Classic Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
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Portrait of Charles Perrault (1628-1703)
Contrôleur général des Bâtiments du roi, membre de l’Académie française Paris, palais de l’Institut
© RMN / Droits réservés
After 20 years in Colbert’s service, the sun was beginning to set on Perrault’s fortunes. His brother Pierre, the Chief Commissioner of Taxes, had a dispute with Colbert and resigned in disgrace. Then Perrault became engaged to a young woman of whom nothing is known except that Colbert opposed the match. (At this time Colbert’s own influence with the king was waning, and this was having an adverse effect on his mood.) It was in Perrault’s nature, that although he was a courtier, he could be relied on to consider the wishes of nobody except himself and his future wife and he refused to break the engagement. He slipped quietly from Colbert’s service in 1683, at the age of 55.
However, before he left the court, he succeeded in frustrating an initiative that would have closed the Tuileries Gardens to the people of Paris. Colbert wanted to have them reserved for the use of the king, but Perrault persuaded him to come for a walk with him there one day so that he could show him the people taking the air and playing with their children. He had the gardeners declare that these privileges were never abused, and drove home his point by declaring that the gardens were ‘so spacious that there was room for all [the king’s] children to walk there’.
In the nineteenth century the literary critic Charles Sainte-Beuve proposed that this service to the children of Paris should be commemorated by a statue of Perrault in the Tuileries Gardens. The statue was never erected, and to this day Paris, although plentifully endowed with statues and portraits of the great men of France, has none to show that she appreciates the genius of Perrault. There is, in fact, no statue of him in existence; indeed, the only painting of him is a rather dubious one that hangs in an obscure corner of the palace at Versailles.
The end of Perrault’s official career coincided with the beginning of his period of greatest literary activity. In 1686 he published a long narrative poem, ‘Saint Paulin Evesque de Nole’, along with a ‘Christian Epistle on Penitence’ and an ‘Ode to the Newly-converted’, which he dedicated to the bishop and theologian Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. Le Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes appeared between 1688 and 1696. In 1693 he brought out his Cabinet des Beaux Arts, beautifully illustrated with engravings and including a poem that even Boileau deigned to admire. In 1694 he published his ‘Apologie des Femmes’. He wrote two comedies: ‘L’Oublieux’ and ‘Les Fontanges’. These weren’t printed until 1868 and ultimately contributed little to his reputation. Between 1691 and 1697 he wrote the Histoires ou Contes de Temps Passé, perhaps better known as Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye, published in English as Tales of Mother Goose, and the Contes en Vers. Towards the end of his life he was working on Eloges des Homines Illustres du Siècle de Louis XIV, the first volume of which was published in 1696, and the second in 1700, illustrated by 102 engravings, including one of Perrault himself by Gerard Edelinck, and another of his brother Claude. These biographies are a valuable contribution to the history of the reign of the Sun King. This list of Perrault’s writings is not exhaustive, but includes the best of his work.
Perrault died in 1703 at the age of 75, admired and mourned by all who knew him. He was clever, honest, courteous and witty, and carried out his duty to his family, his employer, his friends and the general public. In an age of great men, but also one of great prejudices, he found his own way to fame and fortune. He served all the arts and practised most of them. Painters, writers, sculptors, musicians and scientists were among his friends and acquaintances. As a good civil servant he was no politician, and he never showed any leanings towards a career in the army, then regarded as the greatest of all professions. These two deficiencies, if they can be regarded as such, simply endear him to us all the more. Everyone likes a man who deserves to enjoy life and who does, in fact, enjoy it. Perrault was such a man, and more. He brought enjoyment to countless people during his lifetime, and his stories will continue to bring pleasure to multitudes in the future.
It is amazing to think that Perrault was rather ashamed of his Tales of Mother Goose and had them published under the name of his young son, Pierre Darmancour. To maintain his anonymity, Perrault abandoned his usual publisher, Coignard, and the first collected edition of the stories was published in 1697 by Barbin. They had previously appeared anonymously in the little magazine Recueil, published in The Hague. ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ was the first, followed in quick succession by ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Puss in Boots’, ‘The Fairy’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Riquet with the Tuft’ and ‘Tom Thumb’.
Perrault was not so reluctant to admit the authorship of his three verse stories, ‘Griselidis’ (not included in this book), ‘The Ridiculous Wishes’ and ‘Donkey Skin’. Although the first of these had appeared anonymously in 1691, when it was reprinted in 1695, together with ‘The Ridiculous Wishes’ and ‘Donkey Skin’, it was given to the publisher Coignard and described as being by ‘Mr Perrault, of the French Academy’, a style of attribution made popular by La Fontaine.
It would be unfair to assume that Perrault’s son had nothing to do with the composition of the stories that were attributed to him. Paul de St Victor and Andrew Lang are among those who saw in the collection a marvellous collaboration of crabbed age and youth. The young boy probably heard the stories from his nurse and brought them to his father, who would have tweaked them and written them down. In his fine 1886 edition of the tales Paul Lacroix goes as far as to attribute their entire authorship to Perrault’s son. However, he deferred to universal usage when he called his volume Les Contes en Prose de Charles Perrault.
The stories were an overnight success. They had many imitators, but none of them has ever rivalled, much less surpassed the inimitable originals. They had soon made their way across the English Channel and a translation ‘by Mr Samber, printed for J. Pote’ was advertised in the Monthly Chronicle in 1729. Mr Samber was probably Robert Samber of New Inn, London, who translated other tales from the French for the bookseller Edmund Curll at about this time. No copy of the first edition of his translation has survived, but its wide popularity is shown by the fact that a seventh edition was published in 1795 for the bookseller J. Rivington of New York.
Harry Clarke’s illustrations speak for themselves and for Perrault. An illustrator has seldom entered so completely into the spirit of his text. The grace, delicacy, urbanity, tenderness and humour that went into the writing of Perrault’s stories also imbue the wonderful drawings, which would certainly have given pleasure to Perrault himself.
Acknowledgements
Song of the Mad Prince
Illustration by Harry Clarke from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson
He Saw, Upon A Bed, The Finest Sight Was Ever Beheld
Copyright © National Gallery of Ireland
Portrait of Charles Perrault
Wikipedia Commons
Portrait of Charles Perrault (1628-1703)
Contrôleur général des Bâtiments du roi, membre de l’Académie française
Paris, palais de l’Institut
© RMN / Droits réservés
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