The General-Farm of Taxes

The General-Farm (or, strictly speaking, General-Farms) of Taxes was one of the most hated institutions of 18th century France.  It wa  responsible for the collection of the majority of indirect taxes, that is to say it controlled between 40% and 50% of the Crown's total tax revenue. Its operations extended throughout the provinces and  impinged to great or lesser extent on the lives of most ordinary Frenchmen.

An organisation of such a complexity clearly  poses many challenges of research.  According to  the historian of French customs administration, Jean Cliquart, writing in 2004, there is  much work still to be done, especially  at local level.  The major work of synthesis, is still the study by the American George T. Matthews, published as long ago as 1958 (now fortunately available on Open Library). The French scholar Yves Durand published a major thesis in 1971, but his consideration was largely confined to the General Farmers themselves.  

See: Jean Clinquart, "Ce que nous ignorons des fermes générales" In: Histoire institutionnelle, économique et financière : questions de méthode (xviie-xviiie siècles) (2004).  [Open access]  

https://doi.org/10.4000/books.igpde.5732.

To fill some of this gap, an online Dictionnaire de la Ferme générale (1640-1794), part of a wider project involving various different academic and cultural institutions, was launched in 2019. This has loads of information, but is a bit overwhelming to the casual visitor.

Dictionnaire de la Ferme générale (1640-1794)  ed. Marie-Laure Legay, for the  Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion

https://dicofg.hypotheses.org/category/presentation-du-dictionnaire

What follows are my summary notes from a few accessible sources: 

A portrait of Helvétius?

 

It is always exciting to find a new image of a prominent Enlightenment figure!  This portrait of Helvétius has been on the website of Lapham's Quarterly from at least 2015 and is beginning to feature  more and more on the internet.....  

The Prince and the Magician

Portrait  of Orléans by Jean-Pierre Franque, musée de Dreux
https://webmuseo.com/ws/musee-dreux/app/collection/record/188

Here is a curious episode from the late-eighteenth century world of Freemasonry,the occult and ritual magic.  It involves no less a figure than the duc d'Orléans, later Philippe d'Égalité.   According to the fullest account, events took place near Orléan's  residence at the Château du Raincy, about ten kilometres north-east of Paris.   An unnamed Jewish sorcerer led the duke into a forest thicket where an demonic being materialised from a supernatural fire. The apparition conferred on him a talismanic ring and imparted an unknown secret: 

"He conversed for more than an hour with this real or phantasmic figure whose hand sealed an iron ring around his neck.  He showed us this ring, but did not confide in us what had been predicted.  He only told us "The matter is of the highest importance, but it is a mystery".  These are the exact words he used.  [D'Allonville, Mémoires secrets (1838), vol. 1, p.145] 

In later commentaries, notably the history by Auguste Viatte published in 1928,  the  mysterious Jew is identified as Chaim Samuel Jacob Falk, the so-called "Baal Shem of London",  a famous Kabbalistic magician of the later eighteenth century.  It was generally assumed that the duke had been promised a magical guarantee for his accession to the French throne. [see Viatte, p.184]

William Beckford in Paris

 

 Beckford by John Hoppner, Salford Art Gallery        

 https://artuk.org/william-beckford-165217     

Few Englishmen obtained greater celebrity in the late 18th and early 19th century than William Beckford, eccentric, hedonist and creator of the marvellous gothick folly of Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. 

In 1784 Beckford, then a young man of twenty-four, journeyed with his long suffering wife to Paris. In the course of his sejourn he wrote a series of letters addressed to his mistress Louisa, the wife of his cousin Peter.  The letters survive only in copies which Beckford transcribed in his own hand years later, in 1834.  In all probability they were never intended to be sent, but were written for publication; it is reported that the elderly Beckford was in the habit of reading extracts to favoured guests in his retreat at Lansdown Tower in Bath.  How far the letters are genuine reportage and how far fanciful reminiscences, is anyone's guess.  Either way, they are a fascinating read, though possibly more for the light they shed on Beckford's psyche than for their insights into pre-Revolutionary France.

A discussion of the letters, with substantial extracts, is included  in John Walter Oliver's biography, The Life of William Beckford, published in 1932.  [Available for loan on Internet Archive]

Laborde - Life and death of a financier

Monsieur de Laborde, you will perhaps be astonished that, without the honour of knowing you, I have come to ask you to lend me 100 louis? - Monsieur, replied Laborde laughing, you will be even more astonished  to learn that, knowing you, I am prepared to lend them to you.

Quoted Janzé, Les financiers d'autrefois (1886), p.268.

I am remaining in France.  I have never done any harm to anyone. 

Letter from Laborde, received by Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun during her exile in Rome in 1789-90; quoted in her memoirs. 

Laborde by Alexander Roslin,
Cover image from the biography by Jean-Pierre Thomas & François d'Ormesson

Here are a few more notes on the owner of La Ferté and Méréville.  A  new scholarly biography of Laborde by François d'Ormesson and Jean-Pierre appeared in 2001, reissued this year.  I have  not managed to find a copy of this; what follows is just based on sources I found for free on the Web.

A promenade at Betz

For a scholarly description of the garden at Betz and its creation, the English-speaking reader is referred to Gabriel Wick's article, which is available on H-Net. 

The following account is from an old guidebook by  André Hallys, translated into English in 1920 as

The Spell of the Heart of France.  I am reproducing it (from Gutenberg) mainly because I enjoyed the prose.  Hallys provides some record of the fabriques which still stood in the early twentieth century.  The rest of his text is is derived mainly from the poem by Joseph-Antoine-Joachim Cérutti  Les Jardins de Betz, written in 1785 (though published only in 1792). This is a verbose piece, so it is  nice to have a few snippets of English translation! 

Cérutti is an interesting character.  An inveterate writer and versifier, he started out his career as a Jesuit schoolmaster, but later became a prominent Revolutionary journalist.  (It was he who delivered the eulogy at Mirabeau's funeral in 1791) . In the 1780s he had various aristocratic patrons, and had clearly been charged with composing inscriptions and mottoes for the garden at Betz.  His poem, which was no doubt originally intended for the entertainment of the princesse de Monaco's guests, was modelled on the abbé Delille's highly popular Les Jardins, our l'art d'embellir les paysages (1782).  André Hallys has no difficulty in finding plenty of anti-clerical and anti-despotic sentiments in the text.  [Most prescient was the final comment in Cérutti's  notes to the poem: For two hundred year, France has been pregnant with revolution; she will give birth before the end of the century.]

Betz - The King of Morocco's garden

The park at Betz. Plate from Alexandre Laborde's Description des nouveaux jardins (1808)

The princesse de Monaco by an unknown artist         
( Wikimedia)

In 1780 Marie Catherine de Brignole-Sale, princesse de Monaco bought the ancient feudal domain of Betz  in order to be close to her exiled lover, the prince de Condé, in nearby Chantilly.  Between 1782 and 1789 she constructed a Renaissance style château, with a park inspired by the latest taste in landscape design. The result is acknolwedged to have been one of the finest examples of French  picturesque garden. 

The park at Betz has had a quite  different fate from the parks at Ermenonville or Méréville, both of which are now in public ownership. The 70 hectare estate, in the commune of Betz, some 60 kilometres north-east of Paris, now belongs to no less a personage than Mohammed VI,  King of Morocco.  Although the park is classed as "national patrimony" it is not just  completely private -  it is hidden behind high stone walls and patrolled by armed guards....

Hubert Robert's gardens - 2017 Expo

I have a bad habit of finding interesting exhibitions several years after they have closed....

Here, before the notices disappear from the internet, are some notes from a exhibition on Hubert Robert as "composer of landscapes", which took place in  Autumn 2017.   The exhibition, curated by Gabriel Wick,  was held in the beautiful and dramatically-located Château de la Roche-Guyon, in the Vale d'Oise,  which is owned by the La Rochefoucauld family.  

The exhibition offered an opportunity to present some of the new research of Gabriel Wick and others on Robert's less-well known garden projects -  at the Château du Val, the Hôtel de Noailles in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, at Betz, and, above all at La Roche-Guyon itself.  It brought together some  sixteen paintings, thirty four drawings and a number of architectural models and published works from both private and public collections.  Also featured were  photographs  by Catherine Pachowski of the surviving fabriques - many of which are now in poor state of preservation.

 The exhibits were set out in  the public rooms of the Château on ground floor overlooking the grounds.  Also offered were tours of the remnants of the jardin anglais at Laroche-Guyon - which has since been opened to the public on a regular basis.. 

Hubert Robert at Méréville

Here are two striking oil paintings of Méréville by Hubert Robert which were auctioned by Sotheby's New York in January of last last year. Although they have been previously exhibited and documented, this is the first time that images have been readily accessible on the internet.  According to the catalogue notes, the pictures originally hung in Laborde's  hôtel in the rue Cerutti  and were at one time the property of comte Alexandre de Laborde (1853-1944) the financier's great-grandson. The sale price was $620,000, which was within the estimate.

See Sotheby's, Master Paintings, Evening Sale, 29th January 2020, lot 66.  Pair of  oils depicting:  The lake and château at Méréville; The rustic bridge and the Temple of Filial Piety. Each 64 cm x 81 cm.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/master-paintings-evening-sale/hubert-robert-the-lake-and-chateau-at-mereville

A Visit to Méréville c.1808

The following is an extract from the Description des nouveaux jardins de la France written in 1808 by Laborde's youngest son Alexandre. The engravings show illustrations by Constant Bourgeois. At the time of writing, the estate was still in the hands of  the Laborde family, with the trees and plants now in full maturity.  Laborde's account conveys a keen sense of how the garden was intended to be experienced, as its different features progressively revealed themselves to the admiring eye of the visitor.

 Alexandre de Laborde, Description des nouveaux jardins de la France et de ses anciens chateaux (1808), p.95-
Description des nouveaux jardins de la France et de ses anciens châteaux - Google Books

The  English translation is given in the book itself. 

SEVENTEEN leagues from Paris and three from Etampes, in the middle of the lonely plains of Beauce, is a charming valley watered by a small river called the Juine, which is never known either to freeze or to overflow. Even very near its source it becomes sufficiently deep to carry boats, and its channel is sufficiently elevated to give all the effect which can be wished for in the composition of the landscape.

It displays all its beauty particularly in the neighbourhood of Méréville. This spot has accordingly been fixed upon for planting one of the finest gardens in the environs of Paris.

The river, which is the principal beauty of the spot, divides into two branches. The one flows in its natural channel, turns several mills and afterwards forms a cascade of two feet, which is seen and heard from the mansion; from thence it spreads through the valley, forming several islands and delightful walks. Its banks are planted with trees so fine and so high, that a boat may sail in the shade round the whole garden. The other branch runs in a subterraneous aqueduct for the space of three quarters of a league, and again makes its appearance through an artificial grotto of rocks in the interior of a building which was intended for a dairy.

The water rushes in the first place into a basin raised in the middle of the grotto, and is afterwards distributed through the room by spouts ornamented with white marble. The pavement as well as the parapets are also of white marble. The coolness of this place, the gentle light which it receives from above and the beauty of the marble , recalls to mind the Arabian authors and the ancient Eastern Fairy Tales. Upon leaving this building, the river, continuing its subterraneous passage, at last falls again into its own bed by a cascade of from ten to twelve feet high, and forms one of the finest situations which any mountainous country can present to the view.

The whole rising ground which commands this site, is planted with tall ever-greens, the rocks are overgrown with ivy, creepers and other plants of that kind. Steps are hewn in the rock leading to the bottom of the cascade as well as to several vaults which are near it.

.... In ignota, Palinure, jacebis arena. VIRG., V, 871. Et statuent tumulum, et lumulo solemnia mittent. VIRG VI, 380