French life in town and country

by Hannah Lynch

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.

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.