This little incident led me to take note of French ideas about England with reference to patriotic ignorance; and I discovered that there existed a very general belief that there was no intellectual light of any kind in England. Paris was the light of the world, and only so far as Parisian rays might penetrate the mental fog of the British Islands was there a chance of its becoming even faintly luminous. It was settled that the speciality of England was trade and manufacture, that we were all of us either merchants or cotton-spinners, and I discovered that we had no learned societies, no British Museum, no Royal Academy of Arts.
An English painter, who for many years had exhibited on the line of the Royal Academy, happened to be mentioned in my presence and in that of a French artist. I was asked by some French people who knew him personally whether the English painter had a good professional standing. I answered that he had a fair though not a brilliant reputation; meanwhile the French artist showed signs of uneasiness, and at length exploded with a vigorous protest against the inadmissible idea that a painter could be anything whatever who was not known at the French Salon. “Il n’est pas connu au Salon de Paris, donc, il n’existe pas—il n’existe pas. Les réputations dans les beaux-arts se font au Salon de Paris et pas ailleurs.” This Frenchman had no conception whatever of the simple fact that artistic reputations are made in every capital of the civilized world. That was a truth which his patriotism could not tolerate for a moment.
A French gentleman expressed his surprise that I did not have my books translated into French, “because,” said he, “no literary reputation can be considered established until it has received the consecration of Parisian approval.” To his unfeigned astonishment I answered that London and not Paris was the capital city of English literature, and that English authors had not yet fallen so low as to care for the opinion of critics ignorant of their language.
I then asked myself why this intense French patriotic ignorance should continue so persistently; and the answer appeared to be that there was something profoundly agreeable to French patriotic sentiment in the belief that England had no place in the artistic and intellectual world. Until quite recently the very existence of an English school of painting was denied by all patriotic Frenchmen, and English art was rigorously excluded from the Louvre.[21] Even now a French writer upon art can scarcely mention English painting without treating it de haut en bas, as if his Gallic nationality gave him a natural right to treat uncivilized islanders with lofty disdain or condescending patronage.
My next example has no reference to literature or the fine arts. A young French gentleman of superior education and manners, and with the instincts of a sportsman, said in my hearing, “There is no game in England.” His tone was that of a man who utters a truth universally acknowledged.
It might be a matter of little consequence, as touching our national pride, whether there was game in England or not. I have no doubt that some philosophers would consider, and perhaps with reason, that the non-existence of game, where it can only be maintained by an army of keepers and a penal code of its own, would be the sign of an advancing social state; but my young Frenchman was not much of a philosopher, and no doubt he considered the non-existence of game in England a mark of inferiority to France. There is something in the masculine mind, inherited perhaps from ancestors who lived by the chase, which makes it look upon an abundance of wild things that can be shot at, or run after with horses and dogs, as a reason for the greatest pride and glorification. On reflection, it will be found that there is more in the matter than at first sight appears. As there is no game in England, of course there are no sportsmen in that country. The absence of game means the absence of shooters and huntsmen, and consequently an inferiority in manly exercises to the French, thousands of whom take shooting licenses and enjoy the invigorating excitement of the chase. For this reason it is agreeable to French patriotic sentiment to be perfectly certain that there is no game in England. When I inquired what reason my young friend had for holding his conviction on the subject, he told me that in a country like England, so full of trade and manufactures, there could not be any room for game.
One of the most popular of French songs is that charming one by Pierre Dupont in praise of his vine. Every Frenchman who knows anything knows that song, and believes that he also knows the tune. The consequence is that when one of them begins to sing it his companions join in the refrain or chorus, which is as follows:—
“Bons Français, quand je vois mon verre
Plein de ce vin couleur de feu
Je songe en remerciant Dieu
Qu’ils n’en ont pas dans l’Angleterre!”
The singers repeat “qu’ils n’en ont pas,” and besides this the whole of the last line is repeated with triumphant emphasis.
We need not feel hurt by this little outburst of patriotism. There is no real hatred of England at the bottom of it, only a little “malice” of a harmless kind, and the song is sometimes sung good-humoredly in the presence of Englishmen. It is, however, really connected with patriotic ignorance. The common French belief is that as vines are not grown in England, we have no wine in our cellars, so that English people hardly know the taste of wine; and this belief is too pleasing to the French mind to be readily abandoned by those who hold it. They feel that it enhances the delightfulness of every glass they drink. The case is precisely the same with fruit. The French enjoy plenty of excellent fruit, and they enjoy it all the more heartily from a firm conviction that there is no fruit of any kind in England. “Pas un fruit,” said a countryman of Pierre Dupont in writing about our unfavored island, “pas un fruit ne mûrit dans ce pays.” What, not even a gooseberry? Were the plums, pears, strawberries, apples, apricots, that we consumed in omnivorous boyhood every one of them unripe? It is lamentable to think how miserably the English live. They have no game, no wine, no fruit (it appears to be doubtful, too, whether they have any vegetables), and they dwell in a perpetual fog where sunshine is totally unknown. It is believed, also, that there is no landscape-beauty in England,—nothing but a green field with a hedge, and then another green field with another hedge, till you come to the bare chalk cliffs and the dreary northern sea. The English have no Devonshire, no valley of the Severn, no country of the Lakes. The Thames is a foul ditch, without a trace of natural beauty anywhere.[22]