But with an expense of thirty thousand livres in looking-glasses, there is no table in the house better than an oak board, nor a carpet belonging to the house. The floors I abhor, made of red tiles in the shape of Mrs. Quincy's floor-cloth tiles. These floors will by no means bear water, so that the method of cleaning them is to have them waxed, and then a manservant with foot brushes drives round your room, dancing here and there like a Merry Andrew. This is calculated to take from your foot every atom of dirt, and leave the room in a few moments as he found it. The house must be exceedingly cold in winter. The dining-rooms, of which you make no other use, are laid with small stones, like the red tiles for shape and size. The servants' apartments are generally upon the first floor, and the stairs which you commonly have to ascend to get into the family apartments are so dirty that I have been obliged to hold up my clothes as though I was passing through a cow-yard.
I have been but little abroad. It is customary in this country for strangers to make the first visit. As I cannot speak the language, I think I should make rather an awkward figure. I have dined abroad several times with Mr. Adams's particular friends, the Abbés, who are very polite and civil,--three sensible and worthy men. The Abbé de Mably has lately published a book, which he has dedicated to Mr. Adams. This gentleman is nearly eighty years old; the Abbé Chalut, seventy-five; and Arnoux about fifty, a fine sprightly man, who takes great pleasure in obliging his friends. Their apartments were really nice. I have dined once at Dr. Franklin's, and once at Mr. Barclay's, our consul, who has a very agreeable woman for his wife, and where I feel like being with a friend. Mrs. Barclay has assisted me in my purchases, gone with me to different shops, etc. To-morrow I am to dine at Monsieur Grand's; but I have really felt so happy within doors, and am so pleasingly situated, that I have had little inclination to change the scene. I have not been to one public amusement as yet, not even the opera, though we have one very near us.
You may easily suppose I have been fully employed, beginning housekeeping anew, and arranging my family to our no small expenses and trouble; for I have had bed-linen and table-linen to purchase and make, spoons and forks to get made of silver,--three dozen of each,--besides tea furniture, china for the table, servants to procure, etc. The expense of living abroad I always supposed to be high, but my ideas were nowise adequate to the thing. I could have furnished myself in the town of Boston with everything I have, twenty or thirty per cent, cheaper than I have been able to do it here. Everything which will bear the name of elegant is imported from England, and if you will have it, you must pay for it, duties and all. I cannot get a dozen handsome wineglasses under three guineas, nor a pair of small decanters for less than a guinea and a half. The only gauze fit to wear is English, at a crown a yard; so that really a guinea goes no further than a copper with us. For this house, garden, stables, etc., we give two hundred guineas a year. Wood is two guineas and a half per cord; coal, six livres the basket of about two bushels; this article of firing we calculate at one hundred guineas a year. The difference between coming upon this negotiation to France, and remaining at the Hague, where the house was already furnished at the expense of a thousand pounds sterling, will increase the expense here to six or seven hundred guineas; at a time, too, when Congress has cut off five hundred guineas from what they have heretofore given. For our coachman and horses alone (Mr. Adams purchased a coach in England) we give fifteen guineas a month. It is the policy of this country to oblige you to a certain number of servants, and one will not touch what belongs to the business of another, though he or she has time enough to perform the whole. In the first place, there is a coachman who does not an individual thing but attend to the carriages and horses; then the gardener, who has business enough; then comes the cook; then the maitre d'hotel,--his business is to purchase articles in the family, and oversee that nobody cheats but himself; a valet de chambre,--John serves in this capacity; a femme de chambre,--Esther serves for this, and is worth a dozen others; a coiffeuse,--for this place I have a French girl about nineteen, whom I have been upon the point of turning-away, because madam will not brush a chamber: "it is not de fashion, it is not her business." I would not have kept her a day longer, but found, upon inquiry, that I could not better myself, and hair-dressing here is very expensive unless you keep such a madam in the house. She sews tolerably well, so I make her as useful as I can. She is more particularly devoted to mademoiselle. Esther diverted me yesterday evening by telling me that she heard her go muttering by her chamber door, after she had been assisting Abby in dressing. "Ah, mon Dieu, 'tis provoking"--(she talks a little English).--"Why, what is the matter, Pauline: what is provoking?"--"Why, Mademoiselle look so pretty, I so mauvais." There is another indispensable servant, who is called a frotteur: his business is to rub the floors.
We have a servant who acts as maitre d'hotel, whom I like at present, and who is so very gracious as to act as footman too, to save the expense of another servant, upon condition that we give him a gentleman's suit of clothes in lieu of a livery. Thus, with seven servants and hiring a charwoman upon occasion of company, we may possibly make out to keep house; with less, we should be hooted at as ridiculous, and could not entertain any company. To tell this in our own country would be considered as extravagance; but would they send a person here in a public character to be a public jest? At lodgings in Paris last year, during Mr. Adams's negotiation for a peace, it was as expensive to him as it is now at housekeeping, without half the accommodations.
Washing is another expensive article: the servants are all allowed theirs, besides their wages; our own costs us a guinea a week. I have become steward and bookkeeper, determined to know with accuracy what our expenses are, to prevail with Mr. Adams to return to America if he finds himself straitened, as I think he must be. Mr. Jay went home because he could not support his family here with the whole salary; what then can be done, curtailed as it now is, with the additional expense? Mr. Adams is determined to keep as little company as he possibly can; but some entertainments we must make, and it is no unusual thing for them to amount to fifty or sixty guineas at a time. More is to be performed by way of negotiation, many times, at one of these entertainments, than at twenty serious conversations; but the policy of our country has been, and still is, to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. We stand in sufficient need of economy, and in the curtailment of other salaries I suppose they thought it absolutely necessary to cut off their foreign ministers. But, my own interest apart, the system is bad; for that nation which degrades their own ministers by obliging them to live in narrow circumstances, cannot expect to be held in high estimation themselves. We spend no evenings abroad, make no suppers, attend very few public entertainments,--or spectacles, as they are called,--and avoid every expense that is not held indispensable. Yet I cannot but think it hard that a gentleman who has devoted so great a part of his life to the service of the public, who has been the means, in a great measure, of procuring such extensive territories to his country, who saved their fisheries, and who is still laboring to procure them further advantages, should find it necessary so cautiously to calculate his pence, for fear of overrunning them. I will add one more expense. There is now a court mourning, and every foreign minister, with his family, must go into mourning for a Prince of eight years old, whose father is an ally to the King of France. This mourning is ordered by the Court, and is to be worn eleven days only. Poor Mr. Jefferson had to his away for a tailor to get a whole black-silk suit made up in two days; and at the end of eleven days, should another death happen, he will be obliged to have a new suit of mourning, of cloth, because that is the season when silk must be left off. We may groan and scold, but these are expenses which cannot be avoided; for fashion is the deity every one worships in this country, and from the highest to the lowest, you must submit. Even poor John and Esther had no comfort among the servants, being constantly the subjects of ridicule, until we were obliged to direct them to have their hair dressed. Esther had several crying fits upon the occasion, that she should be forced to be so much of a fool; but there was no way to keep them from being trampled upon but this, and now that they are à la mode de Paris, they are much respected. To be out of fashion is more criminal than to be seen in a state of nature, to which the Parisians are not averse.
AUTEUIL, NEAR PARIS, 10th May, 1785.
Did you ever, my dear Betsey, see a person in real life such as your imagination formed of Sir Charles Grandison? The Baron de Staël, the Swedish Ambassador, comes nearest to that character, in his manners and personal appearance, of any gentleman I ever saw. The first time I saw him I was prejudiced in his favor, for his countenance commands your good opinion: it is animated, intelligent, sensible, affable, and without being perfectly beautiful, is most perfectly agreeable; add to this a fine figure, and who can fail in being charmed with the Baron de Staël? He lives in a grand hotel, and his suite of apartments, his furniture, and his table, are the most elegant of anything I have seen. Although you dine upon plate in every noble house in France, I cannot say that you may see your face in it; but here the whole furniture of the table was burnished, and shone with regal splendor. Seventy thousand livres in plate will make no small figure; and that is what his Majesty gave him. The dessert was served on the richest china, with knives, forks, and spoons of gold. As you enter his apartments, you pass through files of servants into his ante-chamber, in which is a throne covered with green velvet, upon which is a chair of state, over which hangs the picture of his royal master. These thrones are common to all ambassadors of the first order, as they are immediate representatives of the king. Through this ante-chamber you pass into the grand salon, which is elegantly adorned with architecture, a beautiful lustre hanging from the middle. Settees, chairs, and hangings of the richest silk, embroidered with gold; marble slabs upon Muted pillars, round which wreaths of artificial flowers in gold entwine. It is usual to find in all houses of fashion, as in this, several dozens of chairs, all of which have stuffed backs and cushions, standing in double rows round the rooms. The dining-room was equally beautiful, being hung with Gobelin tapestry, the colors and figures of which resemble the most elegant painting. In this room were hair-bottom mahogany-backed chairs, and the first I have seen since I came to France. Two small statues of a Venus de Medicis, and a Venus de ---- (ask Miss Paine for the other name), were upon the mantelpiece. The latter, however, was the most modest of the kind, having something like a loose robe thrown partly over her. From the Swedish Ambassador's we went to visit the Duchess d'Enville, who is mother to the Duke de Rochefoucault. We found the old lady sitting in an easy-chair; around her sat a circle of Academicians, and by her side a young lady. Your uncle presented us, and the old lady rose, and, as usual, gave us a salute. As she had no paint, I could put up with it; but when she approached your cousin I could think of nothing but Death taking hold of Hebe. The duchess is near eighty, very tall and lean. She was dressed in a silk chemise, with very large sleeves, coming half-way down her arm, a large cape, no stays, a black-velvet girdle round her waist, some very rich lace in her chemise, round her neck, and in her sleeves; but the lace was not sufficient to cover the upper part of her neck, which old Time had harrowed; she had no cap on, but a little gauze bonnet, which did not reach her ears, and tied under her chin, her venerable white hairs in full view. The dress of old women and young girls in this country is detestable, to speak in the French style; the latter at the age of seven being clothed exactly like a woman of twenty, and the former have such a fantastical appearance that I cannot endure it. The old lady has all the vivacity of a young one. She is the most learned woman in France; her house is the resort of all men of literature, with whom she converses upon the most abstruse subjects. She is of one of the most ancient, as well as the richest families in the kingdom. She asked very archly when Dr. Franklin was going to America. Upon being told, says she, "I have heard that he is a prophet there;" alluding to that text of Scripture, "A prophet is not without honor," etc. It was her husband who commanded the fleet which once spread such terror in our country.
LONDON, Friday, 24th July 1784.