Quentin M. Hope
Saint-Évremond and his Friends: Readings for Quentins’s memorial service
Read by Geof Hope
Dad always thought of himself as lucky. One of the lucky aspects of his life was his retirement. He began work on a biography of Saint-Évremond, the hommes de lettres that had also been the object of his PhD dissertation, following his retirement in 1988, announcing that he did not expect ever to finish the book but to use the activity to keep occupied and out of trouble. He published Saint-Evremond and his Friends with Droz in 1999. The book develops Saint-Evremond’s life, his readings, his writings and his thoughts about such concerns as war, history, poetry, women, love, sex, theatre, cuisine, music, medicine, politics, and important people such as the Cardinal Mazarin who had him exiled from France in 1661.
Dad insisted on the importance of the title of that book, Saint-Evremond and his Friends. With relatively little information about the man Saint-Evremond at his disposal. the biographer might well turn to those around him, those who knew him, to flesh out the material. But friendship was a truly significant concept both for Saint-Evremond and for Quentin himself. The theme runs through the book providing a sense of social comedy and human warmth to the scholarship. An example may be found towards the end of the book in a couple of pages Quentin wrote summarizing the later correspondance between Saint-Evremond and his old friend Ninon de Lenclos.
One of the pleasures Saint-Evremond found in old age was the renewal of his friendship with [Ninon de Lenclos]. The wry, humorous, spirited affection of the letters they exchanged sporadically from around 1685 until the end of the century, their fond memories of the old days, so much brighter and freer than the stuffy pieties and pretentious phraseology of the present, their affection for the bright and lively young people who travel between London and Paris and bring them news of one another, their shrugging acceptance of the burdens of age, and the pride they take in having kept a discriminating palate and an unconquerable digestion, their poignant aceptance of the sad fact that they will never see one another again in this world nor in a world beyond that neither of them believes in, when taken together form a delightful double portrait of two old friends who have learned to grow old with grace and humor. They agree that bodily decrepitude is wisdom and take comfort in it. But they are able to find other comforts in old age as well.
What remains of the correspondence begins on a note of risqué gallantry with a letter dating from around 1685 that is full of memories of the old days. He is sure that she has lost none of her sexual magnetism, recalls that de Guiche was cured of his impotence as long as he was in her service, and wishes she could transform him, old as he is, into a Jason "capable of conquering the fleece." In a more serious mood he asks her if she cannot get Barbin to stop printing things such as an attack on Bouhours, an estimable author that he would never dream of offending under his name. "J’ai assez de mes sottises sans me charger de celles des autres."(L., II, 263) {I have foolish things enough of my own, without taking upon me those of otHers.] Elsewhere he jokes with her about the official mood of piety that now reigns in France. Nowadays it is not only bad to be a sinner, it is bad manners too. All he is waiting for is her example and he will turn pious himself.
When he has friends who are going to France - Lady Sandwich, Dr. Morelli, the new duke of Saint-Albans, the young Protestant preacher Turretini, the abbé de Haufeuille - he asks them to pay a call on her. She enjoys the company of all these young people and grows particularly fond of the witty conversation of Lady Sandwich. The meals they share are worthy of the old days, she dearly wishes he could join them at table. She in turn sends young friends whose business takes them to London to see Saint-Evremond: the nimble and a ambitious abbé Du Bois, who was to become minister to the Regent, Phillipe d’Orléans and earn the intense hatred of Saint-Simon, and the Abbé du Bos, a young diplomat of wide-ranging interests whose influential Réflexions sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture were published in 1719. In response to his repeated gallantries she reminds him that she has become an old lady and has to put her glasses on to read his letters. They are not unbecoming, however. She always had a grave face anyhow. But she is irritated when people console her for all she has lost by calling her 'distinguée'.
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