The American character is now generally acknowledged to be the most
cosmopolitan of modern times; and a native of this country, all things
being equal, is likely to form a less prescriptive idea of other nations
than the inhabitants of countries whose neighborhood and history unite
to bequeathe and perpetuate certain fixed notions. Before the frequent
intercourse now existing between Europe and the United States, we
derived our impressions of the French people, as well as of Italian
skies, from English literature. The probability was that our earliest
association with the Gallic race partook largely of the ridiculous.
All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism,
strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a
Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner
stories. Our first personal acquaintance often confirmed this prejudice;
for the chance was that the one specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to
our childhood proved a poor _émigré_ who gained a precarious livelihood
as a dancing-master, cook, teacher, or barber, who was profuse of
smiles, shrugs, bows, and compliments, prided himself on _la belle
France_, played the fiddle, and took snuff. A more dignified view
succeeded, when we read "Télémaque," so long an initiatory text-book
in the study of the language, blended as its crystal style was in our
imaginations with the pure and noble character of Fénelon. Perhaps the
next link in the chain of our estimate was supplied by the bust of
Voltaire, whose withered, sneering physiognomy embodies the wit and
indifference, the soulless vagabondage that forms the worst side of
the national mind. As patriotic sentiment awakened, the disinterested
enthusiasm of Lafayette, woven, as it is, into the record of the
struggle which gave birth to our republic, yielded another and more
attractive element to the fancy portrait. Then, as our reading expanded,
came the tragic chronicle of the first French Revolution and the
brilliant and dazzling melodrama of Napoleon, the traditions so pathetic
and sublime of gifted women, the _tableaux_ so exciting to a youthful
temper of military glory. And thus, by degrees, we found ourselves
bewildered by the most vivid contrasts and apparently irreconcilable
traits, until the original idea of a Frenchman expanded to the widest
range of associations, from the ingenious devices of a mysterious
_cuisine_ to the brilliant manoeuvres of the battle-field; infinite
female tact, rare philosophic hardihood, inimitable _bon-mots_,
exquisite millinery, consummate generalship, holy fortitude, refined
profligacy, and intoxicating sentiment,--Ude, Napoleon, Madame Récamier,
Pascal, Ninon de I'Enclos, and Rousseau. Casual associations and
desultory reading thus predispose us to recognize something half comical
and half enchanting in French life; and it depends on accident, when we
first visit Paris, which view is confirmed. The society of one of those
benign _savans_ who attract the sympathy and win the admiration of
young students may yield a delightful and noble association to our
future reminiscences; or an unmodified experience of cynical hearts
joined to scenical manners may leave us nothing to regret, upon our
departure, save the material advantages there enjoyed. But whoever knows
life in Paris, unrelieved by some consistent and individual purpose,
will find it a succession of excitements, temporary, yet varied,--full
of the agreeable, yet barren of consecutive interest and satisfactory
results,--admirable as a recreative hygiene, deplorable as a permanent
resource; their inevitable consequence being a faith in the external, a
dependence on the immediate, and a habit of vagrant pleasure-seeking,
which must at last cloy and harden the manly soul. For this very reason,
however, the scenes, characters, and society there exhibited are
prolific of suggestion to the philosophic mind.
In every phase of life, manners, and action, we see a characteristic
excellence in detail and process, and an equally remarkable deficiency
in grand practical idea and consistent moral sentiment. The French
chemists have the art to extract quinine from Peruvian bark and conserve
the juices of meats; but one of their most patriotic writers calls
attention to the wholly diverse motives addressed by Napoleon and Nelson
to their respective followers. "Soldiers," exclaimed the former, "from
the summit of those Pyramids forty ages are looking down upon you."
"England," said the latter, "expects every man to do his duty." In
Paris, the science of dissection is perfect; in London, that of
nutrition;--Dumas has reduced plagiarism to a fine art; Cobbett made
common-sense a social lever;--a British merchant or statesman attaches
his name to a document in characters of such individuality that the
signature is known at a glance; a French official invents a flourish
so intricate that the forger's ingenuity is baffled in the attempt to
imitate it;--government, on one side of the Channel, employs a taster to
detect adulteration in wine whose sensitive palate is a fortune; on
the other, the hereditary fame of a brewery is the guaranty of the
excellence of ale.
This minute observance of detail has made the French leaders in fashion;
it directs invention to the minutiæ of dress, and confirms the sway of
the conventional, so as to give la mode the force of social law to an
extent unknown elsewhere. The tyranny and caprice of fashion were as
characteristic in Montaigne's day as at present. "I find fault with
their especial indiscretion," he says, "in suffering themselves to be so
imposed upon and blinded by the authority of the present custom as
every month to alter their opinion." "In this country," writes Yorick,
"nothing must be spared for the back; and if you dine on an onion, and
lie in a garret seven stories high, you must not betray it in your
clothes."
The superiority of the French in the minor philosophy of life was
curiously exemplified during our Revolutionary War. The octogenarians of
Rhode Island used to expatiate on the remarkable difference between the
troops of France and those of England when quartered among them. The
former speedily made a series of little arrangements, and fell naturally
into a pleasant routine, making the best of everything, adapting
themselves to the ways and prejudices of the inhabitants, and, in a
word, becoming assimilated at once to a new mode of life and form of
society; their wit, cheerfulness, and gallantry are yet proverbial
in that region. The English, on the other hand, even when in full
possession of the country, made but an awkward use of their privileges,
were ill-at-ease, failed to recognize anything genial in the habits and
manners even of the Tory families. While the French officers introduced
the mysteries of their _cuisine_, and brightened many a rustic
household with song, anecdote, dance, and conversation, the English
complained of the simple viands, regretted London fogs and beer,
and made themselves and their hosts, whether forced or voluntary,
uncomfortable. They exhibited no tact or facility in improving the
resources at hand, and relied only on brute force to win advantage. We
beheld the same contrast recently in the Crimea; while exposure and
impatience thinned the ranks of the brave islanders, their Gallic
allies constructed roads, dug where they could not build a shelter, and
ingeniously prepared various dishes from a meagre larder, fighting off,
meantime, chagrin and _ennui_ with as much alacrity as they did
Cossacks.
_Finesse_ characterizes servants not less than courtiers, the
cab-driver as well as the notary, the composition of a dish as well as
the drift of a comedy. This quality seems a result of the conflict of
intelligences in a state of great, material civilization; nowhere is it
more observable than in Paris life. What bullyism is to the English,
shrewdness to the Yankee, and intrigue to the Italian, is _finesse_,
which is a union of insight and address, to the French. This normal
attribute is another proof how the economy of Gallic life is reduced to
an art. It is the expression in manners of Rochefoucauld's maxims,
of Richelieu's policy, of Talleyrand's cunning. It is favored by the
tendency to minuteness of excellence and love of system before noted.
To understand what superior range is afforded to such a principle in
France, it is only requisite to consult the memoirs of a celebrated
woman, or even an old Guide or Picture of Paris, such as in former days
the provincial gentlemen used to study over their breakfast, in order
to learn the _savoir vivre_ of the metropolis. Itineraries of other
cities merely describe streets, public institutions, the fairs,
the courts, and the places of fashionable amusement; one of these
curiosities of literature now before us, published less than a century
ago, describes, as available resources to the stranger, _Gouvernantes,
Émeutes, Rêves Politiques, L'Art de Diner, Bureaux d'Esprit_,
--corresponding to our modern blue-stocking coteries, _femmes de
quarante ans_, with their "_deux ressources, la dévotion et le bel
esprit"; Contre Poisons_,--indispensable in those days of jealousy
and assassination; _Pots de Fleurs_ form an item of the most limited
establishment; emblems, such as _Rubans_ and _Bonnets Rouges_, are
described as essential to the intelligent conduct of the visitor; and a
chapter is devoted to Gallantry, of which a modern author in the same
department pensively remarks, "_Cette ancienne galanterie qui vivait
d'esprit et d'infidélités est comptlètement dénaturée_."
It is curious how municipal, economical, and social life are thus
simultaneously daguerreotyped and indicate their mutual and intricate
association in the French capital. Its history involves that of
churches, congresses, academies, prisons, cemeteries, and police, each
of which represents domestic and royal vicissitudes. What other city
furnishes such a work as the Duchess D'Abrantes' "Histoire des Salons
de Paris"? The _salons_ of Madame Necker, Polignac, De Beaumont, De
Mazarin, Roland, De Genlis, of Condorcet, of Malmaison, of Talleyrand,
and of the Hôtel Rambouillet, etc., embrace the career of statesmen
and soldiers, the literary celebrities, the schools of philosophy,
the revolutions, the court, the wars, diplomacy, and, in a word, the
veritable annals of France. Society, according to this lively writer, in
the proper acceptation of the term, was born in France in the reign of
the Cardinal de Richelieu; and thenceforth, in its history, we trace
that of the nation.
Throughout the most salient eras of this history, therefore, is visible
female influence. Cousin has just revived the career of Madame de
Longueville, which is identified with the cabals, financial expedients,
and war of the Fronde; tournaments, which formed so striking a feature
in the diversions of Louis XIV.'s court, owed their revival to the whim
of one of his mistresses; Montespan fostered a brood of satirists,
and Maintenon one of devotees, while that extraordinary religious
controversy which initiated the sect of the Quietists had its origin in
the example and agency of Madame Guyon. Even now, although, as a late
writer has quaintly observed, "no lady brings her distaff to the
council-chamber," the influence of the sex on political opinion, in
its operation as a social principle, is recognized. A friend of mine,
returning from a dinner-party, described the free and witty sarcasm with
which a fair Legitimist assailed the Imperial rule; a week afterwards,
meeting her at the same table, she related, that, a few days after her
imprudent conversation, she received a courteous invitation from the
chief of police. "When they were seated alone in his bureau,--Madame,"
said he, "you have position, conversational talent, and wield the pen
effectively; are you disposed to exert this influence, henceforth, in
behalf of, instead of against the government?" Before her indignant
negative was fairly uttered, he opened a drawer that seemed full of
Napoleons, and glanced at them and her significantly. Thus Montesquieu's
observation continues true:--"The individual who would attempt to judge
of the government by the men at the head of affairs, and not by the
women who sway those men, would fall into the same error as he who
judges of a machine by its outward-action, and not by its secret
springs"; and the old base system of espionage is revived under the new
despotism.
It has become proverbial in France, that the life of woman has three
eras,--in youth a coquette, in middle-life a wit, and in age a
_dévote_,--which is but another mode of expressing that economy of
personal gifts, that shrewd use of the most available social power,
which distinguishes the Gallic from the Saxon woman, the worldly from
the domestic instincts. There only can we imagine a royal favorite
admitting her indebtedness to a royal wife. "To her," wrote Madame de
Maintenon of the Queen of Louis; "I owe the King's affection. Picture
a sovereign worn out with state affairs, intrigues, and ceremonies,
possessed of a _confidante_ always the same, always calm, always
rational, equally able to instruct and to soothe, with the intelligence
of a confessor and the winning gentleness of a woman." It is peculiar
to the sex there to escape outward soil, whatever may be their moral
exposure; for one instinctively recognizes a Frenchwoman by her clean
boots, even in the muddiest thoroughfare, her spotless muslin cap,
kerchief, and collar. She retains also her individuality after marriage
better than the fair of other nations, not only in character, but in
name, the maiden appellative being joined to her husband's, so that,
although a Madame, she keeps the world informed that she was _née_ of a
family whose title, however modest, she will not drop. The maxims, so
prevalent in France, which declare matrimony the tomb of love, are
the legitimate result of a superficial theory of life and the mutual
independence of the sexes thence arising; accordingly we are assured,
"C'est surtout entre mari et femme que l'amour a le moins de chance de
succès. Ils vieillirent ensemble comme deux portraits de famille, sans
aucune intimité, aucun profit pour l'esprit, et arrivés au dernier
relais de leur existence, le souvenir n'avait rien à faire entre eux."
It is a curious illustration at once of the mobility and the isolation
of the French mind, that, while it assimilates elements within its
sphere which in other nations are kept comparatively apart, it rejects
the process in regard to foreign material. Thus, in no other capital are
politics and literature so interwoven with society; the love-affairs of
a minister directly influence his policy; the tone of the _salon_
often inspires and moulds the author; the social history of an epoch
necessarily includes the genius of its statesmanship and of its letters,
because they are identified with the intrigues, _the bon-mots_, and the
conversation of the period; more is to be learned at a lady's morning
reception or evening _soirée_ than in the writer's library or the
official's cabinet. On the other hand, how few threads from abroad can
be found in this mingled web of civic, literary, and social life! The
vicinity of England and the influx of Englishmen have scarcely brought
the ideas or the sentiment of that country into nearer recognition at
Paris than was the case a century ago. Notwithstanding an occasional
outbreak of Anglomania, the best French authors spell English proper
names no better, the best French critics appreciate Shakspeare as
little, and the majority of Parisians have no less partial and fixed a
notion of the characteristics of their insular neighbors, than before
the days of journalism and steam. The attempts to represent English
manners and character are as gross caricatures now as in the time of
Montaigne. However apt at fusion within, the national egotism is
as repugnant to assimilation from without as ever. The stock seems
incapable of vital grafting, as has been remarkably evidenced in all the
colonial experiments of France.
The excellence of the French character, intellectually speaking,
consists in routine and detail. How well their authors describe and
their artists depict peculiarities! how exact the evolutions of a French
regiment, and the statements of a French naturalist! how apt is a
Parisian woman in raising gracefully her skirts, throwing on a shawl, or
carrying a basket! In loyalty to a method they are unrivalled, in the
triumph of individualities weak; their artisans can make a glove fit
perfectly, but have yet to learn how to cut out a coat; their authors,
like their soldiers, can be marshalled in groups; means are superior
to ends; manners, the exponent of Nature in other lands, there color,
modify, and characterize the development of intellect; the subordinate
principle in government, in science, and in life, becomes paramount;
drawing, the elemental language of Art, is mastered, while the standard
of expression remains inadequate; the laws of disease are profoundly
studied, while this knowledge bears no proportionate relation to the
practical art of healing; the ancient rules of dramatic literature are
pedantically followed, while the "pity and terror" they were made to
illustrate are unawakened; the programme of republican government is
lucidly announced, its watchwords adopted, its philosophy expounded,
while its spirit and realization continue in abeyance: and thus
everywhere we find a singular disproportion between formula and fact,
profession and practice, specific knowledge and its application. The
citizen of the world finds no armory like that which the institutions,
the taste, and the genius of the French nation afford him, whether he
aspire to be a courtier or a chemist, a soldier or a _savant_, a dancer
or a doctor; and yet, for complete equipment, he must temper each weapon
he there acquires, or it will break in his hand.
In every epoch a word rules or illustrates the dominant spirit:
_citoyen_ in the Revolution, _moustache_ during the Consulate,
_victoire_ under the Empire, to-day _la Bourse_. "To a Frenchman," says
Mrs. Jameson, "the words that express things seem the things themselves,
and he pronounces the words _amour, grâce, sensibilité_, etc., with a
relish in his mouth as if he tasted them, as if he possessed them. They
talk of "_le sentiment du métier_"; in travelling, Paris is the eternal
theme. A sagacious observer has remarked in their language the "short,
aphoristic phrase, the frequent absence of the copulative, avoidance of
dependent phrases, and disdain of modifying adverbs. _Naiveté, abandon,
ennui_, etc., are specific terms of the language, and designate national
traits. When Beaumarchais ridiculed a provincial expression, the
Dauphiness, we are told, composed a head-dress expressly to give it a
local habitation and a name."
The mania for equality, in the first Revolution, De Tocqueville shows
was not so much the result of political aspiration as the fierce protest
against those exclusive rights once enjoyed by the nobility, (shown by
Arthur Young to have been the primary impulse to revolution,) to hunt,
keep pigeons, grind corn, press grapes, etc. For a long period, the man
of letters was never combined with the statesman, as in England. In
France, speculation in government ran wild, because the thinkers,
suddenly raised to influence in affairs, had enjoyed no ordeal of public
duty. Hence certain imaginary fruits of liberty were sought, and its
absolute worth misunderstood. And now that experience, dearly bought,
has modified visionary and moulded practical theories, how much of the
normal interest of the French character has evaporated! Even the love
of beauty and the love of glory, proverbially its distinctions, are
eclipsed by the sullen orb of Imperialism; the Bourse is more attractive
than the battle-field, material luxury than artistic distinction.
One of their own philosophers has summed up, with justice, the anomalous
elements of the versatile national character:--
"Did there ever appear on the earth another nation so fertile in
contrasts, so extreme in its acts,--more under the dominion of
feeling, less ruled by principle; always better or worse than was
anticipated,--now below the level of humanity, now far above; a people
so unchangeable in its leading features that it may be recognized by
portraits drawn two or three thousand years ago, and yet so fickle in
its daily opinions and tastes that it becomes at last a mystery to
itself, and is as much astonished as strangers at the sight of what it
has done; naturally fond of home and routine, yet, when once driven
forth and forced to adopt new customs, ready to carry principles to
any lengths and to dare anything; indocile by disposition, but better
pleased with the arbitrary and even violent rule of a sovereign than
with a free and regular government under its chief citizens; now fixed
in hostility to subjection of any kind, now so passionately wedded to
servitude that nations made to serve cannot vie with it; led by a thread
so long as no word of resistance is spoken, wholly ungovernable when the
standard of revolt is raised,--thus always deceiving its masters,
who fear it too much or too little; never so free that it cannot be
subjugated, never so kept down that it cannot break the yoke; qualified
for every pursuit, but excelling in nothing but war; more prone to
worship chance, force, success, _éclat_, noise, than real glory; endowed
with more heroism than virtue, more genius than common sense; better
adapted for the conception of grand designs than the accomplishment of
great enterprises; the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation
of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred,
terror, or pity, but never indifference?"[1]
What other social sphere could afford room for the vocation so aptly
described in the following sketch of his "ways and means," given in a
recent picture of life in Paris by a sycophant of millionnaires, at
a period when interests, not rights, are the watchwords of the
nation?--"Mon rôle de familier dans une véritable population d'enrichis
me donnait du crédit dans les boudoirs, et mon crédit dans les boudoirs
ajoutait à ma faveur près ces pauvres diables de millionaires, presque
tous vieux et blasés, courant toujours en chancelant après un plaisir
nouveau. Les marchands de vin me font la cour comme les jolies femmes,
pour que je daigne leur indiqner des connaisseurs assez riches pour
payer les bonnes choses le prix qu'elles valent. Mon métier est de tout
savoir,--l'anecdote de la cour, le scandale de la ville, le secret des
coulisses." And this species of adventurer, we are told, has always the
same commencement to his memoirs,--"_Il vint à Paris en sabots._"
[Footnote 1: De Tocqueville.]
The numerous avocations of women in the French capital explain, in a
measure, their superior tact, efficiency, and force of character. This
is especially true of females of the middle class, who have been justly
described as remarkable for good sense and appropriate costumes. The
participation of women in so many departments of art and industry
affects, also, the social tone and the manners. Sterne, long ago,
remarked it of the fair shopkeepers. "The genius of a people," he says,
"where nothing but the monarchy is _Salique_, having ceded this
department totally to the women, by a continual higgling with customers
of all ranks and sizes, from morning to night, like so many rough
pebbles in a bag, by amicable collisions, they have worn down their
asperities and sharp angles, and not only become round and smooth, but
will receive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant."
How distinctly may be read the political vicissitudes of France in her
literature,--classic, highly finished, keen, and formal, when a monarch
was idolized and authors wrote only for courts and scholars: Bossuet,
with his rhetorical graces; La Bruyère, with his gallery of characters,
not one of which was moulded among the people; De la Rochefoucauld's
maxims, drawn from the arcana of fashionable life; Racine, whose heroes
die with an immaculate couplet and speak the faint echoes of Grecian or
Roman sentiment! When politics became common property, and the walls of
a prescriptive and conventional system fell, how wild ran speculation
and sentiment in the copious and superficial Voltaire and the vague
humanities of Rousseau! When an era of military despotism supervened
upon the reign of license, how destitute of lettered genius seemed the
nation, except when the pensive enthusiasm of Chateaubriand breathed
music from American wilds or a London garret, and Madame de Staël gave
utterance to her eloquent philosophy in exile at Geneva! "_Napoléon eût
voulu faire manoeuvrer l'esprit humain comme il faisait manoeuvrer ses
vieux bataillons_." Yet more emphatic is the reaction of political
conditions upon literary development after the Restoration. The tragic
horrors and protracted fever of the Revolution, and the passion for
military glory exaggerated by the victories of Napoleon, legitimately
initiated the intense school, which during the present century has
signalized French literature. The _prestige_ of the scholar revived, and
literary eclipsed warlike fame; but with the revival of letters came
the revolutionary spirit before exhibited on the battle-field and
in cabinets. For the artificial and elegant was substituted the
melodramatic and effective; lyrics from the overwrought heart broke in
dreamy sweetness from Lamartine and in simple energy from Béranger;
fiction the most elaborate, incongruous, and exciting, here quaintly
artistic, there morbidly scientific, revealed the chaos and the
earthquakes that laid bare and upheaved life and society in the
preceding epochs; the journal became an intellectual gymnasium and
Olympic game, where the first minds of the nation sought exercise and
glory; the _feuilleton_ almost necessitated the novelist to concentrate
upon each chapter the amount of interest once diffused through a volume;
criticism, from tedious analysis, became a brilliant ordeal; egotism
inspired a world of new confessions, political questions a new school
of popular writing, the love of effect and the passion for excitement a
multitude of dramatic, narrative, and biographical books, wherein the
serenity of thought, the tranquil beauty of truth, and the healthful
tone of nature were sacrificed, not without dazzling genius, to
immediate fame, pecuniary reward, and the delight _d'éprouver une
sensation_. Even in the history of the fine arts, we find the political
element guiding the pencil and ruling the fortunes of genius. David was
the government painter, and regarded Gros and Girodet as _suspects_.
He effected a revolution in Art by going back to severe anatomical
principles in design. There were conspiracies against him in the
studios, and war was declared between color and design; the palette
and the pencil were in conflict; David, the Napoleon of the
former,--Prud'hon, Géricault, Delacroix, and others, leaders in the
latter faction. Each party was surrounded by its respective corps of
amateurs; and military terms were in vogue in the _atelier_ and academy.
"_S'il est permis_" says Delacroix, speaking of his Sardanapalus,
"de comparer les petites choses aux grandes, ce fut mon Waterloo. Je
devenais l'abomination de la peinture; il fallait me refuser l'eau et
le sel." "If you wish to share the favors of the government," said an
official to another artist, "you must change your manner." From the
tyranny of external influences have arisen the incongruities of the
French schools of painting, and especially what has been well called
"that meretricious breed which continue to depict the Magdalen with
the united attractions of Palestine and the Palais Royal." The large
pictures which Gros painted during the Empire were consigned to
long obscurity at the Restoration. The lives, too, of many of these
cultivators of the arts of peace had a tragic close. Haydon's fate made
a deep impression in England, because it was an exceptional case; while,
of the modern painters of France, whose career was far more harmonious
and successful than his, Gros drowned himself, Robert cut his throat,
Prud'hon died in misery, and Greuze was buried in Potter's Field. The
side of life we naturally associate with tranquillity thus offers, in
this dramatic realm, scenes of excitement and pity. It is the same in
literature. Witness the fierce struggle between the Romantic and Classic
schools,--the early victories of the _enfant sublime_, Victor Hugo.
And we must acknowledge that "_les lettres et les arts ont aussi leurs
émeutes et leurs révolutions_," and accept the inference of one of the
_Parisian literati_,--that "_l'esprit a toujours quelque chose de
satanique_." Every revolution is identified with some musical air: when
Louis XVIII. first appeared at the theatre, after his long exile, he was
greeted with the "Vive Henri IV.," and the new constitution of 1830 was
ushered in by the "Marseillaise." The Vaudeville theatre, we are told,
during the Revolution and under the Empire, was essentially political.
An imaginary resemblance between _la chaste Suzanne_ and Marie
Antoinette caused the prohibition of that drama; and the interest which
Cambacères took in an actress of this establishment led him to give it
his official protection.
In the family of nations France is the child of illusions, and excites
the sympathy of the magnanimous because her destinies have been marred
through the errors of the imagination rather than of the heart.
Government, religion, and society--the three great elements of civil
life--have nowhere been so modified by the dominion of fancy over fact.
Take the history of French republicanism, of Quietism, of court and
literary circles; what perspicuity in the expression, and vagueness
in the realization of ideas! In each a mania to fascinate, in none a
thorough basis of truth; abundance of talent, but no faith; gayety,
gallantry, wit, devotion, dreams, and epigrams in perfection, without
the solid foundation of principles and the efficient development in
practice, either of polity, a social system, or religious belief,--the
theory and the sentiment of each being at the same time luxuriant,
attractive, and prolific.
The popular writers are eloquent in abstractions, but each seems
inspired by a thorough egotism. Descartes, their philosopher, drew all
his inferences from consciousness; Madame de Sévigné, the epistolary
queen, had for her central motive of all speculation and gossip the love
of her daughter; Madame Guyon eliminated her tenets from the ecstasy of
self-love; Rochefoucauld derived a set of philosophical maxims from the
lessons of mere worldly disappointment; Calvin sought to reform society
through the stern bigotry of a private creed; La Bruyère elaborated
generic characters from the acute, but narrow observation of artificial
society; Boileau established a classical standard of criticism suggested
by personal taste, which ignored the progress of the human mind.
The redeeming grace of the nation is to be found in its wholesome sense
of the enjoyable and the available in ordinary life, in its freedom
from the discontent which elsewhere is born of avarice and unmitigated
materialism. The love of pleasing, the influence of women, and a
frivolous temper everywhere and on all occasions signalize them. "Why,
people laugh at everything here!" naively exclaimed the young Duchess of
Burgundy, on her arrival at the French court.
The amount of commodities taken by French people on a journey, and the
cool self-satisfaction with which they are appropriated as occasion
demands, give a stranger the most vivid idea of sensual egotism. The
_pâté_, the long roll of bread, the sour wine, the lap-dog, the snuff,
and the night-cap, which transform the car or carriage into a refectory
and boudoir, with the chatter, snoring, and shifting of legs, make an
interior scene for the novice, especially on a night-jaunt, compared to
which the humblest of Dutch pictures are refined and elegant.
The intrinsic diversity and the national relations between the French
and English are curiously illustrated by their respective history and
literature. Compare, for instance, the plays of Shakspeare, which
dramatize the long wars of the early kings, with the account given in
the journals of the reception of Victoria at Paris and of Louis Napoleon
in London; imagine the royal salutation and the official recognition of
the once anathematized Napoleon dynasty; General Bonaparte becomes in
his tomb Napoleon I. No wonder "Punch" affirmed that the statue of Pitt
shook its bronze head and the bones of Castlereagh stirred in protest.
"The English," says a celebrated writer, "like ancient medals, kept more
apart, preserve the first sharpness which the fair hand of Nature has
given them; they are not so pleasant to feel, but, in return, the legend
is so visible, that, at the first look, you can see whose image and
superscription they bear." This is a delicate way of setting forth
the superior honesty and bluntness and the inferior smoothness and
assimilating instinct of the Anglo-Saxon,--a vital difference, which
no alliance or intercourse with his Gallic neighbors can essentially
change.
A century ago there were few better tests of popular sentiment in
England than the plays in vogue. As indications of the state of the
public mind, they were what the ballads are to earlier times, and the
daily press is to our own,--generalized casual, but emphatic proofs of
the opinions, prejudices, and fancies of the hour. Now a large English
colony is domesticated in France; it is but a few hours' trip from
London to Paris; newspapers and the telegraph in both capitals make
almost simultaneous announcements of news; the soldiers of the two
nations fight side by side; the French shopman declares on his sign that
English is spoken within; the "Times," porter, and tea are obtainable
commodities in Paris; and _fraternité_ is the watchword at Dover and
Calais. Yet the normal idea which obtains in the conservative brain of a
genuine _Anglais_, though doubtless expanded and modified by intercourse
and treaties, may be found still in that once popular drama, Foote's
"Englishman in Paris." "A Frenchman," says one of the characters, "is a
fop. Their taste is trifling, and their politeness pride. What the deuse
brings you to Paris, then? Where's the use? It gives Englishmen a true
relish for their own domestic happiness, a proper veneration for their
national liberties, and an honor for the extended generous commerce of
their country. The men there are all puppies, the women painted dolls."
Monsieur Ragout and Monsieur Rosbif bandy words; the former is said to
"look as if he had not had a piece of beef or pudding in his paunch for
twenty years, and had lived wholly on frogs,"--and the latter pines to
leap a five-barred gate, and is afraid of being entrapped by "a rich
she-Papist." His fair countrywoman is invited by a French marquis to
marry him, with this programme,--"A perpetual residence in this paradise
of pleasures; to be the object of universal adoration; to say what you
please,--go where you will,--do what you like,--form fashions,--hate
your husband, and let him see it,--indulge your gallant,--run in debt,
and oblige the poor devil to pay it."
As a pendant, take the description of one of the last French novels:--"À
Paris tout s'oublie, tout se pardonne. Par convenance, par décence,
quelquefois par crainte, on s'absente, ou fait un entr'acte: puis le
rideau se rèleve pour le spectacle de nouvelles fautes et de nouvelles
folies; toute la question est de savoir s'y prendre."
Comedy is native to French genius and appreciation; it follows the
changes of social life with marvellous celerity; it is the best school
of the French language; and is refined and subdivided, as an art, both
in degree and kind, in France more than in any other country. The
prolific authors in this department, and the variety and richness of
invention they display, as well as the permanent attraction of the Comic
Muse, are striking peculiarities of the French theatre. No capital
affords the material and the audience requisite for such triumphs like
Paris; and there is always a play of this kind in vogue there, wherein
novelty of combination, significance of dialogue, and artistic
felicities quite unrivalled elsewhere, are exhibited.
It is quite the reverse with the serious drama. In England this is a
form of literature which goes nearest to the normal facts and conditions
of human nature; it teaches the highest and deepest lessons, wins the
most profound sympathy, and is remarkable and interesting through its
subtile and comprehensive truth to Nature: whereas in France the masters
of tragic art are but skilful reproducers of the classical drama. French
tragedy is essentially artificial, grafted on the conventionalities of
a distant age. It gives scope either to mere elocutionary art or
melodramatic invention,--not to the universal and existing passions.
There is but a slender opportunity to identify our sympathies--those of
modern civilization--with what is going on. Figures in Roman togas
or Grecian mantles rehearse the sentiments of fatalism, the creed of
ancient mythology, or Gallic rhetoric in a classic dress; and these
disguises so envelope the love, ambition, despair, hate, or patriotism,
that we are always conscious of the theatrical, and it requires the
extraordinary gifts of a Rachel to enlist other than artistic interest.
The French have manuals for breathing and composing the features
to secure artistic effects; they offer academic prizes for every
conceivable achievement; their very lamp-posts are designed with taste;
a huckster in the street will exhibit dramatic tact and wonderful
mechanical dexterity. "Quand il paraît un homme de génie en France,"
says Madame de Staël, "dans quelque carrière que ce soit, il atteint
presque toujours à un degré de perfection sans exemple; car il réunit
l'audace qui fait sortir de la route commune au tact du bon goût." And
yet in vast political interests they are victims,--in the more earnest
developments of the soul, children. A new artificial lake in the Bois de
Boulogne, a grand military reception, news of a victory in some distant
corner of the globe, the distribution of eagles to brave survivors,--in
a word, an appeal to the love of amusement, of display, and of
glory,--quiets the murmur about to rise against interference with human
rights or usurpation of the national will. Political interests of the
gravest character are treated with flippancy: one writer calls the
formation of a new government Talleyrand's table of whist; and another
casually observes that "_tous les gouvernements nouveaux ont leur lune
de miel_."
That great principle of the division of labor, which the English carry
into mechanical and commercial affairs, the French also apply to the
economy of life and to Art; but, as these latter interests are more
spontaneous and unlimited, the result is often a perfection in detail,
and a like deficiency in general effect. Thus, there are schools of
painting in France more distinct and apart than exist elsewhere; usually
the followers of such are distinguished for excellence in the mechanical
aptitudes of their vocation; the figure is admirably drawn, the costume
rightly disposed, and sometimes the degree of finish quite marvellous;
but, usually, this superiority is attained at the expense of the
sentiment of the picture. French historic Art, like French life, is
apt to be extravagant and melodramatic, or over-refined in unimportant
particulars; it often lacks moral harmony,--the grand, simple, true
reflection of Nature in its nicety. Delaroche, who, of all French
painters, rose most above the adventitious, and gave himself to the soul
of Art, to pure expression, was, for this very reason, thought by his
brother artists to be cold and unattractive. There is one sphere,
however, where this exclusiveness of style and partition of labor are
productive of the most felicitous results: namely, the minor drama. In
England and America the same theatre exhibits opera, melodrama, tragedy,
comedy, rope-dancing, and legerdemain; but in Paris, each branch and
element of histrionic art has its separate temple, its special corps of
actors and authors, nay, its particular class of subjects; hence their
unrivalled perfection. Ingenuity, science, and Art are concentrated by
thus assigning free and individual scope to the dramatic niceties and
phases of life, of history, of genius, and of society. At the Opera
Comique you find one kind of musical creation; at the Italiens the
lyrical drama of Southern Europe alone; at the Variétés a unique order
of comic dialogue; and at the Porte St. Martin yet another species of
play. One theatre gives back the identical tone of existing society and
current events; another deals with the classical ideas of the past.
Satire and song, the horrible and the brilliant, the graceful and the
highly artistic, pictorial, elocutionary, pantomimic, tragic, vocal,
statuesque, the past and present, all the elements of Art and of life,
find representation in the plot, the language, the sentiment, the
costume, the music, and the scenery of the many Parisian theatres.
Yet how much of this superiority is fugitive! how little in the whole
dramatic development takes permanent hold upon popular sympathy! Much
of its significance is purely local, and of its interest altogether
temporary. Scholars and the higher classes can talk eloquently of
Corneille and Racine; the beaux and _spirituelle_ women of the day can
repeat and enjoy the last hit of Scribe, or the new _bon-mot_ of
the theatre: but contrast these results with the national love and
appreciation of Shakspeare,--with the permanent reflection of Spanish
life in Lope de Vega,--the patriotic aspirations which the young Italian
broods over in the tragedies of Alfieri. The grace of movement, the
triumph of tact and ingenuity, the devotion to conventionalism, either
pedantry or the genius of the hour, also rules the drama in Paris. With
all its brilliancy, entertainment, grace, wit, and popularity,--there
exists not a permanently vital and universally recognized type of this
greatest department of literature, familiar and endeared alike to
peasant and peer, a representative of humanity for all time,--like the
bard around whose name and words cluster the Anglo-Saxon hearts and
intelligence from generation to generation.
But nowhere do life and the drama so trench upon each other; nowhere is
every incident of experience so dramatic. Miss H.M. Williams told the
poet Rogers that she had seen "men and women, waiting for admission at
the door of the theatre, suddenly leave their station, on the passing of
a set of wretches going to be guillotined, and then, having ascertained
that none of their relations or friends were among them, very
unconcernedly return to the door of the theatre." A child is born at the
Opera Comique during the performance, and it is instantly made an event
of sympathy and effect by the audience; a subscription is raised, the
child named for the dramatic heroine of the moment, and the fortunate
mother sent home in a carriage, amid the plaudits of the crowd. You are
listening to a play; and a copy of the "Entr'acte" is thrust into your
hand, containing a minute account of the death of a statesman two
squares off whose name fills pages of history, or a battle in the East,
where some officer whom you met two months before on the Boulevard has
won immortal fame by prodigies of valor. So do the actualities and the
pastimes, the real and the imaginary drama, miraculously interfuse at
Paris; the comedy of life is patent there, and often the spectator
exclaims, "_Arlequin avait bien arrangé les choses, mais Colombine
dérange tout!_"
The Parisian females are "unexceptionably shod,"--but the agricultural
instruments now in use in the rural districts of France are of a form
and mechanism which, to a Yankee farmer, would seem antediluvian; the
cooks, gardeners, and other working-people, have annually the most
graceful festivals,--but the traveller sees in the fields women so
bronzed and wrinkled by toil and exposure that their sex is hardly to be
recognized. When the Gothamite passes along Pearl or Broad Street,
he beholds the daily spectacle of unemployed carmen reading
newspapers;--there may be said to be no such thing as popular literature
in France; mental recreation, such as the German and Scotch peasantry
enjoy, is unknown there. The Art and letters of the kingdom flourished
in her court and were cultivated as an aristocratic element for so long
a period, that neither has become domesticated among the lower classes;
we find in them the sentiment of military glory, of religion in its
superstitious phase, of music perhaps, of rustic festivity,--but not the
enjoyments which spring from or are associated with thought and poetic
sympathies such as national writers like Burns inspired. An exception
comparatively recent may be found in the popular appreciation of
Béranger and Souvestre.
There is not a natural object too beautiful or an occasion too solemn
to arrest the French tendency to the theatrical. Even one of their most
ardent eulogists remarks,--"All that can be said against the French
sublime is this,--that the grandeur is more in the word than in the
thing; the French expression professes more than it performs"; and old
Montaigne declares that "lying is not a vice among the French, _but a
way of speaking_." Both observations admit too much; and indicate an
habitual departure from Nature and simplicity as a national trait.
Who but Frenchmen ever delighted in reducing to artificial shapes the
graceful forms of vegetable life, or can so far lay aside the sentiment
of grief as to engage in rhetorical panegyrics over the fresh graves
of departed friends? Compare the high dead wall with its range of
flower-pots, the porches undecked by woodbines or jessamine, the formal
paths, the proximate kitchen, stables, and ungarnished _salon_ of
a French villa, with the hedges, meadows, woodlands, and trellised
eglantine of an English country-house; and a glance assures us that
to the former nation the country is a _dernier ressort_, and not an
endeared seclusion. Yet they romance, in their way, on rural subjects:
"_À la campagne_," says one of their poets, "_où chaque feuille qui
tombe est une élégie toute faite_." Through an avenue of scraggy poplars
we approach a dilapidated _château_, whose owner is playing dominoes
at the café of the nearest provincial town, or exhausting the sparse
revenues of the estate at the theatres, roulette-tables, or balls of
Paris. People leave these for a rural vicinage only to economize, to
hide chagrin, or to die. So recognized is this indifference to Nature
and inaptitude for rural life in France, that, when we desire to
express the opposite of natural tastes, we habitually use the word
"Frenchified." The idea which a Parisian has of a tree is that of a
convenient appendage to a lamp. The traveller never sees artificial
light reflected from green leaves, without thinking of his evening
promenades in the French capital, or a dance in the groves of
Montmorency. The old verbal tyranny of the French Academy, the
painted wreaths sold at cemetery-gates, the colored plates of fashions,
powdered hair, and rouged cheeks, typify and illustrate this irreverent
ambition to pervert Nature and create artificial effects; they are but
so many forms of the theatrical instinct, and proofs of the ascendency
of meretricious taste. It is this want of loyalty to Nature, and
insensibility to her unadulterated charms, which constitute the real
barrier between the Gallic mind and that of England and Italy, and
which explain the fervent protest of such men as Alfieri and Coleridge.
Simplicity and earnestness are the normal traits of efficient character,
whether developed in action or Art, in sentiment or reflection; and
manufactured verse, vegetation, and complexions indicate a faith in
appearances and a divorce from reality, which, in political interests,
tend to compromise, to theory, and to acquiescence in a military
_régime_ and an embellished absolutism.
It is this incompleteness, this comparative untruth, that gives rise to
the dissatisfaction we feel in the last analysis of French character.
It is delusive. The promise of beauty held out by external taste is
unfulfilled; the fascination of manner bears a vastly undue proportion
to the substantial kindness and trust which that immediate charm
suggests. "Just Heaven!" exclaims Yorick, "for what wise reasons hast
thou ordered it, that beggary and urbanity, which are at such variance
in other countries, should find a way to be at unity in this?" The
bearing of an Englishman seldom awakens expectation of courtesy
or entertainment; yet, if vouchsafed, how to be relied on is the
friendship! how generous the hospitality! The urbane salutation with
which a Frenchman greets the female passenger, as she enters a public
conveyance, is not followed by the offer of his seat or a slice of his
reeking _pâtè_,--while the roughest backwoodsman in America, who never
touched his hat or inclined his body to a stranger, will guard a
woman from insult, and incommode himself to promote her comfort, with
respectful alacrity. It is so in literature. How often we eagerly follow
the clear exposition of a subject in the pages of a French author, to
reach an impotent conclusion! or suffer our sympathies to be enlisted by
the admirable description of an interior or a character in one of their
novels, to find the plot which embodies them an absurd melodrama!
Evanescence is the law of Parisian felicities,--selfishness the
background of French politeness,--sociability flourishes in an inverse
ratio to attachment; we become skeptical almost in proportion as we are
attracted. If we ask the way, we are graciously directed; but if we
demand the least sacrifice, we must accept volubility for service. Thus
the perpetual flowering in manners, in philosophy, in politics, and in
economy, is rarely accompanied by fruit in either. To enjoy Paris, we
must cease to be in earnest;--to pass the time, and not to wrest from it
a blessing or a triumph, is the main object. The badges, the gardens,
the smiles, the agreeable phrase, the keen repartee, the tempting dish,
the ingenious _vaudeville_, the pretty foot, the elegant chair and
becoming curtain, the extravagant gesture, the pointed epigram or
alluring formula, must be taken as so many agreeabilities,--not for
things performed, but imaginatively promised. The folly of war has been
demonstrated to the entire sense of mankind; at best, it is now deemed
a painful necessity; yet the most serious phase of life in France is
military. Depth and refinement of feeling are lonely growths, and can no
more spring up in a gregarious and festal life than trees in quicksands;
citizenship is based on consistent acts, not on verbosity; and
brilliant accompaniments never reconcile strong hearts to the loss of
independence, which some English author has acutely declared the first
essential of a gentleman. The civilization of France is an artistic and
scientific materialism; the spiritual element is wanting. Paris is the
theatre of nations; we must regard it as a continuous spectacle, a
boundless museum, a place of diversion, of study,--not of faith, the
deepest want and most sacred birthright of humanity.
The want of directness, the absence of candor, the non-recognition of
truth in its broad and deep sense, is, indeed, a characteristic phase
of life, of expression, and of manners in France. A lover of his nation
confesses that even in "_galantes aventures l'esprit prenait la place
du coeur, la fantaisie celle du sentiment_." Voltaire's creed was, that
"_le mensonge n'est un vice que quand il fait du mal; c'est une grande
vertu quand il fait du bien_." "_L'exagération_" says De Maistre, "_est
le mensonge des honnêtes gens_."
In every aspect the histrionic prevails,--by facility of association and
colloquial aptitude in the common intercourse of life,--by the inventive
element in dress, furniture, and material arrangements, plastic to the
caprice of taste and ingenuity,--by the habitudes of out-of-door life,
giving greater variety and adaptation to manners,--and by a national
temperament, susceptible and demonstrative. The current vocabulary
suggests a perpetual recourse to the casual, a shifting of the
life-scene, a recognition of the temporary and accidental. Such
oft-recurring words as _flâneur_, _liaison_, _badinage_, etc., have no
exact synonymes in other tongues. All that is done, thought, and felt
takes a dramatic expression. Lamartine elaborates a "History of
the Restoration" from two reports,--the one monarchical, the other
republican,--and, by making the facts picturesque and sentimental, wins
countless readers. Comte elaborates a masterly analysis of the sciences,
proclaims a fascinating theory of eras or stages in human development;
but the positive philosophy, of which all this is but the introduction,
to be applied to the individual and society, eludes, at last, direct and
complete application. A popular _savant_ dies, and students drag the
hearse and scatter flowers over the grave; a philosopher lectures, and
immediately his disciples form a school, and advocate his system with
the ardor of partisans; a disappointed soldier commits suicide by
throwing himself from Napoleon's column, while a _grisette_ and her
lover make their exit through a last embrace and the fumes of charcoal;
a wit seeks revenge with a clever repartee instead of his fists or cane.
A lady is the centre of attraction at a reception, and, upon inquiry, we
are gravely informed that the charm lies in the fact, that, though now
fat and more than forty, as well as married to an old noble, in her
youth she was the mistress of a celebrated poet. Notoriety, even when
scandalous, is as good a social distinction as birth, fame, or beauty.
Rousseau wrote a love-story, and sentiment became the rage. An artisan
has a day to spare, and takes his family to a garden or a dance. Human
existence, thus embellished, impulsive, and caricatured, becomes
a continuous melodrama, with an occasional catastrophe induced by
political revolutions. Louis XIV., the most characteristic king France
ever had, is a genuine representative of this theatrical instinct and
development.
Herein may we find a key to the riddle of governmental vicissitudes
in France. People so easily satisfied with illusions, so fertile in
superficial expedients, are like children and savages in their sense of
what is novel and amusing, and their love of excitement,--and make
no such demands upon reality as full-grown men and educated citizens
instinctively crave. Their powers, in this regard, have not been
disciplined,--their wants but vaguely realized. Accustomed to look out
of themselves for a law of action, to consult authority upon every
occasion, to defer to official sources for guidance in every detail of
municipal and personal affairs,--the lesson of self-dependence,
the courage and the knowledge needful for efficiency are wanting.
"_Savez-vous_," asks an epicure, "_ce qui a chassé la gaîté? C'est la
politique_." They rally at the voice of command, submit to interference,
and take for granted a prescribed formula, partly because it is
troublesome to think, and partly on account of inexperience in assuming
responsibility. De Tocqueville has remarked, that, in every instance
of attempted colonization, they have adapted themselves to, instead of
elevating savage tribes. They have never gone through the process of
state-education by the inevitable claim of personal duty, like the
Anglo-Saxons. Hence their need of a master, and the feeling of stability
realized among them only under legitimacy and despotism. Shallow
reasoners argue from the mere acknowledgment of this state of things
that it is an ultimate public blessing when the man appears with wit and
will enough to regulate and keep from chaos a society thus destitute of
political training. But those who look deeper know that this political
inefficiency is but the external manifestation or the latent cause of
more serious defects: by impeding healthful development in one way, it
occasions a morbid development in another. If citizenship in its most
free and active privilege were enjoyed, there would be less devotion to
amusement, a more virile national character, and the sanctities of
life would have observance. Public spirit and a political career are
incentives to manly ambition,--to an employment of mind and feeling
that wins men from trifling pursuits and vain diversion; they are the
national basis of private usefulness; to thwart them is to condemn
humanity to perpetual childhood,--to render members of a state machines.
The social evils and kinds of crime in France are referable in no
small degree to the absence of great motives,--the limited spheres and
hopeless routine involved in arbitrary government, unsustained by any
elevated sentiment. Such a rule makes literature servile, enterprise
mercenary, and manners profligate: all history proves this. It is not,
therefore, rational to infer, from the apparent want of ability in the
nation to take care of its own affairs, that a military despotism is
justifiable; when the truth is equally demonstrated, that such a sway,
by indefinitely postponing the chance to acquire the requisite training,
keeps down and throws back the national impulse and destiny. The man who
thus abuses power is none the less a traitor and a parricide.