Despite this pandering to the crown, in 1695, when he was sixty-seven years old, Perrault lost his post as secretary. It was at this point that he decided to dedicate himself to his children and began writing stories, inspired by old oral traditions of French and European folklore. In 1697 Perrault published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé), subtitled Tales of Mother Goose (Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye). It was an enormous success, mostly inspired by earlier fairy tales written in the salons, notably by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d’Aulnoy, who coined the phrase ‘fairy tale.’ Barneville in fact, was writing such stories as early as 1690. Even so, many of the most well-known tales that we hear today, such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood are told as he wrote them. Perrault had actually published his collection under the name of his last son (born in 1678), Pierre (Perrault) Darmancourt (‘Armancourt’ being the name of a property he bought for him), probably fearful of criticism from the ‘Ancients.’
In the tales, Perrault used images from around him, such as the Chateau Ussé for The Sleeping Beauty and in Puss in Boots the Marquis of the Château d’Oiron, and contrasted his folktale subject matter with details, asides and subtext drawn from the world of fashion. Perrault died in Paris, the city of his birth – and adult life – in 1703 at the age of seventy-five.
Biography
of
Charles Robinson
Charles Robinson was born in Islington, London, England in 1870. The son of an illustrator, and the brother of famous illustrators Thomas Heath Robinson and William Heath Robinson, he served a seven-year apprenticeship as a printer and took art lessons in the evenings. In 1892, Robinson won a place at the Royal Academy, but was unable to take it up due to lack of finances.
It wasn’t until the age of 25 that Robinson began to sell his work professionally. His first full book was Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses (1895). The work was very well-received, going through a number of print runs. Over the rest of his life, Robinson illustrated many more fairy tales and children’s books, including Eugene Field’s Lullaby Land (1897), W. E. Cule’s Child Voices (1899), Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Sintram and His Companions (1900), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1907), Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1910) and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911).
Robinson was also an active painter, especially in later life, and was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1932. He died in 1937, aged 67.
It is to Perrault that we owe our acquaintance with the greater number of good old-fashioned fairy-tales, but an edition of these, although it includes such intimate friends of our childhood as Blue Beard, the Sleeping Beauty, and Little Red Riding-Hood, is hardly complete without “Beauty and the Beast”; a version of this tale, by Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont, has, therefore, been added to this collection. It has also been increased, space permitting it, by the insertion of two tales by Mme. la Comtesse d’Aulnoy; her writings, of a less robust class than those of Perrault, possess in their atmosphere of hidden magic, the charm which resides in that special feature of fairyland, and the addition of “The Benevolent Frog” and “Princess Rosette” will not, we think, be unwelcome to the youthful reader.
The Sleeping Beauty In The Wood
There were once a King and Queen, who were very unhappy at not having any children, more unhappy than words can tell. Vows, pilgrimages, everything was tried, but nothing was of any avail; at length, however, a little daughter was born to them.
There was a splendid christening. For godmothers, they gave the young Princess all the fairies they could find in the country—they were seven in number—in order that each making her a gift, according to the custom of fairies in those days, the Princess might, by these means, become possessed of all imaginable perfections. When the ceremony was over, all the company returned to the King’s palace, where a great banquet had been prepared for the fairies. The table was magnificently laid for them, and each had placed for her a massive gold case, containing a spoon, a fork, and a knife of fine gold, set with diamonds and rubies.
But as they were all taking their seats, there was seen to enter an old fairy, who had not been invited, for everyone thought that she was either dead or enchanted, as she had not been outside the tower in which she lived for upwards of fifty years. The King ordered a cover to be laid for her, but there was no possibility of giving her a massive gold case, such as the others had, because there had been only seven made expressly for the seven fairies. The old fairy thought she was treated with contempt, and muttered some threats between her teeth. One of the young fairies, who chanced to be near her, overheard her grumblings, and was afraid she might bestow some evil gift on the young Princess. Accordingly, as soon as they rose from table, she went and hid herself behind the hangings, in order to be the last to speak, and so enable herself to repair, as far as possible, any harm the old fairy might have done. Meanwhile the fairies began bestowing their gifts on the Princess. The youngest, as her gift, promised that she should be the most beautiful person in the world; the next fairy, that she should have the mind of an angel; the third, that every movement of hers should be full of grace; the fourth, that she should dance to perfection; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; the sixth, that she should play on every kind of instrument in the most exquisite manner possible. It was now the turn of the old fairy, and she said, while her head shook more with malice than with age, that the Princess should pierce her hand with a spindle, and die of the wound.
The whole company trembled when they heard this terrible prediction, and there was not one among them who did not shed tears. At this moment the young fairy advanced from behind the tapestry, and said, speaking that all might hear,—
“Comfort yourselves, King and Queen; your daughter shall not die of the wound. It is true that I have not sufficient power to undo entirely what my elder has done. The Princess will pierce her hand with a spindle, but, instead of dying, she will only fall into a deep sleep, which will last a hundred years, at the end of which time a king’s son will come and wake her.”
The King, in the hope of preventing the misfortune foretold by the old fairy, immediately sent forth a proclamation forbidding everyone, on pain of death, either to spin with a spindle, or to have spindles in their possession.
Fifteen or sixteen years had passed, when, the King and Queen being absent at one of their country houses, it happened that the Princess, while running about the castle one day, and up the stairs from one room to the other, came to a little garret at the top of a turret, where an old woman sat alone spinning with distaff and spindle, for this good woman had never heard the King’s proclamation forbidding the use of the spindle.
“What are you doing there?” asked the Princess.
“I am spinning, my pretty child,” answered the old woman, who did not know who she was.
“Oh, how pretty it is!” exclaimed the Princess. “How do you do it? Give it to me, that I may see if I can do it as well.”
She had no sooner taken hold of the spindle, than, being very hasty, and rather thoughtless, and moreover, the fairies having ordained that it should be so, she pierced her hand with the point of it, and fainted away. The poor old woman was in great distress, and called for help. People came running from all quarters; they threw water in the Princess’s face, they unlaced her dress, they slapped her hands, they rubbed her temples with Queen of Hungary’s water, but nothing would bring her to. The King, who had run upstairs at the noise, then remembered the prediction of the fairies, and wisely concluded that this accident must have happened as the fairies had said it would. He ordered the Princess to be carried into a beautiful room of the palace, and laid on a bed embroidered with silver and gold. One might have thought it was an angel lying there, so lovely did she look, for the rich colours of her complexion had not faded in her swoon; her cheeks were still rosy, and her lips like coral. Only, her eyes were closed, but they could hear her breathing softly, which showed that she was not dead.
The