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 Lainé, 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 nobility 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 fashions. 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 class 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 ENGLISH COURT IN FRANCE
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 pronunciation 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. 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 “furieusement ennuyé” 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 ambassador 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 Rochelle, in company with the Duke of Ormond, and expressed his satisfaction to one or two of the congregation to whom he revealed his identity.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, nobles, 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 Evelyn951 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 fashionable 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 noblesse, especially my Lord of Ossory, and Richard, sons to the Marquis of Ormond (afterwards Duke), did their exercises on horseback in noble 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 Noble 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 pronunciation. 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
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS IN FRANCE
Men of letters formed a considerable section of the English colony in France. Waller, Denham, Cowley, Davenant, Hobbes, Killigrew, Shirley, 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 Hôtel de Rambouillet, and such names as those of Malherbe, Vaugelas, Corneille, Bossuet, Scudéry, La Calprenède. 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 Cowley, who had followed the queen to Paris, became secretary to Lord Jermyn, afterwards Earl of St. Albans, and deciphered the letters which passed 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, Sorbière, and Gassendi. He fled to Paris during the civil wars, and for a time was engaged in teaching arithmetic to the Prince of Wales.958
Among the many children sent to France for education during the Civil War and Commonwealth were several future literary men. Both Vanbrugh and Wycherley were brought up in this way. At the age of fifteen Wycherley was “sent for education to the Western parts of France, either to Saintonges or the Angoumois. His abode there was either upon the Banks of the Charente, or very little remov’d from it. And he had there the Happiness to be in the neighbourhood of one of the most accomplish’d Ladies of the Court of France, Mme. de Montausier, whom Voiture has made famous by several very ingenious letters, the most of which were writ to her when she was a Maid, and call’d Mlle. de Rambouillet. I have heard Mr. Wycherley say he was often admitted to the Conversation of that lady, who us’d to call him the Little Hugenot: and that young as he was, he was equally pleased with the Beauty of her Mind, and with the Graces of her person.”959
One of the young royalists who received his education in France during the Commonwealth so completely mastered the French language that he gained an important place among French men of letters: the famous Anthony Hamilton, the author of short stories in French960—masterpieces in the light vein961—and of the well-known life of his gallant brother-in-law, the Comte de Grammont, which gives a vivid picture of the life at the Court of Charles II. Hamilton has been placed second only to Voltaire as a representative of the esprit français.962
At the Restoration, Hamilton returned to England with the rest of the English emigrants, together with a considerable number of Frenchmen who had attached themselves to the English Court. He was followed two years later by the hero of his Mémoires,963 the Comte de Grammont, who pronounced the English Court so like that of France in manners and conversation that he could hardly realize he was in another country.964 French was the language freely used by the English emigrants on their return to London, and by others in imitation of them. “French is the most in use,” wrote William Higford in the year of the Restoration, “a most sweet tongue called the Woman’s tongue, and as I think for the address from the servant to the mistress, and from the servant to the soveraigne, there is no sweeter nor more civil.”965 The use of the French language was spreading all over Europe, but nowhere was it so popular as in England: “indeed it is most alamode and best pleases the ladies and we cannot deny but Messieurs of France are excellent wits.”966
FRENCH COURTIERS IN LONDON
The presence of so many of these messieurs in London intensified the already strong French atmosphere. Several famous names occur in the list of French ladies and gentlemen who took up their abode in England at this time. Shortly before De Grammont, St. Evremond had arrived in England, where he spent over thirty years, and died in 1703. Both played important parts in the social life of the time. De Grammont especially was very popular. He received a warm welcome at Court, where he met many old friends and was overwhelmed with hospitality; to make an engagement with him it was necessary to see him a fortnight beforehand. He himself added to the Court festivities by giving French entertainments in the Parisian style.
At the numerous festivities held in honour of De Grammont, St. Evremond967 was almost invariably one of the guests. He soon became the centre of a coterie, half English and half French, including his literary companion the Dutchman Vossius, Canon of Windsor, the French doctor Le Fèvre, professor of chemistry to Charles II.,968 and the learned Huguenot Henri Justel, who had charge of the royal library at St. James’s. What contributed most to reconcile St. Evremond to his life in England, however, was the arrival of Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin, niece of the cardinal. The French ambassador Courtin said England was the refuge of French wives who had quarrelled with their husbands, and the Duchesse was one of these.969 In her salon St. Evremond met the most distinguished Englishmen and foreign ministers of the day. He saw her daily, and she inspired much of his best work. There, too, met French Catholics, Huguenots, and Englishmen, free from all religious prejudice, and talked of the subjects which interested them most. Another of Mazarin’s nieces, the Duchesse de Bouillon,970 was also in London for a time, and received in her salon Waller, St. Evremond, and others; at one time there was a possibility of La Fontaine joining her circle. La Fontaine seems to have felt some interest in England and the English, who, he says,
pensent profondément; Leur esprit, en cela, suit leur tempérament, Creusant dans les sujets, et forts d’expériences, Ils étendent partout l’empire des sciences.
To Mrs. Harvey, sister of Lord Montagu and friend of the Duchess of Mazarin, he dedicated his fable Le Renard Anglais.
Both St. Evremond and the Duchess of Mazarin ended their days in England.971 St. Evremond enjoyed the favour of three English kings. Charles II. gave him a pension, and when William III. dined with one of his courtiers, he is said to have always stipulated that the French writer should be of the party, as he took great delight in his conversation. Though St. Evremond received permission in 1689 to return to his native land, he did not avail himself of the offer, preferring to remain in the midst of his English friends, who were accustomed to his ways and manners and his peculiarities.972 But during the whole of his thirty years’ stay in England he made no attempt to speak English. French was the language in which he and the rest of his countrymen carried on their daily intercourse with their hosts.
Pepys also refers frequently to the Frenchmen he met in London.973 On one occasion at the Cockpit his attention was diverted from the stage by a group of loquacious Frenchmen in a box, who, not understanding English, were amusing themselves by asking a pretty lady, who knew both languages, what the actors said. “Lord! what sport they made!” says Pepys. On another occasion at Whitehall he met a very communicative Frenchman with one eye, who shared a coach with him, and told him the history of his own life “without asking.”
FRENCH VALETS AND “FEMMES DE CHAMBRE”
Covent Garden, we are told, was the favourite resort of the French residents, “nearer the Court, than the Exchange.”974 Their presence, however, was not confined to Court circles; for the French were beginning to take an interest in England and to visit the country,975 although, as yet, their curiosity had not extended to the language. In a few cases English was studied. Mauger even tells us that several of his contemporaries learnt it in France. It is certain that some employed the services of the French teachers of London, who were willing to teach their newly acquired language to their countrymen; for this purpose the practice of attaching English grammars to French ones—a combination first instituted by Mauger, who urged the French and English to avail themselves of this opportunity of exchanging lessons—became more and more common as the seventeenth century drew to its close. In the meanwhile guide-books976 and relations of travel in England appeared. The writer of one of these, M. Payen,977 remarks on the great number of strangers, especially Frenchmen, in London.978 At the time of the Restoration, however, the chief significance of their presence lies in the need they created for the English to speak French.
The great demand for everything French, including the language, offered an opening for many Frenchmen in London; for all the men and women of fashion were not in the position of De Grammont, who sent his valet, Thermes, to France every week to bring back the latest fashions from Paris. “Nothing will go down with the town now,” writes a contemporary author, “but French fashions, French dancing, French songs, French servants, French wines, French kickshaws, and now and then French sawce come in among them, and so no doubt but French doctors may be in esteem too.”979 In almost every book written at the time there is some reference to the mania for French fashions. And some time later the Abbé Le Blanc relates how, on one occasion in England, a self-satisfied Englishman taunted him thus: “Il faut que votre pays soit bien pauvre, puisque tant de gens sont obligés de le quitter pour chercher à vivre en celui-ci. C’est vous qui nous fournissez de Maîtres à danser, de Perruquiers, de Tailleurs, et de Valets de chambre: et nous vous devons cette justice, pour la Frisure ou pour le Menuet, les François l’emportent sur toutes les autres Nations. Je ne comprens pas comment on aime si fort la Danse dans un Pays où l’on a si peu sujet de rire. N’est-il pas triste, par exemple, de ne cultiver vos Vignes que pour nous?”980
Regarding the French valets and femmes de chambre in London, the Abbé writes: “Il n’est pas étonnant que l’on trouve en Angleterre tant de Domestiques François. A Londres on se plaît à parler notre Langue, on copie nos usages, on imite nos mœurs: ils entretiennent du moins dans nos manières ceux qui les aiment: et les Anglois les payent à proportion de l’utilité qu’ils en retirent.”981 We are told that the French lackey was “as mischievous all the year as a London apprentice on Shrove Tuesday”;982 yet he was indispensable:
His Lordship’s Valet must be bred in France,
Or else he is a clown without Pretence:
The English Blockheads are in dress so coarse,
They’re fit for nothing but to rub a horse.
Her Ladyship’s ill manner’d or ill bred,
Whose Woman Confident or Chamber Maid,
Did not in France suck in her first breath’d Air,
Or did not gain her education there.983
French cooks were also in great demand, and it was a point of gentility to dine at one of the French ordinaries. Thus Briske, in Shadwell’s Humourists, is condemned as “a fellow that never wore a noble or polite garniture, or a white periwig, one that has not a bit of interest at Chatelin’s, or ever ate a good fricacy, sup, or ragoust in his life”; for now, “like the French we dress, like Frenchmen eat.” “Substantial beef” is “boil’d in vain,” and “our boards are profaned with fricassee”:984
Our cooks in dressing have no skill at all,
French cooks are only of the modish stamp.
Pepys did not care for the new French restaurants. At the most popular, Chatelin’s,985 he says, they serve a “damned base dinner at the charge of 8s. 6d.” He preferred the old English ordinaries where English food was given a French name. Yet he admits that at the French houses the table is covered and the glasses clean, all in the French manner; and when he dined with his patrons of the Admiralty, he usually was given a “fine French dinner.”986
THE FRENCH TAILOR
As to the French dancing-master, he is a “very Paladin of France when he comes into England once, where he has the Regimen of the Ladies leges and is the sole Pedagoge of their feet, teaching them the French Language, as well as the French Pace.”987 French music was also the vogue. We are told that during the reign of Charles II. “all musick affected by the beau mond ran in the ffrench way.”988 John Bannester, the first violin to the king, is said to have lost his post989 for having upheld, within the hearing of His Majesty, that the English musicians were superior to the French. Soon after the Restoration, Charles on one occasion gave great umbrage to the English musicians by making them stop their performance and bidding the French music play instead.
In the same way the French tailor is “the King of Fashions and Emperor of the Mode, not onely in France, but most of its Neighboring Nations, and his Laws are received where the King of France’s will not pass”;990 and thus the French
Now give us laws for pantalons,
The length of breeches and the gathers,
Port-cannons, periwigs and feathers.991
There was a French peddling woman at Court, Mlle. Le Boord, who “us’d to bring peticoates, and fanns and baubles out of France to the Ladys,”992 and whose opinion had great weight. De Grammont won the favour of the English ladies by having French trinkets sent them from France. “Let the fashion be French, ’tis no matter what the cloth be.”993 Travellers from France were beset with questions as to the latest mode. Some devotees were said to receive weekly letters from France providing information on this subject.994 At one moment Charles protested against the rage for French fashions by adopting a simple garment after the Persian style, which was first worn at Court on the 18th October 1666. Divers gentlemen went so far as to wager that His Majesty would not persist in this change; and when Louis XIV. retorted by ordering his pages to be attired in the same Persian garb, Charles withdrew. “It was a comely and manly attire,” writes Evelyn, “too good to hold, it being impossible for us in good earnest to leave the Monsieurs’ vanities long.”995
Francomania indeed was carried to extremes:
And as some pupils have been known
In time to put their tutors down,
So ours are often found t’ave got
More tricks than ever they were taught.996
We are told of an “English captain that threw up his commission because his company would not exercise after the French Discipline.”997 Dryden even accuses the French of influencing the course of English politics:998
The Holy League
Begot our Cov’nant; Guisards got Whig,
Whate’er our hot-brain’d sheriffs did advance,
Was like our fashions, first produced in France,
And when worn out, well scourg’d and bannish’d there.
Sent over, like their godly Beggars, here.
A French patent was said to authorize any crime.999 “Now what a Devil ’tis should make us so dote on these French,” says Flecknoe,1000 and another writer adds:1001
Our native speech we must forget e’er long
To learn the French that much more modish Tongue.
Their language smoother is, hath pretty Aires,
But ours is Gothick if compar’d with theirs.
The French by arts of smooth insinuation
Are now become the Darlings of the Nation.
FRENCH SPOKEN AT COURT
The example was set at Court, where French was commonly in use, and where to be able to speak it well was a necessity and proof of good breeding. “Mark then, I makes ’em both speak French to show their breeding,” says the author Boyes of his two kings in Buckingham’s Rehearsal.1002 Sir John Reresby first attracted notice at Court by his fluent French. “It was this summer,” he writes in 1661, “that the Duke of York first took any particular notice of me. I happened to be in discourse with the French Ambassador and some other gentlemen of his nation, in the presence at Whitehall, and the Duke joined us, he being a great lover of the French tongue and kind to those who spoke it. The next night he talked with me a long while as he was at supper with the king.”1003 And Reresby, with a keen eye for his own advancement, took advantage of this to secure the patronage of the Duke. He also tells us that the King, Duke, and French ambassador were very often merry and intimate together at Louise de Kerouaille’s (now Duchess of Portsmouth) lodgings,1004 where French alone would be used, for it was an unknown thing for a French ambassador to speak English. There was not a courtier1005 who did not speak French with ease, Clarendon alone excepted.
The ladies of the Court were equally well versed in the language. When De Grammont, who had made the acquaintance of most of the courtiers in France, came to make that of the ladies, he needed no interpreter, for all knew French—“assez pour s’expliquer et toutes entendaient le françois assez bien pour ce qu’on avait à leur dire.”1006 Amongst them was Miss Hamilton, Anthony’s sister, who became De Grammont’s wife,1007 and was much admired at the Court of Louis XIV. The accomplishments of Miss Stuart may be quoted as typical of the rest: “elle avoit de la grâce, dansoit bien, parloit françois mieux que sa langue naturelle: elle étoit polie, possédoit cet air de parure après lequel on court et qu’on n’attrappe guères à moins de l’avoir pris en France dès sa jeunesse.”1008 The least gifted lady of the Court was Miss Blake, who “n’entendoit presque point le françois.” When the Countess of Berkshire recommended one of her near relatives as one of the queen’s dressers, the fact that she had been twelve years in France, and could speak French exceedingly well, was mentioned as her chief qualification.1009 The Portuguese queen1010 was indeed out of place in her Frenchified Court. She could not speak French, and Spanish was her means of intercourse with Charles II. and the Duke of York, who both spoke this language fairly well, and were able to act as interpreters between their French mother and the young queen. Catherine’s Portuguese attire was the subject of much amusement, and her efforts to induce the ladies of the Court to adopt it were of no avail. James II., when he was an exile in France for the second time, told the nuns of Chaillot that she had endeavoured to prevail on King Charles to use his influence with them: “but the ladies dressed in the French fashions and would not hear of any other, constantly sending artificers and dressmakers to Paris to import the newest modes, as they do to this very day.”1011 The country ladies caught the fashion as it was going out in London.1012
THE FRENCHIFIED LADY
In many cases the passion for all things French became a mania with the ladies, as is frequently pictured in the drama of the time.1013 A Frenchified lady would have a French maid, “born and bred in France, who could speak English but brokenly,” with whom she would talk a mixture of broken French and English; while many a one like Melantha of Dryden’s Marriage à-la-mode,1014 doted on any new French word: “as fast as any bullion comes out of France, she coins it into English, and runs mad in new French words.”1015 She importunes those returned from the tour in France, or who have correspondence with Parisians, to know the latest words used in Paris. Her maid supplies her daily with a store of French words:
Melantha.... You sot you, come produce your Morning’s work.... O, my Venus! 14 or 15 words to serve me a whole day! Let me die, at this rate I cannot last till night! Come read your words....
Philotis. Sottises.
Melantha. Sottises, bon. That’s an excellent word to begin withal: as for example, he or she said a thousand sottises to me. Proceed.
Philotis. Figure: as what a Figure of a man is there! Naïve and Naïveté.
Melantha. Naïve! as how?
Philotis. Speaking of a thing that was naturally said: it was so naïve. Or such an innocent piece of simplicity: ’twas such a Naïveté.
And as Melantha becomes excited with her new acquisitions, she bestows gifts on her maid at each new word.
A new catechism1016 for the ladies was invented on these lines:
—Of what Nation are you?
—English by birth: my education à la mode de France.
—Who confirms you?
—Mademoiselle the French Mantua maker.
We are told that the Frenchified lady was educated in a French boarding-school, by a French dancing master, a French singing master, and a French waiting woman. “Before I could speak English plain,” she tells us, “I was taught to jabber French: and learnt to dance before I could go: in short I danced French dances at 8, sang French at 10, spoke it at 13, and before 15 could talk nothing else.”
Among the gentlemen à la mode, “to speak French like a magpie” was also the fashion:
We shortly must our native speech forget
And every man appear a French coquett.
Upon the Tongue our English sounds not well,
But—oh, monsieur, la langue françoise est belle;1017
wrote a satirist of the time. And so the Francomaniacs, designated as beaux or English monsieurs, became the subject for satire and ridicule. Their French was often not of a very high standard. Pepys met one of the monsieurs, “full of his French,” and pronounced it “not very good.” Many, no doubt, had to be content “t’ adorn their English with French scraps.”
And while they idly think t’ enrich,
Adulterate their native speech:
For, though to smatter ends of Greek
Or Latin be the rhetorique
Of pedants counted and vainglorious,
To smatter French is meritorious,
And to forget their mother tongue
Or purposely to speak it wrong.1018
THE ENGLISH “MONSIEUR”
Butler says that “’tis as ill breeding now to speak good Englis, as to wrote good Englis,1019 good sense or a good hand,” and “not to be able to swear a French oath, nor use the polite French word in conversation,” debarred one from polite society. The town spark or beau garzion is frequently introduced in the comedies of the time. Not being master of his own language, he intermingles it with scraps of French that the ladies may take him for a man of parts and a true linguist.1020 Such is Sir Foppington, who walks with one eye hidden under his hat, with a toothpick in prominence, and a cane dangling at his button;1021 and Sir Novelty Fashion, who prefers the title of Beau to that of Right Honourable;1022 and the Monsieur of Paris of Wycherley’s Gentleman Dancing Master, “mightily affected with French Language and Fashions,” preferring the company of a French valet to that of an English squire, and talking “agreeable ill Englis.” Etherege’s Sir Fopling Flutter1023 presents us with a telling picture of what was considered good breeding and wit at the Court of Charles II. Sir Fopling is “a fine undertaking French fop, arrived piping hot from Paris,” bent on imitating the people of quality in France and on speaking a mixture of French and English. “His head stands for the most part on one side, and his looks are more languishing than a lady’s when she lolls at stretch in her coach, or leans her head carelessly against the side of a box in the playhouse.” He judges everything according to what is done at Paris, and English music and dancing make him shudder. And as it was à la mode to be
Attended by a young petit garçon
Who from his cradle was an arch Fripon,1024
he walks about with a train of French valets. Mr. Frenchlove of James Howard’s “English Monsieur” (1674) is likewise “a Frenchman in his second nature, that is in his fashion, discourse and clothes”; he cannot discover a divertissement in the whole of London, but finds “some comfort that in this vast beef-eating city, a French house may be found to eat at.”
The French ordinaries held an important place in the daily round of the beau. His toilet occupied the whole of the early part of the day. He would then go to the French ordinary,1025 where he boasts of his travels to the untravelled company, and if they receive this well, plies them with “more such stuff, as how he, simple fellow as he seems to be, had interpreted between the French King and the Emperor.” Or, if his accomplishments will not stand this strain, “flings some fragments of French or small parcels of Italian about the table.”1026 He may then take the promenade or Tour à la Mode, where he salutes with bon meen, and has a hundred jolly rancounters on the way.1027 He usually ended his day at the play.
And here again he would find the desired French atmosphere. Many translations or adaptations of French plays were acted,1028 and the English drama of the period is so full of French words and phrases that it is hardly intelligible to any one without a good knowledge of French.1029 The Frenchified Gallants and Ladies, the French Valets, and other French characters introduced so freely into the plays, offered ample opportunity for the use of French words.1030 Dryden, alone, is responsible for the introduction of more than a hundred such words.1031 As literature was fashionable at the time, most of the dramatic authors were themselves gentlemen à la mode with strong French tastes. Sedley, for instance, had a great reputation in the world of fashion. Wycherley and Vanbrugh had both been educated in France. Etherege had probably resided many years in Paris. Cibber, who always played the part of the fop in his own plays, went twice to France specially to study the airs and graces of the French petit-maître,—at no better place, however, than a table d’Auberge, the Abbé Le Blanc tells us:1032 “Il faut lui pardonner ses erreurs sur ses modèles, il n’étoit à portée d’en voir d’autres: si même il n’a pas aussi bien imité ceux-ci que les Anglois se le sont persuadé, je n’en suis pas surpris: il m’a avoué de bonne foi qu’il n’entend pas assez notre langue pour suivre la conversation.” It is unlikely, however, that Cibber’s French was as scanty as the abbé reports. At any rate his daughter Charlotte, afterwards Mrs. Clarke, tells us that she understood the alphabet in French before she was able to speak English.1033
The prologues and epilogues of the Restoration plays are frequently addressed to the gallants, and often in a language which would appeal to them; for instance, a French Marquis speaks the epilogue in Farquhar’s Constant Couple:
... Vat have you English, dat you call your own,
Vat have you of grand plaisir in dis towne,
Vidout it come from France, dat will go down?
Picquet, basset: your vin, your dress, your dance,
’Tis all, you zee, tout à-la-mode de France.
FRENCH PLAYS IN LONDON
The Francomaniacs of the time would find still more to their taste at the French play. During nearly twenty years after the Restoration, London was hardly ever without a company of French players. The beaux and gallants flocked to see “a troop of frisking monsieurs,” and cry “Ben” and “keep time to the cadence of the French verses”:1034
Old English authors vanish and give place
To these new conquerors of the Norman race,
wrote Dryden, protesting against the caprice of the town for the French comedians; and he adds elsewhere:1035
A brisk French troop is grown your dear delight,
Who with broad bloody bills, call you each day,
To laugh and break your buttons at their play.
There was a great rush to the French plays, both tragedies and comedies. Valets went hours in advance to reserve a place for their masters. There is no need, says Dryden, to seek far for the reason of their popularity,—they are French, and that is enough. People go to show their breeding and try to laugh at the right moment. The English dramatist insinuates that the comedians let in their own countrymen free of charge that they might lead the applause, and give the cue to the ladies.
The English Court and its followers had evidently acquired a taste for French plays during their sojourn abroad. Immediately after the Restoration a French company settled in London, and the king became their special patron and protector. In 1661 he made a grant of £300 to Jean Channoveau to be distributed among the French comedians,1036 and in 1663 they obtained permission to bring from France their stage decorations and scenery. It seems to have always been the king’s “pleasure” that “the clothes, vestments, scenes, and other ornaments proper for and directly designed for their own use about the stage should be imported customs free.”1037 The earliest troupe of French actors, under Jean Channoveau, acted at the Cockpit in Drury Lane; and there, on the 30th August 1661, Pepys took his wife to see a French comedy. He carried away a very bad impression of the play, describing it as “ill done, the scenes and company and everything else so nasty and out of order and poor, that (he) was sick all the while in (his) mind to be there.” He vented his ill humour on a friend of Mrs. Pepys whom she had met in France; and “that done, there being nothing pleasant but the foolery of the farce, we went home.”
French comedies were also acted at Court. Evelyn, who went very little to the theatre, witnessed one of these on the 16th December 1662, but makes no observation on it. In the Playhouse to be let of Davenant, who directed the Duke’s company playing at Dorset Gardens,1038 figures a Frenchman who has brought over a troupe of his countrymen to act a farce. The French actor Bellerose is said to have made a fortune by playing in London.1039 Another of these actors who ventured to London was Henri Pitel, sieur de Longchamp, who came in 1676 with his wife and two daughters.1040 He stayed nearly two years in England, and shone at the Court of Charles II. Charles himself is said not to have missed one of the French plays,1041 at which his mistress, Louise de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, Mme. Mazarin, the French ambassador, and many courtiers were always present. In 1684 the “Prince’s French players” were again expected in England,1042 no doubt the same troupe, directed by Pitel and known as Les comédiens de son Altesse sérénissime M. le Prince.
Footnotes
943 Expressed in the Lettres of Guy Patin, and numerous pamphlets published at the time.
944 Evelyn, Diary, Sept. 1, 1650.
945 In the Journal de voyage de deux jeunes Hollandais à Paris, 1656-58 (ed. A. P. Faugère, 2nd ed., Paris, 1899), there is some information concerning the exiled Court. The teacher Lainé mentions a lady in the suite of the exiled queen in his Dialogues.
946 Mémoires, 4 vols., Paris, 1859, i. pp. 102, 137, 225, etc.
947 Supra, pp. 262 sqq.
948 After the Restoration he would also try to get out of a difficult situation on the same plea. He talked French freely to Mlle. de Kerouaille. However, when the French Ambassador, Courtin, wished to discuss with him the negotiations with the Dutch, he excused himself on the ground that he had forgotten nearly all his French since his return to England, and asked for delay to reflect on anything proposed in that language. He offered the same excuse for his Council, but Courtin retorted that many of them spoke French as well as English. Cp. J. J. Jusserand, A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II., London, 1892, p. 143.
949 “Il me disoit des douceurs, à ce que m’ont dit les gens qui nous écoutoient et parloit si bien françois, en tenant ces propos-là, qu’il n’y a personne qui ne doive convenir que l’Amour étoit plutôt françois que de toute autre nation. Car, quand le roi parloit sa langue (la langue de l’amour) il oublioit la sienne et n’en perdoit l’accent qu’avec moi: car les autres ne l’entendirent pas si bien” (Mémoires, ed. cit. i. p. 322).
950 Lettre de M. de L’Angle à un de ses amis touchant la religion du sérénissime roy d’Angleterre, Geneva?, 1660, p. 18.
951 Evelyn was in France in 1643, on his way to study anatomy at Padua, and again in 1646-7 on his return, and yet again in 1649.
952 Lord High Treasurer Cottington, Sir Ed. Hyde, etc.; cp. Diary, Aug. 1 and 18, Sept. 7, 12, 13, Oct. 2, 7, 1649, etc.
953 Thus the King invited the Prince of Condé to supper at St. Cloud... “where I saw a famous (tennis) match betwixt Mons. Saumaurs and Colonel Cooke, and so returned to Paris.” Evelyn, Diary, Sept. 13, 1649.
954 Memoirs of Sir John Reresby of Thribergh, Bart., M.P. for York, etc., 1634-1689, ed. J. J. Cartwright, London, 1875, pp. 26, 42 (cp. pp. 359 sqq., supra).
955 Sir Henry Craike, Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 1911, ii. pp. 321 sqq.
956 W. Harvey-Jellie, Les Sources du Théâtre anglais à l’époque de la Restauration, Paris, 1906, pp. 37 sqq.
957 Evelyn visited Waller several times.
958 Evelyn met Hobbes at Paris in September 1650.
959 Dennis, Original Letters, familiar, moral and critical, London, 1723, i. p. 215. At a later date he was again in France for reasons of health. The king gave him £500 to pay the expenses of a journey to the South of France. He was at Montpellier from the winter of 1678 to the spring of 1679.
960 “... cette langue dont il savait toutes les plus délicates ressources en grâce, en malice plaisante et en ironie.” Cf. Sayous, Histoire de la littérature française à l’étranger.
961 “Hamilton dans le conte (says Sayous, op. cit.) l’emporte sur Voltaire qui eut été le premier, si au lieu de se jeter dans les allégories philosophiques il s’était abandonné, comme notre Écossais, au plaisir plus innocent de laisser courir son imagination et sa plume.”
962 The Scotch Chevalier de Ramsay (1686-1743), the friend of Fénelon, also wrote French with remarkable purity. His best known work is Les Voyages de Cyrus avec un discours sur la mythologie (Paris, 1727; London, 1730). At a later date Thomas Hales (1740?-1780), known as d’Hèle, d’Hell, or Dell, a French dramatist of English birth, also made himself a name in French literature (Sylvain van de Weyer, Les Anglais qui ont écrit en français, Miscellanies, Philobiblon Soc., 1854, vol. i.).
963 Hamilton, Mémoires du Comte de Grammont. Histoire amoureuse de la Cour de Charles II, ed. B. Pifteau, Paris, 1876, Preface. Voltaire often quoted the beginning of Le Bélier as a model of style.
964 “Il trouvoit si peu de différence aux manières et à la conversation de ceux qu’il voyoit le plus souvent, qu’il ne lui paroissoit pas qu’il eut changé de pais. Tout ce qui peut occuper un homme de son humeur s’offroit partout aux divers penchans qui l’entrainoient, come si les plaisirs de la cour de France l’eussent quitté pour l’accompagner dans son exil” (Mémoires, ed. cit. p. 83). Grammont had been banished from the French Court on account of a presumptuous love affair.
965 Institution of a Gentleman, London, 1660, p. 88. The book first appeared as Institutions, or Advice to his Grandson, in 1658.
966 J. Smith, Grammatica Quadralinguis, 1674.
967 Sayous, op. cit. ii. ch. iv.
968 Evelyn once accompanied His Majesty “to M. Favre to see his preparation for the composition of Sir Walter Raleigh’s rare cordial,” when the chemist made a learned discourse in French on the nature of each ingredient.
969 Revue Historique, xxix., Sept.-Oct. 1885, p. 25.
970 J. J. Jusserand, Shakespeare in France, London, 1899, pp. 132, 135, 136. Mme. d’Aulnoy, the fairy-tale writer and authoress of the Mémoires de la cour d’Angleterre, was also among the French ladies in London at this time.
971 St. Evremond was buried at Westminster at the age of ninety-one. The Duchess died at Chelsea in 1699.
972 In a letter to Justel he spoke of the Thames as “nostre Thamise.”
973 Evelyn’s Diary, likewise, is full of mentions of meetings with Frenchmen.
974 Sorbière, Relation d’un voyage en Angleterre..., Paris, 1664, p. 32.
975 Cp. Ch. Bastide, Anglais et Français du 17e siècle, Paris, 1912.
976 Jusserand, Shakespeare in France, p. 136, note 2.
977 Les Voyages de M. Payen, Paris, 1667.
978 Mauger calls London “une des merveilles du monde. On y vient de tous côtez, pour admirer sa magnificence.”
979 The Ladies’ Catechism, 1703.
980 J. B. Le Blanc, Lettres d’un Français, à La Haye, 1745, iii. p. 67.
981 Ibid. i. p. 145. Mrs. Pepys assisted Lady Sandwich to find a French maid (Diary, Nov. 15, 1660), and was herself very desirous of one.
The prejudiced Rutledge writes nearly a century later: “As the lower classes of the French are so completely qualified for Domestics, it is not surprising that such numerous colonies of French valets de chambre, cooks and footmen are planted all over Europe: and that the nobility and fashionable people of so many countries shew an avowed Propensity to Prefer them even to their fellow natives” (Account of the Character and Manners of the French, 1770, pt. ii. p. 172).
982 Flecknoe, Characters... (1665), London, 1673, p. 8. “They (the French) have gained so much influence over the English Fops that they furnish them with their French Puppydogs for Valets de Chambre” (French Conjuror, 1678). Addison (Spectator, No. 45) says he remembers the time when some well-bred Englishwomen kept a valet de chambre “because, forsooth, they were more handy than one of their own sex.”
983 Satire on the French, 1691. Reprinted as the Baboon à la Mode, 1701.
984 Satirical Reflections, 1707, 3rd pt.
985 Cp. Wycherley, Country Wife, Act I. Sc. 1.
986 Diary, Oct 19, 1663; May 30, 1665; May 12, 1667; Feb. 18, March 13 and 26, 1668.
987 Flecknoe, Characters, p. 12. Pepys describes a French dance at Court (Diary, Nov. 15, 1666), which was “not extraordinarily pleasing.” He much admired the dancing of the young Princess Mary, taught by a Frenchman (Diary, March 2, 1669). The maîtres d’armes were often Italians and Spaniards. There were protests against the French and Italian singing and dancing “taught by the dregs of Italy and France” (Satirical Reflections, 1707).
988 Pepys’s Diary, ed. H. B. Wheatley, v. p. 332, note, and vi. p. 187.
989 A Frenchman was appointed in his place; cp. Cal. of State Papers, 1660-61, p. 7; 1663-64, pp. 214, 607. Children were sent to France to learn music. Pepys did not like the “French airs” (Diary, July 27, 1661; June 18, 1666).
990 Flecknoe, Characters, p. 48. French gardeners (Cal. State Papers, 1661-62, pp. 175, 294) and French barbers were also in favour. Pepys went to the French pewterer’s (March 13, 1667-8).
991 S. Butler, Hudibras.
992 Evelyn, Diary, March 1671.
993 Vincent, Young Gallants’ Academy, 1674.
994 Cp. Sedley, Mulberry Garden (Sir J. Everyoung: “Which is the most à la mode right revered spark? points or laces? girdle or shoulder belts? What say your letters out of France?”). There is hardly a comedy of the time without some such references to French fashions; cp. Etherege, Sir Fopling Flutter; Shadwell, Humours of the Army, etc.
995 Evelyn, Diary, Oct. 18, 1666. Evelyn had himself written a pamphlet called Tyrannus or the Mode, an invective against “our overmuch affecting of French fashion,” in which he praised the comeliness and usefulness of the Persian style of clothing. This he had presented to the king: “I do not impute to this discourse the change whiche soone happen’d, but it was an identity that I could not but take notice of” (Diary, Oct. 18 and 30, 1666).
996 Butler, Satire on our ridiculous imitation of the French; “A l’étranger on prend plaisir à enchérir sur toutes les Nouveautez qui leur viennent de France....” Muralt (Lettres, 1725).
997 French Conjuror, 1678.
998 Duc de Guise, Prologue; cp. Prologue to Albion and Albanius:
“Then ’tis the mode of France without whose Rules
None must presume to set up here as fools.”
999 French money was said to be most successful in bribes. Farquhar, Constant Couple, iv. 2.
1000 Flecknoe, Characters, p. 12.
1001 Satire against the French, 1691.
1002 Acted 1671; Act II. Sc. 2.
1003 Mémoires, ed. cit. pp. 51-52.
1004 Ibid. p. 143.
1005 Lord Rutherford, for instance, begs pardon for his English, being more accustomed to the French tongue (Cal. of State Papers, 1661-62, p. 4).
1006 Hamilton, op. cit. p. 82.
1007 The story goes that Grammont was leaving England without marrying Miss Hamilton, when her brother overtook him and told him he had forgotten something, whereat he realized his oversight and returned to repair it. It is said that this incident supplied Molière with the subject of his Mariage forcé.
1008 Hamilton, op. cit. p. 82.
1009 Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1661-62, p. 28.
1010 Two grammars for teaching Portuguese greeted the new queen. One was a Portuguese Grammar in French and English by Mr. La Mollière, a French gentleman, 1662 (Register of the Company of Stationers, ii. 307); and the other, J. Howell’s Grammar for the Spanish or Castilian tongue with some special remarks on the Portuguese Dialect, with a description of Spain and Portugal by way of guide. It was dedicated to the queen.
1011 Fragment of the Journal of the Convent of Chaillot, in the secret archives of France, Hôtel de Soubise. Quoted by Strickland in Lives of the Queens, 1888, iv. p. 383.
1012 Cp. Sedley, Mulberry Garden.
1013 Such as Lady Lurewell of Farquhar’s Constant Couple; Lady Fanciful in Vanbrugh’s Provoked Wife; Brome’s Damoiselle (1653); or Mrs. Rich in The Beau Defeated (1700?).
1014 The Frenchified Lady never in Paris was the name given her by Henry Dell in his play, based on Dryden’s and printed 1757 and 1761.
1015 There is a book called The Art of Affectation teaching ladies to speak “in a silly soft tone of voice and use all the foolish French words which will infallibly make your person and conversation charming” (Etherege, Sir Fopling Flutter).
1016 The Ladies’ Catechism, 1703?
1017 Satire against the French, 1691, p. 14.
1018 Satire on our ridiculous imitation of the French; Chalmers, English Poets, viii. p. 206.
1019 Cp. Swift, Poem written in a Lady’s Ivory Table Book (1698):
“Here you may read,
Here in beau-spelling—tru tel deth.”
1020 Character of the Beau, 1696.
1021 Cibber, Careless Husband, Act I. Sc. 1.
1022 Cibber, Love’s last shift or the Fool in fashion. Sedley’s Sir Charles Everyoung, Ned Estridge, and Harry Modish are all “most accomplished monsieurs,” as are Clodis in Cibber’s Love Makes a Man or the Fop’s Fortune; Sir Harry Wildair in Farquhar’s play of that name; Lord Foppington of Vanbrugh’s Relapse or Virtue in Danger; Bull Junior in Dennis’s A Plot and no Plot; Clencher, senior, the Prentice turned Beau in Farquhar’s Constant Couple; Mrs. Behn’s Sir Timothy Tawdry; Crowne’s Sir Courtly Nice, etc. In 1697 appeared a work called The Compleat Beau.
1023 Sir Fopling Flutter or the Man of Mode, 1676. Supposed to be a portrait of the then notorious Beau Hewitt.
1024 Satire against the French, 1691.
1025 Character of the Beau, 1691. Most of the accomplished “monsieurs” frequented the French houses (Sedley, Mulberry Garden). Act II. Sc. 2 of Wycherley’s Love in a Wood, and Act II. Sc. 2 of his Gentleman Dancing Master, both take place in a French house. Cp. Character of the Town Gallant, 1675.
1026 Vincent, Young Gallants’ Academy, 1674, p. 44.
1027 Flecknoe, Characters, 1673. The 1665 edition of his Aenigmatical Characters..., 1665, contains a description in French of the Tour à la Mode: “... C’est une bataille bien rangée où l’on ne tire que des coups d’Œillades, et où les premiers ayant fait leur descharge, ilz s’en vont pour donner place aux autres”..., etc. (p. 21).
1028 Charles II. openly avowed his preference for the French drama. Dryden wrote his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, “to vindicate the Honour of our English writers from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French before them.” Pepys saw many of the French plays acted in English. Cp. H. McAfee, Pepys on the Restoration Stage..., Yale Univ. Press, 1916.
1029 A. Beljame, Le Public et les hommes de lettres au 18e siècle, Paris, 1897, p. 139.
1030 As in Etherege’s Comical Revenge or Love in a Tub, Sir Fopling Flutter, and the plays of Cibber, Vanbrugh, Mrs. Behn, Shadwell, Farquhar, Wycherley, etc.; The French Conjuror, 1678; The Beau Defeated, 1700?, etc.
1031 A. Beljame, Quae e Gallicis verbis in Anglicam linguam Johannes Dryden introduxerit, Paris, 1881. On French influence in Restoration Drama, see Charlanne, L’Influence française en Angleterre, pp. 64 sqq.
1032 Lettre à M. de la Chaussée: Lettres, 1745, ii. p. 240.
1033 Narrative of her Life, written by Herself, pub. in series of Autobiographies, London, 1826, vol. vii. p. 12. Most of the writers of the time were able to write some French. Flecknoe, for instance, wrote some of his Characters in the language, and wrote a French dedication of his Poems (1652), “à la plus excellente de son sexe.”
1034 Dryden, “Prologue spoken at the opening of the new house, 26 March, 1674,” Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, x. p. 320.
1035 “Prologue to Arviragus and Phihera by L. Carlell, revival,” Works, x. 405.
1036 Shaw, Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660-67, p. 311.
1037 Ibid., 1672-75, pp. 14, 24, 29, etc.; 1677-78 (vol. v.), pp. 692, 803; 1684 (vol. vii.), p. 1444.
1038 Charles had granted two privileges: one to Henry Killigrew, who directed the King’s company acting at Drury Lane, and the other to Sir William Davenant, who directed the Duke’s company. The rival companies united in 1682.
1039 Chardon, La troupe du roman comique dévoilée et les comédiens de la campagne au 17e siècle, Le Mans, 1876, p. 47.
1040 Chardon, op. cit. p. 98.
1041 Revue Historique, xxix., Sept.-Oct. 1858, p. 23.
1042 Historical MSS. Commission Reports, v. p. 186. French dancers and singers also attracted the English from the performances of their own actors; cp. Cibber, Epilogue to The Careless Husband, and Farquhar, Preface to The Inconstant.
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