Comfort little known in France.
French Habitations.
There has been little about the French in this chapter, and what there is to say may be expressed in few words. They have not naturally a genius for comfort like the English. Their natural way of living is hard in poverty and luxurious in riches, austerity and luxury equally belonging to the French nature. Of comfort they know what they have imperfectly learned from their English neighbours. At Versailles, in the days of Louis XIV., there was dazzling splendour, but comfort was utterly unknown. Modern French country houses (I mean those built for rich people in the second half of the nineteenth century) are planned as intelligently as the English, but the older châteaux were incredibly rough and wanting in the most elementary arrangements. Even yet, in the old provincial towns, French people put up with lodgings so awkwardly planned that an Englishman would not rent them. New town houses are better contrived, but still deficient in space.
Luxury less Indispensable than Comfort.
The question of expenditure is favourable to the French in this way, that they do without luxury more easily than the English do without comfort. The Frenchman in adversity falls back on the austere side of his nature; being both Sybarite and Spartan, he has the Spartan half of himself always ready for hard times. An impoverished French gentleman lodges in bare small rooms and lives principally on soup.[64] It is ten times harder for an Englishman to give up his spacious house with carpets on the floors.
Comfort and Luxury equally Costly.
The expenses of those who can afford to live largely are the same in both countries. Comfort, in the ideal English degree, is not less costly than luxury, though a careful analysis of details would prove that it is not precisely the same thing.
CHAPTER III
LUXURY
Want of a common Standard.
It is most difficult to fix any common standard of luxury in two different nations. In a single nation the question whether an indulgence may be considered luxurious or not is settled by the national public opinion. There is no public opinion common to France and England.