The Friends as Seen by the French

86 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION THE FRIENDS AS SEEN BY THE FRENCH By Edith Phillips1 The general public thinks of the Society of Friends as an exclusively Anglo-American group. Among Friends themselves, those who have any interest in the history of their movement know that it took rather firm root in Holland and extended somewhat into Germany. The near-conversion by William Penn of the most intellectual woman of her time, Princess Elizabeth of Palatine, is also a well-known incident. Probably very few know of the existence of a modest group of Quakers in the south of France during the French Revolution, a group with a history as old as that of the English Friends, whose members were finally invited to join the society when their English co-religionists realized the similarity of their principles and way of life. It is nevertheless a fact that these obscure Friendly Frenchmen were an object of great interest in France from the very inception of the movement. Then why, it may be asked, do we not hear of larger and more important groups of Friends in France than the village people of Congédies? The answer is simple. The interest was great; that can be proved. But it was largely a literary interest and confined to people who were of no mind to be converted to any religion, although if the Friends had compromised on the military question they might have played an active rôle during the French Revolution. Three types of French writers had a great deal to say about Quakers. Theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, who were afraid of the dangerous doctrine of inner revelation which seemed to undermine equally the authority of the church and of the Bible, wrote so much about them in the latter half of the seventeenth century that French travellers to England made a particular point of seeing what manner of people these were. The travellers found their manners much more interesting than their theology, and wrote accordingly. Then the moralists and reformers took up the story. Enemies of the Roman Church including Voltaire and the authors of the Encyclopedia, found in them the true Primitive Christians. Jaucourt, who wrote the article on Quakers in the Encyclopedia, says, " I am proud to say that I have read and reread with singular pleasure the Apology of Robert Barclay, and he has convinced me that it is the most rational and the most perfect system yet conceived." With such praise of their system and many descriptions of their high moral character, the legend of the " good Quaker " becomes fixed in the French mind. Pennsylvania is· the golden age re1 The author of this article is a graduate of Goucher College and has received her Doctor's degree, with honorable mention, from the University of Paris. She is not a Friend but is doing research work on the influence of Quaker ideas on French literature of the eighteenth century. DOCUMENTS87 turned, and William Penn the modern Lycurgus. (No less person than Montesquieu originated that much repeated phrase.) Occasional hostile critics were silenced with a flow of eloquence. From all the chorus of praise I choose as an example an article which appeared in the Feuille Villageoise, a revolutionary gazette of 1791 : " The Quakers are distinguished for their integrity and their incomparable human sympathy. The character of their religion is an impartial meditation on the Scriptures and on evangelical fraternity; the adoration of thé Supreme Being without vain images or childish ceremonies ; the ethics of Christ and the cult of Nature." Perhaps Friends will be surprised to find themselves classified among the nature cults, but in revolutionary France that was high praise. Space does not permit even a mention of the Quaker as a character on the French stage, always upright, generous, kind and noble, culminating in the Quaker of Alfred de Vigny's Chatterton, a sort of father confessor to the unhappy poet, the only man in a world of crude shopkeepers and cruel aristocrats who is capable of understanding the romantic nature. The material from which these few sketchy remarks are drawn has been collected as a study of a phase of the French...