The scant supply of water for ablution is another annoyance to the American traveler accustomed to the hot-and cold-water faucets introduced into private bedrooms and hotel apartments, and the capacious bath-tubs and unlimited control of water in his native land. To be sure, one can get a bath in Paris, as well as anywhere else, by ordering it and waiting for it and paying for it; but the free use of water and its gratuitous supply in hotels, so entirely a matter of course with us, is here unheard of. As with ice-water, the bath is an American necessity, a Parisian luxury. However, the latest erected dwelling-houses here have had water-pipes and bath-tubs introduced. Wealth can command its bath here as well as its gaslight and its supplies of ice, but wealth only. The humblest abode of a Philadelphia mechanic contains comforts and conveniences which are wellnigh unattainable luxuries in all but the most splendid apartments of the most luxurious city of Europe.
Nor do all the delicate artifices of French cookery suffice wholly to replace for an American palate the dainties of his native land. The buckwheat cakes and waffles, the large, delicate-flavored, luscious oysters, the canvas-back ducks, the Philadelphia croquettes and terrapin, find no substitutes on this side of the water. The delicious shad and Spanish mackerel have no gastronomic rivals in these waters, and the sole must be accepted in their stead. We miss, too, our profusion and variety of vegetables, our stewed and stuffed tomatoes, green corn, oyster-plants and sweet potatoes. As for fruits, the smaller varieties are far more abundant and much finer here than they are with us. Strawberries, cherries, raspberries, gooseberries, apricots—all of great size and exquisite flavor—tempt and enchant the palate. But our rich profusion of tropical fruits, such as bananas and pineapples, is wholly unknown. Peaches are poor in flavor and exorbitant in price. As for meats, poultry is dearer in Paris than at home, a small chicken for fricasseeing costing six francs ($1.20 in gold), and a large one for roasting ten francs ($2). Beef and mutton are at about the same prices as in Philadelphia and New York. Butter costs from sixty to seventy cents a pound. One can easily see, therefore, that it takes all the skill and experience in domestic economy of Parisian housekeepers to maintain the prices of living at anything like its present standard in pensions and hotels. But, in truth, the general standard of French cooking has been much lowered since the war. A really sumptuous French dinner is no longer to be procured at any of the tables d'hôte or the leading hotels, and if ordered at a first-class restaurant it will cost twice as much as it used to do.
Rents, though somewhat lowered from their former proportions, are still very high, a really elegant unfurnished suite of apartments costing from five thousand to ten thousand francs a year, according to location; and if furnished, nearly as much more. Two thousand francs is the lowest rent which economy, desirous of two or three bed-rooms, in addition to the parlor, kitchen and dining-room of an ordinary suite, can accomplish. There are now in process of construction in the suburbs of Paris several rows of houses built on the American plan, and it is hardly possible to tell how comfortable and home-like the neat separate abodes look to one who has been journeying round amid a series of "floors," each so like the others. To the casual visitor there is a despairing amount of sameness in the fitting-up of all French furnished apartments. The scarlet coverings on the furniture, the red curtains, the light moquette carpet with white ground and gay flowers, the white and gold of the woodwork, the gilt bronze clock and candelabra, the tables and cabinets in marquetry and buhl, are all precisely alike in each, and all wear the same hotel-like look and lack of individuality. Nobody here seems to care anything for home or home belongings. A suite of apartments, even if occupied by the proprietor, is not the shrine for any household gods or tender ideas: it is a place to rent out at so much per month should the owner desire to go on a journey. No weak sentimental ideas about keeping one's personal belongings from the touch and the usage of strangers ever troubles anybody's mind. Tables and chairs and carpets and curtains are just so many chattels that will bring in, if rented, just so much more income: around them gleams no vestige of the tender halo that surrounds the appurtenances of an American home.
The servant question is one that is just now of special interest to the American housekeeper in Paris. I have elsewhere spoken of some of the trials inflicted by these accomplished but often unprincipled domestics on their masters and mistresses, so will not expatiate further on the subject. I will merely specify as a special grievance the law that forces the employer who discharges a servant to inscribe on his or her character-book a good character: should the departing help have been sent away for gross immorality, theft or drunkenness, and should the master write down the real reason of the dismissal, he renders himself liable to an action for defamation of character. The person, therefore, who engages servants from their character-book has no real guarantee as to their worth. It is a well-known fact also that the intelligence offices in Paris are far more anxious to obtain places for bad servants than for good ones, because the former class return to them more frequently, and are consequently the better customers. As to the percentage exacted from grocers and provision-dealers by cooks and stewards—a percentage which of course comes indirectly out of the pocket of the master—the evil has become a crying one, but it is apparently irremediable. A provision-dealer opened not long since a shop in one of the most fashionable quarters of Paris, and sent round circulars to all the housekeepers in the neighborhood announcing his determination of paying no percentage to servants. The consequence was, that not one of the cooks would buy anything of him, and he has been forced to break up his establishment and depart. It is an impossibility to engage a first-class cook without according to her the privilege of doing all the marketing—a privilege by which she is enabled to more than double the amount of her wages at her employer's expense.
Among the other drawbacks of a residence abroad to an American woman is an absence of the kindly deference to which, by virtue of her womanhood alone, she is accustomed at home. The much-vaunted politeness of the French nation is the thinnest possible varnish over real impertinence or actual rudeness. None of the true, heartfelt, genuine courtesy that is so freely accorded to our sex in our own favored land is to be met with here. "A woman is weak and defenceless," argue, apparently, a large class of Parisians, "therefore we will stare her out of countenance, we will mutter impudent speeches in her ear, we will elbow her off the sidewalk, we will thrust her aside if we want to enter a public conveyance. Politeness is a thing of hat-lifting, of bowing and scraping, of 'Pardon!' and 'Merci!' It is an article to be worn, like a dress-coat and a white tie, in a drawing-room and among our acquaintances. We have the right article for that occasion—very sweet, very refined, very graceful, very charming indeed. But as for everyday use—nenni!" That deep, true and chivalrous courtesy that respects and protects a woman merely because she is a woman, and as such needs the guardianship of the stronger sex, is something of which they have never heard and which they do not understand. They will hand Madame la duchesse de la Haute Volée or Mademoiselle Trois-Étoiles into her carriage with incomparable grace, but they will push Mrs. Brown into the gutter, and will whisper in poor blushing Miss Brown's ear that she is "une fillette charmante."
And when a Frenchman is rude, his impoliteness is worse than that of other nations, because he knows better: he is rude with malice prepense. The lower classes have especially lost much of their courtesy since the Commune. I have seen a French workingman thrust a lady violently aside on a crowded sidewalk, with a scowl and a muttered curse that lent significance to the act. And the graceful, suave courtesy of the shopkeepers—how swiftly it flies out of the window when their hope of profit in the shape of the departing shopper walks out of the door!
Shortly before quitting the United States I went into one of our large public libraries to consult a voluminous work of reference. In the remote recess where the books were kept sat a gentleman intent on the perusal of a volume, his chair tipped back as far as it could be with safety inclined, and his feet resting on the table. "Horrid fellow!" I said to myself, glancing at the obtrusive members, and going forward to the bookcase in search of the work I wanted. It proved to be of somewhat ponderous dimensions, and higher than I could conveniently reach, so I stood on tiptoe and tugged vainly at it for a moment. My friend of the feet saw my dilemma, and down went his book, and he sprang to my assistance in an instant, "Allow me," he said; and in a moment the heavy tome was brought down, dusted by a few turns of his pocket-handkerchief and laid on the table for my accommodation. If he had but known it, there was mingled with my thanks a world of unuttered but heartfelt apologies for my former hard thoughts respecting his attitude. And therein lay the difference between the two nationalities. A Frenchman would have died rather than have made a library-table a resting-place for his feet, but he would have let a woman he did not know break a blood-vessel by her exertions before he would have rendered her the slightest assistance.
American women are too apt to accept all the courtesies offered them by strangers at home as their right, even neglecting to render the poor meed of thanks in return. But let them when in Paris try to get into an omnibus on a wet day, and being thrust aside by a strong-armed Frenchman they will remorsefully remember the seats accorded to them in crowded cars, and accepted thanklessly and as a matter of course. And when the lounger on the boulevards dogs their steps or whispers his insulting compliments in their shuddering ear, they will remember how they were guarded at home not by one protector, but by all right-minded mankind, and will thank Heaven that their brothers, their sons, their husbands "are not even as these are."
LUCY H. HOOPER.