The Anglo-French Entente In The Seventeenth Century Part 7

(British Museum, _Add. MSS._ 4288, fol. 229. Printed by J. Churton Collins and by Ballantyne.)

_Letter to Joseph Craddock_ (1773)

FERNEY, _October_ 9, 1773.

Sr

Thanks to your muse a foreign copper shines Turn'd in to gold, and coin'd in sterling lines.

You have done too much honour to an old sick man of eighty.--I am with the most sincere esteem and grat.i.tude, Sir, your obedient servant,

VOLTAIRE.

(Ballantyne, _Voltaire's Visit to England_, p. 69.)

[With Voltaire these _Specimens_ must end. To quote Pere Le Courayer, Letourneur, Suard, or Baron D'Holbach would be unduly to prolong an argument that should stop on the threshold of the eighteenth century.]

FOOTNOTES:

[101] For specimens of French written by Englishmen, see _Anglais et Francais au XVIIe Siecle_, ch. iv.

[102] Charles I.

[103] _Cal. Clarendon State Papers_, ii., No. 2214. See also Eva Scott, _King in Exile_, p. 9.

[104] In Oxford.

[105] _Spectator_, No. 288, 30th January 1712.

CHAPTER IV

GALLOMANIA IN ENGLAND (1600-85)

The English have always been divided between a wish to admire and a tendency to detest us. France is for her neighbour a coquette whimsical enough to deserve to be beaten and loved at the same time. The initial misunderstanding between the two nations endures through ages, sometimes threatening open war, more seldom ready to be cleared up. A few miles of deep sea cuts Great Britain off from the rest of Europe. As England has retained no possessions on the Continent, no intermediary race has sprung up, as is the case with most of the Western Powers on their borderlands.

Thus the French and Germans are linked together by the Flemings, Alsatians, and Swiss; the Savoyards and Corsicans are a cross between the French and the Italians; and before reaching Spain, a Frenchman must traverse vast tracts of land inhabited by Basques and Catalans; but a few hours' sail from Calais to Dover, from Rotterdam or Antwerp to Harwich will bring a traveller from the Continent into an entirely new world. To avoid disagreements, in the past infinite tact and patience were requisite on both sides of the Channel: our indiscreet friends made us unpopular with their fellow-countrymen. The story of English gallomania, which is amusing enough, is thus also instructive, as a few episodes will show.[106]

In the sixteenth century, Italy, just emerging from her glorious Renaissance, charmed England; but common interests, political and economical necessities, a degree of civilisation almost the same, prevented her from neglecting us altogether. In the following century, the marriage of Charles I. with a daughter of Henri IV. made French fashions acceptable for a time in Whitehall. But misfortune overtook the Stuarts. The Great Rebellion broke out, Charles I. was put to death and his son exiled. During over twelve years, the future King of England lived in French-speaking countries; when restored to his throne, he could not help bringing back our fashions, literature, manners of thinking and doing; of all the Kings of England, from Plantagenets to Edward VII., Charles II., in spite of some diplomatic reserve and occasional outbursts of insularity, proved the most amenable to French influence: perhaps that is why his popularity was so great; the English would admire France without stint, if France were but her finest colony.

If the courtiers imitated French manners to please the monarch, the citizens did so to copy the courtiers; so that, about 1632 and 1670, all the frivolous, unreflective idlers that England numbered, were bent on appearing French. Few examples are more striking of the power of the curious desire that possesses ordinary mankind to astonish simple souls by aping the eccentricities of the higher cla.s.ses.

The mania was carefully studied by contemporary writers: they describe the morbid symptoms with so much accuracy and minuteness as to render all conjectures superfluous.

The disease was developed chiefly by travelling. Attracted by the mildness of a foreign climate and dazzled by the luxurious life of the n.o.bles there, the young Englishman feels estranged from his native land and the rude simplicity of his home. When he comes back, the contrast between his new ideas and his old surroundings, the conflict waged in his own heart between Continental influence and insularity, are fit themes for a tragedy or at least a tragi-comedy. The character of the frenchified Englishman appears several times on the stage in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_, in Marston's _What you Will_, in Davenant's _Fair Favourite_. Others, again, picture the young fop just back from Paris, clad in strange garments, praising foreign manners, so affected as to disregard his mother-tongue.

About 1609 or 1610, Beaumont and Fletcher sketch the man's character. "The dangers of the merciless Channel 'twixt Dover and Calais, five long hours'

sail, with three poor weeks' victuals. Then to land dumb, unable to inquire for an English host, to remove from city to city, by most chargeable post-horse, like one that rode in quest of his mother-tongue. And all these almost invincible labours performed for your mistress, to be in danger to forsake her, and to put on new allegiance to some French lady, who is content to change language with your laughter, and after your whole year spent in tennis and broken speech, to stand to the hazard of being laughed at, at your return, and have tales made on you by the chamber-maids."[107]

As a fervid preacher finds hearers, so the traveller induces some of his friends to share his mania. The infection spreads in spite of ridicule:

"Would you believe, when you this monsieur see, That his whole body should speake French, not he?

That he, untravell'd, should be French so much, As Frenchmen in his company should seem Dutch?...

Or is it some French statue? No: 't doth move, And stoope, and cringe...."[108]

The most frequent symptom of gallomania in early, as in recent times, is to use French words in everyday conversation. So Sir Thomas More laughed at the fop who affected to p.r.o.nounce English as French but whose French sounded strangely like English.[109]

In the sixteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, French was as generally used as Latin. "In England," wrote Peletier, "at least among princes and in their courts, all their discourses are in French."[110] A few years later, Burghley advised his son Thomas, then travelling on the Continent, to write in Latin or in French.[111] In schools, French was taught with great zeal, and, according to Sylvester, the future translator of Du Bartas, it was forbidden to speak English, however trivial the matter, under penalty of wearing the foolscap.

In spite of these stringent methods of education, backward pupils were not lacking. They were sent to France, but even this desperate remedy was sometimes unavailing; witness Beaumont and Fletcher's youth whose mother, asking him on his return to speak French, was shocked at hearing only a few broken words of abuse.[112]

Yet it was imperative to speak French correctly at Queen Henrietta's Court.

Of course the ladies succeeded. In Blount's Preface to Lyly's plays we read that "the beautie in court which could not parley euphuisme, was as litle regarded, as shee which now there, speakes not French."[113]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A COQUETTE AT HER TOILET-TABLE]

What was the distinctive mark of a good education under Charles I., was equally so under Charles II. "All the persons of quality in England could speak French." The Queen, the d.u.c.h.ess of York spoke "marvellously well."[114] There was no need to know English at Whitehall: few French gentlemen troubled to learn it, but the English unfortunate enough not to know French had to conceal the defect. These would repeat the same foreign words or phrases; "to smatter French" being "meritorious."[115] "Can there be," exclaims Shadwell, "any conversation well drest without French in the first place to lard it!"[116] In an amusing scene, Dryden shows a coquette rehearsing a polite conversation: "Are you not a most precious damsel," she says to her teacher, "to r.e.t.a.r.d all my visits for want of language, when you know you are paid so well for furnishing me with new words for my daily conversation? Let me die, if I have not run the risque already to speak like one of the vulgar; and if I have one phrase left in all my store that is not threadbare and _use_, and fit for nothing but to be thrown to peasants."[117]

Fops followed the example set by coquettes. Monsieur de Paris and Sir Fopling Flutter "show their breeding" by "speaking in a silly soft tone of a voice, and use all the foolish French words that will infallibly make their conversation charming."[118]

After an interval of a hundred years, the reproaches of Sir Thomas More were repeated. If we must credit Shadwell, the youth of England had forgotten their English through studying foreign languages with too much application: they return "from Paris with a smattering of that mighty universal language, without being ever able to write true English."[119]

And, again, "all our sparks are so refined they scarce speak a sentence without a French word, and though they seldom arrive at good French, yet they get enough to spoil their English."[120]

From time immemorial Europe has learned from Paris polished manners and the inimitable art of good tailoring. In the sixteenth-century drama, the tailors are invariably French. Harrison deplored the introduction of new fashions, regretting the time "when an Englishman was known abroad by his own cloth, and contented himself at home with his fine kersey hosen, and a mean slop, a doublet of sad tawny or black velvet or other comely silk."

Then he proceeds to inveigh against the "garish colours brought in by the consent of the French, who think themselves the gayest men when they have most diversities of jags (ribbons)" and "the short French breeches" that liken his countrymen "unto dogs in doublets." The dramatists constantly mention "French hose, hoods, masks, and sticks," thus attesting the vogue of the Paris fashions. In one of Chapman's plays, two shipwrecked gentlemen cast ash.o.r.e at the mouth of the Thames think they have reached the coasts of France; seeing a couple of natives drawing near, one of them exclaims: "I knew we were in France: dost thou think our Englishmen are so frenchified, that a man knows not whether he be in France or in England, when he sees them?"[121]

The lover of France was a true epicure as well as a fop. In the houses of the n.o.bility the cooks were invariably French. "I'll have none," says one of Ma.s.singer's characters, "shall touch what I shall eat but Frenchmen and Italians; they wear satin, and dish no meat but in silver."[122] We must go to Overbury for the portrait of a French cook "who doth not feed the belly, but the palate. The serving-men call him the last relique of popery, that makes men fast against their conscience.... He can be truly said to be no man's fellow but his master's: for the rest of his servants are starved by him.... The Lord calls him his alchymist that can extract gold out of herbs, roots, mushrooms, or anything.... He dare not for his life come among the butchers; for sure they would quarter and bake him after the English fashion, he's such an enemy to beef and mutton."[123]

Gallomania quickly spread after the Restoration. The Record Office has preserved the name of the French tailor, Claude Sourceau, who helped the Englishman, John Allen, to make Charles II.'s coronation robes.[124] As early as October 20, 1660, Pepys, dining with Lord Sandwich, heard the latter "talk very high how he would have a French cooke, and a master of his horse, and his lady and child to wear black patches"; which was quite natural, since "he was become a perfect courtier"; and on December 6, 1661, My Lady Wright declared in Pepys' hearing "that none were fit to be courtiers, but such as had been abroad and knew fashions." Soon the motto at Court was to

"Admire whate'er they find abroad, But nothing here, though e'er so good."[125]

Hamilton tells in his delightful _Memoires de Gramont_ how every week there came from France "perfumed gloves, pocket-mirrors, dressing-cases, apricot-jam and essences." Every month the Paris milliners sent over to London a jointed doll, habited after the manner of the stars that shone at the Court of the Grand Monarch.[126] According to M. Renan, the dreamy Breton blue eyes of Mademoiselle de Keroualle conquered Charles II.; but we feel inclined to think that the monarch appreciated also her brilliant success as a leader of fashion. As Butler satirically said, the French gave the English "laws for pantaloons, port-cannons, periwigs and feathers."[127] Every one spoke of "bouillis, ragouts, frica.s.ses," bordeaux and champagne were drunk instead of national beer.[128]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE d.u.c.h.eSS OF PORTSMOUTH AS A LEADER OF FASHION]

The City ladies tried to outdo the Court belles. One of them "had always the fashion a month before any of the Court ladies; never wore anything made in England; scarce wash'd there; and had all the affected new words sent her, before they were in print, which made her pa.s.s among fops for a kind of French wit."[129]

The movement, of course, elicited a violent opposition. Poets and dramatists were banded together in denouncing the subservience to France of a portion of English society. At times, these nationalists went perhaps too far in their praise of old manners and old fashions. a.s.suredly any reasonable man will side with Sir Fopling Flutter in preferring the wax candle, albeit from France, to the time-honoured tallow candle.[130]

Butler's notebooks, which were published a few years ago, reveal in the man a singularly conservative state of mind. The French are the same, he thinks, to the English nation as the Jews or the Greeks were to the Romans of old. Fashions, cooking, books, all that comes from France is to be abhorred.[131]

One day Evelyn, champion as he was of all generous ideas, determined to bring his countrymen back to their forefathers' simplicity. He accordingly wrote an "invective" against the fashions of France and proposed to adopt in their stead the "Persian costume," "a long ca.s.sock fitted close to the body, of black cloth, and pinked with white silk under it, and a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with black ribbon." Under the t.i.tle of _Tyrannus or the Mode_, the pamphlet was dedicated to the King. Apparently Charles II. was very idle at the time: the idea pleased him and he donned the "oriental vest." Several members of the House of Commons, probably by way of protesting against the dissoluteness of the Court, had forestalled him.

While Evelyn was gravely congratulating himself on the good effect of his pamphlet, the King, in the vein of irrepressible "blague" that was his characteristic trait, remarked that the "pinking upon white made his courtiers look like so many magpies." A few days after, upon hearing that the King of France had caused all his footmen to be put into vests, Charles II. quietly reverted to the French fashion, "which," as Guy Miege wrote after the Revolution, "has continued ever since."[132]

Though beaten in that particular instance, the nationalists were to carry the day, thanks to the power of tradition and the strong individualism of the English nation. For a hundred years at least, it had been recognised as an a.s.sured principle that an Englishman ran the risk of depravation if he ventured abroad.[133] What could the fancy of a few courtiers avail against universal consent? All the satirical poets--Wyatt, Gascoigne, Bishop Hall, Butler--had successfully declaimed against foreigners and frenchified Englishmen. Even Charles II. applauded Howard's comedy, _The English Monsieur_. Then, as now, for the average Englishman, Paris was pre-eminently the pleasure-city. It was even worse at times: if gentlemen fought private duels, it was to copy the French.[134] A man as well-informed as the Earl of Halifax feared that the famous poisoning cases in which the Marquise de Brinvilliers and the woman Voisin were concerned, might find imitators in England, "since we are likely to receive hereafter that with other fashions."[135] As the Chinese in modern America, so the Frenchman was looked upon as a suspicious character; not altogether without cause: the cooks, tailors, and valets, the adventurers of the Gramont type lurking about the Court, were redolent of vice. Pepys, who had nothing of the saint about him, could not hide his aversion for Edward Montagu's French valet, the mysterious Eschar, most probably a spy. The great ladies had the habit, which seems so strange to us, to be waited upon by valets instead of maids. When the valet came from France, the pretext for scandal was eagerly seized upon.[136]