It is the sense of its universal applicability that makes taste so
living an influence in France. French people "have taste" as naturally
as they breathe: it is not regarded as an accomplishment, like playing
the flute.
The universal existence of taste, and of the standard it creates--it
insists on--explains many of the things that strike Americans on first
arriving in France.
It is the reason, for instance, why the French have beautiful stone
quays along the great rivers on which their cities are built, and why
noble monuments of architecture, and gardens and terraces, have been
built along these quays. The French have always felt and reverenced the
beauty of their rivers, and known the value, artistic and hygienic, of a
beautiful and well-kept river-front in the heart of a crowded city.
When industrialism began its work of disfigurement in the great cities
of the world, long reaches of the Thames were seized upon by the
factory-builder, and London has only by a recent effort saved a short
stretch of her river front; even so, from the Embankment, whether at
Westminster or Chelsea, one looks across at ugliness, untidiness and
squalor.
When industrialism came to the wise old Latin cities--Paris, Lyons,
Bordeaux, Florence--their river banks were already firmly and
beautifully built up, and the factory chimneys had to find a footing in
the outskirts. Any American with eyes to see, who compares the
architectural use to which Paris has put the Seine with the wasteful
degradation of the unrivalled twin river-fronts of New York, may draw
his own conclusions as to the sheer material advantage of taste in the
creation of a great city.
Perhaps the most curious instance of taste-blindness in dealing with
such an opportunity is to be found in Boston, where Beacon Street calmly
turned its wealthy back to the bay, and fringed with clothes-lines the
shores that might have made of Boston one of the most beautifully
situated cities in the world. In this case, industry did not encroach or
slums degrade. The Boston aristocracy appropriated the shore of the bay
for its own residential uses, but apparently failed to notice that the
bay was there.
Taste, also--the recognition of a standard--explains the existence of
such really national institutions as the French Academy, and the French
national theatre, the Théâtre Français. The history of the former, in
particular, throws a light on much that is most distinctively French in
the French character.
It would be difficult for any one walking along the Quai Malaquais, and
not totally blind to architectural beauty, not to be charmed by the
harmony of proportion and beauty of composition of a certain building
with curved wings and a small central dome that looks across the Seine
at the gardens of the Louvre and the spires of Saint Germain
l'Auxerrois.
That building, all elegance, measure and balance, from its graceful
cupola to the stately stone vases surmounting the lateral
colonnades--that building is the old "Collège des Quatre Nations," the
Institute of France, and the home of the French Academy.
In 1635, at a time when France was still struggling with the heavy
inheritance of feudalism, a bad man and great statesman, the mighty
Cardinal Richelieu, paused in his long fight with the rebellious vassals
of the crown to create a standard of French speech: "To establish the
rules of the language, and make French not only elegant, but capable of
dealing with the arts and sciences."
Think of the significance of such an act at such a moment! France was a
welter of political and religious dissension; everything in the
monarchy, and the monarchy itself, was in a state of instability.
Austria and Spain menaced it from without, the great vassals tore it
asunder from within. During the Great Assizes of Auvergne some of the
most powerful of these nobles were tried, punished and stripped of their
monstrous privileges; and the record of their misdeeds reads like a
tale of Sicilian brigandage and Corsican vendetta.
Gradually the iron hand of Richelieu drew order--a grim pitiless
order--out of this uninhabitable chaos. But it was in the very thick of
the conflict that he seemed to feel the need of creating, then and
there, some fixed principle of civilised life, some kind of ark in which
thought and taste and "civility" could take shelter. It was as if, in
the general upheaval, he wished to give stability to the things which
humanise and unite society. And he chose "taste"--taste in speech, in
culture, in manners,--as the fusing principle of his new Academy.
The traditional point of view of its founder has been faithfully
observed for nearly three hundred years by the so-called "Forty
Immortals," the Academicians who throne under the famous cupola. The
Academy has never shrunk into a mere retreat for lettered pedantry: as
M. Saillens says in his admirable little book, "Facts about France":
"The great object of Richelieu was national unity," and "The Forty do
not believe that they can keep the language under discipline by merely
publishing a Dictionary now and then (the first edition came out in
1694). They believe that a standard must be set, and that it is for them
to set it. Therefore the Academy does not simply call to its ranks
famous or careful writers, but soldiers as well, bishops, scientists,
men of the world, men of social rank, so as to maintain from generation
to generation a national conservatory of good manners and good speech."
For this reason, though Frenchmen have always laughed at their Academy,
they have always respected it, and aspired to the distinction of
membership. Even the rebellious spirits who satirise it in their youth
usually become, in maturity, almost too eager for its recognition; and,
though the fact of being an Academician gives social importance, it
would be absurd to pretend that such men as Pasteur, Henri Poincaré,
Marshal Joffre, sought the distinction for that reason, or that France
would have thought it worthy of their seeking if the institution had not
preserved its original significance.
That significance was simply the safeguarding of what the French call
_les choses de l'esprit_; which cannot quite be translated "things of
the spirit," and yet means more nearly that than anything else. And
Richelieu and the original members of the Academy had recognised from
the first day that language was the chosen vessel in which the finer
life of a nation must be preserved.
It is not uncommon nowadays, especially in America, to sneer at any
deliberate attempts to stabilise language. To test such criticisms it is
useful to reduce them to their last consequence--which is almost always
absurdity. It is not difficult to discover what becomes of a language
left to itself, without accepted standards or restrictions; instances
may be found among any savage tribes without fixed standards of speech.
Their language speedily ceases to be one, and deteriorates into a
muddle of unstable dialects. Or, if an instance nearer home is needed,
the lover of English need only note what that rich language has shrunk
to on the lips, and in the literature, of the heterogeneous hundred
millions of American citizens who, without uniformity of tradition or
recognised guidance, are being suffered to work their many wills upon
it.
But at this point it may be objected that, after all, England herself
has never had an Academy, nor could ever conceivably have had one, and
that whatever the English of America has become, the English of England
is still the language of her great tradition, with perfectly defined
standards of taste and propriety.
England is England, as France is France: the one feels the need of
defining what the other finds it simpler to take for granted. England
has never had a written Constitution; yet her constitutional government
has long been the model of free nations. England's standards are all
implicit. She does not feel the French need of formulating and
tabulating. Her Academy is not built with hands, but it is just as
powerful, and just as visible to those who have eyes to see; and the
name of the English Academy is Usage.