Here, lastly for this month, is another piece of Marmontel for you, describing an ideal landlord’s mode of “investing” his money; losing, as it appears, half his income annually by such investment, yet by no means with “aching pillows” or broken hearts for the result. (By the way, for a lesson in writing, observe that I know the Canada author to be imperfectly educated merely by one such phrase as “aching pillow”—for pillows don’t ache—and again, by his thinking it religious and impressive to say “knoweth” instead of “knows.”) But listen to Marmontel.
“In the neighbourhood of this country-house lived a kind of Philosopher, not an old one, but in the prime of life, who, after having enjoyed everything that he could during six months of the year in town, was in the habit of coming to enjoy six months of his own company in a voluptuous solitude. He presently came to call upon Elise. ‘You have the reputation of a wise man, sir,’ she said—‘tell me, what is your plan of life?’ ‘My plan, madame? I have never had any,’ answered the count. ‘I do everything that amuses me. I seek everything that I like, and I avoid with care everything that annoys or displeases me.’ ‘Do you live alone, or do you see people?’ asked Elise. ‘I see sometimes our clergyman, whom I lecture on morals. I chat with labourers, who are better informed than all our servants. I give balls to little village girls, the prettiest in the world. I arrange little lotteries for them, of laces and ribands.’ (Wrong, Mr. Philosopher: as many ribands as you please; but no lotteries.) ‘What?’ said Elise, with great surprise, ‘do those sort of people know what love is?’ ‘Better than we do, madame—better than we do a hundred times; they love each other like turtle-doves—they make me wish to be married myself!’ ‘You will confess, however,’ said Elise, ‘that they love without any delicacy.’ ‘Nay, madame, delicacy is a refinement of art—they have only the instincts of nature; but, indeed, they have in feeling what we have only in fancy. I have tried, like another, to love, and to be beloved, in the town,—there, caprice and fashion arrange everything, or derange it:—here, there is true liking, and true choice. You will see in the course of the gaieties I give them, how these simple and tender hearts seek each other, without knowing what they are doing.’ ‘You give me,’ replied Elise, ‘a picture of the country I little expected; everybody says those sort of people are so much to be pitied.’ ‘They were so, madame, some years since; but I have found the secret of rendering their condition more happy.’ ‘Oh! you must tell me your secret!’ interrupted Elise, with vivacity. ‘I wish also to put it in practice.’ ‘Nothing can be easier,’ replied the count,—‘this is what I do: I have about two thousand a year of income; I spend five hundred in Paris, in the two visits that I make there during the year,—five hundred more in my country-house,—and I have a thousand to spare, which I spend on my exchanges.’ ‘And what exchanges do you make?’ ‘Well,’ said the count, ‘I have fields well cultivated, meadows well watered, orchards delicately hedged, and planted with care.’ ‘Well! what then?’ ‘Why, Lucas, Blaise, and Nicholas, my neighbours, and my good friends, have pieces of land neglected or worn out; they have no money to cultivate them. I give them a bit of mine instead, acre for acre; and the same space of land which hardly fed them, enriches them in two harvests: the earth which is ungrateful under their hands, becomes fertile in mine. I choose the seed for it, the way of digging, the manure which suits it best, and as soon as it is in good state, I think of another exchange. Those are my amusements.’ ‘That is charming!’ cried Elise; ‘you know then the art of agriculture?’ ‘I learn a little of it, madame; every day, I oppose the theories of the savants to the experience of the peasants. I try to correct what I find wrong in the reasonings of the one, and in the practice of the other.’ ‘That is an amusing study; but how you ought to be adored then in these cantons! these poor labourers must regard you as their father!’ ‘On each side, we love each other very much, madame.’ ”
This is all very pretty, but falsely romantic, and not to be read at all with the unqualified respect due to the natural truth of the passages I before quoted to you from Marmontel. He wrote this partly in the hope of beguiling foolish and selfish persons to the unheard-of amusement of doing some good to their fellow-creatures; but partly also in really erroneous sentiment, his own character having suffered much deterioration by his compliance with the manners of the Court in the period immediately preceding the French Revolution. Many of the false relations between the rich and poor, which could not but end in such catastrophe, are indicated in the above-quoted passage. There is no recognition of duty on either side: the landlord enjoys himself benevolently, and the labourers receive his benefits in placid gratitude, without being either provoked or instructed to help themselves. Their material condition is assumed to be necessarily wretched unless continually relieved; while their household virtue and honour are represented (truly) as purer than those of their masters. The Revolution could not do away with this fatal anomaly; to this day the French peasant is a better man than his lord; and no government will be possible in France until she has learned that all authority, before it can be honoured, must be honourable.
But, putting the romantic method of operation aside, the question remains whether Marmontel is right in his main idea that a landlord should rather take 2,000l. in rents, and return 1,000l. in help to his tenants, than remit the 1,000l. of rents at once. To which I reply, that it is primarily better for the State, and ultimately for the tenant, that administrative power should be increased in the landlord’s hands; but that it ought not to be by rents which he can change at his own pleasure, but by fixed duties under State law. Of which, in due time;—I do not say in my next letter, for that would be mere defiance of the Third Fors.
Ever faithfully yours,
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
Sir,— Tipton, 8th April, 1872.
You have written a many letters to workmen, and seem to have suffered from a many replies by clerks, manufacturers, and others, to whom your letters were not addressed; and as you have noticed some of their performances, I am encouraged to expect you will kindly read one written by a man belonging to the class that you have chosen to write to,—one who is emphatically a workman, labouring many hours daily with hands and head in the wilderness known to people living in pleasanter places as the Black Country.