ST. JOAN OF ARC

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXVII, Issue 7876, 26 April 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

ST. JOAN OF ARC

The approaching canonisation of Joan of Arc —Who is already technically "Venerable," to the surprise of Mr Andrew Lang and oi'kers, who associate the idea of vtEerability wiVli age, and forget that an Archdeacon need not have grey hairs —may remind us, seasonably enough, that she has

long been sainted by a certain magnanimous tendency in the English character, which is inclined, beyond any modern nation, to pay honor to "a brave enemy (writes the Spectator). Landor, who has drawn so truly dramatic a portrait) of the Maid of Orleans in one of the best of his '"lmaginary Conversations," elsewhere comments on the strikingly different fates of her reputation on the two sides of the Channel. "Had Jeanne d'Arc been born in England and fought for England," he makes Jean Jacques Rousseau say, "the people at tihis hour, although no longer slaves to idolatry, would almost worship her. Every year would her festival be kept in every village of the land. But in France not a hymn is chanted to her, not a curl of incense, is wafted, not a taper is lighted, not a daisy, nob a rush, is strewn upon the ground throughout the whole kingdom she rescued." Henceforward it will be impossible to draw such a contrast, but four centuries have elapsed since the Maid's formal "rehabilitation," of which one notes with pleasure that an English translation is in the press. We may fairly 'take some credit for the practical effect which has long been given, to that document in the country against which Joan of Arc directed her wonderful power of stiri-ing men to battle. The ancient Romans had the same high spirit, and after one or two generations relented—as Livy witnesses —before tlie inveterate hostility of Hannibal in consideration of his genius. Mkhridates, "merely for the magic perseverance of his indomitable malice, won from the same Romans the only real honor that ever he received on earth." We Enplish, as De Quincey puts it in his admirable rhapsody on the Maid of Orleans, "have ever shown -tihe same i honor to stubborn enmity." An acute ob-

server of our national temper declared, when the Boer war was at its heiglit. that De Wet and Botha would 'be acclaimed almost as loudly as the C.I.V. if they were captured and sent home to ride with their daring followers through the streets of London. Sometimes this tendency has been carried to insane lengths—we -may do some pro-Boers the honor of supposing that they have merely forgotten that it is not well to overpraise your enemy until he has been defeated. The genuine admiration -of Napoleon which was expressed by many Englishmen at the height of his rage against England was another manifestation of the same spirit. "To work unflinchingly for the ruin of England; to say through life, by word and deed, 'Delenda est Anglia Victrix !'—that one purpose of malice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. . . . Suffren, and some half-dozen of other French nautical heroes, because rightly they did us all the mischief they could (w'hiqh was really great), are names justly reverenced in England. On the same principle, La Pucelle d'Orleans, the victorious enemy of England, has been destined to receive hsr deepest commemoration from the magnanimous justice of England." Students of the history of Joan of Arc's reputation are well aware that this statement is perfectly true. It is only within the last half-century that the fair fame of the Maid of Orleans has taken its proper place among the archives of her country —and even now there are not wanting 'believers in the iconoclastic paradox of Lesigne, which, as we shall show, has been argued with even more ability by a living French writer of greater reputation. In this country, however, the fame of Joan has long risen clear of all detraction. Rome may now -order that- .the Maid is to be called "St. Joan," 'but in England she has already been canonised by the ro mantle ardour of every boy who has read her fascinating and pathetic story. Fifty years ago Ds Quincey was able to say, with almost entire accuracy: "When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, -shall proclaim, the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries." The "national festival" which M. Fabre and his followers at last persuaded France to celebrate in her honor, just before the Dreyfus troubles brdke out, went far to realise De Quincey's hope. But down to the middle of the nineteenth century France was very ungrateful to her Maid. Voltaire's scandalous "Pucelle," with the preface in which Dom Apuleius Risorius thanks the bonne ame -in which that edifying poem' originated, is a fairly exact measure of the respect which, the philosophical eighteenth, century felt for | the memory -of Joan "of Arc. Voltaire's work was not a mere lampoon flung in the face of society with its author's most apish grin, though the editors of 1785 had the grace to admit that a few grave persons were more indignant with Volitaire for abusing Joan than they were with the late Bishop Of Beauvais for burning her. There is a good deal to be said for this attitude, which -the Maid herself witness the language which she used to Lahire—might have shared. But it was not the .popular view in the .Paris of Louis XV., for we know that the crowd which assembled to cheer Voltaire when he was publicly crowned in the theatre linked the "Pucelle" with the dull but eminently respectable "Henriade" in their plaudits. The reproaches which M. Fabre and others have justly levelled against/ the ugly scenes in "King Henry VI." lose all their weight when we recall the worst passages in the "Pucelle." Indeed, down to the days of Michelet and Quicherat it may be said with truth that the name of Joan of Arc was received with

far greater respect an {England than in any other country. Perhaps the singular levity with winch it was, until quite recently, treated in the one land that ought to have honored Joan beyond ail women may be partly explained on the principle of Tacitus, "odisse quern, laeseris." Her name must have been fraught with painful recollection to the descendants of the men who abandoned tlie Maid without striking a single blow for her rescue. Our ancestors burned her, it is true : and we "dinna think ony mair o' them for that." But they had the apology —carrying some weight in the fifteenth century—of regarding her as a sorceress as well as an enemy. Far less excuse c.m be urged for the shameful callousness of Charles VII. and his dissolute courtiers, not to speak of the villain. John of Luxemburg, who actually sold the Maid to her foes, and thereby earned himself a place for ever wilh the Judases and Ganelons of history or romance.

Possibly some thought of tlris kind was in the mind of M. Huysmans when he put forward his paradoxical theory of Joan's relationship to her history of France. Instead of owing- her love and gratitude all patriotic Frenchmen ought to" regard the Maid of Orleans, according to SI. Huyslnans, aa a wrong-headed and mischievous

meddler in tlie natural course of affairs. The Hundred Years' War, in his view, ra essentially a contest of the "dork and truo and tender' North against Hie "fierce and false and fickle" South. 'The followers of L'hurks VII., luited as tliey were by the very inhabitants of the country which they professed' to be defending, were most-ly drawn from the south of l''ranee and Italy. Enirland, on the other hand, really meant "Normandy, conquered by which, it had preserved the Norman blood, "language, and manners.'' Thus, if Joan oi Ave had only had the good sense to stay at home and darn her father's stockings, the Hundred Years' War would have resulted in a linn union of England and the North of France under a single ruler, forming "one powerful Kingdom of the North,' —a kind of more Stable revival of the banished Angevin Empire. As it is, M. Huysmans laments that the so-called national enthusiasm which was fostered bv the valor of the Maid of Orleans gave rise to a France which totally lacks cohesion, being made up of refractory nationalitiies and mutually hostile raws. I't is to Joan, ill fact, th-at. he attributes the slavery of France to tilie race of Numa JR-cminiestan and G-aiubetta, t-he wordy, faithless, boasting, mirageJiued children of tdie Midi, "ce.tte sacra race latin?, que le diable emport-e!" There is a certain -miO'diouin of reason in this decadent view of t'ha domestic -complications of France, where North and South are as really distinct! as Canneimara. and Yorkshire, amd have equally pulled different ways. Bub the novelist's notion of a possible Kingdom of the North, with the English Channel cutting it in two, could be little ffione tihan a devout imagination. It is liaixliv fair 'bo represent Joan of Arc as solely for the incursion into Gaul of that Latin: race of whom one of t'heiir own poets—'the immortal creator of Tarta.nin of iTairascon —has drawn isuoh bitter and amusing pictures. And when all has beein said we are iheairtiily glad to think 'that 'England tooik tihe lead in making such amends as pastihuntou's regaird can .make for the cruel treiaibmsnti of the girl whom Green rightly calls "tlie one pure figure Trliich irises out of t-he greed, the lust, the selfishness, and nnbelief" of the !ige which she did so arrack to ennoble and to raise into a purer air.