoners. In the newspapers, written by . . . commoners, he is instructed of the grand patriotic contributions of . . . commoners. When narrative expediency ignites a fire underneath the king's window, it is extinguished by . . . commoners. Etc.
Overwhelmed by the burden of empirical evidence, and not much impressed by any magnificent contribution on the part of his courtiers, the king is converted to an admirer of the Third Estate. But when during a hunt his life is imperilled at the tusks of the boar, a gentleman leaps in to save him, and the king recognizes that the First Estate likewise serves its purpose and has its merits. ("[ . . ] alors il reconnut que toutes les classes des citoyens sont également nécessaires; qu'il seroit absurde d'en rejetter une, pour en élever une autre.")
The narrator draws this lovely — and, in my opinion, very thought-provoking — tale to a close, and then goes on to paint a highly improbable (satirical?) picture of the saintly commoners, who are kinder to the impoverished aristocrat than many of his peers, etc. And then he describes the meek ambitions of the Third Estate and its absolute respect for the nobility:
il sait que la Noblesse a des priviléges incontestables auxquels les Rois mêmes ne peuvent ni doivent toucher. Eh! qui doute, que les Gentilshommes sont les remparts de la Monarchie, qu'ils l'ont toujours soutenue aux dépens de leur propre vie, & qu'il n'y a rien de plus respectable & de plus grand qu'une longue succession d'aïeux, qui, de père en fils, maintiennent la Couronne, & sont les suppôts de la Royauté. L'histoire se plaît à rapporter les epoques honorables pour la Noblesse, & le Tiers-Etat se plaît à les lire. Loin d'en être jaloux, il se félicite d'appartenir à une Royaume, où des noms consacrés par une antique bravoure éternisent sa splendeur.In translation: "it knows that the Nobility possesses incontestable privileges which the Kings themselves neither can nor may touch. Well, who doubts that the Gentility are the ramparts of the monarchy, which they have always supported at the expense of their own life, & that there is nothing more respectable & greater than a long succession of ancestors who, from father to son, tend to the Crown & are the supports of the Monarchy? History pleases itself by reporting the honourable periods for the Nobility, & the Third Estate pleases itself by reading them. Far from being jealous, it felicitates itself upon belonging to a Kingdom, where the names consecrated by antique bravery immortalize its splendour."
It must be confessed that, while copying out this passage into my notes, in between the first sentence and the second, I inserted a note:
[N.B.: Choppy, choppy.]Simply to evoke what precisely happened in the years after M. de Caraccioli or whoever published this effusion, and how the Nobility escaped this time without a hair on its collective head being hurt and with its inalienable privileges being preserved with utmost care.
Either way I like being made to think about the role of the aristocracy, and the role of the working class, and the ideal role of both. Besides which the booklet is an insight into the snobbery which characterized some of the upper class, and is in my view, though firmly entrenched in the mentality of the former, poised on the knife-edge where the Ancien Régime ends and the Republic begins.
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I could go on and on. But I won't, for now. (c:
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