TRIVIA.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20334, 5 September 1931, Page 13

TRIVIA.

Among the best of Mr Lytton Straehey'g new "Portraits in Miniature," •which, exemplify perfectly Ms technique of delicate scratch and puncture, is the one called "The President do Brosses." To attempt an abridgment of this summary is horrible, and I do not pretend that my single excuse is anything but slender: I have a pendant, a pretty one, to link to Mr Straehcy's essav.

Charles de Brosses was president of the Provincial Parliament at Dijon, "a wit, a scholar, a lawyer, and a man of the world"; a little man, but a little lion. Politics supported liis fame, literature extended and adorned it. He wrote on archaeology, travel and exploration, primitive religion, and the development of languages; and his edition of Sallust crowned the labour of thirty years. These literary achievements received full honour in DijonJ but what the President .de Brosses aspired to, what Dijon expected for him, was the approbation of Paris and the reward of a seat in the Academv.

Hie devil came to Dijon ; settled, at least, as a near neighbour. Voltaire had broken with Frederick the Great, wandered from Colmar to Lausanne, to Geneva, and at last, in 1758, alighted and folded his dark wings at Ferney. He desired an adjoining property, the domain of Tournay, which belonged to tjie President do Brosses, and for 35,000 francs purchased a lifetenancy, with the right to the title of Count. The new Comte de Tournay was' a vexatious tenant. For two years ho plagued the President with letters about the . terms of the lease, but received only exact and courteous answers. Tho clash was not yet. During this period tho devil published "Candide, ' and the little lion his Culte des Dicux F6tiches"; and tho devil was exceedingly busy—rending and tearing enemies, composing tragedies, editing Corneille, writing the life of Peter the Great, conducting a universal coiTespondence—so busy that when a peasant called Baudy sent a bill for 281 francs for firewood, fourteen loads from the plantations ot Tournay itself, lie brushed it aside. Trumpery—and ridiculous: "Why should ho pay for wood from his own estate ? And besides, lie remembered quite well that the President, before the sale was completed, had told him he oould have as much wood as he wanted." Baudy pressed for his money; Voltaire refused to pay.

. Then came a letter from the President, who politely asked that a quite singular affair should be explained. Before the sale of Tournay, Baudy had bought the cut wood on the estate and had now subtracted from his account of his debt to the President the sum of 281 francs for wood supplied to M. do Voltaire—on the plea that M. de Voltaire had said the wood was a gift from Hie President .... I translate with wobbly freedom:

I as): your pardon [the President continued] for repeating such a notion. You will clearly understand that I am far from iolievins that you entertained it; I do not think of it for a moment. What Baudy eaya I take merely as .the talk of a bumpkin, ignorant of the acceptable ways of the world, who does not know that it i# very well to send one's friend and neighbour » basket of peaches, but that if one had the fancy to aend him fourteen loads of firewood as & delicate attention he would look on it aa a ludicrous contravention of politencM

The President added to this irony his distinct recollection of the facts: on Voltaire's complaining of a lack of firewood, he had recommended Baudy as a man who could supply plenty—only that and nothing more:

1 hope that it Trill be agreeable to you to pay Baudy this trifle at once, for, as X shall certainly exact payment from him, he will inevitably attempt to recover from you —which would trtake an affair of. a'(sort distasteful to auch a man as yourself.

No sum of money \pas ever a trifle to Voltaire. Moreover, lie was now antrigonised. This piffling little provincial ironist 1 So ho wrote in his next letter, with airy grandeur, "It is no longer a question of Charles Baudy 'hnd four loads.of wood," and went on to another matter. To which the President carefully replied, but as carefully, though lightly, corrected tho orror: "Four loads —read fourteen; you dropped a figure; we-call this a lapsus linguae." But if he thought Voltaire was to be softened by good humour he was wrong. The President sued Baudy; Voltaire had not paid; Baudy sued' Voltaire.

Voltaire went mad. He showered on the lawyers of Dijon letters, expostulations, and denunciations. The President became a, monster in a wig, an image of depravity—"Le Fetiche!" —inexorable in demanding money for his logs and sticks of wood, unwearied in impostures.

Bear in mind that he perpetrated this outrage at a time when he had of roe 47 thousand livres! .'. . Let him quake; it i« not now a matter of making him ridiculoup; it ia a matter of bringing hint down in dishonour.

In a lofty strain he wrote to the President himself:

You have visited me, you have offered me your friendship, only to poison with these legal proceedings tho end of my life.

He argued, he imputed, he threatened

If it is necessary for the Chancellor, the Ministry■, all Paris to be informed of your aotion, they shall be; and if there is to be found among your honourable associates a single one to support you, then I am damned.

I suppose ",Je me condamne" doesn't mean quite that; but after the four loads of wood . . . Of course yoltaire was hopelessly in the wrong; still, he Was the very devil, but -the little lion jliardly wavered. As he said later to a friend:

A dangerous man —and must he for that reason be allowed to misbehave uncheoked? No, this is the sort of person that it is necessary to curb. I am not afraid of him. . . . ■ He is to be admired, because he writes very good verses. Oh certainly, he writes versos exceedingly well. But what is admirable is the verses.

And so there was written—on the margins of Voltaire's own letter —a reply which • spared neither his arguments nor his character. There was actually a clause in the lease which reserved from sale the cut wood on the estate 1 Brosses sighed over the frenzied poet but without yielding to the frenzy:

Truly, I groan" for human nature, when I see so great a genius with so mean a spirit, constantly, agitated by wretched suspicions and stinginess. It is by yourself that a life otherwise so fairly shaped for happiness is poisoned.

As for the hint that.the President might pervert the course of justice, to speak in that style was unseemly; let Voltaire have the sense to say nothing of the kind to a magistrate, and let hirt, finallv write no further on the subject, and, above all, not again in that tone.

Il was all up. A judge. Voltaire's friend, told him be had no case and begitev pajfr H« acsceaoaed <*-

fiance. He feared no Fetishes. Fetishes must fear him. _ N. 8., ne wrote to his judicial friend. ! am inflexible about the Fetish." But when the Fetish, a little later, generously provided a way out-ylie to write o Baudy's debt, Voltaire to jrfve_ 281 frames to the poor of Tournay—Voltaire took it.

Ten years after, there wa* a vacancy on the Academy. The President, de Brosses was a favoured candidate supported by that influential old busybody, the Marshal de Richelieu. D'Alembert wrote to Voltaire that "this lumpish President" was almost; sure of election. But who sups with 'the devil .needs a long spoon. • Voltaire was equal to the say Mr Strachey: "his letters new : He wrote repeatedly to Richelieu, injhat tone of delicate cajolery of. which he wasi . a master, torching upon their ancient J ship, and spinning a strange tale of • . i perfidies committed by "cepetit persontear. I nasilloneur," until the Marfchal melted, and promised to withdraw his support. JPi.nally V taire dispatched to D'Alembert a signed declaration to the effect that he would himself resign from the Academy if Brosses jvas elected. This settled the matter, «nd_ no raore was Heard of the candidature of the President. It seems likely thot he never knew, what ft was that had baulked him ot tne ambition of his life. Fourteen loads of firewood, worth 281 francs; and oiie of those men, as Sir Thomas Browne says, ''to whom a dead enemy smells well, and who una musk and amber in revenge. ' / * / And now the pendant. Writing to Hume, on October 24th, 1766, Voltaire referred to the famous quarrel with Rousseau, and used this sad and noble language: • Indeed, sir, all such petty distresses are not worth two minutes' attention; they all slip so soon into everlasting forgetfulness. .... There are follies and bickerings in every state of life All swiftly glides by, like the queer shapes of a shadowshow. . . . The details of the bloodiest wars die with the soldiers who died in them. Even tho critics who pass judgment on the new plays, and their commendations especially, are swallowed .up next day iri nothingness,' with the plays and the papers that babble of them.But everlasting forgetfulness could be postponed for as long as ten yedrs, until the grudge against the "snuffling little persecutor" was paid. ' r-JJ2LBS.S. "i

England, and a work so self-effacing that his brother's biography, though welcome as the record of a career, is trebly welcome as the portrait- of a man; and the portrait is beautifully done. PALACES AND GARDENS. Two Boyal Domains of France. TheTuileries and Versailles In Gardon History, Art, and Anecdote. By D. McDougall. Jonathan - Oape. (15s net.)* - Mr McDougall is a specialist historian; but hs does not attempt to detach the movement he describes, the development of the great formal glories of Trance, in garden and palace, from the rhythm of the great times which produced it. Only in the reign of Louis Quatorze can such a programme of construction and reconstruction be imagined as was being carried out in 1662,' when four of the royal residences were being transformed at once, the Louvre, the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, and SaintGermain; and the project at Versailles was to make the King's hunting-box nothing less than "the most magnificent palace in the world." Louis employed upon it the architect Le Yau, the decorator Le Bruu, and. tho gardener Le Notre,'-the creators of Fouquet's paradise at Yaux-Le-Yiscomte. Only in that period could Le Notre have carried so far the principles of, precision and order he learned from Claude Mollet and Boyceau dc la Berauderie, "because only then could ho have found a master with the grandiose ambition to encourage and tho purse to pay him. Even Mr McDougall cannot help smiljug some- : times at the tyranny of taste armed with such authority: Therefore the axis of the .park and gardens of Versailles should run, straight .as a die, from tho Avenue do Paris and the d'Arwes on the east; through the centre' of the palace itself;. through the bedchamber; of the King, and the bed (and thus through the very nose of Majesty); out and over the. I'arterre d'Eau —to Latona; and front there through tho Tapis Vert to the Fountain of Apollo; then straight along the course of the canal to reach Villepreux and its wonderfully aligned poplars on the horizon. But if triumph has its moments of faint absurdity, it is triumph still, and has; outlasted nearly three hundred years. Some loss, too, has been restored; for though Louis destroyed Le Notre's work at Yaux-Le-Viscomte, when he ruined Fouquet after the Minister's great Fete in 1661, the gardens have lately been reconstructed according to his design. Mr McDougall's photographs, plans, keys, and drawings are excellent. Yet lijs glimpses of the figures who walked those parterres. and listened to the blackbirds, thrushes, and nigh'tingales in the bosquets do even more to lift his descriptions from tho page and set them visibly before the eye. Here is Colbert, threatening to close the Tuileries gar-, dens to the public, and Perrault —the. charming Charles Perrault, the author of unforgettable nursery-tales—prevail-ing upon the Intendant of Finances ,to let the people in:" "The women and little children never "think of gathering, nor even of touching, , a flower." Here is Eacirie, declaiming tlje close of "Mithridate" and drawing an audience of Le Notre's gardeners to listen; and here for an instant is D 'Artagnan, the dust upoii him of that terrible ride I in "Le Yicomto de' Bragelonne."' j

THE PATHS OF TJIE WIND. England of the Windmill#. ByS. P. B. KaU. With 70' drawings toy F. .!*• Buasell. J. nr. Punt and. Sons, Xitd. (7# 6d net.) The plan of this book ■ is delightful, an itinerary—of course on foot-—from, windmill to v in dmill in a dozen Eng-x lish counties or < more; 'an itinerary which finds out ,the, peace and beauty > of the unbitumenised countryside and draws the explorer at every stage not only to the heart, of laUdsbut to, the heart of the .past. But such journeying is unhurried. Its starting, points are towns, the way lies through , villages, past ancient houses, and there is time to step" out j>f the sun the catbedrial shadows; or to read ur Ightham Church the three hundred years old epitaph of Dorothy Selby: In heart a Lydia; in tongue » Hum, in aeale a Ruth; in wedlock a Susanna, ■ Prudently simple, providently wary/ To th' World a Martha, and to He&Ten a Mary: ' and time, also, to lunch at ;the Angol in Guildford, 1 where they have Jo&n PeelV hunting-horn: Mr Mais as. a , guide is full of eagerness, ready wittt information,, and careful to supply maps, with! the mills marked oivthem, and covering Sussex," Keiit, . Surrey > Essex, Buckinghamshire, Cambridge*, shire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. Mr Bu&eU's drawings are good, though a littlp dry andjiard> so that without any defect of gratitude it is possible occasionally to sigh «for the touch of a vanished hand," that bf E. H r New, whodied this year./ Unfortunately, though Mr Mais 8 book is so pleasant an design and/on the whole so pleasantly put ,together, he can still irritate. His stjrle is like an easy Bhoe with a pebble m ut. tie resembles a little the lady whose mind (Dr. Johnson said)\was |'all skimbleskamble." He says that it is "a disquieting thought that thfe _windmill will soon b© obsol©t© as thei windjammer and as mythical as the urncorn"; but his disquiet, which is connected with some confusion about "the nature of a myth, is soon forgotten, for on the next .page his discovers that the Society for the Protection ( Ot Ancient Buildings is at work: . future generations will luckily . be reminded of a once indispensable in- . dustry and their , hearts be uplifted . by the sight of something which, buut , | for utility, livlß for the sake <>f beauty." In literature, says Mr Mais, ; windmills come off badly—"Few P°e ts ; except Robert Bridges .seem to. iav«, "entered the lists on their behalf.' He « means "few poets Other than R/.8. _or i "few poets with;" The mill called Jill < 'is separated from the tall, aust©re». j dignified black . tower mill known as ■, Jack by some cottages." This recalls , the storv of the man who rushed, up , to W. S. Gilbert and. asked if he had i seen ,£ a tall man in a brown 'witn ( one eye, called Jenkins. ' what, • said Gilbert, "is the name of his other - eye?" "We conld not make, our exit from-the county of. Sussex from a J villaue more calculated to mal_"P_.us determined "to revisit it": revisit-what —the village or the county? Mr Mais , should determine to revise. . A REPUTATION FOR MURDER. The Sophisticates. By Gertrude Athertoa. Chapman and Hall. Mrs Atherton's heroine is the wife of a leading citizen of Six Forks, in the Middle West. Temperamentally, they were alifci and discordant, so that when be was found dead—of an ettowmous dose of arsenic—it was at once and Widely inferred that she had administered the dose; but though tried she was acquitted, and this is the occasion of Mrs Athertpn's comedy. The presumed murderess lived on at Six Forks, the Centre of a group of friends —the sophisticates—who thought no i worse of her for terminating Julius and greatly enjoved and admired her self- - possession. The comedy is dexterously controlled; hut Mrs seems to have forgotten her earlier-strivings'and j promise. ' '

S SHORT STORIES. 11 (i) Tares Please. By A. E. Coppard. 3 Jonathan Cape. (7/6 net.) a, (11) Rivers of Damascus. By Donn Byrne. Sampson Low. Mars ton and Co.. I*d. ' Through Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. "Fares; Please" contains three of Mr Coppard's volumes of short stories, "The Black Dog," "The Field of Mustard," and "Silver Circus" —nearly g liine. hundred pages of his strong and Leautiful work. Aot much of it touches ■- tho towns, none of it is urbane, very littlo 'betnifvs that sleight-of-haiid com- . puteneo wlueh is the vice of sh&T-ston* writers. Out of-tho talk of three village women gathering sticks Mr Cojs pard. can bring the hunger, pain, pas--3 feion, and beauty of life; and this swift, j irradiacins; power distinguishes his stories.- It fails, relatively, where; a* 1 in "Tribute," the story is written to s develop an idea independent of charae- . tor, scene, and atmosphere'; but it - rarely fails. The light is often fantas- " tic, never unreal, and it is sometimes j tho light that only genius can throw. 5 Mr Doiiti Byrne's stories are of another class, still good, but written to ' impress rather than to express. No - writer, perhaps, is ever wholly careless i of his readers; but it is impossible not . to think that Mr Coppard frequently forgets, while Donn Byrne very successfully remembered. Mr Coppard's stories 1 have their effect; Donn Byrne's are . an effect, and for this reason it is im- , possible to read tlieui twice; but lie never wrote any that was not well worth icncling once. i I TIGRESS. '• Death in Tiger Valley. A Hovel of the Jungle. ' By Beginald Campbell. Hod- ' der and Stoughton. Prom W. 8. Smart. Mr'Campbell's description of the Siamese jungle and jungle life are excellent i?» themselves and as background for. ljis fiercely dramatic story. Superficially, that is an account of the cam- • paign of two "teak-wallahs," Foster . and-Grainger, against a man-eating i. tigress; but - the antagonism that: de--1 velops between tho two men, to the i pitch of madness and the edge of tra- !■ gedy; is more terrible than the ! In its own kind this is an exceptionally ; good'novel."' ' , v . IN DEFENCE OF ENGLAND. The Spirit of British Policy and the Myth .of the Encirclement of Germany. By > Hermann Kantorowicz. Witha preface , )>y Gilbert Hurray. English edition revised by thq an tho r and translated by , W. VH. Johnston. ; Allen and' Unwln. ■ ; (25s net.) '' ; /' The Professor of Law at Kiel University has written an enormous book in* defence and interpretation of British policy and the English character. In particular, he knocks on the head" the • theory, that Germany was. the victim of . a British plot to hem her in with . enemies, and provoke her to a war in which she must be overthrown.; and . only those who know how • long and . obstinately it.has been held in. Germany' - and how strongly supported in th*i United States since the war. will appreciate the power and-precision of his blow.. But' valuable, as it is, this, is j the least. valuable pftrt, because the itarrowest, of a remarkably > {nook. Weight and 'force of learning might have .been argumentative, skill; and they are'all there.. - Yet they, might have been used, > e -' in the not uncommon way, to establish the fact and' miss the secret, if Professor Kantorowicz did not aHy with thema, quick, imagination, an intellectual / grace, and a sympathetic humour which give him extra range and closer to'uch. - - Professor Gilbert Murray ■is right,, of = ~1"' to give warning:. he hopes this book will not, because it is so frieridl v in its praise and courteous iri criticism, "lead ray own countrymen to bo too satisfied with'themselves." If they- ■ feel the danger, they in u st'**fake /ft is/ £ advice and read the' chapter ion ' Irrationality'; bprfj the;# would do so in *^ t ,| any case._ They %&v a}so. mark—and ' with special- advantage' at ,'tha 1 tireseht moment —Prbfessor Kantorowicsfs read-,' i ing oftthe signs of danger. - vVf^s , i ' yi||| A Son of Arfsona. Bp Charles Aldan, ;:T Hoddex ■ and Stonghtoiu ■ Pronr-.W- ,S. visw Smart. * 320 pp. f \\ j t A yoqng_Tesan- prodigal , rofcurns the farm, finds < his ..father * ,mnr4 er -and others in possessions /and imnjediately begins a desperate struggle justice and vengeance. ' - Mr knows, as nobody, else tdoeSjjhOwr 'to carry off this of thing", including, of ? course, the introdnctionofthe girl-from--Montana. - i ■j' 1 V o6mrnoa-a«nf and th»' - C£Utf.' • • A JPle* -for. Freedom. By Btkel Mamiln. . introdnctlon. bjr A. vB. ®r®Ul" 'i JatrdHa- 'jfis A . Through WhitcomSe anjl Tomb*; -JUdi- jifiM - 2S« pp. (6/- net) ' s ' '■ "In writing! this book," saya""^ Neill in his prefatojy letter to j Mannin. "yOn are challenging all 1 the- ( -j' comfortable who beliave without knowing that they ' There is deal of aenseVmixod > , up' with, nonsense in, the J.S-'s and it is a profitable exercise to v sif one from the other. - Phryna, or X«t» m » 3Plne Art. By Hvntcef' ?r3§i I Sekohra. T. Werner Xaarle, Ltd. IBS A light, sophisticated" essay ' Mr \%4h 'DekobA, followed by a number of.light,.: : sophisticated, sometimes v - startling/. {.| sometimes funny sketches <rf amorous r episodes all over the world. 4 ,. ■ <* ' - . ~ In This 'Bevenge? By Leonard It.' 'Griblile. ■ vUvjrf Georce G. Harrap And Ltd. SBS'pp. ' Mr Gribble's detective, r Anthony. Slade, has bis reputation already, and the murder of' tne Greek theatrical. '. . -s"manager, Eklimakos, in Hyde,'-pari," enables nim to sustain and extend" it. , A *ft . ,-'..aSSr "I was wondering readers of the Week-end Review,Mr Osbert Sitwell writes there, "would 'be interested in a scheme I am anxioqs to sponsor founding of a 'Worst Book of the Month (Hub'!' T'.Jhopfe to find for it a strong and authoritative- r committee, and the award would' Ij® announced every month, in the agony, r' column of 'The Times.' The whole scheme, in these, days of wide and tad ; reading, should Be assured of aupjwfrt, and I. should • welcome any coraeilpon-; ./.j',,-': dence from those attracted by the idea. ' There are those, it is true, who *iH . object to it, holding that such a tfcing -T is unnecessary, since the 'Book of;the Month Club' serves the same porpose. ' * And, indeed, it would be an awkward situation should the two awards be coincident." '