The ordinary tourist has in general no time to get acquainted with the inner life of the people to whom his flying visits are paid. He has the largest possible space to get over in the shortest possible time, and thanks to railways and steamboats, he accomplishes his object. He goes to see Paris, and finds it not altogether unlike London; the people are not very dissimilar; the habits of life have a general resemblance; he need not even talk French unless he chooses; and except that he is generally pretty well got up in his Continental Bradshaw, he returns little wiser than he went away.
This ignorance about continental nations in general, and about our nearest neighbours in particular, Mr Hamerton does his best to remedy in his very interesting and instructive account of rural life in France.[2]
His first difficulty was to find a house there which should be tolerably convenient, and within easy reach of the picturesque scenery in which a landscape painter finds his treasure-trove. In company with his wife he visited a variety of places, such as Vienne, Macon, Collonges, and the wine districts of Burgundy; but with none was he satisfied. He next tried Nuits, Besançon, the valley of the Doubs and other spots, without being able to find the particular one which could alone suit his wandering foot; and when about to give up the search in despair, a friend came to the rescue. 'Make a note of what you want,' said this sensible man, 'and I will find it for you.' He was as good as his word; the house was found (precisely where, we are not told); and a very charming little house it was, out of the world, but still sufficiently in it to be accessible, with fine natural scenery near, and an abundance of hills, valleys, and streams sufficiently large to be navigable by a canoe.
The roads around were good, having been made by the government of Louis-Philippe just before the introduction of railways; and good roads, as Mr Hamerton justly observes, are 'one of the very greatest blessings of a civilised country.' In looking out for and choosing his house he had thought very little of the society in which his lot might be cast, and yet he did not intend to live like a hermit; he was ready to make friends, but it must be in his own way. In England, when a stranger settles in a neighbourhood, the families around call upon him; but in France it is quite the reverse. There a new-comer must push his own way, and card in hand, call upon every one with whom he would like to become acquainted; and blowing his own trumpet as judiciously as he can, endeavour to impress them with the desirability of his acquaintance. This Mr Hamerton refused to do; and finally his neighbours, becoming convinced of his respectability, called upon him in the English fashion, and he had as much society as he desired. He found, however, that he had in a sense fallen upon evil times; the easy old-fashioned hospitality of the good country folks around him was beginning to decline, stifled by the demon of the state dinner, which some ambitious wretch had had the inhumanity to introduce from Paris; and which, with its many courses, expensive wines, and grandes toilettes, threatened to annihilate the enjoyable family meal, at which the only difference made for a guest was the addition of a few flowers, sweets, and candles. The society 'round my house' was not distinguished for intellectual culture, although there were a few brilliant exceptions to the general dullness of the small squires of the neighbourhood. One or two, he found, had studied painting in Paris under Delacroix; another was an enthusiastic ornithologist; another was an excellent botanist and entomologist; and there were one or two antiquaries; and a really first-rate musician, who was so modest, that when he wished to practise, he always locked himself and his violin into a cellar.
The ladies he found decidedly behind the gentlemen in point of culture and attainments. They invariably belonged to one of two classes—the women of the world, and the women who preferred domesticity and home. The latter were most respectable individuals, deeply read in cookery-books, and au fait in every housekeeping detail, but not interesting as companions. Nor were their more ambitious rivals greatly preferable to them in this respect; they were dressy, and had plenty of small-talk, but their conversation was confined to the gossip of the neighbourhood, or the latest things in the ever-changing Paris fashions. It is to this cause that Mr Hamerton assigns that separation of the sexes which most travellers have remarked as characteristic of French society. There is nothing else to account for it; the English custom of leaving the gentlemen alone over their wine after dinner is unknown; but still in most provincial salons it will be found that the men collect into one corner, and the women into another, and there discuss undisturbed the separate questions which interest them.
We are accustomed to consider the aristocratic feeling as much stronger with us than in France; but this Mr Hamerton found was a great mistake. Around his house, the caste feeling in all its genuine feudal intensity was peculiarly strong. Without the all-important de prefixed to a man's surname he was a roturier, an ignoble wretch, a creature sent into the world only to be snubbed. The social value of these two letters is incalculable, and as a matter of course, they are often fraudulently assumed by the vulgar rich; nor does it, curiously enough, when the transition is once accomplished, seem to make much difference whether the coveted prefix is real or borrowed. A false title steadily kept up for a series of years is found to answer quite as well as a true one; and while a constant manufacture of this pseudo-nobility is going on, there is side by side with it a continual process of degradation, by which the true nobles lose their nobility. They become poor; the necessity of earning their bread by manual labour is forced upon them; they drop the de, or if they try to cling to it, their neighbours drop it for them, and in the crucible of poverty the transmutation soon becomes complete: the gold is changed by the roughness of daily toil into simple clay. The de, which is not to be sneezed at, at any time of life, becomes supremely important to the Frenchman when he is about to marry; then, without any trouble on his part, merely by getting a friend to act as his ambassador, it may, and often does procure for him the hand of a rich heiress.
Sometimes people are ennobled in spite of themselves, as when Mr Hamerton, much to his own annoyance, had the title of 'My Lord' bestowed upon him by his French neighbours. It was in vain that he protested against it; he was shewn the title duly registered in an official book at the prefecture; and half-angry, half-amused, he at last accepted his fate, and settled tranquilly down into the dignity of the peerage.
From the noble of the earth, who may be, and sometimes are very poor indeed, one glides by a natural transition into a consideration of the very wealthy. These do not abound in France. As a rule, it is difficult to find a Crœsus; but gentlemen with comfortable incomes, which, with careful management, may be made to procure all the luxuries of life, are very common. The law of the division of property militates against either very large estates or very large incomes, and has made great nobles, such as were common in the days of Louis XIV., an impossibility. The great castles built by these men still exist, and are out of all keeping with the establishments maintained in them. It is not unusual to find a stable with stalls for forty horses, and in a corner the family stud of four unobtrusively munching their oats; while in the great house beyond, the proprietor lives quietly with two or three servants in a tower or wing of his ancestral palace, often thinking very little of himself at all, and a great deal of those who are to come after him, and pinching and saving, that the old place may not require to be sold.
No one is ashamed of saving; thrift is the rule in France; and Mr Samuel Smiles himself cannot have a more genuine admiration of it than the French middle classes have. They are economical to a fault, and their thrifty habits form the great financial strength of their country. A middle-class Frenchman almost invariably lives so as to have something to his credit at the end of the year; if he is rich the balance is large; if he is poor it is small; but, unless in exceptional circumstances, it is always there. In the country the French rise early; five in summer and seven in winter is the usual hour. Ladies in the morning have generally a cup of coffee when they rise and a piece of bread; but the majority of men eat nothing until breakfast, which is the great meal of the day. There is always at breakfast one or two dishes of meat, vegetables, and dessert, and the beverage used is wine, vin ordinaire. A Frenchman never tastes tea except when ill, and then he regards it as a kind of medicine. In summer, white wine mixed with seltzer-water is often used at breakfast; and after the meal, coffee is drunk. Breakfast is usually served between ten and eleven in the forenoon, and dinner at six in the evening. Unless when guests are present, it is a much lighter meal than breakfast, and often consists of an omelette and salad, or soupe maigre and cold chicken.
In rural districts the usual hour for retiring at night is nine o'clock; and after dinner it is not unusual to find some of the elderly gentlemen so sleepy that they are almost incapable of conversation. This drowsiness is caused by their open-air habits and the great amount of exercise they take.