Part 7 (1/2)

(British Museum, _Add. MSS._ 4288, fol. 229. Printed by J. Churton Collins and by Ballantyne.)

_Letter to Joseph Craddock_ (1773)

FERNEY, _October_ 9, 1773.

Sr

Thanks to your muse a foreign copper s.h.i.+nes Turn'd in to gold, and coin'd in sterling lines.

You have done too much honour to an old sick man of eighty.--I am with the most sincere esteem and grat.i.tude, Sir, your obedient servant,

VOLTAIRE.

(Ballantyne, _Voltaire's Visit to England_, p. 69.)

[With Voltaire these _Specimens_ must end. To quote Pere Le Courayer, Letourneur, Suard, or Baron D'Holbach would be unduly to prolong an argument that should stop on the threshold of the eighteenth century.]

FOOTNOTES:

[101] For specimens of French written by Englishmen, see _Anglais et Francais au XVIIe Siecle_, ch. iv.

[102] Charles I.

[103] _Cal. Clarendon State Papers_, ii., No. 2214. See also Eva Scott, _King in Exile_, p. 9.

[104] In Oxford.

[105] _Spectator_, No. 288, 30th January 1712.

CHAPTER IV

GALLOMANIA IN ENGLAND (1600-85)

The English have always been divided between a wish to admire and a tendency to detest us. France is for her neighbour a coquette whimsical enough to deserve to be beaten and loved at the same time. The initial misunderstanding between the two nations endures through ages, sometimes threatening open war, more seldom ready to be cleared up. A few miles of deep sea cuts Great Britain off from the rest of Europe. As England has retained no possessions on the Continent, no intermediary race has sprung up, as is the case with most of the Western Powers on their borderlands.

Thus the French and Germans are linked together by the Flemings, Alsatians, and Swiss; the Savoyards and Corsicans are a cross between the French and the Italians; and before reaching Spain, a Frenchman must traverse vast tracts of land inhabited by Basques and Catalans; but a few hours' sail from Calais to Dover, from Rotterdam or Antwerp to Harwich will bring a traveller from the Continent into an entirely new world. To avoid disagreements, in the past infinite tact and patience were requisite on both sides of the Channel: our indiscreet friends made us unpopular with their fellow-countrymen. The story of English gallomania, which is amusing enough, is thus also instructive, as a few episodes will show.[106]

In the sixteenth century, Italy, just emerging from her glorious Renaissance, charmed England; but common interests, political and economical necessities, a degree of civilisation almost the same, prevented her from neglecting us altogether. In the following century, the marriage of Charles I. with a daughter of Henri IV. made French fas.h.i.+ons acceptable for a time in Whitehall. But misfortune overtook the Stuarts. The Great Rebellion broke out, Charles I. was put to death and his son exiled. During over twelve years, the future King of England lived in French-speaking countries; when restored to his throne, he could not help bringing back our fas.h.i.+ons, literature, manners of thinking and doing; of all the Kings of England, from Plantagenets to Edward VII., Charles II., in spite of some diplomatic reserve and occasional outbursts of insularity, proved the most amenable to French influence: perhaps that is why his popularity was so great; the English would admire France without stint, if France were but her finest colony.

If the courtiers imitated French manners to please the monarch, the citizens did so to copy the courtiers; so that, about 1632 and 1670, all the frivolous, unreflective idlers that England numbered, were bent on appearing French. Few examples are more striking of the power of the curious desire that possesses ordinary mankind to astonish simple souls by aping the eccentricities of the higher cla.s.ses.

The mania was carefully studied by contemporary writers: they describe the morbid symptoms with so much accuracy and minuteness as to render all conjectures superfluous.

The disease was developed chiefly by travelling. Attracted by the mildness of a foreign climate and dazzled by the luxurious life of the n.o.bles there, the young Englishman feels estranged from his native land and the rude simplicity of his home. When he comes back, the contrast between his new ideas and his old surroundings, the conflict waged in his own heart between Continental influence and insularity, are fit themes for a tragedy or at least a tragi-comedy. The character of the frenchified Englishman appears several times on the stage in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_, in Marston's _What you Will_, in Davenant's _Fair Favourite_. Others, again, picture the young fop just back from Paris, clad in strange garments, praising foreign manners, so affected as to disregard his mother-tongue.

About 1609 or 1610, Beaumont and Fletcher sketch the man's character. ”The dangers of the merciless Channel 'twixt Dover and Calais, five long hours'

sail, with three poor weeks' victuals. Then to land dumb, unable to inquire for an English host, to remove from city to city, by most chargeable post-horse, like one that rode in quest of his mother-tongue. And all these almost invincible labours performed for your mistress, to be in danger to forsake her, and to put on new allegiance to some French lady, who is content to change language with your laughter, and after your whole year spent in tennis and broken speech, to stand to the hazard of being laughed at, at your return, and have tales made on you by the chamber-maids.”[107]

As a fervid preacher finds hearers, so the traveller induces some of his friends to share his mania. The infection spreads in spite of ridicule:

”Would you believe, when you this monsieur see, That his whole body should speake French, not he?