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Page 37
In Paris, Corbinelli was secretary for a time; but she regretted the
_petite personne_. "... I don't like a secretary who is cleverer than
I am.... The child suited me much better."
And there the happy little figurine, having danced her hour at Les
Rochers, leaves the stage. Other _petites personnes_ there are--one
the sister of _La Murinette Beaut�_, who got on so well with M. de
Rohan, and was a lady of Madame de Chaulnes', and presently married
a respectable gentleman, a M. de le Bedoy�re of Rennes. But these are
too high levels for the granddaughter of the good-wife Marcile. That
_petite personne_, moreover, was a rather sophisticated young lady.
One would never have seen her, in the mornings, munching a hunk of
bread-and-butter "as long as from here to Easter." No; Jeannette has
fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers
for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers.
She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau
peasant-girl--nothing of the Greuze languish, with its hint of a
_cruche cass�e_. She is as fresh as a March wind. Let us believe that
she found a true man to relish her prettiness and sharp little wits.
A FOOL OF QUALITY
Tom Coryat, the "single-soled, single-souled and single-shirted
observer of Odcombe," having finally bored his neighbours in the
country past bearing, was volleyed off upon a tempest of their yawns
to London. Exactly when that was I can't find out, but I suppose it to
have been in the region of 1605.
In London he set up for a wit, was enrolled in "The Right Worshipful
Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen," who met at "The Sign of the
Mere-maide in Bread Streete"; had John Donne and Ben Jonson among his
convives, and may well have seen Shakespeare and heard him talk, if
he did talk. How he appeared himself we can only guess, but I conceive
his position in the society to have been that of Polonius in the
convocation of politic worms, as one, namely, where he was eaten
rather than eating. That, if it was so, may have determined him to
make a name for himself by what was his strongest part, namely, his
feet.
In 1608 he, the "Odcombian leg-stretcher," did indeed travel "for five
months, mostly on foot, from his native place of Odcombe in Somerset,
through France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, Helvetia, some parts of High
Germany, and the Netherlands, making in the whole 1975 miles." He
started on the 14th May and was in London again on the 3rd October,
and if indeed he did travel mostly on foot, I call it a very
creditable performance. The result was a book more talked of than
read. "Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels
... newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in his county of
Somerset, and now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling
members of this Kingdom." So runs the text of a Palladian title-page,
surrounded by emblems of adventure which support a _vera effigies_ of
Tom himself. He shows there as a beady-eyed bonhomme of thirty-five
or so, with a Jacobean beard, and his hair brushed back and worn long,
like that of our present-day young men.
The book published, the Sireniacal Gentlemen took off their coats and
took up their battledores. Their gibes and quirks are all printed in
my edition, and are better reading than the book itself. Coryat was a
cockscomb and scorned a straight sentence. A rule of his was: "Never
use one adjective if three will do." So far as I know he was the first
Englishman who travelled for the fun or the glory of the thing, unless
Fynes Moryson anticipated him in those also, as he certainly did in
travelling and writing about it. But I think it more probable that
Moryson went abroad to improve his mind. I don't think Coryat had any
notion of that. Foppery may have moved him, vanity perhaps; in any
case there can be no comparison between them. Moryson is thorough,
Coryat is not. Moryson is often dull, Coryat seldom. Moryson was
a student, Coryat a cockscomb. Moryson was a plain man, Coryat a
euphuist of the first water. I haven't the least doubt but that
Shakespeare met him at the Mermaid--he called himself a friend of
Ben Jonson's--and took the best of him. You will find him in _Love's
Labour's Lost_ as well as in _All's Well_. For a foretaste of his
quality take a small portion of his first sentence, the whole of which
fills a page: "I was imbarked at Dover, about tenne of the clocke in
the morning, the fourteenth of May 1608, and arrived at Calais ...
about five of the clocke in the afternoone, after I had varnished the
exterior parts of the ship with the excrementall ebullitions of my
tumultuous stomach...." There is more about it, but that will do.
Shakespeare can never have missed such a man as that.
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