French life in town and country

by Hannah Lynch

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.