OUR TOURIST IN PARIS.—No. 9.
My dear fellow-countrymen who throng the theatres, the cafés, and the promenades of this gay city, may form very different opinions of its inhabitants and institutions; but on one point, I believe, they are all agreed; that, in common with the rest of the Continent, it is over-ridden with bureaus and bureaucracy. Every third man is an employé, a soldier, or a policeman. You cannot have a warm bath, without taking a ticket from a lady at a desk, nor indulge in a mild polka, without being watched by a man in a cocked hat. If you change your hotel, instant information must be sent to the Préfecture; if you want to send a telegraphic message to England, it must first receive the sanction of the Minister of Police; if you enter Paris from a country walk, with a great-coat on your arm, you will be pounced upon and searched at the Barrière. All this is disgusting to honest John Bull, and he curses it with great force of language. "Thank goodness!" says he, "at all events, we are free from this miserable drilling, and marshalling, and boarding-school discipline." In England we certainly are.
Occasionally the London newspapers take the opportunity of an "illustrious foreigner's" visit, to contrast our liberty and their thraldom. The leading journal will point out with its usual epigrammatic terseness, varied illustration, good sense and eloquence, the advantage of letting people alone, and the extent to which our Government does let us alone. "His Highness, or Majesty, as the case may be, will ride for hours in our metropolis with out seeing a soldier or (especially if there's a row) a policeman." Blessed independence! but the contrast is much more striking, because more disagreeable to a wretched Englishmen, born to freedom, who finds himself in a mess on the Continent—a contingency which happens to one out of every dozen tourists. Those confounded passports form the monster grievance. Accordingly from July to November, not a week passes but some victim writes to complain that he is in confinement at Marseilles or Como, or somewhere or another, because his passport is lost or not en règle. Old Jollyboy, I recollect, wrote a tremendous letter to the Times containing a column and a half of his adventures. It ought to have produced a reconsideration of the whole passport system, but it didn't. Those foreign governments are so dense!
And now little Bombazine (who is "reading for the bar," like every young fellow about town that is not in the army) comes to your Correspondent, and complains of a grievance which throws all the foreign misdemeanours into the shade. He went to the English Embassy to get his passport signed, and the man there could not speak English! Now, by Jove, Harry is right, and it is too bad! Here are we every day ridiculing or cursing the villainous antiquated machinery of passports. We all know, and are never tired of repeating, that it works for the persecution of helpless timid travellers and the protection of brazen and ingenious criminals. (Joseph Mazzini entered Italy a few months ago in the petticoats and "front" of an old woman, the policemen taking off their hats and paying compliments, while a poor English consumptive parson in search of health was marched off between two chasseurs as if he had been a pickpocket.) We complain reasonably enough that we travel everywhere scattering our livres sterling, making the fortunes of innkeepers, creating watering places, supporting entire branches of commerce, fostering capital cities, everywhere cheated, pitied, and laughed at, and yet foreign governments have not the sense to encourage such lucrative and harmless visitors, but do everything they can to prohibit our free locomotion. They are great asses, are they not? Call them all the names you like, and now believe, if you can, that an English establishment abroad is worse than them all. Our ambassador, as I understand from a diplomatic friend, receives a very tolerable income from his country by way of wages and compensation for exile, and yet cannot afford to keep a man in his office capable of communicating with the multitude of Britons who do not speak French.
We recollect a certain circular issued from the foreign office at Washington, which invited the United States' consuls and ambassadors to employ native Americans and none others in their offices. And quite right. It is bad enough to have to deal with foreigners about our passports where it is absolutely necessary, but when we go to our own Embassy we hope to meet with, if not the personnel at least the language and plain good sense of the Anglo-Saxon. We might expect to meet also there a disposition to smooth instead of aggravating the nuisances of the passport system, and, behold, we find an official with all the French bureaucratic humbug, and without a knowledge of our tongue. How such a monstrous absurdity could have arisen passes one's understanding. Good heavens! why every hotel, every café, every shop, nay every superior police office, contains one or more persons who speak English, and the English Embassy is the only establishment without one. Why don't some of those young swells come down from their room and do the passport business? Do they think it "low?" But hear Henry Bombazine.
"You know Mrs. Toodleham, my Aunt, is given to reading the papers in connexion with the prophecies, and has just got hold of a very entertaining book on those subjects called 'The Battle of Armageddon,' which has determined her to come to England at once with me. It's by one of those immensely knowing parties, you see, who tell you about the end of the world, give 'tips' in fact 'on future events,' like the Derby prophets in Bell's Life. Well, he says, that Russia is going to invade Jerusalem, and the English fleet is to sail into the Dead Sea—no—the United States' fleet is to sail into the Caspian—no—hang it! I never can recollect the names of places—at all events, there's to be an awful shindy somewhere, and England is the only safe place to go to. So I went to the Embassy to get the old lady's name put on my passport, and, as I said, the fellow couldn't speak a work of English. I tried him with French" (you should hear dear Henry's French), "and could hardly make him understand then. He wanted first to see her passport, but, bless you, she hasn't got any. I don't suppose she ever had one, and at all events, if she had, must have lost it years ago. You know she came over to see Louis Philippe crowned, and liked the place so much she has stayed ever since. And when I told him that, and offered references to bankers, and so forth—mind you, he's not over civil in his manner, I suppose because he can't make anything by the job—he opened his eyes till the eyebrows went right away into the hair of his head, and flatly refused. 'Savvy vous, Mossoo,' said he, 'savvy vous que c'est une affaire très serioose. Une affaire serioose'—those were his very words. What do you think of that, because a poor old woman wants to get back to her native country out of the way of the battle of Armageddon? By Jove, I know what I'll do. I'll write to the Times."
No, no, Harry my boy, we'll do better for you than that. I'll send your history to Mr. Punch. He is great and good, my friend, and will see you righted if anybody can.
Agricultural Improvements.
The old proverb informs us, that "a reformed rake makes the best husband;" but, according to Mechi, it is "your reformed plough that makes the best husbandman"