The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England Part 31

Above all, he loves to display his "sorry French" and chide his French valet in public, and

if he speak Though but three little words in French, he swells And plumes himself on his proficiency.

And when his French fails him, as it soon does, he coins words for himself which he utters with "widely gaping mouth, and sound acute, thinking to make the accent French":

With accent French he speaks the Latin Tongue, With accent French the tongue of Lombardy, To Spanish words he gives an accent French, German he speaks with the same accent French, All but the French itself. The French he speaks With accent British.

Thus the _beau_ cannot be ranked among the genuine students of French.

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

asks Ben Jonson.[670] [Header: "FRENCH-ITALIANATE" GENTLEMEN] We have a picture, in Glapthorne's _The Ladies' Privilege_, of a travelled gallant who undertakes to teach French to a young gentleman desiring thereby to be "for ever engallanted." They confer on rudiments; "your French," says the gallant, "is a thing easily gotten, and when you have it, as hard to shake off, runnes in your blood, as 'twere your mother language." Until you have enough of the language to sprinkle your English with it, answer with a shrug, or a nod, or any foreign grimace.[671] The author of the _Treatyse of a galaunt_ bemoans the fact that "Englysshe men sholde be so blynde" as to adopt the "marde gere" of the French.[672] Many were the outbursts of patriotic indignation roused by the affectation of the newly returned travellers, who "brought home a few smattering terms, flattering garbes, apish cringes, foppish fancies, foolish guises and disguises and vanities of neighbour nations."[673] In the sixteenth century France was not exclusively responsible for the fopperies of the English _beau_, who might often be described as "French Italianate."[674]

He spoke his own language with shame and lisping.[675] Nothing "will down but French, Italian and Spanish."[676] "Farewell, Monsieur Traveller," says Rosalind to Jacques, "look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide G.o.d for making you that countenance you are."[677] The affected _beau_ will "wring his face round about as a man would stirre up a mustard pot and talke English through the teeth."[678]

He sprinkles his talk with overseas sc.r.a.ps. "He that cometh lately out of France will talke French-English, and never blush at the matter, and another chops in with English Italianated."[679] And what profit has he from the journey on which he has gathered such evil fruit? Nothing but words, and in this he exceeds his mother's parrot at home, in that he can speak more and understands what he says.[680] And this is often no more than to be able to call the king his lord "with two or three French, Italian, Spanish or such like terms."[681] His attire, like his tongue, speaks French and Italian.[682] He censures England's language and fashions "by countenances and shrugs," and will choke rather than confess beer a good drink. In time the _beau_ forgot what little he had learnt of Italian, and in the seventeenth century was generally known as the _English monsieur_, or the _gentleman a la mode_.

There were two very different att.i.tudes towards the journey to France, as there were two types of traveller, the serious and the flippant. The prejudiced and insular-minded asked with Nash:[683] "What is there in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenry, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear _Ah par la mort Dieu_ when a man's hands are scabbed. But for the idle traveller (I mean not for the soldier), I have known some that have continued there by the s.p.a.ce of half a dozen years, and when they come home, they have hid a little weerish lean face under a broad hat, kept a terrible coil in the dust in the street in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoke English strangely. Nought else have they profited by their travel, save learned to distinguish the true Bordeaux grape and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleans." The opposite view is expressed in the message George Herbert sent to his brother at Paris:[684] "You live in a brave nation, where except you wink, you cannot but see many brave examples. Bee covetous then of all good which you see in Frenchmen whether it be in knowledge or in fashion, or in words; play the good marchant in transporting French commodities to your own country."

FOOTNOTES:

[564] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._ vol. xvi. No.

238.

[565] Sir Rt. Naunton, _Fragmenta Regalia_, 1824, p. 69.

[566] _Cal. State Papers, Dom.: Add., 1580-1625_, p. 99.

[567] _Ibid._ p. 119. A certain Charles Doyley wrote in similar terms from Rouen.

[568] _Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1595-97_, p. 293.

[569] _Purchas Pilgrimes_, 1625.

[570] Howell, _Epistolae Ho-Elianae_.

[571] As did Sir James Melville (_Memoirs_, Bannatyne Club, 1827, p.

12), "to learn to play upon the lut, and to writ Frenche," at the age of fourteen. Similarly, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, Edward VI.'s youthful favourite and proxy for correction, was sent to Paris to study fashions and manners (Nichols, _Literary Remains_, p. lxx).

[572] The practice was also very common in Scotland, especially when the reformers a.s.sumed the power of approving private tutors as well as schoolmasters. Gentlemen were driven to evade this restriction by sending their sons to France in the care of what they considered suitable tutors. The a.s.sembly then tried to a.s.sert its power by granting pa.s.sports only to those whose tutors they approved. See Young, _Histoire de l'Enseignement en ecosse_, p. 52.

[573] _Copy Book of Sir Amias Poulet's Letters_, Roxburghe Club, 1866, pp. 16, 231.

[574] _The Compleat Gentleman_ (1622), 1906, p. 33.

[575] Ellis, _Original Letters_, 3rd series, iii. 377.

[576] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._ vol. viii. 517; vol. ix. 1086; vol. xii. pt. i. 972, etc.

[577] Dated 1610. Ellis, _Original Letters_, 2nd series, iii. 230.

[578] Green, _Letters of Royal and Ill.u.s.trious Ladies of Great Britain_, London, 1846, ii. pp. 294 _et seq._

[579] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._ vol. xiii. pt. i.

512.

[580] _Itinerary_, 1617, pt. iii. bk. i. p. 5.

[581] _Of Education._ To Master Samuel Hartlib.

[582] _Copy Book_, p. 90.

[583] _State Papers, Dom., 1598-1601_, p. 162; and _1601-1603_, p. 29.

In 1580 a list of some English subjects residing abroad was sent to the queen (_ibid., Addenda, 1580-1625_, p. 4.)

[584] Greene left an account of his impressions of France and Italy in his _Never too Late_ (Works, ed. Grosart, viii. pp. 20 _sqq._).

[585] Frequently the wording in pa.s.sports (_Cal. State Papers_).

[586] There were many complaints throughout the two centuries of the travellers' neglect of everything concerning their own country. "What is it to be conversant abroad and a stranger at home?" asks Higford. See also Penton, _New Instructions to the Guardian_, 1694; and F. B. B. D., _Education with Respect to Grammar Schools and Universities_, 1701.

[587] Ellis, _Original Letters_ (3rd series, iv. p. 46), publishes one of the licences which had to be obtained.

[588] Reprinted by Lady T. Lewis, _Lives from the Pictures in the Clarendon Galleries_, 1852, i. p. 250.

[589] _Description of Britaine_, 1577, Lib. 3. ch. iv.

[590] _Euphues_, ed. Arber, 1868, p. 152.

[591] _Scholemaster_, ed. Arber, 1870, p. 82. Mulcaster was also eloquent on the evil result of travel (_Positions_, 1581).

[592] _Instructions for Youth ..._, by Sir W. Raleigh, etc., London, 1722, p. 50.

[593] Who founded the English seminary at Douay.

[594] See entries in _Cal. of State Papers_.

[595] March 25, 1601 (_Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1601-1603_, p. 18).

[596] _Correspondence with Hubert Languet_, 1912, p. 216.

[597] Letter dated September 1, 1631 (J. Forster, _Sir John Eliot, a Biography_, London, 1864, i. pp. 16, 17).

[598] J. Howell, _Instructions for Forreine Travel_, 1642 (ed. Arber, 1869), p. 19.

[599] 1656, p. 102.

[600] Spence's _Anecdotes_, 1820, p. 184; _Dict. Nat. Biog._, ad nom.