Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings, Volume 3

Nora Crook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138755017
• eBook ISBN: 9781000748338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Literacy
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This collection covers the lyrical poetry of Mary Shelley, as well as her writings for Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia of Biography" and some other materials only recently attributed to her.

MOLIÈRE.

1622–1673.

LOUIS XIV, one day asked Boileau “Which writer of his reign he considered the most distinguished;” Boileau answered, unhesitatingly, “Molière.” “You surprise me,” said the king; “but of course you know best.”^a Boileau displayed his discernment in this reply. The more we learn of Molière’s career, and inquire into the peculiarities of his character, the more we are struck by the greatness of his genius and the admirable nature of the man. Of all French writers he is the least merely French. His dramas belong to all countries and ages; and, as if as a corollary to this observation, we find, also, an earnestness of feeling, and a deep tone of passion in his character, that raises him above our ordinary notions of Gallic frivolity.

^a Probably taken from Taschereau, p. 327.

Molière was of respectable parentage. For several generations his family had been traders in Paris, and were so well esteemed, that various members had held the places of juge and consul in the city of Paris; situations of sufficient importance, on some occasions, to cause those who filled them to be raised to the rank of nobles.^b His father, Jean Poquelin, was appointed tapestry or carpet-furnisher to the king: his mother, Marie Cressé*, belonged to a family similarly situated; / her father, also, was a manufacturer of carpets and tapestry. Jean Baptiste Poquelin (such was Molière’s real name) was born on the 15th January, 1622, in a house in Rue Saint Honorè, near the Rue de la Tonnellerie. He was the eldest of a numerous family of children, and destined to succeed his father in trade. The latter being afterwards appointed valet de chambre to the king, and the survivorship of the place being obtained for his son,^a his prospects in life were sufficiently prosperous. His mother died when he was only ten years of age, and thus a family of orphans were left on his father’s hands.

* A thousand mistakes were current, even in Molière’s own day, with regard to various particulars of his history, which he took no pains to contradict, and which have been copied and recopied by succeeding biographers. Even the calumny that he had incurred the hazard of marrying his own daughter, which he disdained to confute in print, aware that facts known to every one acquainted with him bore the refutation with them, was faintly denied. These days, however, have brought forth a commentator, unwearied in the search for documents on the subject. M. L. F. Beffara hunted through parish registers and other public records, and, by means of these simple but irrefutable instruments, has thrown light on all the darker passages of Molière’s history, exonerated him from every accusation, and set his character in a higher point of view than ever.^c

^b The position of judge or city councillor could enable men to enter the noblesse de la robe, so-called from the robes indicating their position.

^a Royal manservant; the post was transferable to another family member for a fee.

^c Beffara’s Dissertation sur J.-B.-Poquelin-Molière (1821) inaugurated a new era of accurate biographical research.

Brought up to trade, Poquelin’s education during childhood was restricted to reading and writing; and his boyish days were passed in the warehouse of his father. His heart, however, was set on other things. His paternal grandfather was very fond of play-going, and often took his grandson to the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where Corneille’s plays were being acted. From this old man the youth probably inherited his taste for the drama, and he owed it to him that his genius took so early the right bent. To him he was indebted for another great obligation. The boy’s father reproached the grandfather for taking him so often to the play. “Do you wish to make an actor of him?” he exclaimed. “Yes, if it pleased God that he became as good a one as Bellerose*,” the other replied.^b The prejudices of the age were violent against actors. We almost all take our peculiar prejudices from our parents, whom, in our nonage (unless, through unfortunate circumstances, they lose our respect), we naturally regard as the sources of truth. To this speech, to the admiration which the elder Poquelin felt for actors and acting, no doubt the boy owed his early and lasting emancipation from those puerile or worse prejudices / against the theatre, which proved quicksands to swallow up the genius of Racine.

* Bellerose (whose real name was Pierre Le Melier) was the best tragic actor of the reign of Louis XIII.: he was the original Cinna of Corneille’s play. He was elegant in manner, and his elocution was easy. Scarron accuses him of affectation: and we are told, in the Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz, that a lady objected to M. de la Rochefoucault, that he resembled Bellerose in the affectation of gentleness.^d

^b This follows closely Grimarest, p. 37.

The youth grew discontented as he grew older. The drama enlightened him as to the necessity of acquiring knowledge, and to the beauty of intellectual refinement: he became melancholy, and, questioned by his father, admitted his distaste for trade, and his earnest desire to receive a liberal education. Poquelin thought that his son’s ruin must inevitably ensue: the grandfather was again the boy’s ally; he gained his point, and was sent as an out-student to the college of Clermont, afterwards of Louis-le-Grand, which was under the direction of the jesuits, and one of the best in Paris. Amand de Bourbon, prince of Conti, brother of the grand Condé,^c was going through the classes at the same time. After passing through the ordinary routine at this school, the young Poquelin enjoyed a greater advantage

^c Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti (1629–60), brother of Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé (1621–86), known as the Grand Condé, cousins of Louis XIV.

1637. Ætat. 14.

^d Paul Scarron (1610–60), poet, novelist and playwright; see ‘Rochefoucauld’ (vol. 2). The spelling ‘Rochefoucault’ was common. The lady criticised not La Rochefoucauld but one Geffroy de Laigue (Cardinal de Retz, Mémoires, (Paris, 1987), vol. II, p. 502).

than that of being a school-fellow of a prince of the blood. L’Huilier, a man of large fortune, had a natural son, named Chapelle, whom he brought up with great care. Earnest for his welfare and good education, he engaged the celebrated Gassendi to be his private tutor, and placed another boy of promise, named Bernier, whose parents were poor, to study with him.^a There is something more helpful, more truly friendly and liberal, often in French men of letters than in ours; and it is one of the best traits in our neighbours’ character. Gassendi perceived Poquelin’s superior talents, and associated him in the lessons he gave to Chapelle and Bernier. He taught them the philosophy of Epicurus; he enlightened their minds by lessons of morals; and Molière derived from him those just and honourable principles from which he never deviated in after life.

^a Claude-Emmanuel Lhuillier (1626–86); Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), priest, philosopher, astronomer and expounder of Epicurus, Athenian philosophical materialist c. 300 BC, who advocated pleasure as the purpose of life. Gassendi maintained his doctrines were compatible with Catholicism. François Bernier (1620–88) summarised Gassendi’s philosophy and described his own Indian travels. Mary Shelley blends Grimarest, pp. 38–9 with Voltaire, Molière, pp. xxxiii–iv.

Another pupil almost, as it were, forced himself into this little circle of students. Cyrano de Bergerac^b was a youth of great talents, but of a wild and turbulent disposition, and had been dismissed from the college of Beauvais for putting the master into a farce. He was a / Gascon – lively, insinuating, and ambitious. Gassendi could not resist his efforts to get admitted as his pupil; and his quickness and excellent memory rendered him an apt scholar. Chapelle himself, the friend afterwards of Boileau and of all the literati of Paris, a writer of songs, full of grace, sprightliness, and ease, displayed talent, but at the same time gave tokens of that heedless, gay, and unstable character that followed him through life, and occasioned his father, instead of making him his heir as he intended, to leave him merely a slight annuity, over which he had no control. Bernier became afterwards a great eastern traveller.

^b Savinieu de Cyrano (1619–55), dashing soldier and litterateur, subject of legends in his lifetime and a cult figure of early French Romanticism.

Immediately on leaving college Poquelin entered on his service of royal valet de chambre. Louis XIII. made a journey to Narbonne;^c and he attended instead of his father.* This journey is only remarkable from the public events that were then taking place. Louis XIII. and cardinal de Richelieu had marched into Rousillon to

* Biographers are apt to invent, if they cannot discover the causes of even trifling events. That the son replaced the father on this occasion, made the elder biographers state that the latter was prevented by his advanced age. Beffara has discovered that the grandfather of Molière married 11th July, 1594, consequently that the father could not be more than forty-six years of age in 1641. A thousand reasons may be found for the substitution of the son. The aversion that Parisians have for travelling might suffice – the large motherless family that the elder Poquelin must leave behind, or a wish to introduce his son to the notice of the king, &c.

^c In Provence, in the south of France.

1641. Ætat. 19.

complete the conquest of that province from the house of Austria – both monarch and minister were dying. The latter discovered the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, the unfortunate favourite of the king, and had seised on him and his innocent friend De Thou – they were condemned to death; and conveyed from Tarrascon to Lyons in a boat, which was towed by the cardinal’s barge in advance.^a Terror at the name of the cardinal, contempt for the king, and anxiety to watch the wasting illnesses of both, occupied the court: the passions of men were excited to their height; and the young and ardent youth, fresh from the schools of philosophy, witnessed a living drama, more highly wrought than any that a mimic stage could represent. /

^a Armand-Jean du Plessis (1585–1642), cardinal de Richelieu from 1622, chief minister to Louis XIII from 1624–42, and chief architect of absolute monarchy in France (see ‘Corneille’, vol. 2). The province of Roussillon, gained in 1659, on the border with Spain, was ruled by the Habsburg dynasty, whose senior branch was based in Austria. Henrie Coëffier de Ruzé, marquis de Cinq Mars, and François-Auguste de Thou, a leading Paris lawyer, tried in 1642 to undermine Cardinal Richelieu’s authority. Tarrascon is a key river-port on the Rhône, further south of Lyon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Notes on French Lives I [Molière to Fénélon]
• Notes on French Lives II
• FRENCH LIVES VOLUME I [continued from volume 2]
• FRENCH LIVES VOLUME II
• Editorial corrections