|
1881.
Janicot, J. (Dr).
Des Maladies que guérissent ou améliorent les eaux de Pougues... et
de la cure thermale à Pougues, par le Dr J. Janicot,....
|
Janicots boek gaat over de geneeskrachtige
bronnen in het kuuroord Pougues, nabij Nevers. Maar een uitstapje
naar de stad is uiteraard ook bevorderlijk voor de gezondheid...
|
Source: Gallica |
1884
Bericht uit het
tijdschrift Le Livre
Anoniem |
Ver-Vert bestond echt, maar niet in Nevers
Le poème de Vert-Vert:
— Lorsque Gresset publia son poème de
Vert-Vert en 1733, il avait vingt-quaire ans et appartenait
encore à la compagnie de Jésus, dont il ne se retira que plus tard
pour rentrer décidément dans le monde.
Comme poète, il s'essaya dans tous les
genres, mais jamais il ne retrouva la verve gauloise que lui avait
soufflée l'aventure du perroquet; car l'histoire était vraie : elle
s'était passée sous les yeux de l'auteur, non à Nevers, mais à Rouen, où Gresset était alors professeur au collège des Jésuites.
Il avait, paraît-il, une parente à la
Visitation, et il y allait souvent causer au parloir. C'est là qu'il
vit l'oiseau célèbre. La scène fut placée à Nevers pour détourner
l'attention, mais c'est à Rouen que toute l'histoire s'était passée
et c'est sur la Seine et non sur la Loire qu'avait voyagé Vert-Vert.
A Rouen, donc, chez les
visitandines,
Vivait alors un perroquet fameux...
L'épopée du perroquet est donc son
premier succès à Rouen, où elle fut imprimée d'abord.
Des copies en circulèrent partout, même
avant l'impression, et firent la joie et la récréation d'une
soixantaine de couvents que Rouen possédait alors. Le poème était
d'ailleurs dédié à la supérieure d'un de ces monastères.
Ce qui prouve surabondamment que
Vert-Vert était un perroquet normand.
Dit bericht lijkt gebaseerd op een
artikel dat in 1879 verscheen in Le Magasin Pittoresque:
|
Zie ook 1894 |
1891
Auteur onbekend
Une tournée du Conseil de
Révision
|
LES VISITANDINES DE LA RUE SAINT-MA RTIN
Vert-Vert
Dans la rue Saint-Martin, voici l'ancienne
chapelle du couvent de la Visitation. La façade est italienne, à
sculptures contorsionnées, à moulures tourmentées ; elle date du
dix-septième siècle, en style de la plus pure Renaissance. C'est là
que fut élevé Vert-Vert, le fameux perroquet dont Gresset, à
vingt-quatre ans, régent de rhétorique chez les Jésuites do Nevers,
raconta les aventures dans un poème spirituel et délicat. Ce
badinage fit tant de bruit que Gresset, rappelé, quitta la soutane
et s'enfuit à Paris, où il se maria et devint académicien.
À Nevers donc, chez les Visitandines, vivait
adoré, choyé, le perroquet Vert-Vert :
Il reposait sur la boite aux agnus:
A son réveil, de la fraiche nonnette,
Libre témoin, il voyait la toilette.
(…)
Le plus
joli est que la mère supérieure des Visitandines ne put obtenir de
Gresset l'audition du poème que dans un tête à-tête ; mais, arrivé à
ce passage ; Enfin, avant
de paraître au parloir,
On doit au moins deux coups d’oeil au miroir ; un
bruyant et tumultueux éclat de rire interrompit le poête. Le couvent
tout entier était caché derrière une tenture.
Bertin, alors secrétaire d'Etat, fit exécuter à
Sèvres quatorze tasses à café représentant les épisodes de
Vert- Vert, et les offrit à Gresset.
Vert-Vert fut soigneusement
empaillé; nous avons eu l'occasion de le considérer, il y a
quelques années, chez Mme Manuel, boulevard Victor-Hugo, á Nevers.
Il a été acquis, à la suite de la vente du mobilier de cette dame
décédée, par un de nos amis, M. S..., chez qui on peut le voir.
En 185..., le couvent des Visitandines a été
transféré de la rue Saint-Martin à la route de Paris, dans un vaste
établissement construit par les soins de M. Dufêtre, alors évèque de
Nevers. |
|
1894
Bertot, Jean
(1856-19..).
La France en
bicyclette : étapes d'un touriste : de Paris à Grenoble et à
Marseille....
|
Ver-Vert onbekend in Nevers
Mais le
joyau de Nevers, plus austère, et plus intéressant que sa
cathédrale, c'est l'église Saint-Etienne. Tout entière du style
romain auvergnat, ancienne chapelle d'un monastère de Bénédictins,
elle possède une unité de style bien rare. Toutes ses chapelles
formant absides à l'extérieur, ses arcades en plein cintre et
ses étroites fenêtres en font un type remarquable.
Le
beffroi, hautain et carré, de belles maisons en bois, l’évêché, un
véritable palais du temps de Louis XIV, attirent encore notre
attention. Nous voudrions savoir, par-dessus tout, s'il y a encore
un couvent de Visitandines :
A
Nevers donc, chez les Visitandines,
Vivait naguère un perroquet fameux...
Mais
tous les indigènes que nous interrogeons à ce sujet ne comprennent
rien à notre histoire de perroquets et de religieuses, et se
figurent que nous nous moquons d'eux. II n'y a pas de ville en
France où Vert-Vert soit moins connu qu'à Nevers.
|
|
1894
Noël, Eugène
(1816-1899).
Rouen.
Rouennals. rouenneries.
|
A
Rouen donc...
Sur la
continuation de la rue Grand-Pont, rue Beau-voisine, est un ancien
couvent de Visitandines. L'aimable poète Gresset, qui habita Rouen
quelque temps, eut dans ce couvent des relations d'amitié et, je
crois, de parenté. Là, ne vous en déplaise, vécut et mourut le
perroquet Vert-Vert, car c'est à Rouen et non pas à Nevcrs
que se passa l'aventure ;
À
Rouen donc, chez les Visitandines...
On a
retrouvé, il y a vingt ans, les cercueils de quelques-unes de leurs
supérieures : cercueils capitonnés d'un satin doux, fin et moelleux.....
Voilà qui montre jusqu'où étaient portés…
Les petits soins, les attentions fines
Le côté
anecdotique ne tarit pas plus ici que le grand côté historique. |
Zie ook 1884 |
1900 - ca.
JEAN BUGAREL :
HISTOIRE du LYCÉE de NEVERS. RECHERCHES, ÉTUDES, DOCUMENTS DE 1900 À
1908
DÉBUT DU PROVISORAT DE M. FÉLIX MÉCHIN.
Souvenirs du fils du Proviseur.
La chambre de Ver-Vert. |
De kamer van Ver-Vert in Nevers in
ere gehouden
L’Administration occupait le corps de bâtiment le plus noble, entre
la cour des grands et la cour d’honneur. L’appartement du Proviseur
comprenait en annexe, une grande chambre isolée du reste de
l’appartement et donnant sur la cour des grands. On appelait cette
chambre « Ver-Vert » car on ne voulait point douter qu’elle avait
été jadis occupée par le jeune professeur, Louis Gresset, au temps
où le collège des Jésuites prospérait en ces lieux. En souvenir du
spirituel et charmant poète, cette chambre était traditionnellement
« décorée de rideaux de cretonne ornés de perroquets verts ». |
Voor de hele tekst, ga naar:
http://museduc.nevers.pagesperso-orange.fr/1900_1908.pdf
Met dank aan Jos Swiers |
1900 ca.
Prentbriefkaart / Carte
Postale
Het klooster in Nantes /
Couvent des visitandines à Nantes |
|
Met dank aan Jos Swiers |
1907
Matilda Betham-Edwards
Literary
Rambles in France
Chapter 18: Amiens
and Vert-Vert
Contributed by Jos
Swiers |
AMIENS AND 'VERT-VERT'
HOW
many happy hours have I spent in that delightfullest of French
hotels at Amiens with the umbrageous garden and the storks!
The storks, alas! perished during a severe winter some years ago,
but pretty foreign ducks sport in the basin, and the hotel is still
a very haven of rest with the thermometer at ninety degrees, a
breathable, almost cool retreat.
During the heat wave of the present year (August 1906) I
betook myself with a friend to the capital of the Somme, not bent
upon again revelling in its treasures, revisiting its matchless
cathedral with Ruskin for guide, not minded even to stroll through
its magnificent museums, historic collections, and art schools.
My errand was to visit the tomb of its one, its unique poet.
For Vert-Vert stands absolutely alone in French
literature. Nothing like it, or approaching to it, is to
be found throughout the successive stages of that vast
treasure-house. The history of the parrot, every line of which
produces our unreluctant smile, has secured for its author an
imperishable niche in the national Valhalla, and, for the bustling,
prosperous, industrial city of his birth and residence, poetic
lustre.
That quiet, shady hotel garden was not to be quitted last
August during the day, but as the sun declined we exchanged its
comparative refreshingness and shadow for the cathedral. Here
all was greyness and a temperature requiring discarded wraps.
The tropical climate of the streets was left completely behind!
Only two or three worshippers knelt here and there in the
vast space; but, as is always the case, a priest with breviary in
hand slowly paced backwards and forwards, keeping, I presume, an eye
upon intruders. When I ventured to ask him the local of
Gresset's tomb, to my surprise he replied in very good English.
'Yonder,' he said with an affable smile as he pointed to a
tablet on one of the side pillars, 'is the monument; the Latin
inscription is short, but very'—hesitating, he finished with a
French word—'very spirituel.'
'Very witty,' I added, giving the first synonym that entered
my head. 'Elegant,' I think, were the better word. The
inscription is to the effect that Gresset, a son of Amiens and
splendid follower of the Muses, born in 1709, died on the 16th June
1777, was interred elsewhere, and re-interred here on the 16th of
August 1811. A verse from the 118th Psalm followed the
figures.
Poor Gresset! How happy would he have been could he
have known that his memory would be thus gloriously perpetuated,
generation after generation of the devout having this tribute before
their eyes, the commemorative tablet forming part of the cathedral
itself!
And of perverse necessity the poet would have prided himself
more on the monument than the works to which he owed it. Like
Pascal, Gresset could not overcome the dogmatic teachings of early
youth. In his later years he repudiated all claims to literary
fame. His story shows how persistently and how remorselessly
theological narrowness here waged war against intellectual
originality. There is not a line in Vert-Vert, nor even
in the little jeu d'esprit, Le Lutrin Vivant (The Live
Lectern), that can be twisted into real disrespect to religion or
the Church. But unfortunately Gresset had exercised wit and
pleasantry in dealing with ecclesiastical objects and formulas, and
but for tardy recantation he would doubtless have died under
clerical ban.
When only twenty-four, Jean Baptiste Louis Gresset, at that
time a student of the Jesuit College of Louis le Grand, Paris,
composed Vert-Vert. The poem, handed about in
manuscript, took the public by storm; the clerical world was
scandalised, and the young author was sent in disgrace to the Jesuit
College of La Flèche in the Sarthe. Soon after, he threw up
alike theology and seminarist's garb, cast in his lot with letters,
established himself in Paris, and wrote play after play, a series of
successes culminating in that of Le Méchant, a piece that to
this day holds its own in the repertory of the Comédie Française.
Gresset, then in the prime of life, returned to Amiens in
1749, there, with the royal permission, founding a literary academy.
Unfortunately for his peace of mind, he was of a vacillating nature,
and falling under the influence of Lamotte, Bishop of Amiens, was
induced to burn all his unpublished manuscripts, and publicly
repudiate his entire works.
But the bishop's action only damaged himself and his
unfortunate pupil. Gresset died a morbid, deluded,
self-deluding devotee. Vert-Vert will delight the
world as long as the tongue survives in which it is penned.
Did leisure permit, and did the task look at all feasible, how
delightful were it to translate into English the serio-comic story
of the immortal parrot who travelled from Nevers to Nantes, falling
into bad company on the way, and, as will happen to mortals, thereby
losing all the good habits acquired in early youth.
Vert-Vert, then, was a parrot, young,
splendid to behold, vivacious, and the most insatiable picker-up of
unconsidered trifles; in other words, imitating every syllable that
fell upon his ears. But as he was the cherished darling of a
convent, that of the Visitandines, he could of course learn only
what was good and seemly; hence his reputation. Indeed, so far
did his fame spread that the abbess of a sister-convent at Nantes
insisted upon having a visit from him. So, amid tears and
kisses of his friends, and heaps of bonbons being supplied
for his journey, Vert-Vert was put on board a barge bound for
the city on the Loire, among the passengers being three dragoons,
two Gascons, with others not likely to be choice in their topics or
words. So, when poor Vert-Vert reached his destination,
what was the horror of the pious sisters when, instead of
deferentially repeating the Benedicite, the Oremus,
and canticles, he broke forth into terrible oaths and expletives
never before profaning such walls. The novices, as they well
might, thought the bird was speaking Greek! Bundled back to
Nevers with a flea in his ear, Vert-Vert underwent a term of
seclusion and bread and water, and when it came to an end, overjoy
and an overdose of sugar-plums causing his death, all his faults
were straightway forgiven. He was buried with every mark of
grief, and an epitaph was composed by the nuns, ending thus--
'Here lies Vert-Vert;
here lie all our hearts.'
There is a lilt, an irresistible engagingness, about
Vert-Vert that impels the reader to go on from start to finish
without a halt. And every line has a frolicsome turn.
The only kind of frolicsomeness worth having, spontaneity and
sparkle, characterises the poem, as they do the twin jeu
d'esprit, The Live Lectern.
Le Méchant is an admirable play, and, amid
many good things, in a single line focusses French idiosyncrasy.
The excellent Géronte has been told by his niece's maid Lisette that
he is a good man.
'I a good man? I am no such thing. What folly!'
he exclaimed with an air of positive affront.
A sermon on French character might be preached from this
text. The dread of appearing hypocritical is a perfect
nightmare to our neighbours.
Gresset as a stylist is well worth attention. As one of
his own critics has written: 'The great merit of Le Méchant
consists in its style and versification. The piece abounds in
verses so well turned, so witty, so concise, so perfect that as we
read we cannot imagine them being expressed in any other way.
So easy are these verses that the ear retains them without an
effort; so concise are they that, like the best sayings of Boileau,
they became minted, proverbial from the first.'
In his satire, Le Pauvre Diable, Voltaire pretty
severely castigates Gresset for his self-pillorying, and also hits
upon the cardinal fault of Le Méchant, namely, its want of
action. Nevertheless a representation at the Français would be
a treat of the first water.
There are bits of French scenery that take hold of the memory
we hardly know why, coming back to us again and again, when
grandiose sites and natural marvels are only recalled by an effort.
And thus it happened with an afternoon drive I took from Amiens upon
another occasion and a little later in the year. That familiar
city so richly dowered in other respects is unblessed in the matter
of climate. Rain falls at Amiens in the maximum proportion,
and the enormous number of factory chimneys render the atmosphere
smoky. Despite its cathedral and noble art collections, the
capital of the Somme can only be fitly enjoyed in fine weather.
Fine weather is also needed for the little excursion I am about to
describe.
The great manufacturing city has a double girdle of verdure,
first its handsome boulevards, next its market-gardens, wide belt of
variegated greenery reaching far into the country. Beyond
these, stretch vast sweeps of picturesque but unprofitable country,
meres and marshland, reminding us that at a remote period in
cosmical history Amiens was almost a seaport. Within
comparatively recent times the region now forming the two
departments of the Pas de Calais and the Somme have undergone great
changes owing to the retrogression of the sea, or rather the
encroachment of the land. For a most interesting account of
these transformations, see the papers of M. Charles Lartherie,
Revue des deux Mondes, 1902.
Silent, desolate, without a vestige of cultivation, without a
dwelling in sight, the scenery possesses a weird fascination.
On this brilliant afternoon the succession of watercourses and
lakelets set round with sallows lost all dreariness and gained an
ethereal, fairy-like aspect. Every tiny stream, every mere
caught the tints of burning blue sky, silvery cumuli, and sea-green
willows. And it was hard to say which picture was the
lovelier, the real or its double, as we passed stage after stage of
amphibious landscape, haunt surely of will-o'-the-wisps and water
fays! An hour and a half bring us to the trim little town of
Boves, where a ruined chateau recalls the siege of Amiens in 1597
and the sojourn of Henri Quatre, accompanied of course in war as in
peace by the Belle Gabrielle. A little further and my
destination is reached.
The school is reached by way of a lovely little gorge or
ravine, a clear rivulet gleaming through the thick fringes of poplar
and acacia. Here, on the site of an ancient monastery, waste
lands and reedy marsh have been cleared, and within the last few
years rendered cultivable and productive. In the absence of
the Director, his representative most courteously shows us over the
premises, explaining everything. The school accommodates fifty
students, the cost of board and instruction being adapted to the
purse of the small peasant owner, namely, four hundred francs
yearly. Nine professors constitute the teaching staff, each
school of this kind costing the State at least twenty thousand
francs yearly. The curriculum extends over three years.
Our informant explained to us that the chief difficulty to contend
with is that of obtaining pupils. It is not so much the money
that the peasant farmer grudges but the time, three years of his
son's labour lost to him, added to the three years of military
service. But little by little the minds of the more
intelligent are being opened to the ultimate gain of such loss.
The teaching is both practical and scientific. Farming
generally, stock-breeding, dairying, bee-keeping, fish-rearing,
market-gardening, are all taught by the most approved methods and
with the aid, regardless of cost, of the most approved machinery.
In the class-rooms the pupils acquire the theoretic training
necessary for a farmer—chemistry, land-surveying, geometry, etc.
Students belonging to different classes of society share precisely
the same accommodation. Four ample meals a day are allowed,
the diet being liberal and indeed luxurious compared with that of
the recruit going through his military service. The school is
well worth a visit.
Most picturesque is the homeward drive through this
amphibious region on a September afternoon, at first the little
lake-like mere, flooded with ruddy gold,—wood, water, and sky a
blaze of crimson and in amber,—gradually every feature of the scene
subdued to quiet tints, in keeping with the silvery sallows and soft
grey heavens.
|
Matilda Betham-Edward's book is available on line at Archive.com. A
fully edited transcription is available at:
http://gerald-massey.org.uk/betham-edwards/index.htm
|
2006
De Groene Gids van
Michelin en Lannoo
over Nevers
Bijdrage van Jos
Swiers |
|
Screenshot from Google Books |
2013 |
Waar Gresset woonde in
Parijs
Maison de Nicholas Flamel et de dame Pernelle, avant
les multiples transformations rue de Montmorency
Nous pouvons remarquer aujourd'hui que le pignon a
disparu
N° 12 : maison de Mme de Sévigné (avant l’hôtel
Carnavalet)
N° 11 : domicile du poète Gresset (« Vert Vert »)
N° 5 : ancien hôtel de Montmorency, où mourut
Théophile de Viau.Casanova y séjourna en 1763 |
Bron:
http://autourduperetanguy |
|
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