Some of the customs here seem very odd to us. After a couple are married, they go to drive about the city; the wealthier class in their own carriages, the less wealthy in hired ones, and the poor on foot, but all arrayed in the wedding dress, with veil and the orange flowers. We met eight brides in one afternoon’s drive, and we have seen many others in the different museums and galleries. The French are indeed a pleasure-loving people. Every green spot, and they are legion, here is bright with life. Lovely children are out in great numbers with their dark-eyed, handsome bonnes. These nurses are very picturesque, with their white-frilled turbans on, from which hang lengths of broad white ribbon nearly to their feet. The babies themselves are generally costumed in the richest of laces, and often look uncomfortably loaded down with the big white hats even the tiniest of them wear, well covered with ostrich plumes. All seem to enjoy life—the middle classes and the poor in their own way as entirely as the rich in theirs. The parks and numerous gardens are filled with women sitting about with work or book in hand, seemingly perfectly contented with their condition and beautiful surroundings. They wander into the cathedrals and picture galleries at will, and surely such constant familiarity with beauty and art must have a refining influence. Of these poorer people, who have really been taught nothing, some have more knowledge of art than many Americans who have studied it. I, one morning, asked my chambermaid to assist me in wrapping up a few photographs I had in my room. In doing so she told me I ought to get Murillo’s ‘Birth of the Virgin’ and Titian’s ‘Holy Family,’ and recommended several art stores as excellent places to select photographs and etchings. The many and great variety of exhibitions of pictures here, offer instruction to all and are a constant spur to one’s ambition. The Parisians should be thanked by the people of every nation for throwing open their public institutions to all classes to enter ‘without money and without price.’ Paris thus gives freely to all who will accept a liberal education. The Comédie Française and the Conservatoire of Music and Acting give free instruction to all who have talent sufficient to be admitted. With the French people’s love for the beautiful, with their especial love for Paris, with their seeming contentment of position, with their hospitality and their never-failing politeness as we now see them, it does not seem possible that in times of rebellion and riot they so lose themselves as to burn and destroy that they have so dearly loved, and that they become disloyal and unreasonable toward each other. The burning of the Tuileries in 1871 was an exhibition of their insanity in times of excitement.
Here is my Paris edition of the New York Herald. I bless James Gordon Bennett every time I take up this little paper, so grateful am I to him for it. After struggling with French conversation, French books, French signs, French everything, all the day, it is a delight to me to see my own language in print, to see American news, and often to see the name of some one I know or know of. Oh, we do not realize how dear America is to us until we are far from her shores.
Paris, Sunday, July 1st.—And so the month dedicated to Juno is really gone. A month filled with joys has it been to us! It does not seem possible that it can be July. It has been so cool here,—cool and bright, just the weather for tramps.
First of all, dear, I must tell you a little of our dinner with the Duchess last night. How I did wish you were with me, and how every hour you are in loving thought and memory with me everywhere. I know just what you will do to-day. But no one will ever know all the kind acts you perform, all the sacrifices you make, save the recording angels. We gave considerable time to our toilettes last evening, even to having a French hairdresser. F. looked ‘smart’ in her Wörth-made pink gown, and in French conversation did us all credit. Only two of the sixteen guests spoke English, beside our host and hostess and ourselves. We were not only cordially received, but affectionately. Our hostess was charming in face and grace, and her husband not far behind. The halls, dining-rooms, and salon of the house were immense, with polished floors, and rugs, and the woodwork and furniture of the latter in white and gold. Everything was massive and stately, but with a cheerful, bright effect. The menu consisted of fourteen courses, served table d’hôte. The hostess was first helped, then the oldest lady at the table, and so on, down to the youngest lady present. Then the gentlemen in the same manner. I should think this custom would sometimes puzzle the waiters to know whom first to serve. The table was decorated with flowers, and the cumbrous gold candelabra were, with the gold service, very imposing. There was not an article of silver on the table. Every utensil was gold, china, or glass. It is a great error to suppose that, because Frenchwomen love dress and pleasure, they are not devoted mothers, true wives, and intelligent companions. Of course there are exceptions, and so there are in all countries. Our little party of last night was unusually bright, intelligent, and familiar with American history, her institutions, and her literature. They thought our language the hardest of all languages to comprehend or to speak. They referred to our many words ending with ‘gh,’ and each one pronounced so entirely differently. A gentleman who had been in New York said, if a business was to be stopped there they ‘wound it up,’ if clocks were to go they wound them up. Strings were wound up, and he one day received a telegram from the wife of a friend whom he expected to meet, which read thus: ‘Henry is wound up for the day; hopes to see you to-morrow.’ Did not know whether Henry was ‘stopped’ or ‘going,’ but understood later that he was indisposed. They asked us many questions about our own city, and one lady told me that she read in a paper that not long ago a man was imprisoned for preaching on Boston Common, but she supposed it was a mistake, as such a thing could scarcely have taken place in a free country. After dinner we had music and dancing, and bade our entertainers ‘Bon soir,’ having had a delightful evening with them, and feeling that the nice points of the social code, with dukes and duchesses, are not much different from our own.
Sunday in Paris is a great contrast to our New England Sunday. People go to church, to be sure, but they go to the theatre after if they wish to, and think it all right. It is the one great day for families to go into the parks and the woods and the gardens near the city. The larger shops are closed, not because it is Sunday, but because one day in the week is demanded by the employees for rest and recreation. Theatres, circuses, and hundreds of places of amusement are open, and are all thronged, notwithstanding the great exodus into the suburbs. One can hardly blame clerks and working people, who are in cages, as it were, every other day, for taking Sunday to see the green hills, breathe the country air, and gather flowers with their little ones, for Monday puts them in harness again. Going to places of amusement on Sunday is not just our way, but we are not here to criticise.
After early service in the American Church we took a boat up the Seine for St. Cloud, where have lived many kings of France. The palace where Eugénie, in the height of her popularity, so magnificently entertained, has never been rebuilt since its destruction in the siege of 1870. We sat on the broad, handsome steps which had led to the palace, with the leafy avenues of the parks before us, over which the lovely Eugénie, with her imperial husband, and the ladies of her court, clad in their costumes of the chase, had many times cantered. Here they entertained, at certain seasons, sovereigns, princes of the blood, ambassadors, and ‘lords and ladies of high degree,’ and everything that could be devised or money procure was placed before them for their pleasure. Music, games, dancing, and feasting went on—and the people paid for it. Although there never was and never could be the slightest unfavorable criticism upon the moral life of the Empress, her intense love of gayety, admiration, dress, and power caused her to forget the thousands of suffering poor so near her. Had she given more thought to them, with a helping hand, she could so easily have made their dark days less so. Beauty of person and power are rare gifts, but if they so dazzle as to make dim the more divine gift of a charitable heart and hand, they are to be undesired, and—
‘It were better to be lowly born
And range with humble lives in content.’
But the golden-haired, sweet-faced Empress, in her green riding habit, with the flowing white plumes in her hat, rides on under the arches of these beautiful linden trees, and is gone from our thoughts, and the memory of a gray-haired, childless widow in Chiselhurst rises before us. God help her! The fountains and cascades here, scintillating in the rays of the sun this bright morning, are beautiful, and the walks about are superb. We went to the very top of the hill, and were well repaid by the admirable views of Paris, the Seine, and the surrounding scenery.
Our long tramp made us hungry, so we turned our footsteps toward the café at the gate. The tables inside looked very attractive, but my comrades thought the ones outside more so, so we seated ourselves at one in a vine-covered arbor, for dinner table d’hôte. We have got so used to eating out-of-doors—in arbors in the country, and on pavements in town,—that you need not be surprised if I, some Sunday morning, invite you to baked beans and brown bread on the curbstones of the Oxford, and every bean served as a course.
The town of St. Cloud is built on the slope of the hill. The streets are very narrow, and the stores to-day are all open and well filled. Wandering about, I was attracted by the sound of music in a quaint-looking little church and stepped in. Upon coming out, my companions were nowhere visible. I sat down in a conspicuous place on some steps, to wait for them to find me. A richly dressed Frenchman walked past me several times. I felt that I was the object of his gaze—so looked in every direction but toward him, for here let me say that the French are really prolonged starers, notwithstanding their uniform courtesy and politeness. My imagination got the better of me, and I prepared for battle, trying to think of annihilating names in French, that I might call him should he dare address me, and looking at the strong handle of my parasol with renewed confidence. Secondly, I thought it might be good policy to pretend to be deaf and dumb—yes, should he speak, I will really put my finger to my ears and my mouth and he will think I am a dummy, planned I. Thus, with a reinforced feeling of safety and victory, I looked squarely up at him. Imagine my surprise when he raised his hat, and in fair English said: ‘Pardon me, but are you not Mrs. —— of Boston?’ It was Monsieur C——, who formerly taught French in my family. I need not tell you that I gave him a vigorous Yankee hand-shaking. He left America a year ago to take possession of an inherited property. Moral: Consider every man, everywhere, a gentleman, until you have proof that he is not. A Frenchman never sits when a lady in his presence stands, nor does he ever smoke or expectorate in a lady’s presence. Do the Americans? A French lady asked me, and I had to say with humility, ‘Yes.’ After this little incident my friends appeared, more worried about me than I about them, and we soon took ‘top seats’ on steam-cars and were carried to Versailles.