An epigraph to this book can be found in this quotation from Lord Chesterfield: ”The French,” writes Chesterfield, “it is only to do them justice, are much concerned with purity, precision, elegance, and style in their conversation and in their letters. To tell properly for them is an object of study: and though they sometimes carry things to the point of affectation, they never express themselves in a vulgar fashion, which is much the worst of such extremes.” And this style was once universal in Europe, as noted by Louis-Antoine Caraccioli: “The courts of Vienna, of Petersburg, of Warsaw converse in the same language as the court of Versailles. One hears the same expressions, the same accent…The Parisian on his travels scarcely realizes he has left Paris, for he comes to no city where he is not answered in his own tongue…”
When the World Spoke French is a collection of essays written to examine the broad world of French writing and letters during the Enlightenment. Fumaroli takes a character in each essay and gives an overview of their life and correspondents, and provides brief samples of their writing. Any reasonably well educated person would of course be familiar with the major writers and thinkers of the era, such as Voltaire and Diderot. The value in this book is the light it shines on some of the lesser known figures, or at least writers of French who are not well know now in the English speaking world. In virtually every chapter, I added authors and titles to my to-read list, although many of the works I would like to pursue are not currently available in English. Some of the works are available, however somewhat ironically, in nineteenth century translations. The evidence of these translations suggests to me that nineteenth century English readers were more familiar with the French literature of the Enlightenment. It is of course laughable to think that any current speaker of English, or at least the American ones, would have even the slightest awareness of the existence of that vast body of delightful and entertaining literature.
One example from the many fine profiles is Anthony Hamilton. An English Catholic Jacobite who followed the deposed James II into exile, Hamilton’s Memoires du Comte de Gramont is held up as a shining example of an English writer more French than any Frenchman. Hamilton’s memoire of his late brother-in-law achieves a level of l’esprit francais that is so perfect, that according to Sainte-Beuve, “the performance is at a level which is no longer permits us to distinguish anything else in it: he is that esprit itself.” Voltaire himself claimed of the Memoires, “Of all the books of this age, this is the one in which the slenderest matter is embellished with the gayest, the liveliest, and the most agreeable style.” How could one not want to read the Memoires after such praise?
This is but one of many such examples in the book. When the World Spoke French is both exhilarating and exhausting, for while it opens up the doors to so many fine writers, one has to be a little overwhelmed by the quantity and volume of great works from the era.
