Part 37

Brantôme was a disappointed man when he wrote his memoirs. He had been an assiduous courtier for a quarter of a century and had gained nothing by it, while he had seen men whose merits he believed to be inferior to his rise to wealth and honour. But though he had the love of frivolity and the moral indifference of a true courtier, he had not his pliability. “He was violent,” says Le Laboureur, “difficult to live with and of a too unforgiving spirit.” Perhaps the best thing that can be said in his favour is that among his most intimate friends were two of the most virtuous characters of their time, Téligny, the son-in-law of Coligny, and Téligny’s brother-in-law, François de la Noue. Among his other friends were Louis de Bérenger, seigneur du Guast, who was assassinated by order of Marguerite de Valois, and above all Filippo Strozzi, the son of Piero Strozzi, who was his friend for over twenty years, and who exercised over him considerable influence.

The names by which Brantôme’s writings are generally known are not those which he himself gave them. Thus the titles Dames illustres and Dames galantes are an invention of the Leyden publisher for the Premier et Second livre des Dames. The other main division of his writings, Hommes, consisted in Brantôme’s manuscript of two volumes, the first containing the Grands capitaines, French and Spanish, and the second Les couronnels, Discours sur les duels, Rodomontades espagnoles, and a separate account of La Noue. His original manuscript was completed while Margaret was still the wife of Henry IV., that is to say before November, 1599, but some time after her divorce he made a carefully revised copy. It is upon this copy that the text of M. Lalanne’s edition is based for the first five volumes.

Regarded strictly as biographies Brantôme’s lives have slender merit, for the majority give one little or no idea of the character of the persons treated. He is at least successful with those who had in them elements of real greatness, such as Coligny and Condé. Even the long life of François de Guise, though it contains some interesting and valuable information, throws little light on Guise himself. But he gives us good superficial portraits of Charles IX., Catharine de Medici, and the Constable de Montmorency, while several of the minor lives, such as Brissac and his brother Cosse, Matignon, and Mary of Hungary, are not only amusing but hit off the characters with considerable success. One of the most entertaining is the unfinished account of his father. On the other hand the account of Margaret of Valois, though it contains some interesting details, is too ecstatic in its open-mouthed admiration to have any value as a biography. The conclusion of the account of Monluc may be quoted not only for its reference to Monluc’s conversational powers, but as throwing light on Brantôme’s own character.

Much of the interest of Brantôme’s book is to be found in his numerous digressions, for which he is constantly apologizing. Thus in the middle of the account of Montmorency we have a laudatory sketch of Michel de l’Hospital, in that of Tavannes a digression on the order of St. Michael, in that of Bellegarde an account of his own treatment by Henry III. The digressions are frequently made occasions for amusing stories, which, like Montaigne’s, are distinguished from such as Bouchet and Beroalde de Verville collected, in that they generally illustrate some trait of human character.

Like Montaigne again, Brantôme copies freely and without acknowledgment from books. Whole pages are taken from Le loyal serviteur, stories are borrowed from Rabelais, Des Periers, and the Heptameron, as well as from most of the writers dealt with in the last chapter. But Brantôme, unlike Montaigne, tries to conceal his thefts by judicious alterations, or by pretending that he heard the story himself, or even that he was a witness of the event related. J’ai ouy conter and J’ai vu are frequently in his mouth. He was doubtless chiefly influenced in these endeavours to conceal his borrowings by the same form of vanity as Montaigne, the desire to be regarded, not as a man of letters, but as a gentleman who amused himself by putting down his reminiscences on paper. It is for this reason that he tries to give a negligent and conversational air to his style. The result is that he is often ungrammatical and sometimes obscure. Yet his style, at any rate in the eyes of a foreigner, has considerable merit, and chiefly from its power of vivid presentment. For Brantôme, like other Gascons, like Montaigne and Monluc and Henry IV., saw things vividly and can make his readers see them. He has a store of expressive words and phrases such as un peu hommasse (of Mary of Hungary). A noticeable feature of his style is his love of Italian and Spanish words, reflecting in this, as in other features, the prevailing fashion of the Court.

Brantôme’s keen enjoyment of the world pageantry was seldom disturbed by inconvenient reflexion. His only quarrel with society was that the ruling powers were blind to his own merits. He thought the duel, even in the treacherous and bloodthirsty fashion in which it was then carried on, an excellent institution, and at the end of his account of Coligny he inserts an elaborate disquisition on the material benefits which the religious wars had conferred on France. All classes had profited, nobles, clergy, magistrates, merchants, artisans.

And all this is said in sober earnest, without a suspicion of irony. One might at any rate give Brantôme credit for originality had he not told us at the outset that this was the substance of a conversation which he overheard at Court between two great persons, one a soldier and the other a statesman, and both excellent Catholics. Brantôme was the echo as well as the mirror of the Court.

Brantôme’s glowing panegyric on Margaret of Valois induced that virtuous princess to write her memoirs, partly in order to supplement his account of her, partly to correct a few errors into which he had fallen. It is to Brantôme accordingly that her memoirs are addressed. They were written about the year 1597 in the château of Usson in Auvergne, where she had resided, nominally as a prisoner, since 1587.

APPENDIX—B

BRANTÔME: By GEORGE SAINTSBURY

The complement and counterpart of this moralising on human business and pleasure is necessarily to be found in chronicles of that business and that pleasure as actually pursued. In these the sixteenth century is extraordinarily rich. Correspondence had hardly yet attained the importance in French literature which it afterwards acquired, but professed history and, still more, personal memoirs were largely written. The name of Brantôme has been chosen as the central and representative name of this section of writers, because he is on the whole the most original and certainly the most famous of them. His work, moreover, has more than one point of resemblance to that of the great contemporary author (Montaigne) with whom he is linked at the head of this chapter. Brantôme neither wrote actual history nor directly personal memoirs, but desultory biographical essays, forming a curious and perhaps designed pendant to the desultory moral essays of his neighbour Montaigne. Around him rank many writers, some historians pure and simple, some memoir-writers pure and simple, of whom not a few approach him in literary genius, and surpass him in correctness and finish of style, while almost all exceed him in whatever advantage may be derived from uniformity of plan, and from regard to the decencies of literature.

Pierre de Bourdeille (s) (who derived the name by which he is, and indeed was during his lifetime, generally known from an abbacy given to him by Henri II. when he was still a boy) was born about 1540, in the province of Perigord, but the exact date and place of his birth have not been ascertained. He was the third son of François, Comte de Bourdeilles, and his mother, Anne de Vivonne de la Chataigneraie, was the sister of the famous duelist whose encounter with Jarnac his nephew has described in a well-known passage. In the court of Marguerite d’Angoulême, the literary nursery of so great a part of the talent of France at this time, he passed his early youth, went to school at Paris and at Poitiers, and was made Abbé de Brantôme at the age of sixteen. He was thus sufficiently provided for, and he never took any orders, but was a courtier and a soldier throughout the whole of his active life. Indeed almost the first use he made of his benefice was to equip himself and a respectable suite for a journey into Italy, where he served under the Maréchal de Brissac. He accompanied Mary Stuart to Scotland, served in the Spanish army in Africa, volunteered for the relief of Malta from the Turks, and again for the expedition destined to assist Hungary against Soliman, and in other ways led the life of a knight-errant. The religious wars in his own country gave him plenty of employment; but in the reigns of Charles IX. and Henri III. he was more particularly attached to the suite of the queen dowager and her daughter Marguerite. He was, however, somewhat disappointed in his hopes of recompense; and after hesitating for a time between the Royalists, the Leaguers, and the Spaniards, he left the court, retired into private life, and began to write memoirs, partly in consequence of a severe accident. He seems to have begun to write about 1594, and he lived for twenty years longer, dying on the 15th of July, 1614.

The form of Brantôme’s works is, as has been said, peculiar. They are usually divided into two parts, dealing respectively with men and women. The first part in its turn consists of many subdivisions, the chief of which is made up of the Vies des Grand Capitaines Étrangers et Français, while others consist of separate disquisitions or essays, Des Rodomontades Espagnoles, “On some Duels and Challenges in France” and elsewhere, “On certain Retreats, and how they are sometimes better than Battles,” etc. Of the part which is devoted to women the chief portion is the celebrated Dames Galantes, which is preceded by a series of Vies des Dames Illustres, matching the Grands Capitaines. The Dames Galantes is subdivided into eight discourses, with titles which smack of Montaigne. These discourses are, however, in reality little but a congerie of anecdotes, often scandalous enough. Besides these, his principal works, Brantôme left divers Opuscula, some of which are definitely literary, dealing chiefly with Lucan. None of his works were published in his lifetime, nor did any appear in print until 1659. Meanwhile manuscript copies had, as usual, been multiplied, with the result, also usual, that the text was much falsified and mutilated.

The great merit of Brantôme lies in the extraordinary vividness of his powers of literary presentment. His style is careless, though it is probable that the carelessness is not unstudied. But his irregular, brightly coloured, and easily flowing manner represents, as hardly any age has ever been represented, the characteristics of the great society of his time. It is needless to say that the morals of that time were utterly corrupt, but Brantôme accepts them with a placid complacency which is almost innocent. No writer, perhaps, has ever put things more disgraceful on paper; but no writer has ever written of such things in such a perfectly natural manner. Brantôme was in his way a hero-worshipper, though his heroes and heroines were sometimes oddly coupled. Bayard and Marguerite de Valois represent his ideals, and a good knight or a beautiful lady de par le monde can do no wrong. This unquestioning acceptance of, and belief in, the moral standards of his own society give a genuineness and a freshness to his work which are very rare in literature. Few writers, again, have had the knack of hitting off character, superficially it is true, yet with sufficient distinction, which Brantôme has. There is something individual about all the innumerable characters who move across his stage, and something thoroughly human about all, even the anonymous men and women, who appear for a moment as the actors in some too frequently discreditable scene. With all this there is a considerable vein of moralising in Brantôme which serves to throw up the relief of his actual narratives. He has sometimes been compared to Pepys, but, except in point of garrulity and of readiness to set down on paper anything that came into their heads, there is little likeness between the two. Brantôme was emphatically an écrivain (unscholarly and Italianised as his phrase sometimes appears, if judged by the standards of a severer age), and some of the best passages from his works are among the most striking examples of French prose.

NOTES TO VOLUME I

HISTORICAL NOTE

P. VII:

◆The Duc d’Alençon was later called the Duc d’Anjou. He died at Château-Thierry, on Sunday, June 10, 1584, from dysentery, which had almost reduced him to a shadow. Nevers, in his Mémoires (Vol. I, p. 91), maintains that he was poisoned by a maid of one of his mistresses. According to L’Estoile’s account, the Duke was given a magnificent funeral in Paris. He was by no means handsome; his pimpled and deformed nose earned for him an epigram during his expedition in Flanders:

Flamands, ne soyez estonnez Si à François voyez deux nez: Car par droit, raison et usage, Faut deux nez à double visage.

P. VIII:

◆Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de l’Abbaye de Brantôme. Was born in Périgord, 1527; died 1614. Of an old and distinguished family. Served his apprenticeship to war under the famous Captain François de Guise. Later Gentleman of the Chamber to two French Kings in succession, Charles IX. and Henri III., being high in favour with the latter; Chamberlain to the Duc d’Alençon. As soldier or traveller visited most parts of Europe; intimate with many of the most famous men of his day, including the poet Ronsard. Some time after the death of Charles IX. he retired (disappointed apparently by a diminution of Court favour, and suffering from the results of a serious accident due to a fall from his horse) to his estates in Guyenne, where he employed his leisure in the composition of a number of voluminous works based on reminiscences of the active period of his life.

These are: Vies des Hommes illustres et grands Capitaines français, Vies des Grands Capitaines étrangers, Vies des Dames illustres, Vies des Dames galantes, Anecdotes touchant des Duels, Rodomontades et Jurements espagnols, and sundry fragments.

P. XXVI:

Souvent femme varie, Bien fol qui s’y fie!

(Woman is changing ever; fool the man who trusts her!)

P. 3:

◆The word which Molière popularized does not date from that time; it was used much earlier, and in the thirteenth century we see a man pay a fine of twenty ounces of gold for calling an unfortunate husband coucou (cuckold). (Usatica regni Majorici, Anno 1248.) About the middle of the fifteenth century, in a letter of remission to a guilty fellow, we find this curious remark: “Cogul, which is the same (in the vernacular) as coulz or couppault, is one of the vilest insults to be thrust at a married man.” At times the word coux was used:

Suis-je mis en la confrairie Saint Arnoul le seignenur des Coux.