French life in town and country

by Hannah Lynch

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.