The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

The first chapter

Bibliographical Note

9 min of reading

THE Travels of Sir John Mandeville were edited anonymously in 1725, in the version for which a ‘Cotton’ manuscript in the British Museum is our only extant authority. From 1499, when they were first printed by Wynkyn de Worde, the Travels had enjoyed great popularity in England, as in the rest of Europe; but the printed editions before 1725 had all followed an inferior translation (with an unperceived gap in the middle of it), which had already gained the upper hand before printing was invented. Another manuscript in the British Museum, belonging to the ‘Egerton’ collection, preserves yet a third version, and this was printed for the first time by Mr. G. F. Warner, for the Roxburghe Club, in 1889, together with the original French text, and an introduction, and notes, which it would be difficult to over-praise. In editing the Egerton version, Mr. Warner made constant reference to the Cotton manuscript, which he quoted in many of his critical notes. But with this exception, no one appears to have looked at the manuscript since it was first printed, and subsequent writers have been content to take the correctness of the 1725 text for granted, priding themselves, apparently, on the care with which they reproduced all the superfluous eighteenth century capitals with which every line is dotted. Unluckily, the introduction of needless capitals was the least of the original editor’s crimes, for he omits words and phrases, and sometimes (a common trick with careless copyists) a whole sentence or clause which happens to end with the same word as its predecessor. He was also a deliberate as well as a careless criminal, for the paragraph about the Arabic alphabet at the end of Chapter XV. being difficult to reproduce, he omitted it altogether, and not only this, but the last sentence of Chapter XVI. as well, because it contained a reference to it.

That it has been left to the editor (who has hitherto rather avoided that name) of a series of popular reprints to restore whole phrases and sentences to the text of a famous book is not very creditable to English scholarship, and amounts, indeed, to a personal grievance; for to produce an easily readable text of an old book without a good critical edition to work on must always be difficult, while in the case of a work with the peculiar reputation of ‘Mandeville’ the difficulty is greatly increased. Had a critical edition existed, it would have been permissible for a popular text to botch the few sentences in which the tail does not agree with the beginning, and to correct obvious mistranslation without special note. But ‘Mandeville’ has an old reputation as the ‘Father of English Prose,’ and when no trustworthy text is available, even a popular editor must be careful lest he bear false witness. The Cotton version is, therefore, here reproduced, ‘warts and all,’ save in less than a dozen instances, where a dagger indicates that, to avoid printing nonsense, an obvious flaw has been corrected either from the ‘Egerton’ manuscript or the French text. When a word still survives, the modern form is adopted: thus ‘Armenia’ and ‘soldiers’ are here printed instead of ‘Ermony’ and ‘soudiours.’ But a new word is never substituted for an old one, and the reader who is unfamiliar with obsolete words, such as ‘Almayne’ (Germany) or ‘dere’ (harm),--there are surprisingly few for a book written five centuries ago,--must consult the unpretentious glossary. Of previous editions, that of 1725 and the reprints of it, including those of Halliwell-Phillipps, profess, though they do not do so, to reproduce the manuscript exactly. Thomas Wright’s edition is really a translation, and that issued in 1895 by Mr. Arthur Layard often comes near to being one, though the artist-editor has shown far more feeling for the old text than his too whimsical illustrations might lead one to expect. It is hoped that the plan here adopted preserves as much as possible of the fourteenth century flavour, with the minimum of disturbance to the modern reader’s enjoyment.

The plan of this series forbids the introduction of critical disquisitions, and I am thus absolved from attempting any theory as to how the tangled web of the authorship of the book should be unravelled. The simple faith of our childhood in a Sir John Mandeville, really born at St. Albans, who travelled, and told in an English book what he saw and heard, is shattered to pieces. We now know that our Mandeville is a compilation, as clever and artistic as Malory’s ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ from the works of earlier writers, with few, if any, touches added from personal experience; that it was written in French, and rendered into Latin before it attracted the notice of a series of English translators (whose own accounts of the work they were translating are not to be trusted), and that the name Sir John Mandeville was a nom de guerre borrowed from a real knight of this name who lived in the reign of Edward II. Beyond this it is difficult to unravel the knot, despite the ends which lie temptingly loose. A Liège chronicler, Jean d’Outremeuse, tells a story of a certain Jean de Bourgogne revealing on his deathbed that his real name was Sir John Mandeville; and in accordance with this story there is authentic record of a funeral inscription to a Sir John Mandeville in a church at Liège. Jean de Bourgogne had written other books and had been in England, which he had left in 1322 (the year in which “Mandeville” began his travels), being then implicated in killing a nobleman, just, as the real Sir John Mandeville had been implicated ten years before in the death of the Earl of Cornwall. We think for a moment that we have an explanation of the whole mystery in imagining that Jean de Bourgogne (he was also called Jean à la Barbe, Joannes Barbatus) had chosen to father his compilation on Mandeville, and eventually merged his own identity in that of his pseudonym. But Jean d’Outremeuse, the recipient of his deathbed confidence, is a tricky witness, who may have had a hand in the authorship himself, and there is no clear story as yet forthcoming. But the book remains, and is none the less delightful for the mystery which attaches to it, and little less important in the history of English literature as a translation than as an original work. For though a translation it stands as the first, or almost the first, attempt to bring secular subjects within the domain of English prose, and that is enough to make it mark an epoch.

Mandeville is here reprinted rather as a source of literary pleasure than as a medieval contribution to geography, and it is therefore no part of our duty to follow Mr. Warner in tracking out the authorities to whom the compiler had recourse in successive chapters. But as there was some space in this volume to spare, and a very pleasant method of filling it suggested itself, a threefold supplement is here printed, {0} which may be of some use even to serious students, and is certainly very good literature. When Richard Hakluyt, at the end of the sixteenth century, was compiling his admirable work, ‘The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by sea or over land, within the compasse of these 1500 yeeres,’ he boldly overstepped the limits set forth on his title-page, and printed in the original Latin, with translations into good Elizabethan English, the narratives of three of the earlier travellers, all of them foreigners, from whom the compiler of Mandeville had drawn most freely. “And because,” he tells us, “these north-eastern regions beyond Volga, by reason of the huge deserts, the cold climate, and the barbarous incivilitie of the people there inhabiting, were never yet thoroughly travelled by any of our Nation, nor sufficiently known unto us; I have here annexed unto the said Englishman’s {ix} traveils the rare and memorable journals of two friers who were some of the first Christians that travailed farthest that way, and brought home most particular intelligence of all things which they had seen.” These two friars were John de Plano Carpini, sent on an embassy to the great Chan by Pope Innocent IV. in 1246, and William de Rubruquis, who travelled in the interests of Louis IX. of France in 1253. In the same way in his Second Part, Hakluyt adds ‘The Voyage of Frier Beatus Odoricus to Asia Minor, Armenia, Chaldaea, Persia, India, China, and other remote parts,’ Odoric being a Franciscan of Pordenone in North Italy, who dictated an account of his travels in 1330. Anyone who compares these three narratives (more particularly Odoric’s) with Mandeville’s Travels will see how the compiler used his materials, and they have also very considerable interest of their own.

As this volume of the Library of English Classics has brought with it an unusual editorial responsibility, I may be permitted an editor’s privilege in making two acknowledgments. The first, to my friend Mr. G. F. Warner, my readers must share with me, for without the help of his splendid edition of the ‘Egerton’ version and the French text, the popular ‘Mandeville’ could not have been attempted. My second acknowledgment is of a more personal nature. Roxburghe Club books are never easy to obtain, and the few copies of the Mandeville allowed to be sold were priced at £20 each. In noticing Mr. Warner’s edition in the ‘Academy’ (from a borrowed copy), I remarked rather ruefully that the gratitude which students of moderate means could feel towards the Club for printing so valuable a work was somewhat tempered by this little matter of the price. I was then helping Mr. Charles Elton with the catalogue of his library, and on reading my review, he wrote me a pretty letter to say that by the rules of the Club he was the possessor of a second copy, and that he thought I was the best person to give it to. Students who have to think a good many times before they spend £20 on a book do not often receive such a present from wealthy book-lovers; and at the risk of obtruding more of my own concerns than my rough-and-ready editing entitles me to do, I cannot send out this ‘Mandeville,’ within a few weeks of Mr. Elton’s too early death, without telling this little story of his kindness.

A. W. POLLARD.

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