Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Vol 2.

by Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme

The courtier Brantôme sees all of history from the perspective of boudoir-wit. Therefore his portraits of famous ladies of his age are mere mosaics of haphazard observations and opinions. He is a naïve story-teller and therefore his ideas are seldom coherent. The value of his biographical portraits consists in the fact that they are influenced by his manner of writing, that they are the result of scandal and gossip which he heard in the Louvre, or of conversations in the saddle or in the trenches. He always preserves a respectful attitude and restrains himself from spicing things too freely. He did not allow himself to become a purveyor of malicious gossip, he took great care not to offend his high connections by unbridled speech, but his book lost interest on that account.

If we wish to do justice to Brantôme as the author of Fair and Gallant Ladies, we must try and picture his position in his age and in his society. It is not to be understood that he suddenly invented all of these stories during his long illness. Let us try and follow the origin of these memoirs. At that time the most primitive conceptions of literary work in general prevailed. The actual writing down of the stories was the least. An author laboriously working out his stories was ridiculous. The idea and the actual creative work came long before the moment when the author sat down to write. None of Brantôme’s stories originated in his abbey, but in Madrid, in Naples, in Malta before La Rochelle, in the Louvre, in Blois and in Alençon. Writing down a story was a reproduction of what had already been created, of what had been formed and reformed in frequent retelling and polished to perfection. The culture of the court was of great aid to him in his style, but his own style was nevertheless far superior.

For decades Brantôme was a nobleman of his royal masters. He was constantly present at the court and participated in all of the major and minor events of its daily life, in quarrels and celebrations. He was a courtier. He was entirely at home in the halls and chambers of the Louvre, but even though he stopped to chat with the idle courtiers in the halls of the Louvre he never lowered himself to their level. He could be extremely boisterous, yet inwardly he was reserved and observant. He was the very opposite of the noisy, impetuous Bussy-Rabutin. His intelligence and his wisdom made him a source of danger among the chamberlains. His was a dual nature, he was at the same time cynical and religious, disrespectful and enthusiastic, refined and brutal, at the same time abbot, warrior and courtier. Like Bernhard Palissy he ridiculed the astrologers, yet he was subject to the superstitions of his age. His temperament showed that his cradle had not been far from the banks of the Garonne, near the Gascogne. There was combined with his bold, optimistic, adventurous and restless spirit, with his chivalrous ideas and prejudices, a boundless vanity. A contemporary said of him: “He was as boastful as Cellini.” Indeed he believed himself far superior to his class, he not only boasted of himself and his family, but also of his most insignificant deeds. He was irreconcilable in hate, and even admonished his heirs to revenge him. His royal masters he treated with respect tempered by irony. As a contemporary of Rabelais, Marot and Ronsard, he was an excellent speaker. If Rabelais had a Gallic mind then Brantôme’s was French. His cheerful and lively conversation was pleasing to all. He had a reputation of being a brilliant man. But he was also known as a discreet person. Alençon, who was a splendid story-teller himself and liked to hear love stories more than anything else, preferred conversation with him to anyone. His naïveté and originality made friends for him everywhere. He had a brave and noble nature and was proud of being a Frenchman, he was the personified gentilhomme français.

And thus his book originated. He must have taken up his pen quite spontaneously one day. Now from the great variety of his own experiences at court and in war, he poured forth a remarkable wealth of peculiar and interesting features which his memory had preserved. It is a book of the love-life during the reign of the Valois. These stories were not invented, but they were anecdotes and reports taken from real life. He was able to evade the danger of boredom. There is style even in his most impudent indiscretions. He only stopped at mere obscenities. On the other hand, he never hesitated to be cynical. As this age was fond of strong expressions, a puritanical language was out of the question. Not until the reign of Louis XIV. did the language become more polite. Neither was Brantôme a Puritan, how could he have been? But he had character. He took pleasure in everything which was a manifestation of human energy. He loved passion and the power to do good or evil. (To be sure he also had some splendid things to say against immoderacy and vehemence of passions. So he was a fit companion of the Medici and the Valois.)

There is not much composition in his books. His attention wandered from one story to the other. Boccaccio, the foremost story-teller of this period, is more logical. An academical critic says of Brantôme: “He reports without choice what is good and bad, what is noble and abominable, the good not without warmth, but the bad with indestructible cheerfulness.” There is neither order nor method in his writing. He passes on abruptly, without motif, without transition. A courtier, unfamiliar with the rules of the school, he himself confesses (in the Rodomontades Espagnoles): “Son pen de profession du scavoir et de l’art de bien dire, et remet aux meux disans la belle disposition de paroles eloquentes.” Because of the variety his stories have unusual charm. In these numerous anecdotes the graceful indecencies of the ladies-in-waiting at the court of the Valois are described as if they had happened openly. His reports of the illicit relations are rendered in a charming style. Even though his sketches and pictures are modelled entirely on the life at the courts, nevertheless he adds two personal elements: an amusing smile and a remarkable literary talent. The following may even have been the case. In the beginning Brantôme may have taken an entirely neutral attitude towards the material at hand, but took no greater personal interest in them than he would, say, in memoirs. But when we can tell a story well, then we also take pleasure in our ability. We permeate the story with our own enjoyment, and in a flash it turns out to be pleasure in the thing itself. The light of our soul glows upon them and then the things themselves look like gold. Brantôme rarely breaks through his reserve. He usually keeps his own opinions regarding these grand ladies and gentlemen in the background, he leaves it to the competent “grands discoureurs” to judge these things. To be sure, if one wished to get information regarding the court of Henri II. and Catherine of Medici, one ought not exactly to read Brantôme, who creates the impression as if the court were a model of a moral institution. “Sa compaignie et sa court estait un vray paradis du monde et escole de toute honnestate, de virtu, l’ornement de la France,” he once says somewhere in the Dames illustres (page 64). On the other hand, L’Etorle in May, 1577, gives us a report of a banquet given by the Queen-mother in Chenonceaux: “Les femmes les plus belles et honnestes de la cour, estant a moitie nues et ayant, les cheveux epars comme espousees, fuient employees a faire le service.” Other contemporaries likewise report a great deal of the immorality prevailing at the court. Thus we have curious reports regarding the pregnancy of Limeuil, who had her birth-throes in the queen’s wardrobe in Lyon (1564), the father being the Prince of Conde. Likewise, Johanna d’Albret warns her son, later Henri IV., against the corruption of the court. When she later visited him in Paris she was horrified at the immorality at the court of her daughter-in-law, later Queen Margot, who lived in the “most depraved and dissolute society.” (Brantôme pretended that he was a relative of hers, and pronounced a panegyric upon her in his Rodomontades which was answered in her memoirs dedicated to him.) He did not feel it his mission to be a Savonarola. To his great regret this “culture” came home to him in his own family. He had more and more cause to be dissatisfied with his youngest sister, Madeleine. The wicked life of this lady-in-waiting filled him with fury. He paid her her share and drove her from the house.

Certain Puritans among the historians find fault with Brantôme for having uncovered the “abominations” at the courts of the Valois. His vanity may have led him to make many modifications in the events, but most of these are probably due to his desire to be entertaining. In his dedication to the Rodomontades Espagnoles he addresses Queen Margot as follows: “Bien vous dirai-je, que ce que j’escrits est plein de verite; de ce que j’ay veu, je l’asseure, di ce que j’ay seen et appris d’autray, si on m’a trompe je n’en puis mais si tiens-je pourtant beaucoup de choses de personnages et de livres tres-veritables et dignes de foy.” Nevertheless, his method was very primitive. In his descriptions of personalities, he had a thread on which he could string up his recollections, so that there was at least some consistency. In the book of Fair and Gallant Ladies the individual fact is of less importance and has more of symbolic value. They are pictures of the time composed of a confusing multitude of anecdotes. Perhaps the subject-matter required this bizarre method. The Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre was altogether too precise. Brantôme was a man of the sword and a courtier, but a courtier who occasionally liked to put his hand on his sword in between his witticisms. In this state of mind, he was an excellent story-teller, and his anecdotes and stories therefore also have the actuality and the vigorous composition of naïvely related stories.

The book of Fair and Gallant Ladies still contains much of historical value. Almost all the old noble races are mentioned; there is information regarding Navarre, Parma, Florence, Rome and Toulouse. The Huguenots likewise appear, and St. Bartholomew’s Eve (1572), which was far back, still sheds its gloom over these pages. The trenches before La Rochelle play an important part; Brantôme always fought against the Huguenots. Perhaps this was the reason why he was no longer in favor with the Bourbon Henri IV. However, one cannot charge him with animosity. Perhaps the frank and open methods of reforming had affected him. Without taking interest in religious quarrels, he probably also hated the monks and priests. Thus one would be inclined to say to the Puritans who condemn Brantôme: If one may speak of guilt and responsibility, then it is his age which must bear them. Brantôme merely chronicled the morals of his times. The material was furnished to him, he merely wrote it down. He is no more responsible for his book, than an editor of a newspaper for the report of a raid or a bomb attack. Ranke once said regarding the times of Henri II.: “If one wishes to know the thoughts and opinions of France at that period, one must read Rabelais” (History of France, Ch. I, 133). Whoever wishes to become familiar with the age of Charles IX. and Henri III. must read Brantôme.

Georg Harsdörfer.

(Translated from the German.)

LIVES OF FAIR AND
GALLANT LADIES