The names given to bridge and temple, fount and promenade, arc and avenue, recal saints of the middle ages, kings whose reigns embody memorable eras, brave soldiers, great victories, authors and savans—all reflecting glory on the nation. The guide at the Concierge tells you: 'Le cachot où fût deténu Marie Antoinette a eté converti en chapelle.' If roaming in the Luxembourg, you think of poor Ney's last words, on the spot where he perished, 'I need no priest to teach me how to die'—the honors paid to his memory are cited to atone for the sacrifice; if you descant on the murder of the King in 1793, you are told that the mass, so long discontinued, is now celebrated on the anniversary of his death. All that meets the eye and ear either protests against what in the past of France is disgraceful, or celebrates what is glorious. Whoever rules, the lamp of national fame is thus kept burning. The very cafés and restaurants possess an historical interest. The Frères Provinceaux was frequented by General Bonaparte; the Café Foy was the rendezvous of Italian liberals, the Zemblin that of the officers of the Empire, and the Caveau of the Garde Imperiale; the Regence has witnessed games of chess either shared or overlooked by Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Marmontel, and Saint Pierre. At the Place de la Bastille, the column erected to the memory of those who fell when Charles the Tenth was 'hurled from his forfeit throne,' links that recent event to the site of a prison tragically identified with the Reign of Terror. The gates of St. Denis and St. Martin attest the rendezvous of more than one emeute; and from the Champs Elysées to the arch of triumph de l'Etoile, is the scene where some of the most pregnant dramas of modern history were enacted.
The routine of a banker's life would seem antagonistic to romance and dramatic incident; yet the celebrated financiers of France occupy the fore-ground in her civic history: Ouvrard's interview with Napoleon at a memorable crisis; the details of Law's career, including the wonderful vicissitudes to which the famous Mississippi scheme gave birth; and the charlatan adventurer's intrigues with the Duke of Orleans and escape from the Paris mob, are like the most exciting chapters of a modern novel. Lafitte stood at the side of Louis Philippe when the new Constitution was proclaimed, and staid the waves of insurrection at the obsequies of Manuel. If, in the social phenomena elsewhere, we find hints for romance and incongruities the more piquant, here they are more patent. Hospitality is not a national characteristic, as in cities less amply provided with external resources, and the effect is to secure for social aspirants, who have the means and the tact to entertain, advantages they could never realize in other capitals. A wealthy man, with decent manners and average intelligence, ambitious of fame as a host, or the delights of gifted intercourse, puts himself in communication with diplomats, savans and men of letters, who never object to a good dinner, or women endowed with the graces which lend a charm to the soirée, and his salon is nightly filled with people of fashion and celebrity. The dramatic star, the popular author, the famous militaire, the brilliant cantatrice will attract those who are insensible to the zest of pâtés and champagne. 'Do you know that man?' asks some aristocrat of the illustrious guest when they encounter the parvenu-Amphytrion. 'He dines me occasionally,' is the cool reply. Foreigners of either sex, even with a damaged reputation, find no obstacles to such partial successes. Let the frail one have preserved somewhat of her youthful vivacity and the bulk of her fortune, and she has only to hunt up a poor Marchesa or Countess of the Faubourg San Germain, and install her as a friend of the house, in a costly hotel, and coronated paste-board will soon fill her vase in the ante-chamber, and wits and beauties, official and distinguished strangers surround her fauteuil. That there is little meaning in these arrangements; that they merely serve as a pastime, like an opera or vaudeville we pay to witness, is true; but, on the other hand, facilities thus easily obtained by cash and policy, afford scope and yield opportunities for the display of character and the drama of social life, which more exclusive circles never know. The art tenir un salon is one peculiar to the French, and there are ladies of that nation, whose fame is as traditionally and even historically established as that of great generals, statesmen, and poets; their rivalry equals the competition of the other sex in war and politics; and, strange as it may appear to an American, the social prestige thus acquired and transmitted is as often based upon sin as sanctity; an equivocal character united to attractions of manner or rare intelligence, makes the popularity of one Madame and a reputation as a devotee that of another. In a word, society in Paris is an arena so free, versatile, necessary—protected by established conventionalities, and moulded by the laws of taste—that it includes infinite possibilities, as the French memoirs and plays annually demonstrate.
A social atmosphere thus concentrated in effect, and diffusive in its nature, brings into contact associations which more intense domestic life and a more formal organization keep apart. The company in an English drawing-room may vary from year to year, but its tone and character remain intact; while in Paris saloons are designated by historical allusions and renowned for special and temporary features. If it is desired to recal a certain epoch and set of people, the whole idea is conveyed by such names as Hotel Rambouillet or the Salons du Restoration; whereas Holland House bears an identical fame as a place consecrated by intellectual hospitality, under successive reigns. Pedantry and artificial consequence belong to the fashionable levees of Louis the Fourteenth's time, while those of the first Napoleon represent an entirely diverse set of ideas and feelings. It is because society is directly exposed to the 'form and pressure' of the hour in Paris that it is thus Protean; religion, politics, and the taste in art and letters instantly stamp the talk and the manners as the coin of the realm bears the image of a new potentate; the life of the family, of the devotee, of artistic genius, of statesmanship and of arms, penetrate and interfuse in the social sphere, and an acute writer, therefore, alludes with literal truth to the period when 'the perfume of the boudoir mingled with the incense of the sacristy.' There phrases of society are bestowed upon art and politics; the favorable commencement of a new regime has been called its honey-moon; and a critic of Watteau's pictures refers to him as 'cet maitre coquet et naif.'
The caprice and tasteful arrangements in the minutiæ of life, noted by Yorick in his sketch of a Sunday in the French metropolis, when La Fleur brought the butter for his master's dejeuner, on a fresh currant-leaf, and found the bouquet he presented his own chosen fair had changed hands three times in the course of the day—though not so patent now, are equally characteristic; the valet still knows his master's debts, and the femme de chambre her mistress's love affairs; there is the same familiarity in the relation of master and servant, but the chance is, there is less gossip between them, as both have more ideas and think oftener than before the days of cheap literature, steam, and telegraphs. Comedy still makes sport of husbands; 'the literary mind of France takes a religious turn' occasionally; and 'people laugh at every thing' as they did in the time of the young Duchess of Burgundy, whose remark to this effect was then considered so naive. The mariage de convenance is quite as prevalent, children as artificial, and old people as child-like; the precieuses ridicules are, however, on the wane, being fused in the cosmopolitan pressure of a more general intelligence, while the femme savante has given place, in a great degree, to the female authors, who are too alive to the inspiration of the times, and their own ideas to be pedantic.
To such an extent does the tyranny of custom dominate in the social history of France, that duels and gaming have their periods of triumph as well as bonnets and constitutions; at times they have each enjoyed a fashionable prestige, so that individuals, without the least taste for either occupation, in order to be comme il faut have sought to lose a notable amount at roulette and to provoke some famous swordsman to combat. An acute observer of Parisian life, prophesies that two growing tastes are now at work destined to modify the French character, one the rage for English horses, and the other the use of cigars. Of the normal traits of the national mind, that which apparently remains most intact is the instinct of military life. The same adaptation for the camp that we recognize in Froissart's Chronicles and Napoleon's campaigns, is obvious at this moment. 'This is worth considering,' says Montaigne, 'that our nation places valor (vaillance) in the highest degree of virtue.'
The same extravagant notion of an Englishman's whims and sangfroid prevail in the French capital as used to supply farce-writers before the age of steam. Veron recently published the anecdote of un Anglais, who had been his neighbor at a restaurant for several weeks, bidding him good-by one day, as he was going on a trip round the world; and eighteen months after, the traveller reäppeared at the accustomed hour and table, and found his old companion in the same seat; meantime, the Englishman had circumnavigated the globe. We are told in Paris of every conceivable mania on the part of English collectors; one spent a fortune in bottles of water from all the rivers in the world, one in every kind of pipe, and another in specimens of bird's eggs. On the other hand, the French are better understood across the Channel; it is curious, at the present era of alliance, to read one of the old travellers, who reported France to Londoners, in the heyday of British prejudice. 'What is there,' says the famous Thomas Nashe, 'in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in friendship, perfect slovenry, and to love no man for my pleasure? I have known some that have continued there by the space of half-a-dozen years, and when they came home they have had a little, weerish, lean-face, under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoken English strangely. Naught else have they profited by their travel, but to distinguish the true Bordeaux grape and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleans; yet peradventure to wear a velvet patch on their face and walk melancholy with their arms folded.'[A]
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The Unfortunate Traveller: or Life of Jack Wilton. London, 1594.
We recognize the life of Paris by the analytical pictures of the French novelists and the graphic details of the memoirs. No mode of national existence had ever been so candidly revealed; the stranger, if familiar with the authors of the country, is better acquainted with what is peculiar in the habits and tableaux around him, than an unlettered native. Parisian character and the salient qualities which distinguish metropolitan and provincial existence have been daguerreotyped and anatomized by Balzac; each class, economy, and phase he makes the basis of a story, has been not only carefully observed but artistically and psychologically studied; what memories of an old pension haunt the reader of Père Goriot—a kind of prose Lear, as he gazes upon some venerable house of that description; how intensely he realizes the consciousness of the well-endowed yet sated young Parisian, as he recals the opening chapters of La Peau de Chagrin; every aspect and secret of Grisette life has been depicted; the poetry of the career of a gifted French noble, whose first youth witnessed the prologue of the fatal revolutionary drama, is embalmed in tragic or tender lines in the autobiography of Chateaubriand; Saint Beuve's critiques have revived the associations of each epoch of French literature; Lammenais recorded what of faith lingered in the heart of the people; Scribe reflects the most shifting traits of manners and character; and thus each indigenous figure, building, and custom appeals to the imaginative memory as well as to the curious eye.
The salon of a literary clique suggests the extraordinary social history of Paris; and the names of De Staël, Sévigné, Recamier, and others, memorable as female arbiters and queens in conversation, occur to us in connection with each political era and great name in science, art and letters. Delaroche's portrait of Napoleon amid the Alps and at Fontainebleau has stamped that remarkable countenance in all its intensity of expression upon the mind; and thus it ever reäppears on the scene of his power. The new style of pavement attests the triumphs of barricades; and every old lamp-post the horrors of the Reign of Terror. We cannot pass a foundling hospital without thinking of Rousseau; the Jardin des Plants brings back the benign researches of Buffon, Michaux, Cuvier, and the host of French naturalists; old Montaigne's Essays are recalled by many a philosophic hint and maxim of worldly wisdom; and each glimpse of the comedy of French life is eloquent of Moliere. As we pass either palace or prison, the fair vision of Maria Antoinette, as it lives in Burke's description, the heroic devotion of Madame Roland, and the heart-melting voice of Charlotte Corday, appeal to remembrance; and thus the localities of Paris lead the fancy, at every step, from the guillotine to the fête, from massacre to beauty, from blood to flowers; and in early morning rambles we almost expect to see the First Consul roaming incog., wrapt in his gray coat. Notre Dame to the admirers of Victor Hugo, seems less a Cathedral than an architectural Romance. Yet, there is no city where the past is so lost sight of in the present, and where local tradition has so slight a hold upon the sympathies. It is fortunate, therefore, that when inclined to detach ourselves from the immediate—here so absorbing—and rehearse the story of the past, with every needful aid to memory and imagination, there is an available and complete resource: we have but to quit Paris for Versailles. The Place de Carousel and the Tuileries are unimpressive in comparison with the stately decadence of that palatial chateau; before which the mob, with ferocious glances, heaved like a raging sea up to the balcony where stood the Queen and Lafayette; the first solemn confronting of regal and popular will, ere the deadly struggle began—whose renewal is ever at hand. Within those walls is gathered the pictorial history of France in one successive and elaborate series; the battles, counsels, domestic life of every reign; the lineaments of heroes, poets and kings; the deeds, and the men and women that are identified with the country from the beginning. To live at Versailles, with a good library at hand, and pass hours of every day in these halls, would make us intimate, not only in a technical but in a picturesque way, with the annals and the celebrities of the kingdom. It would be as if French history was enacted before us and we saw the features of the leading spirits of each generation as we listened to their achievements. 'C'est à la Seine,' says a popular historiographer, 'que Paris doit ses premiers aggrandizement;' but so completely have modern activity and embellishment overlaid the rude defences whereby barbaric hordes indicated the site of a magnificent capital, that few of the artists who linger on the bridges to note the effect of moon-light on arch and islet, or of the scholars that haunt the book-stalls on the quai, have the associations of the past awakened by these picturesque and suggestive localities; yet they signalize the enterprise of Philip the Handsome, of Charles the Fifth, of Francis the First, Henry the Second, Henry the Fourth, Philipe Augustus, and Louis the Fourteenth. There Clovis and his Germanic tribes and his converted Clotilde, formed the nucleus of Pepin's inheritance, and Charlemagne established his name; thither came the Scandinavian pirates, and musing on the banks of the dingy stream now associated with science and fêtes, with baths and suicides, with boot-blacks and laundresses, with the romance of student life, artistic, medical and literary, and charming to the eye for elegant bridges and massive quays—the historical dreamer recals a century and a half of wars between French and English kings: the Black Prince and Joan of Arc, Calvin and the Huguenots, Guise and St. Bartholomew, Condé, Montmorency, Maria de Medicis, Anne of Austria, Richelieu, Louis the Sixteenth—the Revolution, Bonaparte, and the Bourbon! Such a panorama, its fore-ground crowded with memorable figures, its perspective dim with the smoke of battle, its groups distinguishable by varied symbols—the oriflamme, the lilies, the cross, the tri-color—blood-stained yet radiant with female beauty and animated by martial prowess, seems to bear no relation to the living scene typical of prosperous order and the age of commerce, of luxury and of science. Yet the analyst detects in the most common-place fact of to-day the influence of a dynasty and the bequest of an era. Madame de Genlis tells us how she taught the boy Louis Philipe after Rousseau's maxims; and made him cosmopolitan in taste by her German system of gardening, dining after the English fashion, and taking supper en Italien; and Veron says her pupil, when he became King, introduced the rage for fine horses and clever jockeys; it was, according to the same authority, the fermiers generaux who initiated French cookery as a unique art in their table rivalry with the old noblesse. 'Scarcity of fuel,' says the Quarterly Review, 'has not been without its effect in forming the manners of the polished Parisians, and has transferred to the theatre and the café those attractions, which in the British islands belong essentially to the domestic hearth.' The use of tobacco, in the form of cigars, is another modification of the national habits; but a few years ago it was deemed a nuisance, now it prevails among both sexes; and keen observers declare that the French have grown more contemplative and less excitable as the puff has superseded the pinch, and the slowly-evolved cloud—emblem of ruminating quiescence—taken the place of those 'pungent grains of titillating dust' which stimulate a bon-mot rather than lure to reflection.