The Goodman of Paris

Eds. G. G. Coulton and Eileen Power. Trans. Eileen Power. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1928. (c. 1393).

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INTRODUCTION

I. LE MÉNAGIER DE PARIS

The Ménagier de Paris (the Householder or Goodman of Paris, as we might say) wrote this book for the instruction of his young wife between 1392 and 1394. He was a wealthy man, not without learning and of great experience in affairs, obviously a member of that solid and enlightened haute bourgeoisie, upon which the French monarchy was coming to lean with ever increasing confidence. He had travelled widely in France and Flanders and he speaks of certain of the great men of the day in the terms of one who knew them personally, Jean sire d'Andresel, with whom he was at Niort, Bureau de la Rivière and above all the famous Duke of Berry. It seems probable that he himself was in some way connected with the affairs of government, and his French editor considers that he had at one time been employed in military finance (which would account for his presence at Melun in 1358 and Niort in 1374) and that at the time he wrote he was a member of some judiciary body resident at Paris and concerned with the government of the town, such, for instance, as the parlement or the Châtelet. His detailed account of the dinner given by the abbot of Lagny to the président, procureur général and avocats du roi, and of the wedding feast of Jean Duchesne,

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procureur at the Châtelet seem to bear out the suggestion; and in general his literary knowledge and his high connections make it more likely that he was an official than that he was a merchant. He retained, however, all the modesty and sturdy common sense of the bourgeois, who knew and was proud of his position and had no wish to move out of it; and from time to time he lets fall warnings against attending the entertainments of lords of too high a rank, or serving entremets which are beyond a simple citizen's cook.

When he wrote the book which is here translated he was approaching old age and he was certainly at least sixty, but he had recently married a young wife of higher birth than himself, an orphan from a different province. He speaks several times of her "very great youth" and kept a sort of duenna-housekeeper with her, to help and direct her in the management of his house, and indeed she was only fifteen years old when he married her. Modern opinion is shocked by a discrepancy in age between husband and wife, with which the middle ages, a time of mariages de convenance, was more familiar. "Seldom", the Ménagier says, "will you see ever so old a man who will not marry a young woman." Yet his attitude towards his young wife shows that there may have been compensations even in a marriage between May and January, and that Chaucer's incomparable Marchantes Tale is not the only possible version of such a situation. Time after time in the Ménagier's book there sounds the note of a tenderness which is paternal rather than marital, a sympathetic understanding of the feelings of a

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wedded child, which a younger man might not have compassed. Over all the matter of fact counsels there seems to hang something of the mellow sadness of an autumn evening, when "beauty and death go ever hand in hand". It was his wife's function to make comfortable his declining years; but it was his to make the task easy for her. He constantly repeats the assurance that he does not ask of her an overweening respect, or a service too humble or too hard, for such is not due to him; he desires only such care as his neighbours and kinswomen take of their husbands, "for to me belongeth none save the common service, or less".

In his Prologue, addressed to her, he gives a charming picture of the scene which led him to write his book, reminding her how in the week of their wedding she had prayed him one night in bed not to correct her before strangers, but to tell her what she had done wrong when they were alone and she would amend it. He assures her that all she had done hitherto had pleased him and all that she did thereafter with good intent would please him still, since her youth excused her from being very wise. Nevertheless he has taken heed of her words and has made a little book to show her how to comport herself; for he is sorry for this child, who has for long had neither father nor mother, and who is far from kinswomen, who might counsel her, having "me only", he says, "for whom you have been taken from your kinsfolk and from the land of your birth". One characteristic reason, apart from his desire to help her and to be comfortable himself, he gives for his trouble and reverts to from

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time to time, surely the oddest ever given by a husband for instructing his wife. He is old, he says, and must die before her and she will marry again; and it will reflect the greater discredit on him in the eyes of her second husband if she is not perfect in manners and morals and fully competent to run a house. It is characteristic of the Ménagier's reasonableness and solid sense that he regards his young wife's second marriage with equanimity. One of his sections is headed "that you should love your husband (whether myself or another) after the ensample of Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel", and he constantly speaks of "your husband that shall be".