Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Vol 1

by Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(This list is simply a selection from the many editions of the works of Brantôme in French and German. There are also texts in Spanish and Italian. A complete bibliography would fill many pages and would not be essential to the present text.)

EDITIONS

—Leyde, 1666, chez Sambix le jeune, 2 vol. in-12. Le titre portait. “Vies des dames galantes.”

—Leyde, 1666, chez Jean de la Tourterelle, 2 vol. in-12. Le titre portait. “Mémoires de messire Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, contenans les vies des dames galantes de son temps.”

—Leyde, 1722, chez Jean de la Tourterelle, 2 vol. in-12. Titre rouge et noir. Mème titre que dans l’édition précédente et mêmes fautes.

—Londres, 1739, Wood et S. Palmer, 2 vol. in-12, titre rouge et noir. “Mémoires de messire Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, contenant les vies des dames galantes de son temps.” Édition copiée sur les précédentes.

—La Haye, 1740, 15 vol. in-12. Cette édition est de Le Duchat, Lancelot et Prosper Marchand, et les remarques critiques ont servi aux éditions postérieures.

—Londres, 1779, aux dépens du libraire, 15 vol. in-8^o. “Œuvres du seigneur de Brantôme, nouvelle édition considérablement augmentée, accompagnée de remarques historiques et critiques et distribuée, dans un meilleur ordre.” Les Dames galantes occupent les tomes III et IV.

—Paris, 1822, Foucault, 8 vol. in-8^o. “Œuvres complétes du seigneur de Brantôme, accompagnées de remarques historiques et critiques. Nouvelle édition collationnée sur les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi.” (Monmerqué). Les Dames galantes occupent le VII^e vol.

—Paris, 1834, Ledoux, 2 vol. in-8^o. “Les Dames galantes, par le seigneur de Brantôme, nouvelle édition avec une préface de M. Ph. Chasles.” Édition qui a beaucop et mal profité de l’édition précédente.

—Paris, 1841–1869, Garnier frères, 1 vol. in-18. Édition populaire plusieurs fois réimprimée et faite d’après l’édition de 1740.

—Paris, 1857, A. Delahays, 1 vol. in-12. “Œuvres de Brantôme, nouvelle édition revue d’après les meilleurs textes, avec une préface historique et critique par H. Vigneau. Vies des Dames galantes.” Édition faite d’après les éditions antéricures. Les notes sont bonnes.

Il a été fait une nouvelle édition de ce travail en 1857, chez Delahays, en in-18.

—Paris, 1876, Renouard, libraire de la Société de l’histoire de France. “Œuvres complètes de Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, publiées d’après les manuscrits, avec variantes et fragments inédits, pour la Société de l’histoire de France, par Ludovic Lalanne. Tome neuvième. Des Dames” (suite). Un gros vol. in-8 de 743 pages, titre non compris.

Cette édition est la première qui indique les sources auxquelles Brantôme a puisé ses historiettes. M. Lalanne n’a laissé aucun passage sans une explication toujours courte et toujours substantielle.

—L’Œuvre du Seigneur de Brantôme. “Vie des Dames galantes.” Introduction and notes by B. de Villeneuve. Paris, 1913.

—Les Dames galantes. Publiées d’apres les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, par Henri Bouchot. 2 vols. E. Flammarion. Paris. (A very fine edition.)

—Brantôme: Das Leben der Galanten Damen. (Dionysos-Bücherei). Introduction by George Harsdörfer. 2 vols. Berlin. (The best German edition.)

—Brantôme: Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Translated from the original by A. R. Allinson. 2 vols. Paris. Carrington. 1902.

APPENDIX—A

BRANTÔME: By Arthur Tilley

Like Montaigne, Brantôme pretended to be careless of literary fame, but in reality took every pains to secure it; like Montaigne he loved digressions, gaillardes escapades, from his main theme; like Montaigne he has drawn for us, though in his case unconsciously, a portrait of himself; like Montaigne he was curious of information, fond of travel and books. But these points of similarity are after all superficial; the difference is fundamental. While Montaigne tested the world and society by the light of his shrewd common sense, Brantôme accepted them without question or reflexion. Montaigne was essentially a thinker, Brantôme was merely a reporter; Montaigne was a moralist, for Brantôme the word morality had no meaning. Montaigne criticised his age, Brantôme reflected it. That indeed is Brantôme’s chief value, that he reflects his age like a mirror, but it must be added that he reflects chiefly its more trivial, not to say its more scandalous side. He is the Suetonius of the French Renaissance.

Pierre de Bourdeille, “reverend father in God, abbé de Brantôme,” belonged to a noble and ancient family of Perigord. The precise date of his birth is uncertain, but it must be placed somewhere between 1539 and 1542. He spent his childhood with his grandmother, Louise de Vivonne, wife of the seneschal of Poitou, at the court of Margaret of Navarre, and after studying first at Paris and then at Poitiers, travelled for more than a year in Italy, returning to France at the beginning of 1560, when he made his first appearance at the court. Though he already held other benefices besides the abbey from which he took his title, he was not in orders. The next fourteen years were spent by him either in fighting on the Catholic side in the religious wars, or in attendance at the court, or in travel. In 1574 his military career came to an end, for his duties as gentleman of the chamber, to which post he had been appointed in 1568, kept him at court, frivolous, idle, and discontented. At last the refusal of Henry III. to bestow on him the promised post of governor of Perigord filled him with such fury that he determined to enter the service of Spain. But a fall from his horse, which kept him in bed for four years (1583–1587), saved him from being a renegade to his country and turned him into a man of letters.

For it was during this forced inactivity, apparently in 1584, that he began his literary labours, which he continued for the next thirty years, most of which he spent on his estate. He died in 1614, leaving a will of portentous length, in which, among other things, he charged his heirs to have his works printed en belle et grand lettre et grand volume. The charge was neglected, and it was not till 1665–1666 that an incomplete and defective edition was published at Leyden, in the Elzevir form. Previous to this, however, several copies had been made of his manuscripts, and Le Laboureur in his edition of Castelnau’s Memoirs, published in 1659, had printed long extracts.

Brantôme was a disappointed man when he wrote his memoirs. He had been an assiduous courtier for a quarter of a century and had gained nothing by it, while he had seen men whose merits he believed to be inferior to his rise to wealth and honour. But though he had the love of frivolity and the moral indifference of a true courtier, he had not his pliability. “He was violent,” says Le Laboureur, “difficult to live with and of a too unforgiving spirit.” Perhaps the best thing that can be said in his favour is that among his most intimate friends were two of the most virtuous characters of their time, Téligny, the son-in-law of Coligny, and Téligny’s brother-in-law, François de la Noue. Among his other friends were Louis de Bérenger, seigneur du Guast, who was assassinated by order of Marguerite de Valois, and above all Filippo Strozzi, the son of Piero Strozzi, who was his friend for over twenty years, and who exercised over him considerable influence.

The names by which Brantôme’s writings are generally known are not those which he himself gave them. Thus the titles Dames illustres and Dames galantes are an invention of the Leyden publisher for the Premier et Second livre des Dames. The other main division of his writings, Hommes, consisted in Brantôme’s manuscript of two volumes, the first containing the Grands capitaines, French and Spanish, and the second Les couronnels, Discours sur les duels, Rodomontades espagnoles, and a separate account of La Noue. His original manuscript was completed while Margaret was still the wife of Henry IV., that is to say before November, 1599, but some time after her divorce he made a carefully revised copy. It is upon this copy that the text of M. Lalanne’s edition is based for the first five volumes.

Regarded strictly as biographies Brantôme’s lives have slender merit, for the majority give one little or no idea of the character of the persons treated. He is at least successful with those who had in them elements of real greatness, such as Coligny and Condé. Even the long life of François de Guise, though it contains some interesting and valuable information, throws little light on Guise himself. But he gives us good superficial portraits of Charles IX., Catharine de Medici, and the Constable de Montmorency, while several of the minor lives, such as Brissac and his brother Cosse, Matignon, and Mary of Hungary, are not only amusing but hit off the characters with considerable success. One of the most entertaining is the unfinished account of his father. On the other hand the account of Margaret of Valois, though it contains some interesting details, is too ecstatic in its open-mouthed admiration to have any value as a biography. The conclusion of the account of Monluc may be quoted not only for its reference to Monluc’s conversational powers, but as throwing light on Brantôme’s own character.

Much of the interest of Brantôme’s book is to be found in his numerous digressions, for which he is constantly apologizing. Thus in the middle of the account of Montmorency we have a laudatory sketch of Michel de l’Hospital, in that of Tavannes a digression on the order of St. Michael, in that of Bellegarde an account of his own treatment by Henry III. The digressions are frequently made occasions for amusing stories, which, like Montaigne’s, are distinguished from such as Bouchet and Beroalde de Verville collected, in that they generally illustrate some trait of human character.

Like Montaigne again, Brantôme copies freely and without acknowledgment from books. Whole pages are taken from Le loyal serviteur, stories are borrowed from Rabelais, Des Periers, and the Heptameron, as well as from most of the writers dealt with in the last chapter. But Brantôme, unlike Montaigne, tries to conceal his thefts by judicious alterations, or by pretending that he heard the story himself, or even that he was a witness of the event related. J’ai ouy conter and J’ai vu are frequently in his mouth. He was doubtless chiefly influenced in these endeavours to conceal his borrowings by the same form of vanity as Montaigne, the desire to be regarded, not as a man of letters, but as a gentleman who amused himself by putting down his reminiscences on paper. It is for this reason that he tries to give a negligent and conversational air to his style. The result is that he is often ungrammatical and sometimes obscure. Yet his style, at any rate in the eyes of a foreigner, has considerable merit, and chiefly from its power of vivid presentment. For Brantôme, like other Gascons, like Montaigne and Monluc and Henry IV., saw things vividly and can make his readers see them. He has a store of expressive words and phrases such as un peu hommasse (of Mary of Hungary). A noticeable feature of his style is his love of Italian and Spanish words, reflecting in this, as in other features, the prevailing fashion of the Court.

Brantôme’s keen enjoyment of the world pageantry was seldom disturbed by inconvenient reflexion. His only quarrel with society was that the ruling powers were blind to his own merits. He thought the duel, even in the treacherous and bloodthirsty fashion in which it was then carried on, an excellent institution, and at the end of his account of Coligny he inserts an elaborate disquisition on the material benefits which the religious wars had conferred on France. All classes had profited, nobles, clergy, magistrates, merchants, artisans.

And all this is said in sober earnest, without a suspicion of irony. One might at any rate give Brantôme credit for originality had he not told us at the outset that this was the substance of a conversation which he overheard at Court between two great persons, one a soldier and the other a statesman, and both excellent Catholics. Brantôme was the echo as well as the mirror of the Court.

Brantôme’s glowing panegyric on Margaret of Valois induced that virtuous princess to write her memoirs, partly in order to supplement his account of her, partly to correct a few errors into which he had fallen. It is to Brantôme accordingly that her memoirs are addressed. They were written about the year 1597 in the château of Usson in Auvergne, where she had resided, nominally as a prisoner, since 1587.

[From The Literature of the French Renaissance, Vol. II. 1904.]

APPENDIX—B

BRANTÔME: By George Saintsbury

The complement and counterpart of this moralising[180] on human business and pleasure is necessarily to be found in chronicles of that business and that pleasure as actually pursued. In these the sixteenth century is extraordinarily rich. Correspondence had hardly yet attained the importance in French literature which it afterwards acquired, but professed history and, still more, personal memoirs were largely written. The name of Brantôme has been chosen as the central and representative name of this section of writers, because he is on the whole the most original and certainly the most famous of them. His work, moreover, has more than one point of resemblance to that of the great contemporary author (Montaigne) with whom he is linked at the head of this chapter. Brantôme neither wrote actual history nor directly personal memoirs, but desultory biographical essays, forming a curious and perhaps designed pendant to the desultory moral essays of his neighbour Montaigne. Around him rank many writers, some historians pure and simple, some memoir-writers pure and simple, of whom not a few approach him in literary genius, and surpass him in correctness and finish of style, while almost all exceed him in whatever advantage may be derived from uniformity of plan, and from regard to the decencies of literature.

Pierre de Bourdeille (s) (who derived the name by which he is, and indeed was during his lifetime, generally known from an abbacy given to him by Henri II. when he was still a boy) was born about 1540, in the province of Perigord, but the exact date and place of his birth have not been ascertained. He was the third son of François, Comte de Bourdeilles, and his mother, Anne de Vivonne de la Chataigneraie, was the sister of the famous duelist whose encounter with Jarnac his nephew has described in a well-known passage. In the court of Marguerite d’Angoulême, the literary nursery of so great a part of the talent of France at this time, he passed his early youth, went to school at Paris and at Poitiers, and was made Abbé de Brantôme at the age of sixteen. He was thus sufficiently provided for, and he never took any orders, but was a courtier and a soldier throughout the whole of his active life. Indeed almost the first use he made of his benefice was to equip himself and a respectable suite for a journey into Italy, where he served under the Maréchal de Brissac. He accompanied Mary Stuart to Scotland, served in the Spanish army in Africa, volunteered for the relief of Malta from the Turks, and again for the expedition destined to assist Hungary against Soliman, and in other ways led the life of a knight-errant. The religious wars in his own country gave him plenty of employment; but in the reigns of Charles IX. and Henri III. he was more particularly attached to the suite of the queen dowager and her daughter Marguerite. He was, however, somewhat disappointed in his hopes of recompense; and after hesitating for a time between the Royalists, the Leaguers, and the Spaniards, he left the court, retired into private life, and began to write memoirs, partly in consequence of a severe accident. He seems to have begun to write about 1594, and he lived for twenty years longer, dying on the 15th of July, 1614.

The form of Brantôme’s works is, as has been said, peculiar. They are usually divided into two parts, dealing respectively with men and women. The first part in its turn consists of many subdivisions, the chief of which is made up of the Vies des Grand Capitaines Étrangers et Français, while others consist of separate disquisitions or essays, Des Rodomontades Espagnoles, “On some Duels and Challenges in France” and elsewhere, “On certain Retreats, and how they are sometimes better than Battles,” etc. Of the part which is devoted to women the chief portion is the celebrated Dames Galantes, which is preceded by a series of Vies des Dames Illustres, matching the Grands Capitaines. The Dames Galantes is subdivided into eight discourses, with titles which smack of Montaigne. These discourses are, however, in reality little but a congerie of anecdotes, often scandalous enough. Besides these, his principal works, Brantôme left divers Opuscula, some of which are definitely literary, dealing chiefly with Lucan. None of his works were published in his lifetime, nor did any appear in print until 1659. Meanwhile manuscript copies had, as usual, been multiplied, with the result, also usual, that the text was much falsified and mutilated.

The great merit of Brantôme lies in the extraordinary vividness of his powers of literary presentment. His style is careless, though it is probable that the carelessness is not unstudied. But his irregular, brightly coloured, and easily flowing manner represents, as hardly any age has ever been represented, the characteristics of the great society of his time. It is needless to say that the morals of that time were utterly corrupt, but Brantôme accepts them with a placid complacency which is almost innocent. No writer, perhaps, has ever put things more disgraceful on paper; but no writer has ever written of such things in such a perfectly natural manner. Brantôme was in his way a hero-worshipper, though his heroes and heroines were sometimes oddly coupled. Bayard and Marguerite de Valois represent his ideals, and a good knight or a beautiful lady de par le monde can do no wrong. This unquestioning acceptance of, and belief in, the moral standards of his own society give a genuineness and a freshness to his work which are very rare in literature. Few writers, again, have had the knack of hitting off character, superficially it is true, yet with sufficient distinction, which Brantôme has. There is something individual about all the innumerable characters who move across his stage, and something thoroughly human about all, even the anonymous men and women, who appear for a moment as the actors in some too frequently discreditable scene. With all this there is a considerable vein of moralising in Brantôme which serves to throw up the relief of his actual narratives. He has sometimes been compared to Pepys, but, except in point of garrulity and of readiness to set down on paper anything that came into their heads, there is little likeness between the two. Brantôme was emphatically an écrivain (unscholarly and Italianised as his phrase sometimes appears, if judged by the standards of a severer age), and some of the best passages from his works are among the most striking examples of French prose.

[From A Short History of French Literature. 6th Ed. Oxford, 1901.]