Francis The First

THE BACKGROUND THE BACKGROUND C TAND on the boulevards to-day and you may see a Francis go by. He may be travelling fast, himself at the wheel with a blonde girl by his side. He is the athletic type, the lithe attractive male, broad shouldered and thin-legged, with his hat raked at the jaunty angle of a military cap. His life, the joy of life, glints as he flashes past, maybe on his way to Mont-Oriol. He is a type of Frenchman not yet extinct nor likely to be extinct for centuries. Those who wish the ampoule to be opened and a gallant like this to be anointed once more at Reims, with the oil that the dove brought from heaven, do not choose to see him as a human being so much as a King, a mysterious throb in a force that streams from the Eternal. They think it vulgar to see the blonde at his side history should be blonde-proof. History may select the facts, but they must be worthy of History, must be dignified. Yet observe this long-nosed personage with night-life in his nar rowed eyes, eyes that have wept for the broken Virgin, eyes that have faced battle, caressed and lusted, heavy with cupidity, glazed with surfeit, once expectant as the sky in May. The curve of this personage has its own peculiar grace. But when you take him as the head of a European state, with millions in his power, his intrinsic character is too important in its tiniest detail to be veiled 3 4 FRANCIS THE FIRST in obedience to power-historians who rule out the human being. The craft of ruling certainly glints in those incredible eyes. If he were just a Big Boy, a Big Bad Wolf on the boulevards, his char acter would be of human interest, in its own way. Make him King and it is of poignant social interest. Set himon the throne of the most powerful single nation in Europe. Endow him as a multi millionaire. Give him a strong army. Ask him to guide the nation with a handful of councillors, no representative assembly, no potent public opinion. Then require him to deal with the great surges of human vitality which make themselves felt both in re ligion and in the plain struggle for existence. What he is, what he Inherits, how he feels both as man and King, become then of supreme significance for the Europe he has to mould during the full third of a century that he reigns. Francis was the absolute monarch with whom John Calvin col lided. He was Rabelais patron. Erasmus and Machiavelli disputed him. His sister at once befriended Calvin and wrote the Hep tameron, standing in the dizzying cross-lights of Renaissance and Reformation. It is not enough to see him as a monster, simply be cause he was a sensual male. Our judgment of him must take in an immense variety of Europe, action whirling into counter-action and the chaff almost smothering us as we try to sift the wheat of reality. But that reality cannot be taken as merely political the basic stuff is human. How delightful it would be if Francis were a more dominating figure. To arrest historic attention that is, to become world-famous one must make a block reputation be a conqueror like Cxsar, a vamp like Cleopatra, a greatheart like Abraham Lincoln, a virgin Queen like Elizabeth, a non-Virgin Queen like Catherine the Great, a steam-roller like Napoleon . . . Francis I did not, in this manner, stamp himself on his epoch. He was not man enough to do it. But if he were not a superman, he should not lightly be made the puppet of high moralists, the BadWolf execrated by Bishop Stubbs or vilified by Victor Hugo. Those great condemnations of the nine teenth century were not history so much as pamphleteering. Francis was no monster, any more than his contemporary Henry VIII. He had, curiously enough, much the same personal problems as his rival Henry VIII, but he went about them like a Frenchman. THE BACKGROUND 5 Had he married his mistresses, as Henry did, and then cut off a head or two, he would have added several interesting women to the historical waxworks and himself into the bargain...