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BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?

10 Dec 10 - 09:10 AM (#3050311)
Subject: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: MGM·Lion

Dorothy L Sayers' distinguished detective novel Gaudy Night is set in 1935 Oxford, her own university, and has a running theme of praise for academic life and scholarly attitudes. The chapter-head epigraphs are therefore appropriately selected from learned writers of C16 & C17: Robert Burton, William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Dekker, John Donne, Philip Sidney, Francis Bacon, Michael Drayton, William Turner, Elizabeth I.

The epigraph to chapter 9, on the theme of noblesse oblige, is by one Pierre Erondell:~

"Come hether friend, I am ashamed to hear that what I hear of you . . . You have almost attayned to the age of nyne yeeres, at least eight and a halfe, and seeing that you knowe your dutie, if you neglect it you deserve greater punishment then he which through ignorance doth it not. Think not that the nobilitie of your Ancestors doth free you to doe all that you list, contrary‑wise, it bindeth you more to followe vertue." — Pierre Erondell

"Not traced" is the brief note in Bill Peschel's useful online annotations to the novel.

Attempts to google this M Erondell led solely to this note of Mr Peschel's. Assuming his name to translate as 'Peter Swallow', from French hirondelle, perhaps he and this 'quote' are pastiche referential inventions of Miss Sayers' own: but none of the colloquial meanings of 'hirondelle' in Harrap's French-English Dictionary of Slang & Colloquialisms seems to me to have any application to the theme of the novel, or to the name of her fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey, apart from the forename.

Mudcatters collectively know everything. Has anyone heard of 'Pierre Erondell', does anyone know anything of his life & work ~~ or, alternatively, have any suggestion as to the source & application of the name, if invented?

~Michael~


10 Dec 10 - 10:23 AM (#3050366)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: gnomad

I Googled "attayned to the age of nyne yeeres", if you do likewise then click on "Full Text of the Minor Pleasures of Life", then search for the same words again you get to The French Garden, by Pierre Erondell, 1605.

Dunno how much that helps, but it does at least give you a start.


10 Dec 10 - 10:41 AM (#3050378)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: gnomad

Then there's this


10 Dec 10 - 10:42 AM (#3050379)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: MGM·Lion

Many thanks, gnomad. I shall follow that up.


10 Dec 10 - 10:55 AM (#3050386)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: MGM·Lion

Yes, many thanks for your help, gnomad. I too found myself at the Nat Australian Lib catalogue after following up your first suggestion. And there's my question superbly answered indeed.

Again, my profound thanks for your trouble and help.

~Michael~


10 Dec 10 - 10:56 AM (#3050389)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: MGM·Lion

See what I said ~~ there is always somebody on Mudcat...

Hip-hurrah for the Cat!

~M~


10 Dec 10 - 11:11 AM (#3050395)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: gnomad

No credit to me; all to T'internet and Mr Google in particular.

I find trying to answer queries like this one is a good way to learn how to find out stuff I want to know myself. It can also be fun just seeing what byways such questions can take you down.

Just about all I know about searching on line has been learned right here on Mudcat, so Hip-Hurrah, indeed. I'll drink to that.


23 Jan 13 - 11:50 PM (#3470645)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: GUEST,Anon

Erondelle 'was a native of Normandy resident in England, and wrote
in French and English a work called "A Declaration and Exhortation to Princes." 8vo. London, Aggas, 1586".


06 Dec 13 - 10:25 PM (#3582227)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: GUEST,LBHamilton

Check out The Elizabethan Home: Discovered in Two Dialogues by Claudius Hollyband and Peter Erondell, Ed. Muriel St. Claire Byrne. London: Cobden-Sanderson 1930.
Muriel St. Claire Byrne was a close friend of Dorothy Sayers' and partnered with her on a number of literary projects, including the stage play "Busman's Honeymoon", which Sayers subsequently expanded into a full-length novel. It is not so surprising that something Ms. Byrne edited and published in 1930 should find its way into a book that Ms. Sayers was writing in 1933-34.
I haven't been able to purchase a copy of The Elizabethan Home yet, but it is available in a few libraries.
Love your site.


07 Dec 13 - 12:12 AM (#3582238)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: Mrrzy

Somehow, he sounds like a mondegreen.


07 Dec 13 - 04:00 AM (#3582263)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: Monique

There, page 55, it reads that he was a Huguenot teacher among others ( "En Angleterre, déjà dans les années 1550, on trouve des éducateurs huguenots auprès des grandes familles: ainsi Pierre du Ploiche, Jean Véron, Claude Holyband alias Claude de Sainliens, de la Mothe, Pierre Erondell, Pierre du Moulin, qui, parfois, étaient enseignants aux universités d'Oxford et de Cambridge...") Pierre Erondell wrote his "The French Garden" manual to teach French -published in 1605.


07 Dec 13 - 05:11 AM (#3582279)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: Monique

There, page 63 there's an article -the book is in French- "Gendering Hospitality - Le rôle de la maîtresse de maison au début de l'Angleterre contemporaine" by Felicity Heal. It might be taken from her book "Hospitality in Early Modern England", it's related to it anyway. Well, this Pierre/Peter Erondell was an exiled Frenchman who figured out there was an opportunity to improve languages teaching, wrote a book of dialogs and taught French.


08 Dec 13 - 04:34 AM (#3582513)
Subject: RE: BS: Who was 'Pierre Erondell'?
From: Brian May

Bloody hell . . .