The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England Part 47

[907] As in _A Tour in France and Italy made by an English Gentleman_ (J. Clenchy), 1675 and 1676, reprinted in _A Collection of Voyages_, 1745, vol. i.; and _Remarks on the Grand Tour of France and Italy lately performed by a person of quality_ (W. Bromley), 1692 and 1693 (when it was ent.i.tled _Remarks made in Travels through France and Italy with many public inscriptions. Lately undertaken by a Person of Quality_). Cp. pp.

220 _sqq._, supra.

[908] For instance: _Le Guide des chemins pour aller et venir par tous les pays et contrees du Royaume de France ... par C. Estienne_, Paris, 1552, 1553; Lyons, 1556. _Les Antiquitez et Recherches des Villes, chasteaux, et places plus remarquables de toute la France_, 6e ed., 1631. L. Coulon, _Le fidele conducteur pour le voyage de France montrant exactement les Routes et choses remarquables qui se trouvent en chaque ville, et les distances d'icelles avec un denombrement des Batailles qui s'y sont donnees_, Paris, 1654.

[909] As _Le Guide Fidelle des etrangers dans le voyage de France_, Paris, 1672 (by Aloide de St. Maurice); _Les Delices de la France ou description des provinces et villes capitales d'icelles_, Leyde, 1685; _Le Gentilhomme etranger voyageant en France, par le baron G.D.N._, 1699--borrowed, without acknowledgement, from _Le Guide Fidelle_ of 1672. Cp. A. Babeau, _Les Voyageurs en France depuis la Renaissance jusqu'a la Revolution_, Paris, 1885, chapter v.

[910] By La Serre. The former, which first appeared in 1625, went through fifty editions.

[911] Lockier, in Spense's _Anecdotes_, 1820, p. 75.

[912] _Journal_, p. 89.

[913] Riding on horseback was the more usual mode of travelling, the horses being hired from town to town; cp. Locke's _Journal_, p. 149.

Wherever possible, travellers went from one town to another by water--as from one of the Loire towns to another.

[914] _The Memoirs of M. du Val ... intended as a severe reflexion on the too great fondness of English ladies towards French valets which at that time was a common complaint_, London, 1670, Harleian Miscellany, iii. p. 308.

[915] _Spared Houres of a Souldier_, 1623.

[916] Moryson mentions Orleans as a good town; Edward Leigh, Blois and Orleans (_Foelix Consortium_, 1663); Evelyn, Blois and Bourges; Lookier, Orleans and Caen.

[917] _Epistolae Ho-Elianae_, 9th ed., 1726, p. 38.

[918] Heylyn, _Voyage of France_, 1673, p. 294.

[919] He kept a diary in Latin (1648-50); cf. Wood, _Athenae Oxon._ (Bliss), iii. 901.

[920] Gailhard, _The Compleat Gentleman_, 1678.

[921] Who, in his _Ludus Literarius_, urges boys to practise speaking Latin "to fit them if they shall go beyond the seas, as Gentlemen who go to travel, Factors for merchants, and the like."

[922] He tells us that at Rouen the English usually went to an inn kept by a certain Mr. Madde; at Dieppe, Madame G.o.dard's house was very popular; at Paris, the best hotel was the "Ville de Venize." At Orleans, good lodging was found at the "Croix Blanche," kept by one M. Richard, and at the house of M. Marishall Laisne.

[923] J. Rutledge, _Memoire sur le caractere, et les moeurs des Francais compares a ceux des Anglais_, 1776, p. 55.

[924] Vaira.s.se was born _c._ 1630, probably at Allais.

[925] Another grammar of similar intent was that of Ruau, _La vraie methode d'enseigner la langue francoise aux estrangers expliquee en Latin_, Paris, 1687.

[926] _Epistolae Ho-Elianae_, 9th ed., 1726, p. 283.

[927] _Instructions for forreine travel_, 1642, ed. Arber, 1869, pp. 19 _sqq._

[928] Bacon had many years before advised the traveller to keep a diary: and further "let him sequester himself from the company of his countrymen, and diet in such places where there is a good company of the nation where he travaileth" (_Essay on Travel_).

[929] A Huguenot boy of about sixteen was considered a suitable valet (Laine, _French Grammar_, 1650).

[930] _I.e._ Theophile de Viau.

[931] St. Maurice, _Guide Fidelle_, 1672.

[932] _Limberman or the Kind Keeper_, Act I. Sc. 1.

[933] _On Education._ Miscellaneous Works, 1751, pp. 322-3.

[934] _Satire against the French_, 1691.

[935] Webb, _The Penns and Penningtons of the Seventeenth Century in their Domestic and Religious Life_, 1867, p. 154.

[936] Gibbon, on the contrary, was sent to the house of a pastor of Lausanne, in the hope that he would abjure the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, which he had affected at the same University.

[937] _Diary_, August 26 and 27, 1664; August 30, 1664.

[938] D. Fordyce, _Dialogues on Education_, 1745, i. p. 417.

[939] _The Compleat Education of a Young n.o.bleman_, 1723, pp. 13 and 14.

[940] Costeker, _op. cit._ pp. 50-51.

[941] _Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, 1634-1689_, London, 1875, pp. 26 _sqq._, and _Memoirs and Travels of Sir John Reresby_, London, 1904, p.

21.

[942] Travelling by boat on the Loire, as was usual, and pa.s.sing by Tours. They were accompanied by a band of French men and women who, says Reresby, tried to make the journey more pleasant by singing, and made it less so.

CHAPTER VI

GALLOMANIA AFTER THE RESTORATION

The French teachers of London at the time of the Restoration, chief amongst whom were Claude Mauger, Paul Festeau, Pierre Laine, and Guillaume Herbert, all urged students to travel in France as a means of completing the knowledge of French acquired in England; yet at the same time they naturally and in their own interests lay emphasis on the facilities for learning the language in England, especially after the Restoration, when, to use Mauger's words, there was a little France in London, as well as a little England in Paris; "there being so great a correspondence between the two Courts of England and France that we see here continually the Lords of the latter, as they see at Paris persons of quality of the former, besides an infinity of others going and coming from thence." This indeed was the period in which Francomania reached its height in England. During the Commonwealth the English Court and many of the n.o.bility and gentry had sojourned in France, and returned thence imbued with admiration for everything French. This admiration was intensified by the universal popularity of the French language and French fas.h.i.+ons. Gentlemen from all parts of Europe repaired to France to learn the language and "frenchify" their manners. France was the country to which English gentlemen resorted "to get their breeding"; and the Chancellor Clarendon held that their manners were much improved by the contact. On the other hand, French men and women of the same cla.s.s came to the English Court in larger numbers than ever before. Some returned with their English friends at the Restoration. Others followed later, for the English Court offered more attractions to pleasure-seekers than did the French Court, now under the influence of Madame de Maintenon.

The indignation and dismay aroused in France by the execution of Charles I.[943] made the welcome offered to the royalist emigrants all the warmer in the first instance. We are told that Paris, and indeed all France, was full of loyal fugitives.[944] The exiled English Court was sheltered at the Louvre and the Palais Royal in turn.[945] The queen arrived in her native land in 1644, and shortly afterwards came Prince Charles, then about sixteen years old, and James, the young Duke of York. Mlle. de Montpensier, the grand-daughter of Henry IV., remarks on the French of the two young princes. James, she thought, spoke the language with ease, and very well indeed, and Mademoiselle was no lenient critic.[946] But Charles had not drawn as much profit from the lessons received in England.[947] He found the p.r.o.nunciation an almost insuperable difficulty, stammered and hesitated, and during the early part of his stay remained almost mute for want of words. Mademoiselle says he could not utter one intelligible sentence in French, though he understood all she said to him. Charles, however, soon felt the benefit of his sojourn abroad. When he returned to France from Holland in 1648, he had already made much progress and answered the French king readily in French, when that monarch inquired about the horses and dogs of the Prince of Orange. He was ready enough to talk of hunting in French, but when the queen wished to know about the progress of his affairs, and to talk of serious matters, he excused himself, declaring he could not speak French.[948] He would also sit silent for long periods in Mlle. de Montpensier's presence, and only ventured to convey his compliments to her through Lord Jermyn, one of the chief counsellors of Charles I., who remained in the service of the queen during her exile in France.

[Header: THE ENGLISH COURT IN FRANCE] But the princess was delighted to see a great improvement in his speaking of the language at the time of his return from the expedition into Scotland, and the fatal battle of Worcester. He forgot his shyness and spoke French well, relating to her the thrilling story of his escape, and how he was "furieus.e.m.e.nt ennuye"

in Scotland, where they think it a sin to listen to a violin. He was also able to make the princess very pretty compliments in French, and on these occasions, she remarks, he spoke the language particularly well.[949]

Charles is even said to have gone incognito to several French reformed churches during his stay in France. The presence of Cromwell's amba.s.sador prevented his going to the famous church of Charenton, but he went to others. On one occasion he listened to the sermon in the Protestant church of La Roch.e.l.le, in company with the Duke of Ormond, and expressed his satisfaction to one or two of the congregation to whom he revealed his ident.i.ty.[950]

Many other Englishmen improved their French during their enforced stay on the Continent. Most of the high officials of the Court of Charles I., the courtiers, n.o.bles, and gentlemen round the king, spent the greater part of the interregnum in Paris, although some of them were disturbed by the French understanding with Cromwell in 1656. John Evelyn[951]

enumerates most of the distinguished Englishmen he met in France,[952]

and remarks on the number of French courtiers who paid their respects to the king (Charles II.); he himself kissed His Majesty's hand at St.

Germain's. French courtiers had free intercourse with the English at concerts, festivals, and other entertainments.[953] They also met at the Academies so fas.h.i.+onable at the time. On the 13th March 1650, for instance, Evelyn witnessed a "triumph" in Mr. Del Campo's Academy, where "divers of the French and English n.o.blesse, especially my Lord of Ossory, and Richard, sons to the Marquis of Ormond (afterwards Duke), did their exercises on horseback in n.o.ble equipage before a world of spectators and great persons, men and ladies." And again, on the 24th of May, he writes, "we were invited by the n.o.ble Academies to a running, where were many brave horses, gallants and ladies, my Lord Stanhope entertaining us with a collation." The king's brother, the young Duke of Gloucester, set the example by daily attending one of these academies.

Sir John Reresby, that time-serving politician, has also left an account of his journey in France during the Commonwealth. On his arrival at Paris in 1654 he saw the king, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert playing at billiards in the Palais Royal; "but was incognito, it being crime sufficient the waiting upon His Majesty to have caused the sequestration of his estates."[954] Reresby was again in France in 1659, and was well received by Henrietta Maria. Almost alone of the English exiles, Sir Edward Hyde, the Chancellor, who found the discomforts of the exiled Court very great, failed to become a fluent speaker of French, chiefly because he was unable to overcome the difficulties of the p.r.o.nunciation. After the Restoration he was the one high official of the English Court who did not speak the language with fluency. It was not till the time of his exile in France, after his disgrace in 1668, that he mastered the language sufficiently to read its literature; but he still found "many inconveniences" in speaking it.[955]

Men of letters formed a considerable section of the English colony in France. Waller, Denham, Cowley, Davenant, Hobbes, Killigrew, s.h.i.+rley, Fanshawe, Crashaw, etc., and later Roscommon, Rochester, Buckingham, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and others lived in France, and some mixed freely in French literary circles, then centring round the Hotel de Rambouillet, and such names as those of Malherbe, Vaugelas, Corneille, Bossuet, Scudery, La Calprenede. English literature of the Restoration gives ample proof of their familiarity with both the language and literature of their hosts.[956] Waller, for instance, after spending some time at Rouen, moved to Paris, where he lived "in great splendour and hospitality."[957] [Header: ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS IN FRANCE]

Cowley, who had followed the queen to Paris, became secretary to Lord Jermyn, afterwards Earl of St. Albans, and deciphered the letters which pa.s.sed between the king and queen of England. The dramatist Davenant was twice in France, where he remained several years on his second visit.

Hobbes, who for many years acted as a travelling tutor, made his mark in the philosophic circles of Paris, and knew Mersenne, Sorbiere, and Ga.s.sendi. He fled to Paris during the civil wars, and for a time was engaged in teaching arithmetic to the Prince of Wales.[958]