The houses here are by no means simple and uniform, as with us. The American houses are built, as ladies are dressed, all one way. First there is a pair of rival saloons, which give themselves the air of parlours: and then there is a dining room, and corresponding chambers above to the third or fourth story; and an entry runs through the middle or alongside a mile or two without stopping, at the farthest end of which is the kitchen; so that one always stands upon the marble of the front door in December, until Kitty has travelled this distance to let one in. How many dinners have I seen frozen in their own sauces, how many lovers chilled, by this refrigeratory process? Here, if you just look at the knocker, the door, as if by some invisible hand, flies open; and when you descend, if you say “Cordon,” just as Ali Baba said “Sesame,” the door opens, and delivers you to the street. The houses, too, have private rooms, and secret doors, and intricate passages; and one can never be said to be at home in one’s own house. I should like to see any one find the way to a lady’s boudoir. A thief designing to rob, has to study beforehand the topography of each house, without which, he can no more unravel it than the Apocalypse. There are closets, too, and doors, in many of the rooms, unseen by the naked eye. If a gentleman is likely to be intruded on by the bailiff, he sinks into the earth; and a lady, if surprised in her dishabille, or any such emergency, just disappears into the wall.
No private dwellings are known in Paris. A style, which gives entire families and individuals, at a price that would procure them very mean separate lodgings, the air of living in a great castle; and they escape by it all that emulation about houses, and door servants, and street display, which brings so much fuss and expense in our cities. I have seen houses a little straitened that were obliged to give Cæsar a coat to go to the door, another to bring in dinner, and another to curry the horses. To climb up to the second or third story is, to be sure, inconvenient; but once there, your climbing ends. Parlours, bedrooms, kitchen, and all the rest, are on the same level. In America, you have the dinner in the cellar, and the cook in the garret; and nothing but ups and downs the whole day. Moreover, climbing is a disposition of our nature. “In our proper motion we ascend.” See with what avidity we climb when we are boys; and we climb when we are old, because it reminds us of our boyhood. I have no doubt that the daily habit of climbing, too, has a good moral influence; it gives one dispositions to rise in the world. I ought to remark here, that persons in honest circumstances do not have kitchens in their own houses.
It is in favour of the French style not a little, that it improves the quality at least of one class of lodgers. Mean houses degrade men’s habits, and lower their opinions of living. As for me, I like this Paris way, but I don’t know why. I like to see myself under the same roof with my neighbours. One of them is a pretty woman, with the prettiest little foot imaginable; and only think of meeting this little foot, with which one has no personal acquaintance, three or four times a-day on the staircase! Indeed, the solitude of a private dwelling begins to seem quite distressing. To be always with people one knows! it paralyzes activity, breeds selfishness, and other disagreeable qualities. Solitary life has its vices, too, as well as any other.
On the other hand, a community of living expands one’s benevolent affections, begets hospitality, mutual forbearance, politeness, respect for public opinion, and keeps cross husbands from beating their wives, and vice versa. If Xantippe had lived in a French hotel, she would not have kept throwing things out of the window upon her husband’s head. The domestic virtues are, to be sure, well enough in their way; but they are dull, and unless kept in countenance by good company, they go too soon to bed. Indeed, that word “home,” so sacred in the mouths of Englishmen, often means little else than dozing in an arm-chair, listening to the squeaking of children, or dying of the vapours; at all events, the English are the people of the world most inclined to leave these sanctities of home. Here they are by hundreds, running in quest of happiness all about Europe.
But to return. My object, in setting out, was to shew you, as nearly as possible, my manner of living in the street of St. Anne. I have a chambre de garçon au second; this means, a bachelor’s room in the third story. As companions, I have General Kellerman, and a naked Mars over the chimney (not Mademoiselle), and a little Bonaparte about three inches long; and on a round table, with a marble cover, there is an old Rabelais and a Seneca’s Maxims, with manuscript notes on the margin, and a Bible open at Jeremiah. The floor is a kind of brick pavement, upon which a servant performs a series of rubbings, every morning, with a brush attached to his right foot, which gives it a slippery and mahogany surface. We have a livery stable also in the yard, and several persons lodge here for the benefit of the smell, it being good against consumption. Of the staircase I say nothing now, as I intend some day to write a treatise upon French Staircases. This one has not been washed ever, unless by some accident, such as Noah’s flood. Indeed, the less one says of French cleanliness in the way of houses the better. Our landlady appears no more delighted with a clean floor than an antiquary would be with a scoured shield; and there is none of the middling hotels of Paris that presumes to be better than this. I ought to remark here, that servants do not run about from one garret to another as they do in America. A French servant is transmitted to posterity. Our coachman says he has been in this family several hundred years.
When one cannot travel in the highway of life with a fashionable equipage, it is pleasant to steal along its secret path unnoticed. A great man is so jostled by the throng that either he cannot think at all, or, in gathering its silly admiration, so occupied with intrigues and mere personal vanities that the good qualities of his understanding are perverted, and he loses at length his taste for innocent enjoyments. But, travelling in this sober, unambitious way, one may gather flowers by the road side; one has leisure for the contemplation of useful and agreeable things; and is not obliged to follow absurd fashion, or keep up troublesome appearances; and one can get into low company when one pleases, without being suspected. Now I can wander “on my short-tailed nag” all over the country; I can get sometimes into a coucou and ride out to St. Germains, or stroll unconcerned through the markets, and ask the price of fruits; of cassolettes, muscats, and jargonelles, and of grapes; and I can eat a bunch or two upon the pavement, just fresh from Fontainbleau; and do a great many innocent things which persons of distinction dare not do. This is the life of those who lodge at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs.
Here are two sheets filled, with what meagre events! and how much below the dignity of history! I console myself that trifles, like domestic anecdotes, are often the most characteristic. I will be your Boswell to the city of Paris. But Boswell had to retail the sense of an individual, and I the nonsense of the multitude, and my own. However, I wish these letters to be preserved from the flames, if you can, frivolous as they are; I have partly a design to manufacture some sort of a book out of them on my return home. I intend them as notes upon the field of battle—like Cæsar’s Commentaries, with the exception of the wit.
July 7th.
I went with my Yankee companion last night to the Grand Opera; and, at the risk of being enormously long, I am going to add a postscript; for it is a wet day, and I have no better way to beguile the lazy twenty-four hours. They admit the spectators to a French theatre in files of two between high railings, and under the grim and bearded authority of the police, which prevents crowding and disorder; and whoever wishes to go in, not having a seat provided, “makes tail,” as they call it, by entering the file in the rear. A number of speculators also stand in the ranks at an early hour, and sell out their places at an advance to the more tardy, so that you have always this resort to obtain a good enough seat. In approaching the house, persons will offer you tickets, with great importunity, in the streets. With one of these, which, by cheapening a little, I got at double price, I procured admission to the pit.
L’analyse de la Pièce; voilà le programme! These are two phrases—meaning only the analysis and bill of the play, at two sous—which you will hear croaked with the most obstreperous discord through the house, in the intervals of the performance, to bring out Monsieur Auber, and Scribe, and the Donnas. It is probably for the same reason the owls are permitted to sing in the night, to bring out the nightingales. The opera last night was “Robert le Diable,”—voici l’analyse de la pièce.