French life in town and country

by Hannah Lynch

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.