So popular did the tour in France become in the seventeenth century that guide-books for travellers were produced on the spot. The earliest French books of this kind had not been specially designed for the use of foreign visitors; they were as a rule descriptions of the towns and their geographical positions, or notices on their history and antiquities.[908] In time, however, they assumed a character more particularly adapted to strangers.[909] One of the best known and most ROUTES USUALLY FOLLOWEDpopular was Le Voyage de France, dressé pour l'instruction et commodité tant des Français que des étrangers, first published in 1639. The author, C. de Varennes, gives directions for the study of French. He thinks Oudin's Grammar the most profitable, on account of the manner in which it deals with the chief difficulties of foreigners, and Paris and Orleans the best towns for study. For the rest, the help of a tutor should be enlisted, and the student should converse as much as possible with children, and with persons of learning and ability; he should also read widely, preferably dialogues in familiar style and the latest novels; and write French, for which exercise he will find much help in the Secrétaire de la Cour and the Secrétaire à la mode,[910] collections of letters and "compliments," which, we may say incidentally, enjoyed a popularity greatly exceeding their merit.
The short tour in France grew in popularity as the seventeenth century advanced, and many were content to spend the whole of their sojourn abroad there, without undertaking the longer continental tour. Others went to France to prepare themselves for the longer tour. Naturally the tour in France alone engaged the attention of French teachers. We are told that the cost of a tour of three months need not be more than £50. "If you take a friend with you 'twill make you miss a thousand opportunities of following your end: you go to get French, and it would be best if you could avoid making an acquaintance with any Englishman there. To converse with their learned men will be beside your purpose too, if you go for so short a time: they talk the worst for conversation and you had rather be with the ladies."[911]
The chief routes which French masters in England advised their pupils to take were those from Dover to Boulogne and from Rye to Dieppe, whence it was usual to proceed through Rouen to Paris.[912] Locke, for instance, landed at Boulogne when on his way to the South of France; thence he made his way to Paris, chiefly on foot.[913] "If Paris be heaven (for the French with their usual justice, extol it above all things on earth)," he writes after a night spent at Poy, "Poy certainly is purgatory on the way to it." His impressions of Tilliard were more favourable: "Good mutton, and a good supper, clean linen of the country, and a pretty girl to lay it (who was an angel compared with the fiends of Poy) made us some amends for the past night's suffering." It was on the same route to Paris that the Norman Claude du Val, afterwards notorious on the English highways, first came into contact with the English as he was journeying to Paris to try his fortune there. At Rouen he met a band of young Englishmen on their way to Paris with their governors, to learn the exercises and to "fit themselves to go a-wooing at their return home; who were infinitely ambitious of his company, not doubting but in those two days' travel (from Rouen to Paris) they should pump many considerable things out of him, both as to the language and customs of France: and upon that account they did willingly defray his charges." When the young Englishmen arrived at Paris and settled in the usual quarter, the Faubourg St. Germain, Du Val attached himself to their service, and betook himself to England on the Restoration, which drained Paris of many of its English inhabitants.[914]
Many travellers, however, agreed with the French teachers that Paris was not a suitable place for serious study of French, both on account of the many distractions it offered and of the great number of English people resident there. It therefore became customary with the more serious-minded to retire for a time to some quiet provincial town where the accent was good. The French teacher Wodroeph tells us as much: "Mais, Monsieur, je vois bien que vous estes estranger et vous allez à la cour à Paris pour y apprendre nostre langue françoise. Mais mieux il vous vaut d'aller à Orleans plustost que d'y aller pour hanter la cour et baiser les Dames et Damoiselles. . . . Parquoy je vous conseille mieux vous en esloigner et d'aller à Orleans là où vous apprendrez la vraye methode de la langue vulgaire."[915] The towns in the valley of the Loire were favourite resorts for purposes of study.[916] Orleans, Blois, and Saumur seem to have been the most popular. LOIRE TOWNS FAVOUREDFor instance, James Howell, after spending some time in Paris, where he lodged near the Bastille—"the part furthest off from the quarters where the English resort," for he wished "to go on to get a little language"[917] as soon as he could—went to Orleans to study French; he describes it as "the most charming town on the Loire, and the best to learn the language in the purity." The town was never without a great abundance of strangers.[918] The fame of Blois and its teachers was widespread; and Bourges, Tours, Angers, and Caen were noted for the purity of their French. Saumur and other towns in which the Protestants were powerful were also much frequented. John Malpet, afterwards Principal of Gloucester Hall, Oxford, spent two years in France with his pupil, Lord Falkland, visiting Orleans, Blois, and Saumur.[919] John Evelyn visited Paris, Blois, Orleans, and Lyons, and finally settled at Tours, where he engaged a French master and studied the language diligently for nineteen weeks.
While studying in one or other of these towns, English travellers usually lodged in hotels, auberges, or pensions,[920] and sometimes with French families. One of their chief difficulties appears to have been to avoid their fellow-countrymen in such places. Gabriel Du Grès suggests that when English students are thus thrown together they should come to an agreement that any one who spoke his native tongue should pay a fine. A further though less serious impediment was the speaking of Latin, still considered necessary to the traveller by scholars such as John Brinsley.[921] For this reason travellers "for language" are advised to frequent the company of women and children, and "polite" society, rather than that of scholars. It is a great inconvenience, observes Du Grès, if your landlord can speak Latin. The majority of travellers, however, do not appear to have experienced any embarrassment in this respect; on the contrary, those with little previous knowledge of French found their Latin of use in their first French lessons if they studied the language "grammatically" with a master. French teachers in England usually recommended suitable pensions to their students. Gabriel Du Grès, for instance, gives a list of such lodgings at Saumur, his native town; Mauger, of those of Blois, Orleans, and other towns in the Loire valley.[922] In like manner they addressed their pupils to recommendable academies for instruction in the polite accomplishments and military exercises. However, for the most part they advised their pupils to go to private masters, who would attend to their French as well as the "exercises." The house of M. Doux, who had a riding school at Blois, was considered a particularly appropriate residence for those desiring to learn French, on account of his daughters, who spoke "wondrously well," as was also that of a certain M. Dechaussé, who kept an academy for teaching young gentlemen to ride.
What is more, French teachers in England, no longer regarding their fellow-workers in France as rivals but rather as collaborators, as we have seen, not infrequently entertained friendly relations with them, and even went so far as to direct pupils to them. Claude Mauger, for instance, sent as many of his pupils as possible to M. Gaudrey at Paris, the author of verses in praise of Mauger's Tableau du Jugement Universel. This change of attitude is probably explained by the fact that in the seventeenth century French was studied more seriously in England than in the sixteenth century; and students on their arrival in France had often had preliminary instruction under the care of a French tutor in England; Clarendon significantly states that in France "we quickly renew the acquaintance we have had with the language by the practice and custom of speaking it." Students going abroad for purposes of study are therefore addressed to M. Nicolas, an excellent master at Paris, M. le Fèvre, an avocat en parlement at Orleans, and others. We are also informed that abbés were fond of teaching their language to strangers, especially the English.[923] Moreover, several French teachers in England had previously exercised their profession in France. The most popular of all, Claude Mauger, had spent seven years teaching French at Blois. Many years later, when he had FRENCH GRAMMARS FOR TRAVELLERSmade his reputation as a successful teacher of French in London, he went for a time to Paris, where he settled in the Faubourg St. Germain, and was busily occupied in teaching French to travellers, among others to the Earl of Salisbury. He also tells us that his books were very popular in France, and used by the great majority of English students there.
Several of the French teachers in France wrote books for the use of their pupils. Mauger himself quotes the authority of "all French Grammarians that are Professors in France for the teaching of travellers the language." Yet in the seventeenth century, when the French language became one of the chief preoccupations of polite society as well as of scholars, many grammars paid no attention to teaching the language to foreigners. There were, however, several well-known teachers of languages at Paris who wrote grammars specially for their use. Alcide de St. Maurice, the author of the Guide fidelle des estrangers dans le voyage de France (1672), composed a grammar called Remarques sur les principales difficultez de la langue françoise (1674), which has little value, and is compiled chiefly from Vaugelas and Ménage. His chief aim was to overcome the usual difficulties—pronunciation and orthography. Several years previously he had written a collection of short stories inspired by the Decameron. The Fleurs, Fleurettes et passetemps ou les divers caractères de l'amour honneste, as he called them, were published at Paris in 1666, and were no doubt intended as reading matter for his pupils.
A work called the Nova Grammatica Gallica, written in Latin and French for the use of foreigners, appeared at Paris in 1678. It is mainly compiled from Chiflet and other French grammarians. A certain M. Mauconduy was responsible for the grammar, which was on much the same lines as that of Maupas. The French theologian M. de Saint-Amour, of the Sorbonne, addressed several foreigners to Mauconduy, who issued for their use daily feuillets volants, containing remarks on the language. His pupils made rapid progress, and usually knew French fairly well in three months, we are told.
Another of these teachers, Denys Vairasse d'Allais,[924] lived, like Mauger, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and like him taught English as well as French. He had spent some time in England in his youth, and perhaps taught French there. He also corresponded with Pepys, the famous diarist. Vairasse had a particular affection for his English pupils, and they appear to have been in the majority. He was a strong advocate of the study of grammar, and condemned attempts to learn French "by imitation" alone. His Grammaire Méthodique contenant en abrégé les principes de cet art et les regles les plus necessaires de la langue françoise dans un ordre claire et naturelle appeared at Paris in 1682.[925] In it he criticizes severely all the French grammars for the use of strangers produced either in France or in foreign countries. Shortly afterwards the grammar was abridged and translated into English as A Short and Methodical Introduction to the French Tongue composed for the particular benefit of the English, printed at Paris in 1683. This French grammar published in English at Paris is a striking testimony to the importance of the English as students of French.
René Milleran, like Vairasse d'Allais, taught English as well as French. He was a native of Saumur, but spent most of his life at Paris teaching languages, and for a time acted as interpreter to the king. He composed for the use of his pupils a French grammar entitled La Nouvelle Grammaire Françoise, avec le Latin à coté des exemples devisée en deux parties (Marseilles, 1692), which is no doubt a first edition of his Les deux Gramaires Fransaizes (Marseilles, 1694), in which he expounds his new system of orthography. His collection of letters, Lettres Familieres Galantes et autres sur toutes sortes de sujets, avec leurs responses, of which the third edition appeared in 1700, enjoyed a great popularity, like most similar collections at this time: successive editions appeared right into the eighteenth century. This, he says, was the first work which won for him the favour of so many foreign noblemen. His method was to give the students copies of the letters in either Latin or their own language, and to let them translate them into French. He announced an edition of the letters with English, German, and Latin translations for the use of his pupils, but it does not appear to have been published. Like most writers connected with the Court, Milleran calls attention to the purity of his style, and announces that no other books give such exact rules for the language of the Court. A special feature of his work was the selection of letters by members of the French Academy. HOWELL'S ADVICE TO TRAVELLERSNor was the more familiar side neglected: there are numerous letters to and from students of French, reporting on their progress in the language, with mutual congratulations on improvement in style, etc. It is said of Milleran's compositions that their chief merit is their scarcity, and few will agree with De Linière, the satirist and enemy of Boileau, who wrote in praise of Milleran: