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Carlyle and Louis XV
Mar. 6th, 2025 08:23 am I had a dream in which everyone was wearing some sort of armour and I think it was about a king, but I've forgotten everything else about it. I think it came out of my reading Carlyle's French Revolution last thing at night- the early chapters, that is- in which Carlyle tears Louis XV into little tiny pieces.
Was Louis really a pointless and useless as Carlyle makes out? I checked in with Wikipedia this morning and came away with a not unattractive image of a man who was intelligent, amiable and riddled with self doubt. The portraits show him as middling handsome, a bit like Stanley Tucci- and very French. Had gitanes been invented iin the 18th century he'd have smoked them. He liked sex- perhaps overmuch for his reputation- but said, winningly- that his girls were the only people he could trust to tell him the truth- because they were the only people who really loved him. Poor Louis. Being a king of France in the 18th century must have been a tough gig. He housed his girls in a house called Le Parc aux Certs- the Deer Park- which was poetic of him.
I no longer believe in History, only in histories- and if it suits Carlyle's artistic purpose to monster Louis I'm not greatly bothered. Carlyle is not much loved or read these days, but his French Revolution is one of the great books of the 19th century- a philosophical, prose-poetical epic that one goes to for the same reason one goes to Shakespeare's history plays- because it's quite simply tremendous. Oh the energy!
Was Louis really a pointless and useless as Carlyle makes out? I checked in with Wikipedia this morning and came away with a not unattractive image of a man who was intelligent, amiable and riddled with self doubt. The portraits show him as middling handsome, a bit like Stanley Tucci- and very French. Had gitanes been invented iin the 18th century he'd have smoked them. He liked sex- perhaps overmuch for his reputation- but said, winningly- that his girls were the only people he could trust to tell him the truth- because they were the only people who really loved him. Poor Louis. Being a king of France in the 18th century must have been a tough gig. He housed his girls in a house called Le Parc aux Certs- the Deer Park- which was poetic of him.
I no longer believe in History, only in histories- and if it suits Carlyle's artistic purpose to monster Louis I'm not greatly bothered. Carlyle is not much loved or read these days, but his French Revolution is one of the great books of the 19th century- a philosophical, prose-poetical epic that one goes to for the same reason one goes to Shakespeare's history plays- because it's quite simply tremendous. Oh the energy!
