Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Vol 1

Part 1

Transcriber’s Note

In the following transcription, italic text is denoted by underscores. Small capitals in the original text have been transcribed as ALL CAPITALS.

Superscripts in the text are denoted by a prefixing caret symbol (^). A letter (as in 8^o), or letters in curly braces (as in I^{er}), that follow the caret symbol are to be read as superscripts.

See end of this document for details of corrections and other changes.

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Lives of

Fair and Gallant Ladies

————

VOLUME I

Lives

Fair and Gallant Ladies

The Seigneur De Brantôme

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL

———— VOLUME I ————

The Alexandrian Society, Inc.

London and New York

1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE ALEXANDRIAN SOCIETY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

This work is strictly limited to twelve hundred and fifty numbered sets, which are for sale only to subscribers. The type has been distributed on publication and no more will be printed.

Copy No. ....

FOREWORD

This very fine and accurate translation of The Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies was made by Mr. A. R. Allinson and because of its merit must be considered one of the great English translations, equalling in every quality those of the 16th and 17th centuries. The text of Brantôme’s great work is given practically complete in these volumes and the only modifications are based upon good taste and not on any fearful prudery. A few of Brantôme’s examples that illustrate his points belong more in a treatise on abnormal pathology than in a book of literary or historical interest and value, so nothing of any value is lost by omitting them. The rare charm, shrewd wisdom, amusing anecdote, literary merit and historical and social information will be appreciated by intelligent readers.

The cover design used on this book was made by C. O. Czeschka.

(From a fac-simile page of the manuscript Recueil des Dames. Biblio. Nat: Mss. Nouv. fses. No. 20-474, folio 163.)]

DEDICATION TO MONSEIGNEUR LE DUC D’ALENÇON OF BRABANT AND COUNT OF FLANDERS

SON AND BROTHER OF OUR FRENCH KINGS[1*]

MY GRACIOUS LORD,

Part 2

Seeing how you have full often done me the honour at Court to converse with me in great privity of sundry jests and merry tales, the which are so familiar and ready with you they may well be said to grow apace before men’s very eyes in your Lordship’s mouth, so great your wit is and so keen and subtile, and your speech the same, and right eloquent to boot,—for this cause have I set me to indite these discourses, such as they be, to the best of my poor ability, to the end that in this wise some of them may please you, making the time to pass lightly and reminding you of me in your conversations, wherewith erstwhile you have honoured me as much as any gentleman of all the Court.

To you then, my Lord, do I dedicate this present book, and do beseech you fortify the same with your name and authority, till that I may find leisure to attend to discourses of a more serious content. Of such I pray you note one in especial, the which I have all but finished, wherein I do deduce a comparison of six great Princes and Captains that be to-day abroad in this our Christendom, to wit: the King Henri III. your brother, Your Highness’ self, the King of Navarre your brother-in-law, the Duc de Guise, the Duc de Maine, and the Prince of Parma, making record for each one of you of your noblest deeds of valour and high emprize, of your excellencies and exploits, the full tale and complement whereof I do resign to others better qualified than I to indite the same.

Meanwhile, My Lord, I do beseech God to bless you always more and more in your greatness, happiness and nobility.

And I am for all time

Your very humble and very obedient subject and very loving servant.

BOURDEILLE.

REGRETTING THE DEATH OF THE DUC D’ALENÇON

I had already dedicated this second Part of my Discourses on Women to the aforesaid my Gracious Lord d’Alençon, the while he yet lived,—seeing how he oft did me the honour to be my friend and to converse very privily with me, and was ever right curious to be informed of mirthful tales. Wherefore, albeit his generous and valorous and most noble body hath fallen on the field of honour, I have not thought good for that to recall my erstwhile dedication; but I do repeat and renew the same to his illustrious ashes and noble spirit, of the valorousness whereof and of his great deeds and high achievements I do treat in their turn among those of the other great Princes and Captains. For of a truth he was indeed a great Prince and a great Captain, if such an one there was ever,—the more so considering he is dead so untimeously.

Enough of such serious themes; let us discourse a while of merrier matters.

CONTENTS

PAGE

HISTORICAL NOTE. BY HENRI VIGNEAU xiii

FIRST DISCOURSE

OF LADIES WHICH DO MAKE LOVE, AND THEIR HUSBANDS CUCKOLDS 3

SECOND DISCOURSE

ON THE QUESTION WHICH DOTH GIVE THE MORE CONTENT IN LOVE, WHETHER TOUCHING, SEEING, OR SPEAKING 213

1. OF THE SENSE OF TOUCH IN LOVE 215

2. OF THE POWER OF SPEECH IN LOVE 226

3. OF THE POWER OF SIGHT IN LOVE 233

THIRD DISCOURSE

CONCERNING THE BEAUTY OF A FINE LEG, AND THE VIRTUE THE SAME DOTH POSSESS 273

FOURTH DISCOURSE

CONCERNING OLD DAMES AS FOND TO PRACTISE LOVE AS EVER THE YOUNG ONES BE 293

BIBLIOGRAPHY 341

APPENDIX A. BRANTÔME, BY ARTHUR TILLEY 345

APPENDIX B. BRANTÔME, BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY 351

NOTES 355

HISTORICAL NOTE

Part 3

Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbé de Brantôme et d’André, Vicomte de Bourdeille, was born in Périgord, in 1527, in the reign of François I. He early took up the career of arms, serving under his friend François de Guise, Duke of Lorraine, as his Captain, the same who was killed before Orleans by Poltrot de Méré. Afterwards he came up to Court, and was Gentleman of the Bedchamber under Charles IX., who showed him much favour. On the King’s death he retired to his estates, where he composed his Works. These are: Vies des hommes illustres et des grands capitaines françois; Vies des grands capitaines étrangers; Vies des dames illustres; Vies des dames galantes; Anecdotes touchant le duel; and Rodomontades et jurements des Espagnols.—All that really concerns us here is the Vies des dames galantes. It is especially from this point of view that we propose to speak of Pierre de Bourdeille, known almost exclusively to posterity under the name of Brantôme. As to his Essays in the manner of Plutarch, these do not come into our purview at all. Besides which, I am of opinion, it is in this book that Brantôme appears under his most characteristic aspect, and that it is here we may best learn to know and appreciate his genius.

A gentleman of family, acknowledged and treated as kinsman by Queen Margot, wife of Henry IV., living habitually in the society of the most famous men of his time, a contemporary of Rabelais, Marot and Ronsard, a sincere but unbigoted Catholic, a man of exceptional literary endowments, Brantôme is one of the happiest representatives of the French mind in the XVIth Century.

It is the period of the Renaissance,—the days when Europe resounds with the fame of our gallant King Francis I. and his deeds of prowess in love and war, the days when Titian and Primaticcio were leaving behind on French palace walls immortal traces of their genius, when Jean Goujon was carving his admirable figures round the fountains of the Louvre and across its front, when Rabelais was uttering his stupendous guffaw, that was the Comedy of all human life, when Marot and Ronsard were writing their graceful stanzas, when the fair “Marguerite des Marguerites,”—the Queenly Pearl of Pearls,—was telling her delightful tales of love and adventure in the Heptameron.—Then comes the death of Francis I. His son mounts the throne. Protestantism makes serious progress in France, and Montgomery precipitates the succession of Francis II. This last wears the crown for one year only, succumbing to a fatal inflammation of the ears. Then it is Mary Stuart leaves France for ever, and with streaming eyes, as she watches the beloved shores where she has been Queen of France fade out of sight, sings sad and slow:

Adieu, plaisant pays de France!

And now we find seated on the throne of France a young Monarch of a strange, wild, unattractive exterior. His eye is pale, colourless and shifty, seeming to be void of all expression. He trusts no man, and has no real assurance of his power as Sovereign; he looks long and suspiciously at those about him before speaking, rarely bestows his confidence and believes himself constantly surrounded by spies. ’Tis a nervous, timid child,—’tis Charles IX. History treats him with an extreme severity; and the “St. Bartholomew” has thrown a lurid light over this unhappy Prince’s figure. He allowed the massacres on the fatal nights of the 24th and 25th of August, and even shot down the flying Protestants from his palace roof. Without going into the interminable discussions of historians as to this last alleged fact, which is as strongly denied by some authorities as it is maintained by others, I am not one of those who say hard things of Charles IX. It is more a sentiment of pity I feel for him,—this monarch who loved Brantôme and Marot, and who protected Henri IV. against Catherine de Medici. I see him surrounded by brothers whom he had learned to distrust. The Duc d’Alençon is on the spot, a legitimate object of detestation by reason of the subterranean intrigues he is for ever hatching against his person; while his other brother Henri (afterwards Henri III.), Catherine’s favourite son, is in Poland, kept sedulously informed of every variation in the Prince’s always feeble health, waiting impatiently for the hour when he must hurry back to France to secure the crown he covets. Then his sister’s vicious outbreaks are a source of constant pain and anxiety to him; and last but not least there is his mother Catherine de Medici, an incubus that crushed out his very life-breath. He cannot forget the tortures his brother Francis suffered from his mysterious malady, and his premature death after a single year’s reign.

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