Part 2

Indeed it is very probable that weariness of the long novels and pompous plays of the age of Louis XIV made people find a real charm in the stories of _Cendrillon_, and _La Belle au Bois Dormant_. For some reason, however, the stories (as current in France) existed only by word of mouth, and in oral narrative, till near the end of the century. In 1691 Charles Perrault, now withdrawn from public life, and busy fighting the Battle of the Books with Boileau, published anonymously his earliest attempt at story telling, unless we reckon _L'Esprit Fort_, a tale of light and frivolous character. The new story was _La Marquise de Salusses, ou la Patience de Griselidis, nouvelle_[8]. _Griselidis_ is not precisely a popular tale, as Perrault openly borrowed his matter from Boccaccio, and his manner (as far as in him lay) from La Fontaine. He has greatly softened the brutality of the narrative as Boccaccio tells it, and there is much beauty in his description of the young Prince lost in the forest, after one of those Royal hunts in Rambouillet or Marly whose echoes now scarce reach us, faint and fabulous as the horns of Roland or of Arthur[9]. Nay, there is a certain simple poetry and sentiment of Nature, in _Griselidis_, which comes strangely from a man of the Town and the Court. The place where the wandering Prince encounters first his shepherdess

'Clair de ruisseaux et sombre de verdure Saisissait les esprits d'une secrete horreur; La simple et naive nature S'y faisoit voir si belle et si pure, Que mille fois il benit son erreur.'

So the Prince rides on his way

'Rempli de douces reveries Qu'inspirent les grands bois, les eaux et les prairies.'

The sentiment is like Madame de Sevigne's love of her woods at Les Rochers, the woods where she says goodbye to the Autumn colours, and longs for the fairy _feuille qui chante_, and praises 'the crystal October days.' Of all this there is nothing in Boccaccio. Perrault, of course, does not repeat the brutalities of the Italian tyrant, in which Boccaccio takes a kind of pleasure, while Chaucer veils them in his kindly courtesy.

To _Griselidis_ Perrault added an amusing little essay on the vanity of Criticism, and the varying verdicts of critics. In this Essay, Perrault apparently shews us the source from which he directly drew his matter, namely Boccaccio in the popular form of the chap-books called _La Bibliotheque Bleue_. 'If I had taken out everything that every critic found fault with,' he says, 'I had done better to leave the story in its blue paper cover, where it has been for so many years.' Thus Perrault borrowed from the Bibliotheque Bleue, not the Bibliotheque Bleue, as M. Maury fancied, from Perrault[10].

In 1694 Moetjens, the bookseller at The Hague, began to publish a little Miscellany, or Magazine, in the form of the small Elzevir collection, called _Recueil de pieces curieuses et nouvelles, tant en prose qu'en vers_. Perrault had already published _Les Souhaits Ridicules_, in a Society paper, Le Mercure Galant (Nov. 1693). He now reprinted this piece, with _Griselidis_ and _Peau d'Ane_, in Moetjens' _Recueil_[11]. These versified tales caused some discussion, and were rather severely handled by anonymous writers in the _Recueil_. In 1694, Perrault put forth the three, with the introductions and essay, in a small volume. Probably each tale had appeared separately, but these treasures of the book-hunter are lost. Another edition came out, with a new preface, in 1695[12].

This is the early bibliographical history, as far as it has been traced by M. Andre Lefevre, of the stories in verse. They received a good deal of unfriendly criticism, and Perrault was said, in _Peau d'Ane_, to have presented the public with his own natural covering. This witticism, rather lacking in finish, is attributed to Boileau in an epigram published in Moetjens' _Recueil_. Boileau was still irritated with Perrault for his conduct in the great Battle of the Books between the Ancients and Moderns. By a curious revenge Perrault, who had blamed Homer for telling, in the Odyssey, old wives' fables, has found, in old wives' fables, his own immortality. In the _Parallele_, iii. p. 117, the Abbe quotes Longinus, and his admiration of certain hyperboles in Homer. The Chevalier, another speaker in the dialogue, replies, 'this sort of Homeric hyperbole is only imitated by people who tell stories like _Peau d'Ane_, and introduce Ogres in seven-leagued boots (_bottes a sept lieues_).' The 'seven-leagued boots' are in the Chevalier's fancy an apt parallel to the prodigious bounds made by the horses of Discord, in the Iliad. Thus, even before Perrault began to write fairy tales, he and Boileau had a very pretty quarrel about _Peau d'Ane_. Boileau happened to remember that Zoilus of old had reviled Homer for his _contes de Vieilles_, and thus he could conscientiously treat Perrault as a new Zoilus. In the fifth volume of his works (Paris, 1772), in which these amenities are republished, there is a Vignette by Van der Meer representing Homer, very old and timid, cowering behind a shield which Boileau, like Ajax, holds up for his protection, while Perrault, in a sword and cocked hat, throws arrows at the blind bard of Chios. The strange thing is that they were all in the right. The Odyssey, as Fenelon's Achilles tells Homer in Hades, and as Perrault knew, is a mass of popular tales, but then these are moulded by the poet's art into an epic which Boileau could not over-praise[13].

In the edition of his stories in verse, published in 1695, Perrault replied to the criticisms that reached him, 'I have to do,' he said, 'with people who can only be moved by Authority, and the example of the Ancients;' meaning Boileau and the survivors of the great literary feud. Perrault therefore adduces old instances of classical _contes_, the _Milesian Tales_, and _Cupid and Psyche_ in Apuleius. 'The Moral of _Cupid and Psyche_,' he says, 'I shall compare to that of _Peau d'Ane_, when once I know what it is.' Then he declares that his Contes have abundance of moral, which is true, but there are morals even in _Cupid and Psyche_. He sketches, very pleasantly, the enjoyment of children in those old wives' fables; 'on les voit dans la tristesse et dans l'abattement tant que le heros ou l'heroine du conte sont dans le malheur, et s'ecrier de joie quand le temps de leur bonheur arrive.' Indeed this was and is the best apology for M. Perrault of the French Academy, when he stooped his great perruque to listen to his little boy's repetition of his nurse's stories, and recorded them in the chronicles of Mother Goose.

Had Perrault only written _contes_ in verse, it is probable that he would now be known chiefly as an imitator of La Fontaine. Happily he went further, and printed seven stories in prose. It is by these that he really lives, now that his architectural exploits, his sacred poems, his Defence of the Moderns, are all forgotten save by the learned. His Fairies have saved him from oblivion, and the countless editions and translations of his _Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye_, have won him immortality[14].

The tales in prose appeared in Moetjens' _Recueil_ in the following order: In 1696, in the second part of Volume V, came _La Belle au Bois Dormant_ (our 'Sleeping Beauty'); and in 1697 (Vol. V. part 4), came _Le Petit Chaperon Rouge_ ('Red Riding Hood'), _La Barbe Bleue_ ('Blue-beard'), _Le Maistre Chat, ou le Chat Botte_ ('Puss in Boots,' or 'The Master Cat'), _Les Fees_ ('The Fairy'), _Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre_ ('Cinderilla,' in the older English versions, now 'Cinderella'), _Riquet a la Houppe_ ('Riquet of the Tuft'), and _Le Petit Poucet_ ('Hop o' My Thumb, Little Thumb').

While Moetjens was producing these in his Miscellany, there was published in Paris, at Perrault's bookseller's (Guignard), a little volume called _Bigarrures Ingenieuses, ou Recueil de diverses Pieces galantes en prose et en vers_. The author was Mlle. L'Heritier de Villaudon, a relation of Perrault's. It is to his daughter, a Mademoiselle Perrault, that she addresses her first piece, _Marmoisan ou l'Innocente Tromperie_. The author says she was lately in a company where people began to praise M. Perrault's _Griselidis_, _Peau d'Ane_ and _Les Souhaits_. They spoke also of 'the excellent education which M. Perrault gives his children, of their ingenuity, and finally of the _Contes naifs_ which one of his young pupils has lately written with so much charm. A few of these stories were narrated and led on to others.' _Marmoisan_ is one of the others, and Mlle. L'Heritier says she told it, 'avec quelque broderie qui me vint sur le champ dans l'esprit.' The tale is, indeed, all embroidery, beneath which the original stuff is practically lost[15]. But the listener asked the narrator to offer it 'a ce jeune Conteur, qui occupe si spirituellement les amusemens de son enfance.'

In a later page she wonders that the Contes should have been 'handed to us from age to age, without any one taking the trouble to write them out.' Then she herself takes the trouble to write the story of Diamonds and Toads, a story known in a rough way to the Kaffirs--and hopelessly spoils it by her _broderie_, and by the introduction of a lay figure called _Eloquentia Nativa_ (_Les Enchantemens de l'Eloquence_, ou _Les Effets de la Douceur_). One has only to compare Mlle. L'Heritier's literary and embroidered _Eloquentia_ with Perrault's _Les Fees_ (the original of our _Diamonds and Toads_), to see the vast difference between his manner, and that of contemporary _conteurs_. Perrault would never have brought in a Fairy named _Eloquentia Nativa_. Mlle. L'Heritier's _Eloquentia_ (1696) was in the field before Perrault's unembroidered version, _Les Fees_, which appeared in Moetjens' _Recueil_ in 1697. The Lady writes:

'Cent et Cent fois ma Gouvernante Au lieu de Fables d'animaux[16] M'a raconte les traits moraux De cette Histoire surprenante.'

Here, then, is Mlle. L'Heritier speaking of one of Perrault's children who has written the fairy tales, 'with so much charm.' At this very time (1696-1697), fairy tales, 'written with much charm,' in prose, and without the author's name, were appearing in Moetjens' _Recueil_. In 1697 these prose _contes_ were collected, published, and declared to be by P. Darmancour, Perrault's little boy, to whom the _Privilege du Roy_ is granted[17].

Critics have often declared that Perrault merely used the boy's name as a cover for his own, because it did not become an Academician to publish fairy tales, above all in prose. It may be noted that Perrault did not employ his usual publisher, Coignard, but went to Barbin. There might also have been a hope that little Perrault Darmancour, while shielding his father, 'fit parfaitement bien sa Cour en meme tems,' like _Le Petit Poucet_. Considering how Perrault's other works are forgotten, and how his Tales survive, and regarding his boy as partly their author, we may even apply to him the Moral of _Le Petit Poucet_.

'Quelquefois, cependant, c'est ce petit Marmot Qui fera le bonheur de toute la famille!'

The dedication, signed P. Darmancour, is addressed to Mademoiselle, and contains very agreeable flattery of the sister of the future Regent[18]. These motives would, indeed, account for Perrault's use of his boy's name. But it had occurred to me, before discovering the similar opinion of M. Paul Lacroix, that P. Darmancour really was the author of the _Contes_, or at least a _collaborateur_[19]. The naivete, and popular traditional manner of their telling, recognised by all critics, and the cause of their popularity, was probably given by the little lad who, as Mlle. L'Heritier said, a year before the tales were published, 'a mis depuis peu les Contes sur le papier avec tant d'agrement.' The child, according to this theory, wrote out, by way of exercise, the stories as he heard them, not from _brodeuses_ in Society, but from his Nurse, or from old women on his father's estates. The evidence of Madame de Sevigne and of Mlle. L'Heritier, as well as the testimony of the _contes_ which ladies of rank instantly took to printing, shews how the stories were told in Society. Allegorical and other names were given to the characters, usually nameless in _Maerchen_. Historical circumstances were introduced, and references to actual events in the past. _Esprit_ raged assiduously through the narratives. Moreover the traditional tales were so confounded that Madame d'Aulnoy, in _Finette Cendron_, actually mixes _Cinderella_ with _Hop o' My Thumb_[20].

Contrast with these refinements, these superfluities, and incoherences, the brevity, directness, and simplicity of _Histoires et Contes du Tems passe_. They have the touch of an intelligent child, writing down what he has heard told in plain language by plain people. They exactly correspond, in this respect, to the Hindoo folk tales collected from the lips of Ayahs by Miss Maive Stokes, who was a child when her collection was published.

But, if the little boy thus furnished the sketch, it is indubitable that the elderly Academician and _beau esprit_ touched it up, here toning down an incident too amazing for French sobriety and logic, there adding a detail of contemporary court manners, or a hit at some foible or vanity of men. 'Livre unique entre tous les livres,' cries M. Paul de St. Victor, 'mele de la sagesse du vieillard et de la candeur de l'enfant!' This delightful blending of age and youth (which here _can_ 'live together') is probably due to the collaboration we describe.

Were it a pious thing to dissect Perrault's _Contes_, as Professors of all nations mangle the sacred body of Homer, we might actually publish a text in which the work of the original Darmancour and of the paternal _Diaskeuast_ should be printed in different characters. Without carrying mere guess-work to this absurd extent, cannot one detect the older hand in places like this,--the Ogre's wife finds that her husband has killed his own children by misadventure: 'Elle commenca par s'evanouir (car c'est le premier expedient que trouvent presque toutes les femmes en pareilles rencontres)'? One can almost see the Academician writing in that sentence on the margin of the boy's copy. Again, at the end of _Le Petit Poucet_, we read that he made a fortune by carrying letters from ladies to their lovers, 'ce fut la son plus large gain. Il se trouvoit quelques femmes qui le chargeoient de lettres pour leurs maris, mais elles le payoient si mal, et cela alloit a si peu de chose, qu'il ne daignoit mettre en ligne de conte ce qu'il gagnoit de ce cote-la.' That is the Academician's jibe, and it is he who makes Petit Poucet buy Offices 'de la nouvelle creation pour sa famille.' 'You never did that of your own wit,' as the Giant says to the Laddie in the Scotch story, _Nicht_, _Nought_, _Nothing_. But 'Anne, ma soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir?' 'Je ne vois rien que le Soleil qui poudroye et l'herbe qui verdoye!' or 'Tire la chevillette, le bobinette cherra,' or 'Elle alla donc bien loin, bien loin, encore plus loin'; _there_ the child is listening to the old and broken voice of tradition, mumbling her ancient burden while the cradle rocks, and the spinning-wheel turns and hums.

It is to this union of old age and childhood, then, of peasant memories, and memories of Versailles, to this kindly handling of venerable legends, that Perrault's _Contes_ owe their perennial charm. The nursery tale is apt to lose itself in its wanderings, like the children in the haunted forest; Perrault supplies it with the clue that guides it home. A little grain of French common sense ballasts these light minions of the Moon, the elves; with a little toss of Court powder on the locks, _pulveris exigui jactu_, he tames the wild _fee_ into the Fairy Godmother, a grande dame de par le monde, with an agate crutch-handle on her magic wand. 'His young Princesses, so gentle and so maidenly, have just left the convent of Saint Cyr. The King's sons have the proud courtesy of Dauphins of France: the Maids of Honour, the Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber, the red-nosed Swiss guards, sleep through the slumber of the _Belle au Bois Dormant_[21].'

They are all departed now, Dukes and Vicomtes and Princes, the Swiss Guards have gone, that made the best end of any, the hunting horn is still, and silent is the spinning wheel. The great golden coaches have turned into pumpkins again, the coachman has jumped down from his box, and hidden in his rat-hole, the Dragoon and the Hussar have clattered off for ever, the Duchesses dance no more in the minuet, nor the fairies on the haunted green. But in Perrault's enchanted book they are all with us, figures out of every age, the cannibal ogre that little Zulu and Ojibbeway children fear not unreasonably; the starving wood-cutter in the famines Racine deplored; the Princess, so like Mademoiselle; the Fairy Godmother you might mistake for Madame d'Epernon; the talking animals escaped from the fables of days when man and beast were all on one level with gods, and winds, and stars. In Perrault's fairy-land is room for all of them, and room for children too, who wander hither out of their own world of fancy, and half hope that the Sleeping Beauty dwells behind the hedge of yew, or think to find the dangerous distaff in some dismantled chamber.

The _Histoires et Contes du Tems Passe_ must clearly have been successful, though scant trace of their success remains in the criticism of the time[22]. We may measure it by the fleet of other books of fairy tales which 'pursue the triumph and partake the gale.' The _Contes de Fees_ of Mad. La Comtesse de M---- (Murat) were published by Barbin in 1698. How little the manner resembles Perrault's 'fairy-way of writing,' how much it deserves the censure of the Abbe de Villiers, may be learned from the opening sentence of _Le Parfait Amour_. 'Dans un de ces agreables pais qui sont dependans de l'Empire des Fees, regnoit la redoutable Danamo, elle estoit scavante dans son art, cruelle dans ses actions, et glorieuse de l'honneur d'estre descendue de la celebre Calipso, dont les charmes eurent la gloire et le pouvoir en arrestant le fameux Ulisse, de triompher de la prudence des vainqueurs de Troye.'

The second story, _Anguillette_, is so far natural, that it contains a friendly Eel (as in the Mangaian legend of the Eel-lover of Ina); but this Eel is a fairy, condemned to wear the form of a fish, for certain days in each month. These narratives are almost unreadable, and scarcely keep a trace of the popular tradition. The tales of Madame d'Aulnoy, on the other hand, introduced the _White Cat_, the _Yellow Dwarf_, _Finette Cendron_, and _Le Mouton_ to literature and the stage, where they survive in pantomime and _feerie_. _Beauty and the Beast_ first appears, at the immoderate length of three hundred and sixty-two pages, in _Les Contes Marins_ (La Haye, 1740) by Madame de Villeneuve.

Literary Fairy Tales flourished all through the eighteenth century in the endless _Cabinet de Fees_. As for Perrault's Tales, they were republished at the Hague, in 1742, with illustrations by Fokke. In 1745, they appeared, with Fokke's vignettes, and with an English translation. An English version, translated by Mr. Samber, printed for J. Pote, was advertised, Mr. Austin Dobson tells me, in the _Monthly Chronicle_, March 1729. There have been innumerable editions, often splendidly equipped and illustrated, down to the present date. This little book alone, of all Charles Perrault's labours, has won 'the land of matters unforgot.' Odysseus, Figaro, and Othello are not more certain to be immortal than Hop o' my Thumb, Puss in Boots, and Blue Beard, the heroes whom Charles Nodier so pleasantly called 'the Ulysses, the Figaro, and the Othello of children.'

[Footnote 4: Grimm, _Kinder- und Hausmaerchen_. No. 89.]

[Footnote 5: _Ballet des Arts, danse par sa Majeste; le 8 Janvier, 1663._ A Paris. Par Robert Ballard. M.DC.LXIII.]

[Footnote 6: _Madame de Maintenon d'apres sa Correspondance._ Geffroy, ii. 211. Paris, 1887.]

[Footnote 7: _Madame de Maintenon d'apres sa Correspondance._ Geffroy, i. 322.]

[Footnote 8: Paris: de l'imprimerie de Jean Baptiste Coignard, imprimeur du Roy et de l'Academie Francoise, rue Saint Jacques, la Bible d'or, 1691. The Bibliotheque Nationale and the Arsenal possess copies of this duodecimo of 58 pages. One of the copies is inscribed _Donne par Lautheur_ 1691. (Lefevre. _Contes de Charles Perrault_, p. 167. Paris, _s. a._)]

[Footnote 9: Paul de Saint Victor, _Les Contes des Fees_, in _Hommes et Dieux_, p. 475. Paris, 1883.]

[Footnote 10: _Les Fees du Moyen Age_, p. 101. Paris, 1843.]

[Footnote 11: Recueil, 1694. _Peau d'Ane_, p. 50. _Les Souhaits Ridicules_, p. 93. _Griselidis_, p. 233.]

[Footnote 12: Coignard Veuve. Paris.]

[Footnote 13: _Dialogues des Morts par feu Messire Francois de Salignac de la Motte Fenelon_, vol. i. p. 23. Paris, 1718. 'L'autre n'est qu'un amas de contes de vieilles.' Achilles thus anticipates Gerland's _Altgriechische Maerchen in der Odyssee_.]

[Footnote 14: Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye is the title on the frontispiece. The term occurs in Loret, _La Muse Historique_. (Lettre V. 11 Juin, 1650.)

'Mais le cher motif de leur joye, Comme un conte de la Mere Oye, Se trouvant fabuleux et faux, Ils deviendront tous bien penauts.' ]

[Footnote 15: In her _Moralite_, Mlle. L'Heritier says,--

'Cent fois ma nourrice ou ma mie M'ont fait ce beau recit le soir pres des tisons, Je n'y fais qu'ajouter un peu de broderie.' ]

[Footnote 16: The _Fables d'animaux_ are probably even older than _contes_ _Diamonds and Toads_. A Mouse and a Frog, as well as the Old Woman who survives as _La Fee_, take part in the tale as the Kaffirs tell it in _The Story of Five Heads_, in Theal's _Kaffir Folk Lore_, pp. 48, 49. The Kaffir story slides into a form of _Beauty and the Beast_. By some unexplained accident a story of Mlle. L'Heritier's _L'Adroite Princesse_ slipped into editions of Perrault's _Contes_, in 1721, if not earlier, and holds its place even now.]

[Footnote 17: _Histoires ou Contes du Tems Passe, avec des Moralites._ A Paris. Chez Claude Barbin, sur le second peron de la Sainte-Chapelle; au Palais. Avec Privilege de sa Majeste, 1697. In 12o. 230 pp. Bibliotheque de M. Cousin, 9677. The frontispiece, by Clouzier, represents an old woman spinning, and telling tales to a man, a girl, a little boy, and a cat which, from its broad and intelligent grin, naturalists believe to be of the Cheshire breed. On a placard is written

CONTES DEMA MERE LOYE.

A copy, modified, of the engraving is printed on the cover of M. Charles Deulin's _Les Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye avant Perrault_. (Paris, Dentu, 1879.) The design holds its own, with various slight alterations, in the English chap-books of _Mother Goose's Tales_, even in the present century. There is a vastly 'embroidered' reminiscence of Clouzier in the edition edited by M. Ch. Giraud, for Perrin of Lyon, 1865.]

[Footnote 18: Mademoiselle was Elizabeth Charlotte d'Orleans, born 1676, sister of Philippe, Duc de Chartres, later Duc d'Orleans, and Regent. See Paul Lacroix in _Contes de Perrault_, Paris, s. d. (1826.)]