A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things

by Max O'Rell

It is, I believe, the firm conviction of foreigners that Frenchmen marry for money, that is to say, that all Frenchmen marry for money. As a rule, when people discuss foreign social topics, they have a wonderful faculty for generalization.

The fact that many Frenchmen do marry for money is not to be denied, and the explanation of it is this: We have in France a number of men belonging to a class almost unknown in other countries, small bourgeois of good breeding and genteel habits, but relatively poor, who occupy posts in the different Government offices. Their name is legion and their salary something like two thousand francs ($400). These men have an appearance to keep up, and, unless a wife brings them enough to at least double their income, they cannot marry. These young men are often sought after by well-to-do parents for their daughters, because they are steady, cultured, gentlemanly, and occupy an honorable position, which brings them a pension for their old age. With the wife’s dowry, the couple can easily get along, and lead a peaceful, uneventful, and happy jog-trot life, which is the great aim of the majority of the French people.

But, on the other hand, there is no country where you will see so many cases of mésalliance as France, and this alone should dispose of the belief that Frenchmen marry for money. Indeed, it is a most common thing for a young Frenchman of good family to fall in love with a girl of a much lower station of life than his own, to court her, at first with perhaps only the idea of killing time or of starting a liaison, to soon discover that the girl is highly respectable, and to finally marry her. This is a most common occurrence. French parents frown on this sort of thing, and do their best to discourage it, of course; but rather than cross their son’s love, they give their consent, and trust to that adaptability of Frenchwomen, of which I was speaking just now, to raise herself to her husband’s level and make a wife he will never be ashamed of.

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The Frenchman is the slave of his womankind, but not in the same way as the American is. The Frenchman is brought up by his mother, and remains under her sway till she dies. When he marries, his wife leads him by the nose (an operation which he seems to enjoy), and when, besides, he has a daughter, on whom he generally dotes, this lady soon joins the other two in ruling this easy-going, good-humored man. As a rule, when you see a Frenchman, you behold a man who is kept in order by three generations of women: mother, wife, and daughter.

The American will lavish attention and luxury on his wife and daughters, but he will save them the trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His business is his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun and glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to enjoy as soon as he can throw away the cares of his business. In France, a wife is a partner, a cashier who takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock and speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both cashier and bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France, Paris included, and behind “Pay Here,” you will see Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money for the purchase you have made. When I said she is a partner, I might safely have said that she is the active partner, and, as a rule, by far the shrewder of the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness, her fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and many a customer whom her husband was allowing to go away without a purchase, has been brought back by the wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop. Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Germany, to spend a few days visiting the Exposition. One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards to buy a white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats which the man showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and I declined to buy one. I was just going to leave, when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and said: “But, Adolphe, why do you let Monsieur go? Perhaps he does not care to follow the fashion. We have a few white broad-brimmed hats left from last year that we can let Monsieur have à bon compte. They are upstairs, go and fetch them.” And, sure enough, there was one which fitted and pleased me, and I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs, which the husband was going to let me take elsewhere, but which the wife managed to secure for the firm.

MADAM IS THE CASHIER.

No one who has lived in France has failed to be struck with the intelligence of the women, and there exist few Frenchmen who do not readily admit how intellectually inferior they are to their countrywomen, chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this is not due to any special training, for the education received by the women of that class is of the most limited kind; they are taught to read, write, and reckon, and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn in them, as well as a peculiar talent for getting a hundred cents’ worth for every dollar they spend. How to make a house look pretty and attractive with small outlay; how to make a dress or turn out a bonnet with a few knick-knacks; how to make a savory dish out of a small remnant of beef, mutton, and veal; all that is a science not to be despised when a husband, in receipt of a four or five hundred dollar salary, wants to make a good dinner, and see his wife look pretty. No doubt the aristocratic inhabitants of Mayfair and Belgravia in London, and the plutocracy of New York, may think all this very small, and these French people very uninteresting. They can, perhaps, hardly imagine that such people may live on such incomes and look decent. But they do live, and live very happy lives, too. And I will go so far as to say that happiness, real happiness, is chiefly found among people of limited income. The husband, who perhaps for a whole year has put quietly by a dollar every week, so as to be able to give his dear wife a nice present at Christmas, gives her a far more valuable, a far better appreciated present, than the millionaire who orders Tiffany to send a diamond rivière to his wife. That quiet young French couple, whom you see at the upper circle of a theater, and who have saved the money to enable them to come and hear such and such a play, are happier than the occupants of the boxes on the first tier. If you doubt it, take your opera glasses, and “look on this picture, and on this.”