An Englishman gives his wife so much a month for the expenses of the house, and a certain sum for her dress: her wages. It is without much astonishment she learns one fine morning that her husband is about to take her to a sumptuous new home, or that circumstances, over which she has no control, make it expedient that the removal of their goods, by the back door, shall take place next evening: she follows the furniture.
The Bohemian temperament of the Englishman contrasts strangely with his habits of industry and his reserve: it is a curious blending of the ant and the grasshopper.
The Frenchman has but one aim, as he works: to put by some money that shall bring him in a little income, and allow him to retire from toil.
The Englishman spends as he goes. The workman and the peasant, though they earned two pounds a day, would be satisfied with the provision made for them by the parish, should they outlive their working days. The English house shows that its inmates take little thought for the morrow: few cupboards, no wine cellars. I speak of London houses, with rents rising to £100 a-year. The Englishman orders in a dozen of wine at a time, and keeps it in his sideboard. In France, the ordinary provincial house is a veritable ant’s store. Even the modest cobbler has a dark dry corner, where he can put his hand upon a dusty bottle of old Bordeaux the day that he has one of his family to nurse, or an old friend to feast. The cellar is to the Frenchman what the linen-press is to the Frenchwoman, a sanctuary.
I am constantly hearing on all sides complaints of the stagnation of business. The farmers make loud lamentations: the earth refuses to yield them her increase, and they can no longer make a living on British soil.
Here is a great social problem that I should not care to undertake to solve. However, from the few observations that I have made, it seems to me that many English farmers have not to seek very far to find the cause of their want of success.
The farmer’s wife of other days was a worthy unpretentious woman, who looked to everything connected with the farm, rose at five in the morning, superintended the servants, did her own dairy work, and did not even disdain to feed the pigs. The farmer’s wife of the present day is often a lady who, under pretext of not being able to pay frequent visits to her friends, keeps open house and does the honours of the farm with a grace and liberality worthy of the princely hospitality of an English country-seat. She rises at nine, or has her breakfast taken to her bedside; she has horses and carriages, ponies for the children, wagonettes for pleasure parties, all the accoutrements of an English nobleman’s house. Her time is passed in picnics, drives, visits, and receptions. She aims at keeping pace with the squire’s wife, but has this difficulty to contend with, that whereas the squire takes up his rents whether farming be paying or not, the farmer must pay them, let the year be a good or a bad one.
The tradesmen’s wives outshine the women of the upper classes in the luxury of their toilette. They are caricatures loaded with chains, necklets, lockets, long earrings and feathers, as many as they can carry. These ladies must be impatiently awaiting the day when liberty or fashion will allow them to wear two hats at once, and rings in their noses. These walking feather-brooms form a curious contrast with the pretty little Princesse bonnets and simple attire of the English ladies of good society.
My conscience almost reproaches me for having found fault with the kind of existence led by many farmers’ wives, for I think I may safely affirm that to their hospitality I owe the most delightful hours of jucunda oblivia vitæ that I have ever passed in my life. O conscience!
Just as extensive and varied as are the possessions of John Bull, Esquire, just so restricted is the domain of his wife.