The American in Paris; vol. 1 of 2

by John Sanderson

To know the advantages of these places to the poor, one must visit the close alleys, crowded courts, and over-peopled habitations, of an over-grown city; where vices and diseases are festering in secret in the heart of the community. Why send missionaries to the South Seas, while their infected districts are unreclaimed? or why talk of popular religion, and morals, and education? The people who would employ about half the care and expense in preventing a disposition to vice, that they now employ in correcting it, would be the people the most happy and innocent of the earth. The best specifics I can conceive against the vagabond population of a city, are gardens, airy streets, and neat houses. Men’s habits of life are degraded always to the meanness of their lodgings; if we build “beggar’s nests,” we must expect beggars to breed in them.

Gardens give a taste for out-door exercises, and thereby promote health and physical developement; and they aid in keeping up the energy of a nation, which city life, in depriving the women and children of air and exercise, tends perpetually to destroy. To the children, they give not only habits of health, cheerfulness, and gracefulness, but an emulation of neatness and good manners, which they would surely not acquire under the sober stimulus of home and the nursery; to the nurses, too, they impart a valuable share of the same benefits. Finally, by gardens and other embellishments of a city, we induce strangers to reside there. About fifty thousand English are now residents in France, and their necessary expenditure is rated at half a million of pounds sterling annually. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say, that no property pays so abundant a revenue to a city as its gardens. What is it that produces to a city the same reputation? Who speaks of Madrid without its Prado, of London without its Parks? And why should Paris be the choice residence of Europe, but for its galleries and public gardens, its Tuileries, its Palais Royal, its Luxembourg, its Tivoli, its Champs Elysées, and Bois de Boulogne?

But to make gardens is not enough; you must cultivate the public taste for them. For this, it is necessary that they be made ornamental, kept by a vigilant police, and that fashionable women should frequent them. The French women have a better sense of their advantages than to suffer their fine gardens to become vulgar. They have, to be sure, days and hours that are more genteel than others; but they are to be seen there every day, and there is room for all classes without incommoding each other. Even the poorer classes will not frequent a garden that only poor devils visit. They are flattered to be seen within the sphere of good company, and are encouraged to appear there with becoming decency. It is not to be denied that the poorer people of Paris are decent in their manners and dress, and graceful beyond the example of all other nations. In what more serviceable manner can a lady of fortune benefit her country and humanity, than by improving the manners and elevating the character of the lower classes? She is taking care of her own interests in taking care of the poor. It was the pride of the French nobility, and not the Jacobins, that set loose the many-headed tyranny of their revolution: it was not Robespierre, but Louis XIV. and Louis XV., who put the axe to the throat of their unhappy successors.

Much intercourse of mind or society is not, indeed, to be expected between two classes of a different education and fortune; nor can it be desired by either; but there is nothing in our code of morals or religion which can justify the one in treating the other with unkindness or incivility. True dignity has no need to stand on the defensive. A lady, who has little of this quality, will always be most afraid to compromise it by vulgar associations; it is right to be economical of what one has but little. The contempt of the rabble, of which we hear so much, is three-fourths of it parade and affectation. She who abroad hangs the common world with so much scorn upon her nose, lives at home, under the same roof, almost at the same table, with the veriest rabble of the whole community, her own servants and slaves. Why should we abandon the Tuileries more than the Boulevards, and why the Washington-square more than Chestnut-street, because the common people walk in it? I have written upon this subject more at length, and more earnestly, than perhaps I ought, from the mortification, the almost indignation, I feel, after witnessing the utility and ornament of gardens in other countries, at the immense defect occasioned by their stupid omission, in the face of European experience, in the beauty and comfort of our American cities.

But, without more scolding, let us see how far the evil may admit of a remedy. Mr. Burke, in pleading for the English Parks, which the Utilitarians of the day proposed to sacrifice to some temporary convenience or miserly policy, called them the “lungs of the city,” and supplicated the government not to obstruct the public health in one of its most vital and necessary functions. The question here is with our Philadelphia, which never had any other lungs than the grave-yards to supply these respiratory organs. I propose that some one of your old bachelors, as rich as Girard, shall die, as soon as he can be conveniently be spared, and leave us a second legacy, to be appropriated as follows: to buy two lots of fifty acres each upon the west bank of the Schuylkill; (they ought to be in the centre of the city, but time will place them there;) the one for the parade of equipages, display of horsemanship, and military training, and for the games and ceremonies of our public festivals; the other to be sacred to the arts, and to refined and intellectual pleasures.

I know of no benefaction by which he could impose upon his posterity so sacred a debt of gratitude; there is none, surely, which should confer upon its author so lasting and glorious a reputation.

I have not a word of news, only that my health has improved, very much to the credit of this French climate; you would think it was Spartacus who had stepped from his pedestal in the Tuileries. The French summer is delightful; only think of reading at three in the morning without a candle, and stepping about in the daylight till ten o’clock at night. Adieu.

LETTER VI.

The Three Glorious Days—The plump little Widow—Marriage of fifteen young Girls—Shrines of the Martyrs—Louis Philippe—Dukes of Orleans and Nemours—The National Guards—Fieschi—The Infernal Machine—Marshal Mortier and twelve persons killed—Dismissal of the Troops—The Queen and her Daughters—Disturbed state of France—The Chamber of Deputies—Elements of support to the present Dynasty—Private character of the King—The Daily Journals—The Chamber of Peers—Bonaparte.

Paris, August 1st, 1835.