[120] Béroalde de Verville: _Le Moyen de Parvenir_: Paris, Gamier
Frères; also _Fantastic Tales or The Way to Attain_: translated
by Arthur Machen: Carbonnek, 1890. Our extract is a blend of both
versions, though we have adhered more closely than Machen to the
original text. _Vide_ also _Excursus_ to this story.
Once on a time there lived alone in a lodging near St. Ives a young
man. ‘Twas at the time when the debate was running high ‘twixt the
monks and the ministers whether ‘twere better to say: “Blessed are they
that have dined well,” or, “Blessed are they that laugh.” The young man
took but scant interest in these theological discussions, and devoted
his attention to the maid, who was a fine enough young thing, though
somewhat green. He would talk with her coolly and discreetly, and one
day said:
“Thou art from the country, little friend?”
“Truly, sir.”
“I was assured of it and shall love thee none the less: thou art a good
girl and a good housekeeper.”
“I thank thee kindly, sir.”
“Well, little friend, since I love thee so much, and that thou mayst
serve us well, I must e’en tell thee, for thine own good profit, of a
certain ill that befalleth country maids when they come to dwell in the
town; ‘tis that small eggs do grow in their bellies and harden there,
so that these poor maids have to show their posteriors to the doctor. I
would grieve shouldst thou come to that, and it shall not be so an thou
wilt hear me. I will do something for thee, and I see that ‘tis full
time to begin, for, by thy colour, I can tell that the eggs are already
there.”
“Indeed, sir, I am greatly beholden, for truly I am not what I was.”
“To-morrow morning I will give thee something for this malady.”
When morning came, she went to his chamber and he gave her a spoonful
of white hypocras,[121] telling her to go about her house-work and,
anon, to break her fast on a little dry bread. This treatment was
continued for two or three days, but one morning, when her mistress was
out of the way, he took hold of the maid and, laughing gently, pushed
her against the bed as if to look into her mouth.
[121] An infusion of cinnamon bark, soft almonds, and a little musk
and amber, in wine sweetened with sugar. The word is probably derived
from Hippocrates, the famous Greek doctor.
“Alas! sir! what wouldst do?” she cried.
“I shall do thee no ill; I would break an egg which is fast hardening.”
She let him do it, and he did it so well that he put live flesh in live
flesh.[122] So he finished as soon as he had begun, and she found the
business so much to her liking, although he had cooked her somewhat,
that she came back again and again to have the eggs broken; in sooth,
she had wished for a belly in which one might break eggs for an
hundred years without doing aught else.
[122] We omit the two interjections to be found here in the original
text, not because they are highly flavoured, but simply because they
have no bearing on the narrative. Nor do they merit translation in a
note.
One day she loitered over long at this pleasant pursuit, and her
mistress fell to scolding her when she descended, saying:
“Thou sly wench! Thou hast been in mischief with that man above! Idiot!
Little hussy! What hast been about up there?”
“Naught, madam. Be not wroth; ‘tis as I shall tell thee.”
“Thou hast been after no good with that man above.”
“Nay, madam, thou dost him wrong; he is the most honest man in the
world. I had eggs in my belly, and he broke them for me.”
“Eggs, thou slut! what eggs?”
“Behold, madam, if ‘tis not so; I will lift my smock; thou canst see
my front part, which is yet all damp with the white of the eggs, which
came out when he broke them.”
_EXCURSUS_ to _THE BREAKER OF EGGS_.
_Le Moyen de Parvenir_ of Béroalde de Verville, Canon of St. Gatien
at Tours, once a Hugenot, then a Catholic, finally “neither one nor
the other,”[123] is a work little known to the English reader, be he
student or bibliophile. The cause is not far to seek; no _complete_ and
_unexpurgated_ English translation of this much censured book exists.
Machen’s rendering, while claiming to be the first in our language, is
in no sense full and literal, although free and full-flavoured; the
translator, as he admits in his humourous preface, “has been forced,
much to his sorrow, to weed out some strongly-scented flowers from this
Canonical Garden.” His text, indeed, shows many notable omissions, in
particular the more licentious asides and interjections which have no
actual bearing on the stories; further, there are sundry additions not
found in the old French text--“odd scraps from his own workshop,” as
Machen terms them.
[123] _Dissertation_ de Bernard de la Monnoye sur _Le Moyen de
Parvenir_.
For the student, then, there are: Machen’s delightful (but _partial_)
translation, limited to 500 numbered copies and now a rare book,[124]
and numerous editions in _old_ French, some expurgated, and all
difficult of understanding where the average English reader is
concerned. As we note in the preface to Garnier’s latest issue, the
work, for the greater part, “is an enigma to modern readers and
contains a crowd of obscurities ... it would need volume after volume
to explain and comment upon everything that calls for explanation and
comment.”
[124] An experienced auctioneer of books recently told us that until
December last he had never met with a copy. Strangely enough, two
copies were sold in a week of that month, one, in every respect as
clean and perfect as when printed over thirty years ago, realising
£4.15s. We believe that a few extra copies on large paper still exist,
but the booksellers ask a prohibitive price for them.
_The Way to Attain_ or _The Right Way with Women_ (the title of de
Verville’s book has suffered various translations) would seem to have
a dual personality; one: a clear-cut collection of stories, witty,
realistic, free, Rabelaisian, or obscene as you choose to term them;
another: the same stories, enmeshed in a mass of innuendo, obscure
sayings, licentious and scatalogical asides, and--sometimes--almost
meaningless phraseology. The trouble is to separate the grain from
the chaff, the stories from the irrelevant verbiage--not that the
latter is not often highly entertaining. Bernard de la Monnoye, in his
_Dissertation_ (_cit. sup._), bears out our criticism when explaining
the plan of the book. “The author supposes a sort of general banquet,”
he writes, “where, without regard for rank or degree, he introduces
persons of every kind and age, scallawags for the most part, who, with
no object but their own amusement, talk with the utmost freedom, and
passing almost imperceptibly from subject to subject, cause the stories
to be lost to sight. In fact, they are so jumbled up in the book that
one is hard put to find them....”
Both extracts from _The Way to Attain_ given in this volume (Coypeau
and His Thread and The Breaker of Eggs) are told without interruption
in the original French text, but each is introduced in the most
haphazard fashion, preceded and followed by a veritable welter of
inconsequent remarks; if Machen found it necessary to weed out the most
strongly scented flowers from the Canonical garden, the student will
find it equally necessary to dig before he finds the best.
There are other good things, however, besides the stories in _The Way
to Attain_. While many of the asides and interjections are gross,
vulgar, and, seemingly, pointless, others show a pretty and pungent
wit. The canon is for ever having a thrust at his cloth, the monks, and
the nuns, and some of his criticisms are worth repeating:--
“Where there are no monks there can be no shamelessness.”
“None sit more at their ease than monks, ministers, and consecrated
folk, who, in the place of keeping the holy orders that have been given
them, make them into ordure, and leaving the orders of God take the
orders of the devil, who giveth them grace to be more lewd and whorish
than other men.”
“The women that frequent the abodes of churchmen are not their wives,
... they are first maids, then mates, then mistresses.”
“It is better to have in one’s house a wench with whom one can disport
theologically than to go about wandering from pillar to post like a
high-toby, and run the risk of getting a nip, like Cornu, who sighed as
he lay a-dying of the pox: ‘Now I begin to appreciate the beauties of
domesticity.’”
“Once on a time he was prebendary of Chartres, but he left his stall
to marry a pretty lass, and the morning after the wedding, as they lay
in bed, he said to her: ‘Now, sweetheart, thou dost see how well I love
thee, for I left my fair prebend that I might have thee.’ She replied:
‘Then thou wast a fool; thou shouldst have kept thy prebend, and had me
also.’ ... It would appear that she knew that some canons are given to
waggery.”
“Such cloisterlings, who love not women, are always ready to fish up
some ancient, stinking heresy under the pretence of discoursing against
the Reformation, talking of vices they impute to others, the which
are more tolerable than their own.... It is better to keep a wench
than to trouble the peace of Christendom, and to do the work is true
godliness, which is the reason why bishops are called fathers-in-God,
... fathers-in-God sounds better than fathers-in-law. And they are
certainly godly, that is happy; for happy, thrice happy is the father
who hath not the trouble of feeding his children.”
“He was as liberal as our bishop, who had rather give a crown to a
wench than a groat to a poor man.”
“Assuredly she is a strumpet. I saw her talking to the curate of St.
Paul’s, who had promised his rector to be discreet, and run no more
after the wenches, or at least that he would abstain during Easter
week. But Lord! he hadn’t the patience, and on Easter Monday he spoke
to his woman, and the parson saw him. When they met he told him of it,
saying: ‘I saw thee speaking to a wench. Where is thy shame? Canst not
refrain, at least during the holy season?’ ‘Pardon,’ he replied, ‘I did
but make an appointment for next week.’”[125]
[125] Our excerpts are drawn chiefly from Machen’s translation.
We have quoted sufficiently to show that amid this welter of words
there is fruit worth the plucking. The general tone of the work,
however, is coarse; if the canon desired to refer to what is not
usually mentioned in the most Catholic of assemblies, he did so in
the crudest language. To our age the grossness of his obscenity seems
unnecessary; out of place; unpardonable. Is it so? The conversational
atmosphere of a present-day smoking-room would have made de Verville
blush. The old canon wrote as men in those times spoke; we of to-day
write not as we speak, but as we think we ought to speak. It is this
pitiful hypocrisy which blinds us to the fact that in _Le Moyen de
Parvenir_ we have some of the brightest tales and sayings ever penned
by human hand.
HERE ENDS THE FIRST VOLUME
OF ANTHOLOGICA RARISSIMA:
THE WAY OF A VIRGIN:
PRINTED IN LONDON
FOR MEMBERS OF
THE BROVAN
SOCIETY IN
MCMXXII.
* * * * *