Miscellaneous Essays - Thomas de Quincey
On whatever side of the border chance had thrown Joanna, the same love to
France would have been nurtured. For it is a strange fact, noticed by M.
Michelet and others, that the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had for generations
pursued the policy of eternal warfare with France on their own account, yet
also of eternal amity and league with France in case anybody else presumed
to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and before long you might rely
upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. Let
Franco be assailed by a formidable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of
Lorraine or Bar insisting on having his throat cut in support of France;
which favor accordingly was cheerfully granted to them in three great
successive battles by the English and by the Turkish sultan, viz., at
Crecy, at Nicopolis, and at Agincourt.
This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in those that during
ordinary seasons were always teasing her with brawls and guerilla inroads,
strengthened the natural piety to France of those that were confessedly
the children of her own house. The outposts of France, as one may call the
great frontier provinces, were of all localities the most devoted to the
Flours de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion to
these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler weather was for
ever tilting at her breast, could not bin fan the zeal of the legitimate
daughter: whilst to occupy a post of honor on the frontiers against an old
hereditary enemy of France, would naturally have stimulated this zeal by a
sentiment of martial pride, had there even been no other stimulant to zeal
by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always smouldering.
That great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardor.
To say, this way lies the road to Paris--and that other way to
Aix-la-Chapelle, this to Prague, that to Vienna--nourished the warfare of
the heart by daily ministrations of sense. The eye that watched for the
gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened
for the groaning of wheels, made the high road itself, with its relations
to centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic enmity.
The situation, therefore, _locally_ of Joanna was full of profound
suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and
fear that too surely were in motion. But if the place were grand, the
times, the burthen of the times, was far more so. The air overhead in its
upper chambers were _hurtling_ with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen
fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty
years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had re-opened the
wounds of France. Crecy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the
chivalry of France, had been tranquillized by more than half a century; but
this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles
and endless skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The
graves that had closed sixty years ago, seemed to fly open in sympathy
with a sorrow that echoed their own. The monarchy of France labored in
extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of
monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI.) falling in at such a
crisis, like the case of women laboring in childbirth during the storming
of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of
the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this
madness--the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself,
coming out of a forest at noon-day, laying his hand upon the bridle of
the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, "Oh, King, thou art
betrayed," and then vanishing no man knew whither, as he had appeared for
no man knew what--fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid
France on her knees as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic
doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the
peasantry up and down Europe, these were chords struck from the same
mysterious harp; but these were transitory chords. There had been others
of deeper and more sonorous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the
destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or
suffered by the House of Anjou, by the Emperor--these were full of a more
permanent significance; but since then the colossal figure of feudalism was
seen standing as it were on tiptoe at Crecy for flight from earth: that was
a revolution unparalleled; yet _that_ was a trifle by comparison with the
more fearful revolutions that were mining below the Church. By her own
internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of a double Pope--so that no
man, except through political bias, could even guess which was Heaven's
vicegerent, and which the creature of hell--she was already rehearsing, as
in still earlier forms she had rehearsed, the first rent in her foundations
(reserved for the coming century) which no man should ever heal.
These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies, that to the
scientific gazer first caught the colors of the _new_ morning in advance.
But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead, dwelt upon all
meditative minds, even those that could not distinguish the altitudes nor
decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected
by its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind;
but her own age, as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving
through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to crisis after
crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen
far back, by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs
now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not
wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart,
Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices
whispered to her the duty imposed upon herself, of delivering France. Five
years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At
length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and she left her home in
order to present herself at the Dauphin's court.
The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard:
was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard; and only
not good for our age, because for us it would be unattainable. She read
nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the
Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy with the sad _Misereres_ of the
Romish chaunting; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant _Gloria in
Excelcis_: she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of
her church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to
the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink
of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that
the parish priest (_cure_) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in
order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a
statistical view; certain weeds mark poverty in the soil, fairies mark
its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities, does the fairy
sequester herself from the haunts of licensed victuallers. A village is too
much for her nervous delicacy: at most, she can tolerate a distant view
of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble
which they gave to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at
Domremy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how thinly sown with men and
women must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. But the
forests of Domremy--those were the glories of the land: for, in them abode
mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength.
"Abbeys there were, and abbey windows, dim and dimly seen--as Moorish
temples of the Hindoos," that exercised even princely power both in
Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced
the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy
legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, in no degree
to disturb the deep solitude of the region; many enough to spread a network
or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen
wilderness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most
afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into
courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the
Vosges on the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much notice
from Europe, except in 1813-14, for a few brief months, when they fell
within Napoleon's line of defence against the Allies. But they are
interesting for this, amongst other features--that they do not, like some
loftier ranges, repel woods: the forests and they are on sociable terms.
_Live and let live_ is their motto. For this reason, in part, these tracts
in Lorraine were a favorite hunting ground with the Carlovingian princes.
About six hundred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to
have hunted there. That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions
of a forest or a chase. In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if
the race was not extinct) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary
hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen, at intervals,
that ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, at the least, but
possibly a hundred or two more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing
was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe
Charlemagne knighted the stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he
ought to be made an earl--or, being upon the marches of France, a marquess.
Observe, I don't absolutely vouch for all these things: my own opinion
varies. On a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical; but as
twilight sets in, my credulity becomes equal to anything that could be
desired. And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that, outside of these
very forests near the Vosges, they laughed loudly at all the dim tales
connected with their haunted solitudes; but, on reaching a spot notoriously
eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley
that a good deal might be said on both sides.
Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant
generations with each other, are, for that cause, sublime; and the sense of
the shadowy, connected with such appearances that reveal themselves or not
according to circumstances, leaves a coloring of sanctity over ancient
forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the legend as a fact.
But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary
frontier between two great empires, as here, for instance, or in the desert
between Syria and the Euphrates, there is an inevitable tendency, in minds
of any deep sensibility to people the solitudes with phantom images of
powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation
of a shepherdess, would be led continually to brood over the political
condition of her country, by the traditions of the past no less than by the
mementoes of the local present.
M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was _not_ a shepherdess. I beg
his pardon: she _was_. What he rests upon, I guess pretty well: it is
the evidence of a woman called Haumette, the most confidential friend of
Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and I like her; for
she makes a natural and affectionate report of Joanna's ordinary life. But
still, however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is better; and
she, when speaking to the Dauphin, calls herself in the Latin report
_Bergereta_. Even Haumette confesses that Joanna tended sheep in her
girlhood. And I believe, that, if Miss Haumette were taking coffee alone
with me this very evening (February 12, 1847)--in which there would be
no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes, because I am an intense
philosopher, and Miss H. would be hard upon four hundred and fifty years
old--she would admit the following comment upon her evidence to be right. A
Frenchman, about thirty years ago, M. Simond, in his _Travels_, mentioned
incidentally the following hideous scene as one steadily observed and
watched by himself in France at a period some trifle before the French
Revolution:--A peasant was ploughing; and the team that drew his plough was
a donkey and a woman. Both were regularly harnessed: both pulled alike.
This is bad enough: but the Frenchman adds, that, in distributing his
lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of being impartial: or, if
either of the yoke-fellows had a right to complain, certainly it was not
the donkey. Now, in any country, where such degradation of females could be
tolerated by the state of manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink from
acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she had ever been
addicted to any mode of labor not strictly domestic; because, if once
owning herself a praedial servant, she would be sensible that this
confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to having
incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more
dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed
father, Monsieur D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be
suspected of having ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no
danger of _that_: Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her
father should have mended his own stockings, since probably he was the
party to make the holes in them, as many a better man than D'Arc does;
meaning by _that_ not myself, because, though certainly a better man than
D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of the kind. If I lived even with
Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Friday must do all the darning, or else it
must go undone. The better men that I meant were the sailors in the British
navy, every man of whom mends his own stockings. Who else is to do it?
Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are under
articles to darn for the navy?
The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc is this. There was
a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the
pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent
rolls, viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was
overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, "_Chevalier, as-tu
donne au cochon a manger_!" Now, it is clearly made out by the surviving
evidence, that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say--"_Ma
fille as-tu donne au cochon a manger_?" to saying "_Pucelle d'Orleans,
as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys_?" There is an old English copy of verses
which argues thus:--
"If the man, that turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies--
Then 'tis plain the man had rather
Have a turnip than his father."
I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever _entirely_ to my
satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as clearly as could be wished.
But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the result is--that he
would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the
saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France.
It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the title of Virgin, or
_Pucelle_, had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stones about her,
a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period;
for, in such a person, they saw a representative manifestation of the
Virgin Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the
popular heart.
As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the Dauphin (Charles VII.) amongst
three hundred lords and knights. I am surprised at the credulity which
could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than
myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure
creature? But I admire not stage artifices, which not _La Pucelle_, but the
Court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself a dupe to a conjuror's
_leger-de-main_, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. Southey's
"Joan of Arc" was published in 1796. Twenty years after, talking with
Southey, I was surprised to find him still owning a secret bias in favor of
Joan, founded on her detection of the Dauphin. The story, for the benefit
of the reader new to the case, was this:--_La Pucelle_ was first made known
to the Dauphin, and presented to his court, at Chinon: and here came her
first trial. She was to find out the royal personage amongst the whole ark
of clean and unclean creatures. Failing in this _coup d'essai_, she would
not simply disappoint many a beating heart in the glittering crowd that on
different motives yearned for her success, but she would ruin herself--and,
as the oracle within had told her, would ruin France. Our own sovereign
lady Victoria rehearses annually a trial not so severe in degree, but the
same in kind. She "pricks" for sheriffs. Joanna pricked for a king. But
observe the difference: our own lady pricks for two men out of three;
Joanna for one man out of three hundred. Happy Lady of the islands and the
orient!--she _can_ go astray in her choice only by one half; to the extent
of one half she _must_ have the satisfaction of being right. And yet, even
with these tight limits to the misery of a boundless discretion, permit me,
liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit--that now and then you prick with
your pin the wrong man. But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under
the gaze of a dazzling court--not because dazzling (for in visions she had
seen those that were more so,) but because some of them wore a scoffing
smile on their features--how should _she_ throw her line into so deep a
river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that
masqueraded as kings in dress? Nay, even more than any true king would have
done: for, in Southey's version of the story, the Dauphin says, by way of
trying the virgin's magnetic sympathy with royalty,
----"on the throne,
I the while mingling with the menial throng,
Some courtier shall he seated."
This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's
head." But really, that is "_un peu fort_;" and the mob of spectators might
raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the
Dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the Dauphin
could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion,
he had no crown for himself, but, at most, a _petit ecu_, worth thirty
pence; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the
consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the _popular_ notion
in France. The same notion as to the indispensableness of a coronation
prevails widely in England. But, certainly, it was the Dauphin's interest
to support the popular notion, as he meant to use the services of Joanna.
For, if he were king already, what was it that she could do for him beyond
Orleans? And above all, if he were king without a coronation, and without
the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by
celerity above his competitor the English boy? Now was to be a race for a
coronation: he that should win _that_ race, carried the superstition of
France along with him. Trouble us not, lawyer, with your quillets. We are
illegal blockheads; so thoroughly without law, that we don't know even if
we have a right to be blockheads; and our mind is made up--that the first
man drawn from the oven of coronation at Rheims, is the man that is baked
into a king. All others are counterfeits, made of base Indian meal, damaged
by sea-water.
La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was put
through her manual and platoon exercise, as a juvenile pupil in divinity,
before six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, Book III., in
the original edition of his "Joan of Arc") she "appall'd the doctors." It's
not easy to do _that_: but they had some reason to feel bothered, as that
surgeon would assuredly feel bothered, who, upon proceeding to dissect a
subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself,
especially if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies v.
354-391, B. III. It is a double impossibility; 1st, because a piracy from
Tindal's _Christianity as Old as the Creation:_ now a piracy _a parte post_
is common enough; but a piracy _a parte ante_, and by three centuries,
would (according to our old English phrase[5]) drive a coach-and-six
through any copyright act that man born of woman could frame. 2dly, it is
quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial; for Southey's "Joan" of
A. Dom. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol), tells the doctors, amongst other secrets,
that she never in her life attended--1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental
table; nor 3d, Confession. Here's a precious windfall for the doctors;
they, by snaky tortuosities, had hoped, through the aid of a corkscrew,
(which every D. D. or S.T.P. is said to carry in his pocket,) for the
happiness of ultimately extracting from Joanna a few grains of heretical
powder or small shot, which might have justified their singeing her a
little. And just at such a crisis, expressly to justify their burning her
to a cinder, up gallops Joanna with a brigade of guns, unlimbers, and
serves them out with heretical grape and deistical round-shot enough to lay
a kingdom under interdict. Any miracles, to which Joanna might treat the
grim D. Ds. after _that_, would go to the wrong side of her little account
in the clerical books. Joanna would be created a _Dr_. herself, but not of
Divinity. For in the Joanna page of the ledger the entry would be--"Miss
Joanna, in acct. with the Church, _Dr._ by sundry diabolic miracles, she
having publicly preached heresy, shown herself a witch, and even tried hard
to corrupt the principles of six church pillars." In the mean time, all
this deistical confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the
interest of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon _both_ trials.
The very best witness called from first to last deposes that Joanna
attended these rites of her Church even too often; was taxed with doing so;
and, by blushing, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a
fault. Joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests,
and hills, and fountains; but did not the less seek him in chapels and
consecrated oratories.
This peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural meditativeness.
If the reader turns to that divine passage in _Paradise Regained_, which
Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first entering the
wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great impulses growing
within himself--
"Oh, what a multitude of thoughts arise!" &c.
he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the heart
of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that should carry
her from Orleans to Rheims; when the golden chariot was dimly revealing
itself that should carry her from the kingdom of _France Delivered_ to the
eternal kingdom.
It is not requisite, for the honor of Joanna, nor is there, in this place,
room to pursue her brief career of _action_. That, though wonderful, forms
the earthly part of her story: the intellectual part is, the saintly
passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortunate,
therefore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc," (which however should always be
regarded as a _juvenile_ effort,) that, precisely when her real glory
begins, the poem ends. But this limitation of the interest grew, no doubt,
from the constraint inseparably attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's
history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not have been
presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme,
or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the
latter;--this might have been done--it might have been communicated to a
fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself, in the same way that
Virgil has contrived to acquaint the reader, through the hero's mouth, with
earlier adventures that, if told by the poet speaking in his own person,
would have destroyed the unity of his fable. The romantic interest of the
early and _irrelate_ incidents (last night of Troy, &c.) is thrown as an
affluent into the general river of the personal narrative, whilst yet the
capital current of the _epos_, as unfolding ihe origin and _incunabula_ of
Rome, is not for a moment suffered to be modified by events so subordinate
and so obliquely introduced. It is sufficient, as concerns _this_ section
of Joanna's life to say--that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises,
the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become a province of
England; and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained.
Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and
that critical opening _La Pucelle_ used with a corresponding felicity
of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for
introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the
national pride, and for planting the Dauphin once more upon his feet. When
Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with
the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France.
She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated Orleans,
that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then
beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application of engineering
skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset, on the 29th
of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 8, for the entire disappearance of
the besieging force. On the 29th of June, she fought and gained over the
English the decisive battle of Patay; on the 9th of July, she took Troyes
by a coup-de-main from a mixed garrison of English and Burgundians; on the
15th of that month, she carried the Dauphin into Rheims; on Sunday the
17th, she crowned him; and there she rested from her labor of triumph. What
remained was--to suffer.