DOMESTIC LIFE IN FRANCE.
Mortel, qui que tu sois, prince, brame, ou soldat,
Homme! ta grandeur stir la terre
N'appartient point à ton état,
Elle est toute à ton caractère.--Beaumarchais.
There are two words wanting in French which an Englishman can scarcely do without, comfort and home. The hiatus is not alone in the language, the idea is wanting. Speak to a Frenchman of pleasure, he can understand you--of gaiety, amusement, dissipation, he has no difficulty: but talk to him of comfort, and explain it how you will, you can never make it intelligible to him. In like manner, he will comprehend everything that can be said on the theatre, the coffee-house, the club, the court, or the exchange; but home--there is no such thing. Chez-soi is not the word: intérieur comes nearer to it, for that particularises, but still it is not home--home, where all the affections of domestic life, all the kindly feelings of the heart, all the bright weaknesses of an immortal spirit clad in clay--where all, all the rays of life centre, like a gleam of sunshine breaking through a cloud, and lighting up one spot in the landscape while all the rest is wrapt in shadow. We may carry ambition, pride, vengeance, hatred, avarice, about with us in the world; but every gentler feeling is for home: and miserable is he who finds no such resting-place in the wide desert of human existence.
I speak not of all Frenchmen. I have met some who had the feeling in their hearts, and scarcely knew what it meant. They had formed themselves a home, but had not a name for it. But these are the accidents, and in the generality of French families it is not, nor it cannot be so.
Marriage in France is one of the most extraordinary things that ever was invented. It is a state into which men enter, seemingly, from a principle of inevitable necessity--the besoin de se marier, or else who would engage their fate to that of a person whose mind, education, and disposition, is generally wholly unknown to them? The first principle of a woman's education all over the world is deceit. She is taught, and wisely taught, to conceal what she feels. But in France they try to teach her not to feel it at all. Educated in the greatest retirement, watched with the most jealous suspicion, as soon as a favourable opportunity presents itself, she is brought forward to show off all her accomplishments, before a man, who is destined for her husband, and is bidden to assume his tastes, and coincide in his opinions. Little affectation, however; is necessary. It is all a matter of convention. The one party wishes for a wife, and marries without knowing anything about her; the other wishes for liberty, and is married without caring to whom. This is the great change in a Frenchwoman's life. While single she is guarded, and restrained in everything; each action each word, each look is regulated; but the moment she is married all is freedom, gaiety, and dissipation. From a caterpillar she becomes a butterfly, and flutters on amongst the multitude to be chased by every grown child that sees her. These are not the materials for happiness! But this is not all. Every circumstance, every custom on these occasions leaves little room for the expectation of domestic felicity.
A young lady is to be married, and a young gentleman is found in the necessary predicament. She is promised a certain dower, and he is possessed of a certain fortune, into the state of which, as in duty bound, her parents make the strictest inquiry. But the case is widely different on the part of the young gentleman. No inquiry must be made by him. The character of his future bride it is impossible for him to know, that of her relations concerns him little, and into their means of giving the dower they promise, he is forbidden to inquire, on pain of excommunication. Any doubt on the subject would show that their daughter did not possess his love!--O that prostituted name love! used every day to quality the basest and most ignoble feelings of our nature.
But to go on with the history of a French marriage. The contract generally imports, that the father of the young lady shall pay a certain yearly sum to her husband, and a further sum is promised to be left her at the death of her parents. The benefits of this arrangement are obvious and manifold, and well calculated to check the exorbitant power which husbands have over their wives.
A part of the ceremony, and one of the most essential, is the corbeille de marriage, or wedding present from the lover to his bride. This is scarcely a matter of courtesy alone, as some might imagine, but almost of right, which the young lady would yield upon no consideration whatever. It is a sort of price, and is expected to be the amount of two years' revenue.
The corbeille is a basket lined with white satin, and containing a variety of articles of dress and jewellery. One indispensable part is a cashemere; and the rest is made up of laces, diamonds, and all the thousand little nothings which enter into the composition of a fine lady.
The civil ceremony at the commune is all which the present law requires, but the religious part is seldom if ever dispensed with. The first takes place generally in the morning, without any display. The ceremonies of the church however are delayed till near midnight, and have in general the advantage of new scenery, dresses, and decorations. The higher the class, and the better the taste of the parties, of course, the simpler are all the arrangements, and the fewer and more nearly connected are the persons present. With such a system is it possible that there can be such a thing as home? That it is possible--that it may be found, is one of the finest traits of the French character. All their habits, all their customs, from time immemorial, have been opposed to domestic life; and yet they occasionally create it for themselves.