The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault 2

The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault 2

In the same year Charles was elected to the Academy without any

personal canvas on his part for the honour. His inaugural address was

heard with such approval that he ventured to suggest that the

inauguration of future members should be a public function. The

suggestion was adopted, and these addresses became the most famous

feature of the Academy's proceedings and are so to the present day.

This was not his only service to the Academy, for he carried a motion

to the effect that future elections should be by ballot; and invented

and provided, at his own expense, a ballot-box which, though he does

not describe it, was probably the model of those in use in all modern

clubs and societies._

 

_The novelty of his views did not always commend them to his brother

'Immortals.' Those expressed in his poem "Le Siècle de Louis XIV,"

which he read as an Academician of sixteen years' standing, initiated

one of the most famous and lasting literary quarrels of the era.

Perrault, in praising the writers of his own age, ventured to

disparage some of the great authors of the ancient classics. Boileau

lashed himself into a fury of opposition and hurled strident insults

against the heretic. Racine, more adroit, pretended to think that the

poem was a piece of ingenious irony. Most men of letters hastened to

participate in the battle. No doubt Perrault's position was untenable,

but he conducted his defence with perfect temper and much wit; and

Boileau made himself not a little absurd by his violence and his

obvious longing to display the extent of his learning. Perrault's case

is finally stated in his four volumes, "Le Parallèle des Anciens et

des Modernes," which were published in 1688-1696. He evidently took

vastly more pride in this dull and now almost forgotten work than in

the matchless stories which have made him famous for ever._

 

_After twenty years in the service of Colbert, the sun of Perrault's

fortunes passed its zenith. His brother, the Commissioner of Taxes,

had a dispute with the Minister and was disgraced. Then Perrault got

married to a young lady of whom we know nothing except that her

marriage was the subject of some opposition from his powerful

employer. In a matter of the sort Perrault, though a courtier, could

be relied on to consider no wishes save those of his future wife and

himself. Colbert's own influence with the King became shaky, and this

affected his temper. So Perrault, then just fifty-five, slid quietly

from his service in the year 1683._

 

_Before he went, he succeeded in frustrating a project for closing the

Tuileries Gardens against the people of Paris and their children.

Colbert proposed to reserve them to the royal use, but Perrault

persuaded him to come there one day for a walk, showed him the

citizens taking the air and playing with their children; got the

gardeners to testify that these privileges were never abused, and

carried his point by declaring, finally, that "the King's pleasaunce

was so spacious that there was room for all his children to walk

there."_

 

_Sainte-Beuve, seventy years ago, pleaded that this service to the

children of Paris should be commemorated by a statue of Perrault in

the centre of the Tuileries. The statue has never been erected; and,

to the present day, Paris, so plentifully provided with statues and

pictures of the great men of France, has neither the one nor the other

to show that she appreciates the genius of Perrault. Indeed, there is

no statue of him in existence; and the only painting of him with which

I am acquainted is a doubtful one hung far away in an obscure corner

of the palace of Versailles._

 

_The close of Perrault's official career marked the beginning of his

period of greatest literary activity. In 1686 he published his long

narrative poem "Saint Paulin Evesque de Nole" with "a Christian Epistle

upon Penitence" and "an Ode to the Newly-converted," which he dedicated

to Bossuet. Between the years 1688 and 1696 appeared the "Parallèle des

Anciens et des Modernes" to which I have already referred. In 1693 he

brought out his "Cabinet des Beaux Arts," beautifully illustrated by

engravings, and containing a poem on painting which even Boileau

condescended to admire. In 1694 he published his "Apologie des Femmes."

He wrote two comedies--"L'Oublieux" in 1691, and "Les Fontanges." These

were not printed till 1868. They added nothing to his reputation.

Between 1691 and 1697 were composed the immortal "Histoires ou Contes du

Temps Passé" and the "Contes en Vers." Toward the end of his life he

busied himself with the "Éloges des Hommes Illustres du Siècle de Louis

XIV." The first of these two stately volumes came out in 1696 and the

second in 1700. They were illustrated by a hundred and two excellent

engravings, including one, by Edelinck, of Perrault himself and another

of his brother Claude. These biographies are written with kindly

justice, and form a valuable contribution to the history of the reign of

the Roi Soleil. I have not exhausted the list of Perrault's writings,

but, to speak frankly, the rest are not worth mentioning._

 

_He died, aged seventy-five, in 1703, deservedly admired and regretted

by all who knew him. This was not strange. For he was clever, honest,

courteous, and witty. He did his duty to his family, his employer, his

friends, and to the public at large. In an age of great men, but also

of great prejudices, he fought his own way to fame and fortune. He

served all the arts, and practised most of them. Painters, writers,

sculptors, musicians, and men of science all gladly made him free of

their company. As a good Civil Servant he was no politician, and he

showed no leaning whatever toward what was regarded in his time as the

greatest of all professions--that of arms. These two deficiencies, if

deficiencies they be, only endear him the more to us. Every one likes

a man who deserves to enjoy life and does, in fact, enjoy it. Perrault

was such a man. He was more. He was the cause of enjoyment to

countless of his fellows, and his stories still promise enjoyment to

countless others to come._

 

_It is amazing to remember that Perrault was rather ashamed of his

"Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé"--perhaps better known as "Les

Contes de ma Mère l'Oye," or "Mother Goose's Tales," from the rough

print which was inserted as a frontispiece to the first collected

edition in 1697. He would not even publish them in his own name. They

were declared to be by P. Darmancour, Perrault's young son. In order

that the secret might be well kept, Perrault abandoned his usual

publisher, Coignard, and went to Barbin. The stories had previously

appeared from time to time, anonymously, in Moetjens' little magazine

the "Recueil," which was published from The Hague. "La Belle au Bois

Dormant" ("Sleeping Beauty") was the first: and in rapid succession

followed "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" ("Red Riding-Hood"), "Le Maistre

Chat, ou le Chat Botté" ("Puss in Boots"), "Les Fées" ("The Fairy"),

"Cendrillon, ou la Petite Pantoufle de Verre" ("Cinderella"), "Riquet

à la Houppe" ("Riquet of the Tuft"), and "Le Petit Poucet" ("Tom

Thumb")._

 

_Perrault was not so shy in admitting the authorship of his three

verse stories--"Griselidis," "Les Souhaits Ridicules," and "Peau

d'Asne." The first appeared, anonymously it is true, in 1961; but,

when it came to be reprinted with "Les Souhaits Ridicules" and "Peau

d'Asne" in 1695, they were entrusted to the firm of Coignard and

described as being by "Mr Perrault, de l'Academie Françoise." La

Fontaine had made a fashion of this sort of exercise._

 

_It would not be fair to assume that P. Darmancour had no connection

whatever with the composition of the stories which bore his name. The

best of Perrault's critics, Paul de St Victor and Andrew Lang among

others, see in the book a marvellous collaboration of crabbed age and

youth. The boy, probably, gathered the stories from his nurse and

brought them to his father, who touched them up, and toned them down,

and wrote them out. Paul Lacroix, in his fine edition of 1886, goes as

far as to attribute the entire authorship of the prose tales to

Perrault's son. He deferred, however, to universal usage when he

entitled his volume "Les Contes en prose de Charles Perrault."_

 

_"Les Contes du Temps Passé" had an immediate success. Imitators

sprung up at once by the dozen, and still persist; but none of them

has ever rivalled, much less surpassed, the inimitable originals.

Every few years a new and sumptuous edition appears in France. The

best are probably those by Paul Lacroix and André le Fèvre._

 

_The stories soon crossed the Channel; and a translation "by Mr

Samber, printed for J. Pote" was advertised in the "Monthly Chronicle"

of 1729. "Mr Samber" was presumably one Robert Samber of New Inn, who

translated other tales from the French, for Edmond Curl the

bookseller, about this time. No copy of the first edition of his

Perrault is known to exist. Yet it won a wide popularity, as is shown

by the fact that there was a seventh edition published in 1795, for J.

Rivington, a bookseller, of Pearl Street, New York._

 

_No English translation of Perrault's fairy tales has attained

unquestioned literary pre-eminence. So the publishers of the present

book have thought it best to use Samber's translation, which has a

special interest of its own in being almost contemporary with the

original. The text has been thoroughly revised and corrected by Mr J.

E. Mansion, who has purged it of many errors without detracting from

its old-fashioned quality. To Mr Mansion also is due the credit for

the translation of the "Les Souhaits Ridicules" and for the adaptation

of "Peau d'Asne." "Griselidis" is excluded from this book for two good

reasons; firstly, because it is an admitted borrowing by Perrault from

Boccaccio; secondly, because it is not a 'fairy' tale in the true

sense of the word._

 

_It is, perhaps, unnecessary for me to add anything about Mr Clarke's

illustrations. Many of the readers of this book will be already

familiar with his work. Besides, I always feel that it is an

impertinence to describe pictures in their presence. Mr Clarke's speak

for themselves. They speak for Perrault too. It is seldom, indeed,

that an illustrator enters so thoroughly into the spirit of his text.

The grace, delicacy, urbanity, tenderness, and humour which went to

the making of Perrault's stories must, it seems, have also gone in

somewhat similar proportions to the making of these delightful

drawings. I am sure that they would have given pleasure to Perrault himself._