OUR TOURIST IN PARIS.—No. 10
If there is a point upon which an Englishman can dwell with pride, it is the high character of the English press. He will never be more impressed with this than when he turns over the French journals and examines the matter of which they are made up. A little foreign politics, Paris scandal, theatrical criticism, and a chapter of a vile novel. Fancy taking up the Times and finding, instead of three solid leading articles, a portion of Jack Sheppard, or The Mysteries of the Court of St. James, the debates cut down to an analysis, and no home or foreign correspondence! The change would hardly be made agreeable to him by the fact that the milk-and-water or poisonous contributions that did appear were guaranteed by the name of the author of each, and that its only polemics were waxed by some individual Smith eo nomine, against some individual Brown of another paper. Yet this prosecution against libel is recommended by a public person (I was nearly saying a statesman), who is "by way of being" a patriot, but wants to have a monopoly of influence and vituperation in his own hands. However, it is happily not of the least consequence what that disinterested politician wants, for he certainly will not get it, as we cannot afford to part with our Fourth Estate just yet, and suspect the motives of any one who advises us to do so.
The Tourist makes these reflections with a little bitterness as he sits in a café waiting for breakfast. A beautiful lady, with a ravishing little cap on the back of her head, is sitting at the receipt of custom. Two or three smart waiters with long clean aprons are bustling about in attendance on an elderly benevolent looking gentleman, with an impediment in his French, who has ultimately succeeded in ordering a chop de mutton and une bottel de Stout de Dublin, solacing himself meanwhile with Galignani's Messenger. Through a door is seen another saloon, where bearded men are drinking eau sucré and liqueurs.
The sage waiting for his chocolate turns again to the journals, and gratifies himself by picking out the places where Théophile or Alphonse or Eugène pitches into the English. What a useful thing it is to see ourselves as others see us! We find out so much that we were ignorant of. Your Tourist candidly confesses that he had no notion of the wickedness and absurdity of his countrymen, or even of their manners and customs, or the very localities of the country, until he read them, detailed, in the pleasing pages of French feuilletonists. Until he read M. Méry's English sketches, he was ignorant, and he boldly affirms that many others are ignorant too, of such common facts as that English gentlemen hire post-captains in the Royal Navy to sail their yachts; that Greenwich hospital is a retreat for old soldiers; and that the late Duke of Wellington, when Colonel Wellesley, was Governor-General of India. He has selected one feuilleton, entitled "Sir John Bull à Paris," for its masterly exposure of British foibles. It will be sent to you, translated by his little brother at Dr. Swisham's, Turnhambrown, who has made great progress in French, and is sure to do it justice. Dr. S. says the boy's English is remarkably pure and idiomatic. The author is the well-known Hippolyte Canard, whose bon mots are so successful, and who wrote the noble apology for the massacres of February, which gave such umbrage to the present despicable Government.
"I walk myself on the Boulevart. All the world regards me in smiling. And for what? It is true that I have the insular air, at one time respectable and ferocious. I carry the long redingote, the scarlet waistcoat, the pantaloon of nankeen, and the umbrella, peculiar to the sons of Albion. John, my jockey, follows me clad in the traditional costume which recalls the courses of Derby and Newmarket. With one hand he holds 'the Times,' this journal so powerful with which the 'gentlemens' voyage everywhere. With the other he retains my bouledog, charming little beast, who testifies a lively desire to eat the calves of the passengers. By what it seems, he recognises his hereditary enemies.
"A sun of spring gilds with his young rays the boughs of the noble trees that like a scarf of green velvet border this so delicious promenade. These good Parisians, veritable children of light and heat, sit at tables outside the Coffee of Paris and the Coffee of the Cardinal, and, refreshed by floods of sugar-and-water, play the national game of dominoes. Cigars, fabricated of a tobacco denied to our sterile soil, regale the nostrils with their astonishing perfume. Young and beautiful ladies, dressed with an extreme elegance, attract upon themselves admiring regards. Crowds of nurses lead children with heads of angel, and hear all in blushing the compliments of soldiers in a red pantaloon. In effect there is not but the braves who merit the belles.
"All respires gaiety, and however I feel my heart moved by a profound sadness. Rhum and gin drunk at long draughts in the English manner fail of their effect and inspire me with but a lugubrious gaiety. I am exiled from all I love. I remember my youth spent among the solitary thickets of Brompton and of Bethnal, and the savage mountains of Middlesex. I miss the sport, the box, the chase with guns, the combats of dogs and cocks. I long for my native land, its porter-beer, its rosbif, its eternal mists, and its polismens. I have gained the spleen.
"Fatal and mysterious malady, which on the banks of the Thames produces effects so desolating! It is to thee that we owe those numerous suicides of which the frightful details encumber our journals, a veritable black page in the history of England. I hear on all sides a confused mixture of strange voices, and the bizarre accents of the French tongue. It is an affair of Babel. I am struck with a vertigo.
"When Jules de Prémaray, writer of the first force, visited Albion, he was oppressed by a similar melancholy. He sighed for something of French, a word even. Suddenly an ass began to bray, 'A la bonne heure,' exclaimed he with joy, 'en voilà un qui parle Français.' He knew his brother and was glad. It is not long before I receive an equal consolation.
"I meet Lord Jones, who comes from selling Miladi according to the usage a little severe of the English noblesse, and has the air of being pleased to find himself again a boy. With him is his son Sir Jones, simple baronet, who has completed his studies at the ancient college of Cambridge. I know them amidst the crowd by their stiffness, their whiskers, their enormous white cravats, their hats with narrow borders, reposed on the backs of their heads. It must be confessed our compatriots have not the elegant tournure and mien full of distinction carried by the grand nation.