OUR EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURS
Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON. 12ᵒ. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20. By mail, $1.30
NOW READY
=French Life in Town and Country.= BY HANNAH LYNCH.
=German Life in Town and Country.= BY W. H. DAWSON, author of “Germany and the Germans,” etc.
=Russian Life in Town and Country.= By FRANCIS H. E. PALMER, sometime Secretary to H. M. Prince Droutskop-Loubetsky (Equerry to H. M. the Emperor of Russia).
=Dutch Life in Town and Country.= By P. M. HOUGH.
=Swiss Life in Town and Country.= By ALFRED T. STORY.
IN PREPARATION
=Spanish Life in Town and Country.= By L. HIGGIN.
=Italian Life in Town and Country.= By LUIGI VILLARI.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
OUR EUROPEAN
NEIGHBOURS
EDITED BY
WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON
FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY
THE PEASANT AT HOME—THE CANDIDATE Michelena
FRENCH LIFE
IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY
BY HANNAH LYNCH
ILLUSTRATED
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1901
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Set up and electrotyped March, 1901
Reprinted August, 1901; January, 1902
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
FRENCH RURAL AND PROVINCIAL LIFE 1
CHAPTER II
PARIS AND PARISIANISM 28
CHAPTER III
SOCIAL DIVERSIONS AND DISTINCTIONS 58
CHAPTER IV
THE ARMY AND THE NATION 87
CHAPTER V
SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 112
CHAPTER VI
NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 147
CHAPTER VII
HOME-LIFE IN FRANCE 173
CHAPTER VIII
PEASANT AND ARTISAN 202
CHAPTER IX
THE PRESS AND THE PEOPLE’S COLLEGES 229
CHAPTER X
THE PARISIAN LECTURE AND SALON 250
CHAPTER XI
THE “LITTLE PEOPLE” OF PARIS 264
CHAPTER XII
ORGANISED PHILANTHROPY AND PUBLIC ASSISTANCE 283
INDEX 307
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE PEASANT AT HOME—THE CANDIDATE Frontispiece Michelena.
BLESSING THE WHEAT 16 J. A. Breton.
THE PARDON OF SAINT ANNE (BRITTANY) 42 Guillou.
A REVIEW AT LONGCHAMP 88
CONSECRATED BREAD 114 Dagnan-Bouveret.
THE REFECTORY 120 A. Bouvin.
THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 130
THE FRENCH ACADEMY 148
THE FOYER OF THE OPERA-HOUSE 170
A SEASIDE SERVICE 190 Edelfelt.
AN OUTDOOR MEAL 206 Zimenez.
GLEANERS 262 J. A. Breton.
FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
FRENCH RURAL AND PROVINCIAL LIFE
Among the nations of the earth there exists no more striking contrast than that between the people of Paris and the people of France. While the capital is a political furnace, where all sorts of conflicting ideas and opinions are continually boiling with such a rage of effervescence that the inhabitants, unaccustomed to the sense of calm and security, work, dance, and rest on the brink of an ever-menacing revolution; in the provinces town life drags through its monotonous days, absorbed in dull provincial interests, and rural life knows no other changes or menaces than those of the seasons. We distribute to each race certain broad characteristics, and trace out for them in all circumstances an ideal of conduct from which, if they will be true to their blood, they must not deviate. And so we are all decided upon the general French characteristic, excitability, forgetting the immense provincial differences that are to be found in the people of France as well as elsewhere. The heavy Flemish natives of Picardy, large eaters, deep drinkers, hard workers, slow of speech, somewhat coarse and unperverted, are as French as the natives of Latin Provence, garrulous, sober, alert, and exuberant. They are not less French than the wily, hard-bargaining Norman, who eats and drinks as much, but brings a clearer brain into business, and may always be relied upon to get the better of his neighbour in all transactions; or the dreamy Celt of the Breton coast, the thriftless slave of superstition, with brains to spare as well as prejudices, but not intended by nature as a pillar of the Temple of Wisdom. Not less French the rich green midlands than the white and sunburnt south, the champagne vineyards eastward, and the rocky Cévennes rolling southward. Could anybody differ, more from the morose and inhospitable Lyonese, in whose eyes every outsider is the enemy against whom he sedulously barricades his doors, in whose esteem the pick of humanity is the prosperous silk-merchant, than the pushing, loud-mannered Marseillais, with what he would fain have us take for his heart so aggressively upon his sleeve, emotion so transparently transient ever on the surface, subtly disguising self-interest and calculation?
For every diversity of character equal diversity of scenery—from the Alpine grandeur of the Dauphiny land to the beautiful lagoons of the Marais; the Vendean plain washed by the long blue roll of the Atlantic; Provence, land of salt lagoons and dead old cities of Greece and Rome; the central provinces, with their lovely rivers and chestnut woods; Celtic Brittany, half English; Normandy, with its glorious capital, one of the fairest of France; the radiant cities of the Loire, French river of romance; the bright and witching little kingdom of Béarn, exquisite Roussillon, with its old hum of wars and troubadour songs, its delicate sweetness of herb and leaf and bloom, its quaint old towns breathing of Spain, and its high air of legend; the east, with its mountains and dense pine forests, up to sunnier Ardennes. And the patois of these so different districts are not less distinct than the scenery, the note of town and province, and the characteristics of each race. Shelley most seriously wrote that there was nothing worth seeing in France. Even the tourist will find more to delight his eye in going from one department to another than he will find place to record in the most voluminous note-book. Let him only content himself with such a province as Touraine, with its rich and pleasant landscape, its castles of undying interest, its river of thrilling associations. Or let him wander in summer amid the cherry orchards of the Jura country, with the rampart of mountains above the pine-tops and the touch of Swiss beauty around; or dream away the present in musing upon forgotten Mediterranean glories among the ruins of dead Provençal cities between the grey-green silver of the olive and the sapphire waters beyond the broad grey river bends.
It is true that the townsman all over the land is largely governed by a need for excitement, and having, as a rule, no personal initiative to enable him to minister to it, he contents himself with looking toward the capital with envy, and devours the newspapers from Paris in eager expectation of the “something” he is in daily hope of happening. But whatever does happen in Paris rarely makes itself felt in the intellectually sleepy, industrious provinces; thanks to which wide-spread spirit of commercial and bucolic denseness to the inflammatory influences of the capital, France thrives now as she throve before the war, when at a word she could produce funds to pay off an enormous indemnity, without flinching or hesitating.
When you travel in the country or through small French towns, you are struck with the gaiety, intelligence, and good-will of the people and of the little shopkeepers, and with a certain unintelligent stiffness, pretension, and moroseness of the middle class, whose ambition it is to pass for the aristocracy, or at least for des gens de bonne famille. As these pretensions are rarely in keeping with their actual fortunes, these ambitious provincials, the victims of the political follies born of hostility to the Third Republic, think fit to garb themselves in the unbecoming vices of ill-humour, rancour, and idle pride. These they conceive to be the adjuncts of noble birth. If the fathers have refrained, the sons are certain to announce themselves, sooner or later, by titles of their own choosing. The general preference runs to count and viscount, though baron is not despised. I have known of a respectable middle-class family in the provinces, where the eldest son, a lawyer, is content to remain a republican, and the second son, an officer, a gentleman of aristocratic instincts, eager to profit by the present enthusiasm for the army in anti-governmental circles, calls himself a count. The humorous part of the situation lies in the fact that the wife of the plain Monsieur is not satisfied with her lot, since destiny, ruled by her brother-in-law’s will, has given the latter a title; and so at the recent marriage of that military worthy, the newspapers spoke of M. le Comte giving his arm to his sister-in-law, Madame la Comtesse, while the disgusted republican elder brother stayed in the country, indifferent to the self-appointed glories of his relatives.
Within late years, tennis parties are beginning to introduce a little stir in certain select circles of small provincial towns, where these entertainments are still regarded as novel; but, speaking generally, the dulness of such centres in France cannot be surpassed anywhere. Social life is at as low a level as intellectual life. Few books are read, fewer still are discussed. The very aspect of the streets—with their sealed doors, shut persiennes, sullen absence of neighbourly trust and geniality, high-walled gardens—is morose and incommunicative. They wear, however, as compensation, a look of distinction, not infrequently accompanied by a picturesque charm. Should a river roll in view, or a little street slope down to a busy quay, where the washerwomen kneel and lend mirth and colour to the scene, while above, an old historic castle, high against the sky, on a dusty square, or the grey of Gothic stone and delicate spire add a hieratic note to the quaint picture you forget the unfriendly reserve of those barred and blinded houses, you forget the somewhat aggressive coldness and inhospitality of their front, in recognition of the tempered brilliance, the graceful and distinguished effects around you. Mingle then with the market-folk, and listen to their speech—pleasant vocables, rendered pleasanter still by vivacity of gesture and vividness of gaze; neat peasant women, in spotless caps and sabots, who look all the merrier because they are so hard-worked; tanned, wrinkled faces, that smile as they did in youth, hard-set, but not unkindly, in the rapacity of commerce; responsive to a joke, unflinching in the teeth of trouble, not destitute of a promise of comfort in life’s softer hours—though softness is the very last quality they betray. A genial hardness is, perhaps, the dominating character of the French peasant woman’s expression: it would never be safe to trust in the hope of finding her head napping and her heart too wide awake. But if she is not soft to others, she is implacably hard to herself. Her industry is amazing, and only less amazing is her resourcefulness. A more competent woman does not exist anywhere. Nothing of a dreamer, she is contented with her lot, provided only there is neither thriftlessness, waste, nor idleness about her. She will willingly work for four, if the men will honestly work for one. And while the men loiter and squander substance and health in the wineshops, this gallant creature continues to labour and save and scold, to deprive herself of small comforts in favour of others—a son, a daughter, as the case may be; and, thanks to her, the country ever prospers.
Country life is, of course, far less dull than provincial town life; less unneighbourly, and less destitute of all the charities of existence. For one thing, nature is the eternal friend, benefactor, and instructor of man. The thousand vulgarities of towns are forgotten in the midst of her bounties. A man who lives in bucolic silence, watching the seasons and counting new-born things, dreaming of oats, of crops, of fruit, is essentially the superior of his fellows who dwell amid the sordid details of small towns, commerce, and rivalries, the gossip and drivel which make a spurious animation in the circles of the provinces. There are diversities among the type hobereau (a kind of French squire), as among all other types in France and elsewhere. Many years ago I travelled through a charming south-western province, furnished amply with letters of introduction. I well remember the extraordinary contrast between two families of hobereaux I once visited. A relative of the small squire, who lived in a dull, quaint little town, drove me out to see her bucolic son-in-law and his bucolic parents. The family was described to me as “exceedingly rich.” We entered a brilliant bit of park and avenue on a hot afternoon in July, drenched with the dews of heat, athirst from the dust of the broad, long white road. On the perron stood the young couple and their parents to receive us. The bride was gaudily and hideously attired in yellow and brown satin and silk; the groom in grey, with straw hat and leggings, more appropriately adorned the landscape. He was a heavy-eyed, high-complexioned, silent youth, who seemed at ease and happy only in the society of his most beautiful dogs. To them alone did he sometimes discourse in heavy undertones, while he surveyed me furtively under his lashes in unmistakable awe, but addressed me no word. His father-in-law looked like a farmer or a yeoman, and cracked small jokes. He quizzed his son, who blushed the hues of fire, and his son’s mother-in-law, who ingeniously strove to make me believe that she did not understand him, and he nudged his daughter-in-law in a way she must have resented. Without exaggeration, I have never met a more peasant type of country gentleman in my life. His wife was a simple, ill-mannered person, who talked chiefly about the weather. The grounds were lovely, the orchard a splendid dream, but the floors of the “château,” as every country-house in France is pretentiously called, were mere unvarnished planks; not a rug anywhere, not a hint of beeswax, and even the drawing-room was disfigured with ugly presses. When liquid refreshment was called for—chartreuse and iced water—we were served in coarse glasses, and the iced water was brought in in a kitchen jug. There was not even a flower in a vase, not a pretty window curtain, and the drawing-room chairs were of horsehair. Whatever occult advantages their wealth may have procured them, it cannot be said that beauty, comfort, the joy of living, were amongst them, for a more undecorated interior and duller persons I have never met, and yet, with so much comfortlessness, there was not a touch of vulgarity. The squireen was a rough son of the soil, but you accepted him as the animals of the field; you felt he belonged to the land, and, as such, claimed indulgence. You would not elect to pass your days in his society, any more than you would care to have a bear prancing about your drawing-room, but you instinctively felt his superiority to the town fop, who thinks himself a very fine fellow, with a little tailoring and a vast amount of pretension.
The second hobereau dwelt in the same department, but I visited him with very different results. I was invited to lunch, and my host drove me seven miles in a pony-cart. Here, also, were an imposing park and avenue, and an immense manor, which seemed all windows. There was among the guests a magistrate from Poictiers, who was witty as only a Frenchman can be witty. Our host was a charming, bright-eyed, lean little old man, full of vivacity, of charm, and intellectual alertness. He was voluble, and avid for information, and walked me up and down a delightful berceau to obtain my views of the woman’s question and the relative positions of the young French and English girl. He even pressed me to contrast the French and English novel, and said he greatly preferred Scott to Zola—an opinion I endorsed with fervour. People drove over from neighbouring places, and we were quite a large party at lunch. The talk was capital—local, but interesting; no cheap gossip, but plenty of genial wit, anecdote, and repartee. The women were dowdily dressed, as provincial Frenchwomen frequently are. I judged them as dense, impervious to ideas, utterly uncultivated, never, in all probability, having read anything except the thin religious literature on which the virtuous ladies of France nourish their minds; but they could well hold their own in conversation, could cap a phrase with elegant neatness, and the hostess deserved well of her kind for the evidence she furnished of a perfectly ordered household. It would, however, be a mistake to credit them with grace because they are Frenchwomen. Nothing comes with such a shock upon the traveller in France, used to the feminine grace and charm and witchery of dress in Paris, as the dowdiness and want of ease, the total lack of taste in dress, the heavy figures and unexpressive faces of many of the women of the provinces. They dress shabbily, will even wear cotton gloves and badly cut boots when they consider themselves extremely exclusive, and carry off these defects of costume with a singular and unmistakable air of distinction. The commoner kind prefer to shine in fashions and colours unfamiliar to the eye of Paris; and, as a rule, look clumsy and obtrusive in their fine feathers. The same applies to the men. These, when they prefer to be shabby and roughly arrayed, look far better than the pretentious gallants who, by means of obvious tailoring, offer destruction to the susceptible dames around them. There can be no doubt that an elegant male costume is out of place and a vulgar blot along a sleepy little street where men in blouses pass and bonneted girls and women wheel barrows before them.
The farmer’s life has undoubtedly a larger share of natural interests than that of the hobereau. It is more purely animal, without any attachments to a world unconnected with the land. Ask a farmer what he thinks of politics, and he will tell you that he has nothing on earth to do with idiots or tricksters. He who must warily watch the humours of the seasons cannot trouble himself with the humours of electors and the ravings of voluble deputies. He walks his dew-washed meadows at dawn in wide-leafed felt; and, as he surveys the produce of his labour, his long hours of sweating travail, can he feel other than contempt of the highly remunerative and windy profession of the politician? The superiority of the lord of the soil to whom he pays tribute, he will readily acknowledge, but none other. In the west he will speak of his family as “my sons and the creatures,” meaning his daughters. In the land of the Cévennes, his children are les drôles, and the same unquestioning obedience is expected from both sexes by this rough and silent tyrant of the soil. Outside his farm he has little esteem to waste upon his fellows; within, is far from prodigal of tenderness to his women-folk. These he expects to stand at meals in a corner of the kitchen, while he and his sons sit to eat. He governs haughtily, with few words; but in his rude heart he knows that the real, the silent, and unobtrusive government lies in the hands of his wife, who, with the tact and watchfulness of affection, corrects the errors of his harsh temper, and smooths out the asperities of home-life. It would be difficult to find a people to whom modern feminism is more repugnant than the French, and hard to name one that owes more to the intelligence, good-will, and incessant labour of women. Frenchmen object to women in the liberal professions, and make a desperate hue and cry the day a talented lady seeks leave to wear the lawyer’s toque and gown. Yet the fields are tended by women; flags are waved at railway gates by them; in the lower ranks they bravely do all the rougher work of men, and nobody lifts a voice in protest. Woman may leave her home to make money in the humbler walks of labour, and cause no flutter in male bosoms; but let her elect to do so in paths where ambition lures and pay is higher, and instantly a howl of dismay runs through the ranks of her oppressors and slaves. And yet, if common sense and logic were general instead of rare virtues, even in France, it would be understood that the abandonment of the homes by peasant women is of much more serious consequence to a nation than the infrequent flight into legal and medical circles. The woman lawyer will always be the exception, and if she makes a good thing of her venture nobody is a penny the worse. But examine the home where the wife and mother spends her day in a factory, in the field, whose occupation requires no talent or ambition, and their physical and moral effects are of a very different nature from those that follow the winning of diplomas. The woman works as hard and as long as her husband, and is paid less. They return home to a cold hearth, an uncooked dinner. The man, never an angel where his stomach is concerned, swears and threatens, then sulks and goes off to the wine-shop. There is no compensation for the missing comfort in the few miserable francs earned. No women are more admirably adapted for making the home happy than Frenchwomen. Their general competence is matched only by their industry; and it is a pity to see these fine domestic qualities wasted on outdoor work. Of course, in the case of widows nothing can be said. When the bread-winner is taken away, the woman must perforce shut the house door, and go abroad in quest of the right to live. Girls are in their proper sphere, too, in working manfully on their father’s farm until their marriage, and fatherless girls, without that most useful of national institutions, the dot, must needs find bread wherever they can. But the outside labour of the wife and mother can never be too deeply deplored, above all in the case of the best of wives or mothers, such as Frenchwomen, taking them as an average, usually are.
BLESSING THE WHEAT J. A. Breton
Connected with rural and provincial life are some quaint and pretty religious ceremonies. I need not refer to the Fête-Dieu, familiar to all travellers in Catholic countries. The sight of this well-known procession will please or repel you according as it appeals to your head or your imagination. But a far more picturesque procession, and one containing an element of poetry not at all discoverable in the Fête-Dieu, is the blessing of the fields and orchards between dawn and sunrise. What a novel and peaceful treat I used to find this ceremony in my far-off French schooldays, whereas the Corpus Christi procession was but a scorching misery! To rise in the blue crepuscular light, with the early birds just stirring in their nests and heard behind the unshuttered windows, and emerge from the deep convent porch into the dew-washed country, following and followed by all the town, walking in two long lines, widely apart, behind the priests in their stoles and surplices, and chanting solemn Latin hymns! It was a rich Norman land we wandered along, now by glittering rills, with the smell of violets in the air, by narrow green paths through the newly ploughed earth, while the mounting sun cast joy into our faces, warming the chill spring wind, and provoking the birds to rival our hymns with their clearer and sweeter notes; then through continents of apple bloom, whole lakes above of pink-white blossoms on either side, with rivulets of upper blue seen through the tracery of foamy waves. Who, watching that solemn procession of amiable enthusiasts, chanting hymns to God and beseeching Him with confidence and fervour to bless the earth and all its produce,—wheat, wine, fruit, and flower, the water we drink, and the grass we tread upon,—could smile or carp at the sprinkling of the ground, of trees, of river-bed with holy water? There was something deeply impressive in the hymns sung at that early hour, while the towns still slept and the woods were scarce awake. As a superstition it seemed to carry us back to the great primal superstitions that have run through the earlier religions. It remains ever upon memory as a large and noble and beautiful form of belief, where Pagan and Christian of all time meet in their fear of inclement nature. Religion has ever associated itself with the rural dread of disaster. Priests say masses for sick cattle, and if the cattle do not benefit by this harmless custom, the peasants are thereby greatly comforted; they have the satisfaction of knowing, at any rate, that should the cattle so prayed for die, it was in the design of Providence, against which even the prayer of devout man was inefficacious. If religion never made more injurious concessions than these to ignorance, the wildest freethinker that ever unsheathed a sword against it must be shamed into laughter at his bellicose attitude. Indeed, it is not only the Catholics of France who expect their ministers to stand between them and rural misfortunes by prayer and holy water; in the Protestant Cévennes a pastor of the Reformed Church has been known to exorcise a field of evil spirits, or tackle by prayers the devils in a poor beast, and even in an entire herd of cattle; and the peasants dread even more than the devil a mysterious god called the Aversier.[1] An apologist for these peculiar customs maintains that since Christianity cannot prevent superstition it is wise in directing it,—sending it thus into a right and beneficial channel. This is surely debatable ground. Superstition is by no means the appanage of ignorance only, and we must be grateful when we find it inoffensive and poetical.
[1] The maker of rains.
In Paris to-day, you will meet educated Frenchwomen who are convinced that St. Anthony of Padua went to heaven and was canonised in the exclusive interest of their lost property. A friend of mine, witty, cultivated, a wide reader and traveller, accompanying me on a walk, dropped one of her gloves just outside the avenue door. She perceived her loss when we had gone a few paces ahead. “Oh, dear good St. Anthony,” she exclaimed fervently, “make me find my glove, and I will light a candle in your honour. And now I am reminded, dear St. Anthony, that I owe you already a candle for my note-book which I lost and found last week; I will pay both on the recovery of my glove.” I listened to the prayer in stupefaction. We turned on our heel, and there at the porte-cochère lay her glove. She pounced upon it, and cried, “Thanks, thanks, good St. Anthony, you will have your two candles this afternoon.” Now, this was not a peasant, a servant, an ignorant little bourgeoise. She was a woman of liberal education, a frequenter of the noble Faubourg, the friend, guide, and philosopher of several authentic counts and countesses and marchionesses and diplomats, a woman who had travelled in Russia, Poland, Germany, and England, and admired all these races; in fact, a charming old lady, a mass of pride and prejudice, yearning to-day for another St. Bartholomew, and yet devoted to several Protestants and to at least one freethinker; who professes an ancien-régime hatred and scorn of the lower classes, and treats her servant, her portress, her frotteur, the woman who sells her milk, and the woman who sells her vegetables as her dearest friends, from sheer largeness of heart and generosity of nature. She is not the first person of whom I can truthfully say, “Her virtues are all her own, her vices belong to her religion.”
In Brittany it is the custom to bless houses, and this ceremony is not always accomplished without some bluster; above all, if the spirit of the dead should be attached to it. When a Breton suspects his house to be under ghostly domination, he sends for a powerful fellow in sacerdotal raiment to dislodge the devil. The priest comes, clad in surplice, and, holding his stole in hand, takes off his boots, so that he “shall be a priest to the very ground.” We are told that the staircase and the floors are inevitably covered with sand as evidence of the traces of the ill-intentioned dead. The priest must follow those sandy traces as far as the chamber where they stop. There he shuts himself up, bursts into fervent prayer, and has a hand-to-hand fight with the evil spirit. His triumph is asserted as soon as he succeeds in casting his stole over the neck of the dead, who has taken the shape of an animal, usually a black dog. The beadle and the sacristan are told off to carry away the possessed animal. They lead it to a sterile marsh, or a forsaken quarry, or a meadow hollow, and the priest cries, “Here shalt thou henceforth dwell,” and lets the evil spirit go free; saying this, he makes a wide circle, and departs.[2]
[2] “Satanism” by Jules Bois.
Coming from a feverish centre like Paris, where, as a rule, lives are too crowded with interests, one wonders at the limited interests of rural and provincial life. Sometimes you will meet a country gentleman who dabbles in literature, writes a local guide or an historical essay on some personage or fact connected with his own particular town or village, and then you may count yourself fortunate. Depend upon his natural wit to make the place interesting to you. Such a pleasant squire once imparted a sort of glow and charm for me to Taillebourg, and that dullest of little towns, St. Jean d’Angély. He peopled the neighbourhood with great names, and the very pavements instantly grew sacred. His erudition went so far as to revive Blue Beard, an ancestral neighbour, and show me the Marquis of Carabas, with his immortal feline friend, getting married in the reign of Francis I., from the castle at which I was a guest; and though the life at that summer castle was frightfully monotonous, one forgot the monotony in romantic associations. But this is an infrequent blessing. Unless you form one of a hunting party, I know nothing that palls more quickly upon the outsider than the kind of existence led in French châteaux. There are no day or evening amusements. Ladies between meals sit under trees and talk. If they always talked brilliantly upon general topics, this would be pleasant enough, but as all roads lead to Rome, so do all topics to-day in France lead directly or indirectly to politics, and this is fatal. Literature is only a tepid discussion on the latest novel: and this does not carry one far. Then there is a solemn walk with your hostess about the grounds, or a drive outside, and in the evening after dinner a game of bezique with somebody, or the pleasure of watching somebody else play “patience,” and conversation of a not too thrilling kind. Should your hostess or any other visitor be exceptional, delight and pleasure can be extracted from notable talk; but in the case of ordinary men and women, it is very trying to meet together for the dismal satisfaction of being bored simultaneously. The proprietors naturally do not realise this. They have the excitement of receiving guests, whose arrival must be a change in the burthen of inalterable routine. But I have never left a French château without a feeling of sincere gratitude for not possessing one. The sensation of imprisonment, of futile chains, is oppressive. Here, as elsewhere, individuality is effaced by inexorable common law. To be original is to be amusing, no doubt; but, still more, unseemly and mad. You may be a little wild in speech, provided you walk the respectable step of your fellows without the slightest deviation. Your wit, if you happen to have any, will never be more appreciated, for on that ground the French are exquisite judges; but if you cross your knees, or pick blackberries, or dance a hornpipe, or climb a tree, or smoke a pipe, or whistle a tune (I mix up the offences of both sexes against French propriety), you are safe to go forth with a blighted reputation. Many years ago, before I knew these things, I shocked an amiable country gentleman and his son, a correct young officer down from St. Cyr, by breaking away from them to gather and eat lovely blackberries along our path. They told me it was considered extremely improper in France. They mentioned, upon pressure, so many other things that are regarded in rural esteem as improper, that I suggested writing, with their aid, the things a man and a woman (especially a woman) cannot do in France, but on consideration found it would make too large a volume. Here is exhibited the lasting charm of the French character. Had I said such a thing to an Englishman, imbued with a sense of his own correctness, he would have resented it as a foreign impertinence. My French host was charmed with a criticism which he understood to be meant good-naturedly, and added, “I have ever wondered at the reputation we give the English in France for excessive formality, for, personally, I have always found them to be a great deal more genial and easy than ourselves, and I readily recognise that we are much more formal.” When you read French and English newspapers, and see these two great races, the greatest of the world, showing their teeth like angry dogs, you might believe both nations incapable of a just or generous word of each other. Well, I, who am neither French nor English, can testify to the magnanimous recognition of national virtues of both to each other. A feeling of rivalry, of jealousy, of bitterness, may exist on either side, but I know none who have expressed more cordial admiration of British qualities than the French, none who have returned the compliment to them so generously as the English. I still remember the words of a gallant French officer to me one evening after dinner: “It is an unfortunate misunderstanding, exploited by infamous journalists of both countries, between two races made to sympathise with and admire each other. English and French, we complete one another, and as friends would hold the world.” And how true this is! There are faults on both sides, as there always are in a misunderstanding. The English are admirable, the French are lovable, and both have the defects of these qualities.
Even now, as I write these lines, feeling runs high in both countries, one against the other; higher and more aggressive in France, I admit, than in England, and yet I should fill a volume were I to attempt to repeat the splendid and noble things I have lately heard said of England in France, the proofs of regret for this lamentable and, I trust, fugitive state of affairs which I have received from various sources, beginning with cultured men of letters and science, then from Catholic women of the world, who see no reason to hate England because their newspapers tell them to do so; and lastly from workmen, women of the people, from my washerwoman, who once wisely said to me, “If we listen to the newspapers, French or English, we shall all become as stupid and degraded as the Boxers of China.”
What one first remarks about the French peasantry is the clean and comfortable aspect they present: tidy blue blouses, sabots, strong shoes, neatly patched trousers, and their air of natural breeding. Among the mountains they are of rougher build and manners; but in the plains of Berry, in the flat, green department of the Loiret, where the landscape looks like a little bit of Holland on the edge of the still and sedgy Loire where it ceases to be navigable, the very labourers more resemble well-to-do and well-bred farmers than the class to which they belong. Their breeding and neatness, if you come upon them in the wild solitude of the fields, are in keeping with the gracious silence of shepherd life, instead of being a blot upon it, and their civilised speech does not jar upon the banks of grey, flowing water, or among the warm, sunlit meadows.
Farther south-west the manners are less commendable. Mistrust of the foreigner is more visible; and if you ask your way, you risk falling upon the practical joker, who deliberately sends you wrong out of gaiety of heart. Landscape is decided by region, and local character is decided by religion. Volubility and Catholicism seem to go hand in hand; rigidity and sternness with Protestantism. La Rochelle and Rochefort are Protestant towns on the coast; the Cévennes territory is Protestant, also the towns of Nîmes and Montpellier in Provence. Speaking broadly, I should say the French Protestants are more intelligent, the Catholics brighter; the Protestants deeper in brains and sentiments, the Catholics more winningly vivacious. You esteem the Protestants, you like the Catholics; and your sympathy for each will be prompted by temperament, intellect, and instinct. Catholics will always regard Du Chayla, the Christian persecutor of the Cévennes, as a martyr; Protestants, more justly, will pronounce him a hateful persecutor. Religious persecutors, the world over, find their fervent apologists, and it may be said that a large proportion of the French race approve to-day of their St. Bartholomew, and yearn for a repetition of it; just as the good Catholics of the Spanish race find little to condemn in the horrors of the Inquisition. If there should break out a second Revolution in France (we have been living so long on the brink of it that I am constantly reminded of the story of the boy and the wolf, and ask myself in dismay, How long have we to run before meeting with the famous moral of the story?), be sure this time that religion will prove the provocation. I cannot predict on which side it will burst, but assuredly the red flag will be “anti-Semitism.” In the provinces this sentiment runs in a feebler, less aggressive channel, and the rural atmosphere seems to cleanse the air of it entirely. Here religious feeling is either stagnant because of the absence of religious rivalry, or it is a dull assertion of hostility in abeyance, only waiting for the occasion to break out in a torrential downpour. In provincial circles known as clerical, bicycling is regarded as improper, because it has been pronounced unfashionable. At Orleans you will see women and young girls punting as you wander out beyond the suburbs towards the source of the Loiret, in the charming demesne of the Polignacs, but you will not encounter a woman on a bicycle, for Orleans is a clerical town, and, consequently, all that is most fashionable and pretentious. France is aware of the ills which clericalism has brought upon Spain; yet, for the moment, she is deliberately walking backward, through the strenuous efforts of the snobs and of a defunct aristocracy. These reactionary influences are the work of a coterie of intriguing women and ambitious priests in Paris, and now even material and private interests are menaced by conspiring malcontents.
CHAPTER II
PARIS AND PARISIANISM
The exaggerated Parisianism of the foreigners who settle in Paris is one of the things the French of to-day profess to resent; it is one of the reasons of the great Nationalist cry, “France for the French!” as the Chinese yell more murderously, “China for the Chinese!” Such a feeling of resentment ignores the tribute paid by these foreigners to the indescribable charm and fascination of Paris. For it is not the affairs of France that the foreigners meddle with, but exclusively those of Paris. The provinces are much like other provinces, and you might live therein a half-century and fail to find out that there was anything particularly catching in French politics,—anything absorbing in the questions of the hour. I have known foreigners established for years in Florence, in Venice, in Rome, who have never once opened an Italian newspaper; who take not the slightest interest in anything that concerns Italy beyond that which picturesque Italian peasants and noble stones may inspire. Not so with this bewitching and exacting Paris. Everything here combines to force your powers of resistance; and while you are musing in the Louvre or the Musée de Cluny, behold, the roar of revolution is heard without, and down the solemn halls must you hurry into the blithe air,—forgetful of past, of dreams, of historic associations, of sentimental reveries in front of Leonardo’s “Gioconda,” to learn the latest whim of a petulant city, to learn the latest black deed of whichever party you have come to detest as a personal enemy.
Elsewhere will you meet architectural effects more beautiful,—quaint old streets a thousand times more captivating, reaches of river more lovely and more strange,—but nowhere else will you find modern life unrolling in an atmosphere of such beguilement, set in a frame of such large and harmonious beauty. Nowhere else will you find the very poorest in a measure to be envied, since even they, with a little good will and an eye to look about and enjoy, may make something cheerful of their lives by reason of their environment. The perspective of starvation is not an agreeable one anywhere on earth, but surely a dry crust may be not altogether ungratefully munched walking along the quays of Paris, with those broad sweeps of lines and hues of enchantment upon either horizon; and something not unlike a step of delight may be danced along the joyous, noisy “Boul’ Mich’” with an empty pocket, even if one be the victim of the remorseless term-day, or have no prospect but the shelter of the doss-house at night. For there is no squalor in Paris, no griminess, and penury itself is decent, discreet, admirably self-respecting; and even drunkenness, though of a far more perilous character, if we are to believe the newspaper reports, than in London, abstains from the revolting outrages against sight and hearing we are accustomed to in the cities of the British Isles. To be poor in London is to be the poorest of poor devils upon the globe, for there life offers you no compensation. You live in such a slum as the Parisian eye has never gazed upon; the faces around you are sour or bloated, according to temperament and habits. There is no lightness of air, no brilliance of perspective, to distract the eye from the inward contemplation of daily misery, unless you put on your hat and trudge endless miles to get a glimpse of the long, bright boulevard of Piccadilly, or the sophisticated wonders of the Strand. The attractions of these I willingly admit, and own the Strand, on a wet, lamp-lit winter’s evening, to be a beautiful, strange vision of grandeur and diversity. But then how far these all are from the slums, and the way in London is long, and if your pocket is empty, how are you to get on the top of an omnibus to enjoy a change of view?
But in Paris, should your pocket be empty and your room sordid, you need only saunter into the clear, vivacious air to find yourself within walking distance of every charming point of the radiant city. Between her broad and winding river, Paris lies, a two-volumed tale of romance; on every leaf, as you turn it, matters for musing and rapture, life around you full to overflowing,—the life that has been lived still vivid to remembrance, not clothed in sadness, but in the gracious gaiety of tradition. The scenes of dead hours are animated with floating suggestions. In the Marais, with all these neat, alert workwomen, well hosed, hair alluringly dressed, contented with their lot, which is laborious and frugal, so long as they can brighten it with laughter and the customary joys of beautiful objects which abound here on all sides,—who is to weep for the days of old, and the great historic dames who made its ancient glory? You remember the great ladies of yore, and you are thankful for the sight of the sympathetic workwomen of to-day, and greet them with a tributary smile. For it is the women of Paris who create the better part of its living charm, whether in the populous quarters, where they toss their morning greetings to each other, or to their swains, along the freshly awakened faubourgs and clean streets, with their shining runlets of water which you must dexterously jump, by broad boulevard and acacia avenues; or, later in the day, in the regions of luxury and millions, where the sirens of fashion, arrayed with a taste Solomon never dreamed of at the time sacred tradition supposes him to have envied the lily of the field, corollas emerging from exquisite sheaths, with the plumage of paradise upon their frivolous heads, pass and repass on their mission of smiling destruction, of ruthless rivalry, of scented glory. As well dream of a city of London without its trousered armies, rushing on the wings of time in pursuit of gold, as try to imagine a Paris with woman dethroned. She holds all the strong places; she vivifies the town from the old Place of the Bastille to the heights of Montmartre, where the texture and trimming of her garments is the topic of the hour; and men gather on the boulevards at the hour of absinthe, in devout expectation of seeing her pass by. Whether they discuss politics or art, be certain she is at the bottom of all their talk. The talk is assuredly not of the most respectful kind, nor is the attitude of Parisians to her such as we could with accuracy describe as clean or chivalrous, but they give to her what she, light-minded as she is, demands,—their full attention, a consideration of her charms, her dress, her vagaries, her virtues, her vices,—an attention that never wanders, the most generous measure of contempt, admiration, eternal gratitude, and eternal faithlessness that the perversest witch ever clamoured for. Such is her power that I am tempted to believe that if her ideal were a high, instead of a low, one, she might invent a type of Parisian very different from the well-known boulevardier and hero of French romance. But alas! this is her failing. She has no other ideal than that of ruling by the senses, and mastering the worst in man by the worst in herself. The ideal in her is wrecked on the alluring rock of her own making,—dress, for which she lives, and without which Paris would not be the Paris we know; and, being frail and human and sadly silly, as the best of us are,—Heaven be praised!—we admire even when we would fain deplore.
The finest impression the life of London leaves on memory is that of the wealthy quarters. The pageant of Rotten Row is unforgetable. The splendid roll of life and movement along Piccadilly, the bright impressiveness of Park Lane, of those squares of lofty town palaces, give such a notion of privilege and purse as may be had on no other spot of the globe. But the happiest and most lasting impression of Paris lies in the poor and populous quarters. Who in memory dwells most on the magnificence of the Champs Elysées? Who in after years, remembering Paris, cares about all the luxury of the Park Monceau, with its fashionable and expensive avenues? But what we do remember, with pleasure and surprise, are the agreeable aspects of labour, of every-day life, of outdoor breathing, the variety, labour, vivacity, and insistent beauty, at every turn, of public existence. It is the delights of street study which hold our imagination enthralled. In Paris we realise that the Revolution has indeed brought about something very near to human equality, since here the poorest know and love the feeling of independence, and we understand the world to be made for them and not exclusively, as in London, for the privileged few. Here aristocracy is an incident in social existence, and any attempts at insolence or haughty airs, which thrill to admiration the soul of the British burgess and small shopkeeper, would in this democratic Paris speedily bring insult on the head of the offender. The Parisian workman will “Monsieur-le-Comte” the aristocrat to his liking, but Monsieur le Comte must mind his manners and be careful not to trespass. He took his head off once, and he hopes that will prove enough, not being more bloodthirsty than his own interests and privileges demand. Who can consistently pity a populace, however hard it may work, and however ill it may feed, that has the right of way along such well-kept thoroughfares; that has such fine statuary and elegant architecture to keep it in good humour! Who is really poor that may refresh his eye upon the terrace of the Tuileries, across the Concorde Place, and take his airing along the boulevards, or in the lovely, old-fashioned Luxembourg Gardens? What point of Paris is dull to look at? Where are the shop-fronts that do not fascinate? Take even one of those old aristocratic streets of the noble Faubourg Varenne, or of Saint Dominique. At first glimpse it looks a long, dull harmony of stone,—a uniform grey, with high emblazoned gates and closed lodges. But note the peeps into flowery old courtyards, the charming tufts of garden foliage lifting their green branches above the high walls. Glance down the sudden break in the street, where a kind of tall walled terrace runs, trellised, rich in leafage, as silent as the street of a dead city, where wealth shelters itself from envy by its tone of subdued and sober elegance. And yet it is not more trim than are the haunts of commerce, the abodes of labour. Who would not envy the flower-women of the Quai des Fleurs, with their glorious vista of stone and waterway? The curving Seine, ribboned round its beautiful old island, grey-walled, upon the river’s brink; the spire of the Sainte Chapelle, painted gold, upon a soft or brilliant sky, and the magnificent gates of the Palace of justice, as much theirs as are the rich man’s priceless possessions in his own house. The pleasure of possession alone is lacking in their enjoyments; but they miss its anxieties, and they have not to pay for the keeping in order of all those splendours upon which their eyes daily repose.
To talk of taste in connection with Paris seems as unnecessary to-day as to speak of coals in Newcastle. And yet it is the prevalence of taste everywhere that perpetually surprises inhabitants of less privileged places. Whatever these people do, whatever they make, whatever they wear, the result is pleasing to the eye. If the picturesque is not always achieved, be sure neatness is. Give a poor woman an old skirt or bodice, and instantly will she go home, take it to pieces, and make a new skirt or bodice out of it that will gladden the eye, once upon her. So in her modest way will she improve the general view, and freshen up a porter’s lodge or little doorway. It is by the united action of all those various devices of a race of unerring taste and an indestructible sense of neatness, that Paris, in all its open corners, and byways, and thoroughfares, is, by outward manifestations, the home of permanent and unchequered grace and suavity.
It is a particularly pleasant feature of Parisian life that people of small means can live both decently and economically there. Of course, economy is the chief virtue of the race; and though it would be difficult to name a less attractive one, because of its close alliance to avarice and meanness, it deserves our respect because of its national significance. To it do we owe the exterior neatness of person and home, the tidiness of the poorest interior of Paris. Where else but in Paris will you find a concierge living with her family in one small room and a kitchen just large enough to turn in, and able to preserve that space scrupulously clean, inoffensive to sight and smell, with not so much as an article of clothing hanging about, nor a speck of dust visible, nor an ornament or chair disturbed? I have not penetrated into the ragpicker’s City of the Sun, about which Maxime du Camp wrote so eloquently in the Revue des deux Mondes some years ago; but I have no doubt that even in that elemental nest of humanity I should find orderliness, as far as it is compatible with the ragpicker’s trade, to be the general law. Does not M. de Haussonville, in his Enfance à Paris, assure us, after repeated visits to the doss-houses of London and Paris, that the striking difference between these fugitive shelters for the refuse of mankind in both capitals is a certain dim striving towards cleanliness and taste noticeable in the Parisian outcast, and utterly lacking in the London pariah? The impartial traveller, who knows little of France and French characteristics, will have no difficulty in believing this when he crosses the Channel, and the first thing his eye encounters in London is the frowsy female, with horrid bonnet or atrocious hat and feathers askew, hateful alcoholic visage, and sordid frippery all in tatters. Need one follow the squalid and ghastly vision to its lair to guess the conditions of its dwelling, the habits of its home? There are many blessings France might fittingly borrow of England and be the better for them, but we cannot deny that England, the mightiest empire of the world, would be improved by imitation of French exterior decency. It would brush from English public life many a brazen horror. The love-making of the masses would then be relegated to the privacy of four walls, and we would not see at every turn of our path Harry and his girl with their arms round each other’s waist, or giggling girls in omnibuses sitting on soldiers’ knees, or sights far worse than these, that scare the virtuous and make foreigners stare.
It is a settled thing that Paris is the home of vice. French novels of the day attest this fact; so do the lyrics of the halls of pleasure, where that decadent songstress, Yvette Guilbert (admired of decadent London), offers the strangest entertainment that ever delighted mankind in search of distraction; so, above all, do the songs of the unpublished poets of Montmartre, who fondly and seriously take themselves for misprized genius in the lump, and pose as so many Verlaines. Yet nothing in Paris offends the eye of the casual lounger through its streets as the eye is offended constantly in London. In Paris you have to look for manifestations of wickedness, and then it is known that you will find them in abundance, but they are not thrust under your nose at every street corner. You may walk the streets and boulevards at the small hours of the morning, or in the full glare of evening gas, or in the gathering gloom of midnight, when the lights are being put out, and if nobody assassinates you, you risk no evil sight or sound. There are quarters, we know from the daily papers, where vile creatures of both sexes group themselves for the peril of the passer-by, where blood is shed, and hideous language befouls the air, but these lie off the travelled highways of the city; and if you never read a newspaper, you might live for fifty years in Paris and never suspect that such a thing as crime took place within its fortifications.