Chapter VII: The Study of French by English Travellers Abroad (2)

Many travellers did not follow Moryson's advice "to lay aside the spoone and forke of Italy, the affected gestures of France, and all strange apparrell" on their return to England. Their affectation of foreign languages and customs proved disagreeable to many of their countrymen. The Frenchified traveller and his untravelled imitators were known as _beaux_ or _mounsiers_. Nash speaks of the "dapper mounsieur pages of the Court," and Shakespeare of the young gallants who charm the ladies with a French song and a fiddle, and fill the Court with quarrels, talks, and tailors.[667] When the English nobles and gentlemen who had held official appointments at Tournai returned to England, after lingering some time at the French Court, the chronicler Hall[668] declares they were "all French in eating, drinking, yea in French vices and brages, so that all estates of England were by them laughed at."

The English _beau_ thought it his duty to despise English ways, fashions, and speech, and to ape and dote upon all things French:[669]

He struts about
In cloak of fashion French. His girdle, purse,
And sword are French; his hat is French;
His nether limbs are cased in French costume.
His shoes are French. In short from top to toe
He stands the Frenchman.

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 God 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 scraps. "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 à la mode_.

There were two very different attitudes 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 space 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 assumed 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 Assembly then tried to assert its power by granting passports only to those whose tutors they approved. See Young, _Histoire de l'Enseignement en Écosse_, 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 Illustrious 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 passports (_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.

[601] _A Dialogue concerning Education_, in _Miscellaneous Works_, London, 1751, pp. 313 _et seq._

[602] Cp. Entries of Passports, in the _Cal. State Papers_. The necessity of such a course was considered specially urgent if the traveller was himself ignorant of languages (_The Gentleman's Companion, by a Person of Quality_, 1672, p. 55).

[603] Gailhard, _The Compleat Gentleman_, 1678, p. 16.

[604] Gailhard, _op. cit._ pp. 19, 20. A gentleman, he thinks, should be sent abroad betimes to prevent his being hardened in any evil course.

[605] _Some Thoughts on Education_, 1693.

[606] Walker, _Of Education, especially of Young Gentlemen_, 1699, 6th ed.

[607] _Notes on Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden_ (1619), Shakespeare Soc., 1842, pp. 21, 47.

[608] _Autobiography_, ed. Sir Sidney Lee (2nd ed., 1906), p. 56.

[609] _Memoirs of Sir John Reresby_, ed. J. J. Cartwright, 1875, p. 26.

[610] _Dict. Nat. Biog._, ad nom.

[611] Addison was well acquainted with French literature and criticism. He frequently quotes Boileau, Racine, Corneille, and also Bouhours and Lebossu. His _Tragedy of Cato_ is closely modelled on the French pattern. See A. Beljame, _Le Public et les hommes de lettres en Angleterre au 18e siècle_, 1897, p. 316.

[612] _Memoirs of the Verney Family_, 1892, iii. p. 36.

[613] _The Correspondence of Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet_, ed. W. A. Bradly (Boston, 1912), p. 26.

[614] _Savile Correspondence_, Camden Soc., 1858, pp. 133, 138. O. Walker, in his _Of Education_, differs from other writers in proposing that young gentlemen should travel without a governor.

[615] In the same category may be placed the _Traveiles of Jerome Turler_, a native of Saxony, whose work was translated into English in the year of its appearance (1575). It was specially intended for the use of students.

[616] T. Palmer, _Essay on the Means of making our Travels into Forran Countries more Profitable and Honourable_, 1606; T. Overbury, _Observations in his Travels_, 1609 (France and the Low Countries). William Bourne's _Treasure for Travellers_ (London, 1578) has no bearing on travel from the language point of view. Of special interest are Dallington's _Method for Travell, shewed by taking the View of France as it stoode in the Yeare of our Lorde 1598_, London (1606?), and his _View of France_, London, 1604. Other works are _A Direction for English Travellers_, licensed for printing in 1635 (Arber, _Stationers' Register_, iv. 343); Neal's _Direction to Travel_, 1643; Bacon's _Essay on Travel_, 1625; Howell's _Instructions for Forreine Travel_, 1624.

[617] The versatile master of the ceremonies to Charles I., Sir Balthazar Gerbier, wrote his _Subsidium Peregrinantibus or an Assistance to a Traveller in his convers with--1. Hollanders. 2. Germans. 3. Venetians. 4. Italians. 5. Spaniards. 6. French_ (1665), in the first place as a _vade mecum_ for a princely traveller, the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth. It claimed to give directions for travel, "after the latest mode." Cp. also _A direction for travailers taken by Sir J. S._ (Sir John Stradling) _out of_ (the _Epistola de Peregrinatione Italica of_) _J. Lipsius, etc._, London. 1592.

[618] List in Watt's _Bibliographia Britannia_, 1824 (heading _Education_); and in _Cambridge History of English Literature_, ix. ch. xv. (Bibliography).

[619] _Method for Travell_, 1598, and _View of France_, 1604.

[620] The constant warnings against mixing with Englishmen abroad show how numerous the latter must have been. "He that beyond seas frequents his own countrymen forgets the principal part of his errand--language," wrote Francis Osborne in his _Advice to a Son_ (1656).

[621] As did Lord Lincoln, who "sees no English, rails at England, and admires France."

[622] _Itinerary_, 1617.

[623] Bacon, _Essay on Travel_, 1625.

[624] Gailhard, _op. cit._ p. 48.

[625] S. Penton. _New Instructions to the Guardian_, 1694, p. 104.

[626] Cp. Entries of passports to France in the _Calendar of State Papers_.

[627] _Positions_, 1581.

[628] It appears from a deleted note in the MS. of Defoe's _Compleat English Gentleman_ that travel was not always considered necessary for younger sons (ed. K. Bülbring, London, 1890).

[629] _French Alphabet_, 1592: "Car la plus part de ceux qui vont en France apprennent par routine, sans reigles, et sans art, de sorte qu'il leur est impossible d'apprendre, sinon avec une grande longueur de temps. Au contraire ceux qui apprennent en Angleterre, s'ils apprennent d'un qui ait bonne methode, il ne se peut faire qu'ils n'apprennent en bref. D'avantage ce qu'ils apprennent est beaucoup meilleur que le françois qu'on apprend en France par routine. Car nous ne pouvons parler ce que nous n'avons apris et que nous ignorons. Ceux qui apprennent du vulgaire ne peuvent parler que vulgairement . . . d'un françois corrompu. Au contraire ceux qui apprennent par livres, parlent selon ce qu'ils apprennent: or est il que les termes et phrases des livres sont le plus pur et naif françois (bien qu'il y ayt distinction de livres); il ne se peut donc qu'ils ne parlent plus purement et naivement (comme j'ay dict) que les autres."

[630] Wodroeph, _Spared houres of a souldier_, 1623.

[631] Livet, _La Grammaire française et les grammairiens au 16e siècle_, 1859, p. 2.

[632] _In linguam gallicam Isagoge_, 1531.

[633] _Le Traité touchant le commun usage de l'escriture françoise_, 1542, 1545; cp. Livet, _op. cit._ pp. 49 _sqq._

[634] _Gallicae linguae institutio Latino sermone conscripta_ (1550, 1551, 1555, 1558, etc.).

[635] _Institutio gallicae linguae in usum iuventutis germanicae_ (1558, 1580, 1591, 1593).

[636] _Dialogue de l'ortografe et prononciacion françoese, departi en deus livres_, 1555.

[637] "J'ay tousiours eu plus ordinaire hantise, plus de biens et d'honneur et de civile conversation de la nation Angloise que de nul aultre."

[638] Villiers had no doubt some previous knowledge of French. From the age of thirteen he had been taught at home by private tutors.

[639] _Reliquiae Wottonianae_, London, 1657, p. 76.

[640] 12º, pp. 386.

[641]

"Etranger desireux de nostre langue apprendre,
Employe en ce livret et ton temps et ton soin,
Que si d'enseignement plus ample il t'est besoin,
Viens t'en la vive voix de l'autheur mesme entendre."

[642] It differs from _Les Desguisez_, a comedy written by Godard in 1594.

[643] E. Winkler, "La Doctrine grammaticale d'après Maupas et Oudin," in _Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie_, Heft 38, 1912.

[644] Towards the end of his career, Oudin was appointed to teach Louis XIV. Spanish and Italian; he was the author of several manuals for teaching these languages, and it is worthy of note that sometimes the German language is included.

[645] Printed with Nicot's edition of Aimar de Ranconnet's _Thresor de la langue françoyse_, Paris, 1606.

[646] Garnier was also the author of familiar dialogues, published in French, Spanish, Italian, and German in 1656.

[647] _Lettres sur les Anglais et sur les Français_ (end of seventeenth century), 1725, p. 305.

[648] Another grammar specially intended for the use of strangers was _Le vray orthographe françois contenant les reigles et preceptes infallibles pour se rendre certain, correct et parfait a bien parler françois, tres utile et necessaire tant aux françois qu'estrangers. Par le sieur de Palliot secretaire ordinaire de la chambre du roy._ 1608.

[649] Gailhard, _op. cit._ p. 33.

[650] _Method for Travell_, 1598.

[651] _Records of the English Catholics_, i. pp. 275 _et sqq._; F. C. Petre, _English Colleges and Convents established on the Continent ..._, Norwich, 1849; G. Cardon, _La Fondation de l'Université de Douai_, Paris, 1802.

[652] Cp. p. 343 _infra_.

[653] Cp. account by M. Nicolas, in _Bulletin de la société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français_, iv. pp. 503 _sqq._ and pp. 582 _sqq._ Twenty-five such colleges are named.

[654] _Bulletin_, i. p. 301; ii. pp. 43, 303, 354 _sqq._; also articles in vols. iii., iv., v., vi., ix., and Bourchenin's _Études sur les Académies Protestantes_.

[655] Suppressed as early as 1620.

[656] Driven from Scotland, in many cases, by James I.'s attempt to introduce the English Liturgy into the Scottish churches. Robert Monteith, author of the _Histoire des Troubles de la Grande Bretagne_, was professor of philosophy at Saumur for four years (_Dict. Nat. Biog._).

[657] He composed in French _A faithful and familiar exposition of Ecclesiastes_, Geneva, 1557; cp. _Dict. Nat. Biog._, ad nom.

[658] Cp. Nicolas, _Histoire de l'ancienne Académie de Montauban_, Montauban, 1885.

[659] There was an early Academy at Lausanne which emigrated to Geneva and assured the latter's success (1559); cp. H. Vuilleumier, _L'Académie de Lausanne_, Lausanne, 1891.

[660] _Essai de remarques particulières sur la langue françoise pour la ville de Genève_, 1691. Quoted by Borgeaud, _Histoire de l'Université de Genève_, 1900, p. 445.

[661] C. Borgeaud, _op. cit._

[662] They were united at Nîmes in 1617, and finally suppressed in 1644.

[663] Pattison, _Isaac Casaubon_, Oxford, 1892, pp. 40-42, 155. On the English at Geneva, cp. _ibid._ p. 20.

[664] _Autobiography_, ed. Sir S. Lee (2nd ed., 1906), p. 56.

[665] T. Scot, _Philomythie_, London, 1622.

[666] _Satyra_ (addressed to Ben Jonson), 1608. _Poems of Lord Herbert of Cherbury_, ed. J. Churton Collins, London, 1881.

[667] _Henry VIII._, Act I. Sc. 3.

[668] A. T. Thomson, _Memoirs of the Court of Henry VIII._, London, 1826, i. p. 259.

[669] Epigram by Sir Th. More: translated from Latin by J. H. Marsden, _Philomorus_, 2nd ed., 1878, p. 222.

[670] _English Monsieur: Works_, London, 1875, viii. p. 190. Cp. other satires and epigrams of the time: Hall, _Satires_, lib. iii. satire 7; _Skialetheia_, 1598, No. 27; H. Parrot, _Laquei_, 1613, No. 207; _Scourge of Villanie_, ed. Grosart, 1879, p. 158.

[671] H. Glapthorne, "The Ladies' Privilege," _Plays and Poems_, 1874, ii. pp. 81 _sqq._ It was sometimes the good fortune of the gallant to "live like a king," "teaching tongues" (T. Scot, _Philomythie_, 1622).

[672] 1510? Colophon: "Here endeth this treatise made of a galaunt. Emprinted at London in the Flete St. at the sygne of the sonne by Wynkyn de Worde." Alex. Barclay, Andrew Borde, Skelton and others, all satirize the mania for French fashions. Every opportunity of getting the latest French fashion was eagerly seized. Thus Lady Lisle, wife of Henry VIII.'s deputy at Calais, constantly sent her friends in England articles of dress "such as the French ladies wear" (_Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, i. 3892). Moryson says the English are "more light than the lightest French."

[673] Purchas, _Pilgrimes_, 1625.

[674] Sylvester, _Lacrymae Lacrymarum: Works_ (ed. Grosart), ii. p. 278.

[675] Sir T. Overbury, _Characters_, 1614: "The Affected Traveller."

[676] George Pettie, _Civile Conversation_, 1586 (preface to translation of Guazzo's work).

[677] _As You Like It_, Act IV. Sc. 1.

[678] Nash, _Pierce Pennilesse_, quoted by J. J. Jusserand, _The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare_, 1899, p. 322.

[679] Wilson, _Arte of Rhetorique_ (1553), ed. G. H. Mair, 1909, p. 162.

[680] Hall, _Quo Vadis_, 1617.

[681] Humphrey, _The Nobles or of Nobilitye_, London, 1563.

[682] Overbury, _Characters_, 1614.

[683] _The Unfortunate Traveller_ (1587), Works, ed. McKerrow, ii. p. 300.

[684] _Letters_ (1618), ed. Warner, _Epistolary Curiosities_, 1818, p. 3.