I’m nearing the end of Proust’s À l'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs and I’d always assumed that 1790 had been the end of them in law as well as use, but Proust seems to show that they were not only alive but significant as late as ~1900. Were these vestigial titles that indicated social status without legal effect? Was the distinction mostly a residual effect of generational wealth—and, if so, was this wealth still geographically anchored like such a title would imply?
Thanks!
The Revolution abolished the privileges of the nobility on 4 August 1789, ending the natural rights it had enjoyed for centuries. French nobles went through a difficult decade: tens of thousands fled France - the émigrés -, settling in other European countries and in the Americas, while those who remained in France risked execution or at least the loss of their properties. Some even joined the Revolution, abandoning their names and titles. Incidentally, the question of the actual size (and wealth) of the French noble population at the end of the 18th century is still unsolved, with estimations ranging from 110,000 to 500,000 (see Dunne, 2015 for a discussion about a topic that has kept historians busy for decades). But, no matter what happened to French nobles, there was a before and an after. Many émigrés found themselves destitute, and were forced, humiliatingly, to find jobs (jobs!) to survive. Those who stayed also suffered losses (and death) and a decrease in social status (much of what follows is drawn from Figeac, 2013).
However, French nobility did not disappear. Emigrés were progressively allowed to return, as they were amnestied by laws passed in 1800 and 1802. As it became clear that "Bonaparte had restored a world of stability, hierarchy and religious observance" (Carpenter and Mansel, 1999), families came back, notably to recover their estates (if they had not been sold yet). By 1815, 90% of the émigrés had returned.
French nobility was seriously weakened by the Revolution, notably its demographics: many aristocrats were ruined or killed, and entire families went extinct due to executions and/or disorganization of the familial structures during exile and other Revolutionary troubles. Still, nobility was not destroyed, neither economically nor socially. Nobles reoccupied their lands, found ways to mitigate their Revolutionary losses, and returned in positions of power, particularly at local level. Nobles also found prestigious positions in the higher administration, which had been already opened to them in the Ancien Régime: the judiciary, the army and diplomacy.
Still, the post-Revolutionary world was not a copy of the Ancien Régime. Nobility never recovered its privileges and unique status. There were also considerable variations in the way nobility had been able to reemerge: depending on the region, or town, it could have been wiped out or left mostly unscathed. Different classes of nobles had not been affected in the same fashion. And then it had a competitor in terms of wealth and prestige: the meritocratic noblesse d'Empire created by Napoléon, which was not officially called nobility and was not hereditary (except for his own family), but used traditional titles like Duke and Count. Half a century later, Napoléon III also distributed titles. The old nobility may have held its nose and despised those titled and wealthy noblesses d'Empire made of sons and daughters of farmers and merchants, but it still had to share power with those new elites.
Another change was that French nobility learned to diversify its investments and some of its members entered sectors where there was money to be made: banking, industry and trade. Old aristocracy now mingled not only with the imperial one, but also with the modern business elites. Mingling also meant alliances with non-noble families through marriages. Count Robert de Montesquiou, the model for Proust's Baron de Charlus, was himself the son of a bourgeois woman called Pauline Duroux. In his study of the 19th century Jewish bourgeoisie in France, Cyril Grange (2016) dedicates a chapter to the different marriage configurations between aristocratic families - including old and prestigious ones like La Panouse or Toulouse-Lautrec - and Jewish families of the high bourgeoisie, the former usually bringing a symbolic capital (the name, the title) and the latter financial capital.
By far and large, however, French aristocracy remained land-based, which limited its influence. It had lands, traditions, sociability networks, and was often isolated from the rest of the society. Some Toulouse-Lautrecs married Jews, but others in the family did a little too much inbreeding, resulting in several Lautrec children - not just Henri - being severely disabled. While French nobles of the late 19th century shared power and wealth with other social groups, and were still an important part of the landscape, their clout at national level was weak. They ultimately failed to restore the monarchy after 1870. Nobility, still feeling nostalgia for the Ancien Régime, could no longer rule France.
Nobility kept part of its standing in the last decades of the century, and in the first decades of the next, but there was a downside. Since nobility was no longer "official", people of all walks of life - bourgeois, artists, sex workers... - could safely add a "de" particle in front of their name (or add a space between "de" and the rest of the name) and pretend to be an aristocrat, like the journalist Georges Duroy in Maupassant's novel Bel-Ami, who renames himself Georges Du Roy de Candel. Duroy was partly inspired by Maupassant's friend the equestrian and gossip reporter Charles Devaux, who styled himself Baron de Vaux (though there was a "true" Baron de Vaux). Think also of courtesan Odette de Crécy in La Recherche (modelled after Laure Hayman, but there's no shortage of pseudo-noble courtesans like Valtesse de la Bigne and Liane de Pougy). Titles, like that of "Count Palatine", could just be bought. One can speculate that this little army of bogus French and foreign princes, dukes, and counts helped to reduce the general prestige of nobility. World War 1, who saw the death of many noble officers, was another contributor to the weakening of aristocracy in France.
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