I do not know any earlier instance of a retained female fool than in the case of the wife of Seneca, who kept in her house one named Harpaste, and whom the philosopher describes as fatua, adding that he himself found no pleasure in such objects; and (as I have quoted in another page) that if he found it necessary to take delight in contemplating a fool, he had not far to go,—having only to look in a mirror. Harpaste may have been retained out of charity, for she was so witless that, becoming suddenly blind, she was not conscious of her calamity; but, remarking how very dark it was in the house, asked the p?dagogus to lead her out-of-doors. Seneca, it will be remembered, loved folly as little in a philosopher as in the fool by vocation. “He,” observes the son of the Cordovaner, “who duly considers the business of life and death, will find that he has little time to spare from that study. And yet, how we trifle away our hours upon niceties and cavils! Will Plato’s imaginary ideas make me an honest man?... A mouse is a syllable, but a syllable does not eat cheese; therefore a mouse does not eat cheese? Oh, these childish follies!... We are jesting, when we should help the miserable,—ourselves, as well as others.”
Jeanne, Queen of Charles I. of France, maintained a female fool of the name of Artaude du Puy, but of whom we know nothing more than that she cost her mistress, or rather the royal treasury, a considerable sum, for dress. There is an unpublished autograph letter of Charles, dated January 3, 1373, an extract from which, printed by the63 author of ‘Les Monnaies des évêques,’ etc., shows that the King orders his treasurers to pay Jean Mandoli, furrier and citizen of Paris, the sum of 179 gold francs, for certain gauds and braveries of woman’s dress, furnished “to Artaude du Puy, Fole to our dear companion, the Queen.”
In 1429, we hear of a moult gracieuse folle (she is so called by St. Remy), whose name was Madame d’Or, and whose wit kept all the nobles laughing at the festival in honour of the institution of the Golden Fleece, at Bruges, in 1429. A folle was also attached to the household of Margaret, the granddaughter of Charles the Bold. Her position in the household is clearly ascertained by the fact that, when moving abroad, she followed her mistress in a chariot, accompanied by the “old ladies in waiting.”
In the succeeding century, in the year 1561, we find a woman, named La Jardinière, registered as “Fole de la Royne,” attached to the rather gloomy household of the Queen Dowager, Catherine de Medicis. Catherine seems to have patronized this sort of official, for in 1568, and for at least four subsequent years, there was a certain Jacquette, who held in the Queen’s establishment the office of “Plaisante de la Royne.”
As far, however, as witty license of speech went, Catherine’s court ladies not unfrequently excelled the court fools, male or female. They did not, indeed, let their lightly-hung tongues ring out at Majesty itself; but they observed no such restraint with anybody beneath the rank, even though the individual might be above the King himself in power. I may instance, as a case in point, the mighty Cardinal of Lorraine, who, despite all his puissance, was often the butt of the lively ladies of the Court of Catherine de Medicis and her royal sons. Brant?me says of this gay and intellectual priest, that, when things went well with him, his arrogance was insufferable; but that no one could be more courteous, or more humble, when his projects met with obstruction.64 One of the Queen’s maids-of-honour, Mdlle. de la Guyonnière, afterwards Madame de Ligneroles, often carried on a fool’s war with the redoubted Cardinal. Whenever the latter appeared to be meek and polite with this lady,—she, who, according to Brant?me’s pleasant compendium, “étoist très habile fille, belle, honneste, et qui disoit bien le mot,” would, with audacious gaiety, exclaim, “Come, come, meek Sir, tell us now if you have not met with some check during the night past? Confess at once that you have been humbled, or we will have nothing to say to you; for, most assuredly, you have encountered some defeat. So, let us hear all about it, if you would have us gracious with you.”
At a later period, we find another lady whose wit was wont to give mirth to courtly circles, if not to the French Court itself. I allude to the sister of that younger De Thou who was executed, by Richelieu, in 1642, for not revealing the conspiracy headed by Cinq-Mars, who had trusted the secret of it with his friend. In after-years, this lady attended the funeral service of the Cardinal, or a service held for the repose of his soul. And there she set the noble persons present into scarcely suppressed laughter, by exclaiming, as she gazed at the coffin where Richelieu lay, or was supposed to lie,—in the words of Martha to Christ, after the death of Lazarus,—“Domine, si fuisses h?c, frater meus non esset mortuus.” (“Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”) It was very apt, though a little profane.
To return to the official female fool, we must go back to the Court of the father of the King, under whom this lady lived, namely, the Court of Henri IV. There was there a Mathurine, who seems to have held the office of Plaisante, not to the Queen exclusively, but for the benefit and amusement of the Court generally. Of what quality was the wit of these plaisantes, some of whom I think were dwarfs, I am unable to say; the only certain fact I can tell of them is,65 that they, though not more than the male fools, continued to wear out the soles of their shoes with great rapidity. The registers of accounts show an extraordinary consumption of shoe leather. In the ‘Collection de la Chambre des Comptes,’ under the year 1319, thirty-two pairs of shoes are set down as having been supplied at one time to the Queen’s dwarf!
It is said of Mathurine that she employed her wit in laughing people out of the Huguenot faith into Catholicism. Mathurine was present in 1594 when Jean Chastel wounded Henri, in his attempt on that king’s life, and she ran great risk of sharing the fate of the would-be assassin, for the monarch, aware of her frantic zeal for the Roman Catholic Church, and that she only looked on Henri as half a Romanist, or believing that she was playing too serious a joke by right of her office, ordered her under arrest as an accomplice. Mathurine, however, proved her innocence, and was set free. She died previous to the year 1627.
De Tillot quotes two authors who make mention of this female fool, Mathurine. The first is the anonymous author of ‘La Lunatique,’ who, addressing the King’s male jester, “Ma?tre Guillaume,” remarks: “Thou doest well to have small love for the Reformers. Satan himself looks on them only with regret; and for a good reason, seeing that if the Reformers could have their way, there would soon be an end of court fools and buffoons. Ah, poor Mathurine, and you poor fellows, Angoulevent, Ma?tre Guillaume, and indeed all you other fools, as well without hoods as with, where would all your pensions be if the Reformers had the upper hand?”
It is a significant fact, this, of the Reformers being the opponents of the expensive follies, and their professors, patronized at Court. Ogive, the second author cited by De Tillot, speaks also of Mathurine, as a salaried fool, appointed by the King: “Folle à gages, et appointée du Roi.” He66 writes, in 1627, saying, “Truly it is a marvellous thing that noble personages, who have been brought up all their lives with the parrots and apes of the Louvre, and who do not less belong to the Court than Mathurine did, or the Queen-Mother’s dwarfs do, should not have learnt in their cabinets to write reasonably.”
Thirty-four years after this was written, a Spanish folle appeared at the French Court, and in rather suspicious society; that of Don John of Austria, who accompanied the famous Pimentel to Paris, to negotiate the marriage of Maria Theresa of Spain with the young Louis XIV. (a marriage which, as it was to put an end to the war, was more cared for by Mazarin than a union which might have taken place between the Cardinal’s most clever niece, Marie Mancini, and the French king). Don John had the impudence to present at court this woman, whom he called his “Folle.” She was full of fun and wit, and every one sought to excite both. Louis enjoyed her jokes with wonderful zest. Her name was Capiton, and no party was thought complete without the presence of the Don’s Folle. The cudgelling of brains between her and Marie Mancini was a gladiatorial fight. Poor Marie had loved Louis, and Louis was warmly attached to a woman who had awakened in him the only good qualities he ever possessed, and who saved him from being such a mere beast as his successor was. Capiton loved to provoke Marie, by singing the praises of the Spanish Infanta, and Marie, sharp-witted, as well as sharply wounded by these praises of a rival who was to triumph over her, replied by sarcasms that were repeated with intense delight throughout France. The haughty, eccentric, coarse, and sensual Don John was proud of his Folle Capiton.
The official female fool survived as late as the year 1722, when we meet with a certain Kathrin Lise. She was the duly-appointed jokeress, if I may so speak, to the Duchess von Sachsen-Weissenfels-Dahme, who resided in the castle67 of Drehna, and depended upon Kathrin for her mirth. This is all we know of the last of the line of female jesters.
* * * * *
Before proceeding to sketch an historical outline of our own English fools, I propose to treat briefly of the Eastern buffoons. These may fairly claim precedence, on the ground that in the East the fashion of maintaining household fools is supposed to have originated, and that it has not yet expired in that locality. Further, there is, in connection with barbaric Courts, both in the East and the West, some legendary matter connected with the Fool, of which it may be as well finally to dispose, prior to dealing with the English jester as an historical character.