MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
STAYING this week in a country house in Norfolk I found in my room a little book entitled The Elizabethan Home. Although it was first published in a limited edition in 1925, and reissued in its present charming form by Messrs. Methuen in 1949, I had never come across the book before. I read it with amusement and curiosity; since it only costs six shillings, I recommend it warmly to those wise virgins who are already beginning to collect their Christmas presents before the autumn rush begins. It represents conversation-manuals com- piled at the end of the sixteenth century by two refugees, who, having fled the persecution of the Huguenots. in France, had settled in London, where they maintained themselves by teaching Latin and French. Miss St. Clare Byrne has made a careful selection from these manuals and added an excellent introduction and efficient notes. The original volumes are diffi- cult to obtain, and my only regret is that it was not possible to print the French as well as the English text; it would have been interesting to note the differences in vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation in the language as spoken in Paris in 1952 and that used by educated people in the days when Le Vert Galant was still Henry of Navarre. Miss Byrne is justified in contending that these domestic dialogues throw a fresh light " on the daily life of Shakespeare's fellow-citizens." They were compiled, much as our modern phrase-books are com- piled, in order to enable ordinary people to express in a foreign language the requirements and courtesies of their normal lives. There is no attempt to introduce general ideas, or to enable students to discourse upon the nature of the -beautiful and the good. The sole purpose of the manuals is to furnish the French equivalent of habitual English sentences; they therefore pro- vide us with much information regarding the ordinary langu- age and customs of the age.
* * * * The first two dialogues were composed by Claude de Sainlien, a native of Moulins, who, on obtaining his " letters of deniza- tion " in England, changed his patronymic to the native equiva- lent of Claudius Hollyband. He started by opening a -school for little boys at Lewisham, but was thereafter taken into the house of Thomas Sackville in Salisbury Court and opened a new school " in Paules Churchyard, hard by the signe of the Lucrece." There he taught the children of the local merchants, instructing them in Latin during the morning and during the afternoon in " the true and lively pronunciation and phrase of the frenche tongue." His three dialogues or phrase- books, The Frenche Schoolmaister, The French Littleton and the Campo di Fior, were, he claimed, better than " all other thornie and unapte books "; they appear to have survived as text-books for instruction in the French language for almost a century. It may have been from these curious vocabularies that Shakespeare culled his scanty knowledge of French. The subsequent phrase-hook, known as The French Garden, was composed by another Huguenot refugee of the name of Erondell. His dialogues centre around the formidable character of a great lady of the court, bearing the unconvincing name of Lady Ri-Mellaine, and depict a household more aristocratic than the bourgeois milieu of Hollyband's vocabularies. Yet the life and manners reflected in all these books are similar; they contrast strangely with the Florizels and Horatios of Shakespeare's creation.
* * * * Hollyband's phrase-books were primarily composed for the use of his own pupils, who were little boys from middle-class families aged between eight and eleven. They were supposed to reach the school in St. Paul's Churchyard by eight in the morning and were beaten if they were late. Hurriedly they would leap from their beds, swallow a bowl of porridge with some ale, perform the most perfunctory ablutions and run, or dawdle laggard, to the school. Their relations with their parents were lacking in ease or trust. They would greet their father and mother with certain stock phrases of salutation and ask for their blessing; but the evidence of parental or domestic affection is scant. One father, on bringing his boy to school, introduces him to Mr. Hollyband in opprobrious terms. He describes the lad as " shame-faced, wanton, wicked, liar, stuburne unto father and mother," and begs the schoolmaster to correct these faults. The public school spirit had not, at that date, come to soften and elevate the customs and conven- tions of our educational establishments. There is a truly shocking dialogue describing how the school-sneak, Nicholas, peached against his little comrade John Nothingworth. He told Mr. Hollyband that John, that morning, had " plaid by the waye," that he had " lied twise," and that he had lost his cappe." He also informed the headmas,ter that William had spat on his paper and had spoken English during the French hour. The modern paedagogue would resent such delation as un-English; not so Mr. Hollyband. John is immedi- ately instructed to " put your hosen downe " and soundly whipped; William is abused for being a " pratell, brabell, cakell," is also beaten, accused of being " a snoty one," and told to blow his nose. It is with pleasure that we are told that Nicholas, to adjust the balance, is also whipped. But all this suggests another world than that of the self-confident and happy Florizel.
With the Erondell dialogues we are admitted into an easier and grander world. Lady Ri-Mellaine, although she suffers much from dandruff, is a woman of elegance and distinction. Her sons, before they are nine years old, are provided with capes lined with taffeta and rapiers with silver hilts. They are allowed to play such games as cent, primeroe, trompe and lurch. They are attended by pages and waiting women, and their ruffs are carefully cleaned and ironed before they leave the house. She herself, before the mid-day meal, drives in her carosse to the bazaars, or Royal Exchange, and bargains in the shops. She buys satins and pinkt velvets and tuffe-taffeta; she visits the jeweller and bids for orient pearls, and topazes, and emrodes, and amethysts as a charm against drunkenness. She is much tempted by " the Cellidonie, (black or russet) which cometh from the entrailles of Swallowes and maketh him that carieth it to be gracious, pleasant and well spoken." We derive from this dialogue the impression that Lady RI-Mellaine needed a constant supply of cellidonies, since she beat her ser- vants and to her children was amazing sharp. In all these dialogues there are long lists of the dishes supplied to the merchants and the nobility. They have oysters with brown bread and butter eaten with vinegar and Dijon mustard; they have turnips from Caen, pike with a " high Dutch sauce," blackbirds, larks, capons, mutton stuffed with garlic and " pouder beef." They drink maumsie, double ale, claret and Rhine wine. Mr. Hollyband, remembering the old Moulins days, regrets the manner of English cooking. " They say commonly in England," he remarks, " that God sendeth us meate and the Devil cookes." Above all he regretted our native vice of soaking vegetables in water.
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Yet in other ways the London of Elizabeth, as reflected in these phrase-books, was a different world. They played paille- maille upon the grass at Holborn and they sang songs from midnight to dawn. " Perchance they were the minstrels of the towne, with those of the Queene, mingled with voices of Italions and Englishmen, which did sing very harmoniously." Harps and hautbois and-trumpets echoed at St. Paul's cross, and there were " four Flutes the which did triumph." The atmosphere suggested by these phrase-books is for us curiously un-English, strangely un-Shakespearian. We leave the Mermaid tavern and pass out into the mire and hubbub of the street; the stench of garlic mingles with the stench of open drains; it is not London that is suggested to us, but the alleys and caravan- serais of Baghdad.
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