Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw. Jaargang 1992

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Aubrey Rosenberg
Tyssot de Patot (1655-1738) and ‘Jaques Massé’

In a recent article in this journal (22 [1990] 2, 111-115), R.H. Vermij proposed that the long-held view that Simon Tyssot de Patot (1655-1738) was the author of the anonymously published Voyages et avantures de Jaques Massé is incorrect. His main reason for this assertion is based on an extract from a letter written in 1745 to Prosper Marchand in which the correspondent makes the following observation: ‘On m'avoit assuré que le Voiage imprimé à Bourdeaux étoit du Vieux Tyssot de Patot, mort il n'y a pas bien longtems à Isselstein. Je vous remercie, Monsieur, de m'avoir désabusé. Ces misérables livres font beaucoup de mal.’

Before dealing with this observation, I should like to present the case for Tyssot's authorship. Most of what I have to say has already been presented in the monograph to which Vermij refers^1., but some of it is new information about Tyssot's works. I think it will be clear from the following that, despite the observation of Marchand's correspondent, there can be no doubt that Tyssot was the author of Jaques Massé.

In a letter written in 1720 to his son in Ceylon, Tyssot replies to the complaint that he has neglected to send his son objects and information from Europe, particularly Tyssot's own works that Tyssot distributed to his friends. He reminds his son of what he has already sent, and encloses a copy of his latest anonymous imaginary voyage, hot off the press, the Voyage de Groenland (de Pierre de Mésange):

Il est certain néanmoins que je vous ai fait tenir Arcan & Bélize. Je vous ai aussi envoyé le voyage des Terres Australes par Mr. Jaques Massé, & à la cette heure vous trouverez ici celui du Révérend Pere Pierre de Mésange, jusques sous le Pole Artique. [...] Je croyois que le même Imprimeur, qui a travaillé à Mésange, auroit aussi entrepris les Amours pastorales de Daphnis & de Chloé, que j'ai mis autrefois en vers, & à un recueil de mes Lettres, [...] mais il est tombé malade, & m'a renvoyé mes manuscrits (Lettres choisies, II, 531-531).

1. A. Rosenberg, Tyssot de Patot and his Work 1655-1738 (The Hague 1972).

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The reference to the first of Tyssot's works, ‘Arcan & Bélize’, has only recently been identified as another anonymous novel, not an imaginary voyage this time, entitled Les Amours et les avantures d'Arcan et de Bélize, histoire véritable, traduite du latin en françois par le Chevalier de P, Leyde, 1714.^2. The ‘Amours pastorales de Daphnis & de Chloé’ were destined to take up over half the second volume of Tyssot's three-volume (Euvres poétiques (1727), and the ‘recueil de mes Lettres’ appeared as the two-volume Lettres choisies in the same year. The authorship of none of these works is contested.

Vermij misinterprets and thus attaches undue importance to a letter, written probably at the end of 1714 (see below), in which Tyssot disclaims authorship of the novel:

Je suis bien aise de ce que vous êtes de mon sentiment par raport à la beauté du voyage de Mr. Massé: il est en effet instructif, il est agréable, bien diversifié, rempli d'incidens rares et curieux; et son Auteur y fait suffisamment connoître qu'il avoit de l'érudition, du savoir, du génie, & qu'il pouvoit, pour ainsi dire, passer pour universel dans les sciences. Mais je suis surpris de ce que vous doutez d'une rélation si bien circonstanciée: [...] & ce qui m'étonne le plus, que vous me soupçonnez d'en avoir été l'inviteur. [...] Enfin, j'en viens à moi-même, & je dis que m'atribuer ce livre est me faire bien d'honneur: il est vrai pourtant qu'il ne contient rien, sans vanité, qui soit au dessus de ma portée, et qu'encore qu'un esprit tourné aux Mathématiques, s'applique rarement à la Mythologie & aux Romans, il s'en est vû néanmoins, qui y ont fort bien réussi.
Qui que ce soit, qui ait écrit ce savant livre, sa mémoire me sera toûjours glorieuse, tout Déiste que l'on veut qu'il aît été, comme cela pourroit fort bien être, à cause de sa candeur, de ses lumiéres & des belles découvertes qu'il a faites (LC, II, 251-254).

How seriously are we to take this disclaimer? Ayone who has studied Tyssot's life, personality and writings, will recognize immediately in this letter his characteristic fondness for badinage, allied with his self-styled reputation as a man of many parts, scientist, poet, raconteur, wit, in short, a latterday honnête homme, but not of the kind ‘qui ne se pique de rien’. The excessively lavish, and what Vermij regards as shameless, praise he heaps on this novel and its author is all addressed to himself, a man not overly afflicted with false modesty, a concept largely unknown in his day.

2. See A. Rosenberg, ‘Tyssot de Patot's “Lost Novel”: Les Amours et avantures d'Arcan et de Bélize’, Romance Notes (Spring 1981), 349-351: ‘Le déisme critique dans un roman “inconnu” de Tyssot de Patot’ in La Naissance du roman en France, Biblio 17, (Paris-Seattle-Tübingen 1990), 67-73. In note 3, 352 is misprinted as 352.

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Why then did he not openly avow his authorship? For two main reasons. First, it was a convention throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, when the novel was considered an inferior genre, to dissociate oneself from such publications. Voltaire, for example, in his long life, owned up to almost none of his writings other than those for the theatre. Second, parts of the novel were heretical and could jeopardize an author's reputation and career if his identity were discovered. By 1720 Tyssot was less concerned about these consequences but, in 1714, he was still on his guard. This is why, in the same letter, anticipating the practice of Voltaire, he emphatically denies responsibility for the most heretical section of his novel, the ‘Fable of the Bees’:

[...] si dans toute cette rélation il y a quelque chose capable de choquer une oreille chatouilleuse, c'est cette fable des abeilles du chapitre 15, que je desaprouve entierement, & qui en effet, s'il faut que je le dise, n'est nullement de l'Auteur.
J'en ai vû le manuscrit avant qu'elle fut imprimée, j'en puis rendre témoignage: l'Editeur doit être accusé seul de cette supercherie, et non seulement il s'est ingéré d'ajouter cette parabole à ce bel ouvrage, mais il en a aussi retranché des choses en des endroits, qui étoient dignes de celui, qui les y avoit insérées (253).

For someone who is not supposted to have written the novel, Tyssot shows an extraordinary familiarity with its translation from manuscript to printed text.

This leads to the suggestion that it was the production of a group of writers. But we know from Tyssot's other publications that, even if he were not a great writer, he was perfectly capable of adopting a wide variety of styles for many different topics and purposes, with the result that nothing that appears in Jaques Massé is in any way inconsonant with what is found elsewhere in his works.

The internal evidence of Tyssot's authorship of this novel that contains so many autobiographical references and private jokes (though not nearly the quantity found in the Voyage de Groenland) is equally compelling. It is through this internal evidence that it has been possible to establish incontrovertibly that the novel was not published in 1710 but in November/December 1714 at the very earliest. On July 30 1713, Tyssot's youngest son, Pierre Corneille, killed a fellow ensign in a duel and went off to Ceylon, in November 1714, to seek a new life, without taking with him a copy of Jaques Massé that, as we have seen, Tyssot sent on to him later. Towards the end of the novel, one of the characters recounts that, ‘ayant eu le malheur de tuër en duel un Enseigne du Régiment des Gardes du Prince d'Orange, qui apartenoit à des Personnes de très grand crédit, j'avois été obligé d'abandonner mon Païs, de peur des conséquences’

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(499). Why on earth would some other author choose to include this detail of Tyssot's family life and how could he have done so in 1710? It is also no coincidence, as I have previously pointed out, that Mandeville's Fable of the Bees appeared in 1714. So much for the date of publication.

In Chapter XIV, there is a reference to ‘Mr. le Chevalier Tyssot, Gouverneur de Surinam’ (p. 400) whom Tyssot claimed as a relative (OEuvres poétiques, II, 204-205). What would possess another author to drag in this trivial detail of Tyssot's parentage? And why would someone else reproduce in his (her?) novel the identical treatises on astronomy, eclipses, calendars, the seasons, etc., that occur in Tyssot's private correspondence? There is much more of this kind of evidence but I do not wish to belabour the point since it is all available in the monograph referred to above.

What are we to make, then of the observation that gave rise to this discussion? The objection that immediately springs to mind is that there is no necessary connection between the ‘Voiage’ referred to and Jaques Massé. It could well be that the writer asked Marchand about some other work attributed to Tyssot or that he himself thought Tyssot had written. This would amply explain why Marchand disabused him of the idea. In short, in the absence of the actual letter from Marchand, in which he apparently omitted to provide the author's name, or the correspondent found it unnecessary to repeat it, there is no real or even strongly circumstantial evidence to justify the contention that the ‘Voiage’ referred to is Jaques Massé. It is all very mysterious, but there is no mystery about the author of Jaques Massé (1714?). It was Tyssot de Patot.