The key to the luxuries of the two nations may be found in two words, state and elegance. The desire of the English heart is for state, implying size in the house and numbers in the retainers. French ambition contents itself with a few small rooms and few servants; but it seeks distinction in elegance. French elegance, like that of antiquity, begins with the person, especially in women. In all kinds of feminine luxuries, particularly dress, France has kept the lead and gives the laws to England. The Church of Rome has settled that matter in her own authoritative and decided way by imposing simple and permanent uniforms on all women who belong to religious congregations; but her power, alas! is unequal to the far greater task of imposing a simple and rational dress upon all women whatsoever. The true French female mind, when left to its own devices, loves neither permanence nor simplicity in costume; it desires the utmost elaboration combined with incessant change. It employs thousands of couturières in cutting valuable materials into shreds to be worn for a few days or hours. This modern changefulness has one good effect, it is certainly on the side of cleanliness. The French luxury of to-day is far more closely associated with cleanliness than that of preceding ages. It is especially the luxury of renewal, first in dress, and also in furniture and habitation. The reconstruction of Paris has substituted clean streets, well lighted and well aired, for dirty and dark ones. The same process, in minor degrees, has been going on throughout France.
Luxury and Art.
Art and Austerity.
Beautiful Materials.
The Bibelot.
Commonplace Character of French Luxury.
I cannot examine in this place the question concerning the association between luxury and the Fine Arts. It is most difficult to state the exact truth on so complicated a subject in a few words. Some of the French are artistic, and many of them are luxurious, so that art and luxury may be seen together in France; but they are not inseparably connected, and for my part I regret the accidental association. Nothing, in my opinion, can be nobler than the combination of artistic grandeur in the things which affect the mind with austere simplicity in those that touch the body. In the magnificent old French cathedrals you have the most sublime and the most costly architecture above you and around you, with a rush-bottomed chair to sit upon, like the chairs in the humblest cottage. In many an art gallery you have priceless treasures on the walls; but neither curtains for the windows nor carpets for the floor. The most precious engravings are often framed with a beading of plain oak. The masterpieces of sculpture keep their dignity best in rooms that are simple to severity. It is evident, therefore, that the fine arts are absolutely independent of luxury; but, on the other hand, it is also true that from the richness of the materials employed in some of the fine arts a luxurious people may be tempted to turn them to a lower use. Painting may be made luxurious by the charm of colour, and also by sensuous or sensual suggestions in the work itself. Besides these attractions, the modern spirit of luxury likes a picture as an excuse for decorating a room with a massive and glittering gilt frame.[65] The marble of a statue is also an agreeable thing to look upon, because it is smooth to the touch, and so soon as we descend to the minor arts we find great numbers of precious and pleasant materials which may be used as hangings or wrought into exquisite furniture. The love of beautiful objects, comprised in French under the convenient generic term bibelot, is strongly characteristic of the present stage of ultra-civilisation. The true sign of it is the search for the exquisite in all things. To live on dainties and be always surrounded with softness, to have plenty of amusing and expensive toys, is the end of the luxurious modern French development of the human faculties. How familiar, how commonplace, this life of luxury has become, and how many far higher and more estimable things are sacrificed to it! It is worse even than English comfort; because it takes a false appearance of superior refinement. Only after the first novelty has passed away do we discover that it is essentially vulgar and dull, and truly the vanity of vanities.
CHAPTER IV
MANNERS
National and Class Codes.
Codes of manners have a very restricted rule. They are national, and in the nation each class has its own code. If, therefore, one nation judges another by its own standard, it is evident that abstract justice must be impossible; yet it is difficult to find any other criterion.