There has always been in the minds of those who have amused themselves
with speculating upon the ultimate destiny of mankind a dim belief that
a good time is coming, when wars shall cease, distinctions of race fade
away, frontiers be abolished, and all nations, kindreds, and languages
be united in the great family of humanity, ruled by “the Parliament
of Man, the Federation of the World.” I should not care to be the
president of that assembly. But indeed there seems little likelihood
that the Millennium will begin yet awhile, or that we, as Englishmen,
shall have any immediate cause to regret our geographical position. As
matters stand at present, isolation has its obvious advantages, and,
judging by analogy, we should neither feel more friendly towards our
neighbors nor understand them better if we could shake hands with them
across an imaginary line, instead of bowing politely to them from the
other side of the waves which Britannia rules.
_Comprendre c’est pardonner._ Perhaps so; but we are a very long way
from understanding one another as yet. The simple beauty of Free
Trade is not recognised; standing armies have increased; potential
armies include whole nations, and ingenious persons continue to busy
themselves in devising machines for the wiping out of the largest
possible number of their fellow-creatures in the briefest possible
space of time. In short, it may safely be prophesied that the dawn of
universal peace will be deferred until there shall be a common consent
to keep the ninth commandment, which is as much as to say that we shall
none of us live to see the Greek Kalends.
But we are progressing towards the goal, some sanguine people affirm.
The movement of the earth, which is spinning through space at the
rate of over a thousand miles a minute, is imperceptible to the atoms
that crawl upon its surface; the movements of society are hardly to
be detected by its component parts, which vanish and are replaced
continually. What we do know is that we ourselves are bustling about
much more frequently and rapidly than our forefathers did. We have all
become more or less of rolling stones; and the moss of ignorance and
prejudice is being rubbed off us day by day. It seems natural to assume
that this must be so; but, as a matter of fact, is it so? Do Mr. Cook’s
excursionists obtain the smallest insight into the habits and character
of Continental nations? and do the more ambitious ladies and gentlemen
who would scorn to be “personally conducted” anywhere, and who hastily
survey mankind from China to Peru every year, bring back with them
any notion of what a Chinaman or a Peruvian is like beyond such
as might have been gathered from photographs purchased in Regent
Street? Steam power has enabled us to see many races of men, but it
has made it infinitely more difficult for us to know them. There is,
or there formerly was, in use among the Genevese a queer kind of
carriage, surrounded on three sides by leathern curtains, in which
the occupant sits as in a wagonette, contemplating only that portion
of the landscape which directly faces him; and it is narrated that
an Englishman once hired one of these conveyances, and, after making
the complete circuit of Lake Leman, inquired innocently where it
was. The modern English traveller labors under a somewhat similar
disadvantage. He spends his holidays abroad. He rubs elbows with the
natives in the streets; he gazes at the outside of their houses and at
their closed doors; but he has his back turned to them, as it were,
the whole time; he is among them, but he is not of them. They are not
interested in him. Nor is he ambitious of making their acquaintance. It
is not upon them that he depends for society. When his doctor orders
him to go south for the winter he has no change to dread or hope for,
except a change of scene and climate. Wherever he may go he will
be tolerably sure to find a more than sufficient assemblage of his
fellow-countrymen, an English club, a rubber of whist in the afternoon
if he wishes for it, lawn-tennis grounds innumerable, possibly even a
pack of hounds; and he will be invited to dinners and balls, at which
he may perchance from time to time meet a stray foreigner or two, just
as he might in London.
With this state of things the generality of us are very well contented.
We no longer think, as Lord Chesterfield did, that “it is of much more
consequence to know the _mores multorum hominum_ than the _urbes_;” and
the instructions issued by that shrewd old gentleman to his son, when
the latter was completing his education in foreign parts, are simply
amazing to fathers who live in the latter part of the nineteenth
century. “I hope,” says he, “that you will employ the evenings in the
best company in Rome. Go to whatever assemblies or _spectacles_ people
of fashion go to. Endeavor to outshine those who shine there the most;
get the _garbo_, the _gentilezza_, the _leggiadria_ of the Italians....
Of all things I beg of you not to herd with your countrymen, but to be
always either with the Romans or with the foreign ministers residing
at Rome,” and so forth. Fancy advising a young man of the present day
to “get the _garbo_ of the Italians,” and imagining that he would, or
could, do any such thing!
Lord Chesterfield, no doubt, was able to procure admission for
his son into “the best company” at Rome and elsewhere; but in the
præ-railway era most European capitals were very hospitably disposed
towards persons of less distinction. Provided that these were decent
sort of folks, and that they were received by their ministers,
no further questions were asked, and every facility was afforded
them for acquiring the _garbo_ of the Italians and whatever other
distinctive attributes the French or Germans may have been supposed
to possess. It is probable that they did not take much advantage of
these opportunities, for the English are not naturally imitative; but
at all events they learnt something about the manners and customs
of their entertainers. Most of us have seen letters written by our
grandfathers—possibly even by our fathers—which testify, with that
old-fashioned fulness of style which cheap postage has killed, what
a much more amusing experience travel was then than it is now. The
writers had all kinds of small adventures, incidents, and impressions
to recount; they jogged leisurely along the highroads of Europe in
their heavy travelling carriages, keeping their eyes open as they went;
when they reached a famous city they did not set to work to calculate
in how few days the sights of that city could be seen and done with,
but hired for themselves a house or an _appartement_, prepared for a
long stay, and presented their letters of introduction. Of course they
were in a small minority. Half a century ago it was not everybody who
had time enough or money enough to leave home for an indefinite period.
But, as far as the promotion of universal brotherhood is concerned,
the knowledge of the few may perhaps be as useful as the superficial
familiarity of the many.
As a means to the above end increased facility of locomotion seems to
have failed. Some time-honored superstitions have, it is true, been
swept away thereby; we no longer imagine that frogs form the staple
article of a Frenchman’s diet, while the French, on their other side,
do not now accuse us of selling our wives at Smithfield, although their
belief that we prefer raw to cooked meat appears to be ineradicable.
Yet there are very few Englishmen—so few that one might venture to
make a list of them—who can be said to be at home in French society
or to be capable of following the drift of French opinion. This last,
it must be confessed, is not an easy feat, and indeed can hardly
be accomplished by anything short of a prolonged residence in the
country. Foreigners naturally form their opinion of a nation as much
from reading as from personal observation, and probably there is no
people so ill-represented by its press as the French. Any one who
should read for a year the “Times,” the “Daily News,” the “Standard,”
and “Punch,” to say nothing of the weekly reviews, would be able, at
the end of that time, to pronounce a fairly accurate judgment upon
English politics and English habits of thought. Can it be supposed
that, after a twelvemonth’s patient study of the “Journal des Débats,”
the “République Française,” the “Figaro,” and the “Vie Parisienne,” the
inquiring stranger would be in an equally favorable position as regards
our neighbors across the water? English novels, again, may be said to
mirror English life faithfully, upon the whole, but if a man should
base his estimate of French society upon a study of the best French
novelists he would arrive at a conclusion almost grotesquely unlike the
truth.
For the French novelist, for all his so-called realism, takes neither
his characters nor his scenes from everyday life, his contention being
that, were he to do so, he would produce a work so insufferably dull
that no one would buy it. Writing, not as we do _virginibus puerisque_,
but for readers who like the dots to be placed upon the i’s, he sets
before them a succession of pictures from life, drawn often with great
power and insight into human nature, nearly always with scrupulous
exactitude of detail, and asserts—what cannot be denied—that they are
true pictures. It is a pity that they are usually unpleasant pictures,
and that they are liable to be misinterpreted by readers who adopt
the too common course of arguing from the particular to the general.
There is no occasion to dispute the accuracy of the scenes portrayed
in such books as “Le Nabab” or “Les Rois en Exil,” or to doubt that
the author could, if he chose, point to the living or dead originals
of his chief characters and declare that he has maligned none of them;
but when we find him, year after year dwelling and insisting upon what
is most ignoble in his fellow-creatures, we are surely entitled to
accuse him of a _suppressio veri_ and a _suggestio falsi_. With the
single exception of “Tartarin de Tarascon,” which is a burlesque, I do
not remember one of M. Daudet’s books, from “Fromont Jeune et Risler
Aîné,” down to “Sapho,” his last and infinitely his worst production,
which does not leave behind it a profound impression of sadness.
“C’est la faute de la vie, qui dicte,” he said once, in answer to this
reproach, as though life had but one side, or as though the literal
truthfulness of a photograph conveyed all that there is to be seen in a
landscape. But indeed some people, as we know, have the misfortune to
be color-blind, and to them, no doubt, the outlines of the world must
seem to be filled in rather with shade than with light. One may pay
a willing homage to M. Daudet’s genius and yet suspect that life, if
he had chosen to listen, might have dictated to him different stories
from those which he has published, and one may question whether his
sons will be much the better for reading “Sapho” even “quand ils auront
vingt ans.”
The subject of French fiction, its tendencies and its influences,
is too long a one to be more than glanced at here. The wit, the
brilliancy, the charm of style of About, Octave Feuillet, Cherbuliez,
Jules Clarétie, and others of less repute are familiar to most educated
men. Not all of them are such pessimists as M. Daudet; yet those who
know what _ordinary_ French life is will find only a faint reflection
of it in the novels of the above-named writers, unless it be here and
there in the pages of the first. It is always best to avoid making
statements which, from their very nature, are not susceptible of proof;
but, after associating pretty constantly with French people for a
matter of twenty years, I will take upon me to say that I doubt very
much whether the marriage-vow is broken more frequently in France than
elsewhere. That weary old tale of conjugal infidelity, which appears
to be as essential to the French novelist as the more legitimate love
affair and marriage at the end of the third volume are to his British
confrère, might, I believe, be told with as much or as little truth of
other countries. There is an old story of an artist who sent a sketch
of some Indian scene to one of the illustrated papers, and afterwards
complained that it had been tampered with before publication, a group
of palms having been introduced into the background, whereas those
trees were unknown in the region which he had depicted. “That is very
possible, Mr.----,” replied the editor; “but let me tell you that the
public expects palms in an Oriental landscape, and _will have them_.”
Not being a publisher, I am not in a position to affirm that the French
public expects, and will have, a breach of the seventh commandment in
its novels; but there is every reason to infer that such is the opinion
of French authors.
Of course it may be urged that, in literature as in forms of
government, people commonly get what they deserve, and that a public
which demands the kind of nutriment alluded to must be an unhealthy
and immoral sort of public. It should, however, be borne in mind that
there is a much larger portion of the French than of the English public
which never reads novels at all. Whether the immense sale commanded by
such works as “L’Assommoir” and “Nana” is or is not a sign of national
decadence is a question which will not be too hastily answered by any
one who remembers the various phases through which literature has
passed in other lands, but none need hesitate to say that the effect
produced by them upon outside opinion of France and the French has
been eminently unfavorable. It is not with impunity that a nation can
delight, or seem to delight, in the contemplation of foulness. France,
“ce pays de gens aimables, doux, honnêtes, droits, gais, superficiels,
pleins de bon cœur,” to quote M. Renan, who knows his countrymen
well and does not always flatter them, is becoming more and more
regarded as a sink of iniquity, and those who watch the development of
her manners, as illustrated by some of her most popular novelists, are
beginning to ask themselves whether any good can come out of Nazareth.
In England more especially this feeling is gaining ground. If we are
little, or not at all, better acquainted with the French people than
we were fifty years ago, we are a good deal better acquainted with
the French language. We read all the new French books, particularly
the new French novels (sometimes we have to keep them under lock and
key, and peruse them stealthily after the other members of the family
have gone to bed), and it is hardly surprising that we should take
our neighbors at what appears to be their own valuation. Englishmen,
sober, reticent—a trifle Pharisaical, it may be—cannot pardon writers
who take pleasure in stripping poor human nature of its last shred
of dignity and exhibiting it to the world under its most revolting
aspects. These things are true, the naturalistic school of novel
writers say. What then? we may return. Most people know that hideous
forms of vice exist; but most people think it is safer and wiser not
to talk about them. As for those who do not know, for what conceivable
reason should they be told? And so the Englishman, when he takes his
walk through the streets of Paris, feels that he would just as soon
have nothing to do with the unclean persons who, as he presumes inhabit
that city.
The truth is that there has never been any real sympathy between these
two nations, so nearly united in geographical position and by some
political ties and so widely separated in all other respects. Perhaps
our one and only point of resemblance is our common inability to
adapt ourselves to ways that are not our ways. A Frenchman, wherever he
goes, is always a Frenchman, and an Englishman is always an Englishman.
In this particular the Americans have the advantage of us. With their
keenness of observation, their restless curiosity, their desire to
pick out and appropriate whatever seems to them best in foreign lands,
the Americans have fewer prejudices and fewer antipathies than we who
live in the Old World. Their extreme sensitiveness does not often
take the form of self-consciousness; they readily pick up the tone of
the society that they frequent, and, although they are not as a rule,
first-rate linguists, they soon acquire enough knowledge of a language
to enable them to converse easily with the inhabitants of the country
in which they are sojourning. Moreover, they are less prone than we
are to save themselves trouble by accepting other people’s views, and,
whatever their opinion may be worth, are generally able at least to
give grounds for holding it.
In the case of our kinsmen on the other side of the Atlantic we have
of late years unquestionably made a great advance towards mutual
understanding, and, it may be added, friendship. Possibly we are none
the worse friends for having disliked one another very cordially not
so long ago. There is a prevalent impression in this country that the
quarrel was one-sided, that the Americans were irritated (excusably
perhaps) by our recognition of the Confederate States as belligerents,
as well as by the general sympathy that was felt in England for the
Southern cause, and that we really never said half such unpleasant
things about them as they did about us. But if they expressed their
aversion more loudly than we did it is not so certain that ours was
any less deep; and in our present liberal and enlightened mood we can
afford to admit that most of us had but a poor opinion of our cousins,
from a social point of view, twenty years back. I happened, towards the
close of the civil war, to be in a German city much frequented both
by English and Americans, who could hardly be induced to speak to one
another. The British chaplain of the place—remembering, I suppose,
that the Americans who attended his services contributed something
towards the defrayal of the expenses connected therewith—took it into
his head one Sunday to pray for the President of the United States,
a custom which has since become universal among mixed congregations
on the Continent. In those days it was an innovation, and an English
gentleman who was present marked his disapproval of it by thumping his
stick on the floor and saying aloud, “I thought this was an English
church!” after which he picked up his hat and walked out. It is only
fair to his compatriots to add that in the very pretty quarrel which
ensued they declined to support him: but I doubt whether it was so much
with his sentiments that they were displeased as with his disregard for
religious propriety. How the affair ended I do not know. Let us hope
that bloodshed was averted, and that the irate Briton was brought to
see that there could be no great harm in paying the same compliment to
the President of the United States as we are accustomed to pay to Jews,
Turks, infidels, and heretics. Squabbles of this kind are, happily,
now rare. The “Alabama” claims were settled long ago; Americans in
large numbers visit our shores every year, and are to be met with
pretty frequently in London society, where they are kind enough to
say that they have a lovely time; some are almost domiciled among us,
and have recorded in print their intimate acquaintance with our mode
of life in London and in the country. Perhaps their criticisms were a
trifle too subtle for us just at first, but now that the subtlety has
been discovered and proclaimed we quite delight in it. We, for our
parts, think no more of crossing the Atlantic than we used to think
of crossing the Channel; we partake of the boundless hospitality that
awaits us on the other side, and do not fail to let our entertainers
know how pleased we are with them before we re-embark. We used to add
a kindly expression of surprise at finding them so agreeable, but we
don’t do this any more now. If the perennial interchange of civilities
is sometimes broken by a stage aside we pretend not to hear it, and it
may safely be asserted that we have as much real affection for one
another as commonly subsists between collaterals. That, of course, is
saying no more than that we shall probably continue to be friends until
a cause for dispute arises; but more than this cannot, surely, be said
of any two nations upon the earth’s surface, and, fortunately, there is
little prospect of a difference between England and America which may
not be peaceably settled.
Since the war of 1870 our eyes have been turned towards Germany
with the interest and admiration which success must ever command.
Our military system has been remodelled upon the German system; we
have crowned our soldiers with a helmet somewhat resembling the
_Pickelhaube_, which is, I believe, found to be quite as inconvenient
as that celebrated head gear, and which is certainly several degrees
more unsightly. Also we have a high respect for Prince Bismarck,
considering him as the greatest statesman of the age, and drinking in
eagerly the reports of his utterances vouchsafed to us by Dr. Busch
and others. I have not, however, observed as yet any sign that we—as
represented by our Government—are inclined to display flattery in its
sincerest form by adopting the Chancellor’s decisive method of dealing
with any little difficulties that may arise.
In point of consanguinity the people whom he has succeeded in uniting
into a nation are not a long way removed from us; in times past they
have frequently been our allies; they have, moreover, given us our
reigning dynasty. Perhaps, upon the whole we get on better with them
than with any other continental race. Many English families repair to
Germany for educational purposes, are received at the smaller courts,
visited by the high-nobly born _Herrschaft_ with whom they are brought
into contact, and thus gain some idea of German ways. It has been said
that a sailor is the best of good fellows anywhere except on board
his own ship, when he is apt to become—well, not quite so good a
fellow. The contrary rule would appear to apply to the German, who is a
kindly, pleasant, person at home, but whose demeanor when abroad leaves
something to be desired. We have all met him in Italy or Switzerland,
and we are all aware that his manners, like Mr. Pumblechook’s, “is
given to blusterous.” We have suffered from the loud, harsh voice with
which Nature has afflicted him, as well as from his deep distrust of
fresh air and his unceremonious method of making his way to the front
at railway stations. But in their own country the Germans show to
much greater advantage. They are well-disposed towards strangers; not
a few of them have the sporting pro-civilities which are a passport
to the British heart; they are easily pleased, and are, in the main,
amiable, unassuming people. It is much to their credit that their sober
heads were never turned by victories which would assuredly have sent a
neighboring nation half crazy. Of course there are Germans and Germans,
and the inhabitants of the State which holds the chief rank in the
Empire have never been renowned for prepossessing manners or for an
excess of modesty. Even they, however, have a good deal of the innocent
unsuspiciousness which is one of the charms of the Teutonic character.
Not long ago I chanced to be speaking to a Prussian gentleman about
the ill-feeling which existed at that time between his country and
Russia, and which seemed likely enough to culminate in an outbreak of
hostilities. He assured me that the ill-feeling was entirely on the
Russian side.
“We have nothing against them,” he declared, “and we want nothing
from them; but they are angry with us, and that is easily explained.
They cannot get on without us; they are obliged to employ our people
everywhere instead of their own, and they are furious because they have
to acknowledge the superiority of the German intellect.”
I remarked that the superiority of the German intellect was manifest;
whereupon he shrugged his shoulders quickly, and snorted in the
well-known Prussian fashion, as who should say, “Could any one be such
a fool as to doubt it?”
I went on to observe that in philosophy, science, and music Germany led
mankind. He agreed with me, and added, “Also in the art of war.”
“The Germans,” I proceeded, “are the best-educated people in the
world;” and he replied, “No doubt.”
“And they are the pleasantest company.”
“Certainly,” answered he, “that is so.”
“And what adds so much to the attractiveness of their conversation,” I
continued, “is their delicate wit and keen perception of irony.”
I confess that after I had made this outrageous speech I shook in my
shoes and looked down at my plate. I ought never to have said it, and
indeed I would not have said it if he had not led me on until it became
irresistible. But there was no occasion for alarm. When I raised my
eyes to my neighbor’s face I found it irradiated with smiles. He laid
his hand on my arm quite affectionately.
“What you say is perfectly true,” he cried; “but do you know you are
the very first stranger I have ever met who has had the sense to
discover it?”
And then he explained to me that the Germans were absurdly considered
by Frenchmen and other superficial observers to be a rather dull-witted
and heavy race.
Now I really do not see how any one is to help liking a nation so
happily self-complacent. The Prussians are said to be arrogant and
overbearing; but I don’t think they are so, unless they are rubbed the
wrong way; and what pleasure is there in rubbing people the wrong way?
When Victor Hugo announces that France is supreme among nations, when
he invites us to worship the light that emanates from the holy city of
Paris, and hints that we might do well to worship also the proclaimer
of that light, we are half shocked and half incredulous. The bombast
seems too exaggerated to be sincere; it has the air of challenging and
expecting contradiction. We find it impossible to believe that any
sane man can really mean much of what this great poet tells us that he
means. French vanity—and Victor Hugo, whether at his highest or at his
lowest, is always essentially French—is not amusing. It is the kind of
vanity which is painful to witness, and which cannot but be degrading
to those who allow themselves to give way to it. But in the placid
North German self-approval there is a child-like element, which is not
unpleasing nor even wholly undignified. It may provoke a smile; but
the smile is a friendly one. These excellent stout professors and
bearded warriors who are so thoroughly pleased with themselves, and
who never suspect that anybody can be laughing at them, command our
sympathies—perhaps because John Bull himself is not quite a stranger
to the sensations that they experience.
Yet, when all is said and done, John Bull remains John Bull. German
philosophy, French wit, American acuteness, the “_garbo_ of the
Italians”—these things are not for him, nor is he specially desirous
of assimilating them. He is as God made him, and has an impression that
worse types have been created. At the bottom of his heart—though he no
longer speaks it out as freely as of yore—there still lurks the old
contempt for “foreigners.” As I have already made so bold as to say, I
do not think that the hustle and bustle of the present age have brought
him any clearer comprehension of these foreigners than his forefathers
possessed, or that the advent of the universal republic has been at all
hastened by the rise of democracy and the triumph of steam. Certainly
all men are human, and all dogs are dogs; but you will not convert a
bulldog into a setter by taking him out shooting, nor a mastiff into
a spaniel by keeping them in one kennel. It is doubtless well that
those who own a large number of dogs should encourage familiarity among
them, and restrain them from delighting to bark and bite, and it might
also be a good thing to induce them, if possible, to recognise each
others respective utilities. But they never do recognise these. On the
contrary, they contemplate one another’s performances with the deepest
disdain, and if we could see into the workings of their canine minds
we should very likely discover that each is perfectly satisfied with
himself, and as convinced that his breed is superior to all others as
Victor Hugo is that Paris is the light of the world.
Recent inventions have dealt some heavy blows at time and space, but
have not as yet done much towards abolishing national distinctions of
character. One result of them, as melancholy as it is inevitable, is
the slow vanishing of the picturesque. The period of general dead-level
has set in; old customs have fallen into abeyance and old costumes are
being laid aside. The “Ranz des Vaches” no longer echoes among the
Swiss mountains; the Spanish _sombrero_ has been discarded in favor
of a chimney-pot hat; the Hungarian nobles reserve their magnificent
frippery for rare state occasions, and the black coat, deemed so
significant a sign of the times by Alfred de Musset, is everywhere
replacing the gay clothing of a less material era. But, for all that,
mastiffs are mastiffs and spaniels spaniels. Democracy claims to be
cosmopolitan: perhaps some of us may live long enough to see what
the boast is worth. If it be permitted to ground a prophecy upon the
lessons of history, we may say that co-operation is possible only so
long as interests are identical, and that the mainspring of all human
collective action is, and will be, nothing more or less than that
selfishness which, as Lord Beaconsfield once told us, is another word
for patriotism.—_Cornhill Magazine._