Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

It has been suggested that the effect of these national institutions, ‘a cog in the machine
of centralisation’ as Choay puts it was bad for local antiquarianism, that government committees
kept a stranglehold on conservation and excluded antiquaries. 177 This may well have been, in
time, the effect but, by comparison with England, where, as was discussed in the last chapter, the
relatively few formal or professional organisations were immediately antipathetic to
antiquarianism, the impetus for organisation in France grew directly out of the antiquarian
mentality. Victor Hugo’s article was only one of his contributions to the campaign for
conservation. In 1835 he was appointed to the Comité de Monuments Inédits de la Littérature, de
la Philosophie, des Sciences et des Arts, charged with producing a list of national treasures, the
patrimoine, which the state should preserve. A year earlier the author Prosper Mérimée (1803-
1870), whose Chronique du règne de Charles IX was ‘an “ideal”…imitation of Scott’ succeded
Vitet as national inspector of monuments. 178 The French idea of the ‘patrimoine’ developed out
of the romantics’ view of the past. Medieval objects were displayed in the Louvre two decades
before they were admitted to the collections of the British Museum.
Local museums were also established across the country. The one in Rouen opened in
1834 and managed, as will be seen in the next chapter, literally to accommodate Langlois, who
was eventually, somewhat to his annoyance, awarded the Légion d’Honneur. It is impossible to
imagine a similar distinction being offered to the much better-connected and socially assiduous
John Britton. More clubbable antiquaries than Langlois seem to have had no difficulty
assimilating to the new professionalism. The Abbé de la Rue’s letters to Douce tell a tale of
constant promotion. He had been made Professor of History at the University of Caen as early as
1810. In 1815 he was elected as a corresponding member of the Institut de France and was an
early and enthusiastic member of the Societé des Antiquaires de Normandie. De Caumont grew
up with the state system that he was also important in forming. If local antiquaries seem to
disappear in France, as Choay suggests, that is not perhaps because they were frozen out as she
concludes but rather the reverse. They merged with the academic establishment so seamlessly
that the next generation neither perceived nor needed to make a distinction. By contrast in Britain
antiquaries remained visible because they were excluded. Walter Scott, the only British public
177 Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument, p.79.
178 Dargan, ‘Scott and the French Romantics’, p.609.
159