the two sexes. Women were brought to encounter male wits, sometimes
to conquer, always to improve them. The title to enter was, worth
joined with ability. The etiquette was pedantically strict, as may be
imagined by the case of Voiture, who, on one occasion, after conducting
Julie through a suite of rooms, kissed her hand on parting from her,
and was very near being expelled for ever from Rambouillet, as the
reward of his temerity. Voiture subsequently went to Africa. On his
return, he was not admitted to the illustrious circle, but on condition
that he narrated his adventures, and to these the delighted assembly
listened, all attired as gods and goddesses, and gravely addressing
each other as such. Madame de Rambouillet presided over all as Diana,
and the company did her abundant homage. This, it is true, was for the
nonce; but there was a permanent travesty notwithstanding. It was the
weak point of this assembly that not only was every member of it called
by a feigned, generally a Greek, name, but the same rule was applied
to most men and things beyond it; nay, the very oaths, for there were
little expletives occasionally fired off in ecstatic moments, were all
by the heathen gods. Thus, as a sample, France was _Greece_. Paris was
_Athens_; and the Place Royale was only known at Rambouillet as the
_Place Dorique_. The name of Madame de Rambouillet was _Arthemise_;
that of Mademoiselle de Scudery was _Aganippe_; and _Thessalonica_
was the purified cognomen of the Duchess de Tremouille. But out of
such childishness resulted great good, notwithstanding that Molière
laughed, and that the Academie derided Corneille and all others of the
innovating coterie. The times were coarse; things, whatever they might
be, were called by their names; ears polite experienced offence, and at
Rambouillet periphrasis was called upon to express what the language
otherwise conveyed offensively by the medium of a single word. The
idea was good, although it was abused. Of its quality some conjecture
may be formed by one or two brief examples; and I may add, by the way,
that the French Academy ended by adopting many of the terms which it at
first refused to acknowledge. Popularity had been given to much of the
remainder, and thus a great portion of the vocabulary of Rambouillet
has become idiomatic French. “Modeste,” “friponne,” and “secrète,” were
names given to the under-garments of ladies, which we now should not be
afraid to specify. The sun was the “amiable illuminator;” to “fulfil
the desire which the chair had to embrace you,” was simply to “sit
down.” Horses were “plushed coursers;” a carriage was “four cornices,”
and chairmen were “baptized mules.” A bed was the “old dreamer;” a hat,
the “buckler against weather;” to laugh was to “lose your gravity;”
dinner was the “meridional necessity;” the ear was the “organ, or the
gate of hearing;” and the “throne of modesty” was the polished phrase
for a fair young cheek. There is nothing very edifying in all this,
it is true; but the fashion set people thinking, and good ensued. Old
indelicacies disappeared, and the general, spoken language was refined.
If any greater mental purity ensued from the change, I can scarcely
give the credit of it to the party at Rambouillet, for, with all their
proclaimed refinement, their nicety was of the kind described in the
well-known maxim of the Dean of St. Patrick.
One of the most remarkable men in the circle of Rambouillet, was the
Marquis de Salles, Knight of St. Louis. He was the second son of the
Duke de Montausier, and subsequently inherited the title. At the period
of his father’s death, his mother found herself with little dower but
her title. She exerted herself, however, courageously. She instructed
her children herself, brought them up in strict Huguenot principles,
and afterward sent them to the Calvinistic college at Sedan, where the
young students were famous for the arguments which they maintained
against all comers--and they were many--who sought to convert them to
popery. At an early age he acquired the profession of arms, the only
vocation for a young and portionless noble; and he shed his blood
liberally for a king who had no thanks to offer to a protestant.
His wit, refinement, and gallant bearing, made him a welcome guest
at Rambouillet, where his famous attachment to Julie, who was three
years his senior, gave matter for conversation to the whole of France.
Courageous himself, he loved courage in others, and his love for Julie
d’Angennes, was fired by the rare bravery exhibited by her in tending
a dying brother, the infectious nature of whose disorder had made even
his hired nurses desert him. In the season of mourning, the whole
court, led by royalty, went and did homage to this pearl of sisters.
But no admiration fell so sweetly upon her ear as that whispered to
her by the young Montausier. One evidence of his chivalrous gallantry
is yet extant. It is in that renowned volume called the “Guirlande
de Julie,” of which he was the projector, and in the accomplishing
of which, knights, artists, and poets, lent their willing aid. It
is superb vellum tome. The frontispiece is the garland or wreath,
from which the volume takes its name. Each subsequent page presents
one single flower from this wreath (there are eighteen of them) with
verses in honor of Julie, composed by a dozen and a half of very
insipid poets. This volume was sold some years ago to Madame D’Uzes, a
descendant of the family, when its cost amounted to nearly one thousand
francs per page.
As everything was singular at Rambouillet, so of course was the wooing
of Julie and her knight. It was very “long a-doing,” and we doubt if in
the years of restrained ardor, of fabulous constancy, of reserve, and
sad yet pleasing anguish, the lover ever dared to kiss the hand of his
mistress, or even to speak of marriage, but by a diplomatic paraphrase.
The goddesses of Rambouillet entertained an eloquent horror of the
gross indelicacy of such unions, for which Molière has whipped them
with a light but cutting scourge. The lover, moreover, was a Huguenot.
What was he to do? Like a true knight he rushed to the field, was
the hero of two brilliant campaigns, and then wooed her as knight of
half-a-dozen new orders, marechal-du-camp, and Governor of Alsatia.
The nymph was still coy. The knight again buckled on his armor, and in
the mêlée at Dettingen was captured by the foe. After a two months’
detention, he was ransomed by his mother, for two thousand crowns. He
re-entered Rambouillet lieutenant-general of the armies of France, and
he asked for the recompense of his fourteen years of constancy and
patience. Julie was shocked, for she only thought how brief had been
the period of their acquaintance. At length the marquis made profession
of Romanism, and thereby purchased the double aid of the church and
the throne. The king, the queen, Cardinal Mazarin, and a host of less
influential members, besought her to relent, and the shy beauty at
length reluctantly surrendered. The marriage took place in 1645, and
Julie was then within sight of forty years of age. The young chevaliers
and wits had, you may be sure, much to say thereupon. The elder _beaux
esprit_ looked admiringly; but a world of whispered wickedness went on
among them, nevertheless.
Montausier, for he now was duke and knight of the Holy Ghost, became
the reigning sovereign over the literary circle at Rambouillet, during
the declining years of Julie’s mother. Catherine died in 1665, after
a long retirement, and almost forgotten by the sons of those whom she
once delighted to honor. The most delicate and the most difficult
public employment ever held by the duke, was that of governor to the
dauphin. This office he filled with singular ability. He selected
Bossuet and Huet to instruct the young prince in the theoretical wisdom
of books, but the practical teaching was imparted by himself. Many a
morning saw the governor and his pupil issue from the gilded gates of
Versailles to take a course of popular study among the cottages and
peasantry of the environs.
The heart of the true knight was shattered by the death of Julie in
1671, at the age of sixty-four. He survived her nineteen years. They
were passed in sorrow, but also in continual active usefulness; and
when, at length, in 1690, the grave of his beloved wife opened to
receive him, Flechier pronounced a fitting funeral oration over both.
The daughter and only surviving child of this distinguished pair
gave, with her hand, the lordship of Rambouillet to the Duc d’Uzes,
“Chevalier de l’ordre du Saint Esprit.” The knightly family of
D’Angennes had held it for three centuries. It was in 1706 destined to
become royal. Louis XIV. then purchased it for the Count of Toulouse,
legitimatized son of himself and Madame de Montespan. This count was
knight and Grand Admiral of France, at the age of five years. In 1704,
he had just completed his twenty-fifth year. He is famous for having
encountered the fleet commanded by Rook and Shovel, after the capture
of Gibraltar, and for having what the cautious Russian generals call,
“withdrawn out of range,” when he found himself on the point of being
utterly beaten. He behaved himself as bravely as any knight could have
done; but the government was not satisfied with him. Pontchartrain, the
Minister of Marine, recalled him, sent him to Rambouillet, and left him
there to shoot rabbits, and like Diocletian, raise cabbages.
His son and successor, who was the great Duke de Penthièvre, commenced
his knighthood early. He was even made Grand Admiral of France before
he knew salt water from fresh. He studied naval tactics as Uncle Toby
and the corporal fought their old battles--namely, with toy batteries.
In the duke’s case, it was, moreover, with little vessels and small
sailors all afloat in a miniature fish-pond, made to represent, for the
nonce, the mighty and boundless deep. This grand admiral never ventured
on the ocean, but he bore himself chivalrously on the bloody field of
Dettingen, and he won imperishable laurels by his valor at Fontenoy.
For such scenes and their glories, however, the _preux chevalier_ cared
but little. Ere the French _Te Deum_ was sung upon the last-named
field, he hastened back to his happy hearth at home. Rambouillet was
then the abiding-place of all the virtues. There the home-loving knight
read the Scriptures while the duchess sat at his side making garments
for the poor. There, the Chevalier Florian, his secretary and friend,
meditated those graceful rhymes and that harmonious prose, in which
human nature is in pretty masquerade, walking about like Watteau’s
figures, in vizors, brocades, high heels, and farthingales. When the
duchess died in child-birth, of her sixth child, her husband withdrew
to La Trappe where, among other ex-soldiers, he for weeks prayed and
slept upon the bare ground. Five out of his children died early. Among
them was the chivalrous but intemperate Prince de Lamballe, who died
soon after his union with the unhappy princess who fell a victim to
those fierce French revolutionists--who were ordinarily so amiable,
according to M. Louis Blanc, that they were never so delighted as when
they could rescue a human being from death.
It was by permission of the duke, who refused to sell his house,
that Louis XV. built in the adjacent forest the hunting-lodge of St.
Hubert. An assemblage of kings, courtiers, knights and ladies there
met, at whose doings the good saint would have blushed, could he have
witnessed them. One night the glittering crowd had galloped there for a
carouse, when discovery was made that the materials for supper had been
forgotten, or left behind at Versailles. “Let us go to Penthièvre!” was
the universal cry; but the king looked grave at the proposition. Hunger
and the universal opposition, however, overcame him. Forth the famished
revellers issued, and played a _reveillée_ on the gates of Rambouillet
loud enough to have startled the seven sleepers. “Penthièvre is
in bed!” said one. “He is conning his breviary!” sneered another.
“Gentlemen, he _is_, probably, at prayers,” said the king, who, like an
Athenian, could applaud the virtue which he failed to practise. “Let
us withdraw,” added the exemplary royal head of the order of the Holy
Ghost. “If we do,” remarked Madame du Barry, “I shall die of hunger;
let us knock again.” To the storm which now beset the gates, the latter
yielded; and as they swung open, they disclosed the duke, who, girt
in a white apron, and with a ladle in his hand, received his visiters
with the announcement that he was engaged in helping to make soup for
the poor. The monarch and his followers declared that no poor could
be more in need of soup than they were. They accordingly seized the
welcome supply, devoured it with the appetite of those for whom it was
intended, and paid the grave knight who was their host, in the false
coin of pointless jokes. How that host contrasted with his royal guest,
may be seen in the fact told of him, when a poor woman kissed his
hand, and asked a favor as he was passing in a religious procession.
“In order of religion before God,” said he, “I am your brother. In all
other cases, for ever your friend.” The Order of the Holy Ghost never
had a more enlightened member than he.
In 1785 Louis XVI. in some sort compelled him to part with Rambouillet
for sixteen million of francs. He retired to Eu, taking with him the
bodies of the dead he had loved when living. There were nine of that
silent company; and as the Duke passed with them on his sad and silent
way, the clouds wept over them, and the people crowded the long line of
road, paying their homage in honest tears.
Then came that revolutionary deluge which swept from Rambouillet the
head of the order of the Holy Ghost, and the entire chapter with him;
and which dragged from the mead and the dairy the queen and princesses,
whose pastime it was to milk the cows in fancy dresses. The Duke de
Penthièvre died of the Revolution, yet not through personal violence
offered to himself. The murder of his daughter-in-law, the Princess
de Lamballe, was the last fatal stroke; and he died forgiving her
assassins and his own.
During the first Republic there was nothing more warlike at Rambouillet
than the merino flocks which had been introduced by Louis XVI. for the
great benefit of his successors. A scene of some interest occurred
there in the last days of the empire.
On the 27th of March, 1814, the empress Maria Louisa with the King of
Rome in her arms, his silver-gray jacket bearing those ribboned emblems
of chivalry which may still be seen upon it at the Louvre, sought
shelter there, while she awaited the issue of the bloody struggle which
her own father was maintaining against her husband. The empress passed
three days at Rambouillet, solacing her majestic anguish by angling for
carp. Ultimately, the Emperor of Austria entered the hall where his
imperial son-in-law had made so many Knights of the Legion of Honor,
to carry off his daughter and the disinherited heir. As the three sat
that night together before the wood-fire, the Arch-Duchess Maria-Louisa
talked about the teeth of the ex-king of Rome, while two thousand
Austrian soldiers kept watch about the palace.
The gates had again to be open to a fugitive. On the last of the “three
glorious days” of July a poor, pale, palsied fugitive rushed into
the chateau, obtained, not easily, a glass of water and a crust, and
forthwith hurried on to meet captivity at last. This was the Prince
de Polignac. Two hours after he had left came the old monarch Charles
X., covered with dust, dropping tears like rain, bewildered with past
memories and present realities, and loudly begging for food for the two
“children of France,” the offspring of his favorite son, the Duke de
Berri. In his own palace a king of France was compelled to surrender
his own service of plate, before the village would sell him bread in
return. When refreshed therewith, he had strength to abdicate in favor
of his son, the Duke d’Angoulême, who at once resigned in favor of his
nephew the Duke de Bordeaux; and this done, the whole party passed by
easy stages into an inglorious exile. With them was extinguished the
Order of the Holy Ghost; and never since that day have the emblematic
dove and star been seen on the breast of any knight in France.
Louis Philippe would fain have appropriated Rambouillet to himself; but
the government assigned it to the nation, and let it to a phlegmatic
German, who had an ambition to sleep on the bed of kings, and could
afford to pay for the gratification of his fancy. It was on the
expiration of his lease that the house and grounds were made over to a
company of speculators, who sadly desecrated fair Julie’s throne. The
present sovereign of France has given it a worthy occupation. It is now
an asylum and a school for the children of the brave. It began as the
cradle of knights; and the orphans of those who were as brave as any
of the chevaliers of old now find a refuge at the old hearth of the
Knights of Amaury.
I can well conclude, that, by this time, my readers may be weary of
foreign scenes and incidents, as we are of real personages. May I
venture then, for the sake of variety, to ask them to accompany me “to
the well-trod stage, anon?” There I will treat, to the best of my poor
ability, of Stage Knights generally; and first, of the greatest of them
all--Sir John Falstaff.
SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.
“I accept that heart
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase.”--HEYWOOD.
Henry, Earl of Richmond, always creates a favorable impression on young
people who see him, for the first time, without knowing much about him,
previously, at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy of Richard the Third.
This is a far higher degree of favor than he merited, for Henry was a
very indifferent personage indeed. On the other hand Sir John Falstaff
has had injustice done him by the actors; and of Shakespeare’s jolly
old _gentleman_ they have made what, down to Macklin’s times, they made
of Shylock, a mere mountebank.
In the very first scene, in the first part of Henry IV., when the
Prince and Sir John appear in company, the knight is, by far, a more
accomplished gentleman than the heir-apparent, for he speaks more
refinedly of phrase, and indeed seldom indulges in scurrilous epithets,
until provoked. Strong language is the result of his infirmity of
nature, not of vicious inclination. Lord Castlereagh was not accounted
the less a gentleman for using, as he _could_ do, very unsavory phrases
occasionally.
The Prince is the first to rail, while Sir John shows his breeding and,
I will add, his reading, by quoting poetry. But, if he is poetical,
still more is he philosophical. How gravely does he beseech Hal to
trouble him no more with vanity! And what a censure does the heavy
philosopher fling at the King’s son, when he tells the latter that he
was hurt to hear the wise remarks of a lord of the council touching
that son’s conduct! The fault of the knight is, that he is easily led
away into evil; a common weakness with good-natured people. It is only
since he held fellowship with the Prince, that the fat follower of the
latter had become knowing in evil, and Heaven help him, little better,
as he says, than one of the wicked. Nay, he has enough of orthodoxy
left to elicit praise, even from the editor of the _Record_. “O, if a
man were to be saved by merit,” he exclaims, “what hole in hell were
hot enough to hold him!”
He robs on the highway, it will be said. Well, let us not be too
ready to doubt his gentility on that account. There was many a noble
cut-purse in the grand gallery at Versailles, when it was most crowded;
and George Prince of Wales once nearly lost the diamond-hilt of his
sword, at one of his royal mother’s “drawing-rooms.” The offenders here
were but petty-larceny rascals, compared with Falstaff on the highway.
That he defrauded the King’s exchequer is, certainly, not to be denied.
But again, let us not be too hasty to condemn good men with little
foibles. Recollect that St. Francis de Sales very often cheated at
cards.
Robbery on the highway was, after all, only, as I may call it, a rag of
knighthood. Falstaff robbed in good company. It was his vocation. It
was the fashion. It was an aristocratic pastime. Young blood would have
it so; and Sir John was a boy with the boys. In more recent times, your
young noble, of small wit and too ample leisure, flings stale eggs at
unsuspecting citizens, makes a hell of his quarters, if he be military,
and breaks the necks of stage-managers.
Sir John was, doubtless, one of those of whom Gadshill speaks as doing
the robbing profession some grace for mere sport’s sake. “I am joined,”
says Gadshill, “with no foot land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny
strikers, none of those mad mustachio, purple-hued, malt-worms, but
with nobility, and sanguinity; burgomasters, and great mongers.”
Indeed, it is matter of fact that, there were graver, if not greater
men than these among the noble thieves, “who would, if matters were
looked into, for their own credit-sake, make all whole.” There was one
at least who, for being a highway robber, made none the worse justice,
charged to administer halters to poorer thieves.
But let us return to our old friend. Poor Sir John, I doubt if he
would have gone robbing, even in the Prince’s company, only that he
was bewitched by his Royal Highness’s social qualities. But even
then, while patiently enduring all sorts of hard jokes, he is really
the Mentor of the party, and does not go to rob the travellers without
first seriously reminding the gentlemen of the road, that it was a
hanging matter. He would keep them from wrong, but as they are resolved
on evil commission he accompanies them. He has explained the law, and
he is not too proud to share the profits.
He is brave, too, despite all his detractors! When the Prince and
Poins, in disguise, set upon the gentle robbers, as they are sharing
their booty, Falstaff is the only one who is described as giving “a
blow or two,” before he imitates “the rest,” and runs away. When he
attacked the travellers he was content to fight his man; there were
four to four. And as to the imaginative description of the assault
given by Falstaff, I believe it to have been uttered in joke and gayety
of heart. I have implicit faith in the assertion, that he knew the
disguised parties as well as their mothers did. See how readily he
detects the Prince and Poins, when they are disguised as “drawers” at
the inn in Eastcheap. If Falstaff was right in the latter case, when
he told the Prince that he, Falstaff, was a gentleman, I think, too,
he had as sufficient authority for saying to Hal, “Thou _knowest_ I am
as valiant as Hercules.” I can not believe otherwise of a man whose
taste was so little vitiated that he could at once detect when there
was “lime” in his sack, and who no sooner hears that the state is in
danger, than he suggests to the young Prince that he _must_ to court.
His obesity may be suspected as not being the fruit of much temperance,
but there is a Cardinal Archbishop in England who is the fattest man in
the fifty-two counties, and why may we not conclude in both cases, that
it is as Falstaff says, and that sighing and grief blow up a man like a
bladder?
Then, only consider the reproof which Falstaff addresses to the Prince,
speaking in the character of King to that illustrious scapegrace.
Wisdom more austere, or graver condemnation of excess, could hardly be
uttered by the whole college of cardinals, at any time. The prince is
a mere plagiarist from the knight, and when he accuses the latter of
being given to licentious ways, with what respectful humility does the
old man plead guilty to his years, but “saving your reverence,” not to
the vices which are said to accompany them?
Not that he is perfect, or would boast of being so. “He _has had_,” he
says touchingly, “a true faith and a good conscience, but their date
is out.” How ill is he requited by the Prince, in whose service he has
lost these jewels, when his Highness remarks, before setting out to
the field, “I’ll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know
his death will be a charge of fourscore.” And this is said of one who
has forgotten what the inside of a church is like through keeping this
Prince’s villanous company; till when, he had been “as virtuously given
as a gentleman need be.” What he considers as the requisite practice of
a gentleman, is explained by Falstaff in his low estate, and not in the
spirit which moved him when he “lived well and in good compass.”
But there is a Nemesis at every man’s shoulder, and if Falstaff was
cavalierly careless enough to run up a score at the Boar’s Head, and
to accept even a present of Holland shirts, which he ungratefully
designates as “filthy dowlas,” the way in which he was _dunned_
must have been harsh to the feelings of a knight and a gentleman.
In reviewing his gallantries and his extravagances, we must not,
in justice to him, forget that he was a bachelor. If he degraded
himself, he inflicted misery on no Lady Falstaff at home. Heroes have
been buried, with whole nations for mourners, whose offences in this
worse respect have been forgotten. Not that I would apologise for the
knight’s familiarity with either the Hostess or that remarkably nice
young lady, Miss Dorothea Tearsheet. I do not know what the private
life of that Lord Chief Justice may have been who was so very merciless
in his censure upon the knight; but I do know that there have been
luminaries as brilliant who have hidden their lights in very noisome
places and who had not Falstaff’s excuse.
I am as little embarrassed touching Sir John’s character as a soldier,
as I am about his morals. I do not indeed like to hear him acknowledge
that he has “misused the King’s press most damnably,” or that he has
pocketed “three hundred and odd pounds” by illegally releasing a
hundred and fifty men. But at this very day practices much worse than
this are of constant observance in the Russian service, where officers
and officials, whose high-sounding names “exeunt in off,” rob the Czar
daily, and are decorated with the Order of St. Catherine.