BOOKS
A Literary Exile
BY PETER
QUENNELL
HE English are proud of their language; but I they do not regard it as a national sanctuary, with an innermost shrine that only a true-born Englishman can ever hope to penetrate. The French, on the other hand, have a jealous and possessive affection for the tongue they have in- herited; very few foreigners, according to their view, learn to speak the language either idiomati- cally or correctly; and still fewer manage to write it in a style that satisfies a native ear. But a single exception is admitted to prove the rule; even Sainte-Beuve readily agreed that one Englishman had Composed a French masterpiece, and that he had done so, moreover, during the classic period of French prose. 'To make this exception doubly surprising, the author selected was not a profes- sional writer, but a soldier and man of the world at a loose end, who took to writing for his own diversion, and in the hope of diverting friends who had a similar background and equally mundane tastes. His opening lines set, forth his intentions : Comme ceux qui ne lisent que pour se divertir
me paroissent phis raisonnables que ceux qui
n'ouvrent till livre que pour, y chercher des
defauts, je declare, que, sans me mettre en paine de la severe erudition de ces deriders, je n'ecris qua pour !'amusement des autres. le declare, de plus, que l'ordre des temps. ou la disposition des
falls . . . ne m'embarrasseront guere dans
!'arrangement de ces Memoires.
Anthony Hamilton, when he published his famous book, had nearly reached his seventieth birthday. He had been born in Ireland about 1645, and he and his five brothers—descended from an ancient Catholic family related to the Dukes of Hamilton—had seen service, under several monarchs, in many, different parts of Europe. Anthony himself had fought for Louis XIV against the Dutch, and for James Il at the Battle of the Boyne. The Hamilton brothers—good- looking, debonair and gallant--Seem to have had a somewhat poor opinion of that ineffective and un- attractive sovereign; but (as Mademoiselle Engel remarks in her new edition of the Memoires*) they 'remained imperturbably faithful to the King whom they despised'; and after his flight from the English throne, the survivors—three of them had already been killed—followed their master into exile. This was Anthony's second experience of exile; and, as a middle-aged man, he found it particularly irksome. The court at Saint-Germain was dull and overcrowded; Louis XIV took offence at the pride and haughtiness of the arro- gant Hamilton clan; the English refugees had little money to spare, and Anthony fell back on the consolations of desultory scribbling. In order to get through his days of 'useless leisure' and keep at bay a 'boundless ennui,' he began to produce not only facetious occasional verses but a series of charming fairy-stories in prose. Finally, he decided he would draw a detailed picture of the court of Charles II, at which he himself had been pre- sented as a dashing youth of seventeen. But the • MEMOIRES DU CHEVALIER DE GRAMONT. Texte etabli, annote et presente par Claire-Eliane Engel. (Editions du Rocher : Monaco, 1,850 fr.)
narrative evidently required a hero; and the hero he chose was his amorous and adventurous brother-in-law Philibert de Gramont, one-time lover of Marion de Lorme, who had crowned his brilliant, career by capturing Elizabeth Hamilton. Madame de. Gramont, during her Whitehall apprenticeship, had been celebrated both for her beauty and for her virtue, and was said to have been one of the Maids of Honour who had had the resolution to refuse the King's advances. Their union appears to have turned out happily; and, when Gramont was believed to be dying at Fon- tainebleau in the year 1696, we learn that his English wife (who was suspected of Jansenist tendencies) recited the Lord's Prayer at the foot of the invalid's bed. Gramont was touched and impressed. 'Celle .priere est belle, comtesse,' he observed. 'De qui est dle?'; and, under its soothing influence, he soon recovered. Gramont sur- vived until January, 1707—Anthony Hamilton's Memoires were published in 1713—and Madame des Ursins, writing to Madame de Maintenon, paid a tribute to his odd and original character : 'Je ne pence pas qu'il y ait courtisan assez temeraire pour oser rem placer M. le Comte de Gramont: c'etait un original qu'on ne peut inciter; sa mort n'a pas demetiti sa vie.' Apparently he had not expected death. 'll n'y a que les sots qui meurent,' he had once announced with his custo- mary cynical bravado.
No doubt Hamilton had a double motive for building his story around the Comte de Gramont; he had admired, and been amused by, his per- sonality, and saw that there would be an additional advantage in describing the English court from the standpoint of a foreign visitor. Whitehall was less magnificent than Versailles, Charles II, with his easy, natural ways, a great deal less imposing and alarming than the terrific Sun King. But then, English court-life had a gaiety and informality seldom to be enjoyed in courts across the Channel; and Hamilton emphasises the Englishness of his subject by focusing his narrative upon a French hero and translating the chronicle of his adven- tures into the hero's own language. The result was a book that is neither French nor English, but has some of the distinctive qualities of both races— an admirable piece of French prose, informed by an entirely English sense of humour. That sense of humour does not yet show signs of dating. It would be difficult to improve, for example, as an essay in literary low comedy, on Hamilton's account of how Killigrew and Rochester manage to persuade Miss Temple—`simple, glorieuse, credule, soupconneuse, coquette, sage, fort suffisante et fort sotte'—that a forbidding maiden lady named Miss Hobart, who has warned her to beware of Lord Rochester's seductive speeches, is only playing the part of the prudent, well-meaning friend because she herself has formed horrid designs against Miss Temple's virtue : and how Miss Temple, next time her respectable friend throws an innocent arm around her waist, imagines that she is in the clutches of a she-satyr and rouses the palace with her desperate cries for help. Hamilton's gift of lively characterisation has no exact equivalent in contemporary English litera- ture and sometimes recalls the methods employed by a twentieth-century novelist. Thus Miss Wells,' we are told, was a handsome and graceful girl; but her face, 'fait comme ceux qui plaisent le plus, etoii un de ceux qui plaisent le mains. Le ciel y avoit repandu un certain air d'incertitude, qui lui donnait Pair dun mouton qui reve.' The dreamy sheep was a devoted Royalist; 'et, comme son pere avoit fidelement servi Charles I, elle crut qu'il ne falloit pas se revolter contre Charles IL' At least, the defence she put up was exceedingly half- hearted.
Despite its frequently scandalous contents, how- ever, which since 1817 have earned it a place on the Index Librorum Prohihitorum, the Memoires du Chevalier de Gramont cannot be dismissed as a mere fashionable chronique scandaleuse. It is written in a beautifully lucid style to which no English translation can quite do justice; and, besides his gift of characterising his personages, Hamilton shows himself a minor master of the art of story-telling. None of his portrait-sketches fails to come to life; and Hamilton's levity is sometimes as trenchant in its effect as the Duc de Saint- Simon's cold severity. It would be interesting to know if he ever talked with Saint-Simon (who, although he wrote a savage obituary of Gramont, only mentions the Hamilton brothers in passing); but we are told that he was a friend of Boileau and Bussy-Rabutin, author of the Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules, and used to attend the literary parties held by the Duchesse du Maine at Sceaux. Amid such surroundings he began to prepare the book that almost immediately established his reputa- tion, and which was first translated into English a year after it appeared in French. One is grateful to Mademoiselle Engel for having edited, and carefully edited, the text of the original edition. She has added an informative preface that will give Hamilton's admirers the biographical details they need.
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