Various
Four and Twenty Fairy Tales
MASTER CAT; OR PUSS IN BOOTS
Maître Chat; ou, le Chat Botté.– This capital story is said by Mr. Dunlop and Mr. Keightley to be taken from a collection of stories by Giovan Francesco Straparola, printed at Venice in 1550-54, under the titles of Tredici Piacevole Notte, and translated into French "with considerable embellishments" in 1585. That the first story of the Eleventh Night is derived from the same source as Perrault's there can be little doubt; but I am not by any means prepared to admit that Perrault was indebted to that or any other printed collection for this or any one of those eight stories which it is clear were well known in France as Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye. Straparola, who seems to have borrowed largely from Morlini, and collected stories wherever he could find them, drew upon the traditions of Brittany as well as on the fabliaux of Provence. It is indeed notorious that the Italian novelists were indebted almost entirely to the Trouvères or Troubadours of Languedoc, whilst they themselves admit that the plots of their romances were of Armorican origin.
In Britanie of old time
These lays were wrought, so saith this rhyme.
Says the old translator of the Lai le Fraine, the author of which Mr. Dunlop acknowledges "must have been better informed than any modern writer" (History of Fiction, 8vo, 1845, p. 196). In the second edition of the Countess D'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, I took an opportunity of vindicating that lady from the charge so hastily preferred against her both by Mr. Dunlop and Mr. Keightley, and I now contest as strongly the accuracy of the opinions of the same writers respecting the tales of Charles Perrault. Neither in the story of Straparola, first of the Eleventh Night, nor in the Gagliuso of Signor Basile (whose Pentamerone, published in 1672, is also roundly asserted to have been the "origin" of the French Contes des Fées55), do we find Puss in Boots. What would Le Maître Chat be, were he not also Le Chat Botté? Nor is there an Ogre – that especial characteristic of a legend of Brittany – nor consequently the delicious scene between him and Puss, which so dramatically winds up the French story. The same unmistakeable indications of its being a veritable Histoire du Temps Passé, militate against the belief alluded to by M. de Plancy, that the Marquis de Carabas was intended as a portrait of some particular nobleman of the time of Louis XIV.; and therefore that the usurpation of the castle and property of the ogre might be an allusion to the indelicate seizure by D'Aubigné of the domains of a Protestant, an exile in consequence of the religious persecutions at the close of the seventeenth century, "In which case," he adds, "the Cat would be Madame de Maintenon!" What a pity so ingenious an idea should be destitute of foundation. It is more probable that the wits of the day compared the illustrious individuals to the Marquis de Carabas and his Cat.
I have kept the old English title of Puss in Boots, though it is not literally that of the original. It would have been an indictable offence to have altered it.
The tricks of the cat to catch the rats are described almost in the words of Lafontaine, in his fable of Le Chat et le Vieux Rat, in which Maître Mitis, "l'Alexandre des chats," a second Rodillard, "se pend la tête en bas" and "s'enfarine" for the same purpose.
CINDERELLA; OR THE LITTLE GLASS SLIPPER
Cendrillon; ou, la Petite Pantoufle de Verre. Here, again, could it enter the heart of an Englishman to call this anything but Cinderella? I am proud to say I was not equal to such a sacrifice to principle. I should have been afraid to meet the eyes of my grandchildren. There are persons, however, who have been cruel enough to tamper with the second title, to destroy "the little glass slipper," and tell us that in the original story it was not a pantoufle "de verre," but "de vair" —i. e., a fur much worn in the middle ages, and from which the charge of vair in heraldry was taken. I thank the stars that I have not been able to discover any foundation for this alarming report. Even should it be unfortunately the fact, it would not affect the Conte de ma Mère l'Oye, as handed down to us by Perrault. In that, it is an undeniable "pantoufle de verre," and has been said to represent allegorically the extreme fragility of woman's reputation, and the prudence of flight before it is too late. There appears to be no doubt that this story is founded on an old Armorican tradition, as in 1826 an alteration of an ancient Breton chronicle was published by Madame Piette, entitled Laurette de Karnabas; ou, la Nouvelle Cendrillon, which is taken from the same source, but divested of its fairy agency; and the Countess d'Aulnoy had previously availed herself of some portions of the tale of Cendrillon in her story of Finette Cendron.
The trial of the slipper is like that of the ring in the story of Peau d'Ane, and a "little glass shoe" is the subject of a German fairy tale. The Germans have also a version of Cinderella, in which the slipper is of "pure gold."
At the banquet it will be remembered that the Prince is said to have given Cinderella both oranges and citrons. These do not appear to us at present as particularly suggestive of the magnificence of a royal collation; but in the seventeenth century, Portugal oranges were considered a present worthy princes of the blood. "Monsieur, me vint voir," says the Duchesse de Montpensier, in her Memoirs, "il me donne des oranges de Portugal." Molière, in his description of the comedy which formed a portion of the famous fêtes given at Versailles, in 1668, by Louis XIV., tells us that "d'abord on vit sur le théâtre une colation magnifique d'oranges de Portugal;" and in his own comedy, L'Avare, when Harpagon apologises to his mistress for not having prepared a collation for her, his son replies, "J'y ai pourvu, mon père, et j'ai fait apporter ici quelques bassins d'oranges de la Chine, de citrons doux, et de confitures." Also, according to L'Emery (Traités des Aliments, 1705), the citron was supposed to give a better colour to the lips, and the ladies of the Court in the 17th century, therefore, "portoient en main des citrons doux, quelles mordoient de tems en tems pour avoir les livres vermeilles." – Le Grand D'Aussi. —Vie Privée des Français, tom. i. p. 251.
RIQUET WITH THE TUFT
Riquet à la Houpe is perhaps the least known of the eight Contes de ma Mère l'Oye; but although it has not the attractive qualities which have occasioned the popularity of the others, it is an excellent story, with a valuable moral, though, strangely enough, the moralité with which it concludes takes no notice of it. The object of the story is evidently to show the superiority of mental to personal qualifications, and the power of the former not only to compensate for ugliness and deformity, but even to make one forget them. The concluding verses, however, point only to the fact that love can embellish its object, and turn even defects into beauties, passing over the more important one of the cause of the love itself.
Some writers have fancied the hero of this story to have been a person of distinction at the Court of Louis XIV., forgetting that, like the rest in the collection, it is a "histoire du tems passé." But, as Monsieur de Plancy remarks, "On voit souvent des allusions ou il n'y en a point;" and, as in the case of Le Chat Botté, the application may have been made to the man from the story.
The reader has been referred to this Appendix by a marginal note at page 32, respecting the Queue de Renard. The explanation offered by the editor of the French edition of 1826 is, that "les cuisiniers élégans se coiffaient dans leur négligé de travail de la peau de quelqu' animal, dont ils laissaient pendre la queue;" and he adds, "on voit encore, dans certaines provinces, des chasseurs coîffé ainsi." That a huntsman should sport a fox's brush, or wear a cap made of the fur of any animal, is not in the least remarkable or uncommon; but I do not see how it can be taken as a fact in support of the assertion that cooks did so either in the time of Louis XIV. or at present; and the Editor does not give us any authority for that assertion. Of all animals, a fox would be the last I should imagine a French cook would select to furnish him with a trophy or a sign of company, and that "twenty or thirty rôtisseurs" should all have "la lardoire à la main et la queue de renard sur l'oreille," appears to me, if we are to consider the author to have meant actually the tail of a fox, a very remarkable circumstance, as the use of the definitive article in both cases shows the "queue de renard" must have been as much the mark of a cook as the "lardoire," or larding-pin. I confess I am not satisfied with this explanation; and all my own researches and those kindly made for me by friends both in Paris and London, have hitherto failed in throwing any light upon this curious passage. "Queue de Renard" is the name of a plant known by us as foxtail, and it is also applied to a particular family of flowers; but it is likewise the name of an implement. "Outil a deux biseaux ou chanfreins par le bout dont on se sert pour percer." – Bescherelle. This description looks vastly like some accessory to the larding-pin.
The same authority has also: "Queue de renard à étouper. Le queue de cet animal dont se servent les doreurs pour appliquer les feuilles d'or ou d'argent." This, as we know, is not the entire brush, but a portion of the hair. In default of any positive information, I will merely make three suggestions: 1. A portion of the herb foxtail, dried, which might be used as a whisk. 2. A small instrument for piercing or skewering. 3. A portion of the brush, as used by gilders of wood or metal, and probably by the rôtisseurs of that day, as we find it was customary to gild the beaks and legs of the game and poultry served up at the royal banquets. Favin, amongst other writers, tells us of a grand banquet in which "le quatrième service fut d'oyseaux tans grands que petits, et tous le service fut doré."
In the Form of Cury there is a receipt for making "Viande Riall" (royal), in which the cook is told, after he has dressed it in "dysshes plate," to "take a barre of golde foyle and another of silver foyle, and lay hom (them) on, Saint Andrew's cross wyse, above the potage, and then take sugre plate, or gynger plate, or paste royale, and kutte hom of lozenges, and plante hom in the voide places between the barres, and serve hit forthe." The peacock served in his "hakell," —i. e., neck feathers, or in his "pride" —i. e. with tail displayed, &c. – had always his bill gilt.
Whatever, in fine, the "queue de renard" may have been, I cannot doubt that, worn "sur l'oreille," it was a distinctive mark of a rôtisseur of that day, as a pen behind the ear has been of a clerk in ours; and the probability is in favour of the third interpretation, as rôtisseurs were, as their name implies, those cooks who prepared the roasted dishes only, and in all the old accounts it is especially the "rotie" that is "doré."
Riquet à la Houpe is supposed to have inspired Madame de Villeneuve with the idea of the Beauty and the Beast. In my notice of that story, I shall have a word to say in refutation of that supposition. Riquet with the Tuft was the first of those fairy extravaganzas which the public have so kindly received during twenty years, at the Olympic, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Haymarket, and the Lyceum. It was written in conjunction with Mr. Charles Dance, and produced at the Olympic under Madame Vestris's management, December 26th, 1836
LITTLE THUMBLING
Le Petit Poucet.– This story, under the titles of Hop o' my Thumb, Little Thumb and his Brothers, &c., has been continually reprinted amongst our English nursery tales; and as I have already spoken of ogres and seven-leagued boots, there is little else in it that calls for observation. The latter are said to have been "fées" —i. e. enchanted, as the key in Blue Beard. The attempt of the parents to lose the children in the wood is an incident in Madame d'Aulnoy's story of Finette Cendron, drawn, no doubt, from the same source, as Cambry, in his Voyage au Finisterre, bears witness to Le Petit Poucet having been an "ancien conté populaire," which has for ages amused "les enfans de la Basse Bretagne." I think it is quite unnecessary for me to go into the question of this story being founded on an episode in Homer's Odyssey, to prove that Perrault was not thinking of Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, or that the pebbles and bread were not suggested by the clue of Ariadne.
In Grimm's Kinder und Hausmärchen are several stories about Thumbling; and I need scarcely remind the reader that England has her own renowned Thomas Thumb.
THE COUNTESS DE MURAT
Henriette Julie de Castelneau, daughter of Michel, second Marquis de Castelnau, Governor of Brest, and granddaughter by the mother's side, to the Count d'Angnon, Marshal of France, was born at Brest in 1670. At the age of sixteen, she came to Paris in the costume worn by the peasants in Brittany, the language of which province she spoke very fluently. Her appearance in this dress caused such a sensation that the Queen desired her to wear it on her presentation at Court. She married Nicholas, Count de Murat, Colonel of Infantry and Brigadier des Armées du Roi, descended from a family established in Auvergne before 1300, and that afterwards passed into Dauphiné. Being suspected by Madame de Maintenon of having been part author of a libel in which all the persons composing the Court of Louis XIV., in 1694, were caricatured or insulted, she was banished to Auch, Department du Gers. After the death of Louis XIV., the Regent Duke of Orleans, at the request of Madame de Parabere, recalled Madame de Murat in 1715. She did not, however, long enjoy her return to Paris, as she died at her Château de la Buzardiere in Maine the following year (1716), at the early age of forty-six. She was the author of many works, both in prose and verse,56 but is best known by her Contes des Fées, six of the most popular of which are here translated. Four of these (Le Parfait Amour, Anguillette, Jeune et Belle, and Le Palais de la Vengeance) were printed in 1766, and again in 1817, in the collection of Fairy Tales attributed to the Countess d'Aulnoy, of whom Madame de Murat was the contemporary, but certainly not the rival. Her stories have more the character of romances and novels than fairy tales, with a strong infusion of sentiment, such as is to be found in the writings of Madame de Scuderi, Madlle. de La Fayette, the Countess d'Auneuil, and others of that period.
The plots of them were most probably taken from
"Les contes ingenus quoique remplis d'addresse Qu'ont inventés les Troubadours."
For to this she is specially invited in the verses at the end of the prose story of L'Adroite Princesse, which is dedicated to her, and attributed to Perrault. It has been shown, however, that if that version of L'Adroite Princesse were really written by him, it was not published till 1742, thirty-nine years after the death of the reputed author, and twenty-six after the death of the lady to whom it is dedicated.
PERFECT LOVE
Le Parfait Amour is a story exhibiting considerable talent, although deficient in those lively sallies, those amusing whimsicalities and allusions to the manners and dresses of the period which give so much piquancy to the Fairy Tales of Perrault, and the more elaborate compositions of Madame d'Aulnoy. The interest is entirely of a serious character; but the magic ring, with its power over the four elements – the value of which is destroyed by the too hasty wish of the lover – is an ingenious and dramatic idea, and the fatal lamps a truly affecting situation. This is the first Fairy Tale that gives us a picture of the Gnomes, and their subterraneous magnificence – a superstition existing all over Europe; the Trolls, or underground men of the North; the little people and ground mannikins of Germany; and the Korr or Korred of Brittany.
"The wise
And prudent little people, who keep warm
By their fine fires, many a fathom down
Within the inmost rocks. Pure native gold,
And the rock crystals, shaped like towers, clear,
Transparent, gleam with colours thousand-fold
Through the fair palace; and the little folks,
So happy and so gay, amuse themselves
Sometimes with singing."57
And accordingly we find them singing the charms of Irolite, and entertaining the lovers with "une musique fort harmonieuse, mais un peu barbare."
ANGUILLETTE
Anguillette is a story of the same character as Le Parfait Amour. The interest is wholly serious, and the termination tragical, reminding one, by the transformation of the victims into trees, of the catastrophe of the Yellow Dwarf of Madame d'Aulnoy. The inconstancy of Atimir is very naturally drawn; and there is considerable merit in the general conduct of the story.
YOUNG AND HANDSOME
Jeune et Belle might almost be placed amongst the pastoral romances of D'Urfey and George de Montemayor. It is full of Watteau-like tableaux, many of them suggested, probably, to the writer as to the painter by the Fêtes Champêtre so much in vogue during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at the Court of Versailles.
The sudden and unexpected introduction of Zephyr at the very close of the story as the Deus ex machinâ, is quite in accordance with the taste of the period, though much out of place in a fairy tale. It is not, however, for me to find fault with it, as it afforded me a hint for a character which enabled Mr. Robson to display the versatility of his genius in the last of that long series of extravaganzas I have already alluded to.
In the "Collection" above mentioned, this tale was substituted for Madame d'Aulnoy's Serpentin Vert, the dénouement of which is also produced by the incongruous introduction of mythological personages.
THE PALACE OF VENGEANCE
Le Palais de la Vengeance was printed in the "Collection" as Madame d'Aulnoy's, under the title of the Palace of Revenge. It is principally remarkable for its satirical conclusion – a very original one for a fairy tale, as the lovers are married, and do not "live happy ever afterwards."
THE PRINCE OF LEAVES
Le Prince des Feuilles is, to the best of my knowledge, presented for the first time in an English garb. It is more of a fairy tale than the four preceding it, and appears to me to have been suggested to Madame de Murat by her residence at Auch, where, indeed, it is most likely to have been written.
The natural history of the turquoise had been newly popularized by the publications of Chardin and other Oriental travellers; and more particularly by that of a book by Boethius de Boot, Le Parfait Joallier; Lyons, 1644. The turquoise "de la Vieille Roche," that Madame de Murat speaks of, is a stone found near Nichapour and Carasson, in Persia – the true Oriental turquoise; whilst those called "de la Nouvelle Roche," are not stones, but petrified bones, and are found in Europe, particularly in France, at Auch, (the very place to which Madame de Murat was exiled;) and near Simmorre, in the Département du Gers; and in the Nivernais, according to the account of Reamur in the Mémoires de l'Académie, 1715.
Turquoises were formerly very highly prized, and all kinds of virtues and properties attributed to them, the greater part of which are fabulous, although detailed gravely by de Boot, who was physician to Rodolph II., Emperor of Germany. The jewellers, even in his day, took great pains to distinguish between those that retained their colour and those that turned green. A fine unchanging turquoise, the size of a filbert, sold in that day for two hundred thalers and upwards. "The turquoise possesses such attractions," says de Boot, "that men do not think their hands are well adorned, nor their magnificence sufficiently displayed, if they are not decked with some of the finest." The name is supposed to have been derived from Turkey, the country from which they were probably first imported; but others deduce it from Turchino, a name given by Italians to a particular blue.
Even at this day, the discoloration or loss of a turquoise is considered a prognostication of evil.