Volume 7, Number 5 · October 6, 1966
The Great Society
By C.B.A. Behrens
The Sun King
by Nancy Mitford
Harper & Row, 225 pp., $15.00
At the Court of Versailles
by Gilette Ziegler
Dutton, 402 pp., $7.95
Life at the French court between 1660 and the Revolution is a subject that never seems to pall. Since Louis XIV's day there have been many changes in the standards by which public opinion judges morals and politics. Even before the Revolution the behavior of high society in France (and for that matter elsewhere too) provoked widespread indignation and ridicule. It has often done so since. From that day to this, however, in many countries, there have always been sections of the public who have found the subject engrossing reading. It seems to present the same kind of attractions as do the careers of movie stars to less instructed audiences. The modern writer who describes aristocratic life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries more often than not portrays his principal characters as futile and irresponsible. This does not, however, diminish the glamor which attaches to them because they were rich, elegant, self-assured, and sophisticated. Reading about them clearly satisfies a psychological need (the nature of which it would be interesting to investigate) in certain quarters of present-day affluent societies.
Review, 1778 words
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