Four and Twenty Fairy Tales

The story of the Beast is but alluded to in a few words, and that of the real parents of Beauty altogether omitted. It is no answer to say that the version by Madame de Beaumont is an agreeable story, that the moral is preserved, and that there are portions of the original tale which required alteration or omission. In justice to Madame de Villeneuve, it ought never to be printed without the acknowledgment that it is simply an abridgment of her composition, adapted to the use of juvenile readers, by Madame de Beaumont. I have omitted a dozen lines, and softened one objectionable expression; but, with the exception of this very slight and indispensable alteration, Madame de Villeneuve's story is now placed before the English public in its entirety.

It was published in 1740, and Mr. Dunlop remarks that "it surpasses all that has been produced by the lively and fertile imaginations of France or Arabia;" but in his notice of the tales of Perrault, he says that it is an expansion of and adoption from Riquet à la Houpe. I think this is one of those hasty conclusions of which we are all occasionally guilty. I cannot, for my part, see any resemblance between the two stories. In Riquet, an ugly and deformed prince wins the hand of a lovely princess – the usual triumph of mind over matter; but in Beauty and the Beast, the suitor is not merely a repulsive man, but a monster of the most horrible and tremendous description, and who is specially prohibited from availing himself of those mental powers which might in the slightest degree affect the judgment of the lady. Pity and gratitude are the motives which influence Beauty to sacrifice her own happiness to ensure that of the Beast. In the other case, admiration of the talent of Riquet renders the Princess gradually blind to the defects of his person. Le Mouton of Madame d'Aulnoy offers infinitely more points of resemblance. The transformation of the King into a ram by a jealous and vindictive fairy, and the permission given by him to Merveilleuse to visit her family, on her solemnly promising to return by a stated period, are features too obvious to be overlooked. The despair of the Ram in consequence of her not fulfilling her promise on the last occasion, is also like that of the Monster; but Madame de Villeneuve has avoided the tragical catastrophe; and notwithstanding the similarity I have pointed out, Beauty and the Beast, taken as a whole, deserves all the praise that those who are best acquainted with it have unanimously accorded to it.

It is a curious circumstance that the Gatta Cennerentola of Basile, and the German version of Cinderella, both commence with the departure of the father on a journey, and the requests of his daughters corresponding exactly in their general character with those in Beauty and the Beast, while we find nothing of the sort in Perrault's Cendrillon. I infer from this that the Italian and German writers have mixed two old stories together, and that Madame de Villeneuve's is founded on one of them.

THE COUNT DE CAYLUS

Anne Claude de Tubierre, de Grimoad, de Pestils, de Levi, Comte de Caylus, was born in Paris, in 1692, and died the 3rd of September, 1765. He entered the French army early, and distinguished himself in Catalonia and at the siege of Fribourg. After the Peace of Rastadt he visited Italy, and in 1717 went to the Levant in the suite of the Ambassador of France to the Sublime Porte. During this journey he undertook an adventure which proves his courage as well as his love of art. On arriving at Smyrna, he was anxious to profit by the necessary delay of a few days to visit the ruins of Ephesus, which are about twelve hours' journey from that place. The neighbourhood was at that time infested by a band of brigands, the chief of which was the notorious and terrible Caracayoli. The roads were exceedingly unsafe for travellers; but the Count de Caylus was not to be daunted. He provided himself with a dress made simply of sail-cloth, and carrying nothing about him that could tempt the most petty thief, he sought out two of the band of Caracayoli, and bargained with them for a safe conduct from Smyrna to Ephesus and back again, the money to be paid only on his return. It being their interest to take care of him, he found them the most faithful guides in the world. Caracayoli, on learning the object of his journey, politely offered to assist his researches. He informed the Count that in the neighbourhood of his retreat there were some ruins well worthy his inspection, and to expedite his visit to them, he mounted him and one of his guides on two fine Arabian horses. The ruins proved to be those of Colophon. The Count returned to the retreat of Caracayoli, and passed the night there, and the next morning proceeded to the site of the ancient city of Ephesus, from whence he was safely conducted back to Smyrna by the brigands, each party well satisfied with their bargain.

After his return to France, in 1717, he made several other journeys abroad, and paid two visits to London. At Paris he occupied himself with drawing, music, painting, writing, and sculpture. He wrote the lives of the most celebrated painters and sculptors of the Royal Academy, and founded in that Academy an annual prize for the students who were most successful in expressing the passions. In 1742 he was elected an honorary member of "L'Académie des Inscriptions," in which he founded another prize of five hundred livres for the best essays on the manners and customs of the ancients. He formed a splendid collection of Etruscan, Greek, Roman, and Gaulish antiquities, an account of which was published (seven vols. 4to, the last in 1767) by Monsieur le Beau. He discovered the ancient art of encaustic painting, and of tinging marble, from hints in the works of the elder Pliny. But all this occupation and study did not prevent this eminent scholar and antiquary from indulging in the lighter pursuits of literature. He did not disdain to acknowledge the fascination of a fairy tale, or to contribute to the number of them. I have selected three from his Féeries Nouvelles, which are in my judgment the best, and display the greatest variety of style and power of imagination. The first, —

PRINCESS MINUTE AND KING FLORIDOR

La Princesse Minutie et le Roi Floridor is written in a spirit of playful satire, which reminds one of those sprightly caricatures of fairy tales which flowed so pleasantly from the pen of Count Hamilton; but, unlike Le Belier and Fleur d'Epine of that accomplished satirist, Princess Minute and King Floridor presents us with a sound and serious moral, which at this moment, when the sacrifice of important interests to routine and etiquette has caused so much animadversion, is singularly apropos. It also reads a pleasant lesson to those who neglect or misuse the great means and opportunities which it has pleased Providence to bestow upon them, and amidst all its whimsical extravagances, never ceases to whisper in the words of Solomon —

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise

Floridor was the name of a celebrated French actor of the seventeenth century. In Le Temple du Destin, written by Le Sage, and acted at the Fair of St. Laurent in 1715, the High Priest of Destiny observes upon the vanity of an actor —

Tout ce qui reluit n'est pas orIls out tous ce génie,Chacun se croit un FloridorLa plaisante manie!

THE IMPOSSIBLE ENCHANTMENT

L'Enchantement Impossible is an amusing story with one blemish, which I have ventured to correct by the omission of half a dozen lines, and the suppression of an unnecessary indelicacy. Unlike the last, this is a mere work of fancy, without any particular object – a sort of illustration of the old song and saying, Love will find out the way. The Mer-man and his sister would seem to point out a Breton origin for this story, as the belief in these marine marvels is strong upon the coast of Brittany, where the females are called Morgan (sea-women), or Morver'de (sea-daughters), and are supposed to draw down to their palaces of gold and crystal, at the bottom of the ocean, those who venture imprudently too near the edge of the water; but the Count de Caylus was too well acquainted with the classical Tritons and Syrens to render it necessary for him to draw upon the legends of Armorica for such materials, and it is probable the story is entirely of his own invention.

The absurd fashions in hair-dressing, glanced at in this story, by the introduction of a fairy with her hair dressed en chien fou, are commented upon in a little volume called Histoires des Modes Française; Amsterdam and Paris, 1773. "The number of these frisures," says the writer, "is almost infinite. Every year, every month, produces new ones. We have seen, in succession, hair dressed en bequille (crutch fashion), en graine d'epinards (spinach fashion!), en baton rompu (broken stick!); yesterday it was en aile de pigeon, to-day it is en débacle."

BLEUETTE AND COQUELICOT

Bleuette et Coquelicot is a charming fairy tale of the pastoral order, unexceptionable in its style, and salutary in its instruction. I have only to add, in further illustration of the head-dress of Arganto (p. 360), that "Foreign Marshalle Powder" was advertised in 1781 at sixteen shillings per pound, by R. Langwine, at the sign of the "Rose," opposite New Round Court, Strand; and that receipts for making it occur as late as in Gray's Supplement to the Pharmacopœia, in 1836. The author of L'Histoire des Modes Française, quoted above, says he does not "despair of one day seeing rose-coloured hair powder, blue heads," &c.; and in Plocacosmos (1781), we actually find receipts for making yellow, rose-pink, and black hair powder; while Goldsmith, in his Citizen of the World, Letter III., mentions both black and blue.

MADEMOISELLE DE LUBERT

Of this lady we have but very meagre information. She was born about the year 1710, and is said by some writers to have been the daughter of a President; and by others, of a "Trésorier de Marine." She appears to have led a studious and retired life, her love of literature indisposing her to marriage. Her Contes des Fées were commenced about 1740; and several have been attributed to her pen which she disavowed. Those she acknowledged were: —Terserion, La Princesse Lionette et le Prince Coquerico, Le Prince Glacé et la Princesse Etincelante, La Princesse Couleur de Rose et le Prince Celadon, La Princesse Camion, and La Nouvelle Léonille. She was also the author of a translation of Amadis des Gaules, Les Hauts Faits d'Esplandian, and Anecdotes Africaines, published in 1752. Voltaire and Fontenelle called her "Muse et grace." She was living in 1772, and died before 1779. She had disappeared from society for some time previously, and was presumed to be still living at that date; but a letter written by some one who knew of her decease, inserted in the Journal de Paris of that year (No. 69), addressed to the author of L'Almanach des Dames Illustres, by "l'Ombre de Mademoiselle de Lubert," and dated from the "Mille et unième Bosquet des Champs Elisées," seems to have been considered sufficient authority; though as no precise time or place is mentioned, the letter might have been written by the lady herself had she wished to deceive the public. She had, however, reached a very respectable age, and it is probable that she was dead at that period.

"Her Contes des Fées," remarks one of her critics, "are not nearly equal to those of Mademoiselle de Murat and other ladies who have written in that style. They have less of moral purpose and allegorical allusion." This is quite true; and my object in publishing the two I have selected is to illustrate, as I have mentioned in my preface, the decline of the Fairy tale. Mademoiselle de Lubert is one of the latest of her class. Her stories are only designed to amuse. The publication of The Thousand and One Nights, by Galland, and the immense popularity that work immediately obtained, evidently affected the composition of fairy tales. Wild, extravagant adventures, unconnected incidents, transformations without point or object, a straining after the merely marvellous, and a total abandonment of the laughing philosophy and the unaffected morality which distinguish and immortalize the stories of Perrault and d'Aulnoy, were the first effects of the circulation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. The next was the Orientalizing of every tale of enchantment. Dull Caliphs and Sultans deposed the merry old Kings who "once upon a time" ruled in Fairyland. The amours of the seraglio and the harem were substituted for the innocent courtships of princes or shepherds. The manners and dresses of the time, those delicious anachronisms which impart so much pleasantry – ay, and instruction – to the fairy tale, were carefully avoided; and the characters, arrayed in what the writers flattered themselves were Eastern costumes, were seriously placed in situations compared to which that of Molière's Monsieur Jourdain as Mamamonchi was a nearer approach to reality. Even those that had some claim to Oriental origin were so altered and "manufactured for the European market" that they were said to appear —

– en sortant de chez Barbin60Plus Arabe qu'en Arabie.

Le Mercure Galant was flooded with these productions. Almanzor et Zehra, Conte Arabe; Almerine et Zelima, Conte Oriental; Balky, Conte Oriental; Zaman, Histoire Oriental, &c. Then we have Contes Mogol, Contes Turcs, Contes Chinois, Contes Tartares, Contes Persans, &c.; but we are forgetting Mademoiselle de Lubert and her

PRINCESS CAMION

A translation of La Princesse Camion, much abridged and altered, was published in the Child's Fairy Library some twenty years ago, under the title of Princess Minikin. The plot of this story is intricate without being ingenious. The persecution of Camion by Marmotte is purely capricious, and her contrivances are of the clumsiest description. In the original, Zirphil is commanded to "take off, one by one, the scales of the whale;" but a whale has no scales that it could feel the deprivation of. It is skinning the fish alive that would be a cruel operation, and I have therefore rendered "écorcher" in that sense, and not to scale, as it had been previously translated, in accordance with the specific direction quoted above. The transformation of the unfortunate Princess into a crayfish, and her being shelled instead of pounded as Marmotte had decreed, is all of the same character. The long story told by her in that state to the other crayfish in the plantation is a lame way of enlightening either Zirphil or the reader, and has to be continued in as lame a manner by Citronette. The pounding the crayfish for the King's soup, and the disappearance of them in flames when they are put into the mortar, seems to point to an Eastern origin. The latter portion reminds us of the black man flinging the fish into the fire, in the story of "The Fisherman and the Genius," in the Arabian Nights, where there is also a city changed into a lake, and all its inhabitants into fishes, and re-transformed in the end and restored to the rightful monarch, the young King of the Black Island. The crayfish broth may be an allusion to the well-known Bisque d'Ecrévisse, but it is also an Oriental dish; for while this book was passing through the press, a morning journal announced that "the eldest royal son of his Majesty the First King of Siam," on his arrival at Claridge's Hotel, "after satisfying himself that due provision had been made for the comfort of his staff, retired to rest, having first partaken of a frugal repast, prepared by his own chef-de-cuisine, consisting of crabfish pounded with various Eastern condiments." —Morning Post, October 31st, 1857.

The eagerness with which the nobles of the Court sought for the servile office of filling the King of the Whiting's bowl with sea-water, is the only stroke of satire in the story, and evidently levelled at the candle-holding and similar ceremonies of "le grand et le petit coucher." To stand and hold a "bougeoir allumé," while Louis XIV. undressed himself, was, says St. Simon, "une distinction et une faveur qui se comptait, tant le Roi avait l'art de donner l'être à des riens."

In a note to the expression, "shrieks like Melusine's," page 398, I have suggested that some portion of Princess Camion might have been founded on the romance of Melusine. This romance was composed towards the end of the fourteenth century, by Jean d'Arras, at the desire of the Duke de Berri, son of John, King of France, and was founded on an incident recorded in the archives of the family of Lusignan, which were in possession of the Duke. It is briefly as follows: —

THE LEGEND OF MELUSINE

A King of Albania, named Elinas, had married the beautiful Fay Pressine, by whom he had three daughters at a birth, Melusine, Melior, and Palatine. Fay had stipulated that he should never enter her chamber during the period of her confinement; but the King having broken his promise in his anxiety to embrace his newly-born children, the Queen cried out that she was compelled to leave him, and immediately disappeared with her three daughters. She retired to the Court of her sister, the Queen of the "Isle Perdue," and as her children grew up, instructed them in the art of sorcery. Melusine having learned from her mother the conduct of her father, determined to be revenged on him, and proceeding to Albania, by means of her newly-acquired art carried off the King and shut him up in a mountain called Brandelois. The Queen, who still retained some affection for her husband, on becoming acquainted with this unnatural act, punished Melusine by sentencing her to become every Saturday a serpent from the waist downwards, till she should meet with a lover who would marry her on condition of never intruding on her during the time of her transformation, when she was ordered to bathe; with a promise that if she strictly attended to this injunction, she might eventually be relieved from her weekly disgrace and punishment. Melusine was excessively beautiful, and Raimondin, son of the Count de Forez, having met with her in the forest of Colombiers,61 fell in love with her so deeply that he married her without hesitation on the prescribed conditions. She built for him, near the spot where they had met, the Castle of Lusignan, and bore him several children; but her husband's jealousy being excited by a cousin, who suggested to him that Melusine had a criminal object in secreting herself on a Saturday, he made a hole with his sword in the door of the chamber to which she was wont to retire, and perceived her in her state of transformation. The various versions of this legend differ in the details of the consequences; but all agree in stating that Melusine, reproaching him with the breach of his word, disappeared, and left him to end his days as a hermit on Montserrat. The popular belief was, that she appeared on what was called the Tower of Melusine when any of the lords of Lusignan were about to die; and Mezeray assures us, on the faith "of people who were not by any means credulous," that previous to the death of a Lusignan, or of a king of France, she was seen on this tower in a mourning dress, and uttered for a long time the most heart-piercing lamentations. The Duke de Montpensier destroyed the castle in 1574, on account of the resistance made to his arms in it by the Huguenots; but the family of Lusignan, till it merged in that of Montmorency-Luxembourg, continued to bear for its crest a woman bathing, in allusion to the story of Melusine.

Ange par la figure, et serpent par la reste. —Delisle

PRINCESS LIONETTE AND PRINCE COQUERICO

La Princesse Lionette et le Prince Coquerico is an infinitely better story than La Princesse Camion: but, like that, its aim is no higher than to excite the interest and awaken the wonder of its readers. As a work of fancy, however, it is one of the best of its class, and I believe is now for the first time translated into English.

I do not recollect any story on which it could be said to be founded; but at the end of La Tyranine des Fées détruite, by the Countess d'Anneuil, is a story, entitled La Princesse Lionne, in which a princess is changed into a lioness, and persecuted by a fairy called La Rancune; but there the similarity ends. Mademoiselle de Lubert edited an edition of the Nouveaux Contes des Fées of the Countess d'Anneuil, and may have taken an idea from that particular incident.

The model of the globe in which Prince Coquerico saw and heard all that passed in the universe, and witnessed the opera, the play, and the orations at the Académie Française, reminds one of the room in the Palace of the Beast, the various windows of which afforded Beauty similar entertainment.

The Fairy Tigreline's employments of spinning and threading pearls, is in strict accordance with the manners of the sixteenth century. "Passons avec les dames," says Rabelais, "nostres vie et nostres temps à enfiler les perles ou à filer, comme Sardanapalus." – Livre i. chap. 33. I have mentioned (p. 438) that the opera of Armide was considered the chef-d'œuvre of Quinnault. The music was composed by Lulli, and it is reported that he made Quinnault write the last act over again five times, which so disgusted the poet that he ceased to write for the stage from that period. The incident of the shield is that in which Ubaldo holds before Rinaldo his adamant or diamond shield, in which the latter sees himself reflected in his effeminate attire, is awakened to a sense of his degraded situation, and abandons the enchanted gardens of Armida. – Book xvi.

MADAME LEPRINCE DE BEAUMONT

Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont was born at Rouen, in 1711, and commenced her literary career in 1748, by the production of a romance, called La Triomphe de la Vérité; shortly after which she came to England, and resided in London for a considerable time, occupying herself as a governess, and in writing works for the instruction as well as the amusement of youth. That which acquired the most popularity was Le Magazin des Enfans, in which appeared her abridgment of Beauty and the Beast, and her original Fairy Tales. She was twice married. Her first was an unfortunate union, annulled almost immediately afterwards. Her second marriage took place in England, but to a Frenchman; and in 1762 she returned to France for the benefit of her native air. In 1768, she purchased a small estate, called Chenavoi, and died in 1780. Her miscellaneous works amount to seventy volumes; but even Le Magazin des Enfans is scarcely remembered in the present day, and the four short fairy tales which terminate this volume are, with the abridgment of Beauty and the Beast, the only effusions by which she is popularly known in England. The best of them is

PRINCE DÉSIR AND PRINCESS MIGNONE

It is more like one of the good old Breton stories – pleasant, short, and with a sound moral.

PRINCE CHÉRI,

Corrupted into "Prince Cherry" in our children's books, exhibits the influence of the importations from the East. But that it has so manifest a moral, it might pass for a French alteration of an Oriental tale. The names of Suliman and Zélie would encourage the suspicion.

THE WIDOW AND HER TWO DAUGHTERS

La Veuve et ses Deux Filles is better known by the title of Blanche and Vermillion, under which it has been frequently printed, and was also produced on the French stage by Mons. Florian, in March, 1781. The moral of the story is declared by the Fairy to be that excessively trite and common-place axiom, that happiness consists in content, or, in the words of the author, the possession of things only that are necessary without wishing for more; but the author forgot to show us that Blanche was discontented. It does not appear that she wished for superfluities, or to be a "great Queen," or that such an idea ever entered her head till the Fairy promised her she should become one, "not to reward," but "to punish," her for begrudging to give away her plums. Poor Blanche is therefore made an unhappy queen; her low birth renders her an object of contempt at Court; the King is a worthless person, who neglects the innocent girl his passion induced him to place upon his throne, and who is the mother of his children; and at length the miserable wife exclaims that "happiness is not to be found in magnificent palaces but in the innocent occupations of the country." Now this is foolish – it is worse, for it is false and injurious. There is as much happiness in palaces and on thrones, thank God, as there is in cottages. The occupations of a virtuous sovereign are as innocent as those of a husbandman, while the power to do good, existing with the will, must make the balance of happiness greatly in favour of the former. The cares of State are burdensome enough, no doubt, and the more conscientious the monarch, the weightier the sense of responsibility; but has the countryman no cares, no sorrows, no vices? The legal occupations of all classes are "innocent." Is it only kings and nobles who yield to temptations or indulge in the evil propensities of our common nature? There has been too much of this fallacy infused into what are called moral stories, and at the risk of being accused of breaking a butterfly on the wheel, I have singled out this particular instance, as Blanche and Vermillion is to be found in almost every child's story-book. That the author's intention was laudable, I do not doubt; but to read a wholesome lesson, she should have shown Blanche to have been discontented with the lot assigned to her by Providence, pining to mix in society for which she was neither fitted by birth nor education, and dreaming that happiness consisted solely in rank, wealth, and luxury. The moral should have been, not that such possessions were incompatible with virtue and happiness, but that their owners were not exempted from the frailties and sufferings of humanity, and that unequal marriages were rarely fortunate ones. All this, it will be said, she might mean, but it is not evident; and the only impression made upon a child's mind by this story, if any impression can be made by it whatever, is the very absurd and objectionable one, that all kings and queens are wicked and unhappy, and all farmers and dairy-maids virtuous and contented.