and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is truly unhappy in that village.
‘Arthur dessèche et meurt.—Dans la ville de Sterne,
Rien qu’en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer;
Il n’aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne,
Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.[12]
Liston ne le fait plus sourciller! Il rumine
Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un échiquier,
Contre le peuple anglais, les nègres, la vermine
Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,
Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les pâtissières,
Les parieurs d’Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
il ne touche plus, hélas! un sou d’argent!
Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L’heureux poète!
‘L’heureux poète’ indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. ‘The bath of Asia, with green jalousies,’ in which the lady dwells; ‘the old hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely square;’—were ever such things heard of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes, the vermin, whom he meets in the street,—how great and happy are all these discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and ‘gin,’ ‘cokneys,’ and the ‘quaterly’ have not the least effect upon him! And this gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams Shakspear, the ‘grave et vieux prophète,’ as he calls him, and never, for an instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd.
I don’t know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England; but his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in Kean the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit, with a speech beginning, ‘My Lords and Gentlemen;’ and a company of Englishwomen are introduced (at the memorable Coal-hole), and they all wear pinafores; as if the British female were in the invariable habit of wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it. There was another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject of Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made to play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a duel with Lord Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of Lords was represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen’s favour. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting they proceed to pelting; and pasteboard brickbats and cabbages came flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At this unpleasant juncture, Sir Hardinge, the Secretary at War, rises and calls in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious fall of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!
The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them. Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pig-tail, and spangled court coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has, invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather gaiters, and a long white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was represented in the old caricatures, after the peace, when Vernet designed him somewhat after the following fashion.
