MADAME DE VILLENEUVE.
Gabrielle Susanne Barbot, "daughter of a gentleman of Rochelle," and widow of Monsieur de Gallon, Seigneur de Villeneuve, Lieutenant-Colonel of Infantry, died at Paris, in the house of Crebillon, the tragic writer, Dec. 29th, 1755. Such is the sum of the information afforded us by editors and biographers, concerning the author of one of the most popular fairy tales ever written.
THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
La Belle et la Bête.—Thousands of English readers have no doubt been all their lives under the impression that they knew nearly by heart the story of Beauty and the Beast; and though few, alas! may have taken the trouble to inquire who was the author of it, those who have, imagine themselves indebted for it to Madame Leprince de Beaumont. Nay, there are many, no doubt, in France who are under the same belief, for "La Belle et la Bête, par Madame Leprince de Beaumont," is, without a word of explanation, at this moment circulating as a portion of the French Railway Library, and was published, with various other stories, in a small edition of Contes des Fées only last year, under her name, by a bookseller on the Quai des Augustins, Paris. It is only those who have read the original story by Madame de Villeneuve, either in the Contes Marins,[59] or in the Cabinet des Fées, who will not be surprised to find that Madame de Beaumont has merely the merit of having cut this admirable work down to the smallest comprehensible dimensions, and made a pretty little nursery tale of one of the most ingeniously constructed stories in the whole catalogue of fairy chronicles.
The story of the Beast is but alluded to in a few words, and that of the real parents of Beauty altogether omitted. It is no answer to say that the version by Madame de Beaumont is an agreeable story, that the moral is preserved, and that there are portions of the original tale which required alteration or omission. In justice to Madame de Villeneuve, it ought never to be printed without the acknowledgment that it is simply an abridgment of her composition, adapted to the use of juvenile readers, by Madame de Beaumont. I have omitted a dozen lines, and softened one objectionable expression; but, with the exception of this very slight and indispensable alteration, Madame de Villeneuve's story is now placed before the English public in its entirety.
It was published in 1740, and Mr. Dunlop remarks that "it surpasses all that has been produced by the lively and fertile imaginations of France or Arabia;" but in his notice of the tales of Perrault, he says that it is an expansion of and adoption from Riquet à la Houpe. I think this is one of those hasty conclusions of which we are all occasionally guilty. I cannot, for my part, see any resemblance between the two stories. In Riquet, an ugly and deformed prince wins the hand of a lovely princess—the usual triumph of mind over matter; but in Beauty and the Beast, the suitor is not merely a repulsive man, but a monster of the most horrible and tremendous description, and who is specially prohibited from availing himself of those mental powers which might in the slightest degree affect the judgment of the lady. Pity and gratitude are the motives which influence Beauty to sacrifice her own happiness to ensure that of the Beast. In the other case, admiration of the talent of Riquet renders the Princess gradually blind to the defects of his person. Le Mouton of Madame d'Aulnoy offers infinitely more points of resemblance. The transformation of the King into a ram by a jealous and vindictive fairy, and the permission given by him to Merveilleuse to visit her family, on her solemnly promising to return by a stated period, are features too obvious to be overlooked. The despair of the Ram in consequence of her not fulfilling her promise on the last occasion, is also like that of the Monster; but Madame de Villeneuve has avoided the tragical catastrophe; and notwithstanding the similarity I have pointed out, Beauty and the Beast, taken as a whole, deserves all the praise that those who are best acquainted with it have unanimously accorded to it.
It is a curious circumstance that the Gatta Cennerentola of Basile, and the German version of Cinderella, both commence with the departure of the father on a journey, and the requests of his daughters corresponding exactly in their general character with those in Beauty and the Beast, while we find nothing of the sort in Perrault's Cendrillon. I infer from this that the Italian and German writers have mixed two old stories together, and that Madame de Villeneuve's is founded on one of them.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] So called from being supposed to be narrated on board a ship bound to St. Domingo. 4 vols. 12mo. Paris, 1740-41. They were republished under the title of Le Temps et la Patience, in 1768.