One of the deepest of French thinkers, whose eyes were opened by travel and comparison, De Stendhal, in 1842, says in his book De l’Amour: “Pour comprendre cette passion, que depuis trente ans la peur du ridicule cache avec tant de soin parmi nous, il faut en parler comme d’une maladie”—"To understand this passion, which during the last thirty years has been concealed among us with so much solicitude, from fear of ridicule, it is necessary to speak of it as a malady."
But Stendhal greatly understates the case. It was not only within thirty years from the time when he wrote, and by means of ridicule, that the French had tried hard to kill Love. They have never really emancipated themselves from mediæval barbarism. Pure Romantic Love between two young unmarried persons has never yet flourished in France—because it has never been allowed to grow. To-day, as in the days of the Troubadours, the only form of Love celebrated in French plays and romances is the form which implies conjugal infidelity.
“Marriage, as treated in the old French epics,” says Ploss, “is rarely based on love;” the woman marries for protection, the man for her wealth or social affiliations. In the eighteenth century girls were compelled from their earliest years to live only for appearance sake: “The most harmless natural enjoyment, every childish ebullition, is interdicted as improper. Her mother denies her the expression of tender emotion as too bourgeois, too common. The little one grows up in a dreary, heartless vacuum; her deeper feelings remain undeveloped.... Real love would be too ordinary a motive of marriage, and therefore extremely ridiculous. It is not offered her, accordingly, nor does she feel any.”
Heine wrote from Paris in 1837 that “girls never fall in love in this country.” "With us in Germany, as also in England and other nations of Germanic origin, young girls are allowed the utmost possible liberty, whereas married women become subjected to the strict and anxious supervision of their husbands.
"Here in France, as already stated, the reverse is the case: young girls remain in the seclusion of a convent until they either marry or are introduced to the world under the strict eye of a relative. In the world, i.e. in the French salon, they always remain silent and little noticed, for it is neither good form here nor wise to make love to an unmarried girl.
“There lies the difference. We Germans, as well as our Germanic neighbours, bestow our love always on unmarried girls, and these only are celebrated by our poets; among the French, on the other hand, married women only are the object of love, in life as well as in literature.”
The difficulty of becoming acquainted with a young lady, Mr. Hamerton tells us, is greatest “in what may be called the ‘respectable’ classes in country-towns and their vicinities. In Parisian society young ladies go out into le monde, and may be seen and even spoken to at evening-parties.”
“And even spoken to” is good, is very good. What a privilege for the young men! The iron bars which formerly separated them from the young ladies have actually been removed, and they are allowed to speak to them—in presence of a heart-chilling, conversation-killing dragon. No wonder Parisian society is so corrupt!
Mr. Hamerton has given in Round My House the most realistic and fascinating account of French courtship and marriage-customs ever written. He is a great admirer of the French, always ready to excuse their foibles, and his testimony is, therefore, doubly valuable as that of an absolutely impartial witness. He had an opportunity for many years of studying French provincial life with an artist’s trained faculties; and here are a few sentences culled from his descriptions:—
“It is not merely difficult, in our neighbourhood, for a young man in the respectable classes to get acquainted with a young lady, but every conceivable arrangement is devised to make it absolutely impossible. Balls and evening-parties are hardly ever given, and when they are given great care is taken to keep young men out of them, and young marriageable girls either dance with each other or with mere children.”