MEMOIRS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.*
Tns revolution in Russia, with all its appalling consequences, has imparted a fresh interest to the study of the French Revolu- tion, the painful lessons of which have been obscured and forgotten. We are glad, therefore, to see an English version of a good and typical example of the innumerable memoirs of persons who lived through the Revolution and had some share in its main episodes. The Marquise de la Tour du Pin, daughter-in-law of the nobleman who was Minister of War in 1789,90, was a clever and attractive woman whose recollections, written for her son in and after 1820, were preserved by her family and published in 1906. We wish that the English—or American— version had been thoroughly revised before publication, as it swarms with elementary blunders and inelegances which would make a fifth-form boy blush. But even this very unscholarly translation may be commended, to those who do not read French, for the interest of its subject-matter. Madame La Tour was a Dillon, a great-granddaughter of the Dillon who raised an Irish regiment for King James in 1688 and then took it into the French service. She had kinsfolk in high places on both sides of the Channel. Born in 1770, she lost her mother at an early age and was brought up by an unsympathetic grandmother who lived with her brother, the Archbishop of Narbonne. Madame La Tour gives a vivid picture of this mighty prelate, who visited his see in great state once a year and spent all the rest of his time at Paris and Versailles. He had a vast revenue which he dissipated in luxury, and left heavy debts behind him. In his household, she says, the only person who taught her any sound principles was her illiterate maid ; religion had no part in the Archbishop's scheme of life. Mlle. Dillon was betrothed, after long negotiations, to M. de Gouvernet, son of the Comte de Is Tour du Pin, and was married in 1787. She describes the elaborate ceremonial of her presentation at Court, which she had to rehearse for hours with a dancing-master. She was then appointed a Dame du Palais, or Lady-in-Waiting, and had to attend the Court at Versailles every Sunday. Her sister-in-law had married one of the Lameths, the moderate Royalists who strove vainly after Mirabeau's death to check the downward course of the monarchy.
Upon this placid and conventional Court the Revolution burst like a thunder-clap in a clear sky. Madame La Tour says that the King knew nothing of affairs and that the Queen would do nothing. On the 14th of July, 1789, the high officials at Ver- sailles had no suspicion that Paris was about to break into revolt. The diarist went for a country drive and was horrified on reaching Berny, near Sceaux, to hear that the Bastille had been attacked. Soon after this her father-in-law was appointed Minister of War, and she and her husband were lodged in the Palace at Versailles. She describes minutely the events of the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, when the Paris mob marched to Versailles and broke into the royal apartments. Her husband, she says, saw the rioters entering by a gate which had been closed and locked. They were " certainly guided by someone who knew the route to follow " to the Queen's rooms. The author's maid came to tell her that she had seen the Duo d'Orleans--" whom she recognized perfectly, as she had often Been him "—with a gang of his followers acclaiming him as King. Yet although Orleans may have organized the murderous • Recollections of the Revolution and the Emphe. By La Marquise de la Tour , da Pin. Edited and translated by Walter Geer. London: Jonathan Cape. E 130s. not./
attempt on his enemy the Queen, there is reason to believe that he was elsewhere on that fatal night. In 1793 the La Tours left Paris and sought refuge at their country place, near Bordeaux. M. La Tour went into hiding, while Madame La Tour made herself agreeable to the notorious Therese Cabarrus, mistress and afterwards wife of Tallien, who was directing the. Terror at Bordeaux. Therese, of whom the author says that " a more beautiful human being had never issued from the hands of the Creator," was good-natured and pleased to do a service to the Court lady with whom she had had a very slight acquaintance in Paris. Tallien gave Madame La Tour a licence for her family to sail in an American ship, nominally for Martinique. Her father and her father-in-law were both guillotined while she and her husband were crossing the Atlantic.
When they reached the United States they settled on a farm near Albany. Madame La Tour relates with pride how she rose at daybreak and made butter for the market, and how Talleyrand, also an exile, found her preparing a joint for the oven. She did not like the ex-bishop, but she relates, despite herself, several anecdotes of his never-failing shrewdness and promptitude in action. A banker to whom Madame La Tour's small fortune had been remitted from Holland was on the verge of bankruptcy ; Talleyrand went to him and by sheer bluff constrained him to surrender the drafts. On another occasion she was complaining to Talleyrand that she could not afford to take a certain course. " Bah ! " he replied, " on a toujours de l'argent quand on vent." The La Tours returned to France in 1797—a little too soon, for the Directory was afraid of the emigres and required them to leave the country. Madame La Tour and ter husband came to England and settled down at Richmond until Bonaparte's overthrow of the Directory enabled all but the extreme Royalists to go back to France. Josephine's first husband, M. de Beauharnais, had known M. La Tour in the West Indies, where he was aide-de-camp to M. Bouille during the American War (1778-82). As the First Consul " had given his wife the mission of bringing to him la haute societe; having been persuaded by Josephine that she belonged to it," the returned exiles found themselves sought after. " I allowed myself to be implored a little," writes Madame La Tour, " then one morning I went with Madame de Valence to call on Madame Bonaparte." After a decent interval M. La Tour found himself appointed Prefect of Brussels, and thus resumed his old standing in the official hierarchy. The author's account of the Emperor's -visit to Bordeaux and of the strictness with which he regulated everything, even to the details of his wife's dresses and of the company that she was to receive, is illuminating.
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