Recollections of Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

Marie, the locum tenens of the lady who had let the apartment, and the wife of a coachman who was in the country, was the mother of the infant. After its birth she presented herself to her new master; told her story; adding, by means of an interpreter, that if he turned her away, she had no place in which to lay her head. The kind-hearted fellow made out to live abroad as well as he could for a day or two—an easy thing enough in Paris, by the way,—and when I so unexpectedly entered, Marie was actually cooking the captain's breakfast in the kitchen while he was nursing the child in the salon!

The dialogues between the captain and Marie were to the last degree amusing. He was quite unconscious of the odd sounds he uttered in speaking French, but thought he was getting on very well, being rather minute and particular in his orders; and she felt his kindness to herself and child so sensibly, that she always fancied she understood his wishes. I was frequently compelled to interpret between them; first asking him to explain himself in English, for I could make but little of his French myself. On one occasion he invited me to breakfast, as we were to pass the day exploring in company. By way of inducement, he told me that he had accidentally found some cocoa in the shell, and that he had been teaching Marie how to cook it "ship-fashion." I would not promise, as his hour was rather early, and the distance between us so great; but before eleven I would certainly be with him. I breakfasted at home therefore, but was punctual to the latter engagement. "I hope you have breakfasted?" cried the captain, rather fiercely, as I entered. I satisfied him on this point; and then, after a minute of demure reflection, he resumed, "You are lucky; for Marie boiled the cocoa, and, after throwing away the liquor, she buttered and peppered the shells, and served them for me to eat! I don't see how she made such a mistake, for I was very particular in my directions, and be d——d to her! I don't care so much about my own breakfast neither, for that can be had at the next café; but the poor creature has lost hers, which I told her to cook out of the rest of the cocoa." I had the curiosity to inquire how he had made out to tell Marie to do all this. "Why, I showed her the cocoa, to be sure, and then told her to boily vous-même." There was no laughing at this, and so I went with the captain to a café; after which we proceeded in quest of the gullyteen, which he was particularly anxious to see.

My rides often extend to the heights behind Malmaison and St. Cloud, where there is a fine country, and where some of the best views in the vicinity of Paris are to be obtained. As the court is at St. Cloud, I often meet different members of the royal family dashing to or from town, or perhaps passing from one of their abodes to another. The style is pretty uniform, for I do not remember to have ever met the king but once with less than eight horses. The exception was quite early one morning, when he was going into the country with very little éclat, accompanied by the Dauphine. Even on this occasion he was in a carriage and six, followed by another with four, and attended by a dozen mounted men. These royal progresses are truly magnificent; and they serve greatly to enliven the road, as we live so near the country palace. The king has been quite lately to a camp formed at St. Omer, and I happened to meet a portion of his equipages on their return. The carriages I saw were very neatly built post-chaises, well leathered, and contained what are here called the "officers of the mouth," alias "cooks and purveyors." They were all drawn by four horses. This was a great occasion—furniture being actually sent from the palace of Compiègne for the king's lodgings, and the court is said to have employed seventy different vehicles to transport it. I saw about a dozen.

Returning the other night from a dinner-party, given on the banks of the Seine, a few miles above us, I saw flaring lights gleaming along the highway, which, at first, caused nearly as much conjecture as some of the adventures of Don Quixotte. My horse proving a little restive, I pulled up, placing the cabriolet on one side of the road, for the first impression was that the cattle employed at some funeral procession had taken flight and were running away. It proved to be the Dauphine dashing towards St. Cloud. This was the first time I had ever met any of the royal equipages at night, and the passage was much the most picturesque of any I had hitherto seen. Footmen, holding flaming flambeaux, rode in pairs in front, by the side of the carriage, and in its rear; the piqueur scouring along the road in advance, like a rocket. By the way, a lady of the court told me lately that Louis XVIII. had lost some of his French by the emigration, for he did not know how to pronounce this word piqueur.

On witnessing all this magnificence, the mind is carried back a few generations, in the inquiry after the progress of luxury, and the usages of our fathers. Coaches were first used in England in the reign of Elizabeth. It is clear enough, by the pictures in the Louvre, that in the time of Louis XIV. the royal carriages were huge, clumsy vehicles, with at least three seats. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her Memoirs, tells us how often she took her place at the window, in order to admire the graceful attitudes of M. de Lauzun, who rode near it. There is still in existence, in the Bibliothèque du Roi, a letter of Henry IV. to Sully, in which the king explains to the grand master the reason why he could not come to the arsenal that day; the excuse being that the queen was using the carriage! To-day his descendant seldom moves at a pace slower than ten miles the hour, is drawn by eight horses, and is usually accompanied by one or more empty vehicles of equal magnificence to receive him, in the event of an accident.

Notwithstanding all this regal splendour, the turn-outs of Paris, as a whole, are by no means remarkable. The genteelest and the fashionable carriage is the chariot. I like the proportions of the French carriages better than those of the English or our own, the first being too heavy, and the last too light. The French vehicles appear to me to be in this respect a happy medium. But the finish is by no means equal to that of the English carriages, nor at all better than that of ours. There are relatively a large proportion of shabby-genteel equipages at Paris. Even the vehicles that are seen standing in the court of the Tuileries on a reception day are not at all superior to the better sort of American carriages, though the liveries are much more showy.

Few people here own the carriages and horses they use. Even the strangers, who are obliged to have travelling vehicles rarely use them in town, the road and the streets requiring very different sorts of equipages. There are certain job-dealers who furnish all that is required for a stipulated sum. You select the carriage and horses on trial and contract at so much a month, or at so much a year. The coachman usually comes with the equipage, as does the footman sometimes, though both are paid by the person taking the coach. They will wear your livery, if you choose, and you can have your arms put on the carriage if desirable. I pay five hundred francs a month for a carriage and horses, and forty francs for a coachman. I believe this is the usual price. I have a right to have a pair of horses always at my command, finding nothing but the stable, and even this would be unnecessary in Paris. If we go away from our own stable, I pay five francs a day extra. There is a very great convenience to strangers, in particular, in this system, for one can set up and lay down a carriage, without unnecessary trouble or expense, as it may be wanted. In everything of this nature, we have no town that has the least character, or the conveniences, of a capital.

The French have little to boast of in the way of horseflesh. Most of the fine coach and cabriolet cattle of Paris come from Mecklenburgh, though some are imported from England. It is not common to meet with a very fine animal of the native breed. In America, land is so plenty and so cheap, that we keep a much larger proportion of brute force than is kept here. It is not uncommon with us to meet with those who live by day's work, using either oxen or horses. The consequence is that many beasts are raised with little care, and with scarcely any attention to the breeds. We find many good ones. In spite of bad grooming, little training, and hard work, I greatly question if even England possesses a larger proportion of good horses, comparing the population of the two countries, than America. Our animals are quicker footed, and at trotting, I suspect, we could beat the world; Christendom, certainly. The great avenue between the garden of the Tuileries and the Bois de Boulogne, with the allées of the latter, are the places to meet the fast-goers of the French capital, and I am strongly of opinion that there is no such exhibition of speed, in either, as one meets on the Third Avenue of New York. As for the Avenue de Neuilly, our sulky riders would vanish like the wind from anything I have seen on it; although one meets there, occasionally, fine animals from all parts of Europe.

The cattle of the diligences, of the post-houses, and even of the cavalry of France, are solid, hardy and good feeders, but they are almost entirely without speed or action. The two former are very much the same, and it is a hard matter to get more than eight miles out of them without breaking into a gallop, or more than ten, if put under the whip. Now, a short time previously to leaving home, I went eleven measured miles, in a public coach, in two minutes less than an hour, the whip untouched. I sat on the box, by the side of the driver, and know that this was done under a pull that actually disabled one of his arms, and that neither of the four animals broke its trot. It is not often our roads will admit of this, but, had we the roads of England, I make little doubt we should altogether outdo her in speed. As for the horses used here in the public conveyances, and for the post routes, they are commonly compact, clumsy beasts, with less force than their shape would give reason to suppose. Their manes are long and shaggy, the fetlocks are rarely trimmed, the shoes are seldom corked, and, when there is a little coquetry, the tail is braided. In this trim, with a coarse harness, that is hardly ever cleaned, traces of common rope, and half the time no blinkers or reins, away they scamper, with their heads in all directions, like the classical representation of a team in an ancient car, through thick and thin, working with all their might to do two posts within an hour, one being the legal measure. These animals appear to possess a strange bonhomie, being obedient, willing and tractable, although, in the way of harness and reins, they are pretty much their own masters.

My excursions in the environs have made me acquainted with a great variety of modes of communication between the capital and its adjacent, villages. Although Paris is pared down so accurately, and is almost without suburbs, the population, within a circuit of ten miles in each direction, is almost equal to that of Paris itself. St. Denis has several thousands, St. Germain the same, and Versailles is still a town of considerable importance. All these places, with villages out of number, keep up daily intercourse with the city, and in addition to the hundreds of vegetable carts that constantly pass to and fro, there are many conveyances that are exclusively devoted to passengers. The cheapest and lowest is called a coucou for no reason that I can see, unless it be that a man looks very like a fool to have a seat in one of them. They are large cabriolets, with two and even three seats. The wheels are enormous, and there is commonly a small horse harnessed by the side of a larger, in the hills, to drag perhaps eight or nine people. One is amazed to see the living carrion that is driven about a place like Paris, in these uncouth vehicles. The river is so exceedingly crooked, that it is little used by travellers above Rouen.