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His Father Louis: Even though they embody notes and impressions recorded as far back as 1694, the Memoires were specifically written as an expansion and refutation of the marquis de Dangeau's Memoires, an insipid work of monarchical adulation by a fellow courtier. Saint-Simon disapproves strongly of Louis XIV, whom he compares unfavorably to his father Louis XIII. Louis XIV is viewed as the chief artisan of a social upheaval in which the old aristocracy was supplanted by a coalition of bourgeois ministers and various upstarts from the judicial and other low-ranking nobility.
Returning to Missouri, Grant settled his family on 80 acres of land given him by his father-in-law and tried to farm. With grim humor he called the place "Hard Scrabble," for he had to bear all the work of clearing the land, hauling wood, plowing, and cultivating his crop. After four years he abandoned fanning and set up an unsuccessful real-estate business in St. Louis. In 1860 he moved to Galena, 111., where he worked in his father's leather shop.
SAINT-SIMON, Due DE (Louis DE ROUVROY), French memorialist and historian: b. Paris, France, Jan. 16, 1675; d. there, March 2, 1755. In 1702 he left the army because he had not received an anticipated promotion and went to the court in spite of Louis XIV's coolness toward him. Outside of minor diplomatic missions, he spent most of his time at Versailles; in relative isolation. His political hopes, shattered at the death (1712) of Louis, duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV's grandson and heir to the throne, were revived when another friend, Philippe II, due d'Orleans, became regent in 1715. |
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