"How many gentlemen have we in France who by their own talk are of royal extraction? More I think than who will confess they are not.
"Was it not a pleasant passage of a friend of mine? There were a great many gentlemen assembled together; about the dispute of one lord of the manor with another, which other had in truth some pretty eminence of titles and alliances, above the ordinary scheme of gentry. Upon the debate of this priority of place, every one standing up for himself, to make himself equal to him; one, one extraction, another another; one the near resemblance of name; another of arms; another an old worm-eaten patent, and the least of them great-grandchild to some foreign king. When they came to sit down to dinner, my friend, instead of taking his place amongst them, retiring with most profound congees, entreated the company to excuse him for having lived with them hitherto at the saucy rate of a companion; but being now better informed of their quality, he would begin to pay them the respect due to their birth and grandeur; and that it would ill become him to sit down among so many princes; and ended the farce with a thousand reproaches.
"Let us in God's name," continues the illustrious writer, "satisfy ourselves with what our fathers were contented and with what we are; we are great enough if we understand rightly how to maintain it; let us not disown the fortune and condition of our ancestors, and lay aside those ridiculous pretences that can never be wanting to any one that has the impudence to alledge them."
[XIII]
The alphabetical series of Norman or Anglo-Norman names here given was selected by an English scholar from an English official directory and published, anonymously, in the latter half of the last century, to illustrate a theory of the genesis of the English race. The present selection represents only in part the series or lists originally published, embracing several thousand names. To this selection the writer has added Norman or Scandinavian names from other sources, together with "notes" that serve to confirm in detail the general theory of inherited racial traits. The list which he first published has been greatly enlarged and many additions made from the original English series.[7]
Mr. Freeman says that the Normans "lost themselves" among the people whom they conquered. Very clearly, however, the "names" were not lost. The original Norman may be said to have had, in a high degree, that personnalité absorbante which, according to Littré, is characteristic of every great man. It is not remarkable, therefore, that after every Norman invasion the resulting ethnical transmutation was complete. The new element became at once the vitalizing power of the "absorptive" or subjugated race. This gift of racial transformation was so great that the Scandinavians, seizing a Gallic province, became French or Norman; subjugating England, they became English; overflowing Ireland, they fused at once with the native race; actually becoming "Irisher than the Irish" themselves—Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores. The Duke of Argyle once said in the English House of Lords that three of the Irish leaders of that day (one of them John Redmond, the present Irish King) were genealogically superior men—men of illustrious descent—leaders of royal or noble Norman blood; confirming the declaration made by the author of the "Peerage" that it is not lands but ancestors that make a nobility. The career of the Norman as a conquering or migratory race has been a perpetual masquerade; in England taking the form of an Irishman and controlling the Parliament; in the same guise leading the armies of England and France; in America, demoniacally possessed, becoming the personal director of a lynching, the boss of a strike, or the leader of a lawless expeditionary force. But everywhere he leads! The name of the race disappears, but the original, indestructible, irresistible, invisible and protean force is still there. If we reject the existence and operation of this subtle and pervasive influence in the ancestral strains of Kentucky, the evolution of the typical Kentuckian can not easily be explained. The race is "lost," not because the visiting Norman is absorbed by his host, but because the visitor appropriates all that his host may have, even his personality and all that it implies. The Englishman, or the Irishman, or the Scotchman, disappear, and a transmogrified Norman takes his place. It is not English, nor Irish, nor French absorptiveness, but Norman appropriativeness, that has done the work. Precisely thus, to compare great things with small: the English Whigs once went in swimming, and the Norman Tories "stole their clothes." But the Norman's act of appropriation usually goes deeper than the skin. He is not content with a petty theft of "clothes." With an almost satanic subtlety and finesse he appropriates the very soul. It becomes, indeed, his very own. That incomparable illusionist, Benjamin Disraeli, was a past-master in these Norman arts, and in perfect sympathy with those Anglo-Norman Tories who followed his fortunes in victory or defeat. But Norman or Saxon were equally indifferent to him. It was glory enough for Semitic ambition to build success upon the needs of both; and yet, in doing it, this man of alien blood and ancient race repeated the miracle of Lanfranc—the scholar and statesman who, in the old Norman days, had not only cooled the hot blood of the Normanized Scandinavian and conciliated the respect of the proud, implacable Saxon, but, linking their interests in inseparable association, had brightened with a prospect of imperial splendor the destinies of the common race. So, too, the Semitic statesman charmed the rudest elements with his Orphean song. His brilliant successor, Salisbury, added to parts and learning the technical information of a savant. Disraeli had something better. He had that deep, philosophic insight which seems to be bred into the elect of an ancient stock. It is a mystical gift.
"He saw things, now, as though they were,
And things To Be in things that are."