French life in town and country

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Title: French life in town and country
Author: Lynch, Hannah
Language: English
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COUNTRY ***

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

[Illustration: 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

Set up and electrotyped March, 1901
Reprinted August, 1901; January, 1902

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

[Illustration]

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

[Illustration]

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._

[Illustration]

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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration]

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.

Rents in Paris are comparatively high, and space is precious; hence the
exiguity of the average home of the middle and lower classes. Spare rooms
are unknown, and closets and presses must be packed with the nicest
precision. But it is surprising how soon one becomes reconciled to want
of room in a French flat, and in how short a time one learns to pity the
London householder—above all his wife and servants—for his superfluity
of chambers. Once you have climbed up the stairs of your flat, there
is no more climbing, no futile running up and down stairs. Everything
is at hand. You walk from your dining-room into your salon and across
a level floor into your bedroom; and it needs no excessive labour to
keep all things straight, and polished, and spotless. If you are fond
of experimental cooking and light housework, you can dispense with the
trouble and cost of a servant; avail yourself of the services of a _femme
de ménage_, in a land where women of the people are admirably competent
and honest, and potter about your doll’s-kitchen to your liking. Fuel
you will find much cheaper than in London, thanks to the little charcoal
furnaces in enamel fireplaces, which can be lit and extinguished at will,
at a nominal expense. And so a poor lady, a teacher, or a student, can
live respectably and agreeably in Paris on an income that would mean
squalor and misery in London. A flat consisting of three bright rooms,
a kitchen, several presses, a closet large enough to stow away endless
boxes in, and serve as well as a hanging-clothes closet, plenty of water,
and excellent sanitary arrangements may be had in an enviable spot,
with pleasant outlook and good entrance, for six hundred francs a year
(£24); a _femme de ménage_ who will cook, market, mend, and clean up as
a French woman knows how, for six sous (threepence) an hour; and if you
treat her fairly well and secure her loyalty, she will give you devotion
and friendship, as well as excellent service and amazingly intelligent
speech. For here you need never be at the expense or trouble of cooking
complicated dishes. These are sold at the pastry-cook’s or the baker’s
for considerably less than they will cost you at home; so that you can
live well and keep your household bills within your means, even if meat
in Paris be dear. And then, when you want amusement, should your income
not permit of frequent theatre-going what need to open your purse? You
have but to open your house door, and emerge upon the public Place. On a
summer afternoon or evening a ride on the top of an omnibus or tram is
better entertainment than that offered by many a theatre in London. A
walk through old Paris, or along the ever lovely quays, is refreshment
enough for eye and fancy. Three sous will take you from the Madeleine
to the Bastille; and where is it you may not go from the Bastille for
another three sous? If the chestnuts are in bloom, on foot, or on the
_impériale_ of a public vehicle, in imagination you are wandering through
your own avenues; and you really have little envy for the rich in their
cushioned victorias. This is why I contend that the philosopher of either
sex, whose purse is light and whose tastes are frugal, can make shift
with less in Paris than elsewhere; can live and be infinitely happier
there on small means than in London. So much beauty is provided for him
gratis, that he must be a churl who can spend his time in moaning and
whining because his private walls are undecorated, or costly carpets
do not cover his floors. Let him go to the Louvre or Cluny Museum when
the fit takes him, and count himself a king without the cost and care
of sovereignty. Let him sit in the Tuileries, and call them his private
gardens while he feeds the sparrows; let him loaf among the book-stalls
of the Seine, and leisurely turn the pages of books he means not to buy.
Where will he better such luxuries, even at his own price, if fortune
stepped his way? In London, poverty is galling because there is no escape
from its meannesses and its miseries. That is why the poor in London
may be pardoned for taking to drink. That seems the only door, for it
would need that a poor man living in a London slum should be very drunk
indeed to find beauty of any kind in his environment. But poverty in
Paris may be found both amusing and instructive. I am not sure that it
is not the poor, the needy, the small clerk, the overworked teacher, the
shop-girl, the underfed student, who do not get the best of Paris; feel
to the fullest measure its common joys, which lie not in wait for the
rich and worldly. These are in too great a hurry between their amusements
and frivolities, their dress, their precarious triumphs, their fugitive
passions and idle loves, the consuming cares of social ostentation and
rivalry, to understand Paris, to seize the thousand-and-one delights of
its streets and squares and river-bends, to realise how much enjoyment
may be got out of an hour in the Luxembourg or Tuileries Gardens, of a
penny run down the river to Auteuil, and from Auteuil to Suresnes. When
I read a fashionable Parisian novel, where the titled heroine, doubly
veiled, is invariably driving in a fiacre to a perfumed and luxurious
bachelor’s _entresol_, in a house with two exits; and the hero, when he
is not in an elegant “smoking” costume, is making most fatiguing love to
his neighbour’s wife in evening dress, I am always very sorry for these
misguided creatures, and think how much better employed they would be,
how much happier and high-spirited they might be, if they only went down
the river in a penny boat, or watched the children play, and fed the
sparrows in some dear nook of the enchanting public grounds of Paris.

[Illustration: THE PARDON OF SAINT ANNE (BRITTANY)

_Guillou_]

Another source of pleasure are the markets of Paris. The great Halles
Centrales one generally visits once, and no more, as a truly wonderful
sight; but the flower-markets of the quays, of the Madeleine, and St.
Sulpice are scenes of perpetual delight. There are many markets in the
different quarters of Paris, where your servant may go in search of
vegetables, fruit, eggs, and fowls for the national _pot-au-feu_. It is a
small luxury, however, which I do not recommend, though widely practised
by the bourgeois, who has a positive genius for the slow and ingenious
saving of sous.

It is for all these reasons, and thousands more that creep into the
blood and the brain beyond the range of analysis, that Paris takes such
a grip of the foreigner, and becomes the birth-town of his maturity. In
other towns you sojourn as a stranger or a contemplator. You live apart,
either in your own world of dreams, among old stones, ruins, and faded
pictures, amid the dim aisles of Gothic poems, or else you form part of a
foreign coterie, and give and go to afternoon teas, living like invaders,
in insolent indifference to the natives around you, except in your
appreciation of them should they be courteous enough to lend themselves
to your notion of the picturesque, or treat you with the consideration
and kindness you naturally deem yourself entitled to expect along the
highways of Europe. But Paris will have none of this patronage. If you
settle there it is inevitable that you will become Parisianised. I do not
say anything so flattering as that your taste in dress, if you happen
to be a woman, will, of necessity, become that of your adopted sister,
but there will be a chance that her eye for colour will modify your
barbaric indifference to it, and the cut of her gown and shape of her
hat will insensibly beguile you into altering yours. Nor, in the case of
the young gentlemen of Great Britain, would I imply that long residence
in Paris will affect their excellent tailoring, or turn them into the
overdressed popinjays of the boulevards. The Englishman and the Parisian
woman will always remain the best-dressed of their kind wherever they
may live; and, while the Frenchman, in morals and manners, can descend
to odious depths unsuspected by the blunt and open-minded Saxon, he can
also, when the race shows him at his best, reveal virtues of subtler
and more captivating quality. I know no form of young man more charming
than a good young Frenchman, and can never understand why he figures so
little in French fiction. There is nothing of the prig about him. He does
not spend his days in being shocked at his neighbour; he is under no
compulsion to be narrow and dull; he does not quote the Bible, nor does
he desire, like the British virtuous youth, to mould all humanity upon
his own stiff and starched effigy. His wisdom is woven with a great deal
of gaiety; and when he happens to be dull, he carries off his dulness
with an imperturbable amiability. This type of Frenchman a woman will
never find offensive. He can oblige her with simplicity, and courtesy and
gentleness are the most distinctive features of his character.

Foreigners in Paris seem to be very much swayed in their judgments and
adoption of French politics by the mental and moral atmosphere they
breathe, as well as by their own natural tendencies. The average Briton
far too rarely stoops to consider the question of Republicanism, but
condemns it beforehand on aristocratic principles. Mr. Bodley, who wrote
a singularly pretentious work on France, frequented Bonapartist circles,
and sat at the feet of the Comte de Mun, and sundry other political
noblemen of the same mind; and the consequence is two tomes to prove
that what France wants is another Napoleon—the very thing that nearly
ruined her. The daughter of a sister Republic carries her millions into
France by marriage with some needy nobleman, who has already figured
in no estimable light in the pages of contemporary history written by
fashionable romancers, under the guise of fiction, and she perhaps
brandishes her parasol at the head of a band of miscreants, called _La
Jeunesse Royaliste_, in enthusiastic admiration of its mission to batter
the hat of a guest, an old man, the Head of the State, the Representative
of France before the world. Mr. Bodley’s ideal appears to be not the
good of France, but the triumph of the ideal of the archbishops and
owners of castles. The Republic is bad form, and he would fain see it
overthrown for the pleasure of his good friend, the Comte de Mun. What
the Parisianised, ennobled American subject wants is to see her admirable
and chivalrous husband Court Chamberlain, or something of the sort;—she,
too, yearns for the life which every other countess in Paris wants, a
Court to confer a forgotten dignity upon herself, and if she longs for
the re-establishment of the old privilege, it is in order to patronise
and protect those she fondly deems her inferiors. Other rich or needy
foreigners in Paris wish for a Court to shine at, a monarchy or an
empire, to be able to boast of their powerful relations. And what none
of them will see is that France, in her several experimental moods, is
seriously labouring to discover the form of government best suited to her
needs, and that the elect of the people still hope, through trial and
blunder, to reach the ideal of a progressive liberality. But the passion,
the earnestness, of all these Parisianised foreigners in their adoption
of the several prejudices and aspirations of Paris prove the truth of
my assertion, that Paris absorbs us in her furnace of ardent sentiments
and theories as no other place does. We can not stand by and view the
spectacle of her follies and furies like a philosopher. Needs must we go
down into the fray, which in reality does not concern us, and brandish
the stick or parasol of revolt, whatever our nationality. Needs must we
adopt a party in the land which regards us mistrustfully as foreigners,
and rewards our generous enthusiasm for its multiple causes by calling
us “Sans-patrie,” “Jews,” and “Traitors from Frankfort,” subsidised
by a mythical syndicate, like the Czar, the Emperor of Germany, the
King of Italy, and the Pope of Rome. Needs must we fret and fume, grow
irritable and ill, perhaps long to hear the tocsin ring for another St.
Bartholomew’s, if we are on one side,—that of the large, unenlightened,
and foolish majority; yearn to people the Devil’s hole with sundry
scoundrels we have come to hate if on the other side, that of the elect
and liberal minority, with a passion of hatred no public men in our own
country have ever inspired. What is the meaning of it? Is there some
subtle magnetism in the air of Paris which makes us see French rascals
as so different from other rascals, French tragedy as more poignant
and intense than any other? I know I could cheerfully get through the
remainder of my days in Spain or Italy without giving a thought to either
government or caring a straw whether Sagasta or Crispi were in or out of
office. I never see much difference between the gentlemen who in turn
manage the affairs of England; in fact, I never have the ghost of an idea
who is at the head of each department, and could not for the life of me
distinguish between Mr. Codlin and Mr. Short. Not so in this brilliant,
variable, light-headed, light-hearted, graceless, and bewitching Paris.
I am burningly anxious to know all there is to be known about each
minister of war, and take their repeated defections almost as a personal
grievance. I eagerly examine the interpellations and their consequences,
count majorities and minorities in the turbulent Chamber, follow the
fortunes of the Senate, applaud, disapprove of all that happens with the
ferocity of a citizen who pays to keep the machine going. I know well
that I am a fool for my pains, and that I would be far better employed
in minding my own business. But it is all the fault of Paris for being
so abominably, so mischievously interesting. She it is who will not let
you let her alone. She is like a vain woman; she must have all attention
concentrated upon herself. She clamours for your notice, and despises you
for giving it. If you stand aside with folded arms and look elsewhere,
she will get into a passion, create a frightful scene to attract your
attention, and when you obey her and give it in unstinted fashion, she
turns on you and sneers and rails at you for a foreign spy and busybody.
Poor Mr. Bodley, all ignorant of the fretful indignation he often roused
in France by his thirst for information, was for long regarded by many an
honest Frenchman as a spy.

Oddly enough, I hold that the pleasure side of Paris, its fashionable
world, is the least of all to be envied. If I were a millionaire, I
think I should prefer London, with its larger public life, its more
varied hospitalities, for the investing of my millions in the thing
called experience. Even a British ass, with time on his hands, and
millions to squander, can discover an original method of going to the
dogs and casting his millions into the bottomless pit. But what can the
French idiot do after he has sent his shirts to London to be washed, and
invested in an automobile? He is such a superlative dandy and humbug—I
would fain use a hideous word, which describes him still better in
three letters, if it were not for its inexcusable offensiveness—that he
cannot bring sincerity to bear upon his imaginary passion for sport, and
looks ten times more absurd when he is playing the athlete than when
he is contentedly playing the fool. He is “the sedulous ape,” not to
literature, like Stevenson in his young days, but to the Anglo-Saxon; and
the folly lasts on to the brink of age.

The Faubourg holds itself more aloof than ever. It is now not even on
saluting terms with the Republic. Still its life must be lived after a
fashion, and it must give balls, if for no other reason than the ignoring
of ministers and their wives. It cannot be said that the country at large
is much affected by its doings; and if we are to judge the inhabitants by
the fiction of the day,—the dialogue novels of Gyp, of Lavedan, of Abel
Hermant, the psychological studies of MM. Bourget, Hervieu, Prévost,—the
sane and intelligent person may thank his stars that he is still free
to choose his society, and is not condemned by an accident of birth to
tread such a mill of vaporous frivolity and futility, of intellectual
blankness and arrogance, and of senseless corruption. I do not presume
to say that these clever writers are invariably accurate in their
delineation of fashionable Paris, nor do I deny that there may be a good
deal of exaggeration in their sombre and revolting pictures,—for what
lies under the sparkling effervescence of the brightest and wittiest of
Gyp’s earlier work if it is not a dead-level of inanity and perversity?
But their singularity consists in the fact that all are unanimous in
their conclusions, in the general tenor of the life they portray. Pride
of birth is the only sort of pride this class seems to possess, and for
a nod the heroines of all those heraldic pages fall into the arms of
the first comer and the last alike. When you make the acquaintance of
a viscount, you may be sure he has an _entresol_ somewhere for varied
clandestine loves, and passes his time between encounters here, _le
boxe_, and his “circle.” One solid, useful action never seems to be
entered to his account. His days and nights are devoted to accomplished
idleness and seduction, and his busiest hours are those spent on his
toilet. And the women of this dreary and monotonous fiction,—how shall
we qualify them? They have all the frailty of the wicked, red-heeled,
minuetting eighteenth century without any of its charm, its wit, and real
intellect. For if the marquise of the old school, passed into perfumed
memory, were a rake, she was not a fool, she was not a rowdy, and she had
a feeling for great deeds and great thoughts. She stands on a picturesque
eminence in the history of her land. We cannot say the same for the
titled rake of to-day. It is the fashion to treat her as a _détraquée_,
because she subsists mainly upon excitement. But what needs altering
is her standard; what should be overthrown is the altar upon which she
sacrifices her futile existence. Not that she is the only example of
her class, but somehow the novelists have not thought fit to present us
with any other. The strange thing about it is, that she and her mate in
the game of battledore and shuttlecock with reputation and morality,
the incorrigible viscount, have been brought up under a supervision and
care exceeding northern conception. Neither was permitted a moment of
licensed childhood. Priest and nun were at the side of each, in constant
attendance upon their minds and manners and morals. The male cherub lost
his wings when the abbé made his last bow and retired, leaving his charge
alone on the brink of temptation, a youth with a budding moustache. The
maid ceased to be an angel before the honeymoon had well begun; and,
if we are to believe polite fiction, was already one of the pursued of
snaring sinners before she was a week a bride.

The Paris of this class is not the Paris that charms and holds you in
its spell. The fast, luxurious, and expensive Paris belongs to it;
the cosmopolitan Paris, kept going by the millions of the foreigners
who come here to amuse themselves. Theirs is the Rue de la Paix, the
Concours Hyppique, the Arménonville Restaurant, the Bois, the avenues
of the Champs Elysées and the Parc Monceau, the race-courses, the
Théâtre Français “Tuesdays,” the charity bazaars, the flower feasts and
exhibitions, the automobile competitions, the “five-o’clocks,” and M.
Brunetière’s lectures on Bossuet. This is the rowdy, reactionary Paris,
ever on view, which disapproves of the Pope, and would assuredly array
itself in garments of gaiety if M. Loubet were assassinated. This is
the Paris which sneers at _rasta-quouères_, and is ever on the lookout
for American heiresses for its needy titled sons, which is rabidly
anti-Semitic, and supports its prestige upon Jewish millions. Quite
recently, when anti-Semitism was raging in France, and we were informed
in every tone of fury and contempt that no self-respecting Catholic
could possibly regard a Jew as an honest man or a French subject, an
authentic French marquis married the daughter of a Hebrew millionaire,
and to console themselves for the obligation of profiting by their noble
comrade’s good fortune, his friends summed up the young lady’s qualities
in three amusing lines:—

“Belle comme Vénus,
Riche comme Crœsus,
Innocente comme Dreyfus.”

The raillery did not prevent “tout Paris” from being present at the
splendid marriage ceremony, and inscribing its best names upon the
wedding gifts. It could not do less, seeing that its king and master,
Philip of Orleans, the _digne_ (for alas! there is no English equivalent
of that indescribable French word as applied to a man) representative of
the House of France, is said to have accepted a million from the bride’s
anti-Semitic Hebrew mother.

There is another side, less known, of aristocratic Paris. This is the
quiet, exclusive, genuinely religious side, that of old-fashioned, rigid
noblewomen, who live apart in their dull, old houses of the Faubourg,
given up to prayer and good works. There is a charming distinction
about them, a musty, conventual odour, as you enter the halls of their
faded hotels. They preside over _ouvroirs_, where ladies of their like
meet to make church articles and decorate altar pieces. Sometimes they
carry piety and good-will to the poor to excess, for I know of one, a
baroness, who neglected her children to make perfume and soap of her own
invention, which she sold for the benefit of the poor. The instinct of
trade so developed that she ended by opening a shop, on which she duly
bestowed a saint’s name; and here, if you are willing to pay exorbitant
prices, you may find wherewithal to wash and scent yourself with the
labours of aristocratic hands, and tell yourself you are doing so for
the good of mankind. Not that I would laugh at those ladies, who are the
salt, the redemption of their class. I once lodged in the dismantled
hotel of such a countess, and was edified by the stately, chill dignity
of her austere existence. Her private rooms were furnished with a
touching simplicity. Even in winter there was not a carpet anywhere, no
sign of luxury or comfort; but in her private chapel, where Mass was
celebrated every day, the vestments and ornaments were both beautiful
and precious. She herself had nothing whatever to do with the frisky
countesses of French fiction. She was in every sense of the word a great
lady,—handsome, with aquiline features, and with hair worn high off a
noble forehead, reserved, possibly too haughty in bearing and expression
for her reputation of piety, but essentially one of the elect of this
earth, the kind of woman that an aristocrat should be, and too rarely
is, to justify her privileges and pretensions.

Here, far off from the roar of reaction and the rumble of revolt,
such women dwell amidst the dim splendours of an impoverished house,
unfamiliar to the frequenters of routs and races; whose names never
appear in the society columns of the _Figaro_; who are chiefly known
to the poor and the priests of their neighbourhood; and they it is who
preserve some charm for the Faubourg, who help us to regard it with some
indulgence and sympathy in its futile discontent. For what can be the
benefit to itself or to France of this fine attitude of disdain? Every
part of a nation should go with the times, and the Faubourg would have
served its own cause as well as its country’s in abandoning its belated
ambitions, and making the best of its existing circumstances. It feeds
its pride on its absurd exclusiveness; and who is the better for this? It
is largely due to this insane vanity, that Paris has become the centre of
rowdy cosmopolitanism, the pleasure-ground of the entire world, for it
is the titled malcontents who attract the class they are pleased, with
signal ingratitude, to call, contemptuously, _rastas_, instead of looking
after the affairs of their country. Since they will not earn their right
to live, they must be amused, and amusement is the costliest thing in
the world. Not having enough money for this profession, they needs must
set themselves out for the capture of alien millions; and then when the
foreign millions fall into their laps, by way of Frankfort, or New York,
or South America, they mourn and lament because the foreigners take root,
Parisianised by the sorceress Paris, and cry out that France no longer
belongs to the French, and that Paris is sold to a band of cosmopolitan
miscreants.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL DIVERSIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

With a race that has so thoroughly mastered the art of living, and not
merely working or vegetating, the question of diversion is of paramount
interest. In the fashionable world, sport monopolises the better part
of man’s hours. This is an overseas passion, adopted with frenzy and
fervour. M. Rémy de Saint Maurice has given us the odyssey of the record
cyclist in an amusing and humorous book, _Le Recordman_, where we see
the wealthy idlers of France in awed adoration before the prowess of the
racing-wheel. The champion cyclist raises storms of emotion wherever he
runs, be it in Paris or in the provinces. When he returns to his native
town, all the authorities come to meet him and do him honour.

The French race is essentially a conversational and not a sporting one.
It has a natural predilection for the amenities of life, and we feel how
inappropriate is this present craze for rude and unsocial games. You need
only watch a Frenchman on horseback, and contrast him with a British
horseman to assure yourself of the fact that the point of view of each
is quite different. The Anglo-Saxon rides ahead with the air of thinking
only of his horse. The Frenchman trains his beast, like himself, to have
an eye to the arts and graces, to curvet and prance minuettingly, to arch
its neck as he himself bows, and he brings a suggestion of the salon
among the shadows of the Bois de Boulogne. Should there be a mortuary
chapel on their road to this sophisticated paradise, stand and note the
pretty way these dashing creatures will salute death. Spaniards would
do it, I admit, much more gracefully, for in the art of salutation the
Spaniard comes first beyond a doubt. But you will not see anywhere in
the British Isles so pleasing a spectacle. Some bend altogether over
their steeds, hat curved outward on a wide sweep; others pause midway,
less ostentatious and theatrical in their respect, and hold their hats
in a direct line from their eyebrows, admirably suggestive of diplomatic
reticence, younger and elder men all expressing every shade of effective
recognition of alien grief with a subtlety, a dramatic felicity of
movement and line the stiff Anglo-Saxon could never hope to achieve. Of
course the supercilious Englishman would say he had no mind to play the
monkey, and find a cause for just pride in the rigidity of his body, and
the stoniness of his well-trained and inexpressive visage. But here I
differ from him. A man loses nothing by outward grace, and there is no
reason on earth why he should rejoice in the fact that he cannot bow.

The motor craze has superseded the cycle craze. The _bourgeois_ bicycles
so much that the youth of fashion needs something to distinguish him on
the road from his inferior brother. So somebody came to his rescue with
the motor-car. Go to Paris if you would realise what a perilous thing
the crossing of a street may be. In such a neighbourhood as the Place
Pereire it is almost mortal. I imagine it as a machine invented by the
upper classes to replace the guillotine, and run down the miserable
foot-passengers to avenge the beheadings of a century ago. Whenever I
return home, and discover that I have lost a purse, a book, a packet
according to my invariable habit, I am so thankful to feel that I am
still alive, in spite of the automobile which charges through the streets
in such a dreadful way, that I balance loss and gain, and count myself
still a winner in the game of life by every new day to my account. In
London you are everywhere enveloped in a sense of public protection. The
cab drivers know how to drive, a feature of their trade they are most
imperfectly aware of in Paris. The policeman is there when he is wanted,
and, thanks to him, the nervous passer-by is valiant and unafraid. But in
Paris the driver regards him with an eloquent hostility. His one hope is
to get a free chance of running over him. He is insolent, overbearing,
and menacing, unfettered by policeman or law in his man-crushing career.
And, as if regretting the very slight limits still left him, Paris cast
forth upon the public way the motor-car. This machine of destruction
hisses along, leaving a trail of petroleum in the air, and you have
barely time to start back for its passage, such is the fury of the horror
in the hands of its fashionable owner. There are many motor-cars in
use for the big shops and public offices; but these, being in no sense
competitive in luxury, measure the ground by a speed less fatal, the
drivers seem to desire to leave you whole, and suggest by their pace and
bearing, some glimmering of humanity in their heart. For it is only the
rich young men who give one the notion of wishing to avenge the massacres
of the French Revolution. For the benefit of these flowers of the race,
exhibitions of motor-cars take place, under the patronage of dukes and
counts more or less authentic. And, so encouraged, these wild Parisians
set out in their automobiles for the harmless and distant provinces,
and charge down the long French country roads with purpose often more
deadly than that displayed in the capital. The newspapers acquaint us
with frequent accidents; and whatever the general sentiment regarding
these accidents may be, I always feel that they are a well-merited
chastisement. Why must the poor, the obscure, the inoffensive clerk and
shop-girl, go in fear and trembling of their lives, that the privileged
few may add a fresh sensation to their list of entailed emotions? Is not
the luxury of a horse good enough for those busy idlers, without adding
heart disease to our inherited disorders?

Boxing and fencing are also favourite exercises, as well as polo and
tennis amongst games. One of the more serious of diversions is the duel,
the first of which must be fought in early youth, and the last when
temperament and politics shall have said their final word. Then come the
amusements of club life, which absorb a good deal of masculine leisure,
of course, and where men meet to talk and be entertained, as well as to
eat, and read the newspapers. The races and the horse-show are sources
of pleasure at which every self-respecting Parisian drinks. Not to be
connected with horses or exhibitions would be almost as bad as not to
possess an automobile, not to be seen in the _foyer_ on great theatrical
nights, not to have fought a duel. But beyond even all these pleasures
are the noisy suppers of the fashionable restaurant, where everybody
who is anybody meets “tout Paris”; where the dresses of the women find
rivalry in the decorations of the men, and the scene approaches the
ideal paradise, the mundane city peopled with brilliant personages.

In all things the French _bourgeoise_ is more difficult to divert than
her aristocratic sister. She is much more particular and infinitely
more restricted in her ideas upon feminine liberty. While the women of
the upper class arrogate to themselves the right to amuse themselves
in whatever fashion they like, with lovers or without them, bicycling,
skating, shooting, on horseback, in automobile (the Duchesse d’Uzès was
the first Frenchwoman to obtain a certificate as woman driver of the
motor-car), private theatricals, they can smoke or scale the mountains
of the moon with impunity. All these varied avenues of distraction
are rigorously denied the _bourgeoise_. She is the most conventional
of creatures, and anything like marked originality in one of her sex
terrifies her and fills her with distrust. She was bred in the conviction
that girls should resemble their great-grandmothers, be clothed until
marriage in the integrity of imbecility, and after marriage in the
narrowness of piety, and know no other amusements than those strictly
suitable to a “feminine” woman. The path her mother and grandmother trod
is the path she must never deviate from. She must be just as religious
as they were, taking care, however, to follow the fashions of her own
class, in order to guard from so dangerous and disreputable a pitfall
as originality, which, with her, means pronounced eccentricity. When
she lives in Paris she dresses well; but the province often transforms
her into an inconceivable shape of dowdiness. In Paris, thanks to the
lectures, music, drama, literature, the multiple elements of culture,
it is impossible for her to escape, unless her days be entirely devoted
to domestic economy and good works; she is rarely destitute of that
agreeable worldliness that makes commerce with her, however shallow and
superficial she may be, facile and often instructive. And when she has
the hardihood to plunge into deeper waters and think for herself, when
she ceases to be beset with a craving for the ordered in conventional
circles, and to think ill of originality and individual character; there
is no woman on earth more charming, more capable, of readier wit, of less
intellectual prudery, wedded to a wholesome independence of judgment and
principle.

But as I have said, the amusements of the _bourgeoise_, “big” or
“little,” are very restricted: books, theatres, balls, dinner-parties,
with the excitement of religious ceremonies, an academy reception, a
noisy sitting of Parliament, the hourly expectation of revolution, a
correct evening party,—the dullest thing on earth wherever it takes
place. But, on the other hand, we may be sure she will find ample
entertainment in looking after her admirably managed establishment,
in making her own and her husband’s means go a very long way in
accomplishing a thousand little domestic meannesses unknown to the
thriftless Anglo-Saxon, and all with a certain geniality and discretion
that win her the esteem and goodwill of her fellows. For of womankind she
is the most genial and well-mannered, and though she may, in straitened
circumstances, deny every pleasing luxury to her family, her good humour
will keep those around her in good humour, and the counting of lumps of
sugar and of grains of coffee will seem a slight matter compared with the
flavour of domestic courtesy that accompanies the process. I have known
of an English family where at table forced strawberries and peaches were
daily eaten, and vegetables at a fabulous price, upon the finest damask
and priceless china, to the accompaniment of glasses flung by sisters
and brothers at an argumentative head, plates flying, and oaths showered
like missiles. Who would not prefer the economical French middle-class
table, where, in well-to-do families, lunch is often served on shining
oilcloth or table as polished as a mirror, to save washing, and where the
amenities are as carefully guarded as if the household were on view?

In this world the young men, as elsewhere, have the best of it. Theirs
the licence of manhood in all things. The moment dinner is over they
put on their evening suit and file off (_filer_, as they say themselves,
in their pleasant French slang) in the quest of pleasure. If they are
well-to-do they have no difficulty in getting accepted in the world of
third-rate titles. Tarnished dukes will cordially shake their hands. As
there is no peerage in France to control aristocratic pretensions, they
may have as much as reasonable man can desire of the society of marquises
and counts, provided they take these exalted personages on trust, and
do not seek to examine too closely their blazons. The method of making
one’s self a count or a baron in Paris under the Third Republic is very
simple. You may purchase a Papal title at a not exorbitant cost. In Abel
Hermant’s _Le Faubourg_, a porcelain manufacturer was awarded the title
of count by the Pope in return for a dinner-service he sent him, which
was explained on the grant as _pour service exceptionelle_. In France and
America only are Papal titles taken with gravity, and pronounced with all
the sounding magnificence of hereditary names. But a simpler way still,
and less costly even than the interference of Rome, is to buy a plate,
and have graven on it first a name prefixed by the particle _de_. When
this has been accepted without demur, and the newspapers have a dozen
times announced you here, there, and everywhere as M. de ⸺, then boldly
apply the title of your predilection, and behold you are, without more
ado, a noble of France. No need of papers or permissions. You are noble
by the grace of your own goodwill; and as most of the people around you
are playing the same game, there is no earthly reason why your friend
should be more of a count than you are of a baron. And so you may
aspire to a larger _dot_ from your bride. If you are in the army, you
may even look as high as your general’s daughter; and when you travel
abroad or journey in the provinces, you will be made to understand what
a fine thing it is to be able, thanks to your own valour and judgment,
to inscribe yourself in hotel books as M. le Baron or M. le Comte. You
will be served better than when you were plain Mr. So-and-So. Waiters
will help you off and on with your coat with a deference hitherto not
enjoyed by you in your anterior plebeian state, and the society papers
will record your great doings with gusto and fervour. Who, under these
circumstances, would not be a count or a marquis? Had I known years ago
of the facilities and advantages offered in France to titled adventurers,
I might have had the wit and wisdom to style myself countess of this
or baroness of that, the sole existing representative of an Irish King
or a Norman house. Indeed, such is the predisposition of the French
_bourgeois_ to believe in the noble origin of his acquaintance, that one
stoutly maintained before me that O and Mac were the Irish equivalents
of count; and my remark that every second washerwoman or policeman in
Ireland rejoiced in those attributes of nobility was received with frosty
incredulity. A French officer’s wife of the name of Mahon assured me that
her husband was of noble origin, and related to Marshal MacMahon; but
that, unfortunately, the papers identifying the relationship were lost,
and, in consequence, they could not call themselves MacMahon. As the good
lady really believed every word she was saying, I could not in courtesy
point out to her that Mahon and MacMahon are equally common names in
Ireland, and, for that matter, in the British Isles, and that every
MacMahon deems himself a connexion of the late marshal, though not one
would have thought of claiming the relationship if Marshal MacMahon had
remained in obscurity.

A substantial source of income is occasionally derived by the authentic
nobles for the presentation of the other kind into the halls of social
greatness, and for standing sponsors for them in exclusive clubs.
Another source of income for avid noblemen lies in their shooting and
hunting grounds. So much is paid for an invitation, still more for
the button, which permits parvenus to hunt on equal terms with their
so-called betters. The extraordinary things these nobles will do passes
the imagination. I know of a viscountess who possesses magnificent
hunting land on which men from all parts are invited to hunt. The guests
departing naturally tip gamekeepers and servants according to their
means. Every tip, by order, under penalty of expulsion from the château,
must be brought intact to the viscountess, and out of these tips are the
servants paid their wages.

The life of fashion in Paris is pretty much the same as the life of
fashion elsewhere. Men and women ride in the Bois in the early hours, and
it must be admitted that they could not find a pleasanter spot to ride
in anywhere. The landscape is charming, and if you break away from the
Allée des Acacias—the Parisian Row—you may even make a feint at losing
yourself under columns of tall trees, by little, moss-grown paths, where
the branches meet overhead, with ever in view grassy rolls of sward
and bright trellises of foliage above the broad white roads. In the
early hours this trim paradise is cool and quiet; and even an Anarchist
on foot will have no cause to envy his prosperous enemy on horseback,
for the same delights of herb and leaf, of sky and water, are his at a
cheaper rate. Indeed, there is no land on earth where a good-humoured
taste of vicarious pleasures may be so freely and fully enjoyed as in
France. Amiable _petits gens_ sit on chairs and watch the great parade
of the Bois without a trace of envy in their looks, comment on dresses,
horses, equipages, bearing, as if it were but a pageant got up for
their benefit. I am not sure that this is not one of the advantages of
Society—one of its objects—to minister to the kindly and generous vanity
of the workers of a country. These, by their labours, maintain it, dress
it, wash for it, build for it, manufacture for it, keep in order for
it the public roads, give the best of their blood, brains, nerve, and
force to its triumphs, and are content to see how well the result of
all this gigantic travail of a race looks in the show hours of national
existence. The big dressmakers are repaid when, sitting in their _loge_
of inspection, they watch the effect of their several creations on
Varnishing Day, at Auteuil or Longchamps. The artistic temperament is
at the root of all this contentedness, of these subtle gratifications
which the Philistine workman does not apprehend. The Frenchman brings
this sentiment of art into all he does. The word “artist” is applied
to cook, dressmaker, milliner, hair-dresser. In many ways M. Demolins
has shown us that the race is inferior to the Anglo-Saxon races, but it
has one essential superiority—the absence of vulgarity in the artisan
and shopkeeping classes. You can hold converse with pleasure and profit
with your washerwoman, who also will, in all probability, be something
of an artist, with the artist’s personal point of view; with your
char-woman, your hair-dresser; and the grocer’s boy on his daily rounds,
if you come in contact with him, you will find to be an intelligent
and well-mannered youth. It is only when you get a little above this
class that you light upon a trace of commercial vulgarity. The _commis
voyageur_ is something of a trial on the public road. He is not a pattern
of manners, and he is apt to be aggressive in his desire to obtain the
value of his money. Go still higher, among the wealthy bourgeois, and in
no land of all the world will you find men who can comport themselves
worse. In their attitude to women they seem to possess no standard of
courtesy whatever. When a Frenchman of this class is polite to a woman,
you may be in no doubt of his views in her regard, and you may be
perfectly sure of her social and pecuniary value; for he is the least
chivalrous, the least kind, the least disinterested of mortals, speaking
generally, though here, as elsewhere, you will find noble exceptions. I
hardly know an American or English woman who has travelled or stayed any
time in France who has not had occasion to note how much less courteous
to women Frenchmen are than their own men. Two young English ladies,
finding themselves in some dilemma with regard to trains or luggage,
had occasion to call on one of the chiefs of the Gare du Nord. This
gentleman, elegant, disdainful, and fatuously rude, received them in a
luxurious office, fitted up with such splendour as to suggest some of the
complications of the Parisian drama, and bore himself towards them with
such intolerable insolence, that, on going out, one of the travellers,
to be even with him, said: “Everything may be found in Paris, I see,
except a gentleman!” This, of course, is angry exaggeration, for nobody
can be more delightful than a Frenchman, when he chooses to give himself
the trouble to please and to serve; but it is as good an example as I
can give of the attitude of the French functionary to the public. Put a
uniform of any sort on a Frenchman, invest him in any kind of office, and
he is apt to become insupportable. Rudeness he practises as part of his
official dignity. It never occurs to him that he is there to assist the
public. He conceives himself to be there to insult and domineer over the
public.

In France, social distinctions are less insusceptible of permutation
than elsewhere. Everything is possible in a land where a tanner may
hobnob with a Czar, be embraced and addressed by that august personage
as “friend.” The nations of Europe may object to this state of things,
but the nations of Europe must put up with it. Amongst these same nations
France cannot be left out of the reckoning. Her capital is always felt
to be the best morsel of foreign travel. It is she who gives “tone,”
for I do not speak of anything so obvious as the unquestioned prestige
of her fashions. A day may come when this prestige shall have passed
elsewhere, but even when that day comes Paris will continue for long
years to subsist upon her ancient renown. Even now there are signs of
revolt against her sovereignty. For in my own town, Dublin, contempt for
her fashions is openly expressed, it being alleged here that the women of
Dublin dress with far greater taste than their sisters of Paris. Those
who are inclined to make light of these pretensions should go to Dublin
in the Horse Show week, where I am assured that the dresses of the girls
and women of Dublin leave Paris nowhere. So the good people of Dublin
say, for they have a fine conceit over there, and profess to hold Europe
in light esteem. But in spite of this it is not improbable that Paris
will continue to maintain its superiority.

Under republican rule, woman has no official position, is in all matters
of state a mere cipher. And so it is not possible for the President’s
wife to start a fashion, or for any Minister’s wife to guide the vagaries
of taste. This in itself suffices to explain to us the fact that a large
majority of women are anti-republican. They feel that their sex is
insulted by a Government which takes no recognition of their charm and
influence, presumes to govern without the assistance of their presence,
without any loophole for their unauthorised supremacy. There is no chance
for a Pompadour under a Republic, and whatever other abuses may exist
to-day, ladies of light morals cannot hope to attain heraldic glory
and hereditary wealth by the “primrose path of dalliance” with royal
Lotharios. And so social distinctions are now in France more complex and
less stringent than under the _ancien régime_. Complexity lies in the
variety of claims not known in former days, when the division between the
classes was sharp and infrangible. In the world of toque and robe there
are men who count themselves the superiors of the crusaders; in the army
there are generals of plebeian origin who think themselves the first of
Frenchmen; there are fashionable doctors and surgeons, painters, authors,
politicians, men of science, and merchant princes who regard themselves
almost as the equals of the crowned heads of Europe.

All these varied ranks of society meet at a general point—social
pretension. Wealth is the sole degree they really acknowledge, though
“good family” is their vaunted consideration. They are aware that fashion
and birth are no longer synonymous terms, that the goal is quickest won
by the longest purse. A duchess with a hundred a year may feast on her
own prestige in the eyes of a few intimates, but the world at large will
forget her existence to run after the capitalist of yesterday’s standing.
With the suppression of the power of the aristocracy, its removal in a
body from the governing centre, the field was left free to money and
talent; and with industry and education both may now be said to be within
reach of everybody. The aristocracy groan, ineffectual and undignified,
while a large majority of the nation heeds them not. It is perfectly
aware of the impotence of these discontented idlers, aware that, with
a few chivalrous exceptions, who must be admired for their fidelity to
tradition, it is not at all the good of the country they are working
for, but their own personal triumph. Who to-day is going to stop to
examine the rights, the promises, of the candidates of the three mutually
destructive parties working for the hour conjointly in their vindictive
hatred of a Government able to get on without them? But all know very
well that should the Nationalists win and overthrow the Republic, as
they desire to do, it is only then the country would be hurried into a
ruinous civil war. The inoffensive President holds the balance between
Legitimist, Imperialist, and Orleanist, and as soon as arms against the
Republic shall be laid down by all three we may prepare to see them
showing their teeth to each other. For one of the three parties must
triumph, and how will the other two that have fought with it on equal
terms tolerate this obvious consequence of its success?

While admitting that Frenchmen have brought much grace along with the
continual gratification of the senses into the diversions of outdoor
existence, it is questionable if they enjoy them really as the English
do. We cannot easily conceive a French Minister shaking off the cares of
office to refresh himself with all the gusto of a schoolboy on the golf
links. Taste and national character would be much more likely to lead
him to seek change and distraction in that temple of fame, the _salon_.
Here we may picture him talking with the consummate and exquisite ease
of his race. Their sports, like their clubs, the French have borrowed
from England, and, according to the point of view, have improved or
disfigured these noble institutions; but their _salon_ is their own. No
other race has even tried to compete with them on this famous ground,
for the reason that no other race has the art of general conversation.
You must have the instinct of good conversation, be yourself something
of an artist in it, be able to bring an attention, a readiness of wit
and intelligence and information, demanded in this national pastime.
The French speak well because they know how to listen so well. With
them there is no such thing as talking down the company. The deference
given is duly claimed and granted, and the first thing that strikes you
in a _salon_ is the complete absence among the men of that vexatious
British habit of lounging. Frenchmen in their families do not lounge
as Englishmen lounge in strange drawing-rooms. I once heard a Russian
woman who had sojourned in both countries say, _Les Anglais n’ont pas de
tenue_. And this is true. An Englishman who counts himself a gentleman
will put his feet on railway cushions when women are present, he will
sprawl before women in rooms, keep his hands in his trousers pockets
while talking to them, nurse his foot at an afternoon call—in a word, do
everything but sit on the chairs or seats of civilisation in a simple and
inoffensive attitude. Not one of these things have I ever seen Frenchmen
do, even in intimacy. Their correctness in a drawing-room is scrupulous.
Familiarity is the very last thing they suggest, though the house you
meet them at may be one they have been in the habit of visiting once a
week at least for many years. Englishwomen to whom I have remarked this
peculiar characteristic of their countrymen retort that the behaviour of
Frenchmen in dining-rooms is as inferior, compared with that of their
compatriots, as ever could be the behaviour of Englishmen, tested by the
same standard, in drawing-rooms. I willingly admit the accusation, and I
confess I should find both races more delightful if each borrowed the
best of the other, and so mended their ways and became perfect. I do not
care on which side the lesson begins, if only Frenchmen will eat as well
as Englishmen, and Englishmen will imitate the perfect “tone” of the
Frenchman in a drawing-room. The niceties observed by each in its sphere
are equally admirable and equally necessary if we are ever to arrive at
that indefinable and still distant state called civilisation. But to hear
the Anglophobe in France (or, still worse, read him), and the Gallophobe
in England talk of one another, it might be believed that these two great
races stood farthest off from the goal we all aspire to reach instead of
being both in their several ways nearest to it.

I will be honest, and confess that the race of my predilection, France,
is far the worse sinner of the two. To soothe her wounded vanity, and
an imaginary hurt of honour skilfully exaggerated by the Press, she has
descended to foolish misrepresentation of a neighbour with whom she
had far better live on terms of amity. The Russian alliance turned her
head, and for once she had not wit enough to see that she was being
deliberately fooled for purposes not in the least connected with her own
interests. Since that memorable date, she has gradually raised the tone
of her hostility to England, till now her chief aspiration, if we are to
believe the nonsensical Nationalist Press, is to avenge the old defeats
of Crécy, Poictiers, and Agincourt. We will not speak of Waterloo.
That victory is associated with Germany and Russia, and her intention
is, for the moment, to pass as the very good friend of both. Left to
herself, France would never have unearthed these ancient hostilities
of the War of a Hundred Years, for she is in the main both sane and
intelligent; but the Nationalists do not for nothing profess hostility
to the Government, and they are ready for war, even if it but lead to
the reversal of the ministry, and the removal of President Loubet. For
they hate poor M. Loubet with ferocity; and I have seen in the eyes of
some of my Nationalist friends, devout Catholics and Conservatives,
that is, rabid partisans of the lost cause of the aristocracy, a gleam
of joy when one night the late roars of the newspaper boys led us to
fear that the President had been murdered. _On a assassiné Emile!_ they
shouted, leaping to their feet, and flinging down their cards. If their
lips did not simultaneously pronounce the words, “Thank God!” there was
not present an expression of countenance, a tone of voice, that did not
eloquently utter the unchristian thanksgiving at the thought but my own.
And yet these people are all excellent citizens; possess many lovable
qualities, are capable of kindness to friends, to the poor, to foreigners
even. And so I am led, from intimate knowledge of the “Boxers” of
France, to conclude that the “Boxers” of China may not be in themselves
reprehensible creatures, but only wild and misguided “patriots.”
Patriotism is accounted one of the noble virtues of mankind; and when
we obey the dictates of patriotism who is to pronounce them criminal
even when they prompt us to massacre all the foreigners at our gate, and
torture all their partisans within those same gates?

The pastimes of the “little people” are infinitely more interesting than
those of their betters. Here is no idle waste of money on fashion and
display. Every penny spent brings in compound interest in relaxation and
enjoyment. For the “little people” are mighty careful of their sous.
When the small shopkeeper, with his wife and limited family, go to dine
at a restaurant, it is an excellent lesson in domestic economy to watch
their proceedings. One good dinner will be ordered, and the waiter
places this, with a second relay of plates, before the shopkeeper, who
shares this dinner with his wife, and the children feed surreptitiously
off the parents’ plates. Thus four persons will have dined, and well,
at the restaurant price of one. As foreigners are not supposed to be up
to these dodges, they will find their adaptation of them difficult and
discouraging. Those who prefer to picnic in the public woods on a Sunday
have a better time. They fill a lunch basket according to purse and
palate, and set out on the _impériale_ of the tram from the Louvre, which
takes them for three sous each to the wood of Vincennes, one of the most
charming of Parisian fringes. The people of Paris are more spoiled than
any other, for public pleasure-grounds abound, and no one can complain
that the rich have the monopoly of the best. Where will you find such
an exquisite park as the dear little Parc Monceau, with its ruins, and
emerald slopes cut and watered to look like carpets of plush, its alleys
and gorgeous flower-beds? In London such a cultivated bit of fairy-land
would be the exclusive property of the wealthy residents round this park;
not so in Paris, where verdure and flowers are cared for for the public,
to whom they belong. The people of Paris have won their freedom for ever,
and the privileges of the wealthy are reduced to those they can pay for.
Were they to attempt the appropriation of others, the Parisian workmen
are quite ready to start another revolution. Their argument is that, so
long as they are willing to work, they have a right to live, and living
implies not only bread and meat, but a fair share of pleasures. These
pleasures for them must be inexpensive, and their pleasure-grounds must
be maintained at the cost of the public, which in turn is maintained at
the cost of their labour. And so they are free of the Bois de Boulogne,
a gem of public woods; of Vincennes, less prepared and perfumed and
rigorously trimmed, with its wilder bits of scenery along the Marne, its
hillsides and quaint solitudes; of Fontainebleau, that airy heaven of the
artist, on the edge of one of the cemeteries of the _ancien régime_, the
grand old palace of kings which now belongs to the nation, the little
town asleep on its forest marge, where of old the Court played at life in
high dramatic fashion, and “minuetted” itself with grace into the grave.

The surrounding scenery of Paris is unimaginably enchanting. Luckily
for themselves, and unluckily for the fastidious dreamers, the people
have spoiled all this beauty with their gingerbread fairs, their rowdy
diversions, their feasts and improprieties. Bougival is given over
to ladies of indecorous habits and their fugitive mates, Asnières is
now a place where fast men take women at war with respectability and
virtue to dwell at ease, so that these pretty resorts are closed to the
puritan holiday maker. If you have not lived in the neighbourhood of a
French fair for the traditional three weeks of its duration, you cannot
understand to what extent a nation or a city may be martyrised for the
pleasure of its people. The clamour of diverse sounds begins at ten A.M.
and ends only at one A.M., fifteen hours later. There are the roars of
the wild beasts, the tambour beating outside each booth at intervals,
the whiz and whistle of the merry-go-rounds, the frightful music of the
dancing halls, each repeating without intermission the same airs and all
simultaneously, so that you hear the waltz of Faust, of Mme. Angot, the
jingle of the _Danse du Ventre_, and polkas and marches in a maddening
mingle. Add to this the uninterrupted popping of guns, and the shouting
of the booth proprietors, and you have all the elements of an inferno
never imagined by Dante. To complain were idle. The people are taking
their pleasures, and the people must live. So the world of fashion, when
a fair comes its way as it does at Neuilly, makes the best of it with the
good-humoured philosophy of France, and goes down into its midst. At the
fair of Neuilly it is the _chic_ thing for the elegant diners to attend
in evening dress, and admire the pugilist, the lions and tigers, the
merry-go-rounds, and the exhibitions of the tents.

The behaviour of the people at these public entertainments is admirable.
No rowdiness, or drunkenness, or ribald conduct, for the poorest devil in
France has the art of taking his pleasures decently. But as the reverse
of the medal, no people could be less innocent, less clean in its choice
of amusements, and so these gingerbread fairs are well provided with
obscene spectacles. I need cite only one case to prove how deep lie the
roots of the national perversity of a race which reveals in all things
such remarkable exterior grace and refinement. My servant, an excellent
creature, well-bred, of the very highest moral character, and a delicacy
of sentiment and instinct many a lady might envy, a woman a duchess might
make her friend and count herself the gainer, has a child, a little lad
of ten. She has brought up this boy so perfectly that if fate transformed
him to-morrow into a prince, he would have nothing to learn. She has
insisted in his training on an exquisite modesty, the delicacy of a girl,
and a corresponding innocence. I gave this little fellow the other day
half a franc to go down to the fair, then in my avenue, and told him
to go and see a brown bear and a delightful young camel with which I
had made friends; but before the child reached the wild-beast booth, an
elderly gentleman, going into another booth, invited him to accompany
him. Now, the elderly gentleman knew where he was going, and why; the
child did not, and he trustingly went in, paid his twopence, and followed
the elderly reprobate to see—what?—a series of anatomical models in wax;
the man explained the spectacle to the child, and sent him back to his
mother troubled and unhappy. François communicated all that had passed to
my servant, who came to me with tears in her eyes, and we both felt it a
hard thing that a boy in Paris could not be trusted to amuse himself in
a harmless way while waiting for his mother, and almost within range of
her glance, without disgusting snares being laid in wait for him, with no
excuse even on the score that his elders were seeking entertainment where
he was not expected to be found.

Other pastimes of the people, besides fairs and picnics, are the
cheap excursions down the river with inexpensive refreshments on
the water-edge, the public dancing of the 14th of July, and the
illuminations, carnivals, and the feast of the washerwomen with the
coronation of their queen, the free afternoons at the state theatres.
All these are edifying sights, for they show you how decorously
and charmingly the French people can take their diversions and how
good-humoured and well-mannered a French crowd can be. If you venture
up to Montmartre, the hill of impropriety, you will find a different
quality in the entertainment offered. You will be less convinced of the
moral and mental value of the nation. A great deal of hot blue wine is
consumed, and the desperadoes of misprized genius meet to shock and
shake the foundations of the hill by their stupid ruffianism in verse.
Ladies display their underwear, and their havoc of virtue is gauged by
the length of their laundress’s bill. Tenth-rate journalists, unread and
unreadable authors, penniless, whose talent consists in their indecency,
inane and flatulent “masters,” pose here and enjoy in their several ways
the sensation of going to the dogs in a body. They drink out of skulls,
and count themselves original. A waiter dressed as a devil addresses
them, _Que veux tu, damné_? Satan at the counter, with hoofs, horns,
and tail, welcomes them to hell, and they think they have accomplished
unheard-of villainy when they get drunk. It is not unusual to hear that
these amiable gentlemen live upon the profits of prostitution, while
awaiting their merited recognition from a dense and ungrateful world.
Sometimes, but rarely, real talent has travelled down to the Boulevards
by way of Montmartre and the dull Red Mill of Folly. Maurice Donnay is a
brilliant example. He dwelt awhile on his high perch of misprized genius,
but he was speedily valued at his worth, and carried in triumph into a
cleaner and more intelligent atmosphere. There is nothing drearier in
Paris than its resorts of vice, such as the Moulin Rouge, Bullier, its
“halls of brandy and song.” They are quite as vulgar as elsewhere, and
infinitely more disgusting.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV

THE ARMY AND THE NATION

The question of the hour in France is militarism and anti-militarism.
The emotions roused by this fierce duel between these two parties of
the nation are poignant and absorbing, and threaten us ever with civil
war. It is impossible to blink away all the perils and grievances and
wrong-doing in which the final triumph of militarism could involve
France; and still less possible to deny the sad fact that a large
proportion of the country are in favour of military triumph. This fact
is mainly due to the infamous campaign of a Press with little instinct
of honour or truth, which persuades the unthinking multitude that the
salvation of France lies in the hands of a group of unscrupulous and
incompetent generals who, since Sedan, have not done anything to justify
the extraordinary confidence reposed in them by their credulous and
easily fooled countrymen.

[Illustration: A REVIEW AT LONGCHAMP]

Thanks to Napoleon, the French are unable to bear defeat. The race is a
nervous, excitable one, susceptible to great moments of dejection, and
easily plunged into terror under the influence of anxiety. They have not
recovered from the effects of ’70, and their souls are still stamped with
the horrors of that terrible year. They wince at the memory of Sedan,
and have only been able to check the depressing work of remembrance by
a buoyant conviction in the near hour of vengeance. For years they have
fed upon the hope of the _revanche_. Only a general can give them this
desired satisfaction, they believe, and hence their absurd worship of
their army, and their still more absurd readiness to fling themselves
under the feet of any soldier who will fool them with tall talk, and
intimidate them with the discovery of traitors. Their apprehension of
treason in their own midst is one of the most significant symptoms of
demoralisation. According to the modern French, every man seems to have
his price, and every Frenchman is only longing for an opportunity to
sell his country. Not even the Chinese have an intenser distrust of the
foreigner. In the lamentable _Affaire Dreyfus_, the immense majority
were honestly convinced that the nations of the world (Spain excepted)
were banded together to work the ruin of France, and cast shame upon
her army. They knew the figures paid to the Czar, their ally, to the
Emperor of Germany, and to the King of Italy by the Jews. England as
a rich country was supposed to be one of the paymasters of Europe in
its unequal struggle against the honour of France. It was the _Affaire
Dreyfus_ that revealed to the amazed world the sudden passion of the
French people for its army. The army saw its opportunity, seized it, and
may now be said to be in revolt against the nation. Let us be in no doubt
of the fact that France does not desire a military dictator, and that
such a dictatorship would be the very worst calamity that could happen
to her. It is easy enough to detect the wire-pullers behind a parcel
of mischievous journalists; discontented shopkeepers, whose suffrages
are obtained by the promise of brisker commerce under a new condition
of things; the large middle class always in terror of socialism, which
might rob them of their cherished luxuries. There are two great powers
diminished under republican government—the aristocracy and the Church.
These are working together to overthrow what they regard as a common
enemy, and any means are welcome to them, whether foul or fair. Hence we
see a marquis who has denied his order, an atheist and blasphemer who has
shocked every religious and aristocratic conviction, and wounded every
decent French susceptibility by pen and speech, M. Henri Rochefort, the
leading light of the present agitation, a man who has heaped obloquy and
contempt on French generals in days gone by, now the honoured mouthpiece
of the army, fighting, with his usual weapons, the battle of the Church
and the aristocracy. Devout Catholics will say to-day of the man whose
name some years ago they could not bring themselves to mention: _C’est
un bien brave homme_ (“Such an honest fellow!”) and well-born ladies of
unimpeachable morals and manners will spend their halfpennies on the
_Intransigeant_, in which this amiable gentleman exhales his patriotic
wrath. A more singular union has never been celebrated even in France,
land of incongruous contracts and odd proximities, than that between M.
Henri Rochefort and the army of France, the Church, and the aristocracy.

The attitude of the army to-day may be traced to the two parties in
the land already mentioned, through its commanders and officers, who
naturally belong to either or both. The officers who are not well
born—and they are many—would fain conceal the circumstance in a snobbish
democracy, and, as a consequence, adopt with exaggerated fervour the
prejudices of the class to which they desire to be admitted. For
there are no partisans of aristocratic privilege so impassioned and
so silly, as the middle class, who ape their ways and espouse their
cause through snobbishness. It is upon the weakness of this class that
the nobles of France are playing so recklessly. Every second officer
calls himself a count, or viscount, and is accepted as such with joy in
provincial circles and by wealthy parvenus. I should be sorry to deny the
respectability of honest religious convictions, but Catholicism at the
present hour in France is too much a question of fashion and politics
to inspire respect. Men who, to my knowledge, believe in nothing, make
a point of ostentatiously attending religious services and simulating
attitudes of advanced piety, because they think it “good form,” and that
it will give them tone in the eyes of their neighbours. They are well
aware that they cannot hope to place Philip of Orleans on an unstable
throne, being too cognisant of the fact that that singular pretender is
held in light esteem even by his followers and would be far from welcome
to the large majority of his intelligent compatriots, still less to the
working classes, and so they pin their faith to the military dictator.

The popularity of the French army to-day, the outcome, be it said, of a
well-worked political campaign, in which credulous French officers have
been shamelessly used as mere tools, is hard for us to understand, if it
were for nothing else but the heavy mortgage on man’s freshest and most
ardent years which it implies. How, one asks one’s self, can independent
citizens accept such a tax when combined resistance to it ought to be
so easy? For, after all, in a democracy it should be the voice of the
people that rules, and not the law of a dead tyrant. Militarism to the
outsider appears to be not only a demoralising force, but a monstrous
expense; and it passes imagination how so thrifty a race as the French
can go on complacently squandering millions on the support of an army
that has stood still for thirty years and may not move for thirty more.
It would be compensation enough if one could only believe what, in the
face of facts, experience teaches us to be false, that military life
hardens and solidifies a man and gives him an ideal of honour higher
than any he would learn in any trade or profession that might assist
him to a fortune. The proof that it does not solidify the citizen may
be accepted when we remember the coarsening influences of the barracks.
How general is the complaint that the three years spent in the army have
unfitted a country lad for farm service, a town youth for the shop; and
when you dwell on the rapid downward careers of retired officers, of men
dismissed from service, of their inability, once out of regiment lines,
to stand alone and cope with the difficulties of individual strife, it
is impossible to agree to the theory that intelligence and force of
character are acquired in the army. I once heard that _bête comme un
militaire_ is an accepted conclusion in diplomatic circles; and I think
the conclusion a just one. An intelligent soldier over thirty is very
rare to find, however bright and pleasant young officers may sometimes
be. As for the military ideal of honour, that is hardly a thing to speak
of with patience.

Recent events in France have proved how fatal it is to allow the army
of a country to dabble in politics. The military code of honour is good
enough for the battle-field, where all we need of men is the courage
to fight well and the capacity to provoke and profit by the enemy’s
blunders. When the battle is won, it would be a churlish people who
would ask to peer too closely into the method of winning it. For this
reason a licence is permitted to soldiers that could never be tolerated
in civilians. But bring those same morals into civil existence, and
you may judge of the results by an impartial study of the _Affaire
Dreyfus_. Where the civilian, bred to allow the individual some rights,
would hesitate, the spurred and sabred hero knows no fear. He is
accustomed to the effacement of the individual, to the suppression of all
personal rights, to an unmitigated harshness of rule, to the dictator’s
unquestioned authority. The law has no terrors for him, for he possesses
his own law, which is summary and implacable. All means which lead to the
end he has in view are alike serviceable and honest, since he is bound
to win, and, as a soldier, must make short work of all obstacles in
his path. And so, when he drifts into politics, liberty, life, honour,
justice are words he recognises not. He is apt to treat his opponents as
the enemy, to be circumvented at all costs, and into politics he carries
the nefarious theory that all is fair in war. Unhappily, France for the
tristful hour shares his belief. If militarism were not the execrable
plague it is, such a lamentable state of things could never have been
brought about amongst a fairly sane and intelligent people. Nowhere will
you find a higher ideal of justice, of honour, of delicate and noble
sentiment, than in France among the elect. This fact alone proves the
French capable of every generous feeling, which we may be sure militarism
will tend to destroy.

One of the worst things about the French army is, undoubtedly,
conscription. Who is to measure the amount of evil done to the country
by taking young men of twenty-one away from the work which is to make
them independent citizens—to the commerce, the tillage, the liberal
professions of a land where everything must stand still while its youth
learns enough of soldiering to detest it, as a rule, without any serious
profit to the army? I have gathered many impressions of barrack-life from
Frenchmen and have never found that they were imbued with an excessive
admiration of it. The good-humoured and indifferent make a joke of their
trials; but it is plain to the simplest intelligence that their time, for
themselves and their country, would have been better employed at home
than dodging and ducking from the furies of corporals or captains. Here
are some impressions culled from a young soldier’s notes, sent to me by a
scientific student, whose time was lamentably squandered in his year of
futile service.

“Monotony is not the only thing a soldier complains of. I remember
suffering many fits of indignation and of fury, principally in the
beginning. A most remarkable thing about the army is that you are
punished, not only for your own faults, which is quite right, but also
for those of each of your comrades; and so you are responsible for the
behaviour of the whole army—six hundred thousand men. Suppose you are
at Brest. You will not, of course, be hanged if a soldier at Marseilles
misbehaves, but if a soldier on leave a hundred leagues off comes back
tipsy and obstreperous, the leave you hoped to have will perhaps not be
given, and the time you might have employed in a pleasanter manner will
be spent in cleaning the floor with the bottom of a bottle, without wax.
These vicarious punishments occur much oftener in your own regiment,
above all, in your own company; so that the nearer the sinner is to you
the more threatening is he; and if you have the ill-luck to have for
comrade a stupid or awkward fellow, you will be insulted and punished
until that poor devil converts himself. I well remember such an idiot I
suffered constantly for. The sergeant would tread on his feet when he
was cold, and, consequently, more sensitive, and I have seen tears in
his eyes more than once. Nobody, however, pitied him; everyone laughed
at him; and such was his misery, his loneliness, his deep distress,
that I have seen him weeping in bed like a child. He entered the army a
good, poor creature, and will probably leave it a hardened blackguard.
From military life, the school of patriotism, honour, and abnegation,
he will only learn evil.... Sometimes it was so evident that our
sufferings diverted our chiefs, and had no other object, that I fell into
indescribable anger; though I am not bloodthirsty, I would gladly have
killed some of my superior officers—this is no exaggeration; and I well
remember one day weeping from impotent rage.”

Elsewhere he remarks that the only feeling a soldier comes to cherish is
resignation. “He knows very well that none of his superiors will ever say
a kind word to him, and that his destiny is to pay for every annoyance
they undergo. If he behaves himself he will be compelled to toil all day
without evening recreation, and his only reward will be to be called
an idiot by his comrades, to be punished for them, and not be allowed
out oftener than they, and, in the case of a clever comrade, have his
work forced upon him—for in the regiment the clever fellows do nothing,
the fools do everything. Oh, the things I have seen! A black-hearted
sergeant, who always chose for attack weak and sickly men; a Parisian
workman, one of my comrades, on the brink of manslaughter or self-murder
from persecution, not ill-natured, but destined to be sent to Africa for
indiscipline or rebellion. Those who can’t hold their tongues or their
tempers are greatly to be pitied. I saw one strike a chief, and he was
right. I sometimes scorn myself for not having done so too. It makes
a great difference, of course, when you have a good captain or a good
lieutenant. The beginning is the hardest time in barracks. The cavalry
and artillery regiments are the worst of all. You would not believe half
the dreadful things I could tell you of them. The great evil of the army
comes from this. The corporal can injure you; that is all he can do. He
may punish, but he cannot reward. He can prevent you from going out,
but he cannot give you leave of absence before the regulated hour. But
if his power to do good is small, his power to do evil is immense. The
general cannot give a leave if the corporal opposes it. In the army the
punishment always suppresses the reward, but the reward never suppresses
the punishment; and as the number of those who can punish is at least
twenty times greater than that of those who can reward, nearly everything
that happens is disagreeable. In fact, rewards are unknown. To show a
curious example: leave of absence is not a reward; the privation of it
is a punishment. A soldier’s paradise is outside the barracks. Offer him
fifteen days of prison and after that fifteen days’ furlough, and he
will not hesitate. What the corporal and sergeant wish to avoid is being
bored, and so, to get out of work, they punish and govern by the terror
they inspire. The men do not wash their clothes because they should be
washed, but from fear the sergeant should find them dirty. The idea of
duty does not exist in the army; it is the kingdom of fear, into which no
ray of hope or justice penetrates.”

I have left these notes of a young French soldier in their original
English, with hardly an alteration. This is one of the anecdotes
concerning military denseness he sends me: “In the town where my
regiment was quartered there was an exhibition, and the directors of the
exhibition, knowing how light a soldier’s purse is (a soldier’s purse is
one of the most remarkable things I ever saw. It contains everything:
thread, needles, pins, nails, white and black wax, buttons of six or
seven sorts; but if you wish to dig so far as to find money, you are as
likely as not to reach the ground), wrote to the colonel to say that a
certain number of soldiers—sixty, I believe—could visit the exhibition
free every day. In the beginning it was all right. The soldiers had as
lief go to the exhibition as do exercise. They understood nothing; they
were watched by a corporal, and could not go away before the regulated
hour. After two weeks there were not sixty volunteers to be found, and
after a month not twenty; after six weeks not even five. The colonel’s
order was that each day sixty soldiers _could_ go to the exhibition, but
the corporal understood _must_ go, and so every day sixty unfortunates
were bidden to dress themselves in their best and go and be bored for two
mortal hours between pictures and ploughshares, so that in the end the
visit to the exhibition was used as a punishment. This surely was not the
intention of the kind-hearted director.”

Something must be said of how conscription is worked in France. Military
life begins at twenty-one and ends at forty-five, which means that every
Frenchman is subject to the military authorities during twenty-five
years, three in the _Armée Active_, ten in the _Réserve_, six in the
_Territoriale_, and six in the _Réserve de la Territoriale_. A youth,
when he reaches twenty-one, draws a lot in February; he enters the
barracks in November and remains there until September three years later,
and is then guaranteed as a proper defender of his country. After that,
for ten years, he forms part of the _Réserve_, and twice he must return
to the regiment for twenty-eight days. In the _Territoriale_ he must
serve once for fourteen days, and after that he is let alone unless war
should break out, when he must shoulder his gun and knapsack, and go to
the front with the rest. The drawing of lots takes place in the town
hall, where the mayor sits with a big box filled with numbers written
on bits of wood. Each youth draws out a number. Formerly this ceremony
had a meaning, for the owner of a lucky number was exempt from military
service, or only served a year. Now all must serve for three years, and
the numbers count as nothing. Then comes the Revision Council, a most
important thing. If a man passes he enters the barracks six months later;
if not, he waits a year and begins again. If he is refused once, he
serves only two years; if twice, one year; if three times, none at all.
But it is exceedingly rare that a candidate is refused three times, as it
is considered disgraceful not to serve as a soldier, though you should
die in barracks or always be ailing. Men are passed even in advanced
stages of heart disease or consumption, too weak almost to hold a gun.
The chiefs argue that military service will strengthen the weak, and
be very good for the strong. My scientific correspondent ironically
adds: “It is, above all, very good for those who die in the middle of
their three years, for, indeed, they were not hardened enough for such
a difficult thing as life.” But there are so many ways of escaping
from the three years’ servitude, the wonder is all do not profit by
the opportunities offered. These are the lucky ones: the eldest son of
seven brothers, the eldest son of a widow, of an invalid father, or of
one blind or over seventy; those who have a brother “under the flag,”
or students of all sorts. To quote my correspondent again: “There are,
I believe, at least a hundred kinds of students, coming from you could
never imagine where. I had a comrade who was a _clerc de contentieux_. I
have never known, nor has anybody I have asked known, what on earth was
a _clerc de contentieux_. He himself did not know, and when questioned
about it he would answer, ‘Something in the way of law.’ He knew nothing
more about his own profession. I am sure that he had none, but those
magic words saved him two years’ service.”

One of the worst consequences of militarism has of late years been
witnessed in France for the stupefaction and edification of Europe—the
terrorising of all classes. In 1898, we saw how the army comported
itself in the Palace of Justice, which it may be said to have carried
by assault. The whole place was packed with officers in uniform and in
mufti, spurred and sabred menace going through the hall. The law was
laughed at with amazing cynicism by these booted warriors. They refused
to reply to the questions put to them, and threatened the civilians
who presumed to differ from them with the horror of “a butchery.” They
held the field with unexampled effrontery, and the terrorised jury
spoke at their bidding. You must go far back in the Middle Ages to find
another such tale of wholesale assassinations, perjuries, forgeries,
cynical traffic with justice, insolent manipulation of documents,
suppressed correspondence, distorted telegrams, bribed evidence, strident
vituperation and manifestation of despotism, the more extraordinary by
the multiplicity of despots; and so delighted was the befooled populace
by this parade of rabid defiance and booted revolt against national
tribunals (had the magistrates been honest and the jury courageous,
and both held out in the performance of their duty, the suffrages of
the people would just as likely have been on their side, since the
successfulness of success is proverbial) that _Vive l’armée_ came to
mean everything on earth, from the servant-maid’s traditional love of
a uniform, the street Arab’s passion for the blare of a trumpet, the
sentimental citizen’s yearning for Alsace and Lorraine, and the longing
of Imperialist, Royalist, and every other form of fractious opponent of
the Republic to overthrow the Government. In a word, it became the cry
of sedition, admirably worked up by the Church, the Army, and Society.
M. Urbain Gohier’s famous book, _L’Armée contre la Nation_, undoubtedly
contains much exaggerated abuse of French officers and French chiefs,
but it also contains many indisputable truths. When one hears French
officers speaking of civilians with indescribable contempt as “pekins,”
and remembers that all of these miserable pekins have served in the army
and will be called upon, without reward or pay, to defend their country
with their lives, it is difficult not to regard such a passionate attack
as his as justified. The Nationalists to-day have the hardihood to
describe themselves as the only true patriots, the only pure Frenchmen.
The _Temps_ once pertinently asked what they expected to do in war more
than any other kind of Frenchman or patriot—carry two muskets instead of
one? One sees MM. Coppée, Lemaître, and Barrès, the literary chiefs of
the patriots, thus accoutred with an incredulous smile. After twenty-five
years the patriots are still stalking the shades of Alsace and Lorraine,
and hurling defiance towards the Vosges, while every honest Alsatian with
them passes for a traitor.

The army owes its present unwonted prestige and popularity to the
fear war breeds in the modern mind, and this fear it has evidently
utilised through its mouthpiece—the militarist Press. Every event is
pressed into its service; the return from Fashoda of a brave man, the
procession of the École Polytechnique at the grand review, admired for
its ill-treatment of an eminent professor, M. Georges Duruy, the son of
Victor Duruy, because in the intervals of lecturing to them he presumed
to write articles in the _Figaro_ expressing doubts of the culpability
of an unfortunate French officer, one of themselves. The sight of
these young gentlemen suffices to create a delirious enthusiasm, which
is fondly hoped by the authors of the frantic display will prove the
death-knell of the Republic. Never has a nation worshipped stranger, more
incongruous warrior-gods than France of to-day. She has embraced and
wept rapturously over the military virtues and honour of an Esterhazy;
she has melted in the furnace of adoration before Major Marchand; she
has prostrated herself in reverence and gratitude at the feet of General
Mercier, and now she is pantingly waiting for the generalissimo of her
dreams—another Boulanger, plumed, handsome, and haughty, on a black
charger. It used to be for the _revanche_ she so ardently desired this
deliverer, but now the hated enemy is no longer beyond the Vosges, but
on the other side of the Channel. A French boy once wrote to an English
comrade that he wanted to put his hand through the sleeve (the channel,
in French, _la manche_), and shake hands cordially with him. Alas! it is
her sword that bellicose France wishes to put through the sleeve, if we
are to believe the Nationalists, and slay perfidious Albion.

It is, perhaps, an exaggeration to describe barracks, as M. Urbain
Gohier does, as “the school of all crapulous vices: idleness, lying,
debauchery, drunkenness, obscenity, and moral cowardice.” But there is
much truth in his contrasting statement, that “the surprising vitality
and progress in every way of the Anglo-Saxon races are due to the fact
that these latter escape the corrupting and degrading influence of the
barracks.” In war men may herd together and be the better for it, since
they suffer and bear privation together. But in peace it is impossible
that general life of this comfortless kind can have any but a disastrous
action upon character. The twenty-eight days of the reservists may be
an excellent farce, if the discomforts and trials are borne with high
spirits and a sense of fun. From this point of view it is easy enough to
laugh at such amusing plays as _Champignol Malgré Lui_, and the coarse
and witty comedies of Courteline, whose military studies are steeped
in a good-humoured but terrible realism. You must laugh at that brutal
but brilliant little piece, _Lidoire_, capitally acted at Antoine’s,
even while you are filled with an unutterable sense of sadness in
contemplation of the futile suffering of barrack-life. Why should grown
men, under pretext that their country may some day be attacked, be
submitted to the disennobling trials of the general dormitory, to the
annihilating process of inflexible and petty discipline, at the mercy
of the temper and caprices of superiors? The audience at Antoine’s
shout with laughter when the sober fellow is brutalised for his drunken
comrade, whom he is trying to shield, but the thinking spectator is
saddened by the realistic travesty of justice so peculiar to-day in
militarist France. One applauds the more the magnificent outburst
against the army in that remarkable play of MM. Donnay and Descaves, _La
Clairière_, where the tortured workman shouts, “There is no such thing
as an intelligent bayonet.” Think, then, what it must mean for the young
fellow dragged reluctantly from his chosen work, to waste three years
fretting in servitude that does his country no good, to share the common
life of men more often than not repulsive to him. In the case of the
poor it is far worse, for they have no means of avoiding the obligatory
three years’ service; and if you would have some idea of the corrupting
influence of this experience on a farmer’s son, read M. René Bazin’s
charming story, _La Terre qui Meurt_, where the young soldier back from
Africa has acquired such habits of idleness, of café loungings, of
little glasses, and martial vanity that his downward career is traced out
almost on the page that introduces him, and the poor fellow goes to the
dogs, not from inherent viciousness, but because the barracks has spoiled
him for farm-work, for steady labour.

The lucky students destined for civil professions when they leave the
Polytechnique, the École Centrale, the École Forestière, have only a
year’s service, and that under the most comfortable circumstances.
They are officers at once, with £100 a year, a servant, and lodgings
in town. This cannot be said to be much of a sacrifice upon the
altar of patriotism compared with that the ordinary citizen makes in
shouldering his gun and heavy knapsack, in undergoing all the weary and
repugnant experiences of barrack-life. As Urbain Gohier says: “Under a
Democratic Republic there is only one way of escaping from the terrible
barracks—the wearing of the epaulette; there is only one means of not
being a soldier—becoming an officer.” You will find in France that it is
precisely the people who benefit by these means of escaping the worst
consequences of militarism, and women who know nothing at all about it
and could never endure five minutes of the martyrdom, who are its most
violent eulogists. It is difficult to explain military arrogance in
France, for it certainly is not based on the fact that officers alone go
to the wars. When the battle-cry rings over the land the whole nation
arms itself and goes off to fight, as well as the officers, and when
the nation stays at home, so do the officers. When I asked a friend of
General de Gallifet the motives of his resignation, he replied haughtily:
“How could you expect Gallifet to tolerate the interference in military
affairs of a miserable pekin like Waldeck-Rousseau?” In vain did I
point out that when an officer mixes himself up in politics and tries,
in a mischievous and underhand fashion, to injure the Government, the
Prime Minister has every right to interfere, since, in his quality of
“miserable pekin,” politics is his business and not a general’s. And
the man who was speaking to me was but a “pekin” himself, who, like the
Prime Minister, had served in the army, and yet quite approved of martial
contempt for all who do not wear a sabre or a plumed kepi. Watch these
generals ride through the streets of Paris, beribboned and befrogged, and
note the lofty, godlike way they gaze down upon the adoring multitude.
Are they back from the wars? Do all these glorious and shining medals
mean battles won? Where has Zurlinden fought with conspicuous glory?
Where Mercier? Billot? Gonse? And yet they all look as proud and fatuous
as the marshals of Bonaparte returning from their successful raids across
Europe.

I have heard in France a great deal of fine talk, which would be
admirable and noble if it were true, about the soldier’s abnegation, his
lack of ambition, his disinterestedness, and modest pay. A Frenchman
who had just returned from a tour through America once said to me: “It
is our army which maintains our superiority; through it we keep intact
a high ideal. I was struck by this fact in America, where there is no
army and consequently no ideal. There must be a generous part of the
nation kept aside for disinterested work.” We need only glance through
the military history of the world to recognise the utter bombast and
falseness of this view. Officers are no more disinterested than other
men, and there are, in fact, no men so splendidly paid for their services
in all lands. The general who wins a battle is a hero for ever, though no
better brains, no finer qualities may go to the winning of that battle
than go to the making of a useful law, the winning of an election, and
less than goes to a scientific discovery or the writing of a great book.
He has, as well as his pay, his prestige, his popularity; probably a
title and an estate. Jove himself could scarcely ask for more. Take,
then, the ordinary officer. What does he work for if it is not for
military advancement? Is not the title of captain, of major, of colonel,
of general, dearer to him far than the millions of the millionaire? And
surely our payment is measured by the price we put upon it! The man who
prefers millions nowadays does not become a soldier, though in Napoleon’s
days, with the sacking of all Europe in view, it was perhaps the swiftest
road to fortune. But he is paid for his services in the coin he loves
best; and what more can he require? Why pose as the victim of his own
virtues, and prate of his disinterestedness? I was very much struck by
a tragic military novel written recently by two French officers: _Au
Tableau_, a tale of army deceptions and bitternesses in preferment.
Here is the truth put nakedly, and here is a revelation of military
want of judgment, of justice. The general is a dense brute and a snob,
who chooses his officers by their rank and fortune, and not by their
merit. The hero, of Irish extraction, is a man of culture, of delicate
sentiment, of intensely active conscience and brains. He is sacrificed
all along the line to the base intrigues of inferior men, comrades who
spy and tittle-tattle, idiot aristocrats who look down on their untitled
brother officers, and dazzle by their expensive hospitality. Defeated and
discouraged, he leaves the army to find himself an outcast, a _déclassé_,
with nothing before him but suicide. The moral of the tale, of course,
is, that even in the army it is better to stay there, however hard
things may go with an officer; for outside there is nothing for him but
suspicion, averted glances, ill-will, and slander. But the picture it
draws of the army from within is one of unspeakable sadness. This vaunted
French school of abnegation is full of intrigues, perfidies, injustices,
petty persecutions, petty miseries. It makes men glad to be outside it,
breathing the air of liberty and personal responsibility.

An Englishman said to me one day, “There was only one honest man in the
French army, and they turned him out.” This is naturally an extravagant
assertion, but it expresses in wild fashion a secret feeling in the
minority. “I was bred in the worship of the army, and brought up a
fervent Catholic,” said an eminent French writer lately; “well, it is
with difficulty now I keep myself from looking away when I see an officer
or a priest.” There can be no denial that soldiers with a delicate
conscience are not approved of in the French army. They are regarded as
dangerous subjects, apt to create “affairs.” When a colonel exposed a
scandalous abuse in a certain regiment, the President of the day sent him
word that “a due regard for the honour of the army should prevent every
officer from making an accusation, however justified, or creating any
scandal that could diminish the prestige of the army.” The army, we see,
is the one institution insusceptible to the rigours of justice, wherein
ill-doers enjoy immunity (if they are not of Jewish persuasion) for the
sake of that extraordinary thing called the “honour of the army.”

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V

SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Education in France has neither the moral nor social value it has in
England. In the first place, public-school life has nothing like the
importance it has with us, where a university education almost suffices
to make a gentleman of a young man, for, whatever his origin may be, the
Oxonian is pretty sure to plume himself on the prestige of his training.
In France there is no equivalent for this rank. Where a man has been
educated is of no consequence to him in after life. While he is at
school, his parents, if they happen to be nobles, or snobs who desire to
pass for nobles, or as belonging to a set _bien pensant_, like to be able
to say that their son is at the school of Vaugirard, Madrid, La Poste, or
at the Marists. This fact suffices to pose a family with the hall-mark of
indisputable correctness. Neither the Jesuits nor the Marists offer such
solid advantages in the way of pretension and reputation as the English
universities do, but they secure youth from the taint of Republicanism,
and Society knows that it can rely on their support when the long and
expected _coup d’êtat_ comes off. In certain circles, to be educated Is
not the main thing, but not to be mistaken for one of the _canaille_.

M. Demolins wrote a book, _A quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons_,
which made a considerable stir. The author maintains that the violent
contrast between the two races starts in the schoolroom, and reveals to
us already the deep-seated causes of their differences. The French boy
is trained in the suppression of all independence, the discouragement of
all initiative. Those brought up in the secular _lycées_ have nothing
to remember but unqualified misery. The system is less intolerable for
the day-pupils. These come at eight and leave at seven. Each class lasts
two hours, and if the boy’s way lies through any of the big gardens,
he can enjoy, with other outdoor comrades, many an hour of play. The
indoor martyrs are less privileged, for each moment of recreation is
as severely guarded as the hours of class. They have stated intervals
for play; in the earlier years they are contented with running, but,
by-and-by, they crave for more violent and interesting exercise, and
when these are denied them, they give up play. Until lately, all violent
games were forbidden in the _lycées_ because they were regarded as
dangerous, and the college principals are responsible for all accidents
that happen in their schools. Not long ago a _proviseur_ was heavily
fined because one of the students, in flinging a stone, had accidentally
broken a window and hurt another boy’s eye. It is easy enough, under such
extraordinary circumstances, to understand the _proviseur’s_ persistent
discouragement of rough games. Skating is not allowed, for this, too, is
dangerous; and, for the same reason, gymnastics are permitted only once
a week, each student going in turn to the gymnasium and staying there
for about three minutes. And so in French colleges these blustering
years of boyhood know no other variety of pleasure than the treadmill
of the courtyard. Backwards and forwards they walk in recreation hours,
talking together; and need it be supposed that the words of wisdom are
ever on their lips? As I have said, the day-students do not need much
pity. They can make the _lycée_ merely a daily accessory of life—a place
they go to generally with the intention of wasting their time. Should
they have the good-fortune to light upon a first-rate teacher, which is
rare, they will get some profit from the hours spent at the _lycée_. But
the indoor student is wretched. He is a dejected being, with none of
the distractions of his age—unboyish, unjoyous, watched and watching,
prematurely demoralised by his fellow unfortunates, and, like them, the
slave of the very worst possible system of education.

[Illustration: CONSECRATED BREAD

_Dagnan-Bouveret_]

M. Demolins complains that the French rely too much on stiff examinations
as a test of knowledge, and a French youth writes me on this subject: “We
have a great many schools in France; as many as there are professions,
since nobody who has not spent two or three years in some sort of
school, and undergone innumerable examinations, can hope to do anything.
For instance, I have undergone nine examinations, and it is not even
over! Naturally, I only refer to necessary examinations. They begin
at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Before that period you must have
been at a _lycée_ or college. A _lycée_ is a government establishment,
and a college belongs to its township. The training is identical, but
the college professors are less well paid. Their inferiority to the
_lycée_ professors lies in the fact that they have not undergone so many
examinations as these, or, perhaps, only have come out of them less
successfully. In the _lycées_ and colleges there are two methods—the
literary or old method, and the scientific or new one. The old method is
general: literature, geography, history, German or English (never both),
Latin, Greek, mathematics, every year; in the first years only zoölogy,
botany, and geology, and in the last years philosophy. But always the
most important thing is Latin. The youth who has gone through the course
of philosophy has learnt Latin for seven years, Greek for five years and
a half, but, knowing that his Latin will be of no service to him after
he has passed his _baccalauréat_, as soon as he thinks he knows enough
for that examination—and he thinks so at an early hour—he flings his
Latin books at the head of his professor or recklessly goes to sleep upon
them, if he be working merely for place as a bureaucrat; and I, for one,
have not the heart to blame him. Unfortunately, it is the same thing for
German, and English, and everything else. Amongst a hundred young men in
the philosophy class, not more than two will understand or speak German,
and never more than one will speak English. Amongst a hundred French
youths speaking German or English you will find that ninety-nine have
spent some years in Germany or England; the hundredth is a phenomenon.
Besides, it is fashionable to-day in France not to know a word of a
foreign tongue. The scientific method is less general than the literary
method. It comprises chiefly sciences and modern languages—German,
English, Spanish, and Italian. It is certainly more serious than
the other. There is a _baccalauréat_, too, but unlike the literary
_baccalauréat_, which is an aim, the scientific _baccalauréat_ is only
the means of arriving at an aim. The literary _baccalauréat_ leads to
nothing, or to the law school, which is almost the same thing, for,
speaking generally, the students have no other object than the avoidance
of the three years’ military service.” The scientific _baccalauréat_
leads to the Polytechnique school, to St. Cyr, or to the school of
medicine, but those who wish to become officers or doctors do not leave
the _lycée_ after the _baccalauréat_, and some stay on three or four
years longer. The _externes_, that is, those who go to the _lycées_ only
for the classes, are well off, for these find their pleasures and moral
training where they should be found, at home and with comrades of their
own choosing. But the _demi-pensionnaires_ are nearly as unfortunate as
the _internes_, as these are condemned to most of the prison tortures
of one of the worst gifts the genius of Napoleon gave to the land he so
basely used. “Everyone knows well enough our dreadful college,” writes M.
Demolins, “with its much too long classes and studies, its recreations
far too short and without exercise, its prison walks, a monotonous going
and coming between high, heart-breaking walls, and then every Sunday and
Thursday the military promenade in rank, the exercise of aged men and not
of youth.”

For this reason you will never hear a French boy speak with any kindly
sentiment of his school-days. Napoleon, who invented the horrid
system, was a creature absolutely destitute of kindness or humanity.
He wanted more destructive machines, willing for the chance of what is
euphemistically called “glory.” Virile independence in boyhood was just
the very last thing a man like Napoleon could be expected to value. An
English schoolboy will cheerfully go to the wars by force of his own
good-will, but he will not be whipped thither by Government whether he
wills it or not. And you would never find him submitting, as his French
brother does, with patience and resignation to a scholastic system which
atrophies his body and unduly heats his brain. The instincts of his race
must be considered, and these make for energy, action, and independence.

From the _lycée_ to French fiction is a big jump, and at first blush
neither seems to have any connection with the other, yet I do not
hesitate to blame the unhealthy, enervating, and unmanly training of the
former for many of the lamentable scandals of the latter. English boys
are not saintly, but they are certainly admitted, by those who have had
opportunities of judging both, to be cleaner-minded, with a more vigorous
and healthy outlook, than French lads. The same difference exists between
French and English girls. To begin with, the French are naturally less
frank and truthful; and where there is practised dissimulation it is not
easy to answer for the moral and mental cleanliness of the young. These
young fellows, whose sole distraction from excessive and futile mental
labour has been the daily promenade in the courtyard, who have been the
recipients of insidious confidences and unhealthy talk, leave school
blighted and perverted. We need not ask ourselves what, in nine cases out
of ten, follows, the tenth being the admirable youth who takes himself
and his future responsibilities seriously, who loves knowledge with the
disinterestedness and capacity for sacrifice to it that a Frenchman of
the best kind is capable of. But these others, unsoundly bred, without
an outlet for the barbarous spirits of the youthful male,—what will be
their experiences? Denied exercise, they cannot even fall back upon
innocent flirtation with girls of their own age, for this is not possible
in France. And so these newly emancipated citizens straightway wander
off in search of romance into a world that it would have been wise and
right to keep them out of, and whatever freshness the _grisette_ may
leave them can speedily be lost in the still more destructive hands of an
unprincipled married woman. It is the shabby and monotonous love-affairs
of this uninteresting rake, his steady degradation, that procure renown
for the popular romances; to paint him and his dreary deceptions and
drearier outrages on decent feeling a whole school of novelists exists
and thrives, and the great desire of the newly married bride, never
before permitted to read the fiction of her own land, is to learn what
life is through his unmanly and ignoble adventures. Had the boy been
trained differently he would have had another ideal, and there would have
been some place for noble aspirations and generous sentiment in a heart
not yet hardened by squalid cynicism.

[Illustration: THE REFECTORY

_A. Bouvin_]

The great defect of the _lycée_ system is its impersonality. The
Republican professors should borrow a hint from their more successful
ecclesiastical rivals, the Marists and Jesuits, and hold their pupils by
the influence of personal relations, win them by the direct exercise of
moral guidance. There are two courses to adopt in training youth—that
followed by the priesthood, which is insidious, and which regards them
not as so many young men to be taught how to live and conduct themselves
as honourable men, but as so many souls to be saved in a world to
come. The second is the British method, the object of which is to make
men of boys, to teach them to think and act for themselves, to be
self-sufficing, self-supporting, to know how a gentleman should act in
all circumstances, and, should nature have denied him intelligence, to
prove himself, in the depths of his stupidity, at least a “gentlemanly”
ass. I give my preference, I will own, to the British system, like M.
Demolins, but what I should prefer to it even would be a third, not yet
practised, by which youth might profit by the best in the English course
of training and the best in the French; that is to say, a combination
of the superior French intellectual education and the superior English
moral training. If there were nothing between a well-brought-up fool and
an intellectual cad, then, in Heaven’s name, give us nothing but the
sympathetic fool; but how much better if we could have the well-bred
“intellectual” too! Some years ago a Greek minister, about to send his
son to a public school either in France or England, did me the honour to
take me for a wise and intelligent person,—which I have no pretension
to be,—and asked my advice on the question of a choice of countries. I
told him he would have to decide between knowledge and education. If he
wished his son to be brought up in a healthy, virile fashion, taught
to conduct himself on the lines of the British ideal, which for all
practical purposes is about as fine a one as is to be found, though it,
too, has limitations it were well to recognise and acknowledge—then let
it be England, and Oxford or Cambridge. If, on the other hand, he wished
to see his son a proficient scholar, well grounded in the classics,
intellectually trained in the course of a couple of miserable years, his
brain overworked in the depressing atmosphere of a prison, then let the
French _lycée_ be his choice. The minister decided for knowledge; and I
believe his son returned to Athens a very brilliant young fellow, and all
that a statesman could desire his son to be. He would have learnt less in
England, but certainly he would have had a pleasanter time; and to me it
always seems that our real education only begins when we have left off
compulsory learning; that what we teach ourselves and not what others
teach us is of consequence. A duffer will always be a duffer, however
much you may stuff his head; the main thing is that he should be an
honest duffer. The brilliant boy will never fail to light upon food for
his brains wherever he may find himself.

The misfortune is that everything in France leads to politics, and hence
we have had the disgraceful sight of students in revolt against their
professor, hissing and pelting him because elsewhere he had chosen to
express political views to which these wise and learned young gentlemen
objected, or because his politics were not those of their parents. The
class of an eminent professor at Bordeaux was deserted, and stones were
flung at him in the street by his pupils, for a graceful and manly
reference to the cause of the death of the dean of his university,
whose funeral oration he was called upon to pronounce. Under such
circumstances, it is difficult to acquire a beneficial influence as a
professor, for personal prestige, the value of character—which is the
highest thing we can value in a teacher—are of no account in a land
where, generally speaking, a man is loved or hated, not for the life he
leads, the acts he commits, the duties he leaves unfulfilled, but solely
for the political side he takes. In modern France character is nothing;
politics everything. What students first demand is that their professors
shall be on the side approved of by this immature class. After that they
will condescend to listen to them. But the notion of being guided and
influenced by the older mind, the riper judgment, does not enter their
heads. The only professors who know how to grip and mark for life these
malleable natures are the Jesuits. When Jesuit boys break away from
their keepers, the Jesuits have no bitterer enemies. What intelligent
Protestant has ever given us arguments so powerful and damning against
Jesuit training as those two novels by their old pupils, _Le Scorpion_
of Marcel Prévost, and _L’Empreinte_ by Estaunié? _L’Empreinte_ (The
Stamp) is much the greater study of Jesuitism of the two. Here you see a
young, pliable nature for ever caught in its meshes, not brutalised or
overtly captured, but insidiously demoralised, directed unconsciously
into the path of dissimulation and unsleeping watchfulness, out of
which the manliest efforts he makes afterwards, when he has shaken off
its vice-like grasp of his individuality, never carry him. Here you
understand, as no melodramatic stories of Sue or Dumas could make you
understand, the shuddering intensity of moral hold; the implacable, mild
pursuit; the potency and success of the Jesuits all the world over. It
is a mistake to associate this self-rooted dislike of the Jesuits with
bigoted Protestantism or blatant atheism. Read the exquisite stories of
Ferdinand Fabre, studies by a sincere Catholic of Catholic life, which
bear upon the underhand persecution of excellent, well-meaning country
priests by what are called the Congregationalists, the Black Army, the
Jesuits chiefly. Read that delightful study of Cévennes life under the
Restoration, _Jacquou le Croquant_, by Eugene Le Roy, and see how a good
French Catholic, who loves and reveres the saintly village curate, can
loathe his enemies, the Jesuits. Here, too, as in Ferdinand Fabre’s _Mon
Oncle Celestin_, a beautiful soul, a kind of early Christian,—who lives
only to do good around him, whose life is one long lesson of love, of
sacrifice, and abnegation,—is hounded out of the priesthood, falsely
accused, horribly slandered, and excommunicated; and all by the secret
manœuvres of the Jesuits, because he accepted the Republic, deeming it
more the priest’s duty to concern himself with the private interests
and sorrows and trials of his flock than to dabble in politics; more
occupied in spreading the evangelical precept, “Love one another,”
than in maintaining the power of the Church. I count among my friends
Jesuits whom I like and appreciate, for whose private character I have
the highest possible esteem, whom I have found in all respects amiable,
educated gentlemen, full of gaiety and charm, and of a sympathetic
address rarely to be met with in any other class of men. But of the
order and its principles, based upon knowledge, I feel nothing but
dislike. The Jesuits in China, in South America, have, I understand,
and willingly believe, done good work. We know that they are brave, and
can sacrifice their lives in the cause of their religion. I know from
personal experience that they can be the most charming and sympathetic of
men. But can anyone point out the good they have done in Europe? What are
their charities? What are their good deeds? What noble use do they make
of their extraordinary worldly influence? For, wherever they establish
themselves, it is the world of fashion, and not the poor, they gather
round them. When they open schools, it is for the rich, for the powerful,
for the aristocrats of the land. If you pass their doors, it is carriages
you will see there; well-dressed ladies and men of fashion you will find
on their steps, and not the outcast, the abandoned wife and children,
miserable, poor, and withered humanity. The order is essentially a
political and not a Christian order, established to work upon the
wealthy, and to obtain their suffrages.

In proof of this statement I need only quote a common phrase among
middle-class Catholics, “If you are not rich or clever, never go near the
Jesuits.” They appreciate brains as much as money, for they can make good
use of both, but you will never hear their praises sung by the poor, the
“little” class, useful neither socially nor politically, through whom
they cannot hope to advance their order and secure it prestige. The order
was founded by an aristocrat and a soldier. Aristocratic it has ever
since remained in its sympathies; and the moral of the Dreyfus affair has
given us a good notion of the military principles of honour, justice,
and truth which modern France owes to its training. For assuredly it is
the Jesuits who have exercised a wider influence upon the educational
forces of France than any other society; it is they who are the deadliest
enemy of the Republic; and as they hold all the forts of tradition,
aristocratic, fashionable, and military, France may be said to be in
their hands. It is to be hoped that when posterity comes to judge the
recent crisis through which France has passed it will not spare a society
which deserves ill at the hands of humanity.

One of the things for which the Jesuits are to be praised or blamed,
according as you may view the proceeding, is the extraordinary way they
follow their pupil out into the world and through the various phases of
his career. If he forsakes them, as the harassed hero of _L’Empreinte_
does, an invisible hand arrests his course at every step. He is the
victim of the implacable pursuit of those who trained him, while he can
never throw off the habit of dissimulation acquired in his impressionable
youth. Let him go where he will, let him be what he will, the moral of
M. Estaunié’s masterly study is that he is stamped with the imperishable
stamp of Jesuitism. He cannot be frank and straightforward, even with a
violent effort, and he knows that, whatever he does, he is being watched
and followed. _L’Empreinte_ is a book that should be given to every newly
married pair, in the hope of making them think twice when their son
is born, before deciding to have him brought up by the Jesuits. Since
France is, on the whole, a Catholic country, it would be unfair to the
large majority of the race to attempt to suppress the seminaries, and
prevent French boys from being trained by priests. If the professors are
laymen, with a tolerably free hand, there is no reason why the principals
should not be ecclesiastics. A good priest can do no harm anywhere, if
only he will abstain from politics and sedition. Indeed, if he thought
a little more of rigid truthfulness, and recognised the value of sports
in a boy’s training, I should be disposed to regard him as an excellent
college principal, for we may be sure that his influence will be directed
against vice of every kind. Unfortunately, the ecclesiastical temperament
tends to undue interference and espionage, for which the habits of the
confessional are mainly responsible. In these novels by Jesuit pupils
in revolt, the abuses of the confessional in the training of boys are
clearly indicated, and though these abuses are considerably diminished in
the case of secular priests, I still have no faith in the discretion of
the good Fathers of Stanislas.

When I was present at the distribution of prizes at the Sorbonne, a very
imposing spectacle, the display of Stanislas was that of a charming,
well-bred group of French lads, but behind each I saw the spectre of
dissimulation, the insidious suggestion of the “priestly Father,” and
the glory of the Church to the detriment of the State, the significant,
inalterable law of Catholicity, that the triumph of good is the
justification of evil, and that the law of Christ is less important than
the maintenance of sacerdotal prestige and power. I looked attentively
at those boys, and asked myself what the value of such training could
be for them. For the priests who have educated them, they represent so
many prized instruments against the Republic, and possibly so many future
souls in paradise. But they themselves? When the present fashionable
craze for mere “exterior” Catholicity—which is nothing more than an
exasperated revolt against foreign influences, on a level, in the record
of modern civilisation, with the outbreak of the Boxers of China—shall
have exhausted itself, many of the lads will be mediocre freethinkers;
the greater part will be what are euphemistically called “non-practical
Catholics,” that is, men who are not expected to go to Mass of a Sunday
in the shooting season, because it interferes with their sport; who
regard confession as a distraction for women; who allow neither God nor
the devil to stand between them and the most shameless vices, but who are
married and buried by the ritual of Holy Mother, the Church, and whose
friends, after their death, piously contemplate them aloft, wreathed and
winged, playing harps and chanting hymns, who in life never listened with
pleasure to any but ribald songs and unedifying verse.

I have read attentively a little _mémoire_ of the Stanislas College,
relating all that is to be told about its routine and order. A sadder
pamphlet in connection with boyhood could not be found anywhere. Not a
moment’s liberty, not an hour of honest gaiety; under the eye of the
overseer from their up-rising to their down-lying. It is bad enough to
think of girls so trained in convents; but as the world expects less
initiative, less independence, from women, it matters less for them,
though it matters much more than parents believe. But who can expect such
an unhealthy system as that of Stanislas to turn out straightforward,
manly youths? I will translate some of the laws of the institution, and
the reader may judge for himself. If it makes him wish to have been
brought up at Stanislas, under the care of the good Marists (priests
devoted to the service of Mary), I can only say that I do not envy his
taste. To begin with, the system of emulation I regard as disastrous;
it invariably opens the door to cheating and lying, to jealousy and
ill-will. Pride, sense of duty, affection for their masters, are much
higher incentives to study than marks, which imply too much espionage
on the part of the masters. Stanislas teaches by the desire of reward
and the fear of punishment. Even in the case of very young children I
hold that this system is deplorable; in that of youths, who are fencing,
riding, studying philosophy and the higher mathematics, I can only
qualify it as idiotic. Why should a boy receive a prize for behaving
himself decently? The moment you put a premium on good conduct you
invite the hypocritical to perfect themselves in the art of duplicity in
order to compete for it. What master can honestly pronounce on a boy’s
character, and swear that the good boy is quite as good as he looks? The
moment you tell him that to appear good is to merit a prize, his goodness
ceases to be disinterested, and, therefore, virtuous; and in order not
to lose his own prize, won by the assiduous suppression of impulse, of
temperamental revelation, of all natural instinct, is he not apt to fall
into the approved vice of assisting in the discovery of the faults of
his rivals? The only prizes we can accept without moral danger are those
awarded for actual work done. These have their pitfalls for character
too, but there is not nearly such peril of demoralisation. The conduct
and work of pupils are appreciated every week by the number of marks, and
rewards and punishments are allotted accordingly. A hundred marks buys an
outing. Is not this atrocious? That bad conduct should keep a boy indoors
when he might be out with his parents is a recognised form of punishment
for ill-behaviour; but that he should have to purchase by marks the
right to go out seems to me altogether wrong. Even a boy should have his
rights, his heritage of free birth; and to be forced to pay for these
upon the judgment of others is an iniquity. Forty-one long pages are
devoted to the explanation of this futile, shabby, and spying system of
emulation, a kind of artificial moral respiration, in which all apertures
for simplicity, frankness, and spontaneity are hermetically sealed.

[Illustration: THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES]

Here, now, are the rules of the establishment. Silence is compulsory,
except at recreation hours, and then speech is strictly controlled by
the president, for, says the pamphlet, “One of the first conditions
of the college order is silence; those who are unable to keep silence
are running the risk of utter ignorance and worthlessness.” One of the
attributes of piety, also enjoined, is found to be “friendship for
those who are worthy of it.” I should like the Marists to explain to me
what they mean by such an extraordinary assertion. In the first place,
who is to pronounce on the kind of person worthy of friendship, least
of all a schoolboy? Is the pious boy himself worthy of inspiring the
sentiment? Many a pious person is incapable of feeling friendship for
anybody. This does not take from his piety. It merely proves that he is
charming, or cordial, or good-natured, which many an impious soul may
be. And why seek to turn a pleasing young animal into a hateful little
prig, asking himself, when he should be playing games and flattening
an enemy’s nose, if the boy he projects bestowing his friendship on is
worthy or not of it? Let the other boy be a black, a brute, or a beggar,
his comrade should be content if he likes him. Friendship can never have
a more solid, human, and wholesome basis. When we read this sentence we
feel that the little Stanislas prig, with his eyes turned down, and his
toes turned out, wants a good kicking. If only one could hope to see his
nose bleed! but alas! these are the laws of the recreation ground: “All
violent and dangerous games are forbidden, likewise all games that touch
upon gambling, and cries, and songs, and whistling, and, in general, all
that resembles disorder of any kind. It is forbidden to fling stones,
to communicate with pupils of another division, to lie on the ground,
to drag one another about, to fight. And the pupils can never leave the
recreation-ground without leave.”

If, after that, the reader does not agree with me that it is a fine thing
to be a British lad, with his cricket, his football, his occasional
black eyes, his surreptitious feeding, his long-drawn accounts with
the lemonade and ginger-wine merchant, his chatter, and escapades,
I can only advise that misguided individual to send his son with
all haste to Stanislas, and let him be turned out in its approved
fashion, a first-rate, consummate prig and humbug, a well-mannered,
French-speaking young hypocrite, perfected in the art of duplicity and
self-repression, who, on the order of the Marist Fathers, only bestows
his friendship on those worthy of it—individuals, it is to be hoped, of
his own self-conscious, sanctimonious way of thinking. He has been bred
to calculate the value of every action and every word, for each leads
to punishment or reward. He has never, for five mortal minutes, been
permitted to show himself for the young barbarian he is. He is a pious
old diplomat, a rascal in _posse_, a sage in _esse_, when he ought to
be a simple, high-spirited, or dreaming child. Between his spiritual
readings, his meditations, his confessions, church services, retreats,
and rigid discipline, whose control of every minute only ceases when the
poor martyr enters the lovely land of dreams,—where the Marists, if they
could, would follow him, to see that imagination played no tricks on
their training, and that in that world of vagaries and topsyturvyism he
was still the pious, silent, and obedient lad they had formed,—he is not
a form of boyhood it is pleasant to contemplate. He is allowed fifteen
minutes to dress of a morning, under watch, to see “that he dresses
promptly and decently beside his bed,” and out of that there is not much
time for ablutions. Possibly, like the kings of France, his washing
consists of ten fingers dipped into a basin no larger than a milk-bowl.
In class he must make no movement of foot or desk, his mind must not
wander, he may not open any other book but the class-book in use, he
must not draw, or give himself up to any frivolous occupation—presumably
verse-making. If he has need to open his desk, he must only lift the lid
half-way, and never lock it, as the prefect visits it once a week. He
washes his feet once a week and his body once a month, and in summer
bathes twice a week. In the parlour he can be visited only by his
parents, or persons duly authorised by his parents, and when he goes home
of a Sunday he must be escorted from the college and back by a “person of
confidence,” furnished with a signed and dated letter. This person can
under no circumstances be accepted if a young man.

Those who have the responsibility of the Stanislas pupil on his outing
must observe the precautions exacted by the directors. On going out he
receives an entrance ticket, which his parents or guardian must fill up
with the details of his day, and this account is verified and stamped on
his return to the college. The pupil who returns without an escort is
punished for a month. Should he obtain leave on false pretences, he is
expelled. He can advance by a day or prolong for a day his winter and
Easter vacations, by payment of three thousand marks. His letters to
his parents or guardian are not read, but they must bear the signature
of these on the envelope to assure their privacy; all the rest of his
correspondence is under strict control, and the introduction of a book,
not a class one, a pamphlet, or a newspaper, constitutes an infraction
of the rules so grave as to merit expulsion. This system of education
begins at childhood, when he enters the eleventh class and graduates
into the preparatory classes for the Naval School and St. Cyr, when his
moustache is beginning to bud and he is still supposed to bestow his
friendship on those who are worthy of it. Poor youth! He has learnt
everything—from the Catechism to mathematics, from philosophy (of a kind)
to fencing, riding, and gymnastics (also of a kind, and warranted never
to last longer than half an hour, twice a week)—except simple manliness,
independence, and the real philosophy, which will help to carry him
decently through the surprises and snares of existence, and help him
to meet unaided an emergency. Toss him roughly from his Stanislas bark
upon the turbulent sea of experience, and what may you expect from this
fatuous, trained young hypocrite? The wave rolls over him, carries him
to the bottom, and he comes up all covered with mud. Of course he abuses
freedom, a stimulant he has never known, and he speedily converts it into
the intoxicant of licence.

It will be seen that the training of boys, whether in French seminaries
or in French _lycées_, is not the most perfect of its kind. There is
the careful home-training, too, which is, of course, the best. But here
also the shadow of the Church towers over childhood. The boy leaves his
nurse’s hands to toddle into those of his ecclesiastical tutor, Monsieur
l’Abbé. He attends _cours_ and studies at home, with the priest, and
when he attends the classes of a _lycée_ he is duly escorted back and
forth, with all imaginable precautions to prevent from getting in his
mind what should not be there; and finally he is sent to St. Cyr or
Saumur, with the usual results. Gyp has given us an amusing sketch of the
innocent little lad of this period in _Le Petit Bob_, about as black a
little rascal as ever breathed, and of the model Jesuit boy, “Monsieur
Fred,” an accomplished rake, when he is not supposed to look above the
rim of his prayer-book.

And now let us glance at the training of the girls. This is, if possible,
more deplorable than that of the boys. But it is an admirable testimony
to the natural superiority of the Frenchwoman’s character that even the
long-persistent effort to spoil her in early years does not prevent
her from turning her liberty, when it comes, to excellent account. The
little French girl in her mother’s home is happier, I believe, than any
other little girl of the world. No child has such tender, such watchful,
such devoted, parents as she. She is enveloped in love and care from
her cradle, and her privilege is to hear delightful speech about her. A
foreign _gouvernante_ will be engaged to teach her whatever language it
is intended she shall speak fluently—German or English. If she is not to
go to a convent (and this will be, in her interest, the only intelligent
decision) she attends _cours_ like her brother, and the _gouvernante_
is superseded by the certificated governess. A good governess, that
is, a cultured and liberal-minded lady, is a priceless blessing, but,
unhappily, she is rare. I do not know why the best class of women avoid
the mission of training the young, for, in the case of a woman without
children of her own to train, it ought to be regarded as an exceptionally
noble undertaking. It is not, however; and more’s the pity. Society is
to blame, with its inane traditions, and, along with it, the senseless
passion for inflicting slight and pain upon those in an inferior position
which besets so many women in their own homes. And so, not wishing to be
treated as servants, without any proper status or dignity, the superior
women, who would make the best governesses, seek more independent and
congenial occupation; and the training of girls at home falls into the
hands of hopeless mediocrities, who have little knowledge and less
manners, whose point of view is squalid and shabby and personal. I have
listened to the complaints of many an unhappy governess, and I will own
I have always been shocked and sickened by the silly way these women
allow their lives to be poisoned by considerations they should have the
dignity to ignore. How are young women to acquire a noble influence
over their pupils when they are busy lamenting the fact that biscuits
at lunch were not offered to them, or other such material and vulgar
slights which they usually dwell upon as unendurable? If they have heart
enough to love, and brains enough to teach and guide, their pupils, and
sufficient independence of character not to let themselves be trampled
upon, overworked, or snubbed, of what would they have to complain? Let
them raise the tone of their position, and they will get all the respect
they need and have a right to. I know Frenchwomen who are grandmothers,
who still love and admire the feeble and disabled governesses of their
girlhood who have helped to train their children and their grandchildren.
But in France the superior woman, who might have made an excellent
governess, is apt to enter one of the teaching orders, where, instead of
doing the good she was intended to do singly, she helps in the crowd to
work evil.

The home education of girls will be referred to in another chapter; here
I wish to treat of the other kind,—the conventual training. Speaking from
extensive knowledge of it, and of wide personal experience, I do not
hesitate to qualify it as the very worst possible. It is bad everywhere,
but nowhere is it so bad as in France. Its essential object is the
destruction of independence and candour. I do not say that a frank girl
will never be met with in a convent, but you will never find her among
the privileged ones; she will be one of the black sheep, one of the
unpliable, one of those who cannot be utilised to full advantage for the
greater glory of God, A. M. D. G.! There never was a more subtle legend
invented by man for the pursuit of his own aims under the mantle of
self-abnegation.

The convent girl is the creature of her environment. You will know her
by the hall-mark of her manners. These will be perfect when she comes
out of The Assumption, or any other Parisian convent of fashionable
renown. Wealthy converted Jews, of rabid anti-Semitic tendencies, send
their daughters to these famous establishments for the knotting of useful
social ties. I have known of the children of a great foreign merchant
being accepted in one of these centres of aristocratic exclusiveness,
on the condition that they concealed the fact that they belonged to the
commercial classes, and the result was that the unfortunate children,
with the natural ease of their imaginative years, drifted into glorious
bragging and lying. There was no objection on the part of their trainers
to any exercise of imagination that served to ennoble them; the objection
would have been provoked by betrayal of the truth. It will be said that
this is an exceptional example perhaps. Not so. The last thing recognised
by nuns is the virtue of poverty, the value of the lowly born. This
fact is so widely recognised by women who visit convents that they
themselves will not conceal from you the importance nuns attach to dress,
and their indifference to shabbily attired visitors. I still vividly
remember a rebuke addressed to a girl in an Irish convent who had got
into a scrape with a companion of inferior social rank. “I am surprised
at your choice of companion,” said the nun loftily. “Remember, should
you and she encounter outside these walls, you will be in your carriage
and she will be on foot, and she may count herself honoured if you are
permitted to salute her.” There is no reason why there should not be
vulgar-minded women within convent walls as well as within the walls of
pomp and fashion, for, alas! vulgarity and snobbishness abound; but it
is significant that nuns, of whatever nationality you find them, have a
strong predilection for the wealthy and well-born. So, it will be said,
have the large majority of people, regarding these as the elect of the
earth. Well, if so, let girls, when they come to be women, find this out
for themselves. But as children and girls, let not their freedom, their
spontaneity, be hampered by such unlovely distinctions. Teach them to
love all that is good and pleasant in humanity, and let the daughter of a
marchioness at school make friends with the daughter of a grocer, without
condescension on one side, or undue humility or concealment on the other.
Why should not a school seek rather to be a republic, based upon the
lovable and republican principles of Christ’s Christianity? The children
of both classes will be the gainers, and each will leave school with a
hearty esteem for the other. Relations can terminate here, for there
is no reason why school girls should continue to be friends if their
parents see any cause for objection to the intimacy; but there is every
reason that they should learn to appreciate the good there is to be found
in those of a different social rank from theirs—inferior or superior.
This is the very last thing they may hope to learn in a fashionable
convent, since there are no greater worshippers at the shrine of birth
and fortune than nuns. I am aware that the difficulties in the way of
maintaining such a free mingling of the classes would assuredly come from
the parents. The nobles would be horrified if assurance were withheld
of perfect social exclusiveness for their offspring, and still more
angry would be the sham nobles, the purse-proud snobs, whose selection
of a convent for their daughters depends solely upon its fashionable
reputation. It may also be contended that the society of the better
classes unfits a girl of the commercial class for her after surroundings.
But this fact also is based upon false prejudice. Lift the girl’s moral
tone, and she will find something else in the acquirement of good manners
than contempt of her equals.

My next and still greater charge against conventual education is the
elimination by strict supervision of all sentiment of honour. In France
two girls are forbidden to talk in the recreation-ground. When they
are seen to do so, instead of being separated in an open fashion, a
third is secretly ordered to go and join them in a friendly way, and
then return and report the subject of their talk to the nun in charge.
Needless to say, only the girls regarded as trustworthy and virtuous are
told off for this diplomatic duty. I myself, being a hopelessly black
sheep, and, in consequence, excellent material for the exercise of this
peculiar form of virtue, was long enough its victim before I grasped the
fact, and could not understand how reverend mothers and such exalted
personages came to be familiar with all my whispered revolutionary
chatter. It would be wonderful if girls so trained should in after
life scruple to read letters, to steam them if necessary, to listen at
doors, and to betray confidences of every kind. And girls who know no
other form of distraction and play than the dull walking up and down the
recreation-ground, the nightly trial of round games, where you sit in
a large circle on benches, with a string and a button attached to it,
which one girl passes to the other through her closed fist, all singing
French _rondes_, such as _J’ai perdu le cor de ma clarionette_, or
_Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre_, or the glories of Cadet Roussel? And
this, remember, for girls of sixteen and seventeen—craving intelligent
and exciting pastimes!

How fervently I used to bless the headache or cold that permitted me to
slip up to bed after supper, and escape from the evening recreation into
the more peopled and interesting solitude of my own thoughts. Things
may be better since my day. Tennis, bathing, golf, cricket, and racing
may now be admitted as feminine pastimes in those holy establishments
where I spent so many miserable and profitless years. I hear that even
baths are introduced, and that it is no longer deemed by French nuns an
offence against modesty to wash oneself. But I recall a very different
state of affairs—a state so curious that my French friends do not like
to credit it when I assure them of it. I was fourteen when I was sent
to school in France to acquire the tongue of courts and diplomacy. On
the first morning that I awoke in the long, white-curtained dormitory, I
proceeded to wash and dress myself as I had been taught to wash and dress
in English convents. I had deposited my dressing-gown on my bed, and was
splashing my neck with water, when, to my astonishment, a nun approached
me noiselessly, lifted my dressing-gown from the bed, and holding her
shocked glance averted murmured, _La pudeur, mon enfant, la pudeur_,
as she covered my dripping neck in the folds of my dressing-gown. When
I clamoured for an explanation, I was told it was not considered decent
in France for a young girl to wash her neck. We were worse off than the
young gentlemen of Stanislas, whose feet are washed once a week; ours
were washed only once a fortnight, and then a cloth was kept over them,
lest the sight of our naked feet in the water should lead to the loss of
our souls. For the years I was there, nobody, to my knowledge, ever had a
bath of any kind. However, this is all changed, I am happy to say. French
nuns have had to move with the times and accept the modern institution of
baths.

I hope they have also grown to accept the institution of men. When I
was at school we were strictly forbidden to lift our eyes to a man’s
face. When the old doctor of eighty passed through the courtyard, if any
of us happened to be about there was an instant cry of alarm, _Baissez
les yeux, mesdemoiselles. Il y a du monde._ _Du monde_ always meant
the wolf in trousers and coat, and we were invited ever to tremble,
blush, and lower our eyes in the dreadful creature’s presence. It was a
garrison town, and whenever we walked abroad and found officers upon our
path nuns would skurry down our black-robed ranks, crying in terrified
undertones, _Baissez les yeux, mesdemoiselles. Messieurs les officiers
vous regardent._ Will any one explain to me the mental and moral value of
such training? Is it not shocking that innocent girls should be bred in
the notion that there is any reason why they should not look men frankly
and simply in the face?

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Among the national institutions of France, the place of honour must
undoubtedly be given to the Académie Française; not because of its
utility, still less for the amount of respect and admiration it deserves.
My own opinion is, that a more fantastic and ridiculous institution was
never invented; and to-day it has no connexion between our democratic
times and the monstrous period in which it was founded. Why forty
respectable gentlemen who happen to have written books more or less good
(and by no means always such as to justify their election), composed
tolerable operas, written amusing or instructive plays, as the case may
be, should not have been content with the applause and pence of their
fellows, but must needs array themselves in an absurd uniform, with
triumphant green palm-leaves embroidered over a modern coat, and a toy
sword at their side, and play at immortality, is what I have never been
able to understand. As if the votes of his contemporaries can possibly
decide the question of a man’s immortality!

Read over the lists of academicians since Richelieu’s time, and see how
many among all those names you will ever have heard of. Intrigue and
prejudice frequently settle the question of a day’s immortality. But in
the case of a century’s fame it requires solid merit of a higher order
than that which is often necessary to secure the election of a candidate
to an armchair among the favoured Forty. Flaubert and Maupassant
assuredly hold very different places in French literature from those
occupied by the mild André Theuriet and the dull Paul Bourget; and it
is as difficult to explain the absence of Balzac from this literary
club half a century ago as it is to explain the presence there to-day
of M. Henri Lavedan. The mystified foreigner notes that Balzac created
the colossal _Comédie Humaine_, and that M. Lavedan wrote _Le Vieux
Marcheur_, and is apt to tell himself gleefully that the judgment of the
elect in France is no wiser, no more judicious, than that of the common
herd elsewhere. But of course the institution, with its pretentious
traditions, its mock air of the _ancien régime_, is only a club, whose
members choose their society upon other than intellectual grounds. There
is a great deal of wire-pulling, too, in the matter, chiefly done by
women. In fact, when the noble dames of the Faubourg decide to run a
candidate, he is pretty certain to be elected. Loti was run by those
ladies, and the first thing he did was to scare the club by breaking with
all its traditions and making a mockery of academic urbanity. Lavedan,
as a reactionary candidate, was naturally the protected of clericals,
aristocrats, and the flower of snobbery, and committed a still greater
breach of academic etiquette than Loti, by a veiled and sneering attack
upon the dead he was deputed to belaud.

[Illustration: THE FRENCH ACADEMY]

I was present at this extraordinary _séance_, and, although the Marquis
Costa de Beauregard is an academician whom posterity may in all safety be
reckoned on to ignore, it was impossible to withhold cordial recognition
of the justice and good taste of his sharp retort to the inexcusable
offender. Meilhac, whose empty chair M. Lavedan was elected to fill, may
or may not have been as black as his appointed eulogist painted him, but
the Academy was not the place to attack this character, and the occasion
chosen by M. Lavedan was as indelicate as if he had selected a man’s open
grave, with mourning relatives and friends around, for disrespectful
usage of his name. Stupefied, as was everyone else by this singular
proceeding, I questioned a friend whose privilege it is to wear the
palm-embroidered coat and mother-of-pearl sword, and was told that this
was M. Lavedan’s way of avenging the disapproval of the Academy of his
_Vieux Marcheur_, played only after his election. These nervous elderly
gentlemen, unacquainted with the literature of their new colleague, were
desperately alarmed when they were made aware of the nature of this
popular and shocking play. The sensations of the hen affrighted on the
edge of a pool where her duckling is disporting were nothing to theirs;
and so the author, at bay, took his revenge by endeavouring, with more
talent than taste, to prove to them that, if they did not relish the
_Vieux Marcheur_ (something in the style of “sad old rake”) out of their
doors, they could be extremely indulgent to the same type of gentleman
within those sacred precincts. At a more recent election, that of M.
Paul Hervieu, M. Brunetière, reversing the order of contumely, was
nothing loath to poke blame at the newly received Immortal because of
his social cynicism and the unkind pictures M. Hervieu has drawn of the
world of men and women M. Brunetière delights to honour. But we need not
penetrate beneath the surface to explain such an inhospitable fashion
of receiving a candidate into this classical club. M. Brunetière, the
discoverer of Bossuet, is a fervent reactionary. The Church, the Army,
Society,—behold his gods!—with the result that, in the deadly conflict
waged for two years round an unfortunate Jew, M. Brunetière went with
the unjust majority, while M. Hervieu, the author of that dramatic and
brilliant thesis on Feminism, _La Loi de l’Homme_, went with the just
and liberal minority. It needed nothing more to give him over as a meal
to the omnivorous editor of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, whose virtuous
indignation against M. Hervieu’s generous cry for justice to women knew
no bounds.

In the present divided state of France, with anti-Semitism raging and
disaffection rife in all quarters, even a pacific academical reception
approaches the verbal war waged in the arena of politics conducted
with leisure and urbanity. The ceremonial is imposing and of a supreme
dulness. If you have a centre seat, the wise thing to do is to go early
and amuse yourself by watching the arrivals; or manage to arrive at the
last moment, and you will have the best seat of all, in the very middle
of the hall, literally at the feet of the Immortals. If you know all
Paris, you will enjoy yourself, for you will see and be seen of all
Paris, and the dresses are usually worth looking at. After that you have
the mild excitement of watching the Immortals enter, to your surprise not
in academical raiment, but in ordinary coats, wearing the air of ordinary
men. Only the godfathers of the newly elected, the perpetual secretary,
the chancellor, always the latest member, and the gentleman deputed to
receive the new Immortal wear the sword and palm-embroidered coat. There
are no arm-chairs, but wooden benches ill adapted to the ease of age.
The classical hall is about as squalid and uncomfortable a vestibule of
posterity as one could wish to see, and is so ill-ventilated that, when
it is full, as it always is, to excess, the spectators are frequently
threatened with apoplexy or syncope. Whenever I get away sound and alive
from beneath the celebrated cupola, I always feel that I have escaped
unharmed from actual peril.

Then the newly elected stands at a reading-desk and reads out the
eulogy of his predecessor, which a committee has already been convened
to consider, and when he terminates his “discourse,” his godfathers
warmly shake his hand, and he sits down. The academician who receives
him in the name of the august assembly replies, and reads his discourse
sitting, placed between the chancellor and secretary, at the centre
table, on a high daïs. When the speakers read their discourses as M.
Brunetière reads his, it is a pleasure, whether you agree with them or
not; but this is rare, for M. Brunetière was meant by nature to be a
preacher or an actor. His elocution is magnificent, his voice arresting;
whereas the average man is hard to follow and, in winter, is apt to
have a cold in his head. After the ceremony, greetings during the exit,
which is slow and precarious, and in the big courtyard proclaim you a
fashionable person, and reveal to you the utter vanity of the whole
affair. Then you understand why it is that women are supposed to be the
pillars of the institution. There is something essentially wrong about
fashionable women. They must, perforce, worship false gods. When they
admire a writer, or a musician, or a dramatist, they are not happy until
they see him in a false position. They must make a fool of him before
they can consent to worship him. He administers to their vanity, and
they administer to his. And so they go in a body to crown him; and not
to be present at the crowning is a confession of social inferiority.
Being more intelligent than the same class of women elsewhere, their
folly takes this form of rendering interesting men ridiculous. If I
thought them capable of humour and irony (which they are not), I might
regard this as the supreme vengeance of their sex, excluded by national
prejudice from all public honours. But, alas! no. They are in deadly
earnest, and take their great men with rapture and gravity. They, at any
rate, and the Immortals themselves, really believe in the Academy. They
swallow each other, and piously give thanks for the meal. The fashionable
woman hastens to invite the new Immortal to dinner for the exquisite
satisfaction of giving him the place of honour and conferring distinction
upon herself.

“However,” as Sainte-Beuve says, “we may jeer at the French Academy, but
it has not ceased to be popular in Europe.” Foreigners and Parisians
are equally eager for tickets, and French genius more eager than either
for the prizes and renown it confers. It is one of the monarchical
institutions restored by the Convention after its suppression in the
Terror. Only, instead of the monarchical Institute it had been, it
became a national Institute, existing by grace of the State and the
people, and not by that of a minister like Richelieu, or a monarch like
Louis XIV. It was thus composed of a hundred and forty-four members in
Paris, and an equal number in the provinces, with power to associate
twenty-four learned men with its corps. It was divided into three parts:
Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Moral and Political Sciences, and
Literature and the Fine Arts. This new national Institute was opened on
the 4th of April, 1796, when Daunou pronounced the inaugural address.
In those days there was no such thing as a perpetual secretary. The
excellent republican spirit of the State was naturally modified under
the Consulate, and completely demoralised under the Empire. Napoleon
reinstituted the perpetual secretary of the _ancien régime_, suppressed
the class of Political and Moral Sciences,—the least to be expected of
a political dictator without any notion of morality,—and divided the
two other classes into three, and thus restored the ancient Academy
of Sciences, French Academy, Academy of Inscriptions and Letters,
the Academies of Painting and Sculpture. Hence grew the ambition to
connect, in unbroken continuity, the defunct institution of a vanished
monarchy and the new institution of the Directory. In 1803, it began the
reactionary period, and posed as Royalist in sentiments and opinions.
Sainte-Beuve defines the Academy as that of the reigning perpetual
secretary.

What the Academy really remains is the home of tradition. Here the main
thing is not intellect, but distinction; not genius, but the consummate
perfection of expression. Urbanity is its hall-mark, and what it most
dreads in originality is the abuse of novelty. You may have little to
say; only see that your way of saying it cannot be bettered. It has
been blamed for excluding from its ranks so much real genius; and this
blame would, of course, be earned by it if its object were so much the
recognition of genius as the welcome to its midst of a congenial spirit.
Gautier, with his long hair and red waistcoat, was not a congenial
spirit, though if finish of style, charm, urbanity, and exquisite grace
are accounted academical graces, there never was a writer to whom the
term “born academician” was more applicable. But the Academy always
sees that there is a bulldog on the threshold to show his teeth to the
“masters” of to-morrow; a pedagogue to teach the aspirants to academical
honours how they should write and think, and what small beer their
literary pretensions are regarded by the Forty Immortals he speaks for
so arrogantly. The bulldog of the hour is M. Brunetière. This unamiable
pedant, the enemy of individualism and youth, the enemy of all things
not hall-marked with his pontifical approval, has announced that Zola
can enter the Academy only across his dead body. He has many hatreds
to balance the immensity of his single love and admiration, the Eagle
of Meaux, but none that can compare with his implacable hostility to
Zola. And yet this academical pontiff, who disapproved of Daudet, wiped
out the Naturalists, shot bilious blame at M. Jules Lemaître (that was
before this amiable individual sought ridicule in the famous Ligue de
la Patrie Française, a sentiment he, MM. Coppée, and Barrès were the
first Frenchmen of their time to discover) and at Anatole France, whose
shoe-strings he is not fit to tie, allows M. Henri Lavedan to sit beside
him, and does not repudiate _Le Vieux Marcheur_.

While all France has been divided of late, it would be demanding a
superhuman effort of urbanity and harmony from the Immortals to expect a
concord of sweet sounds to be heard beneath the famed cupola. Politics
have introduced their consequent animosity and bitterness here as
elsewhere, and the academicians, like the rest of their compatriots,
are ranged in two defiant and hostile camps. I am bound to say that the
_élite_ is with the splendid and disinterested minority. It is sad to
witness the extraordinary capers, the passion for popularity in which an
intelligent man like M. Lemaître indulges, and to see him brandishing
a wild pen and shouting in every tone of anger; so little dignity and
common sense are left a Frenchman when hate and rancour hold him and
when race-fury rolls over the land like a tidal wave, _Vive l’armée!_
This famous critic has betaken himself to a sort of politics invented
for the hour—a feverish antagonism to foreigners and all foreign
influences, and a passion for every form of sabred hero. He goes from
the Clotilde to Notre Dame, from Notre Dame to the Madeleine, in the
glorious attitude and humour of the Irishman at Donnybrook Fair, seeking
for somebody in the crowd who will tread upon the tail of his coat. This
offence may be committed by cheering the Republic or its President;
then there is instant competition in pugilism. And so M. Lemaître,
accompanied and admirably assisted by his no less heroic and patriotic
fellow academician, M. Coppée, forgets academical urbanity in wild and
incoherent abuse of living persons and respectable citizens who happen
not to think as he does.

This state of affairs has given rise to countless rumours and jokes over
the compilation of the eternal dictionary upon which the illustrious
company is engaged. How is it possible for men who disagree upon the
essentials of morality, justice, honour, and truth to agree upon the
definition of a word? In olden days the occasional antagonisms of this
renowned salon were rare or were revealed with a sympathetic vivacity
and wit. Sainte-Beuve could say: “The Academy is the place where
literature is the best discussed and where all the amenities are most
rigorously observed.” Now all that is changed. Happily, as an interlude
in internecine warfare, there is the yearly examination of books and
prizes to award. These are many. It is a mistake to believe that a book
crowned by the Academy is necessarily good. Noting one year that several
absolutely bad, as well as many mediocre, books had been crowned, and
sums of money awarded to the malefactors who had perpetrated them, I
asked an academician how it was. His explanation was, that so much must
be spent on prizes every year, whether there are books to crown or not,
as it would excessively complicate the affairs of such a rich body if
these sums were allowed to accumulate. Of course there are certain
large prizes, such as the Jean Reynaud (£400), which are carefully and
justly disposed of, but the multiple insignificant ones of £10, £20, and
£40, are distributed as well as they can be in days when there is not a
plethora of real talent in France. It is not only literary works that
merit academical prizes. There is the Montyon prize, awarded to “the poor
French man or woman who has done the most virtuous action during the
year.” The sum spent on prizes under this head is £800, and it is divided
between several poor persons whose lives are looked into, and of whom
usually a touching and admirable picture is drawn. It would not be in the
nature of things if the distribution of this prize did not provoke much
humorous comment in France. Some satirists maintain that the candidates
for the Montyon prize invariably go to the dogs after they have been
rewarded. I was once present at the reading out of the numerous actions
so recompensed by M. Brunetière, and I was never more deeply impressed by
the splendid record of virtue, of unparalleled abnegation and generosity,
among the French poor. The second Montyon prize is destined to reward the
most useful moral book written during the year. There are also prizes
destined to alleviate literary misfortunes, that is, unfortunate authors
or their widows and families in trouble.

The old house of Molière is, like the Academy, a permanent attraction
of Paris. It stands in the Rue de Richelieu, on a Place of its own,
a light, animated, illuminated Place, dominated by the columns of the
Théâtre Français. This was established here after the Revolution, and,
thanks to the famous Decree of Moscow, its name is almost as eternally
linked with that of Napoleon as with those of the immortal Molière and of
Louis XIV., a more liberal but not less exacting master of France than
the Corsican adventurer.

There is not a civilised land that has not something to learn of other
lands. While the French may well envy the more stable and self-respecting
government of England, England might just as well borrow something of
France; and one of the things it ought to envy is the establishment,
two centuries ago, of a national theatre. The result for France has
been the most perfect dramatic school of the world. The suppression
of excessive individuality is a benefit to the entire company, as it
forbids any ambition to “star.” We have seen what the star system has
done for the two great artists who broke away from its traditions to
amass fortunes and fling their reputations to all the quarters of the
globe. South America has had the privilege of hearing Sarah Bernhardt,
but the artist who left the Théâtre Français had genius of a finer
quality and theatrical cultivation of a higher order than those displayed
to-day by this extraordinary woman in the various more or less mediocre
plays she acts in, often without a single other actor or actress worth
listening to. The starring system is essentially the development of
all that is worst in the artist—vulgarity, crude bids for personal
popularity, blighting vanity, and egotism; in a word, all the cheapest
characteristics of the charlatan. It is precisely these ugly defects that
such an institution as the Comédie Française tends to suppress. There
the reputation of the company and not of the individual is at stake.
Minor parts are played by eminent artists, and the excessive vanity and
pretension of the one become the plague of the many. I will not advance
the assertion that everybody in the famous company of the Comédie
Française is equally admirable. Temperament will, of course, prompt your
criticism. For instance, Mounet-Sully is the beloved of many a nation as
well as of thousands of his own countrymen, and I can scarcely listen to
Mounet-Sully with patience. A greater bore I cannot conceive. He belongs
to the Byronic school, the days of cloaked and sabred romance. His sombre
voice lifts itself on a volume of sound, and is flung in mournful and
passionate reproach against the implacable walls of destiny. But yet
in your most exasperated mood, with nerves on edge from his excess of
clouded despair and desperate anguish, you must admit that the man is a
perfect artist, and that such a temperament starring about the globe,
without the control of the company to which he belongs, would drift into
ineffable charlatanism. Poor M. Claretie has much ado to keep him in
order. What would happen if he had a stage of his own to rant and roar
upon? A lesser Sarah Bernhardt, without her inexpressible charm and her
undoubted genius, which in soft interludes help us to bear with the
shrieking, hysteric, high moments. It would be a mistake to regard the
Français as a kind of happy family, living in perfect amity and peace.
The roar of domestic war sometimes penetrates without, and all Paris was
excited lately by M. Le Bargy’s noisy menace of resignation. Le Bargy,
on his own boards, in his own atmosphere, surrounded by his own company,
has made his mark as a well-cravatted, fashionable young lover; but what
will Le Bargy do elsewhere, in a theatre where, with his prestige, and
coming from such a house, he will be expected to fill the stage? I doubt
if there is the stuff of the star in him, and upon the Boulevards there
are many actors as good as and better even than he. This is the triumph
of the Français,—that by means of inexorable tradition and training,
without individuality or genius, actors acting harmoniously, guided by a
common standard, may attain an eminence in their profession achieved in
no other land. And though the chances of fortune and popularity are much
greater outside its walls, popular actors are always proud of the honour
of election into its illustrious company.

The theatre was founded by Louis XIV., by whom it was made a co-operative
association, and who established pensions for retiring members. It has
two classes of actors: _sociétaires_, who have each an interest in the
theatre, have a voice in its government, a share of the profits, assist
at the choice of plays, and retire with a pension. On retirement, they
possess not only their pension, but a little capital of their own, the
half of their share of the profits of the theatre having been annually
invested for them. The second class is composed of _pensionnaires_,
engaged yearly at a fixed salary, and at the end of a certain period of
probation nominated _sociétaires_. Napoleon chose the most astonishing
hour of his astonishing career for consideration of the destiny of the
Théâtre Français. At Moscow he diverted his mind from colossal disaster
by framing the celebrated Decree of Moscow. The theatre is a State
institution, subsidised by an annual vote of 240,000 francs, in return
for which it is bound to play the old classical repertory twice or thrice
a week. By this means the memory of the masters of the French drama,
Racine, Corneille, and Molière, is kept ever green in France, and is not
less fresh to-day than that of the modern dramatists.

And so one understands how the entire world was affected by the dreadful
catastrophe not long ago in the burning of this great old house. Neither
M. Claretie, with his eyes full of tears, nor any of the distracted
company was bemoaning a personal loss, was thinking of private interests
in sight of the devastating flames; but all were throbbing, as one
heart, before a national calamity. The civilised world felt it had lost
a precious and a unique thing. The new building will contain most of
the rescued works of art, but the figures of Rachel, of Delaunay, of so
many shades of departed dramatic glory, have gone. The new theatre will
probably be handsomer than the old one, and it could easily be that; it
will also be more modern, more comfortable; it may even be fitted up with
luxury, and, Heaven permit it! that horrid national institution, the
_ouvreuse_, may be abolished. Blessed changes! but we of our generation
will ever be grateful that it was on the old stage we saw Got and
Reichemberg, Worms, Barretta, and Bartet.

L’École des Beaux Arts is another national institution. In all things
the French passion for art is visible. Art is the one thing the entire
race takes seriously. The capital is laid out to please the eye and
captivate the senses like a work of art. This School of Fine Arts itself
is connected with one of the most radiant bits of Paris. The bridge,
called after it, seizes one of the loveliest views of the city. It
spans the river between the glorious Louvre and the imposing dome of
the Institute. Stand midway, and here, in the heart of modern life,
will you find yourself in the midst of enchantment. Let the vision be
a morning vision, and the lights about you will be pearly, the blue of
the air rose-tinged, the gold of the sun-rays, as it shimmers over the
water, broken and tossed against its blithe, persistent grey. Or see it
at the magical hour of sunset. All the gilt of the Louvre glistens like
living light. Towers and fretted spires are pencilled in the lovely glow,
seemingly enlarged by the large serenity of the atmosphere. Below, the
roll of the river curls into the deep grey hollows of the mysterious
isle whose gates of romance are fittingly guarded by the high towers of
Notre Dame, the church that foreigners will persist in regarding as the
most beautiful of Paris, and whose architectural value has been absurdly
overrated, I suppose because of Victor Hugo; while Saint Étienne-du-Mont,
with its delightful _jubé_, Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, home of poetry,
and the exquisite Sainte Chapelle are neglected for this second-rate
edifice. On one side Richelieu’s dome, fronted by its circling space
which breaks the winding, gracious line of quay and bookstalls; on the
other, Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, bending its Gothic shadow to the bright
glory of the Louvre, and the upward view running past bridges and
gardens, past the grey temple of legislation, to sweep upon a wide curve
into the colonnaded heights of the Trocadero. The picture is enhanced by
the bright verdure of the Tuileries gardens; by the gay, swift passage of
boats; by all the sparkling diversities of Parisian life which fill the
streets with so much colour and charm. When you have crossed the Pont des
Beaux Arts, on which I have kept you standing awhile, you will enter the
school by the busy, old-fashioned, almost provincial Rue Bonaparte. What
a pleasant place it is to be sure, this modern school of art! Here it
is that the famous Prix de Rome is given, which sends hopeful youths to
the very fount and cradle of art for its instruction and gratification,
but not infrequently for the careful destruction of all individuality
of sprouting genius in thrall to academic rule. It is the rigidity
of this academic rule in France which produces such explosions of
anarchy in literature and art. Precision and clarity are such essential
characteristics of the genius of the race that, when turbulent youth in
a tempest of revolt against the discipline of the implacable academies
decides to fling its cap over the mill, and carve out its own fresh road
to the devil, we are shocked by eccentricities that elsewhere would leave
us unmoved.

If youth must occasionally go mad, at least we demand that French youth
shall go mad with sanity of taste and judgment. His Anglo-Saxon brother
in a like predicament may be as imprecise, as vague and obscure, as
racial character and the genius of his language permit, but we exact
of this raging Gaul that his insanity shall be beautifully measured
by the canons of art. And so his excesses in anarchy appear to our
judgment far more grievous crimes against taste and tact than those of
less intellectually and artistically disciplined races. When he falls
away from the lines of beauty his defection is more deplorable than
another’s. We are accustomed to count upon him as a model of elegance in
all the finer paths of pleasure; and when he dips into crabbed prose or
rude verse, or paints us, as a symphony of modern morals, a naked woman
playing the piano, with a fashionable hat on a vulgarly dressed head, we
resent the hideous joke as evidence of unjustifiable lawlessness. The
Prix de Rome may have something to do with these outbreaks. The best art
of the world has been spontaneous and not academic; and though we may
admit that training is a priceless advantage in all paths, the individual
influence of one master of his craft is far above that of all the
academies ever formed. The French in all things depend too exclusively
on institutions. They tired of the tyranny of Throne and Church, and
overthrew the one and shook the altars of the other. But the abiding
tyranny of institutions they unmurmuringly accept and submit to as their
substitution. Louis XIV. and Napoleon ruled the people with a rod of
iron; each combined in his personal prestige and power all the resources
of the various institutions which, united, now represent the authority of
a single man. The traditions of subservience that they left were not to
be shaken off, in spite of revolutions and occasional canters down the
wild road of anarchy. There dwell permanently in the race a terror and
distrust of individualism and initiative. Since it has shaken off the
shackles of kings and dictators, it must walk in willing servitude to the
countless smaller, and, it must be admitted, less obnoxious, tyrannies
it maintains for the clipping of its own wings, and which form a kind of
stable throne for its prestige. For what would France be in the eyes of
the world without its five Academies, without its École des Beaux Arts,
its Théâtre Français, the house of Molière, without its high literary
tradition, the distinction and elegance of all that emanates from its
genius? The liberty of the gypsy is undoubtedly the greatest blessing
of life, freedom to paint, to write, to act, to speak, to breathe, by
spontaneous and untrammelled effort, freedom to ride upon the crests of
inspiration unmindful of the approval of the fogies of tradition, to tilt
against the windmills of discord in one’s own manner without a thought
for “conservatoire” or national opera-house, to go a-sailing on the lake
of dreams, without calculating the benefit it may be to your pocket,
and dive for pearls of fancy without reckoning their market value. But
civilisation sets too just a value upon the benefits of tradition and
discipline to tolerate this nomad contempt of their advantages; and in
no country are these advantages more highly prized than in France, the
land of revolution and unrest. Even the follies of the Latin Quarter,
as long as they lasted, were rigidly based upon the traditions of that
wild spot. _La Vie de Bohème_, for all its apparent recklessness of rowdy
students and Mimi Pinsons and Lisettes, had its traditions in vice and
virtue, deviation from which was regarded an infraction as intolerable
as ever could be deviation from those of the five Academies or the
Comédie Française. The student in the process of going to the dogs was
bound to go thither in the way of the Quarter. He inherited from a long
line of genius his hat and his garments, the cut of his hair and beard,
his sins and attitudes. The road of pleasure and pain, of wickedness
and repentance, of distraction and despair, was cut out for him upon
tradition as unswervable as that of the most respectable institution, and
to act the proper part assigned him in the triumph of disreputableness he
should take Villon for his model, or wring out the sombre folds of the
poet’s mantle in the gaiety and genial ruffianism of the modern ideal of
the Latin Quarter. But here, happily, we alight upon an institution in
process of doom. The Quarter is in the pangs of transformation, and soon
the cheap and unsympathetic heroes of Mürger will be but a memory, and
not a decent one at that. Along the “Boul. Mich.” youths are beginning to
pay their way, for all the world like the common “beastly burgess” across
the river.

[Illustration: THE FOYER OF THE OPERA-HOUSE]

The Conservatoire is another national institution. Like the Academy and
the Comédie Française, it is a home of traditions. The airy foreigner who
wishes to assist at one of its concerts cannot hope to open its doors
with a golden key. Its seats are subscribed for and constitute personal
property. Should the foreigner be fortunate enough to possess a friend
with one of these seats who is willing to sacrifice a concert for his
benefit, he will hear a marvellous orchestra. For a short time the scene
of this unique harmony of sound was shifted from the neighbourhood of
the Upper Boulevards to the boards of the Opera-house, and the result
was sheer disaster. The orchestra of the Conservatoire is just suited
to its own select little hall, but it is too delicate, too perfect, for
transposition to a big theatre like the Opera-house of Paris. There you
need instrumentation of a coarser quality, music less subtly rendered.
Where the polka may be fitly danced, the _pavane_ would be out of place.
M. Taffanel, the able conductor of the Conservatoire orchestra, cannot
compare with the great German conductors; he has not the genius of Mottl,
nor the magical temperament of Weingartner, nor the individuality of the
French conductor, the late Lamoureux. But in his quiet, measured way he
is an incomparable artist, to judge him by the results of his lead. When
Weingartner and Mottl conduct, the attention is continually drawn to
them. Indeed, in the case of Weingartner, who is unreasonably affected,
and, like every other artist with a “temperament,” is apt to exaggerate
its privileges, the audience is ever more conscious of him than of his
instruments. He is a superb master, but one wishes him less histrionic.
Now, M. Taffanel has not a suspicion of affectation or histrionism. He
is simplicity itself, the very model of impersonality. He so effaces
himself that you are conscious of his presence only by the perfection of
his orchestra. He is so easy and subdued that he hardly seems necessary
in this admirable triumph of art. Of course, as his house is the home
of tradition, Wagner is excluded. Wagner dominates outside, but in here
it is the masters consecrated by unmixed approval who rule the ear.
Mounet-Sully will read to you, in his inimitable, sombre Byronic way,
the ravings of Manfred, while Schumann will roll your soul over the
crests of musical passion. Beethoven will speak to your heart and brain
like a god, and Mozart will captivate you with his joyous melody and
sweetness, but not a note of Wagner, the modern Colossus. It is well that
this exclusive home of music should be kept up upon its aristocratic
traditions—the best orchestra of the world and the least accessible; but
the evil effect of exclusiveness is at once visible in a glance around at
the audience. Daudet has written that the French do not in their hearts
really like classical music. I think it is true. They delight too much
in conversation to delight in music as the duller, the denser, and more
sentimental Germans do. But to have a seat at the Conservatoire denotes
wealth, the prestige of fashion; and so they go to each concert more to
see and be seen than to hear. In doing so they are conscious of being
part of the _chic_ world. In the _loges_ around you, men and women talk
of every mortal thing except the music heard; and the chief anxiety
of both sexes, if I may judge by the testimony of my ears on repeated
occasions, is to know what baron, count, marquis, marchioness, or duchess
is present, with smart remarks upon their dress. The Conservatoire is a
traditional school of music and of the drama; prizes are awarded upon
the test of examination, and reputations started here which may end in
celebrity.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII

HOME-LIFE IN FRANCE

There is no race on the face of the earth whose home-life is so enviable
as that of the French. Both men and women bring the best of their
qualities to the making and maintaining of this admirable domestic
institution. It is, perhaps, too perfect, too wadded, for any people
which may hold the theory that domestic happiness is an inferior ideal.
It explains to us why the French are bad colonists, why initiative
and enterprise are less developed here than in the regions of rougher
interiors. The atmosphere of a French home is the most delightful I know.
I cannot see why men and women should be expected willingly to tear
themselves away from it in search of dubious prosperity and happiness
among barbarians. After all, it seems to me that human happiness is as
high an ideal as any of us can justly lay claim to; and if we want our
own happiness we are pretty certain to want that of others, for the few
who find their happiness in the misery of those around them are lower
than the brutes. In England and in Ireland I have seen men and women
of this sort, persons of diseased selfishness, who, in their homes,
surrounded by others, live only for themselves, and whose sole mission
in life apparently is to render those same victims of their proximity as
wretched as possible.

Frenchwomen are not perfect, we know, since they are human. They have
their meannesses, their spites, their pettinesses, and jealousies,
like others; they are largely tainted with the vice of avarice, and
it cannot be said that they are, in general, capable of climbing the
heights of disinterestedness. They love money, and they save it. But,
whatever their faults, I dare to say that no race of women can show
a smaller percentage of shrews and reckless mischief-makers. Their
discretion is extraordinary, and no less extraordinary is the equable,
dignified nature of their domestic rule. They have their tantrums like
other women, but they are surprisingly free from the vice of scolding.
The word “termagant” was never invented for the pleasing and tactful
Frenchwoman. She will blight your life by other means should she have
that fancy. Economy is her great and unlovable virtue. If she clips the
wings of romance so ruthlessly, it is always in the interests of economy.
I do not give her ideal as the highest or the noblest; it is even
lower, perhaps, than that of many other classes of women, since it is
exclusively occupied with the state of her own and her progeny’s purse.
But the process by which she attains this ideal is charming in itself.
She cheerfully makes every personal sacrifice needful, and counts herself
blest when she places the hand of a son or daughter in that of a suitable
match, with fortune proportionate and prospects of equal promise. She
lives for her husband and children; and if, as the fashionable novelists
assure us, she often deviates from the path of virtue,—makes, as the
boulevardiers say, a rent in the marriage contract,—not even those
romancers dare affirm that she neglects, for such caprices, the interests
of either.

She is in all things literally the better half of her people. Observe her
in all classes, and you will have no further need of explanation of the
striking prosperity, strength, and self-sufficiency of France itself.
Cheerful, competent, thrifty creature, how could the land that owns her
go to the dogs, whatever the decadents and politicians may do? She is
the force of the country, its stable influence and salvation. The home
rests upon her, and she makes of it a delicious nest for her children,
who may exaggerate the outward form of their love for her, but who can
never exaggerate the inward devotion they owe her. She has taught them,
it is true, to think too much about money, to be too ready to dispute
the wills of recalcitrant relatives who wish to leave their fortunes
to others than themselves; she has left them too little liberty, and
trained them in ignorance of such a virtue as disinterestedness; she
is too apt to encourage her son in the theory of the wild oats-sowing,
without even the saving grace of limiting that period to pre-nuptial
days, being trained herself in the fixed conviction of her land,
that man is a tameless beast who cannot exist without fugitive loves
throughout his chequered career. Indeed, I have heard a very pious old
French lady assert that a married man may have a hundred mistresses
and be a perfectly honest man whom nobody should criticise. When I
made respectful mention of the wife’s injuries, she shrugged, called
me an unsophisticated fool, and said that every sensible girl, on her
wedding-morn, understood what she was facing, and, if she were well-bred,
she was wise enough to keep her eyes shut. No wife, she maintained, could
expect to learn anything to her advantage by prying into her husband’s
habits and distractions outside the portals of home, and so her wisdom
lay in studied ignorance. The thing to prevent in a husband or son was
extravagance. So long as the purse-strings remained unloosened, and the
health was uninjured, a judicious woman should ask for nothing more from
the men around her. For this reason, the novelists show us the French
mother as charmed to discover that her son has started romantic relations
with the wife of a wealthy friend. She is convinced that he must have a
mistress, and her only hope is that he shall choose one who will not ruin
him in purse or in health. Of his heart and happiness in these matters
she seems to care not a pin, possibly because of the talent for cynicism
possessed by the French, which declines to recognise heart outside the
family. If every poison has its antidote, so has every quality its
drawback. This beautiful maternal devotion we so admire is practised
to the detriment of all outsiders. The French mother would make a
holocaust of all humanity on the altar of her offspring’s advancement and
interest. She will gladly toil for him or for her, save francs and pence
for either, deprive herself of what she most loves, accomplish for her
child every virtue in the world but that of justice or generosity toward
outsiders. For the French _ménagère_, the outsider is the enemy. Indeed,
for all the French family the outsider is a reptile to be crushed. Let a
wealthy Frenchwoman take a strong fancy to an outsider, and the hostility
awakened in the breast of every member against this inoffensive outsider
will be found to be a sentiment to which only Balzac could do justice.
Sons and daughters, cousins, nephews, and nieces, will combine to slight
or insult the reprobate.

In the case of a widower, or an unmarried uncle, marriage is the terror;
in the case of the wealthy woman I suspect the last will and testament
arouses the scare. Anyway, whatever the unexpressed sentiment may be,
the French family of all classes joins in this unreasonable hatred,
suspicion, and jealousy of the outsider. I remember when I first came to
Paris many years ago, having a letter of introduction to Madame Blaze de
Bury, a very singular and clever old lady, who said to me: “You will find
the French as hard as a granite wall when you come to knock against them.
To the superficial glance they are so easy, so accessible, so pleasant.
Well, I have lived long enough among them to discover that they are just
like the Chinese. They hate foreigners, even when they are delightful to
them. And this hatred of the foreigner is shown in family life, where
the foreigner is everyone who is not a direct relation.” Subsequent
experience did not prove Madame Blaze de Bury altogether right as regards
the foreigner, for I, a foreigner, have found in France kindness,
sympathy, generosity, and affection, and all from the French of the very
French. In criticising Frenchwomen, I am criticising the part of humanity
I like best, appreciate and admire most on earth. Give Frenchwomen the
freedom, the liberal education of England, a dash of Protestantism—that
is, mental and moral independence—and you will have womanhood in its
perfection. They have little of the snob, they are naturally simple and
unpretentious, and they are competent, intelligent, and discreet.

The two features that most strike the foreigner in French home-life are
the careful economy practised everywhere, in city and country, among
the poor and the rich, and the pretty courtesies and tendernesses which
help to keep the wheels of domestic machinery so admirably oiled. The
notion that relationship is merely the privilege of making one’s self
as disagreeable as possible, and indulging in cruelties of speech and
action, does not exist in France, or exists in a very diminished degree.

A study of the economies practised in aristocratic and prosperous
bourgeois circles in France leads us to strange facts. Taine quotes an
incident in his _Carnets de Voyage_ that happened in the neighbourhood
of Poitiers. A Parisian was hunting by invitation on a friend’s lands,
and, without knowing it, crossed the border-land of those of a certain
viscountess. He was not shooting, but carried his gun under his arm;
he had lost his way. Up came a keeper and stopped him. The Parisian
explained the circumstances, and insisted that he was not shooting. His
host and he decided to visit the viscountess personally, and put the case
before her in order to avoid unjust proceedings. They were received in
a superb chamber hung with tapestries. The viscountess listened to them,
and put her hand out: “Twenty francs each to pay,” was all she said. I
think I can tell a better tale still, that of the interested hospitality
of a well-known Flemish countess, whose shooting lands are among the best
in France. The guests of this lady who liked a liberal supply of sugar in
their morning coffee were obliged to provide themselves with it before
coming, for every lump consumed in the castle was counted by the thrifty
châtelaine; and the servants were bound, on penalty of dismissal, to give
up to her all the tips they received. These were dropped into a cash-box,
and at the proper time were returned to them under the form of wages. The
good lady also makes a fine thing of her invitations to shoot upon her
land, and may be said to merit a high place in the ranks of economists.

And yet there is much to be said in favour of French thrift, not only for
the good it brings to the country, which is immense, but still more for
the inappreciable advantages it affords the family, above all, the girls.
Go to Ireland and observe with lamentation and indignation the havoc made
of home-life, of family dignity, of the lives of unfortunate girls, by
the miserable wastefulness of parents. On all sides you will hear sad
tales of girls, obliged to work hard for shocking rates of payment, who
were brought up in foolish luxury, whose parents “entertained” in that
thriftless, splash, Irish fashion, drank champagne, drove horses, when
the French of the same class would be leading the existence of humdrum
small burgesses, depriving themselves of all that was not absolutely
necessary for their position, and teaching their children the art of
counting, of saving, and of laudable privation. The Irish way is the
jollier, I admit, but it is a cowardly, selfish way, for it is the
children who always have to pay the piper, and, more often than not, the
unhappy trades-folk who supply these gay and festive spendthrifts.

We laugh at the counted lumps of sugar in France, forgetting that
sugar here is sixpence a pound, and becomes an item to be considered.
I remember once feeling some sympathy with the French carefulness of
sugar. An Irish girl, whom I did not know, somewhere in the twenties, and
consequently supposed to conduct herself like a reasonable being, thrust
accidentally upon me for hospitality for a single night,—which, owing to
unforeseen circumstances, was prolonged to ten or twelve days,—did me the
honour to consume a pound of sugar a day at my expense. In every cup of
tea she melted nearly a dozen large French lumps of sugar, and she drank
many cups in the day; also she ate sugar continually as other women
munch sweets, and as she disliked cold red wine, she insisted on heating
it with quantities of sugar until it was turned into a syrup. When my
grocer sent in his monthly account, with sugar at sixpence a pound in
enormous excess, I felt it would be a singular advantage for Ireland if a
little judicious thrift were practised in Irish homes. The young lady’s
father went bankrupt shortly afterwards, and I cannot say I was at all
surprised. He was an ordinary burgess, who worked hard to maintain a
large and extravagant family, and my guest once told me that her sister
frequently ran up a bill at the florist’s for boutonnières to the sum of
thirty shillings a month, which her father had to pay. French thrift,
if it does so often touch hands with meanness, at least implies the
exercise of a quality we all should admire, even when we cannot practise
it, thanks to taste, training, or temperament—hardness to ourselves, the
capacity for voluntary self-suffering.

The first thing that strikes you as you enter a French beeswaxed flat
in winter is the chill of it. Few but the very rich know the delights
of generous fires, of well-carpeted houses, of warm, comfortable, and
luxurious interiors. Silver appointments and splendid napery, which
you will find nowadays in the commonest Irish homes, are here unknown,
and people of the class who in England dress for dinner here wear the
clothes they have lunched in, and are none the worse off for it. They
have, along with their thrift, much less pretension, and are simpler
and more intelligent in their home-life than we of the British Isles.
In one way they live better, because their food is better cooked and is
more varied, and for dinner you are sure to have brighter conversation.
In certain rich and snobbish circles, above all in the shooting season,
you risk being bored to death, for here nothing is talked of but titles,
game, and fortunes. The wonder to me is how women, who themselves do
not shoot, can sit placidly through a long afternoon and evening and
listen to men who talk incessantly of their own bags or their neighbours’
bags—of how the prince shot this snipe, the count shot that partridge,
and how many pheasants the marquis bagged. I suppose it is to keep the
men in good-humour that these amiable Frenchwomen—against whom I can
bring no other charge than vacuity and snobbishness, two parasites of
wealth—feign the intensest interest. They are paid in the coin they
desire, and if they are bored nobody is a penny the wiser, and they
probably do not mind it.

I have said the lack of material comfort and plenty in middle-class
French homes is striking. I, of course, refer to people who are not
rich, where the husband is a state functionary on a modest salary in
Paris, to small professors, to the wives of military officials, the
widows of colonels and broken-down aristocrats. I have had a glimpse of
all these classes of homes, and in winter found them unseasonably chill
and frugal. Thirty years ago, I am assured, it was far worse, for then
carpets were unknown, and fires less used than to-day. Such economies
are practised here as in England would accompany only harsh poverty,
but they must not be taken as the symbol of such. Your grocer and his
wife, who eat behind the shop in a sanded and comfortless space walled
off, and on Sunday afternoon go out, neatly arrayed in well-fitting but
dowdy and serviceable garments, have tidy fortunes stowed away, while
their flashy, splash-loving brethren of the British Isles, with their
dog-carts, bicycles, and up-to-date attire turned out by fashionable
tailors, dressmakers, and milliners, are pulling the devil by the tail
and stupidly patronising their betters, who are contented with less
display.

I retired lately to Ireland to write this little book, and was struck,
after long residence in France, by the violent contrast between French
and Irish character in these respects. I was used to the simple,
courteous, willing, active trades-people of Paris, who give themselves
no airs, dress dowdily, live modestly. I found the same class in
Ireland, even in a small village, dressed daily as Solomon in all his
glory never was, with tailor-made gowns worth ten and twelve guineas,
and with haughty manners that would bewilder a princess of the blood;
the one cutting the other, Heaven only knows on what assumption of
superiority, and all hastening from their counters in smart turnouts,
duly to subscribe their loyal names to the list of the Queen’s visitors.
I felt like Rip Van Winkle—as if I had waked in my native land and
found everyone gone mad with pride and pretension. When I ventured
into a shop to make an insignificant purchase, a gorgeous dandy with a
lisp condescended to attend to me, or a lady looking like a duchess,
and most desirous that you should take her for such, dropped from the
height of her grandeur to my humble person, and was good enough in her
superior way to look after me. Everybody was seemingly so above trade
or business or bread-winning of any kind that I was glad enough to pack
up my papers and things and come back to a race more simple and less
pretentious, where the people work with good-will, and sell you a yard
of tape or a hat without insufferable condescension, and where tradesmen
and their wives do not think it necessary to confer on crowned heads the
honour of their call. In pursuit of my investigations on this subject
I was taken to the house of a very small trades-person, who lived over
her shop. The owner wore a twelve-guinea silk-lined gown trimmed with
Irish point. I could well imagine what sort of residence hers would be
in France. For Ireland it was a sort of Aladdin surprise. Majesty indeed
might have sat in that sitting-room. It was furnished with faultless
taste: beautiful old Sèvres, proof engravings exquisitely framed, buhl
cabinets; everything—curtains, chairs, sixteenth-century benches and
couches, quaint ornaments, the spoils of frequent auctions of gentlemen’s
houses—was chosen with the best of judgment by an ignorant peasant woman,
whose bringing up, surroundings, and life had been of the most sordid
kind. I was shown the bedroom, and found it a no less pleasing and
surprising vision, a nest of modern luxury and beauty, such a bedroom as
in Paris you would see only along the handsome and expensive avenues.

Another time I obtained a glimpse of the home of a bankrupt widow of a
“little burgess” who had had to vacate a house with grounds to take up
her residence in a more modest dwelling. Such a woman in France would be
content to live and die a very plain and simple person, and, having had
to compound with her creditors, would have considered herself bound to
lay out her new existence upon lines of the most rigid economy, above
all, as there was a large family of sons and daughters not yet of an
age, nor having the requisite education, to provide for themselves. The
house I visited was one of a row, a poor, mean quarter, where no sane
person would look for any appearance of affluence. Over the fan-light
the house rejoiced in an imposing Celtic name in three words in raised
white letters, not the cheapest form of house nomenclature. A gardener
was engaged trimming the infinitesimal garden front; the youngest girl,
of twelve, was mounting her bicycle to career off with a companion; in
the hall were three other bicycles belonging to different members of
the family. The furniture of the drawing-room was new and expensive,
and a young lady was playing up-to-date waltzes on the piano, without a
trace of concern or anxiety; no sign anywhere of economy, of sacrifice,
of worry. Yet I knew I was entering a house where there was practically
nothing to live upon, and where the proceeds of a sale that should
have gone to the woman’s creditors had been squandered on unnecessary
things. One may criticise the meannesses to which thrift drives the
frugal French, but I never felt more near to falling in love with what
is to me an uncongenial vice than I did on leaving my native land after
this visit, to have commercial dealings once more with people not above
their business, instead of trading with the spurious descendants of
kings, whose sole anxiety is to make you feel their social superiority
and extraordinary condescension, to find these excellent French
“little people” all that Lever told us the Irish were but have ceased
to be—cordial, delightful, intelligent, and simple. For that is the
great, the abiding charm of the French middle class—the absence of vulgar
pretension. Every man to his trade, and an artist at that—such is the
wise French motto. I begin to suspect the late Felix Faure, the tanner
of France, must have had some Irish blood in his veins, for he was well
worthy to play the sovereign to that mock prince of the blood, the Irish
tradesman.

The home of the French middle classes, I have already said, is not,
in the Anglo-Saxon conception of the word, an abode of comfort.
Small economies are too rigidly practised therein. The _salon_, or
sitting-room, is apt to be shut up all the week in the interest of the
furniture, and only opened on the single afternoon the lady of the house
is supposed to be at home to her friends. Then in winter, just before the
hour of reception, the meagre wood-fire is set ablaze, and sometimes tea
is prepared, along with biscuits far from fresh. You may be thankful—if
tea is to be offered you, a rare occurrence—should the tea be no staler
than the biscuits, I have known a Frenchwoman, the sister of a professor
at Stanislas College, who admitted to me naïvely that she changed the
leaves of her tea every four or five days. She informed me that this
economical hint was given her by a Scotchwoman, who assured her that in
Scotland nobody was extravagant enough to make fresh tea every day. I
hope this Scotchwoman was an invention of the Frenchwoman. It would be
terrible to believe that all the families of Scotland drink their daily
dose of slow poison. In winter also are the two meals of noon and evening
consumed in a frigid atmosphere, for such a thing as a dining-room fire
is unheard of in the class I refer to. The napery will be of the coarsest
quality, and oftener coloured than white.

The house is generally run with a single maid-of-all-work, who receives
a monthly wage of from thirty to forty francs, and her life is not an
easy one. The lady already referred to had her _bonne_ from the country,
where existence is still harsher than in Paris, and paid her thirty
francs a month. The unfortunate _bonne_ for this sum had to wash, clean,
scour, cook, market, make beds, and sew. The lady was pious, and a
philanthropist, but pious and philanthropic persons are sometimes harsh
taskmasters, and not infrequently dishonest. The _bonne_ was obliged,
out of her scant wages, to pay a hundred francs a year for her bedroom,
which was merely a box under the roof, without ventilation or fireplace,
so that in winter she froze, and in summer she was baked. She also had
to buy her own wine and coffee, if she needed either, and never, from
week’s end to week’s end, tasted of dessert or sweets, or knew what it
was to dine off fowl, when by rare chance fowl was served at table. I was
this lady’s “paying guest” for four or five months; and if my lot was a
hard one, I could console myself with the reflection that the servant’s
was infinitely harder. True, the servant did not, as I did, pay an
exorbitant price for those discomforts, but we could both say that we had
to deal with a singularly pleasant, affable, well-spoken, and agreeable
woman, surprisingly intelligent, who kept her house in admirable order.
She was secretary for several Catholic philanthropic works, and taught
catechism, for a consideration, to poor children in some disreputable
quarter of Paris. I thought of her, as I have thought of many another
Christian philanthropist, Catholic and Protestant, how much more in
keeping with the doctrine of Christ it would be to stay unpretentiously
at home and practise the modest virtue of honesty, doing unto others as
one would be done unto. On her way to her catechism class she would drop
in to the woodman’s to order wood for me, as a favour for which it was my
duty to thank her, pay the woodman three francs, and virtuously charge me
five in the bill. I was ill, and in the same spirit of benevolence she
ordered everything needful for me—_for a consideration_. For all that,
she was the nicest, the cheerfulest, and most pleasing robber and humbug
I have ever known. I defy any Anglo-Saxon to give the fleeced as much
value in the way of agreeable speech and cordiality and beaming smiles
as this religious Norman lady gave me. She broke the heart of a trusting
friend, and, having gracefully beggared her, drove her to America ruined
and embittered, yet went on her own confident way along the path of
virtue, assured of nothing more than her indisputable right to a seat in
Paradise.

[Illustration: A SEASIDE SERVICE

_Edelfelt_]

But she was not the first to initiate me into the economical mysteries of
the French home. Before this I had been the “paying guest” of a native
of Burgundy with an Alsatian title as long as an Alexandrian verse. She
professed to have known Lamartine in her youth, and when I spoke of
the poet by his name, she corrected me with a grand and reproving air:
“Mademoiselle, we of Macon say _Monsieur de Lamartine_.” Here the same
mysteries of locked _salon_ all the week round, open only for a few hours
on the famous reception day of Madame la Baronne; the same absence of
plenty at the board—lunch for three persons invariably three boiled eggs,
three tiny cutlets and three boiled potatoes, three little rolls and
three small apples. Never a fourth of anything, should one of the three
happen to be a little hungrier than the other two. Only, as I had to
do with a broken-down aristocrat, there reigned, instead of the beaming
cordiality of the bourgeoise, an awful, desperate, glacial reserve. The
baroness’ attitude to life may be described fitly as resembling her
attitude to the late lamented poet, whom she apostrophised stiffly as
_Monsieur de Lamartine_. She was frightfully dignified, even in starving
her unfortunate paying guest on twelve pounds a month. It is true, paying
guests are not infrequently regarded by ladies as creatures predestined
to starvation and prompt payment in their hands, and in business matters
I can safely say, from singularly sharp experience, that there are no
more heartless and rapacious landladies on the face of the earth than
needy and educated women. The greed of the common woman runs to pence,
while that of the lady runs to shillings; and whereas the former, when
she is dishonest, has a lingering consciousness of it, and flies into
a wholesome rage on detection, the latter is armoured in the brass of
breeding, and looks cool and surprised that you should object to being
fleeced by her. Upon any approach to complaint, instead of excuses, she
shows you cynically that she took you in in order to fleece you. A French
“woman of letters,” in the lowest acceptance of that unpleasing term,
the old, semi-extinguished type of bluestocking, once told me that she
always calculated on making a clear profit of two hundred francs a month
on the board of her “paying guest,” otherwise she did not regard herself
as having made a good thing out of it. As she charged a hundred francs a
month for a bedroom, twelve pounds a month was the sum she counted upon
as legitimate profit. Her terms were sixteen pounds a month—light, fire,
afternoon tea, and wine extras—so that the unfortunate fleeced one had
exactly the value of four pounds for the sixteen disbursed. Needless
to say, this literary hostess only found stray fools from perfidious
Albion, recommended by amiable folk over-seas, who guilelessly believed
the young ladies despatched to her would enjoy the benefit of exalted
social relations, since titles were never out of her mouth, and upon her
own description of herself she entertained daily the highest of the land.
She traded upon the British weakness for titles, but took care to conceal
from these gulled ones the fact that French doors, whether of nobles or
of commoners, are not easily opened to foreigners, and never to “paying
guests,” whom the careful French fear as possible adventurers.

I have heard English people criticise the parsimony of the first French
breakfast, because you generally find a couple of lumps of sugar on the
side of your saucer instead of a sugar-bowl, and a pat of butter and a
single small roll instead of the domestic loaf and a butter-basin. I own
I give my preference altogether to the dear, neat little French tray.
When I go on visits to friends in France, I find nothing so charming as
to be wakened every morning by a beaming Frenchwoman of the people, whose
manners are always so perfect, who is a human being, and not, like the
well-trained English servant, a machine; who opens the shutters and lets
in light with her fresh, soft “Good-morning,” and approaches the bed with
a small, dainty tray, exquisitely laid; such coffee or chocolate as you
will get nowhere else, and everything so trim and minute—the two lumps
of sugar, the tiny pat of butter, the hot roll—what ogre could demand
more on returning from the land of dreams? Naturally, the English fashion
calls for a more liberal supply, because there you are cleansed, combed,
and buckled in the shackles of civilisation downstairs, perhaps after a
morning run—and the scent of bacon and eggs is refreshing to the keen
nostril. But more than this neat little French tray contains would be too
much in a bedroom, and nobody but that Irish girl I referred to, with
morbid taste, could clamour for a sugar-bowl to sweeten a single cup of
coffee.

Then mid-day, when the sun is high in the heavens, gathers the family
round the second breakfast-table. Amongst the well-to-do this is a meal
to shame the frugal British luncheon. It consists of an _entrée_, a roast
dish, vegetables, a cold dish, a sweet, dessert, and cheese. No need
to mention the cooking. That is sure everywhere to be excellent, though
even among French cooks there are grades. Here you will of a surety not
be struck by the pervasion of economy, but that of plenty. You will
understand why the comfortably-off French, when they lunch at British
tables, lament that they are starved. Indeed, when you have the good luck
to partake of French hospitality, you will find it the best in the world.
At no tables will you eat so well and so plentifully as at the tables
of your French friends, and in no land on earth will you enjoy such
delightful conversation as theirs, where they know how to speak and have
something to say. In England people are always on their guard, are often
afraid to talk their best, lest they shall prove bores or eccentrics. In
France the bore is the person who has nothing to say, and the eccentric
is thanked for frankly revealing himself as such. Only be intelligent, be
individual and interesting, and then you may rattle on to your liking,
and provided you tumble with glory, you may choose between the devil
and the deep sea with equal unconcern. The people around you, the most
susceptible and sympathetic to individual value, will be far too busy
listening to what you have to say—provided it is worth the saying—to give
a thought to picking you to pieces.

In spite of the romancers and all the twaddle they talk in the interest
of the psychological novel, there are no women capable of warmer and
more generous friendships than Frenchwomen, none capable of a deeper,
discreeter, more abiding loyalty. They are astonishingly indulgent, too,
which is part of their great sense, and even their intolerance, where it
exists, they have the grace to clothe in the suavity of tact. If they
talk, as they too often do, a great deal of nonsense about the English,
and cherish vast illusions about their own nation, this is only in the
nature of things, seeing that there is no race in the world brought up
in more astonishing ignorance of every other race, and more trained to
cherish denser prejudices. At school they learn only French geography,
French history, French grammar. The rest of Europe comprises mere
congested districts round France; and while it takes several volumes to
learn the history of France, the history of other peoples may be told
in a few paragraphs. Boys may fare differently, but in my time this is
how French girls were taught. England, as the traditional enemy, must
necessarily expect rough treatment at the hands of the French; and in
a country where the Press is a blatant monument of misrepresentation,
the women cannot be wiser than their country, led by such a disastrous
influence. French prejudices against England are as substantial and
impenetrable as the walls of Pekin; you may ride round them, marvel
at them, but never hope to demolish them. But the French mind that
manages to keep outside these walls becomes surprisingly enlarged, and
then you need ask for no finer or more generous judgment. It needs
this finish of magnanimity to so sympathetic a character, rare though
it be in France,—for magnanimity is the last quality we may allow the
race in general,—to show us how delightful the French can become. For
this you must look among the cultured workers of France, the thinkers,
the teachers, and men of science. These alone—and they are not loved
for it—can recognise and tell the truth about even the mediæval enemy,
perfidious Albion.

Frenchwomen of all classes live much more in their bedrooms than
Englishwomen do. Of a morning they study, read, work there, give orders
to their servants, write letters. These bedrooms are generally very
pleasant places, with dressing-rooms off, and clothes closets, so that
intimate friends of either sex may pass in and out without indiscretion
or awkwardness. The bed itself is a handsome piece of furniture, with
curtains to match the big bed-cover, which hides every atom of white,
and sometimes, with the pillows in the middle and silk or satin-covered
bolster at either end under this covering, it resembles those imposing
mediæval couches we see in the Cluny Museum. On the other hand, the
sexes in family life are more apart than in England. They meet at
table, but their amusements, interests, and work are accepted as widely
different. The relations of husband and wife are based upon a more
intelligent understanding than elsewhere; and those of parent and child
are the nearest approach to perfection with which I am acquainted, if
only a higher moral training were added to the tenderness and incessant
care, for the French wife and mother is undoubtedly the best of her
kind; and if her mate is less worthy, at least he is a kinder, more
considerate, and courteous mate than his Anglo-Saxon brother. His sins,
when he is volatile and bad, run to the _cabinet particulier_ or the
_foyer_ of fast theatres, while the other flies to perdition on the fumes
of alcohol, and sins against home in public bars, upon race-courses, in
the hostels of fugitive dalliance. The Frenchman will tell you that he
is the better man of the two, for he brings a little sentiment into his
infidelities, while the Anglo-Saxon, when he turns his back upon home and
the domestic virtues, is brutal and gross.

I think there is something to be said for the erring Frenchman in his
frailty. Lisette, while her reign lasts, is somebody for him whom he must
study and consider, to whom he is bound to be kind, until he makes up his
mind to leave her, or until she leaves him. But this is not a point I
need dwell on. In the matter of virtue, the Britishers make themselves
out to be such honest, invulnerable fellows, unlike the chattering,
bragging sinners on the other side of the Channel, that it is only the
state of the public streets of Great Britain at nightfall that fronts us
with the universal charge against them of Pharisaism. And so I come back
to my contention, that since infidelity to the marriage vow does exist,
the light-headed sons of France choose the more open way of sinning.
Their view of the case, as expressed in their fiction, is frankly
odious, and, on his own showing, there is something essentially unclean
in the Frenchman’s mind, though I have always found his conversation
fastidiously correct and inoffensive, and it is sad to think of such a
fine and splendid race of women playing the unsavoury _rôle_ they are
made to play by the dramatists and novelists of their land. The women,
of course, must be greatly to blame for the misesteem expressed in
their regard by their fashionable and popular writers. Too fearful of
displeasing, and too sensitive to Gallic ridicule, they do not understand
that it rests with them to claim and obtain the respect due to them. They
applaud and admire the writers who most persistently degrade them under
the flattering guise of a passionate interest and concern. They, who so
wisely dominate at home, have seemingly little or no objection to play
the animal on paper. Of course there is a cultured and distinguished
class who detest the modern fiction and plays of their country, who
protest against them at home and in the Press, who will tell you they
read only foreign novels, to avoid being dragged through the mire of
their own.

This brings me to the consideration of woman’s _rôle_ in France. The
foreigner who only judges that _rôle_ from the novels he reads, mostly
pornographic, and from the drama, increasingly gross and immoral, will
be all at sea as regards the part woman plays in French life. He will
conceive her first playing the hypocrite up to the time of marriage, and
then living without restraint ever afterwards. He will wonder what time
is left her for domestic duties, and judge her social duties merely as
convenient stages along the downward path. If he enjoys that sort of
thing, she will amuse and interest him, but he will underestimate her
position in reality. For no one plays a more important _rôle_ in the
ranks of humanity than the Frenchwoman. She it is who rules the home,
and in what an admirable way she rules it can never be sufficiently
extolled. She it is who trains, fashions, guides man in every step of his
career, from his boyhood into his first love-affair, and makes of him
the courteous and indulgent creature he proves in matrimony. As mother,
aunt, sister, wife, and daughter, the Frenchman relies on his womankind
throughout his whole career. She is, in the best and fullest sense of
the word, his helpmeet; assists him in his business, enjoys his entire
confidence, because he knows so well that she is the better part of the
institution, bears more than half of his troubles. As a mother, she knows
how to efface herself, and in acting to her sons as their best friend
and confidant, keeps her sovereignty stable. It is because she is such
a sensible and dignified ruler, indulgent where indulgence is needful,
that the men around her rarely feel the impulse to break from her sway.
She moulds the politicians, takes the poets and novelists by the hand,
holds the social sceptre with ease and charm, pulls the academical
wire-strings, aids youth to success and triumph, names the fashion in
literature,—and here she does less wisely and less well,—makes and mars
reputations, is responsible for more of the commercial prosperity of
the land than her mate, and brought, of her own thrift and labour, a
bigger share to the millions that went to Germany than he. An England
without her women could be conceived as still standing, so effaced is
their _rôle_; but France may almost be said to exist by hers. If the
women would only consent to go to the colonies, the French would, I am
convinced, turn out capital colonists.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII

PEASANT AND ARTISAN

From earliest youth I had been accustomed to the trim and pleasing aspect
of the French peasant, but lived long in Paris without ever having had
occasion to examine this class more closely than a walk in the country
permits. I chanced to summer one year in the Saintonge, and friends made
me acquainted there with an excellent miller and his wife who dwelt
upon their lands. I published in the _Speaker_ something about these
delightful people afterwards, and I cannot do better than quote from that
forgotten source:

“In the Saintonge, as elsewhere, the local mood is ruled by politics, and
private friendship gives way to public rivalry. I learnt all about these
feuds from my friend the miller of La Pellouaille. Intellect was not his
strong point, but there was a cheerful cynicism about him to lend flavour
to his commonplaces. While others affected the heroic or patriotic, he
was content to accommodate himself to circumstances. In reply to my
query—to which party he belonged—he said, with a humorous smile, ‘_Dame_,
I go with the strongest, naturally,’ which did not prevent him from
giving his own sly hit at the Government. I give his views for what they
are worth—neither brilliant nor original, but expressed with a certain
geniality of tone and temper that kept him from bucolic dulness. If the
Republic kept France out of mischief for the next twenty years, and
carried her into fair prosperity, he believed, by that time, neither
Bonapartist nor Legitimist would be remembered. For the moment the land
was in a state of ferment, and he thought it a pity such excessive use
should be made of those big words, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
These three republican assurances be qualified as mere _blagues_; and
told me of a jocose tobacconist who wrote them on the sign-board of
his shop, with an empty tobacco-pouch suspended from each, the pouches
in France being called _blagues_. But the miller’s wife was certainly
his pleasanter half. It was a delight to look upon a creature so human
and wholesome and resourceful. She was a large, handsome woman, with a
smile as fresh as new milk, and hazel eyes as clear as daylight, beaming
with good-will, with vitality, and interest in her fellows. The kine
browsing in the fields were not more mild. Such a woman has you right
at nature’s heart—big and broad and bountiful. She is peasant in the
best sense, proud of her spotless cap and apron, free and independent in
her carriage, with shoulders that know no cringing stoop and voice that
cannot whine.”

This good creature took me rambling through the woods, she picking the
nuts, and I devouring them; and I found her talk ever sensible and
entertaining. Thanks to the natural good manners and intelligence of the
French people, there is far less difference than in England between the
uneducated and educated classes. My friends of the mill honoured me once
with an invitation to dinner. The sky was menacing, and, as I entered the
long park avenue whence the mill was visible, I saw the miller and his
son anxiously scanning the heavens and the green-roofed aisle of walnut
and sycamore by which I came. They hailed me with vigorous welcome, and,
as I rested in their beautifully clean kitchen, with broad and generous
fireplace, where the wood crackled pleasantly, and shone upon polished
brass dogs and gleaming bronze pots, with the high French bed in the
deep recess, the miller’s wife mixed me some _cassis_ and water. A more
excellent dinner I have never eaten than that cooked, without fuss, or
haste, or delay, by the miller’s wife. In a twinkling, as it seemed to
me, she had savoury tomato-soup on the table; and while she laid the
cloth, the miller sat in front of the capacious mouth of flames, and saw
that the browning chicken was kept moist with grease. I told them the
story of Alfred and the cakes, and the miller’s wife cried, “She struck
a king—a peasant just like myself!” “_Dame_,” laughed the miller, “it
doesn’t make much difference, when it is a woman, whether she be queen or
peasant!” And I thought the remark one that an English peasant would have
been incapable of making. He would have been incapable of such a point of
view.

The French peasant has not the charm of the Irish peasant—the women,
above all, lack the lovely complexion and beautiful eyes of the Irish—and
he has less of the grand air. He is much more the son of the soil and
less of the gentleman. The writer, wishing to be true to life, could
never make such enchanting “copy” out of him as Jane Barlow made of the
Irish peasant in her delightful _Idylls_. There is too little poetry
about him, and he is too evenly balanced and cool-headed to offer us
many of the adorable surprises of humour. I have heard it said, by
French persons who live in the country, that Zola comes nearer to truth
and reality in his presentment of the peasant than George Sand in her
exquisite pastorals, or M. René Bazin in such a tender and lovely story
as _La Terre qui Meurt_. But Balzac himself did not weave us tales of
romance and delicate feeling when he touched upon the theme; and so it
is very likely that the fellow is more of a brute than he seems to be in
casual intercourse, without, however, sinking to the loathsome depths
of the realism of _La Terre_. I, when I recall him to mind, own that I
ever see him a dignified, well-mannered figure in blue blouse, generally
clean, sometimes incredibly patched by his thrifty wife, frugal, sober,
hard-worked, not too garrulous, and yet not resentful of easy speech,
nor suspicious of the stranger who accosts him with courtesy. I find him
in all things, as he presents himself to the eye and offers himself for
observation, the superior of his British brother Hodge, neither so gross
nor so unintelligent, with a look in his eye much resembling humour.
He has his demands upon life, too, which are not those of the clownish
brute, the inarticulate rustic. Not for nothing was the Revolution made,
since by it has he learnt that he has his own share in the joys of
civilisation, and that if he work hard enough his sons may aspire to such
a measure of education as a harsher lot denied him. When business brings
him into a little town or a great city, his eye alights on beautiful
objects, placed there as much for him as for the owners of seigneurial
dwellings. Flowers, trim parks, legends in stone, splendid cathedrals,
every gracious blending of line and colour, combine to train his eye in
beauty and refine his nature. He need thread these quaint and lovely
streets with no slouching step, for he, and such as he, are too conscious
of their stable efforts in the general work of order and national
prosperity. He need touch his forelock to no great lord for permission
to breathe the free air of heaven, for does not he, too, possess his
bit of land, his little dwelling, from which none can oust him? And, on
feast-days and Sundays, are there not always public museums at hand for
his instruction and entertainment? No country in the world takes such
care to provide museums for the people throughout all the provinces as
France. Every year the State purchases pictures at the annual exhibitions
of Paris to add to these provincial collections; and in every little
town you pass through you are personally urged by some native to visit
the Musée. This fact may have something to do with the astonishing
intellectual superiority of the French peasant over Hodge beyond the
Channel. For the fact remains that you can talk to the blue-bloused son
of the soil and hope to learn something from him, when the absence of
loquacity and ideas and manners in Hodge will leave you discouraged and
in despair. The French peasant loves so many things that educate and
refine—flowers and pictures and military bands, spectacles of all kinds,
and independence.

[Illustration: AN OUTDOOR MEAL

_Zimenez_]

His standard is by no means an exalted one. His frugality is practised
in the interest of his old age. His honesty is chiefly, I suspect, a
shrewd protection against the probable dishonesty of others, for the
simple law of comradeship demands that you shall treat fairly the man
who treats you fairly. And his religion does not go down as deep as
his soul, or whatever may serve him as such. It is with him merely a
material influence, since it furnishes a serviceable plank for getting
safely across the perilous abyss into a better world, and enables him
to be decently baptised, married, and buried as a member of a Christian
community. All other phases of religion—its emotions, exactions,
penalties, and devices—he leaves to the foolish women-folk. Indeed, this
seems to be the conviction of the average male Catholic the world over,
if I may except Ireland, the one Catholic country in which I have found
men to take their religion seriously, and the little Celtic corner of
France, where the blue-eyed Bretons so closely resemble them. When I have
visited at a French country-house in the shooting season, I have never
known a male guest to attend mass, the explanation given being that _la
chasse_ had begun before the hour of mass. But if a woman stayed away
from mass she would create a scandal. In Spain I have seen acquaintances
of mine, while their women-folk knelt and prayed with fervour, stand
throughout the Sunday service with a bored and perfunctory air, only
looking towards the altar and the priest at the moment of the elevation
of the Host in a casually respectful way, as an officer might salute the
passage of a military chief, and seemingly relieved to be able to examine
again the faces and dresses of the women about them. Children barely in
their teens, young lads going to school, carefully imitate this attitude
of merely tolerant recognition of religious form, and their elders never
dream of encouraging them to use a prayer-book, or kneel, or show any
sign that the weekly mass is to them more than the bored attendance at an
official ceremony.

What is a moral influence with them? High above religion is their sturdy
passion for independence. It is this passion that enables them to scrape,
and serve, and suffer privation with dignity and patience. However meagre
their resources may be, they are content with their lot, provided the
roof they sleep beneath is their own, the land they till their own, the
goat, the pig, the poultry, theirs to do with what they will. This is no
mean standard, and it works miracles in France. Would they were by nature
and instinct kinder to their beasts! but this, too, is not a Catholic
characteristic. I am assured that the Bretons and Provençals are the
worst offenders. However, they do not sink so low in cruelty to animals
as the purely Latin races, like the callous Spaniards and the Italians;
and even in France the condition of animals is considerably ameliorated,
though horses and donkeys are still often maltreated, and geese are
killed in the cruelest fashion, their prolonged agonies, in peasant
esteem, lending flavour to the cooked flesh.

What should, however, be a source of perennial admiration is the
extraordinary absence in this class of anything approaching snobbishness.
The eternal simplicity and unpretentiousness of the race are my constant
wonder and delight. You will see a man in blue blouse, his wife in
spotless cap and coloured kerchief, the man in appearance and fashion
of speech and manners a gentleman, the woman educated, with her _brevet
supérieur_, not destitute of music or art, working and living like
peasants because they are working their own land, and receiving on
lines of perfect equality their humbler neighbours, without any thought
of giving themselves the vulgar airs so common in my own land and in
England. When they take their well-earned holiday at the seaside or among
mountain waters, you will rarely find them seeking to pass for other than
they are, or talking loudly of their advantages of fortune or station.
Their natural dignity is such that they are content to abide by it and be
judged accordingly. This class of the French race may be described as the
least vulgar, the least boastful of the world. With these cleanly and
self-respecting toilers there is no insane aping of the idler, no cheap
imitation of the _bourgeoise_ in dress, no awful spectacle of girls with
hideous feathers and hats the grossest assertion of ill-placed ambition.
Finery of any kind is recognised as the advertisement of something worse
than bad taste,—of the bonnet gone clean over the mill and morals gone
after it. The peasant woman’s vanity is to dress as her mother dressed
before her, her pride is to belong to her land and her people. And it
is because of this wholesome vanity and this noble pride that France is
France, and the land is such a pleasant one to travel over.

This hard-working race is not without its amusements. It must, as I have
said, have its share of the joys of life. They are never too tired after
a day’s work to dance to the music and measure of song, which they love;
and whenever you chance upon them congregated for diversion, whether
at a fair, on a moonlit sward, over a hilarious meal, you will always
find their behaviour seemly and their gaiety attractive and measured.
If the feathers and hats of holiday trim of Great Britain are lacking
here, so also are the repulsive giggles and the hateful love-making
of those latitudes. The French, we know, are not patterns of virtue,
but they certainly are patterns of deportment abroad. In that clever
little book, _The Island_, Mr. Whiteing depicts the love-making of this
class in England as certainly the worst enemy of the French could never
write with any semblance of truth of the same portion of the race in
France. “Like their North-American sisters, fond of feathers and bright
hues. No gaudier thing in nature than the coster-girl in her holiday
dress of mauve, with the cruel plume that seems to have been dyed in
blood. Relation of female to male, singular survival of primitive state.
Love-making always, in form at least, an abduction of the virgin. A
meeting at the street corner in the dusk for the beginning of the
ceremony; then a chase round the houses, the heavy boots after the light
ones, with joyous shrieks to mark the line of flight; after that the
seizure, the fight, with sounding slaps for dalliance that might knock
the wind out of a farrier of the Blues. In the final clutch skirts part
in screeching rents, feathers strew the ground. Then the panting pair
return hand in hand to the street corner, to begin again.” Of the meeting
of these dreadful lovers later in the public-house Mr. Whiteing adds—and
here, too, he paints a picture exclusively British, that never could
be seen in France: “Nightfall brings them together at the universal
rendezvous from every near or distant scene; men and those that were once
maidens, mumbling age and swearing infancy, stand six deep before the
slimy bar, till the ever-flowing liquor damps down their fiercest fires,
and the great city is once more at rest. The imagination of him that
saw hell could hardly picture the final scene.” And yet you will read
such things printed of the French not immediately under your inspection
that make you ask yourself if the rowdy love-making and public-house
bars constitute the worst possible degradation of humanity. The most
obvious, the most offensive assuredly, but not the least innocent. M.
Octave Mirbeau has recently done me the honour to send me his latest
book, _Le Journal d’une Femme de Chambre_. Not even Zola could conceive
a more terrible indictment against his own race. All classes are therein
depicted as equally corrupt, shameless, brutalised by irrepressed and
irrepressible vice,—nobles, _bourgeoisie_, servants of both sexes,
city and country folk, artisans and peasants. The book has an air of
sincerity, of being the truthful record of a lady’s-maid’s career in
Paris and in the country, so that one cannot discuss it as mere vicious
raving, and every character introduced is worse than the one that went
before. I question if humanity has ever been dragged into such infamous
depths with such a singular display of enjoyment in its degradation.
I read such charges, and I am stupefied with their divergence from my
own personal experience. The French servants I have known have all
been excellent creatures, devoted to their mistresses, grateful for any
kindness or interest shown them, surprisingly intelligent, honest, sober,
of lives of conspicuous virtue. They have the national failing, which is
a tendency to insolence on slight provocation—for you cannot reason with
French people. They fire up angrily at the least hint of an opinion that
displeases them, and their very independence of character makes them sin
on the other side of servility. But those monsters of their fiction—where
are they to be met with? How do they manage to hide themselves so
cleverly from daily scrutiny, if they are, as we are assured, so
persistently around us? Have any of the sweet-mannered Eugénies, the
Irmas, the Marguerites, the Louises, I meet at the different houses of my
friends, who greet me with such cheerful welcome, who take my umbrella or
cloak with such suggested sympathy, and put fresh flowers in my room with
such graceful pleasure, anything in common with M. Mirbeau’s unspeakable
wretch, Mlle. Celestine?

The same admiration I am compelled to entertain for the French peasant,
I feel for the French artisan, whether in town or country. Yet he, too,
has been depicted as a creature of loathsome perversity; but I can only
speak of him as I have found him. Some years ago, going from Cognac to
Angoulême, I decided to abandon the dull, incommunicative travellers
of the second class and try my chances among the loquacious third-class
voyagers. Here I fell into the very midst of good-humoured, general
conversation, and learnt more about the stirring local events of Cognac
and Angoulême than I should have known after a week’s residence in either
town. A young girl with a round, baby face addressed me in excellent
English, so evidently beaming with the joy of being able to do so that
I lavished my congratulations instantly, and learnt that she had been
for two years a nurse in Warwickshire, where she had picked up fluent
English and met with so much kindness and innocent pleasures of all
sorts that she adored the name of England ever afterwards. Certainly
not a sister of M. Mirbeau’s ineffable Mlle. Celestine, this dear,
sentimental little maid of Angoulême. It was a case of attraction at
first sight, for she begged of me to use her room instead of going to a
hotel, and be her guest at her father’s, a little watchmaker, during the
three days I projected staying at Angoulême. I accepted, enchanted at
a proposal that offered me such an out-of-the-way and original glimpse
of a French town. “Sweetness and light” are words that best describe
this delicious little creature. She was like a round, innocent kitten,
all gaiety and brightness, and sparkled and danced along the streets
beside me, crazy with the delight of talking English again. Girls, she
moaned dejectedly, were most unhappy creatures in France; they had no
pleasures, no freedom. She could not take her beautiful big dog Tom,
given her as a puppy in Warwickshire, out for a walk because it is not
proper in France for a young girl to be seen out-of-doors with a dog.
Poor little martyr, she did not look much of a victim, and missing and
yearning for the larger ways of England had not thinned or paled her
rosy, vivacious, round visage. Here she was, as happy as a queen because
she was going to sleep on her grandmother’s sofa that a stranger from
whom she would take no money might sleep comfortably in her bed. She
insisted on carrying my bag, too, as if that were another beaming source
of satisfaction; and as we trudged blithely up from the valley of the
station to the quaint street in which a quaint, dim-eyed old man lived
and made and mended watches in an altitude rivalling the stars, I saw
that Jeanne was a popular personage. Not this the timid French girl
who slips in and out of life unnoticed, and says, _Oui, monsieur; Non,
monsieur_, to the trousered wolves. The station-master cast her a cordial
nod; the doctor, climbing into his gig, heard her speak English, and
turned with a big, gruff laugh as he waved his hand to her. “There’s
Mlle. Jeanne, happy at last. She is able to calumniate us all in good
English to an insolent foreigner. _Pauvres de nous!_” and wherever we
went together those three days, I saw that the townspeople in shops,
down by the river the boatmen and boys, the women who showed us over
the museum and over the town-hall, the Alsatian manager of Laroche
Joubert’s huge paper factory, whither Jeanne and I drove next day, the
servants at the Duc de la Rochefoucauld’s castle, all knew, admired, and
respected Jeanne, the artisan’s daughter and Warwickshire nurse. She was
not pretty nor distinguished, she dressed like a dowdy nurse, and wore
cotton mittens, but I would I knew anybody in her position who could
attain such popularity in a town like Angoulême out of France. And all
with the utterest simplicity, and an excellent breeding. A heart-broken
shoemaker, a melancholy widower, who wanted her for wife, came to me
and begged me to use my influence in his behalf. He confided to me the
tale of his love, and felt sure that if Jeanne were urged to marry him
in the language of Shakespeare she would consent. She brought in to be
introduced to me a soldier to whom she was teaching English, a nice, mild
young fellow, who told me with gravity that in order to keep himself
abreast of English literature he had subscribed to _Pick Me Up_ for
himself and Jeanne, getting this luminous organ from Bordeaux. The doctor
and his wife invited Jeanne to take her foreign lion over one evening,
and we were made much of, and given syrup and water to drink. We stayed
out shockingly late of nights, for there was a splendid moon and I could
not be torn from the river. But when we entered on our upward toil along
the dark and silent streets, Jeanne would say: “Talk English very loud.
It is a woman’s best safeguard in France.” She called the English tongue
“a _coup de pistolet_ in French ears.” So whenever she saw a silhouette
in uniform, she fired off an aggressive shot of British vocables, and
when midnight, or later, found us under the watchmaker’s roof the old man
lifted his hands in horrified astonishment at our staying abroad so late.
It was another evidence of English eccentricity.

When I bade Jeanne good-bye at the station, I with difficulty prevailed
upon her to name a sum at least for my excellent board, if not for
the pretty bedroom I had used for three delightful days. Judge of
my amazement when at length she said, to put me at ease, and quite
reluctantly, that she would accept three francs for my three days’ board.
This I regarded as so ludicrous that I laughingly told her I would rather
discharge my debt from Paris, for I preferred to be remembered by a
present than take out of my purse three miserable francs in return for
all I had enjoyed. I declare there were tears in the child’s eyes, and
she sorrowfully assured me her holiday was over. She had never had such
a time at Angoulême since her birth: rows on the river by sunset and
moonlight, she steering, I rowing, and all the boatmen looking on and
cheering lustily; walks here, drives there, and Tom, the glorious Tom, in
honour of my nationality, permitted to walk with her, free beneath the
free heavens.

I saw many artisans at Jeanne’s, and never in one of either sex a hint of
grossness, of boorishness, of stupidity. Jeanne, I admit, was the pearl
of her set, speaking with polished diction, of manners gentle and urbane,
only a nurse, and yet a perfect lady in everything. Her bedroom denoted
her own charming refinement, with its blue and white curtains, its
spotless prettiness, the flower vases, and little bookcase not ignobly
filled. She spoke continuously of herself, of her wishes and dreams.
Well, never once did I get a suspicion of a flirtation in her life. She
spoke of men with dignity and simplicity, without simper or giggle, and
made no effort to lead me to believe that she was pursued by lovers. When
she referred to the shoemaker’s addresses, it was simply to express her
judicious fear of the immense responsibility of the post of stepmother.
Her dreams were not sordid or vulgar. She wanted more liberty as a young
girl, freedom to walk about with Tom, and not be hampered with so many
unwise and unwritten laws. For the rest, she seemed content with the
modest place she had in the world; and I have known many a wealthier
woman who might with reason have envied this bright little French
nurse,—an honour to her country, her sphere, and her sex. I have seldom
parted with a roadside friend with keener regret.

My next friend of the working class, and she, I am proud to say, is a
friend of several years’ standing, is my Parisian washerwoman. But here,
I am bound to confess, I am fronted with an exceptional character,—witty,
brilliant, of a liberal and bountiful nature, and original almost to
the point of genius. My washerwoman comes every Tuesday, and brings
gaiety and delightful wit along with her. She is all sorts of odd things
together: a fierce Nationalist, a hard politician, a violent atheist,
a hater of Jesuits and freemasons, inclined to Protestantism, if,
unfortunately, the English were not Protestants already; intelligent
enough not to have been dazzled by the Russian alliance, even when all
France went mad on the Czar’s visit. “He wants our money, mademoiselle,”
she said to me in those mad times, “and we are fools enough to believe in
his friendship.” Whenever you mention the Russian alliance to her, she
promptly asks who has seen that alliance written out on paper, stamped,
and signed. And at the time of the Dreyfus Affair she could tell me
to a centime the sum the Jews and the English had paid the Czar, the
Pope, and the Emperor of Germany. I was used to an excellent, witty, and
extravagant lecture on the intricacies of the Affair every Tuesday which
delighted me, as she always had some ineffable monstrosity on the part
of the Jews, the English, the Germans, or the crowned heads of Europe
to impart; and took my joking with such delicious good humour that I
did not know how to fill up the gap after the verdict of Rennes, for
she is a very seemly, dignified little woman, my Parisian washerwoman.
She stands upon her manners, and says nothing more than “Good morning,
mademoiselle,” if you give her eloquence no opening. And what an
eloquence it is! What a flow of admirably chosen words, so expressively
enunciated, with fitting gesticulations and the most wonderful grimaces
of the wittiest and ugliest face I have ever seen! Then came the
Transvaal War, and here she shone. Indeed, I have repeatedly begged her
to abandon the obscure calling of a washerwoman, and betake herself to
public speaking. I have never known a woman more astonishingly fitted for
the part.

With her, too, as with the peasant, the distinctive characteristic is
an indomitable spirit of independence. I have never seen her anything
else but gay and charming, but two Englishwomen to whom I recommended
her complained of her insolence, because, being the soul of honesty
and an excellent washerwoman, she will stand no “observations” either
about her washing or her prices; nor will she tolerate anything like
airs. She maintains that she is quite as good as the Czarina, quite as
useful, and probably more intelligent, as, if they changed places, she
is convinced she would make a better hand at sitting on the throne than
the Czarina would make with her washtub. The Englishwoman, I suppose,
made some remarks that wounded this susceptible pride, and the fiery
little washerwoman neatly tied up her bundle of soiled linen, and with
a magnificent and haughty gesture laid it at her feet. “Madame can wash
her own linen or look elsewhere for a laundress; I decline madame’s
custom,” and walked out. The race have an eye, an unerring instinct, for
the drama, and know how to render even the rejection of soiled linen
picturesque and effective. They will cheerfully wash your linen for you
and black your boots; but, as well as payment in coin, they demand that
you shall recognise their right to consideration and courtesy as human
beings. With the _ancien régime_, servility was swept away, and when your
boots are blacked you are expected to give thanks for the service instead
of lifting the toe of contempt in your servant’s direction. A Scottish
woman who married a Frenchman used to convey her opinions and wishes to
her servants by means of a horsewhip, and, though some years dead, is
still a legend in Paris for her domestic difficulties and interior wars.
She belonged to the earlier period, now happily ended, when a kick was
administered for a pair of clean boots, and servants were supposed to
swallow strong language with a grin. Slave-driving, too, is restricted
here, for I have never caught a glimpse of the poor London “slavey,”
overworked almost to disease and insanity. This may be due to the system
of flats, which saves labour, and does away with the necessity for
carrying cans of water up several flights of stairs, but I am inclined to
think that French character goes for much in the suppression.

Domestic service is despised by the average peasant, the girls looking
forward to marriage, the men to peasant proprietorship, which works
so admirably in France. And in many provinces very young children of
both sexes go out as servants. At the different houses and châteaux I
visited in the Saintonge it was always little girls and boys between
seven and ten who served at table, answered bells, and helped in the
house-cleaning. I cannot say I found the houses particularly clean,
which may be a consequence, but it was interesting and amusing to see a
tiny lad enveloped in a blue working bib sweeping the stairs, and little
creatures at table removing the plates with not an excessive clatter.
One of the good results of this infant service was the indulgent and
maternal attitude of master and mistress. Such wee, willing creatures
could not be scolded seriously when they broke plates or glasses, and you
could not take in their regard the high, impersonal air of England, where
servants are mere instruments, not accepted as flesh-and-blood humanity.
Here you must, if human yourself, smile and thank and pat a curly head or
diminutive shoulder as the quaint creature offers you a course, with, oh!
such a stern determination to hold it steady and not accomplish disaster
in the neighbourhood of your garments.

The standard of comfort, especially in the matter of sanitary appliances,
has in France made an enormous progress during the last ten years. Ten
years ago in the country even the better classes were little, if at
all, in advance of Spain. I have seen such things in châteaux as would
not bear description, and could not be credited except upon personal
experience. So I ask myself what must be the state of peasant homes and
of artisans’ dwellings. With, however, the advance in schooling, comes an
appreciation of domestic improvements, and the kitchen is rapidly ceasing
to be the best bedroom. Under the Third Republic, so much maligned,
public schools for peasant girls have increased, which are considerably
an advance on the old convent system of education. Nuns are the worst
teachers in the world and the least conscientious. We have the exposure
by the Archbishop of Nancy of the method of the nuns of the Bon Pasteur,
who train orphans, and instead of teaching them, merely exploit them,
and keep up a flourishing institution on the hard labour of children and
girls, and, when the time for leaving the convent arrives, cast them
out without an outfit or a farthing of all the immense sums they have
earned for the convent when they ought to have been learning lessons.
Of course, these republican schools are thwarted and vexed by every
kind of petty persecution on the part of the clerical party. The French
Catholics detest the lay teachers, whom they regard as the rivals of
the Christian Brothers and the nuns, and make them suffer accordingly.
Their writers of predilection make a point of holding them up for public
scorn and ridicule, and so M. Henri Lavedan shows us, in that detestable
play, _Le Vieux Marcheur_, a country teacher, Mademoiselle Léontine
Falempin, all that she ought not to be; and M. de Vogüé, to be true to
the modern traditions of the French aristocrat, when he makes the base
heroine of his dull novel, _Les Morts qui Parlent_, go wrong, jeeringly
says, “So acted the pupil of the good M. Pécaut.” M. Pécaut, a respected
and popular citizen who died lately, established an excellent lay
institution for girls at Fontenay-aux-Roses, and M. de Vogüé’s cowardly
attack upon a dead man of whom the world knew nothing but good, by
implying that a woman is impure because she has been brought up in his
college, aroused the just indignation of every fair-minded Frenchman. If
the theme were not too unsavoury M. de Vogüé would deserve that I should
retort by revealing the tales of scandal and vice I have learned of a
fashionable convent near Paris,—and these stories do not reach me from
outsiders, but from four women who were educated therein.

It is a source of astonishment to me how inventive the French “little
people” are in the matter of domestic stores. In Ireland, certainly, you
will see nothing like it, but perhaps it may be different in England.
Here all sorts of things are made at home: wines, spirits, liqueurs,
and essences; jams, jellies, oil, vinegar, linen, bread, and honey.
Everything in nature is turned to useful account, and the housewives are
never idle. They have fruit and vegetables in abundance, and live, on
the whole, well, if frugally. Their lands produce flax, hemp, cloves,
colza, wheat, maize, every kind of flower, according to season and soil;
and such is the elasticity of their temperament and their unsleeping
industry, that they have been able to float above that tidal wave, the
phyloxera, as great as any of the Egyptian plagues, as they floated
above the national disaster of “’70.”

The hero of M. René Bazin’s most charming novel _La Terre qui Meurt_, is
a _métayer_; and _métayage_ is land worked on the half-profit system,
a midway position between labourer and freeholder. The sermon preached
by this mournful little story is that the French land is dying for want
of cultivation, as the peasants are swarming into the big towns, where
they are not wanted, and leaving to waste the land that needs them. Each
name in France is selected with a regard for the dignity of mankind.
The cook and the barber call themselves “artists,” and thereby efface
any menial touch from their calling. The retired servant calls himself
a _rentier_, and the retired labourer decks himself in the gentlemanly
title of _cultivateur_. You may be a _cultivateur_ with “lands and proud
dwellings,” like the earl in the song, or you may modestly cultivate a
single acre.

With such a fine name in prospect, I wonder any peasant lad is lured
from the country to the big, unsatisfactory towns, as M. Bazin laments
in his tale of the _métayer_ and his sons. In the _métairie_ system the
partnership between landlord and _métayer_ is worked in this wise. The
landlord supplies stock, land, and implements; the _métayer_ brings the
labour, and the profits are equally divided. The _métayer_ boards his
labourers, and their wages vary, according to season, from seventy-five
centimes to two and a half francs per day. The agent, on this system, is
done away with, and the landlord and his partner stand as man to man.
The artisan, too, in the country enjoys a pleasant independence. He
builds his own house, he makes and maintains his own home with thrift and
ambition. The standard of honesty is high. There is little beggary or
drunkenness, and early marriages are frequent.

Of course the peasant is grasping,—it were idle to hide this, even in
praising his frugality. He is close-fisted and hard-headed, and would
rather part with his blood than with a franc; but he and his brother,
the artisan, have made, and help to keep, France where she is. However
deplorable the pictures of their land which French novelists and
story-tellers may offer us, we may believe, without fear of error, that
it is not _La Terre_ which represents the French peasantry, so human
and so lovable, despite its lack of disinterestedness and generosity;
and it is not M. Octave Mirbeau’s appalling heroine who represents the
great hard-working, honest, and intelligent artisan class. Both of them
have qualities above and beyond any to be looked for in the same classes
elsewhere; and if there were nothing else to admire, surely we must find
admirable their rectitude and their love of independence.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX

THE PRESS AND THE PEOPLE’S COLLEGES

The French bring an artistic instinct into the manufacturing of all
things, and so it follows that they could not be content to compose
newspapers on the lines of British journalism, which accepts the
propagation of mere news as the aim and object for which journalism was
instituted. It is not necessarily what is true, but what will amuse and
please his subscribers that the editor thinks of. If these want fiction,
then give them fiction, by all means, but mix it up in a literary ragout.
And so, when you have turned from the political article of your paper,
which is frequently written in questionable taste, you will find little
paragraphs, half-columns about the nothings of the hour, written with
a delicate wit, an infinite grace and humour. Most of the contributors
to the _Figaro_ are remarkable writers. Of M. Anatole France there is
nothing to be said here, once we salute him as the living master of
French literature. Every Wednesday he offers the fortunate readers
of the _Figaro_ a scene of contemporary history which constitutes a
morning delight. This front column is reserved for the elect. Since
the split in the French nation over an unhappy Jewish officer, many
of the old contributors have been replaced by writers more in accord
with the present line of the _Figaro_ in politics. M. Cornély, the
practical editor to-day, used to be a frantic Monarchist, the pillar of
the _Gaulois_. Now the Government has no more firm upholder than this
Conservative Catholic. His brilliant leaderettes each morning in the
_Figaro_ are a daily joy, so full of sense, of logic, of humour, and of
wit are they.

Then the brief and delicious dialogues of M. Capus, who would miss
them? To see the name of Capus to a half-column of dialogue on a topic
of the hour is to be glad you have lived another day. It was by sheer
imperturbable good-humour that the _Figaro_ so splendidly fought the
governmental campaign during the severe crisis it passed through after
the verdict of Rennes, and out of which it came so triumphantly. Since
the Revolution no French Government has had such an hour of triumph
as that which the brave and excellent old man, M. Emile Loubet, and
his brave and able Minister, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, enjoyed on the
22nd of September, 1899, at the unforgetable banquet of twenty-two
thousand mayors of France, come from all parts of the country to gather
enthusiastically round the head of the State in a loyal protest against
all the base and scandalous machinations of his enemies. It is not
often one can congratulate a French editor on the political conduct
of his paper, and M. Cornély deserves hearty congratulations for his
skilful management of the governmental campaign in the columns of the
_Figaro_. It is true he was magnificently supported by M. France, a host
in himself, whose witching satires on Nationalism will remain among the
most delicate and dainty of contributions to political literature of
this or any country. It was a battle worthily won, the weapons, used
with a surprising dexterity, being wit, charm, grace, and humour. The
_Figaro_ has also an old contributor, Le Passant, who out of nothing will
fabricate you a half-hour of delicious hilarity, and for articles of a
more serious and intellectual quality, the distinguished woman of letters
who writes under the pseudonym of Arvède Barine.

Add to these intellectual features the bright interspersion of graceful
little Parisian notes on anything, from a cabmen’s or washerwomen’s
strike to the fraternity of European soldiers in China, from the
weather to the circulation of false silver, the literary and theatrical
chronicle at the end of such papers as the _Temps_ and the _Débats_,
always intrusted to writers of wide renown. For the criticism of books
in Paris is done by competent critics, who sign their articles, or
is not done at all. Unsigned reviews in Paris are regarded merely as
publishers’ advertisements; and as well-known and responsible critics
are few, it wisely follows that few books are ever seriously noticed.
This is as it should be. If the London Press would adopt this manner,
and suppress the daily trivial reviews of trivial books, less time would
be wasted on mediocrities, and more time devoted to the few makers of
literature. It is, thanks to this indifference to the large majority of
incompetent and unoriginal scribblers in France, that here there are far
less spurious reputations than across the Channel, where popularity and
frantic eulogies in the columns of the newspapers seem to be based on the
possession of no conceivable literary quality.

“We publish more than our own share of worthless trash,” once said a
French writer to me, “but it is always better written than your trash,
for our bad writers must have some knowledge of grammar, which it appears
yours lack, and they must write with what looks like a certain measure
of style, whereas your bad writers shine by absence of the smallest
pretension to style of any kind”; which means, of course, that illiterate
French men and women know their language better than illiterate English
men and women know theirs. They have been better trained and disciplined
in the maintenance of grammatical laws. And while English journalism
would, I am confident, never descend into the gross personalities and
insults of the low French Press,—that kind of journalism presided over
by MM. Drumont of _La Libre Parole_, Millevoye of _La Patrie_, Judet of
_Le Petit Journal_, and Rochefort of _L’Intransigeant_, the unspeakable
_Intransigeant_,—more intellect, education, and style are expended in
the columns of an ordinary French paper than would be needed to carry
on a dozen successful London papers. No London journalist would think
it worth his while to spend an entire morning over the “confection” of
a bright leaderette, read to-day and forgotten to-morrow, or be content
to cast real brilliance on the ambient air in the reckless fashion of
the polished French journalist. The thousand exquisite things Daudet
in this fashion flung into the bottomless abyss of journalism without
a thought—Provençal spendthrift that he was!—that he was wasting his
intellectual capital!

The _Temps_, a Protestant organ, is the most serious, the best informed,
and the most respectable of Parisian newspapers. It has not the dash,
the astonishing verve, the invincible courage of the _Figaro_, but it is
always well written, moderate, and interesting. The dramatic and literary
columns are special features. The day of the _Débats_ is over. It once
held the first place as an intellectual and political paper, but it has
lost all vitality, and it has become that unacceptable thing in such
an atmosphere as Paris, _démodé_. Few of its subscribers have remained
faithful to it, and only one or two of its distinguished contributors.

The _Débats_, like the _Temps_, is eminently respectable, and never uses
that recognised weapon of French journalism, calumny, which makes the
loss of its prestige on political grounds to be deplored. For, in its
method of fighting its political campaigns, the French Press to-day has
descended to strange depths of dishevelled freedom. Under the Second
Empire the Press had hardly more liberty than that which it enjoyed
under the iron heel of Napoleon, and the supervision exercised by the
censor in songs, plays, pamphlets, and literature was assuredly of
greater benefit to the nation, even when making allowances for errors
of judgment, than the coarse and outrageous licence permitted under the
Third Republic. It was nothing but an act of stupid prudery to have
taken proceedings against a grave masterpiece like _Madame Bovary_, but
the Public Prosecutor, M. Bulot, should certainly have taken measures
to summon before a court of justice M. Octave Mirbeau for writing
such an irredeemable study as _Le Journal d’une Femme de Chambre_.
The working-man, the artisan, those whom the conditions of existence
have excluded from the privileges of education, who can pay only a sou
for their daily supply of political information, cannot be too deeply
pitied for having to rely upon such sources of news as _La Patrie_ and
_L’Intransigeant_. They go into the wine-shop then, primed with the
awful lesson in civilisation they daily receive, their minds poisoned
against all those in public office by the ferocious hate, the slander,
the ignoble lies they have read and discussed in their newspaper. How are
these to distinguish between truth and falsehood? No critical faculties
in them have been cultivated by training or education. They accept as
educated the men who write these pernicious articles, and if the writers
solemnly assure their readers that every public man in France is a thief
and traitor, the latter suppose these men must know, and, being by nature
suspicious of those who rule and tax them, they are only too ready to
believe all they read. And so they credit M. Loubet with a capacity for
every dark crime.

The unpretentious dignity and courage, above all, the _bourgeois_
simplicity of M. Loubet’s presidentship of the Republic should bid us
hope for France in our worst hour of despondency. There is a fine sense
of duty in the race, for which this simple civilian stands without brag,
assumption, or a trace of French _panache_. Honour came to seek him
uncourted, and he has not wavered or been bullied into resignation by the
most appalling insults, outrages, calumnies, and actual assaults that
have ever been showered on one mortal man. As a figure of civic integrity
and of unassuming merit, I know none worthier of admiration in France
to-day. For the terrible price paid in Paris for public office is not
only abuse of person and principles, but the digging into every private
corner of family history with a deliberate intent to injure and wound by
attacks upon the dead. It is this extraordinary Nationalist Press that
has so brutalised the imagination of the great reading public, that its
readers do not even exact logic or a shadow of consistency from those who
cater their politics for them. A little while ago two French officers
killed their superior officer sent to arrest them on their way into
the heart of Africa. Those two officers were then despatched by their
own men, and the _Patrie Française_ made a great splash in the way of
a patriotic funeral for the assassinated colonel. Had the colonel been
murdered by two civilians all would have been well. But the assassins
were officers, and officers, when they are not Jews, must always be
respected, admired, and adored. So when the patriots had done weeping
over Colonel Klobb, since he had been interred with national and military
honours, MM. Coppée and Lemaître, in the name of the nation, acting
as chief mourners, they decided to forget him and wax exceedingly and
patriotically wroth over the fate of his glorious assassins. Why were
Voulet and Chanoine killed? Who had dared to kill so sacred a thing as a
French officer? It must be the Government, the wicked, infamous, Jew-paid
Government. M. Loubet, of course, gave the order, and M. Waldeck-Rousseau
transmitted it, and then, lest anyone should live to tell the tale,
Waldeck-Rousseau wired instructions to kill off anyone else belonging to
the mission. My Catholic friends are ever lamenting the lack of freedom
under the Third Republic. I wonder if any Catholic Government has ever
tolerated its enemies in the very heart of its rule writing daily in a
hostile Press that it traffics in assassination. And nobody seems to find
the charge in this case laughable. Nationalism is certainly in direct
hostility to all sense of humour.

But France is too sound and honest and sober a race to live contented
with no other public influence than that of her untrustworthy Press. The
Catholics have always understood that religious ideas are most happily
and lastingly spread by direct personal influences, hence the prestige
of their clergy. Catholic clubs and societies abound, but the want of
liberal education in the working-man was deeply felt in the revelations
of the _Affaire_. To write of France to-day is to hark back perpetually
to the Dreyfus Affair. Everything seems to date from it, everything to
touch it, everything to be explained by it. The misfortunes of no single
man in all history have ever left such abiding and momentous consequences
as those of the Alsatian Jewish officer, whose return to his native land
all Europe stood still to watch with thrilled pulses. And so it was felt,
as infamy after infamy practised against him was discovered, that the
people should be educated to think for themselves, to know and understand
what is being done in their name. It was felt, too, that they should have
their share of the intellectual ideas, the moral and mental beauty that
brightens life and gives it zest, hitherto appropriated by the rich and
leisured classes. What M. Deherme calls the co-operation in idea, the
basis of the people’s colleges of Paris, is really the popularisation
of culture. Anything is good that will help to keep the workmen out of
the wineshops, where they are poisoned with inferior and inflammable
alcohol, and guard them from the political garbage of their inferior and
inflammable newspapers. If you cannot give the workman space, privacy,
wealth, and luxurious home-life, at least make him free in his heritage
of the thoughts that move the ages, put him in contact with the current
of ideas in the ambient air. And so M. Deherme’s notion “caught on,”
and from it sprang the “Universités Populaires” opened in several of the
populous working-quarters of the capital, where every evening, during
certain periods, every different kind of distinguished citizen gives some
of his leisure and some of his brains to the poor.

A subscription of fivepence a week, afterwards reduced to sevenpence
halfpenny a month, from the numerous members was thought sufficient to
pay for rent and light, while the rich should lend their pictures, give
their books, and under the form of lectures impart their knowledge—this
was the practical form of co-operation of ideas. Then it was decided
that a doctor should have his free consultation-room, and working-men’s
families be able to come on Sundays and enjoy reading and plays or
amusements of divers kinds. In winter, as well as books and papers, light
was at their service, which was a small economy that balanced the small
charge for these privileges. At its worst, it was always better and
cheaper than the wineshop. M. Deherme hired a small lecture-room in the
Rue Paul Bert, and for two years, even in the summer months of holiday,
arranged for commercial lectures, debates, entertainments provided by the
disinterested professional class—always the readiest to assist the poor.
The wealthy sometimes give of their superfluous income—and how little!
Contrast with it the much that doctors, lawyers, professors, men of
science, give of their less as regards actual income! When men like Zola
and Léon Daudet sneer at surgeons and fashionable doctors, I ask myself
if, for a moment, they realise all that these surgeons and doctors do for
the needy for nothing. You give a subscription for some charitable object
duly recorded in the newspapers. You have the benefit of your charitable
reputation, and your self-advertisement; you have earned both without any
actual sacrifice.

How many doctors and surgeons have their hours set aside regularly for
free consultations, and add to these gifts of money for medicine and
wine! If I were to try to enumerate all the kindnesses and liberal
charities done by big doctors and surgeons, and by small doctors, and
never a word of it recorded, I should have to embark in several volumes.
I know no class of men so disinterested and generous, except perhaps,
barristers and professors. In France we need seek no more splendid
examples in this class of men than the present French Prime Minister,
M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who gave up a lucrative profession, being the
most brilliant and best paid advocate of France, to become an ill-paid
Minister, sacrificing in the hour of a great national crisis something
like fifteen thousand a year; and Maître Labori, who, in order to defend
an unpopular cause, not only risked his life but fell from the height of
professional wealth to something nearly approaching professional poverty.
The Université Populaire, a liberal institution, with, in consequence,
Church, Army, aristocracy and snobbish upper-middle class against it,
was supported by such professors and writers, the glory of hard-working,
thoughtful and intelligent France: M. Gabriel Séailles, philosopher; M.
Ferdinand Buisson, educationalist; M. Emile Duclaux, director of the
Pasteur Institute; the Pasteur Wagner, M. Paul Desjardins; M. Daniel
Halévy, the brilliant young son of the illustrious writer, Ludovic
Halévy, one of the simplest and most charming of Frenchmen it is my
privilege to know; M. Anatole France, whom I do not hesitate to call the
greatest of living French writers; M. Paul Hervieu, a kind of French
George Meredith, with all the qualities and defects, the generosity and
passion for justice of his great English brother, and others less known
across the Channel.

Now the mother-house of the Université Populaire is in the Faubourg St.
Antoine, the big nerve of labouring Paris. Here, in the heart of the
Socialist movement, serious and honourable men strive nobly to combat the
current of anarchy by fraternity in ideas and intellect with those who
work by their hands and the sweat of their brow to keep France where she
is, and where she will ever remain as long as her children so strive,
the centre of civilisation. The new building has a spacious lecture-hall,
a museum, billiard-room, theatre, and library. The fame of its brilliant
lectures has drawn such a large gathering from the centres of fashion and
idleness that many a time the workman, the real “lord of the soil,” has
been turned away from his own door, having arrived late, when all the
places were taken by the well-dressed usurpers from the boulevards and
wealthy avenues.

Branch colleges have happily been established on the same lines at
Montmartre, Grenelle, Belleville, the Boulevard Barbés, the Barrière
d’Italie, the Rue Mouffetard, and, without the city wall, where the idea
first started under the personal superintendence of its noble founder,
M. Deherme, at Montreuil sous Bois. Alas, it cannot be said that the
impetus that formed these admirable institutions has continued with the
same force. Some of the people’s colleges are temporarily closed, because
the workmen have not shown ardour of late in attending them. It may only
mean the defection that accompanies all strong reactions. Nobody but
Don Quixote could for ever live and die at the fever-point of chivalry.
Humanity traverses passionate crises, which reveal in a transient flash
all that is best and worst in it, and then calms down to the ordinary
level of contentment, which has neither best nor worst, but which denotes
merely the humdrum desire to live as easily as possible. The historical
social crisis France has gone through has done this good, that a freer
current was established between the intellectual and the manual workers
of France, the guiding soul and hand of the race; and though for the
moment the great emotions which served as intermediary between them are
forgotten, something of their union will remain. Neither the Church nor
militarism, neither the worst influences of caste nor of the clerical
party, can undo the good done by this late union. Let us hope the
Université Populaire will pull up in the coming crisis of the Liberal
Government, against which every base engine and infamy will be used, and
that such an excellent institution as one which provides the teaching of
the best intellects of France for the working-classes, libraries (from
which are excluded any novels that respectable women and girls could not
read), concerts, public reading-rooms well lighted and heated in winter,
free consultations of brilliant lawyers and doctors on stated days, for
the modest subscription of sevenpence halfpenny a month for an entire
family, will not perish for want of general encouragement.

The French Liberals are making giant efforts to spread enlightenment,
comfort, and fraternity among their poorer brethren, and under the name
of solidarity, are founding cheap restaurants, bath-houses, workmen’s
dwellings, and a nursing institute. Their efforts have inspired a
Conservative rivalry, most excellent for the good of the country, as all
rivalries are which strive for the improvement of the condition of the
artisan class and the poor. The difference between them lies in the fact
that the Catholic party is opposed to education. They wish to give as
charity the Republic’s offer as a right earned by labour.

There are two other influences at work upon the artisans of France; one
exclusively masculine, and the other an influence equally strong with
each sex—the wineshop and the public ball. Statistics assure us that
France leads the list for the consumption of alcohol—and statistics are
weighty and respectable matter. But can it be true? one asks one’s self
in amazement, remembering the evil sights of London and the astonishing
absence here of drunken men in the streets. Now and then you will meet
such a thing as a drunken man, but the sight is unusual enough to attract
notice. Tippling is the general form of drinking to excess here. The men
go into the wineshop to have a drink, and to talk things over. There
is always something to be talked about, and the public bar is the best
place to have it out with your neighbour, and the _marchand de vin_, sly
rogue, is accused of supplying queer, unwholesome drinks that provoke
thirst, so that one drink follows another.

The _marchand de vin_ sells more than liquors. He is the local
post-office keeper, sells stamps, postcards, tobacco, and usually has a
rude little dining-saloon where workmen and coachmen gather. So it stands
to reason that there is a great deal of coming and going, of movement and
life; there is always something to be learnt in the way of rumour, and
someone to listen to you in the hour of revolt. Thus many private and
personal revolutions are planned here and it is decided here whether, on
the occasion of public functions, the cry shall be, _Vive l’Armée_ or
_Vive la République_. As a different decision will probably be taken at
the next wineshop, when these valiant heroes meet in the streets we are
threatened with a renewal of the barricades. After the first or second
shudder at these menaces, the citizens come to take them very quietly. I
remember the afternoon the Chamber of Deputies met under the protection
of the troops, when the whole large Place de la Concorde was laid out in
bivouacs, mounted police and cavalry gathered in knots around groups of
resting horses, both sides of the bridges guarded by lines of _sergeants
de ville_ through which a needle could not pass, except by wily and
clever entreaties; egress to the avenues, Rue de Rivoli, Rue Royale,
all severely barred. You rubbed your eyes, and wondered if the city were
besieged. Well, not a soul sought to cross the Place de la Concorde,
except some curious, inoffensive spectator like myself. So quiet, so
still and silent, was everything that it was impossible to account for
all these regiments and this look of a besieged city. Visiting a friend
who lives near the Pont des Invalides, she informed me that two young
English girls had just left her in a state of acute disappointment. “We
came to Paris to see the great French Revolution, and there was nothing.”
That has been the true state of affairs in Paris for the past two or
three years. We were constantly sallying forth into the streets, and
there never was anything much to be seen. What little there was in the
way of civic uproar was centred round the reactionary and anti-semitic
beershop Maxeville on the Boulevard. It rarely led to anything but a few
arrests of a few hours’ duration, and then we quieted down to await with
fortitude and patience the next explosion.

The public ball is, if less revolutionary in its consequences, more
morally disastrous. The French love dancing; when they dance together
in the open or in big kitchens, as the peasants dance, there is nothing
for us to do but cheer and envy them. Here we recognise in the dancing
of tired workers a legitimate outlet for compressed activities, the
eternal measure of joy which children of nature must ever tread. If it
lead to love and marriage, or, maybe, only through the dalliance of
flirtation, that, too, is in the fitness of things, since men and women
must flirt, make love, marry or jilt; and the only thing we have to ask
of humanity is that it shall do these things with decorum and taste.
It is just this sense of decorum, of taste, which is so conspicuous in
the French of all classes, and so absent in the British Isles. And the
only place where this decorum and taste fail them is at the public ball.
Here they literally go off their heads, and become vulgar, gross, and
indecent. Modest little _grisettes_ come to these vile rendezvous for
the first time, well-mannered, timid, perhaps with some of the bloom of
youth about them still, a reserve which might be interpreted as a kind
of virtue,—such a pretty, engaging dignity does it give them,—and this
they leave behind in the empty bowl of hot blue wine, with the slices
of lemon or orange floating in it. They breathe the air of obscenity,
and grow vain and audacious, believing this is life, and that they have
learnt it. Inept and stupid rascals think it a grand thing to dye their
souls in purple-black, and make a foolish mockery of all things sacred.
Tenth-rate, vulgar-minded scribblers haunt these halls of horror, and
pretend to prefer the popularity earned by their brutish impurities,
couched in coarse verse, in such abodes of vice to that of the reading
public. And when, by chance, you see printed, or hear one of those hymns
of Montmartre of the glories of Bullier or the Moulin Rouge, it seems to
you a proof of infallible justice on the part of contemporary judgment
that these mediocre scoundrels should have failed.

Yet the Parisian _grisette_, even when she is far from being a model
of virtue, if she has not been vitiated by the _bal public_ is a very
well-behaved and gracious little creature. Her standard of life is not
high, but such as it is, it is attained with surprising dignity, and
it is thanks to the lover who leads her to the public ball, that she
becomes acquainted with the ignoble, the profane, and the outrageous.
Left to herself, she would ask for nothing better than a quiet and
refined interior, a little money to spend capriciously, as many pretty,
inoffensive fineries to wear as are necessary to make her always pleasant
to be looked at, an occasional cheerful outing, with a picnic at Robinson
or in the woods of Vincennes, or safe water-excursions at Bougival,
with the certainty of replacing the present lover on the same discreet
and advantageous lines. She takes no heed of the morrow, and it is this
improvidence and the public ball that inevitably accomplish her ruin
when she does not find—and it must be admitted she more frequently than
not does find—an honest workman willing to overlook her past and to
start married life with her. Made for the stability of home, neat and
competent, she soon settles down, and proves herself a good housewife.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

THE PARISIAN LECTURE AND SALON

In no city in the world is the public lecturer so popular as in Paris.
The _Conférence_ is almost a national institution, like the _salon_ and
the _foyer_. I will frankly confess that I find the average Parisian
lecturer overrated, and the whole thing sadly overdone. In the winter and
spring there are a great deal too many lectures, on too many subjects,
but that is the way the Parisian, above all, Parisian woman, likes to
take a dose of culture. When the season opens in January, you will
generally find that your friends have subscribed somewhere or other for
a course of lectures—six or twelve. Sometimes they take place in the
lecture-hall of the Rue Caumartin, or in a lecture-hall in the Rue Boissy
d’Anglas, or at the Société Géographique on the Boulevard St. Germain.
Then there are the lectures of the Sorbonne, or the Collége de France,
where the salaried professors of the State lecture, and a host of stray
lectures on every subject under the sun, in various private dwellings or
hired rooms. In spite of the competition between the well-known French
lecturers, professors, men of letters and of science, foreigners are
given courteous hearing, and if they have anything novel and interesting
to say, are heartily thanked as well as generously paid for saying it.
This I know, for I have had the honour of giving several lectures in
Paris on modern English literature, and had reason to congratulate myself
on my sympathetic and appreciative audience of intelligent and cultivated
Frenchwomen. They dress so well, these pleasant-looking Frenchwomen,
and listen with such speaking, sparkling visages, that no wonder there
is so much competition between the male lecturers. Even a morose man of
science, when he casts his eye over his audience, must be gladdened and
freshened by their presence. He may prefer communion with the masculine
intellect; but he must find his countrywoman’s alert and agreeable face,
under its ever-becoming bonnet, a welcome vision.

Distinguished foreign writers, if they know enough French, are generally
invited to lecture by some society. Fogazzarro was asked to lecture
here on his recent visit, and a very pleasant little lecture it was,
delivered in the best and easiest manner possible; and after him came
Madame Pardo Bazán, the Spanish writer, with a few commonplaces about
Spain. The fashionable resort for the lecture fanatic has been, for
some years past, the Bodinière, in the Rue St. Lazare. This is an old
theatre, a concert hall, a kind of fast musical chamber, where ballets,
songs, and lectures all mingle strangely, and the lecturer, when the
curtain rises, is revealed seated before a table, with ballet-girls
heel-and-toe-tipped on the walls around him. The first time I attended a
fashionable lecture at the Bodinière, it was to hear the Abbé Charbonnel
talk to us on Lamennais. I am not easily shocked, but I found both
incongruous and indecorous the picture made by an abbé in his uniform
of religion, between two ballet-girls, with images everywhere of public
dance and light morals. The lecture was an impressive one, far above the
average Parisian lecture, eloquent, original, solemnly grave, polished
as only a Frenchman’s prose is polished, with a note of burning revolt
running through it. This, too, surprised me. When all London gathered to
hear why an eminent clergyman of the Church of England left the faith
of his fathers, they congregated in a church, and listened with a sense
of solemnity to a solemn avowal. Here was a French abbé talking to us
with a just indignation of the tyranny of Rome; talking with passion and
admiration of Lamennais’s revolt and the injustice of Rome, talking as
only a man who felt and shared the moral sufferings of his hero could
talk. It was undoubtedly beautiful and thrilling. It was like hearing
a heart beat, like watching a brain throb, feeling one’s self face to
face with a naked soul in one of its great crises. But was a fashionable
lecture-hall the place for such a public confession? Were frivolous,
fluttering women of society a fitting audience in such an hour? Were
these ladies of the ballet painted on the walls, this theatrical curtain,
seemly environment? And was it in his abbé’s robe that Victor Charbonnel
should have denounced the tyranny of Rome in public? Shortly afterwards
the Abbé Charbonnel was excommunicated, which was no more than everybody
expected; and though there was not a word he uttered in that remarkable
lecture on a remarkable subject with which I did not sympathise, I should
have preferred to hear it delivered elsewhere,—in other and more solemn
surroundings.

There is one thing that I have always noticed in the Parisian
lecturer,—his complete lack of timidity, of want of self-confidence.
However dull he may be, however mediocre, however uneloquent,—and
he is often one, or all three,—no matter, he is sure of himself. He
has chosen to shine as a lecturer, and as a lecturer he will under
no circumstance be induced to recognise himself as a failure. This
stupendous self-conceit is a masculine characteristic, I know, but the
Parisian lecturer carries it off with art. He is an artist in his genius
for believing in himself. How many great men have I gone forth to hear
talk of their art or of themselves, and come away amazed by the string of
admirably delivered commonplaces they have uttered!

M. Gustave Larroumet is a lecturer all Paris was wild about some years
ago. I was told that for love or money you could not get a place at
one of his lectures, unless you subscribed beforehand for the whole
course, and even then that he was bombarded with declarations, like
a popular tenor, and that young girls died of undeclared love for
him. Never was such a popular lecturer as M. Larroumet! I went in
dread and awe. Should I, too, succumb, and add one more to the daily
thousand and one declarations of a hopeless passion? The vast hall was
thronged, the dresses were exquisite, the bonnets dazzling. All the
young girls of fashionable Paris were there, with note-books and scented
pocket-handkerchiefs for the expected great emotions. He came, the
popular lecturer, and never was I more grievously disillusioned. He spoke
well, his gesticulation and enunciation were equally delightful to hear
and behold. He was, what one might expect him to be after such a course
of public worship, the _blasé_ fine gentleman of the lecture-hall,
good-looking, youngish, the very tenor of lecturers. But to what hopeless
mediocrities he treated us, what _lieux-communs_ he imperturbably walked
us through! It was one of Gresset’s plays he analysed. The gist of it
all was that our grandmothers were better bred than we are, because they
indulged in _persiflage_ and we in _blagues_. And this was the great
lecturer of the hour!

Everybody knows the initial story of the French _salon_, and the
fortunate influence on manners and literature of the prestige of the
Hôtel de Rambouillet; Molière, who laughed at everything, even at
his own desperate sufferings, laughed at it in his _Les Précieuses
Ridicules_, for nothing on earth is sacred to a Frenchman. Whatever his
name, in whatever century he was born, he must, in consistency with his
nationality, prove himself a scoffer; and as he has the art of mocking
admirably, it is always very difficult to know when he is serious or
when he is laughing in his sleeve. A Frenchman will work night and day
with frenzy for a purpose dearer to him than anything on earth, and
all the while will deliberately make a mockery of his labour and his
devotion. Writing to me on this subject, the eternal passion of the
French for _blagues_ (my correspondent defines in lucid English the word
_blaguer_, “To say about somebody or something one admires or respects,
jokes of which one does not believe the first word,” and I leave the
definition with its pleasing French savour of composition and sentiment),
a Frenchman says: “There is not a man in the whole of France about whom
we have more joked than about M. Brisson, the ancient minister, the
only political man to whom nothing could ever be reproached, but the
epithet ‘austere’ deprived him of three-fourths of his authority, though
Frenchmen are, after all, as sensible as other people to the virtue of
honesty.” And so may be said of Molière. He was as well aware as anyone
could be of the immense benefit to his race and to his language of the
establishment of the _salon_, even when he laughed at it.

Though the century of the _salon_ has passed away, and carried along
with it some of the glory of French literature, some of its traditions
still linger, and will never be lost as long as the race delights in
good conversation. English people visit to kill time, to fulfil a
social obligation, and consider that their duty to themselves and their
neighbours is done if they happen to remark that it is a fine day.
Now, the French visit to talk. A pretty and well-dressed woman will,
perhaps, have other more private and personal preoccupations, and wish
to distract masculine attention to an adorable gown or a bewitching
bonnet; this was one of the reasons why that model keeper of a _salon_,
Madame Geoffrin, excluded women from hers. She found they interfered
with serious conversation. I advisedly call Madame Geoffrin the “keeper”
of a _salon_, because she made a business of it, and ruled and tamed
her literary menagerie by a discreet and liberal use of her purse. I
have often wondered if her great men in their hearts did not sometimes
revolt against the thraldom in which they lived from the moment they
became celebrated. To be bound to be brilliant and witty, in return for
a good dinner and a consideration every evening of one’s life! And to be
condemned to meet none but brilliant and witty persons, and listen to
their splendid talk when not talking splendidly oneself! There is matter
for reflection here to make dull and obscure persons occasionally thank
their stars. If good talk is not spontaneous, I own it has no charm for
me, but then I have never aspired to hold a _salon_, and if you hold a
_salon_ and wish it to be a success, talk cannot be spontaneous.

Quite recently Madame Aubernon died, and Paris lost a literary _salon_,
modelled, at a long distance, on that of Madame Geoffrin. Madame
Aubernon was a rich _bourgeoise_, with no pretensions on the score of
age, good looks, or dress. Her only ambition was to form a menagerie of
celebrities. She gave them every evening dinners by no means as good
as those of Madame Geoffrin, and checked, controlled, made them march
to her liking. She, too, professed mistrust of pretty women, whom she
invited only to lunches and teas and such entertainments, because she
feared that their pretty frocks, their arms and shoulders, would divert
the attention of her great men from their duty to her and her _salon_.
She kept a little bell beside her, and only allowed the great men to
talk in turn. “Now, M. Renan,” and Renan poured forth to order. “If
you please, M. Dumas,” and behold M. Dumas acquitting himself with
docility and force. The famous story of the _petits pois_ is told of
every distinguished guest of Madame Aubernon. Sometimes you hear it
with Dumas’s name, or Renan’s, or Pailleron’s. It does not matter, but
the incident remains a delightful illustration of the inconveniences
of eating your dinner on the understanding that you are to pay for it
in wit. The great man opened his lips out of turn, when the hostess
stormily rang the bell, and ordered him to shut them again. Somebody else
was speaking with permission. When he ceased, Madame Aubernon turned
graciously to her tame lion, and said: “Now you may speak. What was
it you wanted to say?” “Oh, nothing, madame. I only wanted to ask for
another helping of peas.” Musical celebrities are not so easily trained.
When, after dining at some Parisian countess’s, Chopin was asked to play,
he quietly retorted: _Madame, j’ai si peu mangé_. But if the great men
of letters had been such bears as Chopin there would never have been the
_salon_, and the story of Parisian life would be the poorer. And, after
all, it is an excellent discipline. Men acquire the art of listening as
well as that of talking, and it is a virtue of national importance to
teach people not to be dull. For if you are dull you have no possible
place in a salon. Your hostess has no desire to crowd her rooms with
inanimate or bored figure-heads. You come on a distinct treaty, the
conditions of which are accepted by your appearance,—to amuse and be
amused. If you speak, either you must have something to say, or you must
say whatever you wish to utter well.

Since the Faubourg has been sulking, and the aristocracy is no longer
a power in the land, the aristocratic _salon_ has dwindled into a
tradition. The young men are so desperately taken up with sport, with
automobiles, that they have not the leisure their elders had for the arts
and graces of life. The _rosse_ literature has spoiled the traditions
of the Faubourg for us. The French aristocracy has come to mean Gyp and
Lavedan for us, and a course of those writers may be warranted to drive
any intelligent reader into the society of washerwomen and tramps as a
pleasing change. The absence from all these heraldic pages, in which
everybody is more or less titled, of such a thing as a gentleman, or
even an ordinarily honest man, is what stupefies me. What their admirers
can imagine would be the benefit to France in upsetting the Republic in
order to place in power a party, upon its own testimony, so scantily
furnished with brains or honour, is what I am unable to grasp. And if
their women-folk had their way, we should have back the “White Terror,”
and science and liberal thought would receive an emphatic blow. But
happily there is no immediate fear of their triumph. The Duc d’Aumale and
the Prince de Joinville took with them to the grave all the prestige that
was left the House of France, and not even his followers take the Duke of
Orleans seriously.

Political intrigue is, of course, worked in the _salon_, as Academy
elections are helped. The Frenchwoman’s influence is too great not to
find an opening in every question of the hour. If she has no vote, she
inhabits a land where the sorcery of her sex exercises a wider and
deeper, a more permanent power than any political rights could ever
give her, though, for many reasons, I am inclined to believe that it
would be better for her and for her race if the significance of this
power were other than it is. In a country where the courtesan plays a
triumphant part, where newspapers solemnly recount her doings, describe
her toilettes at Longchamps, at Auteuil, and interview her, we can
scarcely expect women not to misuse their sovereignty. They know that
the day it bores them to be chaste, they need not cloak sin in the mantle
of night. They may wear their lovers on their sleeves in broad daylight,
and lose not a pennyweight of consideration. The _salon_ of the woman
who is known to have had (or to have) sentimental adventures will be
thronged, and people will only smile and say of her that she “distracts”
herself. I remember hearing an extraordinary story once of a beautiful
woman, the admired and courted holder of a famous _salon_. The cousin of
the friend who told me the story fell a victim to her charms, and was
staying with his mother at some Mediterranean resort, when he learnt of
the siren’s arrival at a neighbouring town. He forsook his mother to
rush after her, and remained with her during the greater part of the
long summer vacation. When their holiday had drawn to a close, the lady
took the train, and called on her lover’s mother, and in the highest
_ancien régime_ manner, said: “Madame, I come to return your dear son
to you.” His little _fugue_, she said, was at an end. The two ladies
parted on the best of terms, the one to welcome back the erring sheep
(not that a French mother regards her son under these circumstances as
an erring sheep), and the other to open the doors of her closed _salon_
in Paris to all the notabilities she had left sighing for her brilliant
and hospitable roof. What will you? When a woman is not his own wife, a
Parisian does not put any price upon her honour. True, he makes up for
this laxity in regard to his neighbour’s wife by arrogating to himself
the right to murder his own faithless wife with impunity. By this legal
ferocity he buys back the privilege of considering himself at times a
model of Roman virtue.

The _salon_ is all very well, so are the songs of Montmartre, the Théâtre
Rosse, but there is just one little point, a solitary point, on which
the Frenchman is in no mood to _blaguer_, not being Molière, and that
is _his_ wife’s fidelity to the marriage vow, which vow, if we are to
believe him (I confess I do not) he spends his own life in breaking.
He laughs at most other things, but here he displays a desperate and
unhumorous gravity. The law considerately assists him, by telling him
that killing is no murder. But if he doesn’t laugh, his neighbours round
him laugh joyously for him. The infidelity of another man’s wife is the
best of all jokes in France, and public sympathy always goes with the
wife.

[Illustration: GLEANERS

_J. A. Breton_]

And yet, while laughing at himself, and at all things round him, the
Frenchman offers us the ideal of an indefatigable worker in whatever
road he has elected to run his career. If he can talk well, he can work
hard, and no race seeks so strenuously as his to achieve perfection in
every path. The alacrity and precision of his speech he brings into
all he does, and I know no men who have won renown able to wear it so
simply, with such a delightful absence of pompousness, as distinguished
Frenchmen. Victor Hugo was, of course, the big exception indispensable
for the proof of the rule, for Victor Hugo sat in pontifical state on
his Throne of Letters, and posed as a sort of Napoleon. But that was a
part of his flamboyant genius, which had to make a life apart for itself.
Renan, with his delicate scepticism, his good-humoured tolerance, was
a much more convincing figure of French genius; he was more in keeping
with the urbane, gentle traditions of his race. The French language lends
itself to such a daily dignity of existence, that this may partly be the
reason there always seems to me something peculiarly and indescribably
harmonious about intimate life in France, as well as in its larger social
phases. Everybody about you, beginning with your servant, speaks so well,
that long intercourse with them unfits you for latitudes where speech is
less admirable and less choice.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI

THE “LITTLE PEOPLE” OF PARIS

The “little people” of Paris are not confined to any particular quarter
of the city. They are to be found everywhere, in spacious avenues,
in streets of heraldic renown, in the sinister neighbourhood of La
Roquette, through the noisy length of St. Denis. Opposite the palace of
the Duke of La Rochefoucauld in the Rue de Varennes will you see an old
curiosity shop, and close by work a mild-eyed cobbler and his wife, a
little sempstress. Excellent types, both of these indefatigable little
people of Paris, living in two tidy attics of this aristocratic street,
with an air of quiet independence. The little people are of all sorts:
beginning with the “little” _bourgeoise_ and ending with the rag-picker
and the _marchand de quatre saisons_. The little _bourgeoise_ is a
curious study, and to penetrate into the precincts where she breathes and
thrives, the foreigner must be her boarder. Else will he obtain none but
a superficial view of her; and as her aspect is generally cheerful, her
manners pleasing, he will be disposed to think better of her than she
altogether deserves. The thrift of the little _bourgeoise_ must be given
its real and ugly name, avarice, for it is nothing else. It has turned
its back upon the virtue of economy, and has assumed the coarseness of
a vice. And so when she furnishes a spare room, it is that she shall
exploit mercilessly the stranger at her gates. The traveller in search of
experience may drop in upon her, but those not supplied with patience,
with fortitude in the endurance of cynical imposition and lucre to meet
complacently exorbitant demands upon their purse, should avoid this
interesting creature, and go to a hotel. In the first place, the opening
of private doors to the traveller or over-seas student is so foreign
to the habits and instincts of her race, that once she has allowed the
brilliant idea of “taking in” a foreign boarder to enter her narrow mind,
she starts immediately by magnifying her legitimate profits, and in her
ardour to amass francs on ground where she is practically free from all
commercial or professional restrictions, she is not beset by any paltry
fear of overstepping the limits of honesty. Her sole conception of that
homely virtue lies in its rigid application in her own regard, in an
austere resolution to see that nobody on earth shall cheat her of the
value of a single farthing. I know not which is the more astounding: her
inflexible insistence on the honesty of her _bonne_, or the flexibility
of her conscience when she comes in contact with alien claims upon her
own honesty.

Her favourite boarder is the young American or English art student.
Young women she naturally prefers, because it is easier to fleece them,
and they are shyer of monetary disputes than men or experienced women.
She will not scruple to demand for the poorest table imaginable and
the perfunctory service of a single maid-of-all-work, the terms of a
first-rate _pension_ or a comfortable hotel, where there are servants in
plenty and the table is varied and excellent. Her excuse is that, not
being a boarding-house keeper or a hotel keeper (“Would that she were
either!” dejectedly moan her victims), she is entitled to relatively
higher prices for the privilege of a seat at a private table. In the
region of bills she is altogether her own mistress, for she has no
commercial reputation at stake to balance her notions on the subject of
profits, which are colossal, and so she enters every extra she can think
of with gaiety of heart, and a smiling conviction that all is fair that
puts cash into the big pocket of the rapacious little _bourgeoise_. Not
that she will risk frightening off a possible boarder by a revelation
of this view beforehand, and no mention of those formidable trifles
called “extras” will be made in the preliminary treaty. Then it will be
all beguilement and blandishment, allurement and promise, with a hint of
paradise through the open door of her modest establishment. Within there,
seems to say this cheering creature, will you find the warmth of home,
maternal care and tenderness when you are ill, and intelligent sympathy
in all hours. Ten pounds a month seems a small sum to pay for this, and
you enter gratefully, not disposed to criticise, on the contrary, eager
to see everything through the rose hue of satisfaction, to find another
fifty or seventy francs added to your bill at the end of the month for
wine, light, coffee, service, linen, and baths. When fire comes to
be included, you discover that you might have boarded, with comfort,
independence, and good living, for the same price in one of the hotels
of the Rue de Rivoli. For independence is the very last thing the little
_bourgeoise_ is disposed to allow her “paying guest.” It needs a quality
of brain of which she is destitute, to recognise a single woman’s right
to liberty.

The foreign boarder’s days under her roof constitute a march through
surprises. Here no gleaming glass and shining damask at table; no
flowers, no silver, no tasteful arrangement of desert; for tablecloth a
coarse sheet and cloths to match for napkins, sometimes patched, and
invariably sewn down the middle. There is nothing to please the eye or
the palate, but the disappointed boarder must stoically hold her tongue
if she would maintain agreeable relations. The hostess is an arbitrary
as well as a parsimonious and dishonest housekeeper. The exactions, the
arrogance, must be allowed to remain all on her side and the malcontent
has nothing to do but pay a month’s board and lodging in advance and pack
up her things. If she stays, a hushed civility is expected from her, and
all payments rigidly in advance. Why, the little _bourgeoise_ should have
instituted this singular law, that a month’s food should be paid for
before it has been consumed, I have never been able to understand: but I
confess I have never been able to master the complicated ethics of this
interesting woman. She is a fervent Catholic, attends church regularly
morning and evening, confesses, teaches Catholicism and morality to the
outcast infant, and never seems to suspect that honesty is one of the
virtues incorporated in the Christian doctrine. When she orders anything
for you she will pay one price in the shop and charge you another; yet,
good, consistent creature, she goes to market on market days after Mass
to take note of the prices, in order to calculate to a farthing what the
day’s purchases will cost, so that the _bonne_ shall not cheat her of the
value of a sou. This is hard on the _bonne_, whom she pays as little
as she can, and underfeeds, and overworks, and who is thus defrauded of
one of the acknowledged perquisites of the servant in France,—_le sou
du franc_. When a Parisian servant makes a purchase over a franc, each
tradesman returns her a sou on every franc paid in cash. The avid “little
_bourgeoise_” usually insists on having this sou back, and if the _bonne_
is meek and afraid she gives up the sou, for her mistress understands the
question of perquisites only in her own right. She watches her servant
closely, though there is nothing of a shrew or a Sally Brass about her.
She victimises her through the attendant vice of avaricious, unsleeping
suspicion. And so she visits the kitchen when the girl has left, to see
if a lump of sugar or a piece of bread, or anything else, should be
secreted anywhere. Perhaps once a week she will give the domestic martyr
a half-dozen rotten strawberries or cherries when these can be had for
next to nothing, or the last spoonful of rice or stewed prunes when the
enraged boarders have turned their eyes from nauseous remains of these
choice dishes three or four days old.

Her cuisine is a thing to gape at. You forget you are in France, the land
of good, inexpensive living, and pronounce it frankly execrable. The
dinner usually consists of vegetable water or greasy water with pieces of
bread floating about, of ragged _bouilli_ (the meat used in the boiling
of this insipid liquid), a tasteless dish of sorrel and of stewed prunes
that will be served no less than four or five times successively until
the very last of the dish has been consumed, or a dish of rice which
will also in its half-finished condition make its successive appearance
until the last grain has vanished, and the dish, presumably on the score
of economy, on which these luxuries are served will not even be changed.
In the same quaint spirit the remains of cold vegetables are reheated
and served again, with such result for eye and palate as no pen can
describe. Whatever you find at her table you may know beforehand will be
of the worst and cheapest of its kind, and there will be as little as
possible of it. When fruit outside, in the markets, along the streets in
barrows, in the shops, is plentiful, excellent, and absurdly cheap, she
will assure you it is far too expensive for her table, and treat three
art students, each paying, exclusive of extras, ten pounds a month, to
musty biscuits and dried figs that taste like caked sawdust. As for
sweet dishes, creams, sauces, varieties of well-cooked vegetables, all
the thousand little kickshaws we associate with the dainty French term
cuisine, these you are as likely to find at her table as ice-cream or
champagne.

The home life of the little _bourgeoise_ is a strange and a dull one.
She possesses a house, one wonders why, when a bedroom seems to be all
that she requires. She lives in her bedroom as Englishwomen of the same
class live in their parlours. That a _salon_ was made for use, to be
sat in and worked in and talked in, never enters her head. She uses her
dining-room only for meals, and thus never has any fire in it during the
winter, does not dream of lighting the stove which every French _salle
à manger_ has, however small. She puts on a shawl to go into lunch and
dinner. The _salon_ is hermetically sealed all the week, and opened
gingerly should she have an at-home day; if not, it is opened only when
some very important visitors call. I have known a little _bourgeoise_,
whose “paying guest” I, for my misfortune, happened to be, who allowed
the inmates of her establishment to pass into the _salon_ after dinner
for exactly an hour. At nine o’clock she rose and graciously dismissed
us from the sacred precincts, bidding us disperse to our chambers, while
she locked up the holy of holies. Here, as elsewhere, I discovered that
such a thing as a comfortable chair or sofa is unknown, undreamed of by
the little _bourgeoise_. To do her justice, she never lounges herself,
and consequently does not understand the need. This is the admirable side
of her character,—the complete absence of self-indulgence. She swindles
you, not for her comfort, but for the security of her old age. She is
circumspect and formal in all her attitudes, absolutely self-respecting,
of a cordial coldness, and there is something impersonal, something
claustral in her selfishness. I have remarked that nuns resemble her
astonishingly in all their material relations with the world: the same
implacable hardness, the same smiling austerity, the same lack of honesty
or of consideration for others, the same resolute determination to get
the best of outsiders in the matter of labour or bargains, to give as
little and obtain as much as possible in all transactions, to underfeed,
underpay, and overwork,—and all with the same high air of self-approval
and righteousness.

Religious communities will cheerfully, singing, as it were, hymns of
thanks, do for the glory of God things modest pagans would shrink from
in honour of the devil, and the little French _bourgeoise_ has much
of this inexplicable complacency in dishonesty. Like the nuns, she is
active and virtuous, and she is most pleasant as long as you are pliant
and uncomplaining,—the ideal art student! But she is essentially a
despot, the unyielding mistress of her own house; and she is cynically
indifferent to your dissatisfaction should you think fit to make it
visible. She has no hesitation whatever in letting you understand,
with a sincerity that does her honour, that she did not take you as a
boarder with the naïve intention of rendering you comfortable or giving
you an adequate return for your money, but with the simpler design of
making a considerable profit on you. She will say to you, with that
French independence I ever admire, that it is not your purse but hers
that is in question; and I judge her to regard as idiots such saints as
Martin of Tours and Francis of Assisi. Truth is no more conspicuous than
charity and honesty among her virtues, for she will lie with a courage
befitting a nobler cause in the interests of her pocket. The minute and
persevering genius of Balzac alone could follow her through the maze of
economical twists she has devised wherewith to save or make a sou. She
is impaled in my memory over her sugar-bowl like the king of nursery
legend counting out his money. If avarice be an impediment to reception
within the gates of Paradise I fear my arrogant, self-approving little
friend has small chance in the next world. Yet far be it from me to deny
her good qualities and her charm. She is so well-mannered, so pleasant,
so intelligent, such a plausible villain when off the field of her
illegitimate profits, that fain would I see her flourish and triumph.
After all, money matters are not the sole test of virtue. I have known
persons of the most unimpeachable honesty and delicacy on this ground,
utterly insupportable in all things else, with horrid tempers and
tongues, an utter lack of heart, which is not the little _bourgeoise’s_
failing, for if you are ill she will overwhelm you with kindness and
attentions, accompanied ever with her equable, smiling cordiality; and
if your bill is the heavier, well, at least you have had the pleasure
of the attentions; and her presence, when you are not considering its
consequences in your bill, is more often than not a tonic and a ray
of sympathy and gaiety. Of so priceless a quality is gaiety, that
good-humoured roguery is better any day than sour, ill-natured honesty.

The small dressmaker is another pleasing picture of the humbler walks
of Paris. The _grisette_ I deem to be as extinct as the dodo, while the
class of work-girl I have in view may be supposed to step out of her
rank. But the novelist who would try to turn her into copy for Musset or
Mürger would be all abroad. She earns her bread honestly and diligently
in the skilful exercise of her art, with a band of juvenile needle-women
round her who ought to be playing in the fields, but who, instead, are
content to sit in a tiny workroom and sew and snip all day. Nothing
more dignified, more modest, more self-respecting than all this young
world, seemingly unaware of any reasons for dissatisfaction. The youthful
mistress exercises her authority with good-humour and gentleness,
and her willing little workers appear really fond of her. It is in
Paris that I have become converted to Tolstoi’s belief that the humble
class is the _vrai grand monde_, a thousand times more interesting and
instructive, worthier of our admiration, than the wealthy and educated
classes. The deeper you penetrate into these obscure lives, the deeper
you feel a sense of humiliation by confrontation with the futility of
education, breeding, blood,—the accepted adjuncts of superiority. The
poor and humble of the world are inarticulate, and they live and die
unconscious of the heroism of their existence. But the average woman
of the people gathers more virtue into a single day than the educated
woman, who enjoys the priceless benefits of leisure, space, and ease,
spreads over a week. Mark the gaiety and content with which she will
toil for inadequate pay, rising early, resting late, with few pleasures,
fewer distractions, maintaining through all her never-ending trials a
dignity of bearing, an ideal of honesty, an incomparable altitude of
disinterestedness that should shame us for the idle price we put upon
birth and education. Let us pick out of the crowd one figure of the small
dressmaker Dickens or Daudet might have made a charming study of. I have
been observing her life now for some years with friendly interest, and
have not found a flaw in it. She is good to look upon, a supple French
figure, clear skin, pretty features, reddish soft eyes, and red hair
a painter would delight to paint. Young, too, with winning manners,
she would not have far to look for assistance in her difficulties with
term-day, work-girls, and other expenses. Her father, an invalid, and her
mother live in a suburb, and she dwells alone all the week in a somewhat
squalid flat near the Bon Marché, her own protector, and needing none
other; such is her indestructible purity. No well-born girl could show a
more delicate reserve towards men than this pretty French dressmaker, no
nun could reveal herself less of a flirt. Her sole desire is to please
her customers and extend her connexion, to work early and late, sometimes
into the small hours of the morning; and her sole distraction, after a
week’s hard labour, is to go out to her parents in a dusty suburb beyond
Sant-Ouen, from Saturday evening to Monday morning. She never grumbles,
she is never unhappy; and though I give her books and encourage her to
talk to me about them, I have never detected in her remarks a particle
of envy or discontent with her humble lot. Her mind is clear and fresh,
essentially a lady’s mind, and her notions on the score of honesty are as
primitive as those of the poet who taught us in our infancy that it was
a sin to steal a pin. Quite as good and graceful pictures may be drawn
from the lower class of sempstresses who come to the house and work by
the day. These, too, have their ideal of conduct, which owes nothing to
education, and which a lady need not disown.

The _concierge_ belongs to a more complex order of being. These often run
down to desperate depths of degradation, and, in the wealthy quarters
especially, constitute one of the curses of Parisian life. I suspect
it is the tips and the endless sources of gossip that demoralise them.
And yet I can remember a delightful old lady, who looked as if she had
stepped out of a perfumed page of the last century, with her lovely white
hair fluffy and soft under a black mantilla; tiny, elegant, wrinkled
hands; gentle glance and exquisite smile, with the manners as well as the
appearance of a French marquise. She was my _concierge_, and a sweeter,
more disinterested little creature I have never known. I lived on the
fifth floor, and had no servant, contenting myself with the services of a
_femme de ménage_ in the morning. I was seriously ill for months; and had
this dear, gentle old lady been a relative or a friend she could not have
nursed me more devotedly, and never a farthing in coin would she accept.
She overwhelmed me with thousands of charming attentions, and the only
payment she would take gratefully was the assurance that they gave me
pleasure.

So, though I constantly hear terrible tales of the wicked doings of the
Paris _concierge_, I have to pass them over lightly for the sake of my
white-haired little marquise. Whenever I want to show an English friend
what an enchanting creature a Frenchwoman of the people can be, I make a
point of passing through her street, for the pleasure of looking in on
her, and saying, “Good-day” to my old friend. The _concierge_, should he
or she happen to be disagreeable, can do a singular lot of mischief, and
make the lodger’s life a burden to him. If you are out, friends who call
can be sent up several flights of stairs for nothing; if you are in, your
callers will be assured you are out. Letters can be held over, mislaid,
or forgotten; your servants can be set by the ears in the _concierge_’s
parlour; evil reports can be spread of you in the neighbourhood;
hints given to trades-people against your solvency. All these things
I have known to happen to persons in discordant relations with their
_concierge_; so that it is recognised in Paris that if the _concierge_
does not like you, the best thing you can do is to pack up your things,
pay a term in advance, and go.

The rag-picker of Paris is a familiar figure. To him belongs, I know
not why, some of the glory of romance. Everybody feels a sneaking
tenderness for the rag-picker. When, some years ago, M. Poubelle, the
Prefect of Police, decided that the rubbish of Paris was no longer to
be left outside along the pavements, but that each house should have
its big refuse-box, called ever since by his name, there was a general
uproar in the Press. What! disturb the amiable customs of the interesting
rag-picker! Diminish the income of these delicious Parisians!

Little by little their favourite and most famous citadels have been
demolished, their oddly named groups dispersed. There used to be the
_Cité des Singes_ and the _Cité des Mousquetaires_, now no longer in
existence. The rag-pickers are everywhere, and live just like other
citizens. I visited the rag-pickers of my quarter the other day. I found
them in an airy quarter of Grenelle, like a quiet little town of the
provinces on the edge of a wide river. Who would dream it was Paris, and
that broad splash of dull grey, the lively brilliant Seine that flows
past the Louvre? When I reached the rag-picker’s dwelling, she was out,
and two neighbours from different doors appeared to assist me. If they
had known me all their lives they could not have given me a more friendly
greeting. One went off in search of the rag-picker, the other pressed
me to take a seat in her room. The rag-picker came, one of the jolliest
and pleasantest-looking women I ever saw. She spoke admirably, with
perfect gesticulation, with inflection of voice, management of eyebrows
that would have won her distinction in a _salon_. Her expressive face
was clean, but her hands were the hue of soot, and her hair was the
grey of dust. Her little room, kitchen and sleeping-chamber, was freshly
washed and in perfect order. Outside the window clothes hung drying, and
below in the courtyard a pile of rubbish lay for sorting. It would be
impossible to find anywhere a healthier-looking or a happier creature.
Yet this has been her life from the age of twelve: she gets up at four
A.M. winter and summer, hail or snow; she heats some milk for her dog,
boils coffee for herself and her husband, leaves coffee simmering for
her three children, who, when she and her husband, with their cart and
dog, have gone off on their rag-gathering mission, get up, dress, and go
off to school. She paid fifty francs to her fellow-rag-pickers for the
whole of the Avenue de Breteuil, which was then only half built upon, and
to-day her practice is worth three hundred francs. I imagined the tax was
paid to the town; but no, it is paid to a sort of guild of rag-pickers,
who thereby assure her and her husband that they only have the right to
the refuse of the avenue. When they have picked up all the refuse, they
return and sort it out in the yard. She told me the prices of each thing,
and hair is the most valuable,—above all, white hair. The honesty of the
Parisian rag-picker is proverbial, and I know something of it, for once
a silver spoon of mine was accidentally flung out, and the next day the
rag-picker brought it back to the _concierge_.

Her visage shone with a positive radiance of soul. Her cheerfulness was
so contagious that it set me wishing to be a rag-picker too. Her devotion
to her husband and her children, of whom she spoke in rapturous terms,
was hardly more touching than her devotion to a saintly priest, who seems
to do an immense deal of good in the neighbourhood.

This man is quite remarkable; and a friend, speaking of him to me, and
of his well-known enthusiasm for rag-pickers and their like, told me he
once said to her: “See you, when once you get into the heart of that
class, you can’t endure any other. It becomes a passion.” And I can well
understand it, from all I have seen of the humbler classes of Paris.
There is a fulness of life, of vitality, of inarticulate, unconscious
goodness about them that puts you in sympathy with Tolstoiïsm. But
instead of the mysticism, the intensity of the Russian character, you
have here that irresistible French gaiety, which is not by any means
so light as it is said to be. Action is its virtue. Its mental horizon
is brightened by a personal charm of character, as a twilight sky is
enriched by an arch of radiant colour. In spite of the false romancers,
morality is in the air, everywhere about us.

In these humbler walks I refer to, pure girls, faithful husbands,
devoted wives, hard-working, honest sons and daughters abound, and the
force, as well as the weakness of all may be found in the love of home
and family. The temple of self-respect is lit with the unquenchable
flames of independence. All these admirable “little people” work so hard
and so contentedly that they may enjoy the delights of freedom and a
hearth, and they work the more contentedly, without embittered or soured
temper, because they have the inestimable art of living and enjoying
themselves when they leave aside work. The lower down you go among the
people, the greater the readiness to open the purse, and a workman bent
on a holiday will not hesitate to pay twenty or thirty francs for a
picnic carriage for the day, and fill the hamper with an abundance of
good fare and drink. I remember once hearing a well-to-do woman violently
complain because her coachman’s brother-in-law had paid such a price
for a vehicle to take a marriage party out into the country. I could
not share her indignation, to her disgust. The French people work so
hard, and so gallantly, and so well, that I think they earn their right
to an outbreak now and then. They at least pay for their pleasures and
dissipations with the sweat of their brow, and we who profit by their
labour owe them all thanks and indulgence.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII

ORGANISED PHILANTHROPY AND PUBLIC ASSISTANCE

It would be difficult to say whether or no France compares favourably
with England in the matter of philanthropy and the poor laws. But this
much must be admitted in favour of the Republican Government,—charity
was never so widely practised, was never so effectual or so free-handed,
as it is to-day in France. You will hear the futile nobles and those who
would pass for a part of the aristocracy by the mere virtue of adopting
its vices and prejudices, assure you that everything was better under
the _ancien régime_; that shopkeepers, peasants, farmers, and workmen
were all better off when they depended upon an absolute king. French
Catholics, like nearly all other Catholics I know, soar above argument,
logic, the surprises, revelations, and irrefragable testimony of history.
What they desire to have been, to have happened, must have been and
happened, and there is nothing more to be said. And so to-day, whenever
a handful of titled malcontents out of office, followed by a train of
wealthy and fashionable imitators, rail at a Government indifferent to
their interests, it is solemnly maintained that the people groan and
sweat under tyrannical laws, and that France has gone to the dogs. A
statement more contrary to truth and fact could not possibly be made.

Without examining even the enormous efforts of private charity to
improve the condition of the poor, we need only take up the subject of
Public Assistance to assure ourselves that the incessant preoccupation,
under republican rule, of the municipalities all over France is the
amelioration of the lot of the unfortunate classes of humanity. If you
lend an indulgent ear to the Catholics, they will assure you that the
municipality of Paris, because hitherto it has been democratic and
secular, is a mere gang of thieves, that the public funds are squandered
on private ends, and that not a penny of its vast revenues finds its
way into the pockets of the poor. This is simply a calumny—a stupid,
groundless invention. The _Assistance Publique_ has done more for the
poor than all the kings of France put together. In the days of Louis XIV.
there was no such thing as a public lying-in hospital. Wretched women,
without a home, or means of any kind to obtain shelter for the birth of
their children had to go to the Hôtel de Ville, where they lay on the
floors, and even two occupied each of the few beds, and childbirth took
place in a state of indescribable filth and discomfort.

The calumniated _Assistance Publique_ has built a large _maternité_,
where mothers and infants receive all possible care; and, in case of
pressure on their space, they pay midwives, properly diplomaed, to take
charge of poor women in their own houses. Everything at present is so
comfortably organised in these public institutions that many women of
small means prefer to avail themselves of them rather than endure the
domestic upheaval of a confinement at home. It should, however, be
admitted that the _Assistance Publique_ took the idea from M. Pinard’s
charmingly situated _maternité_ of the Boulevard Port Royal. M. Pinard is
something more than a celebrated _accoucheur_; he is a philanthropist,
or, as his enthusiastic disciple, Dr. Franck Brentano, said of him when
kindly doing me the honours of the _maternité_ of the Boulevard Port
Royal, he is a saint. He decided that his hospital should be cheerfully
situated, and so it lies in lovely gardens, and, on every side, the
patients have views of flowers and trees and green spaces between
well-kept paths. Not a hospital this, surely, but an elegant old mansion,
through whose long, open windows the fragrance and bloom of flowers
carry joy to the senses, while the song of birds makes perpetual music
for the weary convalescents. Dr. Franck Brentano showed me the trim
rose-beds with the proud intimation that it was M. Pinard who reared
them exclusively for his invalids. From time to time he gathers them,
and places a rose, moist with its early dew, beside a patient, bringing
her, with such delicacy, the assurance that she is, for him, something
more than a public patient. Not so were cherished unfortunate women
under the _ancien régime_. We laugh at the official legend bequeathed
France by the Revolution, and, of a surety, we are not justified in
that laughter. If liberty, equality, and fraternity are not all that
they might be in France to-day, there has been made a considerable step
towards their accomplishment which the conscientious observer is forced
to recognise. If brotherhood is still in a nebulous state, the same
cannot be said of equality. Where, in London, will you find the head
of a large hospital cultivating roses and gathering them at sunrise to
carry a breath of delight to a worn-out woman of the people? Such a
division and infrangible distance as exist between classes in England are
here no longer known. The people are the better for it, and certainly
society is not the worse. If republican independence has done nothing
else for France, it deserves national gratitude for having abolished what
flourishes so desperately in England,—the painful whine of poverty, not
ashamed to cringe, and the smirking curtsey and bob of the people, proud
to acknowledge what they are pleased to call their betters.

I have heard a great deal of abuse of the lay nurses who replace the
sisters now in public hospitals. All I can say is, that I was struck
with the spirit of cordiality and exquisite humanity which seemed to
emanate from everybody I encountered at M. Pinard’s _maternité_. This,
of course, may be due to the governing hand, for where so rare a nature
as the chief commands the illimitable devotion and passionate admiration
of his subordinates, it is but natural we should find an atmosphere of
disinterestedness and good-will. That M. Pinard’s delicate consideration
for oppressed womanhood does not end or even begin in this well-ordered
hospital is proven by the establishment of his admirable asylum close by.
This is a home for friendless women awaiting their turn to be received
into the hospital. Here they may come for two or three months, free to
live and work as they like, to go to mass, to the temple or synagogue,
or to no church whatever; and, by sewing or some such light labour,
to earn a little to put by for the day they leave the _maternité_.
Surely this is the most practical of all forms of free philanthropy.
No propaganda, no religious exclusiveness, no other preoccupation, but
the wish to persuade a despairing creature to live and give life under
the best conditions of care and personal kindness. Yes; let us frankly
admit that the Revolution has not been in vain, in spite of its horrors,
its inexplicable baseness, its acts of inconceivable cowardice. The
men who made it were no heroes, and we can bear at this hour to call
them remorselessly by their proper names. But the evil they did in the
cause of humanity has finally led to the amelioration of their race.
Lay France, with all her liberal aspirations, with her generous hatred
of injustice, tyranny, and oppression, bids fair to construct a France
which shall be the real and not the illusive home of freedom. The land
that can produce men and women like M. Pinard and Madame Coralie Cahen
need have no fear of the triumph of decadence. There were nearly seven
thousand births during the past year at the _maternité_. When we remember
that women are not obliged to give their names, and that their secret is
honourably kept in the teeth of all inquiries that may be made, there
seems less and less reason to-day for the extremities of despair.

The _Assistance Publique_ is not exclusively concerned with hospitals.
The increase of its income and the increase of its expenditure
sufficiently testify to the extent of public charity in France. In 1834
its income reached 9,946,874 francs, and in 1894, 43,043,935 francs. The
number of patients received in hospitals in 1834 was 66,521, and in
1894, 172,500; of children helped in 1834, 21,781, and in 1894, 48,000.
It disposes of 11,989 beds in hospitals, 12,370 beds in asylums, and the
average of persons helped is 480,600 a year. In outdoor help it spends
11,365,951 francs.

Again to compare the _ancien régime_ with the new order of things. It
was not until 1660 that the horrors of forsaken childhood obtained
commiseration. Yet St. Louis had lived; more than one king had been
called the father of his people, and the good King Henri IV. of legend
had asserted his royal wish that each family should have a fowl boiling
in the pot. It was the work of St. Vincent of Paul who, after founding
the excellent order of Sisters of Charity, bethought himself of unwelcome
babes left to suffer the consequences of their parents’ fault. Since
then the idea has rapidly progressed. In 1881 the _Conseil Général de la
Seine_ instituted what is greatly superior to the mere animal succour of
new-born infancy, the _Service des Moralement Abandonnés_. The morally
abandoned! How much more needful, how much more clamorous for the good
of the race, is the succour of these little creatures, morally depraved,
from want of training! In 1888 this society received 2062 boys and 905
girls, the numerical difference being explained by the fact that there
are always more ways of disposing of girls than of boys, and their
adoption by private persons is much more frequent.

Too much praise cannot be given to the _Assistance Publique_ for the
admirable fashion in which it discharges its duty to the children placed
under its protection. Zola in _Fécondité_ records the improbable tale of
a whole town in Normandy living solely upon the slow murder of babies put
out to nurse by the institution. I need give only one example of what has
come under my own notice. My servant, unfortunately married, was deserted
many years ago with three children, one new-born. The Public Assistance
took the two elder boys and placed them out to nurse in a farmhouse,
where every quarter an inspector visited them, and himself inquired
into the condition of their health and general welfare. The inspector
makes his report to the prefect, and his visits are supplemented by the
doctor’s. It is he who signs the agreement of apprenticeship, distributes
clothes, and pays the nurses and adopted parents. As an encouragement
to treat the children well, these receive a present of money when each
child reaches the age of thirteen; an outfit is bestowed upon the child,
who is then apprenticed, preferably for farm-work, and, in order that
the precious ties of family life shall not be broken, it is invariably
exacted that the boys shall continue to live with their foster parents
during the years of apprenticeship. A portion of the boy’s earnings is
placed in the Caisse d’Épargne to make him a tiny capital, when of age to
start upon his own account. My servant’s children were well-treated and
happy, and when she went down to the farm to spend ten days with them,
she found two healthy lads and a hospitable family to receive her, and in
their midst enjoyed a delightful holiday. The boys had their pass-books,
and could make her a present each of twenty-five francs. The other day
one of them decided to come to Paris to earn his bread, and even at the
station the mother was not allowed to claim him, it being a notorious
fact that boys fresh from the country often fall into evil hands at the
big railway stations. Scrupulous in the acquittal of its duties, the
_Assistance Publique_ will only deliver its charge into the mother’s hand
in official circumstances that render all fraud impossible. The boy wore
a fine new suit of clothes and new boots, and his great fear was that,
leaving the care of the _Assistance Publique_ these peacock feathers
would be taken from him. But they were not, and when he came to see me, I
found, instead of a cowed charity lad, a pink-cheeked, open-eyed youth,
well dressed and strong, with an independent air and an excellent fashion
of speech. I sent him with a card of recommendation to the _Figaro_, and
he was engaged on the spot. It speaks well for the people who brought him
up, that he already regrets them and their quiet shepherd-life, and says
he was much happier in the country than ever he expects to be in Paris.
In the case of children leaving the correctional schools, the State has
organised several schools of apprenticeship for the young prisoners of
both sexes.

There are, as well, a considerable number of these establishments under
the direction of private persons and charitable societies. The boys
are taught a trade and are classed according to their antecedents, if
brought up in town or country. They work seven hours a day, and the
money they earn is placed to their account in the Savings Bank. The
colony at Belle-Ile-en-Mer receives the pick of this corrupt young
world, and trains them for marine service. They are taught reading,
writing, history, geography, and arithmetic, while Sunday is given
up to gymnastics and long walks with their professors. The rewards
for good behaviour are—praise, additional food, good-conduct stripes
with pecuniary remuneration, gifts, a grant of three francs a month,
confidential employment, and weekly leave of absence, provisional
freedom, and military service. The Maison Darnetal for girls, near Rouen,
has excited such admiration that the Italian Government has ordered its
nuns to imitate it. Young girls here, when they leave the correctional
school, are trained as farm wives, to grow fruit and vegetables, to make
butter and cheese, to rear fowl; and they themselves carry to market the
produce of their labour and learn to make excellent bargains. When they
have earned their freedom, they are independent young women, capable of
directing a farm, with all the thrift, the natural, keen intelligence and
unsleeping industry of that most admirable portion of the French race,
the hard-working, good-humoured women of the people.

For years past there has been raging in France a bitter war between
the Catholics and the Radicals on the subject of hospital nurses. The
Republic, which mistrusts the Catholic party, has sought to limit their
power in every direction. It was a mistake, I think, to attack them at
hospital beds, for if there is a place which belongs by divine right,
if I may say so, to the nun, it is the side of a sick-bed. With their
guimps and coifs, their life of religious meekness, their cheerfulness
and self-abnegation, they make ideal sick nurses. Then, the patient
feels that with them it is not a profession, the means to an end, that
money is not their object, nor are they likely to forget their duty
in a flirtation with the doctor. In England and France I have had,
unfortunately, experience of both kinds of nurses, and I unhesitatingly
give my preference to the French nun. She is softer, kinder, gayer,
and more delicate and modest in her handling of a patient than the
average lady nurse of England. She nurses you for love of nursing, or
for the good of her soul, and she has the secret of a boundless sympathy
and untiring good-will. Yet many scientific Frenchmen and doctors,
while praising her disinterestedness and purity of motive, allow her
unsatisfactory peculiarities. For instance, they complain of her
indocility to the doctor and surgeon, and state that when a difference
of opinion between them and the mother superior arises, the religious
sick nurses will obey the latter rather than those in whose hands lies
the fate of the patient. Dr. Fauvel, of le Hâvre, stated before the
International Congress of Assistance, relative to the laity of the new
hospital of that town: “As regards primary instruction and professional
education, the nuns are in no wise superior, quite the contrary; with
an incomplete professional education, the lay staff has shown special
knowledge ignored by the nuns, nursing the sick with greater intimate
skill, preparing instruments, baths, helping the doctors and pupils more
efficiently, being more docile in taking the thousand precautions ordered
in operations and the dressing of wounds.... It is a mistake to regard
as false all the accusations made against the sisters; and I declare
emphatically that I have found in lay nurses an equal and often a more
spontaneous devotion.” This is quite possible, but I maintain, upon
personal experience of both methods, that the religious atmosphere brings
a refinement and delicacy into the sick room by no means to be despised.
Whatever throws a charm, a grace, a sweetness over the sick-bed carries
an inappreciable value, and Frenchwomen, at least, however religious,
have that delightful tact of their race to prevent them from worrying a
recalcitrant patient on the subject of her faith.

At Lyons, as early as the fifteenth century, a medium was found between
congregational and secular sick-nursing. It appears to work excellently,
though the persons in this state affair who deserve our pity are the
unfortunate sick nurses, whose sole reward for a life of unceasing labour
is the precarious value of fifty low masses after death. I cannot, for
the life of me, see why these poor women, so wretchedly paid in life,
should not at least enjoy the glory of fifty high masses and a monument.
But women who devote themselves to public service are, in all lands, and
under every _régime_, ancient or modern, gallantly exploited. It is a
recognised duty to overwork them, underfeed them, and pay them next to
nothing, and then expect gratitude from them for permitting them to waste
their lives in the service of their ungrateful fellow-men. In mediæval
times the town of Lyons decided to profit by the repentance of loose
women, and ordered them to attend the sick for the good of their souls.
They took no vows, but little by little they adopted a uniform, and, in
1598, a meeting of Lyonese doctors resolved that this lay order of sick
nurses should be known as _servants of the poor_. There is such a pretty
mediæval twang about this name, that we salute it, still existing in
these modern days, with respect. This lay order has existed throughout
all the storms of French history, and works as well to-day as when it
was founded four centuries ago. True, it is now recruited from quite a
different class, and is divided into three terms of service: _novices_,
_prétendants_, _sœurs croisées_, or decorated sisters. When a young girl
wishes to become a “servant of the poor,” she is severely catechised
as to the reasons of her choice, is compelled to furnish proofs of
her capacity for her chosen task, and the consent of her parents or
guardians. Inquiries are made about her, and if she is accepted, her
novitiate lasts a year, during which period she wears no uniform. Then
she becomes a _prétendant_, and wears a uniform, receiving in payment of
her incessant service the sum of eighty francs a year, out of which she
must pay for her uniform and linen. She can leave when she likes, or the
hospital committee can discharge her for any reason whatever. She obeys a
superior nurse, who in turn obeys the administration, and her period of
service lasts from twelve to fifteen years. Imagine her, then, wishful of
rest, far away from lint and bistouries and hospital odours. Her £3 4_s._
a year will not have afforded her much chance of putting anything by. But
if, happily, her vocation for unrewarded service lasts, she is decorated
with a silver cross; and though she still takes no vows, and can leave
when she wishes, she is regarded as having a life-claim upon the
administration. They cannot now turn her into the streets, and there is
no fear of her dying of hunger. In return for this assurance her salary
is reduced to forty francs a year. But she is titled _Cheftaine_, with
also its pretty ringing sound of the Middle Ages; she has seventeen days
holiday every year, and she has her silver cross and fifty low masses!
There are eight hundred of these disinterested creatures in the city of
Lyons; and it will be admitted that the great silk centre of France knows
how to manage its affairs with prodigious economy.

It would be impossible, in a short chapter dealing with organised
philanthropy in France, to mention even a tenth of the private
institutions and associations that abound. In Paris alone there are
thirty orphanages for boys and a hundred and twenty for girls, the
deficiency on the side of the boys being supplied by innumerable
patronages, or boys’ clubs. There are forty-three societies for infancy,
eighty-seven _crèches_,—an excellent institution invented nearly fifty
years ago by M. Marbeau,—two hundred and ten infants’ schools, first
established by a Protestant clergyman in the Vosges, and now spread
all over France. In 1895, 37,253 children were placed in the country,
entailing an expense of 9,336,711 francs, and every year the number
increases.

Each denomination has its private and organised charities, and the late
Maxime du Camp awards the palm of incomparable perfection in this path to
the children of Israel. The Rothschild hospital, the Rothschild asylum
for old ages of both sexes, the children’s school, and school for girls
of Madame Coralie Cahen, are the best of their kind in Paris. When one
reads the story of Jewish charities in Paris, one is stupefied by the
senseless outburst of mad and wicked anti-semitism which rages in France
to-day. The Baron Henri de Rothschild has instituted a sort of mothers’
refuge up in the poor and populous quarter of Belleville, where he
gives advice to mothers, and supplies them with a litre of sterilised
milk daily. Believe me, when you dive below the surface of Paris, you
will find it to be something nobler than a city of pleasure. Poverty
and misery abound because, alas! they are inseparable from existence;
but there is no city in the world where poverty is more endurable than
in Paris, none where it is sweetened with a surer and more efficacious
fraternity. Between the classes there is not that intolerable arrogance
and impertinence which constitute the blight of British philanthropy. In
England I have seen charitable women go into poor men’s cottages with
the air of tamers entering a menagerie. They ask unendurable questions,
fling open windows without consulting their victims, pooh-pooh everything
said to them, order this, command that, till I have marvelled at the
long-suffering of the poor, and wondered that they restrained themselves
from flinging their torturers out of the window. And I have remarked
that these busybodies, under the guise of philanthropy, rarely brought
the victims of their implacable sense of Christian duty anything but
their arid advice. Now, whatever the failings of the French are, I can
confidently assert that tactless spiritual arrogance is not among them,
still less an impertinent interference in private matters. They will
not open their purse as freely as the English do—the French themselves
are the first to admit it—and the secretary of the Academy of Medicine,
speaking to me of English private charities, and the vaster scale on
which they are managed, said, with delightful gaiety of admission, “In
England, you know, you always find a benevolent old lady or gentleman,
who will give you for a charitable project £20,000, as I might give
you two sous”; but they will not thrust their advice upon the poor with
wounding contempt as the English do.

If you would obtain the most striking possible contrast of the hospital
workings of the old and new _régimes_, comparison should be made of the
authentic plan of the old hospital under the kings of France, and the new
hospital of the Institut Pasteur under the directorship of M. Duclaux.
Under the old system, patients suffering from various maladies, all more
or less contagious, lay four in one bed, two with their heads above, two
with their heads below, the legs of the four touching. We may imagine the
rest of the details in keeping with this frightful situation—sanitary
details not improved between the eighth and eighteenth centuries—food,
attendance of doctors, surgeons, and nurses of the worst and coarsest
kind, sickness not other than a filthy and hideous visitation of destiny,
the inevitable precursor of the common ditch of burial. One wonders what
degree of physical despair and disgust it was necessary to reach in those
days to face the horrors of a public hospital. The courage such awful
contact entailed means, to me, greater far than any involved in fronting
the vicissitudes of battle. To die untended and forsaken on the bloodiest
field of history, with unchanged linen, unwashed and unbound wounds, the
visible prey of vultures, without hope of decent burial, were surely an
end more honourable and less nauseous than illness and death in a public
hospital of Paris in the much lauded and poetised days of the _ancien
régime_.

A well-known charitable institution of France is the order of the Little
Sisters of the Poor. These Little Sisters are highly popular, and
whenever anyone _bien pensant_ (as the Catholics call themselves) dies,
his or her relatives hasten to send all the wardrobe of the defunct
to the Little Sisters. A branch house is almost beside me, and I see
cartloads of clothes driven off frequently for sale from its door. I
visited the establishment once, and cannot say that I was much impressed
with the spirit of charity revealed to me. To enter this asylum, men and
women must have attained the age of sixty. The old men are better cared
for, better treated, by the Little Sisters than the old women. The best
side of the house is theirs; they have a handsome covered terrace to
walk along when they are not in the gardens, have a smoking-room, and
can spend their days playing cards. Their quilts are of silk and velvet
patchwork, while the old women must be thankful for cotton, and the nun
who showed me over the establishment reserved for the men all her smiles
and pleasant greetings. The poor old women got nothing but sour looks and
silence, and while the men amused themselves, these were condemned to
hard work in the big laundry and kitchen. “As we have no servants,” said
the nun, “the old women must work.” To enter a charitable institution
over sixty, having worked hard all one’s life, in order to stand over
a wash-tub, seems a dubious advantage. A very devout Catholic friend,
with whom I discussed this fact, has told me of a lasting grievance she
has against these Little Sisters of the Poor. A broken-down gentle old
washerwoman, near seventy, in whom she took an interest, was recommended
to them, a friend paying four hundred francs to the asylum. The nuns
are not supposed to take money, but it is never refused, and in this
case the generous donor meant to secure a little extra comfort for the
hard-worked old soul. She was put in there to rest from the wash-tub,
but the excellent nuns understood it differently, and placed her at once
before it. Within a year she died from overwork. Whenever you penetrate
below the surface of conventual charities, they will always be found
profitable for the order and never for the individual. The hearts of nuns
seem implacably steeled against human suffering, steeled against pity
and generosity. They are among the worst paymasters and taskmasters in
the world, on the pretext that, being hard to themselves, nobody has the
right to expect that they shall be soft to others.

The Mont-de-Piété is a civil institution, which exists for the benefit
of the needy. It is not in the least like our pawn-offices, for here no
usury is practised, and the town benefits by any profits that accrue. The
central house is in the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, and there are four large
branch offices. Money is advanced on the objects offered, and when the
sum is brought back, interest is charged, and the objects are restored.
If no claim is put in at the end of eighteen months, the objects are
sold, and the profits are handed over to the _Assistance Publique_. All
classes of society in straitened circumstances have recourse to the
Mont-de-Piété which is a most useful institution.

Turn now to the latest public edifice for the poor under the Third
Republic. The late Baroness de Hirsch, a Jewess, was one of the several
founders—all of them women—of this splendid hospital, attached to the
Pasteur Institute. Here each patient has a room to himself free on the
raised ground-floor or on the story above. Below there are bath-rooms
and douches; there is a workshop for the carding of mattresses, each
patient sleeping on a new mattress, each mattress passing through an
immense steriliser. To improve upon the old method, by which doctors and
surgeons visit the patient at stated hours, a private house of handsome
dimensions has been built expressly for the doctor, who must be always
on the spot. In the case of contagious sickness there is the process of
purification in the lower cells, while ordinary cases of illness are,
after the _consultation à la hâte_, despatched to one of the bright,
clean, little sick rooms on the ground-floor. Here the rooms are divided
by glass partitions, which are muffed or not, as may be required.
Grown patients are more likely to wish for the privacy of muffed-glass
panels, whereas it is preferable that the panels should be transparent
when the patients are children and need constant supervision. During
convalescence, the patients, weary of solitude, can seek change by
transportation to a public ward, and there is a long glass gallery, or
winter garden, well located, and gay with green seats and tables, where
they can walk up and down, and receive their friends among the palms and
India-rubber trees. This part of the establishment has more the air of a
convalescent home than a public hospital. As deaths may occur even in the
best regulated hospitals, there is a subterranean passage constructed for
the _service des morts_, by which means the living are spared all contact
with lugubrious eventualities. M. Duclaux calculates that the yearly
expenditure of this admirable institution will reach £20,000. Let us hope
that those who profit by this foundation will prove not destitute of
good feeling towards those who have spent so much time, labour, money,
science, and thought on their behalf. But, alas! the poor are essentially
mistrustful of public charities. I know not why, but it is, nevertheless,
a fact that they seem to labour under the impression that such edifices
exist mainly to exploit and defraud them in some mysterious fashion. One
would approve of a sentiment of independence, and the conviction of a
sacred claim in their usage: but the feeling of distrust of them is ever
to be deplored.

It is due, no doubt, to groundless suspicions among the benefited
themselves, the flame of discontent being steadfastly and perfidiously
fanned by the Catholics, ever yearning for Catholic rule in France,
that all sorts of reports are spread as to maladministration of the
_Assistance Publique_. The fact is, of course, that centralised state
assistance to the poor can never be so cordial, so satisfactory
and helpful, as that administered by private hands. The State is a
functionary-tyrannised machine, which nobody thanks, and from which
everything is expected.

[Illustration]

INDEX

Académie Française, 147;
reception of M. Lavedan, 149;
reception of M. Hervieu, 151;
its restoration after the Terror, 154;
its influence and mission, 155;
prizes, 158

_Affaire Dreyfus_, 88, 93, 101, 126, 220, 237

Alsace and Lorraine, 102

Angoulême, 214

Anti-Semitism, 26, 53, 151

Aristocracy, 47;
its disaffection, 50;
the old-fashioned aristocrat, 55, 56;
the modern rowdy aristocrat, 52, 56, 75, 259

Army, 87;
its attitude, 90;
its popularity, 91;
the perils of militarism, 94;
conscription, 94;
a military document, 95;
military service, 99;
attitude of officers in civil courts, 101;
M. Urbain Gohier’s indictment of the army, 103, 104;
military plays, 105;
French generals, 108;
military rewards, 109;
_Au Tableau_, 110

Artisan, 219, 244

Assistance Publique, 284;
contrast of the state of the poor in Paris under the _ancien
régime_ and under the Third Republic, 284, 285, 288-292, 300

Aubernon, Madame, 257

_Aversier_, 17

Baccalauréat, 116

Balzac, 148, 205

Barrès, Maurice, 103, 156

Bazin, René, _La Terra qui Meurt_, 106, 205, 227

Béarn, 3

Blaguer, 255

Blaze de Bury, Madame, 178

Bodinière, 252

Bon Pasteur, 225

Bourgeoisie, the, 60;
its provincial pretensions, 5;
its prejudices, 63-65;
its passion for titles, 66;
the “little bourgeoise,” 264-274

Bourget, Paul, 51

Breton, 2;
Breton superstitions, 19

Brisson, M., 256

Brunetière, M., 53, 152, 156, 159

Catholicism, the cult of St. Anthony of Padua, 18;
hostility to the Republic, 89;
its influence, 128

Charbonnel, Victor, 252

Châteaux, 9, 21, 22

Child service, 223

Clericalism, 27

Comédie Française, 161;
its traditions, 161;
its composition, 163;
the new theatre, 164

Concierge, 277, 278

Conférence, la, 250

Conservatoire, 170-172

Convent life, 139-146

Country life, 5, 6, 25

Coppée, François, 103, 157, 236

Daudet, Alphonse, 172, 233

Demolins, M., 70, 113, 115, 117, 120

Duclaux, M., 241, 300, 304

Duruy, Georges, 104

École des Beaux Arts, 164

École Polytechnique, 104

Education, 112

England and France contrasted, 34, 37-42, 59, 65, 76, 118, 121, 167,
197, 206, 232

Environments of Paris, 82

Estaunié, M., _L’Empreinte_, 123, 127

Fabre, Ferdinand, 124

Fairs, 82

Farmer, 12

Fashionable Paris, 53

Faubourg St. Germain, 35, 50, 54, 55

Fiction, 118

Flats, 39

Flower markets, 43

Gallifet, General de, 108

Geoffrin, Madame, 256

Gouvernantes, 137

Grisette, 248, 274

Gyp, 50, 137, 259

Halévy, Ludovic and Daniel, 241

Halles, the, 43

Hirsch, Baroness de, 303

Hobereaux, 8-12

Home life, 55;
its economies and courtesies, 179, 188;
French table, 193, 194;
home habits, 197

Hospitals, 285, 298, 300

Hugo, Victor, 263

_Jacquou le Croquant_, 124

Jeanne of Angoulême, 214, 520

Jesuits, 123;
their mission and training, 124-127

Jeunesse Royaliste, la, 46

_Journal des Débats_, 231, 234

_Journal d’une Femme de Chambre_, 213-215, 234

Larroumet, Gustave, 254

Lemaître, Jules, “Ligue de la Patrie Française,” 156, 157, 236

_Le Vieux Marcheur_, 148-150, 225

“Little bourgeoise,” the, 264-274

“Little people,” 226, 264, 273, 274, 281

Little Sisters of the Poor, 301, 302

Lycées, 113-122

Maison Darnetal, 292

Marais, the, 31

Marchand de Vin, 245

Maternité, the, 285-287

Métayer, 227

Minister: Waldeck-Rousseau, 230, 237, 240

Molière, 255, 262

Mont-de-Piété, 303

Montmartre, 32, 38, 85, 248

Morality, 38, 42;
influences of public-school training, 117;
the moral training of Stanislas College, 130-137;
tolerance of vice, 176;
feminine cynicism, 177;
the Frenchman’s vices, 198

Motor cars, 60, 61

Napoleon, 46, 87, 110, 117, 154, 163, 234, 263

Nationalists, 75, 78, 79, 103, 220, 231, 236, 237

Nurses, religious and lay, 287, 293, 294

Orleans, Duc D’, 54, 91, 260

Paris and Parisianism, 28-57;
the gaiety and charm of Paris, 29;
the influence of women, 32;
the old streets of the Faubourg St. Germain, 35;
inoffensiveness of the streets, 38;
rents, 39;
walks, 41;
markets, 43;
Parisianism, 47;
aristocratic Paris, 50;
the old-fashioned noblewomen, 54, 55;
Parisian washerwomen, 220-222

Pastimes, 80-86

Patriotism, 80, 103, 236

Peasant, the, 202, 215, 228

Pellouaille, La, 202-205

People’s colleges, 238-244

Philanthropy, 283, 298

Pinard, M., 285-288

Press, 229-235

Prix de Rome, 166, 167

Public ball, 246, 247

Rag-Picker, 278-280

Renan, 258, 263

Sainte-Beuve, 153, 155, 158

Sand, George, 205

“Servants of the poor,” 295-297

Stanislas College, 128-135

Taine, 179

_Temps, Le_, 231, 233, 234

Vogüé, M. De, _Les Morts qui Parlent_, 225

Woman’s rôle, 200, 201

Zola, M., 156, 205, 213

THE END

[Illustration]

Our European Neighbours

Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON

12ᵒ. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20.
By Mail 1.30

I.—FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

By HANNAH LYNCH.

“Miss Lynch’s pages are thoroughly interesting and suggestive. Her
style, too, is not common. It is marked by vivacity without any drawback
of looseness, and resembles a stream that runs strongly and evenly
between walls. It is at once distinguished and useful.... Her five-page
description (not dramatization) of the grasping Paris landlady is a
capital piece of work.... Such well-finished portraits are frequent
in Miss Lynch’s book, which is small, inexpensive, and of a real
excellence.”—_The London Academy._

“Miss Lynch’s book is particularly notable. It is the first of a series
describing the home and social life of various European peoples—a series
long needed and sure to receive a warm welcome. Her style is frank,
vivacious, entertaining, captivating, just the kind for a book which is
not at all statistical, political, or controversial. A special excellence
of her book, reminding one of Mr. Whiteing’s, lies in her continual
contrast of the English and the French, and she thus sums up her praises:
‘The English are admirable: the French are lovable.’”—_The Outlook._

II.—GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

By W. H. DAWSON, author of “Germany and the Germans,” etc.

“The book is as full of correct, impartial, well-digested, and
well-presented information as an egg is of meat. One can only recommend
it heartily and without reserve to all who wish to gain an insight into
German life. It worthily presents a great nation, now the greatest and
strongest in Europe.”—_Commercial Advertiser._

III.—RUSSIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

By FRANCIS H. E. PALMER, sometime Secretary to H. H. Prince
Droutskop-Loubetsky (Equerry to H. M. the Emperor of Russia).

“We would recommend this above all other works of its character to those
seeking a clear general understanding of Russian life, character, and
conditions, but who have not the leisure or inclination to read more
voluminous tomes... It cannot be too highly recommended, for it conveys
practically all that well-informed people should know of ‘Our European
Neighbours.’”—_Mail and Express._

IV.—DUTCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

By P. M. HOUGH, B.A.

Not alone for its historic past is Holland interesting, but also for
the paradox which it presents to-day. It is difficult to reconcile the
old-world methods seen all over the country with the advanced ideas
expressed in conversation, in books, and in newspapers. Mr. Hough’s long
residence in the country has enabled him to present a trustworthy picture
of Dutch social life and customs in the seven provinces,—the inhabitants
of which, while diverse in race, dialect, and religion, are one in their
love of liberty and patriotic devotion.

“Holland is always interesting, in any line of study. In this work its
charm is carefully preserved. The sturdy toil of the people, their quaint
characteristics, their conservative retention of old dress and customs,
their quiet abstention from taking part in the great affairs of the world
are all clearly reflected in this faithful mirror. The illustrations are
of a high grade of photographic reproductions.”—_Washington Post._

V.—SWISS LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

By ALFRED T. STORY, author of the “Building of the British Empire,” etc.

Switzerland forms one of the smallest states of Europe, being little more
than half the size of Scotland, and is almost the only one whose history
is the history of its people. It is the centre of the grandest scenery,
the birthplace of four of its best known and most considerable rivers,
and has for centuries enjoyed the special distinction of being the home
of democracy and freedom.

As Mr. Story points out, the average tourist, passing more or less
rapidly through the country, while impressed by the grandeur of the
scenery, fails utterly to secure any true insight into the home life of
the people. Mr. Story has, however, pitched his tent among the Alps and
has made a careful and sympathetic study of Swiss life,—the keynote of
which is simplicity and sincerity.

_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_

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "French life in town and country" ***

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