Dans un square écarté, morne et couverte de givre,
Où se cache un hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;
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.
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,
Dont 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 favor. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting they proceeded 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 pigtail, 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.
And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of the “Naufrage de la Meduse,” the first act is laid on board an English ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue or green coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the color accurately), and TOP-BOOTS!
Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any more remarks. The force of blundering can go no further. Would a Chinese playwright or painter have stranger notions about the barbarians than our neighbors, who are separated from us but by two hours of salt water?
MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES.
The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bricabrac shop of late years, and its time-honored walls have been covered with many thousand yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on. I don’t know how many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy visitor is now obliged to march through, amidst a crowd of chattering Paris cockneys, who are never tired of looking at the glories of the Grenadier Français; to the chronicling of whose deeds this old palace of the old kings is now altogether devoted. A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither from Paris, bringing shoals of badauds in its wake. The old coucous are all gone, and their place knows them no longer. Smooth asphaltum terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have frightened them away from the pleasant station they used to occupy under the trees of the Champs Elysées; and though the old coucous were just the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever constructed, one can’t help looking back to the days of their existence with a tender regret; for there was pleasure then in the little trip of three leagues: and who ever had pleasure in a railway journey? Does any reader of this venture to say that, on such a voyage, he ever dared to be pleasant? Do the most hardened stokers joke with one another? I don’t believe it. Look into every single car of the train, and you will see that every single face is solemn. They take their seats gravely, and are silent, for the most part, during the journey; they dare not look out of window, for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes whizzing by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down train; they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness: through awful pipes of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the bowels of gentle mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on, puffing and screaming. Does any man pretend to say that he ENJOYS the journey?—he might as well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he IS afraid: nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I am sure Hannibal or Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at this dizzy pace. You can’t stop, if you would:—you may die, but you can’t stop; the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go along with it; or, may be a bolter and take a fancy to go down a hill, or into a river: all this you must bear, for the privilege of travelling twenty miles an hour.