Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France

Three French Moralists and The
Gallantry of
by Edmund Gosse

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Title: Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France
Author: Edmund Gosse
Release Date: November 19, 2006 [EBook #19872]
Language: English
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THREE FRENCH MORALISTS AND THE GALLANTRY OF
FRANCE
BY
EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.
OFFICIER DE LA LÉGION D'HONNEUR
LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN
TO
LORD RIBBLESDALE
This little book, long the subject of my meditation, suddenly began to
take shape one Sunday morning when I was your guest at Gisburne. We
were actually starting for church, and the car was at the door, when I
announced to you that the spirit moved me to stay behind. "Very well,
then," you said, with your habitual good-nature, "we leave you to your
folios." My "folios" were the three volumes of one of the smallest of
books, the 18mo edition of Vauvenargues published by Plon in 1874. In
the midst of a violent thunderstorm, which was like a declaration of
war upon your golden Yorkshire summer, I wrote my first pages, and
you were so sceptical, when you came back, as to my having done
anything but watch the lightning, that I told you you would have to
endure the responsibility of being sponsor to a work thus suddenly
begun in all the agitation of the elements. So, such as time has proved it,
here it is.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THREE FRENCH MORALISTS--
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

LA BRUYÈRE
VAUVENARGUES
THE GALLANTRY OF FRANCE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INTRODUCTION
The object of these essays is to trace back to its source, or to some of
its sources--for the soul of France is far too complex to be measured by
one system--the spirit of gallantry which inspired the young French
officers at the beginning of the war. We cannot examine too minutely,
or with too reverent an enthusiasm, the effort of our great ally, and in
this theme for our admiration there are many strains, some of which
present themselves in apparent opposition to one another. The war has
now lasted so long, and has so completely altered its character, that
what was true of the temper of the soldiers of France in November
1914 is no longer true in April 1918. Confidence and determination are
still there, there is no diminution in domestic intensity or in patriotic
fervour, but the long continuance of the struggle has modified the
temper of the French officer, and it will probably never be again what it
was in the stress and tempest of sacrifice three years and a half ago,
when the young French soldiers, flushed with the idealisms which they
had imbibed at St. Cyr, rushed to battle like paladins, "with a pure
heart," in the rapture of chivalry and duty.
All that has long been wearied out, and might even be forgotten, if the
letters and journals of a great cloud of witnesses were not fortunately
extant. The record kept by the friends of Paul Lintier and those others
whom I am presently to mention, and by innumerable persons to whose
memory justice cannot here be done, will keep fresh in the history of
France the idealism of a splendid generation. Now we see, and for a
long time past have seen, a different attitude on the fields of
Champagne and Picardy. There is no feather worn now in the cap, no

white gloves grasp the sword; the Saint Cyrian elegance is over and
done with. There is no longer any declamation, any emphasis, any
attaching of importance to "form" or rhetoric. The fervour and the
emotion are there still, but they are kept in reserve, they are below the
surface, "at the bottom of the heart," as La Rochefoucauld puts it.
Heroism is now restrained by a sense of the prodigious length and
breadth of the contest, by the fact, at last patent to the most unthinking,
that the war is an octopus which has wound its tentacles about every
limb and every organ of the vitality of France. A revelation of the
overwhelming violence of enormous masses of men has broken down
the tradition of chivalry. War is now accepted with a sort of
indifference, as a part of the day's work; "pas de grands mots, pas de
grands gestes, pas de drame!" The imperturbable French officer of
1918 attaches no