The American in Paris; vol. 2 of 2

by John Sanderson

But these English people, when did they all at once become so clean, that they should turn up their noses so fastidiously at others? Why, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, in Shakspeare’s time, in my Lord Bacon’s time, in my Lord Coke’s time, courtiers used to offend the very nose of majesty by coming with dirty feet into the presence. Oh, here is a quotation apropos, in Pepys’s Journal, which I have just been reading. “February 12th; Up, finding the beds good, but lousy.” Now, this is in London, and this Pepys, who found the beds so “good,” was secretary of the admiralty, only one hundred and fifty years ago. Besides our judges, I guess, don’t carry posies in their button holes—(though, it is not because they have not frequent need of them.)

These are the delights of Chantilly. If any one should go thither twice, he must be a much greater fool than I am, which I deem impossible. Yet here was the whole habitable earth; all the peasantry with their baked faces, and caps like your winnowed snows, and all the trim rabble of the towns, the beau monde of the Halles, and all that is richest in beauty, education, and blood, too, was here—not forgetting my Lord S——, who keeps horses for the turf, and liveries for Longchamps, nor him, so enviable for his skin and bones, so recommendable by his thinness, and who makes himself lighter on a pinch, by holding his breath, who rode Miss Annette, though Volante came up like a storm from the south, victoriously to the stake—Mr. Robinson. Now all these were at the races, and the newspapers have done nothing else for a week than describe their inexpressible enjoyments.

The truth is, I set out upon this excursion on one of my unlucky days. I have read of a giant somewhere, who one day swallowed down windmills without choking, and who was suffocated by a piece of fresh butter the next. Unlucky days are an old woman’s superstition. But there is scarce a wise man, who does not tell you some of his days that were nothing but a series of mishaps.

In the same manner, good fortune appears to attend some persons in all their enterprises, while others again seem marked for special persecution; adversity keeps barking at their heels through the whole course of their lives.

My grandmother, who brought me up, besides being a Presbyterian, was a Scotchwoman; she believed she was compelled to snuff out the candle by predestination; and it is not so easy a matter as you think, to get rid of one’s grandmother. My silly jaunt to Chantilly occurred on one of these days. It was not enough that I should be run against by a diligence, and almost irretrievably smashed; that I should be crammed into a stable; be destroyed by bugs, and frightened to death by a pair of boots; the same fortune pursued me on my return home. I hung up my watch by a nail, which had sustained it for six months; but it was my unlucky day; it fell, to its entire destruction, upon the brick floor. I gathered up the fragments, and to close my window curtains, mounted upon a chair, which tilted; I fell against an opposite table, which also upset, breaking the marble cover into several pieces; and there I was, with a broken head, amidst the ruins. I then crawled into bed, where I remained the next day with a fever, and sent for the doctor.

Now I will conclude this very absurd doctrine, with a sensible advice; namely, that you never set out to the Races, on any such abominable, horse-play, excursions of pleasure, in a melancholy, or ill-natured mood; it is the sure precursor of ill-luck; both because you will extract evil out of every occurrence, and, in your froward temper, you will be continually running into difficulties, which, in good humour, you would either have escaped, or turned to a merry account.

If you come to Paris without a soul with you, having been spoiled a little at home with your domestic affections, you will every now and then fall into a fit of melancholy, which the doctors will call a “nostalgia;” and you will wish the very devil had Paris; and you will detest all French people, whatever be their merits; and, to be revenged of them, you will write home to your friends, and you will call the men all rogues, and the women all something else, and then you will feel a little better. I have been in the midst of this wilderness of men, as solitary as Robinson Crusoe, in his island. And I know of no kind of solitude half so distressful, as the aspect of a large city, especially to tender-hearted gentlemen, who have been brought up in villages.

To walk in the midst of multitudes of one’s own species, without a sign, or a look, or a smile of recognition, impresses one with a very humiliating sense of one’s own insignificance; besides, one feels the necessity of loving somebody, and of being loved. These feelings will be exceedingly bitter on your first arrival, and your fits of “blue devils” more frequent. My advice is, that you seek the distractions of gentlemanly amusements. For this, you must make the acquaintance of some French gentleman, (a French lady is much better,) who is well versed in the genteel world, and she will lead you into such consolations and mischiefs, as your unfortunate situation may require. She must be sufficiently attached to you, to take the trouble to instruct you, and you must take the trouble, by your amiability and assiduities, to win this attachment. How much better is this than sitting alone, and killing the minutes one by one, in your bachelor’s chamber; it is better, though you should gain nothing else from her acquaintance than hanging yourself in her garters.

Depend upon it, nature did not intend the whole of this life as a preparation for the next; else had she not opened to us so many means of enjoyment of the senses here. And, depend upon it, there is a world of delightful and genteel pleasures in Paris, if one has but the address to hunt for them. My special advice is, that you do not seek a cure for home-sickness, in excesses; if in wine, be assured that your spirits will soon pass from the vinous to the acetous fermentation; if in gambling in Paris, your ruin is accomplished. I repeat, there is but one effectual cure, it is the acquaintance of an amiable and sensible woman. This was the first remedy for solitude prescribed by Him, who knew best the heart and dispositions of man. Adam, I doubt not, while Eve slept, yet a rib in his bosom, was afflicted often with home-sickness; and I dare say he was never troubled with it afterwards.

Recollect, when I speak of women, I claim the right of being interpreted on the side of mercy. I speak of them with an entire sense of the respect due to the sex; as a gentleman should, who does not forget that his mother is a woman, his sisters, wife, and daughters are women. When I recommend woman’s society, you will please to think of the intercourse of the bee with the flowers; it gathers its honied treasures, where most rich and succulent, but meditates no injury to the plant by which they are supplied. But I am relapsing into morality; good night. I will fill the rest of this blank to-morrow.