Saint Evremond
The Letters of Saint Evremond. Edited by John Hayward. (Routledge. 21s.)
TOWARDS the end of the seventeenth century there was to be seen about London a very old man who was certainly rather queer to look at. He had an enormous wen, about the size of an apple, between his eyes ; he wore no wig or bat, but his unkempt grey locks stuck out from under a skull cap ; he was well known for being somewhat dirty, sharing his lodging, indeed, with fowls and monkeys. Never- theless, he knew everyone, and went everywhere. This he was able to do because he was a highbrow—what in those days was called a wit—he would discourse of Gassendi, and especially of Epicurus, but not much of Spinoza, for although he had suet him, he did not much care for the God-intoxicated. He would tell you exactly why Corneille was a really great poet, and Racine only a little behind him. He wrote about Italian operas and English comedy although he did not know Italian and could not speak a word of English, in spite of his having been an English Civil Servant, namely, Beeper of the Ducks in the Decoy at St. James's Park. He had been intimate, and still was by letter, with Ninon de Lenclos, and was a devoted admirer of the Duchess of Mazarin. Above all, he would talk ; he would talk for hours ; " he would talk for ever." Such was Charles Marguetel de Saint Denis, Seigneur de Saint Evremond.
His career was chequered. Born in 1616, he was brought up to be a scholar and a lawyer, but at about sixteen he turned his back on drudgery, and went for a soldier. It was a pleasant life ; in the summer, campaigning which allowed intervals for witty talk ; and when this was over, there was more talk, now in the salons ; writing ; and the making of a little winter love in bright corners. He emerged happily from various passing troubles, but in the winter of 1601 he was Aimed' to fly his country owing to the discovery of a private letter he had written in criticism of Mazarin. He spent his time partly in London and partly at the Hague, but in 1670 he went to live in London at the invitation of Charles II._ -He never went back to France. For years he solicited for grace, but was alWays refused. Still, one must be happy and cheerful wherever one is ; there are books, there are ,eople, even friends ; and endless oppor- tunities for conversation. Reason is there to regulate one's sorrows and to direct one's joys, in short, to govern the hehrt. There was much to comfort him, especially the Duchess of Mazarin. He was about sixty when he offered her his head- directed but tender and delicate heart. And when, at last, in 1689, his pardon came, he could not tear himself away from her, although on the other side there was still Ninon, as young as ever, and still owing him fifty pistoles.
But even when one is old, and the passions have subsided, the heart sometimes escapes the bondage of the head. " When you remember your youth," he wrote to Ninon on New Year's Day, 1700, " does not the recollection of the past sometimes suggest to you ideas as far removed from the langours of idleness as from the tumults of passion ? Do you never feel in your heart a secret opposition to the calm of mind you imagine yourself to have acquired ? " And he added a little song to prove that the reason orders you to love. .Amw ergo sum, was his amendment of the Cartesian philosophy. But now it was only the memory of the Duchess which kept him in England, for she was dead. She was never out of his mind. " There is not one word in your letter that does not please me," he wrote to Lord Montagu in 1700; two years after her- detith;:'-- except where- you tell hie- tfitit- you
eat truffles every day. I could not forbear crying when I thought of my eating them with the Duchesse Mazarin ; I represented her to myself with all her chum's. . . ." Vet she had been overbearing with him now and again, and he had had to protest ; with all his age and his reason, he was, in 1688, as susceptible to pain as a romantic boy. " I entreat you, Madam, do not censure nic generally upon every thing I say, nor condemn me for every thing I do."
As Mr. Hayward says, we shall find in these letters" material for the re-creation of a delightful and sympathetic character," and also, we might add, a wise one : he understood philosophy is the old sense, as a rule for the art of life. We should ho grateful for the opportunity-Mr. Hayward gives us, for thought many of the letters come from the early eighteenth-century translation, a large number, newly-translated, are added. from various sources, both French and English. It is an admirable edition, with an excellent introduction and copious notes, which here and there, and just in the right places, are agreeably garrulous. We might suggest that Letter No. 37 should conic immediately before No. 34, since the latter evidently refers to the former ; as a note to Mine Aims, " i.e., a thousand years " semis scanty. If we have any quarrel with Mr. Hayward, it is that he is somewhat too inclined to take for granted that everybody holds the same views on life as he does. He cannot conceive why a man should wish to be a soldier, so he says : " Perhaps it will always remain something of a mystery why a man decides to be a soldier." It might be just as much a mystery to a soldier why a man should want to edit some old letters ; it is just as much a mystery to those who wish otherwise why a man should wish to become a stockbroker, an M.P., or a bishop. 'Again, Mr. Hayward is a little too much inclined to the easy generalization. He refers to " the plump and stupid people of the Hague," when the Hague was the most brilliant diplomatic centre of Europe, and a notable cultural point ; and we beg leave to doubt whether Dutchmen are flitter than the rest of mankind. As to England, Addison asked how a man of honour could help being fat if he ate " suitable to his quality." He exaggerates also, and Mr. Hayward as a recognized authority on this period should not have allowed himself the clap-trap, when he says that at the Restoration Court conjugal fidelity " could never have survived." But there is no shadow of reason to suspect that Sarah Jennings, for instance, was ever unfaithful to Colonel Churchill ; and was there not the immaculate Margaret Godolphin 'e Nor is it necessary to agree with him on the fatal effects to England of Mademoiselle de Keroualle. Charles may have sold England, but it is remarkable how little Louis XIV got for the sums he paid. But that one has to pick upon such trifles is indirectly to praise so companionable a book.
BONAMY BOBRAE.
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