Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies/Volume I/Appendix A
APPENDIX—A
BRANTÔME: By Arthur Tilley
Like Montaigne, Brantôme pretended to be careless of literary fame, but in reality took every pains to secure it; like Montaigne he loved digressions, gaillardes escapades, from his main theme; like Montaigne he has drawn for us, though in his case unconsciously, a portrait of himself; like Montaigne he was curious of information, fond of travel and books. But these points of similarity are after all superficial; the difference is fundamental. While Montaigne tested the world and society by the light of his shrewd common sense, Brantôme accepted them without question or reflexion. Montaigne was essentially a thinker, Brantôme was merely a reporter; Montaigne was a moralist, for Brantôme the word morality had no meaning. Montaigne criticised his age, Brantôme reflected it. That indeed is Brantôme's chief value, that he reflects his age like a mirror, but it must be added that he reflects chiefly its more trivial, not to say its more scandalous side. He is the Suetonius of the French Renaissance.
Pierre de Bourdeille, "reverend father in God, abbe de Brantôme," belonged to a noble and ancient family of Perigord. The precise date of his birth is uncertain, but it must be placed somewhere between 1539 and 1542. He spent his childhood with his grandmother, Louise de Vivonne, wife of the seneschal of Poitou, at the court of Margaret of Navarre, and after studying first at Paris and then at Poitiers, travelled for more than a year in Italy, returning to France at the beginning of 1560, when he made his first appearance at the court. Though he already held other benefices besides the abbey from which he took his title, he was not in orders. The next fourteen years were spent by him either in fighting on the Catholic side in the religious wars, or in attendance at the court, or in travel. In 1574 his military career came to an end, for his duties as gentleman of the chamber, to which post he had been appointed in 1568, kept him at court, frivolous, idle, and discontented. At last the refusal of Henry III. to bestow on him the promised post of governor of Perigord filled him with such fury that he determined to enter the service of Spain. But a fall from his horse, which kept him in bed for four years (1583-1587), saved him from being a renegade to his country and turned him into a man of letters.
For it was during this forced inactivity, apparently in 1584, that he began his literary labours, which he continued for the next thirty years, most of which he spent on his estate. He died in 1614, leaving a will of portentous length, in which, among other things, he charged his heirs to have his works printed en belle et grand lettre et grand volume. The charge was neglected, and it was not till 1665-1666 that an incomplete and defective edition was published at Leyden, in the Elzevir form. Previous to this, however, several copies had been made of his manuscripts, and Le Laboureur in his edition of Castelnau's Memoirs, published in 1659, had printed long extracts.
Brantôme was a disappointed man when he wrote his memoirs. He had been an assiduous courtier for a quarter of a century and had gained nothing by it, while he had seen men whose merits he believed to be inferior to his rise to wealth and honour. But though he had the love of frivolity and the moral indifference of a true courtier, he had not his pliability. "He was violent," says Le Laboureur, "difficult to live with and of a too unforgiving spirit." Perhaps the best thing that can be said in his favour is that among his most intimate friends were two of the most virtuous characters of their time, Téligny, the son-in-law of Coligny, and Téligny's brother-in-law, François de la Noue. Among his other friends were Louis de Berenger, seigneur du Guast, who was assassinated by order of Marguerite de Valois, and above all Filippo Strozzi, the son of Piero Strozzi, who was his friend for over twenty years, and who exercised over him considerable influence.
The names by which Brantôme's writings are generally known are not those which he himself gave them. Thus the titles Dames illustres and Dames galantes are an invention of the Leyden publisher for the Premier et Second livre des Dames. The other main division of his writings, Hommes, consisted in Brantôme's manuscript of two volumes, the first containing the Grands capitaines, French and Spanish, and the second Les couronnels, Discours sur les duels, Rodomontades espagnoles, and a separate account of La Noue. His original manuscript was completed while Margaret was still the wife of Henry IV., that is to say before November, 1599, but some time after her divorce he made a carefully revised copy. It is upon this copy that the text of M. Lalanne's edition is based for the first five volumes.
Regarded strictly as biographies Brantôme's lives have slender merit, for the majority give one little or no idea of the character of the persons treated. He is at least successful with those who had in them elements of real greatness, such as Coligny and Condé. Even the long life of François de Guise, though it contains some interesting and valuable information, throws little light on Guise himself. But he gives us good superficial portraits of Charles IX., Catharine de Medici, and the Constable de Montmorency, while several of the minor lives, such as Brissac and his brother Cosse, Matignon, and Mary of Hungary, are not only amusing but hit off the characters with considerable success. One of the most entertaining is the unfinished account of his father. On the other hand the account of Margaret of Valois, though it contains some interesting details, is too ecstatic in its open-mouthed admiration to have any value as a biography. The conclusion of the account of Monluc may be quoted not only for its reference to Monluc's conversational powers, but as throwing light on Brantôme's own character.
Much of the interest of Brantôme's book is to be found in his numerous digressions, for which he is constantly apologizing. Thus in the middle of the account of Montmorency we have a laudatory sketch of Michel de l'Hospital, in that of Tavannes a digression on the order of St. Michael, in that of Bellegarde an account of his own treatment by Henry III. The digressions are frequently made occasions for amusing stories, which, like Montaigne's, are distinguished from such as Bouchet and Beroalde de Verville collected, in that they generally illustrate some trait of human character.
Like Montaigne again, Brantôme copies freely and without acknowledgment from books. Whole pages are taken from Le loyal serviteur, stories are borrowed from Rabelais, Des Periers, and the Heptameron, as well as from most of the writers dealt with in the last chapter. But Brantôme, unlike Montaigne, tries to conceal his thefts by judicious alterations, or by pretending that he heard the story himself, or even that he was a witness of the event related. J'ai ouy conter and J'ai vu are frequently in his mouth. He was doubtless chiefly influenced in these endeavours to conceal his borrowings by the same form of vanity as Montaigne, the desire to be regarded, not as a man of letters, but as a gentleman who amused himself by putting down his reminiscences on paper. It is for this reason that he tries to give a negligent and conversational air to his style. The result is that he is often ungrammatical and sometimes obscure. Yet his style, at any rate in the eyes of a foreigner, has considerable merit, and chiefly from its power of vivid presentment. For Brantôme, like other Gascons, like Montaigne and Monluc and Henry IV., saw things vividly and can make his readers see them. He has a store of expressive words and phrases such as un peu hommasse (of Mary of Hungary). A noticeable feature of his style is his love of Italian and Spanish words, reflecting in this, as in other features, the prevailing fashion of the Court.
Brantôme's keen enjoyment of the world pageantry was seldom disturbed by inconvenient reflexion. His only quarrel with society was that the ruling powers were blind to his own merits. He thought the duel, even in the treacherous and bloodthirsty fashion in which it was then carried on, an excellent institution, and at the end of his account of Coligny he inserts an elaborate disquisition on the material benefits which the religious wars had conferred on France. All classes had profited, nobles, clergy, magistrates, merchants, artisans.
And all this is said in sober earnest, without a suspicion of irony. One might at any rate give Brantôme credit for originality had he not told us at the outset that this was the substance of a conversation which he overheard at Court between two great persons, one a soldier and the other a statesman, and both excellent Catholics. Brantôme was the echo as well as the mirror of the Court.
Brantôme's glowing panegyric on Margaret of Valois induced that virtuous princess to write her memoirs, partly in order to supplement his account of her, partly to correct a few errors into which he had fallen. It is to Brantôme accordinly that her memoirs are addressed. They were written about the year 1597 in the chateau of Usson in Auvergne, where she had resided, nominally as a prisoner, since 1687.
[From The Literature of the French Renaissance, Vol. II. 1904.]