One or two indications have reached me which seem to imply that in

England there exists a belief that French school life is immoral.

This may be founded on the mutual amenities of the clerical and lay

parties in France, which profess a complete disbelief in each other’s

morality, and would equally accuse each other of murder, if that were

as difficult to test. Nobody knows much about the morality of boys,

but I may observe that the government of French schools, both lay and

clerical, is too strict for any immorality that can be detected to

make way there. The very few instances of it in school life that have

come to my knowledge have been followed by instant expulsion. I have

heard something about school immorality in England, especially in one

great public school, coupled with an expression of the desire that the

rigorous French system could be established there, not in all things,

but for this one safeguard.

[Sidenote: Domestic Servants in Paris.]

[Sidenote: The Parisian System of Lodging.]

With regard to the class of domestic servants, I am told that in

Paris the morality of servants is generally much lower than in the

country; but never having kept house in Paris I know nothing about

it, except by hearsay. Statistics show a remarkably large proportion

of illegitimate births for the capital; this, however, is rather

favourable in a certain sense, I mean in the sense of natural morality,

as the worst women are sterile. An ecclesiastic of high rank, who has

had exceptional opportunities for studying the moral aspects of Paris,

told me that he attributed the greater laxity there in the class of

domestics to the system of lodging, by which the servants are often

separated from the family life of the household, and sent to sleep up

in the attics, where they are in a world of their own.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Unsatisfactory Nature of the Subject.]

[Sidenote: Two Codes of Morality.]

[Sidenote: Permanent Conflict between Man’s Animal Nature and his

civilised Condition.]

[Sidenote: Increase of the Difficulty.]

[Sidenote: The Prudent Classes avoid Marriage.]

[Sidenote: The Imprudent.]

[Sidenote: Effects of Crowding.]

[Sidenote: Gentility.]

[Sidenote: Limitation of Offspring.]

[Sidenote: The great Temptation of Women.]

[Sidenote: Connection between Morality and plain Living.]

[Sidenote: Luxurious Livers respected.]

Here I leave this subject, the most difficult to treat in the volume,

and the most unsatisfactory in many ways. It is unsatisfactory because

the facts are usually concealed, and that leaves room for uncharitable

minds to assume a concealed immorality in others, as, for example,

when it is assumed, without any proof, that respectable French people

are immoral. It is unsatisfactory, because there are two codes of

morality, a severe one that is expressed, and a laxer one that is

understood and acted upon. It is unsatisfactory, because language

itself is so employed as to make the same actions pure or impure

as they are or are not admitted by the customs of society. But the

subject is most unsatisfactory because there is a permanent conflict

between the animal nature of man and the situation in which a safe

and peaceful civilisation places him. He is gifted with reproductive

powers well adapted to fill up the ranks of primitive societies as

they were continually decimated by disease, by famine, and by violent

death; but in a state of civilisation in which diseased people live on,

in which famine is all but unknown, and wars continually postponed,

the reproductive force is so much in excess of the need for it that

it bursts forth in tremendous moral evils. Nor is the difficulty

lessening; it is, on the contrary, increasing year by year. The prudent

classes avoid marriage more and more, thus exposing young men to the

snare of the kept mistress or the peril of promiscuous concubinage.

The imprudent classes marry with perfect recklessness, and even their

marriages themselves are indirectly favourable to immorality, because

they supply recruits for the army of vice by bringing up children

in conditions that make decency impossible. The crowding of people

together in industrial centres and the craving for town excitements all

tend towards the one greatest and most natural of all excitements; the

vast increase of military life tends to it also in other ways. But of

all the influences directly or indirectly tending towards immorality

_Gentility_ is the most subtle and deadly in its operation. Genteel

young men dare not marry on small incomes because poverty will take

the polish off their style of living; genteel young ladies cannot marry

unless they are assured of incomes large enough to dress fashionably

and have all the housework done by servants. In France, and not in

France only, but much more in France than in England, the number of

offspring is limited that the family may maintain a genteel position in

life and not fall down into the working classes. In the poorer classes

themselves the desire for a genteel appearance is the great temptation

of women. I remember a dangerously beautiful young Frenchwoman

married to a professional man who earned a wretchedly small income,

yet she dressed most expensively, and had but one means of paying

her milliner’s bills. She was the representative of a class. When

we look these truths and their consequences in the face, we come to

understand the close connection that there is between natural morality

and simplicity of life. It is of no use to preach morality to people

so long as we show by our language, by our manners, by every kind of

expression or implication, that we despise them for living plainly and

respect them for living luxuriously. By the help of the tailor, the

cook, and the carriage-builder I can be a “gentleman” in England, and

a “_monsieur comme il faut_” in France; by the help of Epictetus I can

live simply and be a common man whom the luxurious man will patronise.

[Sidenote: The English Idea]

[Sidenote: Utility of English Moral Pride.]

This chapter has been occupied more with actions than with ideals, but

it would not be complete without some reference to ideals. The English

idea takes the form of moral pride, of belief in one’s own moral

superiority. This is offensive to other nations because it expresses

itself unpleasantly, not in words only but in manners. But however

offensive it may be to Frenchmen (and it irritates them to the supreme

degree), it is most valuable to the English themselves as a strength

and a support. The intense soldierly pride of the military caste in

Prussia was offensive, but it enabled the army to endure the discipline

that led to all success. No amount of divorce-court evidence, no amount

of medical evidence, no amount of ocular evidence, even in the public

streets, will ever convince the English that they are not moral, and

therefore their moral standard is maintained, at least ideally. It is

well for them to have this opinion about themselves so long as they

make the feeblest effort to justify it. To have national pride on the

side of morality is to give morality a mighty ally.

[Sidenote: Want of moral Pride in France.]

[Sidenote: Foreigners in Paris.]

[Sidenote: The Goddess of French Maidenhood.]

[Sidenote: The Virgin Mary and _La Sainte Vierge_.]

[Sidenote: _La Sainte Vierge_ an Ideal.]

[Sidenote: The Queen of Heaven.]

The French, unfortunately for them, have never associated national

pride with morality. They have associated it with generosity, with

courage, and with the externals of civilisation, but never with sexual

purity. The French never think that they are purer than other people,

they imagine that the weakness of humanity is the same everywhere, and

as Paris is the pleasure city of Europe they have ample opportunities

for observing how foreigners conduct themselves there, which only

confirms them in their opinion. Still, it cannot be truly said that

the entire French nation is without an ideal, even in this matter. The

goddess of French maidenhood is not the goddess of Lubricity, but her

precise opposite, the Holy Virgin. It has been written, with slight

exaggeration, that every French girl is called Marie; it is not an

exaggeration to say that every French girl brought up in the Catholic

religion is taught to look to the Holy Virgin as her ideal. It may

be answered that the Virgin Mary is not unknown in England either;

certainly the Virgin Mary is known there, but _La Sainte Vierge_ is

not. The Virgin Mary is partly ideal, but there is much everyday

reality about her, and Protestantism insists upon that reality which

French Catholicism conceals. The Virgin Mary is also an ordinary

mother; she had a family by Joseph, the carpenter. In _La Sainte

Vierge_ there is nothing to diminish the purity of the ideal; her

marriage with Joseph was merely nominal, and Joseph himself was a great

saint above the common lot of humanity. _La Sainte Vierge_ had but one

child, and that one by the mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit. The

Virgin Mary is in heaven, _La Sainte Vierge_ reigns for ever as the

crowned Queen of Heaven and the royal patroness and special protectress

of France. Her statue is on a hundred hills, it looks down benignantly

from a thousand towers, she herself, the mystical Tower of Ivory, has

preserved many a French city from invasion. Every French girl, at her

_première communion_, is robed in white from head to foot in emulation

of her purity; during _her_ month, _le mois de Marie_, her hundred

thousand altars are covered with flowers in memory of her sweetness,

and all the terms of love and praise are exhausted in her litanies.

[Sidenote: Want of a Masculine moral Ideal.]

There is no ideal for the male sex comparable to this. We have read of

Sir Galahad, who could say--

“I never felt the kiss of love,

Nor maiden’s hand in mine.”

[Sidenote: Sir Galahad.]

[Sidenote: England the more moral Country.]

[Sidenote: Especially in Principle and Feeling.]

[Sidenote: The Story of Joseph.]

But who is Sir Galahad? In England only a poetical creation, in France

unheard of and unknown. Were he known he would encounter a danger that

even the bravest knight might dread. It might be decided, in France,

that he was ridiculous. I have been represented as holding the opinion

that France and England are exactly on the same level in morals; but

that is not my view. Justice consists in giving everybody his due, it

does not consist in believing that nations are exactly alike. I have

no doubt that England is the more moral country of the two, even in

practice, and much more in principle and feeling. The great difference

(and it is most profound) is that the English are still capable of

stern and austere feeling about these matters, which they have derived

from Puritan ancestors; whereas the French, even when practically

chaste in their own lives, regard adultery, in the male sex at least,

with a sort of amusement not always unmingled with admiration for the

address and audacity of the sinner. A witty word may save him. I knew

a marble-cutter who was accused of some illicit passion, and who saved

himself by the reply, “_Pour être marbrier, on n’est pas de marbre_.”

A certain incident in the life of a former prime minister of Egypt may

be taken as a test of the feeling of the two countries. In England

he is looked upon with serious respect as an example of chastity in

youth, and wisdom in maturity; but in France all the ability of his

administration cannot efface the recollection of his “_niaiserie_” in

the well-known interview with “Madame Putiphar,” and shamefaced youths

are called after him to this day.

CHAPTER IV

TEMPERANCE

[Sidenote: Moderate Drinking in France.]

The French are supposed to be a much more temperate nation than the

English, and, in fact, there used to be few drunkards in France. That

country has, however, a peculiar characteristic as to drinking. It is

a country where moderate drinking is itself immoderate. The reader

understands what this contradictory statement means.

[Sidenote: The Education of the Body.]

[Sidenote: Artful Drinking.]

[Sidenote: Peasant and Gentleman.]

Men are called moderate drinkers so long as they do not show any

outward sign of being “the worse for liquor.” But there is an education

of the body by which it may be made to absorb great quantities of

alcoholic stimulants without exhibiting anything in the nature of

drunkenness. In France it is considered shameful and disgusting to be

drunk; but no blame is attached to the utmost indulgence in drinking

so long as it keeps on the safe side. This leads to that artful kind

of drinking which is well known to all French physicians, and which

produces, in the long run, that peculiar state of body which they call

“_l’alcoolisme des gens du monde_.” A peasant may get perfectly drunk

once a month and yet be a very small consumer of alcohol; a gentleman,

without ever being even tipsy, may consume five times as much alcohol

as the peasant.

[Sidenote: Possible Allowance of a comfortable Frenchman.]

The following account of what a comfortable Frenchman _may_ consume

in the twenty-four hours is founded on actual observation, but is

not intended to represent temperate habits in France, which will be

dealt with later. This first description may stand for the habits of a

drinker who lives in a state of constant stimulation only.

[Sidenote: The Morning Drink.]

[Sidenote: _Un apéritif._]

[Sidenote: Déjeuner.]

[Sidenote: Café.]

[Sidenote: Absinthe.]

[Sidenote: Bitters.]

[Sidenote: Dinner.]

[Sidenote: Ale.]

[Sidenote: _Un Verre d’eau._]

On rising in the morning he will probably take either brandy, or

sherry, or white French wine. The working men now prefer brandy.

In former times white wine was more drunk, especially in the wine

districts. If French wine is preferred the moderate quantity will

be half a bottle, but it is easy to go beyond, and a lover of wine

will finish his bottle without stopping half-way. He will eat a crust

of bread with it, and perhaps a morsel of Gruyère cheese. There

is no pleasanter early breakfast; it is much pleasanter than the

sickening English combination of sweet coffee and fat ham; the wine is

exhilarating, and by its help the day opens cheerfully; its pleasures

seem attractive and its duties light. Unfortunately, the white wine

habit is known to tell on the nervous system in course of time.

Before _déjeuner_ the moderate drinker will go to a café and take his

_apéritif_, usually a vermouth, and perhaps something else. Vermouth

is simply white wine in which aromatic herbs have been infused. At

_déjeuner_ he will drink a bottle of red wine. Immediately after he

returns to the café and orders coffee, which is invariably accompanied

by brandy, and of that he takes a large dram. If inclined to rest some

time in the establishment he will order a little glass of _liqueur_,

and if he meets with friends they may perhaps treat each other to

different kinds of _liqueurs_ for the sake of good-fellowship and

variety. At five o’clock he returns to the café for his absinthe. In

ordinary times he will be content with one absinthe, when inclined to

exceed he will take two, or possibly even three, or a mint in the place

of the third. Just before dinner he may think it necessary to “open his

appetite” with an _apéritif_, say bitters and curaçao. At dinner he

drinks a bottle of common wine, and possibly some good wine at dessert

if he dines with friends. After dinner come liqueurs, and then he

drinks ale in a café all the evening whilst he smokes. This lasts till

eleven o’clock, when he goes to bed. He has never shown the slightest

sign of tipsiness all day, and is ready to go through the same course

on the morrow. Meanwhile, in case he should feel thirsty, he has a

“_verre d’eau_” in his bedroom, which means a very pretty little glass

tray with a glass, a small sugar-basin, a decanter of water, and a

small decanter of pure cognac.

The state of this Frenchman is one of incessant alcoholic stimulation.

If he takes hard exercise he may bear it for many years, if not, he

will feel the effects of it, and the physician will privately note his

case as one of _alcoolisme des gens du monde_.

[Sidenote: Habit of drinking French Wine.]

[Sidenote: Spirits.]

[Sidenote: German Wine-drinking.]

Now, with regard to the common people in France, the old habit of

drinking large quantities of wine in the wine districts seems to have

done wonderfully little harm. As the subject interests me I have asked

for the opinion of several physicians, and they all say that the

drinking of _pure_ French wine is harmless if accompanied by exercise.

Without exercise it may establish gout. The physicians dread the

effects of spirits even in small quantities; they look upon wine as a

kind of safeguard, and on spirits as a terrible danger. The reader may

remember a passage in Lewes’s _Life of Goethe_, where the biographer

says that the illustrious German “was fond of wine, and drank daily

his two or three bottles. The amount he drank never did more than

exhilarate him; never made him unfit for work or for society. Over his

wine he sat some hours.” Lewes appended to this passage a quotation

from Liebig in which he says that amongst the Rhinelanders “a jolly

companion drinks his seven bottles every day, and with it grows as old

as Methuselah, is seldom drunk, and has at most the Bardolph mark of a

red nose.”

[Sidenote: Wine a useless Expense.]

[Sidenote: Advantage of very cheap Wine.]

[Sidenote: Consequence of dearness in Wine.]

[Sidenote: Dangerous Drunkenness.]

Wine has never been much of an evil in France except as a cause of

useless expense. A Frenchman’s wine bill is usually out of proportion

to his income, especially in the present day, when common wine is

no longer cheap enough to make the quantity consumed a matter of

indifference, nor yet dear enough to impose the other and still more

effectual economy of abstinence, except in the poorest classes. For

my part, I am convinced that to grow sound light wine, as the French

once did at marvellously cheap rates (a penny a bottle or even less

in years of great abundance), is an immense blessing to a community,

because it is the most effectual rival of strong spirits.[52] Sound

light wine exhilarates, but it does not brutalise; brandy, acting on

excitable brains, drives many literally mad. The effect of dear wine

in France has not been favourable to temperance, but the contrary, by

increasing the consumption of poisonous spirituous liquors. That has

now reached such a pitch in the working classes that drunkenness of the

most dangerous kind--the kind unknown in wine countries--is established

amongst them as it is in the lower orders of London or Glasgow. In

fact, the worst form of Scotch dram-drinking is common in the great

French cities.

[Sidenote: Adulteration.]

If a French workman buys wine he must buy it at a low price, and in

Paris, where the octroi duties are so high, it is impossible that cheap

wine can be unadulterated. I will not presume to say what the “wine” is

made of, I do not pretend to know, but at present prices it cannot be

the juice of the grape.

[Sidenote: How the Cafés are maintained.]

[Sidenote: Differences in drinking Habits.]

Now, let us pass to the pleasanter subject of French temperance. It

is very commonly believed in England that every Frenchman must have

his café to go to and his theatre. As a matter of fact provincial

French people go very little to the theatre, and the cafés, though

flourishing, are maintained by a remarkably small number of _habitués_.

Many Frenchmen never go to a café at all, unless perhaps occasionally

when travelling. Amongst the daily visitors there is an immense

difference in drinking habits. I remember a middle-aged gentleman who

confined himself to one tiny glass (like a thimble) of pure cognac per

day, an allowance that he never exceeded. Another visits the café every

day regularly at six in the afternoon and takes his absinthe, a third

drinks only ale, a fourth confines himself to coffee with the _petit

verre_.

[Sidenote: The half-bottle Persuasion.]

[Sidenote: Peasants like pure Wine.]

With regard to the consumption of wine, there are great numbers of

half-bottle drinkers at each meal. The women generally belong to this

sect, and half a bottle of light wine, taken whilst eating, is but a

gentle stimulus, especially if mixed with water. The use of water with

wine varies very much. I never in my life saw a French peasant mix his

wine with water; there may be peasants who do it, but I have never met

with one. The peasant will drink water abundantly by itself, but when

he gets wine he seems to think that to water it would be a sin against

the rites of Bacchus. When there is wine on a peasant’s table, the

water-bottle is not to be seen.

[Sidenote: Wine and Water.]

On the contrary, in the middle and upper classes, it is the general

custom to mix water with the _vin ordinaire_ whilst people are eating,

but the finer wines are never watered. Then you have all degrees of

watering. You have the gentleman who puts three drops of water in

his wine in deference to custom, though it is a mere form; you have

the conscientious man who mixes the two liquids carefully in equal

quantities; and you have the drinker of _eau rougie_, who would

probably be a water-drinker, like an English teetotaller, if he had not

before his eyes the dread of the French proverb “_Les buveurs d’eau

sont méchants_.”

[Sidenote: “Reddened Water.”]

[Sidenote: Jean le Houx.]

I remember, however, one of those drinkers of “reddened water,” who

used to maintain that a few drops of wine almost infinitely diluted

gave the taste of the grape-juice far more delicately and exquisitely

than the unalloyed grape-juice itself. The reader may try the

experiment, if he likes. Let him take a glass of water, and just redden

it with claret. If he fails to appreciate the exquisite taste of the

beverage, it will, at least, inflict no injury on his constitution.

Unless, indeed, as the old bacchanalians affirmed, water brings on the

dropsy; for what saith the good Maistre Jean Le Houx, the gentle singer

who immortalised the _Vau de Vire_?

“_On m’a deffendu l’eau, au moins en beuuerie

De peur que je ne tombe en une hydropisie

Je me perds si j’en boy

En l’eau n’y a saueur. Prendray je pour breuuage

Ce qui n’a poinct de goust? Mon voisin qui est sage

Ne le faict, que je croy._”

[Sidenote: French total Abstainers between Meals.]

In France there is a large class of total abstainers _between

meals_. These observe rigorously the rule of never drinking except

at meal-times. They have a set phrase by which they are known, their

shibboleth. This phrase is “_Je ne bois jamais rien entre mes repas_.”

They are not teetotallers, as they drink at _déjeuner_ and dinner,

but between these periods they observe a strict abstinence, like the

Mahometans in the Ramadan fast between the rising and the setting of

the sun. They pretend that they are never thirsty, but I do not believe

them; it is merely the pride of their sect.

[Sidenote: French Gormandism.]

[Sidenote: The Solace of dull Lives.]

[Sidenote: France the Land of good Living.]

[Sidenote: Importance of the _menu_.]

English writers are often on the look-out for subjects of accusation

against the French (this attention is reciprocal), and they generally

hit upon immorality. May I give them a hint that may be of use, at

least in affording the refreshment of change? Why do they not accuse

the French of gormandism? There are a hundred proofs of that vice for

one of the other. It is visible everywhere in France, and in some

parts of the country it predominates over all other pleasures of

life. Most well-to-do French people who live in the rural districts

and are excessively dull find a solace and an interest twice a day

in the prolonged enjoyments of the table. There is no country in the

world where so much thought and care, and so much intelligence, are

devoted to feeding as in France, and the reward is that the French

govern the world of good eating, and their language is the language

not of diplomacy only but of that far more important matter the

_menu_. They will talk seriously for an indefinite length of time

about the materials of dinners and their preparation. When the English

newspapers give an account of a royal feast, they do not tell you what

the distinguished personages had to eat, but French reporters give the

_menu_ in detail. Some French newspapers present their subscribers with

a _menu_ for every day in the year, others announce what will be the

dinner at a great hotel.

[Sidenote: _Gourmand_ and _Gourmet_.]

[Sidenote: The _Glouton_.]

[Sidenote: The _Goulu_.]

[Sidenote: The _Goinfre_.]

The love of good cheer in France has all the characters of vulgarity

and refinement. In former times _gourmand_ meant a judge of eating, and

_gourmet_ a judge of wine. We find those interpretations still in the

dictionaries, even in Littré and Lafaye, but custom has given the words

a new significance. _Gourmet_ is now universally understood to refer

to eating and not to drinking. _Gourmand_ has acquired a lower sense

between _gourmet_ and _glouton_. The _gourmand_ of the present day is

a passionate lover of good eating, who gives it inordinate attention,

and usually eats more than is good for him. The _glouton_ is the quite

unintelligent animal feeder who stuffs himself like a pig; and there

is a still worse word, the _goulu_, which means the voracious man who

throws eatables down his throat. There is also _goinfre_, the man who

is very disagreeable to other people in his eating, which he does to

excess and dirtily.

[Sidenote: Temperance of the true _Gourmet_.]

[Sidenote: Thackeray a _Gourmet_.]

The _gourmet_, on the contrary, is a product of high civilisation. He

enjoys with discrimination, and is above the vulgarity of estimating

the quality of dishes by their elaboration or their costliness. He

values the commonest things, if they are good of their own kind; he

will praise well-baked bread or pure water. He is entirely on the side

of temperance. A French _gourmet_ once said to me, “I am excessively

fond of oysters, but never exceed one dozen, being convinced that after

the first dozen the palate has become incapable of fully appreciating

the flavour.” A real _gourmet_ preserves his palate in the healthiest

and most natural condition. He would not cover an oyster with pepper,

nor even squeeze a lemon over it. Plain things are often preferred by

a true _gourmet_ to richer things. The uninitiated drink wine and eat

cakes at the same time. A _gourmet_ would not do that unless the wine

were unworthy of his attention; with a wine of any quality he would

eat a crust of bread. A _gourmet_ prefers the simplest meal, such as a

fried mutton chop, if it is really well cooked, to an elaborate banquet

where the cookery is less than excellent. In Thackeray’s imitation of

Horace (_Persicos Odi_) he expresses contempt for “Frenchified fuss”

in the first stanza, but in the second he exactly hits the taste of a

French _gourmet_ in praising the good qualities of a simple dish--

“But a plain leg of mutton, my Lucy,

I pr’ythee get ready at three:

Have it smoking, and tender, and juicy,

And what better meat can there be?”

[Sidenote: A Parisian _Gourmet_.]

I knew a Parisian who was a _gourmet_ in Thackeray’s manner, and his

way of living was to order one dish of meat, one of vegetables, and a

little dessert, at an excellent and expensive _restaurant à la carte_.

He did not desire the more abundant feeding at the _restaurants à prix

fixe_ and the _tables d’hôte_. He drank very moderately also; in a

word, he lived as a gentleman ought to live, without excess, yet with

perfect appreciation.

[Sidenote: The _Gourmet_ keeps up Prices.]

The influence of the French _gourmet_ on the price of eatables is

remarkable. The dealers know that extravagant prices will be given for

anything that is exceptionally good. The result is that the Parisian

connoisseur in good living feeds very expensively, and his tendency is

to maintain a high standard of costliness.

[Sidenote: France also a Country of Plain Living.]

The accusation against the French that they are a nation of

gormandisers is to be understood with the reserves that I have now

indicated, but I must add, in justice, that France is a country of

plain living as well as of rich and elaborate living. The peasants, a

very numerous class, live with extreme sobriety and simplicity; the

soldiers, also a numerous class, live just sufficiently and no more;

the priests live simply as a rule, though they are said to enjoy a good

dinner when invited to a château, the only pleasure they have. Then you

find large classes in which simple living is a matter of necessity,

such as the members of religious houses and young people in educational

establishments.

[Sidenote: Good Living a Restraint on Population.]

Nevertheless, I believe it is true that the love of good living in

the middle and upper classes amounts to a serious evil, and actually

operates as a restraint on population since it would be as cheap to

feed a large family in a very plain way as to feed a small one on

luxuries. My opinion is that luxury in food and dress are the two great

parents of evil in France.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: England a Country of Extremes.]

[Sidenote: Ardent Spirits in England.]

[Sidenote: Abstinence and Moderation.]

[Sidenote: English and French Moderation compared.]

In drinking, England is a country of extremes. It has the misfortune

of not being a wine-producing country, with the usual consequence that

the consumption of ardent spirits is very great, and drunkenness of

the most dangerous and most brutal kind very common. On the other hand,

this horror has produced a reaction going as far in the other extreme,

so that there are far more water-drinkers in England than in France.

What is called “moderation” is also much more moderate in England. I

lunch with an Englishman in London, and observe that he takes perhaps

a single glass of claret and nothing after it; a Frenchman equally

moderate would take half a bottle, with coffee and cognac afterwards.

The same Englishman will never drink in a public-house from January to

December; the Frenchman sees no harm in visiting his café every day.

[Sidenote: Female Drinking in the two Countries.]

Vulgar French people delight in accusing English ladies of dipsomania.

Some of them drink, I have known several instances, and I have known

instances of the same infirmity in France, but I am quite convinced

that Englishwomen in the middle and upper classes are usually more

abstemious than French. Comparing people equally sober, equally removed

from all suspicion of drunkenness, a bottle of claret would last the

English lady a week and the French lady a day. It is true that the

English lady might take a glass of port after dinner, but that answers

to the Frenchwoman’s occasional _liqueur_.

[Sidenote: The Present and the Past.]

[Sidenote: A French Traveller in England.]

[Sidenote: His Inventions.]

I am writing of the present, that is, of the ninth decade of the

nineteenth century, when excessive drinking has come to be considered

vulgar in England. French accusers delight in taking the worst examples

of the past and in representing them as the average of the present. I

was reading lately a French book of travels in England, including an

account of a visit to a large country house. There are certain signs

by which an English critic knows at once whether narratives of this

kind are genuine or fictitious. A Frenchman who invents anything about

England, and pretends that he is recounting a real experience, is sure

to invent clumsily. In the present instance, I know by two pieces of

evidence that the writer has been drawing upon his imagination. He

makes the men in the smoking-room, after dinner, talk about the absent

ladies in a style absolutely incompatible with English breeding, and

he describes these gentlemen as having all got nearly or completely

drunk before they were helped to bed by the domestics. This Frenchman

has read that such things happened under the Georges, and as he is

not describing a real experience he makes our contemporaries drunk to

gratify the malevolence of French readers.

[Sidenote: Present Condition of England.]

England is now a country of very temperate, very intemperate, and

very abstemious people. If a man belongs to the refined classes he

will probably take wine in moderation, perhaps in great moderation;

if he belongs to the humbler classes he may be a besotted drunkard, a

sober workman who appreciates a glass of beer, or an apostle of total

abstinence with a blue ribbon in his button-hole. The country spends

too much in drink, but its expenditure is gradually diminishing, and

the burden of it falls very unequally on the citizens. Looking to the

future, which is more interesting than the past, I may add that it is

hopeful for England, which is improving, and discouraging for France,

which is going from bad to worse.

[Sidenote: Eating in England.]

[Sidenote: Peculiar Form of English Extravagance.]

[Sidenote: Waste in the Poorer Classes.]

[Sidenote: Utility of Soups in France.]

[Sidenote: Both Countries Extravagant, but in Different Ways.]

As to eating, the English are rarely either _gourmands_ or _gourmets_,

but they have a rooted belief in the value of an abundant flesh diet,

which cannot be good for health unless accompanied by hard exercise.

Although the English are not extravagant like the French from a love

of expensive delicacies, they are extravagant in the display of great

abundance. Immense pieces of the finest meat in the world appear on

English tables, and then disappear to be replaced by others equally

imposing. People tell you of the quantities eaten by their servants

with a smile of indulgence. In the poorer classes there is waste of

another kind from simple ignorance and want of culinary economy and

art. In a French household the smallest fragments make a little dish,

and nothing is lost; in England this kind of economy is practised least

where it would be most required. In the French middle and lower classes

the daily use of soups is an economy, as the soup is the final save-all

of the little establishment, and it presents the materials in the most

nourishing and digestible form. As to extravagance, the well-to-do

French and English may be equally extravagant, but in different ways,

and as to temperance in eating, there is little difference. The French

eat heavier meals, but they eat less frequently. Each nation accuses

the other of over-eating, and doctors say that the accusation is

merited in both cases.

[Sidenote: Stately Service and plain Table.]

[Sidenote: English Asceticism.]

One is sometimes struck in England by the combination of a very

stately service with a very plain table. Fine linen, expensive plate,

formidably dignified servants, and all this ceremony about a leg of

mutton and some boiled potatoes. Thackeray amused himself with noting

this contrast. It is a revelation of English character, which is deeply

attached to state and style, but is really not given over to sensual

pleasures. Occasionally the English go rather far, perhaps, in the

direction of plain living. The total abstainer gives you pure water,

the _very_ moderate drinker forgets to pass the decanter, and so do

his servants. I remember being invited once to an early dinner in the

country and riding to it several miles in drenching rain. I was cold

and wet, for it was winter, and I looked forward confidently to warm

old English hospitality; but my host had _principles_, and principles

are nothing if you do not act up to them, so he gave me a slice of

cold beef with a glass of cold water. That _menu_ was easily and long

remembered.

CHAPTER V

THRIFT

[Sidenote: Why Thrift is a Social Virtue.]

Thrift is classed as a social virtue, because in a thrifty society few

people fall upon others for their support. The thrifty man looks to his

own independence during sickness, and to that of his wife and children

after his death, so that he is never burdensome either to public or

private charity.

[Sidenote: Thrift often associated with Meanness.]

Socially, then, the thrifty man is an acceptable member of the

community; but when we inquire closely into the nature of thrift we

often find it associated with meanness, and therefore the esteem for it

has never been quite without reserve.

[Sidenote: French Qualities favourable to Thrift.]

[Sidenote: French Defects favourable to Thrift.]

[Sidenote: French Meanness.]

To apply this to the English and French, I may begin by admitting,

quite frankly, that the French are incomparably superior to the English

in thrift. The natural talent for thrift is far commoner in France

than in England. The French are prudent as a rule, and very capable of

limiting their desires; they have also a great love of independence,

a horror of debt, a readiness to accept and avow a modest social

position, and they have (in spite of apparent frivolity) a foresight

that looks a long way into the future. That is the good side of the

French character as regards thrift, but there is a bad side at least

equally favourable to it. There is a pettiness in the French mind which

adapts it well for dealing with details, and gives it a keen zest for

very small economies. An Englishman is astonished by nothing so much

as this pettiness when he first knows the French as they really are,

and begins to perceive what close and earnest attention they will

give to what seem to him ridiculously small matters. In many French

people, I do not say in all, there is something worse than pettiness,

namely, downright meanness, and this too is highly favourable to

thrift. This meanness is not confined to the poorer classes, or to the

_bourgeoisie_, it may be found in all classes.

[Sidenote: The English have less both of the Qualities and the Defects.]

In England the qualities and the defects which are favourable to

thrift are much rarer. The English are not so prudent as the French,

not so capable of limiting their desires, not so ready to accept

humble positions contentedly, and if they have foresight they too

often find reasons for not acting according to its dictates. But, on

the other hand, the English have a hearty contempt for pettiness. An

Englishman who is mean is a very rare exception. The English nature

finds no satisfaction in paying less for anything than it is really

worth; it does not wish to pay more, but in consideration for its own

self-respect it wishes to give the full value.

[Sidenote: Egoism and Altruism in Thrift.]

A further examination of the conduct of thrifty people leads to the

conclusion that thrift may be either self-denying or denying to other

people. A man has a family; he feeds himself luxuriously and his family

as poorly as possible; at the year’s end he will have saved more than

if he had lived on potatoes and kept his family well. In large families

thrift often means refusing things to the wife and children whilst the

master is self-indulgent, like the Sultan of Turkey, who wallows in

luxury whilst his ragged soldiers starve. The commonest English form of

this selfishness is to spend in drink whilst denying necessaries to the

children; but this is not thrift, as there are no savings.

[Sidenote: A pretty Instance of Unselfish Thrift.]

Thrift may be one of the noblest forms of altruism. I know all the

details about a very pretty instance that occurred in England two

generations before mine. A lady, well-to-do and childless, had

three little penniless nieces. By pure self-denial she saved three

fortunes for them, enough to keep them in comfort all their days. This

self-denial was all the harder in her case that she belonged to an

aristocratic family, and might have excusably spent her income for the

maintenance of her rank.

[Sidenote: Dowries for Daughters.]

[Sidenote: The Dowry an Education in Thrift.]

The strongest motive for French thrift is to provide dowries for

daughters. It being an accepted rule that every girl must have a dowry,

a Frenchman is not discouraged by the smallness of the sum he is able

to put by. This enables him to begin, and if a little prosperity comes

to him it is a satisfaction to make the dowry larger. Whilst saving the

dowry he learns the art of saving, and applies it afterwards to other

purposes.

[Sidenote: Two English Discouragements to Saving.]

[Sidenote: Gentlemen and Ladies.]

[Sidenote: The Great Renunciation for an Englishman.]

In England there are two terrible discouragements to saving. The first

is the exacting character of English opinion with regard to style

of living, the contempt felt for people who are not gentlemen and

ladies, and the vulgar belief that one cannot be a gentleman or a lady

without leading an expensive life. “It costs a great deal of money

to be a gentleman,” says an English writer, “and a great deal more

to be a lady.” Well, if this is so, why not leave gentlemanhood and

ladyhood to rich people, and why not be content with simple manhood and

womanhood? Nothing can be more admirable than the life of an Englishman

who saves money from a sense of duty when the saving implies the

great renunciation, the renunciation of the title of “gentleman.” A

Frenchman, who may live as he likes, knows nothing of that sacrifice.

[Sidenote: English Contempt for small Sums of Money.]

[Sidenote: £300 a Year.]

[Sidenote: £500 a Year.]

The second great discouragement to saving in England is the English

contempt for small sums of money. “The Englishman,” says Bagehot, “bows

down before a great heap and sneers when he passes a little heap.” The

sneer is perhaps more frequent than the bow. The mention of a small

fortune often excites a smile. And the heap need not be a very little

one to be sneered at. You may be almost ridiculous for having an income

that places you far above want. Three hundred a year is an income that

seems really amusing to the well-constituted English mind. I myself

have heard a man with five hundred a year called a “beggar,” and have

seen people smile good-humouredly at more than twice as much. The

consequence is that unless an Englishman has the natural instinct of

avarice he may think, “What is the good of saving when all I can put by

will only be contemptible?”

[Sidenote: Thrift not always general in France.]

[Sidenote: Grévy and Carnot.]

It is worth noting, as a contrast, that the idea of thrift has not

always been general in France. The present French rural aristocracy

is thrifty; but the old ideal of a French nobleman included largeness

and even prodigality in money matters, which led to the ruin of

many a noble house. To be careful and exact was, in the old days, a

middle-class virtue, the consequence being that there are so many

_nouveaux riches_ in France at the present day. Even now it is not

thought well to be too thrifty in high situations. That was President

Grévy’s fault; President Carnot saves nothing out of his allowance, and

is liked for it. The millions claimed by the Orleans family seemed to

them a good kind of ballast in troubled waters, but they sank the royal

ship.

[Sidenote: An Example of French Carefulness.]

The following may be taken as a rather extreme example of French

carefulness. I knew an old bachelor who had £800 a year and not at

all an ungenerous disposition, but he enjoyed making little savings.

He drove frequently to the neighbouring town, and was quite delighted

with an arrangement he made there, by which he was allowed to put up

his pony for a penny a time on condition that he harnessed it himself

and that the animal had nothing to eat. The pony was avenged by the old

gentleman’s cook, who was thriftier even than her master, and kept him

on short commons.

[Sidenote: Effects of Extreme Thrift.]

[Sidenote: Tradesmen and Thrifty Customers.]

The spirit of small economies may take a character of positive

meanness. Servants may be, and sometimes are, so wretchedly fed that

they will not stay in the place. Relations, as eating beings, may be

so inhospitably received that they finally cease their visits. All

hospitality may come to an end, invitations being declined in dread

of the obligation of reciprocity, till at last the thrifty household

realises its perfect ideal of spending nothing on anybody. French

tradesmen are well acquainted with this class of customers, who are

incessantly trying to get something out of them. The ingenuity of such

customers goes beyond anything that would be believed in England.

French novelists sometimes amuse themselves by depicting the petty

craft of the meanest natures. The novelists cannot go beyond the

truth, with all their inventiveness.

[Sidenote: English Improvidence.]

As a contrast to this you have English improvidence, especially in the

genteel professional class, where the whole energy of the master of

the house is devoted to earning fairy gold, the gold that immediately

vanishes. He spends that he may succeed and succeeds that he may spend.

He brings up a family with genteel habits and no capital. Apparently

prosperous and enviable, he enjoys in reality nothing that prosperity

ought to give, since he has neither leisure to think, nor liberty, nor

peace of mind, nor any hope of rest except in the grave.[53]

[Sidenote: Results of French Thrift.]

The final results of French thrift, for the nation, are as follows:--

[Sidenote: The Poorer Class.]

1. The poorer classes are better fed and better clothed. This is a real

good, because they needed it. They are probably stronger than they used

to be.

[Sidenote: Increase of Idlers.]

2. The idle class is constantly increasing in numbers, not because it

is prolific, but by the accession of _nouveaux riches_. This is not

perceptibly a benefit.

[Sidenote: Effect of Thrift on Population.]

3. The _extreme_ spirit of thrift will not allow population to increase

with riches. It operates as a powerful restraint on procreation even

in wealthy families. This weakens France relatively to England and

Germany.

[Sidenote: Effects of Luxury.]

4. Thrift has produced wealth, wealth luxury, and luxury also acts as a

restraint on population, because, in a luxurious age, children are too

expensive.

[Sidenote: Weakening of the Warlike Temper]

5. As for national defence, the wealth of France is of use for all

material things, such as ships, fortresses, and guns, but by increasing

the love of comfort and commerce it has enfeebled the warlike temper of

the nation.

[Sidenote: Temptation to Enemies.]

6. As the wealth of France continually increases, and her defenders do

not increase with it, she becomes every year a more tempting prize for

an enemy.

CHAPTER VI

CLEANLINESS

[Sidenote: English Civilisation.]

Entering London one day with a friend in the railway train, I asked him

what, in his opinion, would have been the impressions of an ancient

Roman if he could have accompanied us. What would an inhabitant of

Augustan Rome think of English civilisation in Victorian London?

My friend at once answered, “He would think we were a very dirty race,

and this impression would be so strong and so unfavourable that he

would be slow to perceive our superiority in other respects.”

[Sidenote: Belief in English Cleanliness.]

This is not the general English opinion. The English believe themselves

to be a clean people. Foreigners are dirty, Englishmen are clean; that

is one of the most obvious distinctions between them.

[Sidenote: The Morning Sponge-bath.]

[Sidenote: Earlier Habits.]

[Sidenote: Present English Claim to Cleanliness.]

The English upper classes are clean, but cleanliness of any high

degree is a very modern virtue amongst them. It is an invention of the

nineteenth century. I am just old enough to remember the time when

the use of the morning sponge-bath became general amongst boys and

young men of my own generation. Men and women born at the close of the

eighteenth century did as French people do to-day; they took a warm

bath occasionally for cleanliness,[54] and they took shower-baths when

they were prescribed by the physician for health, and they bathed in

summer seas for pleasure, but they did not wash themselves all over

every morning. I remember an old gentleman, of good family and estate,

arguing against this strange, newfangled custom, and maintaining that

it was quite unnecessary to wash the skin in modern times, as the

impurities were removed by linen. However, the new custom took deep

root in England, because it became one of the signs of class. It was

adopted as one of the habits of a gentleman, and afterwards spread

rather lower, though it is not yet by any means universal. It is

chiefly upon this habit that the _present_ English claim to superior

cleanliness is founded. In former times the English were proud of using

more water than the French for ordinary ablutions, and they pretended

to believe that the French were unacquainted with the use of soap,

because they did not provide public pieces of soap in the bedchambers

of their hotels.

[Sidenote: The best Cleanser.]

[Sidenote: Hardihood above Cleanliness.]

The cold sponge-bath is perhaps used in England more for health than

for cleanliness, as a prolonged stay in a warm bath cleans much better,

and the treatment by perspiration according to old Roman or modern

oriental usage is incomparably the most effectual cleanser of all.

It is characteristic of the English to have set hardihood above the

ideal perfection of cleanliness, and to have avoided the luxurious and

enervating bath in which the ancients took delight.

[Sidenote: English Pride in Hardihood.]

Englishmen are proud of being able to sponge themselves with cold

water all through the winter. I have known one who used to lie down

in ice-cold water every morning; others boast of a morning plunge in

sea or river at Christmas time, and they continue the habit as long as

their constitutions will hold out.

[Sidenote: Concealed Dirtiness.]

[Sidenote: Efforts of the Poor towards Cleanliness.]

English physicians are severe on the concealed dirtiness of many

people in the middle classes, who seem clean with their false collars

and cuffs and their washed faces and hands. One does not expect much

cleanliness amongst the labouring population of any modern country,

but the working classes in England deserve great credit for every

effort they make in the direction of cleanliness, because they have

not the facilities of the rich. I myself have often seen colliers in

Lancashire naked to the waist and giving themselves a thorough wash in

plentiful hot water with soap, and when greater facilities are given

in the shape of public baths they make use of them. It would be easy

for manufacturers to encourage cleanliness by having baths at their

factories. Some have actually done this.

[Sidenote: French Warm Baths.]

[Sidenote: Effects of the Warm Bath in France.]

[Sidenote: Consequences of English Example.]

The state of England with regard to personal cleanliness may be

considered as partially satisfactory, and it is improving. As to the

French, their strong point is their excellent institution of warm

baths, which are to be found even in the smallest towns with a complete

service. A tired Frenchman, arriving at anything like a town, looks to

his hot bath as the best restorative. If these baths are a pleasure

to a man he will be clean; if he does not like them he will not be

so clean as the Englishman who sponges himself by way of discipline,

whether he likes it or not. However, English example has had a

wonderful effect in improving the apparatus of cleanliness in French

private houses. English baths, ewers, basins, and other complicated

toilet arrangements are copied extensively in France. If you visit a

pot-shop in a small provincial town, quite remote from the Channel,

you will find English washstand services of full size, or good French

copies of them; and if you go to the ironmonger’s you will find all

kinds of baths for domestic use, including English “tubs.” In French

houses, where the old small ewers and basins are retained, they are

now almost invariably supplemented by a capacious tin water-jug on the

floor. In fact, the French are becoming a cleaner people, thanks to the

example of their neighbours, who are about forty years in advance.

[Sidenote: Cleanly Appearance of French Crowds.]

[Sidenote: Reasons for it.]

A French crowd (I am not the first to notice this) always _appears_

cleaner than an English crowd. This is due to the self-respecting

habits of the French lower classes. In England the poor people in towns

will wear old and dirty things that have belonged to middle-class

people; in France they wear cheap things of their own and take care

to have them clean, especially on Sunday or a fête-day. Peasants’ and

workmen’s wives look as clean as ladies; in fact, their washed caps,

prettily ironed, have a fresher appearance than ladies’ bonnets. The

men, too, in their new blouses, appear cleaner than a _bourgeois_ in a

black coat. In summer, all the young peasants look as if they put on a

new straw hat every Sunday.

[Sidenote: Effects of Coal-smoke.]

[Sidenote: English Towns.]

[Sidenote: Paper and Paint.]

[Sidenote: The old-fashioned French Way.]

[Sidenote: Carpet and _Parquet_.]

Much of this external cleanliness is due merely to the absence of

coal-smoke. In London and Manchester it is difficult and expensive to

be clean. The cheery and bright external appearance of French houses

is due to the same cause, and now the common use of coal is spoiling

it in some places. As for English houses in large and smoky towns, the

melancholy dinginess of the outer walls is accepted as a matter of

course, but cleanliness has its revenge in the interior and even on

the whitened doorstep. There is one point as to which the English are

greatly superior to the French, especially to middle-class provincial

families,--they renew paper and paint. The good old-fashioned French

way was to neglect papering and painting till further neglect could

make it no worse, and then to think no more of the matter. There is a

strong conventionalism about these subjects everywhere. In the inside

of a room English people are more particular about the walls and

ceiling, French people about the floor. There is many a middle-class

French dining-room where the only beauty is the extreme cleanliness of

the bare boards. The English like carpets, which are more favourable to

comfort than to cleanliness, the French prefer the healthy waxed oak

_parquet_, and often content themselves with a deal _plancher_ or red

tiles.

[Sidenote: English Love of Whitewash.]

[Sidenote: Whitewash unknown in French Farm-houses.]

The humbler classes in England have a great superiority in their love

of whitewash. The passion for whitewash which has been so disastrous

in churches is excellent in farm-houses, and I have known many a

farm-house in Lancashire that was kept fresh and pleasant by the use

of it. In French farm-houses it seems to be perfectly unknown; and

although their interiors are admirably adapted for pictorial treatment,

and have been charmingly painted by Edouard Frère and others, the rich

browns of the coarsely-plastered walls are really nothing but dirt,

though delightful in colour and texture from an artist’s point of

view.[55]

[Sidenote: French Bedding.]

The French are very careful about the cleanliness of their bedding.

I have often in my travels slept in very poor country inns, but was

always sure of clean, if coarse, sheets, as well as a clean table-cloth

and napkin.

[Sidenote: English and French Water-closets.]

[Sidenote: French Neglect.]

The English are incomparably superior to the French in their care and

cleanliness about water-closets and everything of that kind. French

incompetence, stupidity, and neglect of this matter are indefensible.

The only possible explanation is that when people have once got into

the habit of neglecting any particular thing the habit of neglect

becomes fixed, even when it is attended by great inconvenience. To

borrow an illustration from a pleasanter subject, I may observe that

many French farmers, and, I believe, more Irish, have a fixed habit of

neglecting the repair of harness except with bits of string. Certainly,

in the better class of French houses, an attempt is made to keep the

water-closet in order; but as it has always been badly organised at

the beginning this is very difficult. The French might learn all about

these inventions from the English, who thoroughly understand them.

[Sidenote: Comfort of Moderate Dirtiness.]

[Sidenote: The Poor Man’s Under-Shirt.]

In conclusion, France and England may be ranked amongst the tolerably

clean nations, England taking the lead; but real cleanliness is not

general in either. What there is of it is confined to limited classes,

and anything like an ideal perfection of cleanliness is the peculiarity

of individuals who have a natural genius for it and find a pleasure in

it. The majority prefer a moderate degree of dirtiness as being more

conducive to their true comfort. A certain English poet used to wear a

dirty shirt for comfort, and a clean one over it for show. That exactly

represents the feelings of ordinary mankind, who have no objection to

a little cleanliness in deference to custom, provided that it is only

external, and that they may have the satisfactions of dirt beneath,

like a cherished secret sin under a mantle of piety. As for the really

poor, who are miserably clad, it has been pointed out by Mr. Galton

that dirt is a necessity for them in cold weather; it is the poor man’s

under-shirt.

CHAPTER VII

COURAGE

[Sidenote: Seeming Decline in National Courage.]

I think it must be admitted that there has been an apparent decline

in national courage both in England and France during the latter half

of the nineteenth century. They now, both of them, shrink from war as

they did not shrink in former times, and when the _casus belli_ would

have been clear to the Englishman and the Frenchman of more heroic

days their descendants prefer to wink at it. We are no longer quite

certain that national courage was a great virtue, and there are certain

considerations that may console us for its real or apparent diminution.

[Sidenote: Personal Risk.]

[Sidenote: Nations do not desire War.]

[Sidenote: Rarity of Warlike Enthusiasm in France.]

[Sidenote: Tonquin.]

[Sidenote: Egypt.]

In the first place, Did the men who decided upon former wars _risk

their own lives_? When a cabinet of civilians declares war, or when

it is declared by a king who is not really a soldier, the act is not

one of courage at all, but of political wisdom or folly. Or if a

military king with a standing army declares war, the act is not one of

national courage; it is only a demonstration of the military caste.

When the nation itself is the army, and when it declares war through

its freely-elected representatives, then the act is one of national

courage; but how often has a war been declared in that way? Nations do

not desire war, and the better they are educated the less they wish for

it. The only French war in our time which really excited the enthusiasm

of the nation was that for the liberation of Italy. The French had no

enthusiasm whatever for the Crimean War, which they looked upon as an

English enterprise; they had none for the Mexican, and there was only

a little noisy surface excitement in favour of the war of 1870. Since

then the nation has really had the control of its own affairs, and has

shown no warlike tendencies. The Tonquin enterprise was ministerial,

and ruined the minister who undertook it. The French people would not

even support a vigorous Egyptian policy. Its only national courage is

that which takes the form of waiting calmly for the German onslaught.

[Sidenote: Turning against Weak Peoples.]

Neither England nor France now ventures to attack a really first-class

Power; but they exercise their military strength against weak,

half-civilised peoples. England breaks the Zulu power, but not the

Russian. France advances her African frontier, but not her European.

France now exactly imitates the English policy of expansion out of

Europe, and of doing nothing in Europe until she can find an ally.

[Sidenote: France and England now Second-class Powers.]

They are still nominally Great Powers, but they now belong in reality

to a second class which might be defined as that of the nations that do

not fight without allies except against feeble potentates. Neither one

nor the other preserves those illusions about its own strength which

are necessary for heroic action. What is more, the other nations have

lost the old fear of England and France, whose mutual distrust breaks

forth on every possible occasion and deprives them of the one source of

real strength--association.

[Sidenote: The Siege of Paris.]

The kind of national courage which consists in offering a determined

though hopeless resistance to a successful enemy was very nobly

displayed by the French after Sedan, especially during the siege of

Paris. Some English writers called this mere obstinacy, and had nothing

but contemptuous blame for it, yet I venture to say that if an invading

army surrounded London the English would show exactly the same kind

of noble obstinacy themselves. In such a case a nation does not fight

without a purpose, though it may struggle without hope. It fights for

its self-respect.

[Sidenote: Courage possible for Second-class Powers.]

[Sidenote: Danger of bottled-up Courage.]

[Sidenote: The Paris Commune.]

This is the sort of courage that second-class Powers may still retain,

they may reserve themselves for a fierce and prolonged defence. There

remains for them a peculiar danger. It might happen that two Powers,

not quite of the first rank, might fight each other because they dared

not assault the greatest Powers. A superfluity of unexercised courage

might explode in a war between England and France, because one dared

not fight Russia, nor the other Germany. There have been moments when

this seemed very likely to happen. The dangerous effects of bottled-up

courage were curiously displayed in the time of the Paris Commune. The

National Guards had been expecting to be led against the Prussians in

a grand sortie, but were always put off till the peace came. They had

their rifles and their bottled-up courage, so they rushed into conflict

with the “Versaillais.”

[Sidenote: Individual Courage.]

[Sidenote: Football.]

[Sidenote: Duelling.]

[Sidenote: Danger in Duels.]

For individual courage the two peoples are nearly on a par, but

they differ in their training. It is unpleasant to have to confess

that brutal and barbarous customs are favourable to the development

of courage, yet some of them unquestionably are so, and a higher

civilisation might have a difficulty in replacing them. Football, as

practised in English public schools, is a brutal pastime, but it is an

excellent discipline in courage. French duelling, though infinitely

more refined in its forms, is in principle thoroughly barbarous, but

as a school of courage there is nothing to equal it, and the great

advantage of it in that respect is the constant possibility of an

encounter that hangs over the head of every Frenchman, and accustoms

him to the idea of danger. He goes through life like an armed knight

riding through a wood. In saying “every Frenchman” I exaggerated,

because, in fact, men are very differently exposed to the danger

of duelling in France. Peasants never fight duels, workmen hardly

ever, but there is not a gentleman, or an officer, or a deputy, or a

journalist, who is not ready to go on the field of private battle at a

moment’s notice. It is true that these encounters rarely end fatally,

yet there is always danger, if only from accident. An intimate French

friend of mine, when he had a duel on his hands, would go home to his

wife and say, “Now, my dear, I must be left very quiet, as I have to

fight to-morrow morning;” then he would go to bed and sleep till four

o’clock, when he drank nothing but a glass of water before facing lead

or steel.

[Sidenote: Boxing.]

[Sidenote: Bull-fights.]

I have a poor opinion of the sort of courage which consists in looking

on with tranquil nerves whilst others suffer. However, this base valour

may sometimes be of use. The English may acquire it to some extent

by witnessing pugilistic combats, the French of the south by seeing

bull-fights in the arenas of Nîmes and Arles; but it is only a very

small proportion of the population in England and France that now

witnesses these things, the spectators are not comparable in numbers to

the vast Roman public that hardened its heart in the gladiatorial shows.

[Sidenote: Field Sports.]

As for field sports, those practised in England require little courage

except in horsemanship for English hunting. In France there are

dangerous boar-hunts. It is, however, only in some parts of France that

this amusement is to be had, and it is practised by comparatively few

persons, chiefly amongst the richer gentry. Field sports are good for

keeping up the energy of semi-barbarous aristocracies, which, in the

absence of war, might lapse into indolence without them.

[Sidenote: Courage in the Common People.]

[Sidenote: Military Service.]

[Sidenote: French Boys.]

Courage is kept up amongst the common people chiefly by dangers

repeatedly incurred in their ordinary avocations. This discipline of

experience with boats, horses, bulls, and other dangerous things or

creatures, is common both to England and France. In a word, as to the

lower classes, they are in the same situation in both countries, except

that the humble Frenchman has to undergo military service, which is a

fine school, especially in the cavalry and artillery. Young English

boyhood, in the middle and higher classes, is in a better situation for

acquiring manliness than French boyhood, because it has more liberty. I

have not, however, noticed that French boys were timid for themselves

(except in talking), it is their parents and teachers who are timid for

them.

PART VI

CUSTOM

CHAPTER I

CHRONOLOGY

[Sidenote: Dissimilarity between French and English.]

It is a commonplace that the French and English of to-day are extremely

unlike each other--wonderfully unlike each other, considering that they

are such near neighbours, and the two principal representatives of

western civilisation in Europe.

Has the unlikeness always been as marked as it is now, or has there

been a time in the past history of the two nations when they resembled

each other on some points now marked by trenchant differences?

[Sidenote: Varying Degrees of Dissimilarity.]

The answer appears to be that the French and English have at certain

periods of the past been much less unlike each other than they are

now, but yet that the extreme of dissimilarity has been reached at a

later period, and that, in the present day, the slow but sure action

of causes that may be indicated is bringing about a diminution of that

extreme dissimilarity, without, however, giving grounds for any belief

or hope that the two nations can ever be very like each other in the

future.

[Sidenote: A French _Noblesse_ in England.]

Recent historians, especially Mr. Freeman, have taught us to realise

much more clearly than we did thirty years ago the truth that the

kings of the House of Anjou were French kings, and that the governing

classes in the England which they ruled were essentially a French

_noblesse_. The Frenchifying influence of kings and nobles was resumed

in another way by the Stuart dynasty, and might have gone on gradually

approximating the entire English nation to French customs, had not

a great mental revolution occurred in England and Scotland, which

made the British thenceforward a peculiar people, strongly differing

not only from the French but from all the other continental nations

whatever. The result of that revolution, as it affects our own time, is

that England resembles no nation in the world except her own colonies,

including, of course, the great kindred nation in America.

[Sidenote: Puritanism.]

[Sidenote: Its Effect in making the English unlike the French.]

That revolution was Puritanism, a far more important thing than

the change from a monarchical to a republican form of government,

because it really changed the mental habits of the nation, making

English people more peculiar than they themselves know, and quite

incomprehensible by the French; making English customs differ from

continental customs more widely than they had ever differed before;

changing even the fundamental character of the English mind by

chastening and repressing the light-hearted gaiety of merry England and

substituting for it a gravity often deepening into gloom; replacing the

old morals by severer morals, establishing a strict censorship even

over language, substituting for the old religion of Europe a faith

less picturesque and less indulgent, consequently less in harmony with

French feeling.

[Sidenote: Puritanism in the British Middle Classes.]

There is a temptation to exaggerate the importance of historical

influences when once they have been perceived, but one can hardly

exaggerate the importance of Puritanism in the history of the English

people, especially in the history of the middle classes, where it is

still predominant at the present day. Both the qualities and the

defects that distinguish the British middle classes are for the most

part directly traceable to the influence of Puritanism, and so are

those feelings and opinions of which they themselves have forgotten the

origin.

[Sidenote: Not a Special Creed.]

[Sidenote: Transformation of British Sentiment and Custom.]

[Sidenote: An English Family in Paris.]

[Sidenote: The old English Sunday.]

[Sidenote: Sunday a Cause of Separation between English and French.]

It may be thought that Puritanism ought to have been spoken of in the

chapters on religion, but I am not sure that it ought to be classed

as a special creed. It seems rather to be a reform of custom in the

direction of severity and austerity which might be carried out under

any creed that permitted rigorous moralists to obtain a great social

power. The Wahhabees are the Puritans of Islam, with their particular

prohibitions, their gravity of demeanour, their employment of pious

forms in language, their severity of social espionage, and control by

a vigilant public opinion. But although we may find Puritanism in the

most unexpected places, it has never accomplished a work so extensive

in its consequences, or likely to be so durable, as the transformation

of British sentiment and custom. Only a dispassionate comparison with

custom still alive on the continent, but extinct in England, can enable

us to realise what that transformation is. A middle-class English

family goes to Paris.[56] In due course of time a Sunday comes; or

rather, not a Sunday, but a _Dimanche_. The English family has heard

of a French Sunday before, but has hitherto been unable to realise it

by mere force of imagination. On actually _seeing_ it, the impression

received is that the French are all intentional Sabbath-breakers--that

the amusements which go forward on that day are a clear evidence of

French wickedness. Some good English or Scotch people are so shocked

by what they see that they recognise in the defeat of 1870 a just

punishment for the national sin of Sabbath-breaking. They do not

realise that what they see is not the French Sunday in particular, but

the continental Sunday in general; still less do they remember that it

is also the English Sunday of pre-Puritanic times--those times now so

remote in memory, and yet historically still so near, when the English

had not yet become a peculiar people, but lived like the other nations

of western Europe. The English of Shakespeare’s time went to the

theatre on Sunday,[57] and after morning service in the churches they

enjoyed many active games and recreations, including dancing, archery,

and leaping.[58] Now, as there is nothing more visible than external

differences of custom, and as people are separated even more by visible

differences than by those which are invisible, and as on one day out of

seven those differences are now strikingly apparent between the English

and French peoples, it is evident that on the day when they differ most

they cannot but feel infinitely more estranged from each other than

their ancestors would have felt on the same day.

[Sidenote: English Roman Catholics.]

[Sidenote: The Catholic Sunday.]

[Sidenote: Studies on Sunday.]

The modern disapproval felt by British visitors for the behaviour

of the French people on Sunday is due in great part to the cautious

conduct of the Roman Catholic minority in England, who do not venture

to show openly what kind of Sunday it is that their Church would hold

to be innocently employed. To avoid scandal in a country where the

influence of Puritanism is still powerful, they keep a Sunday that is

outwardly almost a Sabbath, and are careful to avoid many recreations

that the Church of Rome has always freely permitted. In fact, that

Church permits all recreations on the first day of the week that she

sanctions on any other, including the most active exercises. What

she really forbids is lucrative professional labour. A lawyer should

not study a case on Sunday, unless there is urgent necessity, but he

is perfectly free to amuse himself, however noisily, in sawing and

hammering. A professional artist may do better not to paint (although

there is a kind of special toleration for artistic and intellectual

pursuits, as being different from mere drudgery), but an amateur,

working for recreation, may take his apparatus into the fields.

Disinterested studies of all kinds are permitted by the Church on

Sunday. It is not in a Roman Catholic country that geologists would be

in danger of being stoned, as they have been in Scotland, for hammering

at rocks on that day.[59]

[Sidenote: A French Sunday.]

Here is the way in which some very religious French people spent a

Sunday in 1886, I being one of the party. They went to mass early in

the morning, in the chapel of the nearest _château_; then they made

preparations for receiving their friends. The friends came after

_déjeuner_, two families, in addition to seven guests staying in the

house. Some of them remained in the garden, sat about in camp chairs

and talked; others went to the village _fête_, where, of course, there

was a great deal of dancing and other amusements, which they looked

upon quite benevolently. Now, it so happened that those who went to

the _fête_ were the most religious people of the whole party. On their

return we had dinner, and the most pious were by no means the least

merry. After dinner the young ladies gave us some music, and one of

them played a waltz. This set the young people dancing, and so a dance

was improvised which lasted till eleven o’clock, when the guests drove

away in the moonlight.[60]

[Sidenote: Success of the Puritan Legislation in Scotland.]

Perhaps the English and Scotch might have given up Sunday dancing more

readily than if they had been by nature as saltatory as the French

are, but the British have given up many things that they cared for

passionately. They gave up salmon-fishing, for example, which was not

readily put down in Scotland, and the new legislation attained in the

end that supreme success of the legislator when he establishes a very

durable custom that would survive the repeal of his law. The power of

the dead Puritans is shown in nothing more wonderfully than in the

abstinence of British sportsmen when the twelfth of August occurs on a

Sunday, and every fowling-piece in the British Islands remains unloaded

till Monday morning.

[Sidenote: New Customs.]

This history of the divergence from continental custom may be written

in two sentences. Puritanism obtained power to legislate, and made

recreation illegal on Sunday. By laws of great severity it established

new customs which have now, by lapse of time, become rather old

customs; and these have completely obliterated from the ordinary

British mind all traces of any recollection that the still older

British customs were like those of the continental nations.

[Sidenote: Development of Opinion.]

[Sidenote: The Violin.]

Opinion has gone even beyond legislation itself, by a process of growth

and development. Here is an example. An amateur violinist was staying

in an English house for a few days, including the first day of the

week. He took his violin out of its case and began to play a little

in private. The lady of the house immediately entered the room and

begged him to desist. “I am playing sacred music,” he answered; “this

is a part of Handel’s _Messiah_.” “That does not signify,” was the

rejoinder, “the music may be sacred, but the instrument is not.” Here

is a new development in the distinction between sacred and profane

instruments, and a very subtle distinction it is. The organ, the

harmonium,--in default of these, even the commonplace piano,--these

are sacred instruments, but not the voice-like violin. Yet the violin

is but the lyre--“Jubal’s lyre”--made capable of far more perfect

expression.[61]

[Sidenote: Rowing and Sailing on Sunday.]

When I lived in Scotland I had occasion to observe another very subtle

distinction. It is forbidden to labour on the Sabbath-day, yet I

found that the toilsome work of rowing was looked upon as innocent in

comparison with sailing. This was because a white sail had rather a

festive appearance. I was especially blamed for not removing the flag

from my sailing-boat, for the same reason, though it might be argued

that there can be nothing unholy in the crosses of St. Andrew and St.

George. In France, sailing regattas are usually held on Sunday, with

the full approval of the Church.

[Sidenote: Effect of the Sabbath on Literature.]

[Sidenote: French Ignorance of the Bible.]

[Sidenote: English prepared for German Criticism.]

The establishment of Sabbatarian customs in Great Britain had an

unforeseen effect on literature. It prepared the way for the success

of theological books and periodicals by leaving the day, in the most

pious families, without any other recreation than religious reading.

The British read ten times as much about theology as the French, and

therefore have a much more extensive knowledge of the subject. In

France pious people read the _Imitation_, the mass-book, an abridgment

of sacred history, and some printed sermons by the most celebrated

ecclesiastical orators; but this is not to be compared with the range

of English theological reading, both in the Bible itself and in all

kinds of elaborate commentaries. As for French unbelievers, who are

very numerous, they live outside of theology much more easily and

completely than their English brethren, and often know so little about

it that references to the Old Testament familiar to every Englishman

would be unintelligible to them. The modern English political use of

the cave of Adullam puzzled Frenchmen exceedingly, as they did not

know anything about Adullam. One very curious and unexpected result

of Sabbath strictness in Great Britain is that the British are much

better prepared for German exegetic criticism than the French; so

that the British often arrive at unbelief by laborious theological

reading, whilst the French, as a general rule, come to it with much

less trouble through Voltaire, and retain the Voltairean spirit. Of

late years, however, certain scientific influences, especially that

of Darwin, have been common to both countries, and the effect of

theological studies counts for less, relatively, even in England.

[Sidenote: Duelling an old English Custom.]

The best example of a difference of custom that is simply chronological

is that of duelling. The English, by a real progress, have passed out

of this custom; the French have not yet passed out of it, though it

is probable that they will do so ultimately. Like all fashions very

recently discarded, it seems absurd to those who thought it a part of

the order of nature a little time ago. And so completely do we forget

the reasons for discarded customs that the English now look upon

duelling as quite contrary to reason, having forgotten the ancient

reason on which the single combat was founded. Yet it was a very good

reason indeed, according to the ideas that our fathers held about the

government of the universe.

[Sidenote: The old Religious Reason for Duelling.]

The old belief, in France and England equally, was that the appeal

to arms was an appeal to divine justice, and that God himself would

interfere in the battle by protecting the combatant whose quarrel was

rightful against the power and malice of his assailant. So long as this

belief prevailed, a duel was incomparably more reasonable than is an

action-at-law in the present day, for it appealed to infallible instead

of to fallible justice, and in addition to being reasonable, it was

distinctly a pious act, as the combatant proved his faith by staking

his existence on his trust in the divine protection. “He will deliver

me out of the hand of this Philistine.” The faith of David was the

faith of the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote: Duelling Irrational without a Providence.]

The custom lasted longer than the belief, even in England, and in

France it has long survived all faith in supernatural interference.

The duel is utterly irrational when people do not believe that God

will protect an inferior swordsman, with right on his side, against a

better swordsman in the wrong, or that he will spare the innocent by

deflecting the course of a bullet well aimed by a wicked adversary.

[Sidenote: The Religion of Honour.]

There has been, however, the intervention of a sort of secondary

religion between the old one and modern unbelief. There has been the

religion of honour. According to this, a man of honour was bound to

expose his life on certain occasions to the rapier or pistol of a

private enemy, and, if he fell, he fell a martyr to this religion of

honour, leaving a name unsullied by the stain of cowardice, which was

the equivalent of infidelity or apostasy.

[Sidenote: The old English Sentiment.]

[Sidenote: The French Sentiment about Honour.]

This religion survived in England even so late as the first half of

the present century, and it still survives in France. The old English

sentiment,--I say the old sentiment because contemporary Englishmen

have got so far past it, though it is very recent in mere date,--the

old English sentiment was expressed by Thackeray in the challenge sent

by Clive Newcome to his cousin Barnes, and in the gratification it

afforded to Sir George Tufto and to the Colonel, both of them elderly

men. Nevertheless, as Thackeray knew that the religion of duelling was

already dead in England when he wrote, he took care to make the action

of Clive acceptable by assigning to it filial affection as a motive.

The French sentiment about honour was described with disapproval in the

case of de Castillonnes and Lord Kew. “Castillonnes had no idea but

that he was going to the field of honour; stood with an undaunted scowl

before his enemy’s pistol; and discharged his own, and brought down

his opponent, with a grim satisfaction and a comfortable conviction

afterwards that he had acted _en galant homme_.” And so, no doubt, he

had, not only according to modern French ideas, but according to old

English ideas also.

[Sidenote: The Newcomes.]

General Tufto was of the old school when he said of Sir Barnes Newcome,

after he had received Clive’s challenge, “At first I congratulated him,

thinking your boy’s offer must please him, as it would have pleased any

fellow _in our time_ to have a shot.” And the Colonel himself, instead

of reprimanding Clive for wishing to commit murder, “regarded his son

with a look of beautiful, inexpressible affection. And he laid his hand

on his son’s shoulder and smiled, and stroked Clive’s yellow moustache.

“‘And--and did Barnes send no answer to that letter you wrote him?’ he

said slowly.

“Clive broke out into a laugh that was almost a sob. He took both

his father’s hands. ‘My dear, dear old father, what an--old--trump

you are!’ My eyes were so dim I could hardly see the two men as they

embraced.”

[Sidenote: Extinction of the old Sentiment.]

All this is much more French (even down to the embracing and the

tear-dimmed eyes of the spectator) than the opinions professed about

duelling by the English newspapers of 1886. According to them, a man

who sends a challenge is ridiculous, and no more. This marks the final

extinction of the old sentiment.

Another indication of this change is the ridicule of duelling on

the ground that it is not dangerous. French duelling is constantly

represented in English newspapers as a very safe kind of ceremony, in

which a slight scratch only is to be apprehended. As to this, perhaps I

may be allowed to give an instance that was brought very near home.

[Sidenote: A French Duel.]

I had been away for several days, and on my return journey dined at a

railway station. The waiter had known me for years, and, according to

his custom, enlivened my solitary dinner with a little talk. He asked

if I had “heard about M. de St. Victor.” I had heard nothing. “Because,

sir,” the waiter continued, “he was killed this morning in a duel in

the wood at Fragny.” Now, it so happened that my wife and daughter were

to have lunched and spent that afternoon with Madame de St. Victor;

but as her husband’s dead body had been brought back to the château of

Montjeu, where he lived, with a sword wound through it, Madame de St.

Victor did not receive her friends that day.[62]

[Sidenote: Cause of the Duel.]

A single event of that kind, occurring in a family not altogether

strange to you, does more to make you feel the grim reality of duelling

than many newspaper paragraphs. In this particular case the incident

arose from a correspondence between two proud and brave gentlemen

about their game preserves. One of them had written in a manner that

offended the other, and had refused to withdraw his letter. The code

of honour then made a duel almost inevitable, and the correspondence

being continued very soon led to it. An especially significant thing

about this duel was that the conqueror was known as a remarkably

expert swordsman, which the victim was not to the same degree. This

demonstrates the real unfairness of duelling, as we see that the weaker

or less expert antagonist goes down, whatever may be the righteousness

of his cause.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of abolishing the Duel.]

The sense of this unfairness is gradually tending (in spite of

appearances) to the abolition of the duel in France. There are two

signs that the custom is growing weaker. The opinion that duels are

contrary to reason is more frequently expressed in conversation,

especially by women, than it used to be, and the duellists themselves

are generally satisfied with the degree of deference to custom which

goes as far as the first wound, and do not vindictively thirst for

each other’s blood. The difficulty in abolishing the duel strikes an

intelligent Frenchman in this way. “The duel,” he thinks, “is evidently

a most irrational institution; but when there is a quarrel between two

high-spirited men I cannot see how it is to come to an end otherwise.”

Then he will say, “I know that the duel is obsolete in England, which

is a happy thing for your country; but I cannot imagine how an English

gentleman behaves when he is insulted.” To this difficulty I usually

reply that public opinion in his country condemns the insolent man

for his bad manners, and puts itself on the side of any gentleman who

conducts himself with simple dignity, so that the latter is free to

treat his enemy with silent contempt.

[Sidenote: Wines.]

[Sidenote: French Wines in old England.]

Changes of custom in one of the two nations, which have had the effect

of separating it still further from the other, may be traced in several

minor habits that are now considered especially and characteristically

English. I can remember the time when the middle classes of England

hardly knew the taste of French wine. Port and sherry were the wines

of the middle class. The upper classes, in those days, offered French

red wines at dessert under the general name of “claret,” without

distinguishing between Bordeaux and Burgundy, and consequently without

mentioning vineyards, unless the host happened to be, or pretended to

be, a connoisseur. The taxes on French wines were afterwards reduced,

and just before the reduction the kind of middle-class people who

prided themselves on being especially national often declared that John

Bull would never take to those light French wines, implying that he

was a personage of more manly tastes, and writers in the press quoted

a dignitary of the Anglican Church who had declared that “claret would

be port, if it could,” which is like saying that port is anxious to

become brandy. These good middle-class people, who made it a part of

John Bull’s character to despise their French wines, seem to have

been perfectly unaware that their ancestors, not less English than

themselves, had for centuries been hearty appreciators of French wines,

and that, in old times, casks of Bordeaux or Burgundy were to be

found not only in the cellars of the rich, but in country hostelries.

This may be a trifling matter, but to have the same taste in wines is

not altogether unimportant as an aid to good-fellowship. A Frenchman

looks upon an incapacity to appreciate the best wines--by which, of

course, he always means the best French wines--as the sign of the outer

barbarian. What he most likes in the Belgians is the just value they

attach to the produce of “_les meilleurs crûs_” and their excellent,

well-filled cellars.

[Sidenote: Tea.]

[Sidenote: Englishwomen in France.]

[Sidenote: Novelty of Tea-drinking in England.]

Another great change of custom in England, separating her from France,

is of quite modern introduction. There was a time when both countries

were total abstainers from tea-drinking, and, so far, exactly alike;

now England is a great tea-drinking country and France is not. Here is

a new subject on which they are not in sympathy. It may seem a trifle;

but has the reader ever observed Englishwomen in France deprived of tea

or supplied with the beverage in a weaker condition than they like?

At such times they have a very low opinion of Gallic civilisation.

Far-seeing Englishwomen who are accustomed to the continent take their

own teapots with their private supplies, and make the indispensable

decoction themselves. When drinking it they feel like Christians in a

pagan land. Is that nothing? Does it not produce a perceptible sense of

estrangement from the French? Tea-drinking has now become one of those

immensely important customs, like smoking and coffee in the East, that

have connected themselves with the amenities of human intercourse, and

to brew your cup in the solitude of a foreign hotel is to feel yourself

an alien. Yet how long is it since the English began to drink tea? They

began tasting it experimentally, as a few Englishmen now smoke hashish,

about the middle of the seventeenth century. Compared with ale and

wine, it is a novelty. The greatest of Englishwomen, Queen Elizabeth,

who was of English blood by father and mother, and thoroughly national,

never drank a cup of tea in her life, and did her work energetically

without it.

[Sidenote: The Peculiarly English Meals.]

The use of tea has produced a special meal in the English middle

classes which is unknown in France as it was unknown in England two

hundred years ago. The French way of living, under other names, bears a

near resemblance to old English habits. The _déjeuner à la fourchette_

is the early dinner, the _dîner_ is the supper. The French first

breakfast is modern, when _café au lait_ is taken, but great numbers of

French people take soup or a glass of white wine with a crust of bread,

and many take nothing at all. Breakfast and tea are the peculiarly

English meals, and they are modern. The one great English innovation

which the French have never been able to accept is that of eating salty

and greasy food, such as fried bacon, and drinking hot and sweet tea or

coffee at the same time.

[Sidenote: The Beard and Moustache.]

[Sidenote: Shaving.]

As an example of an old English fashion that is now looked upon as

French, I may mention the way of treating the beard adopted by Napoleon

III., and in imitation of him by many French soldiers and civilians.

The moustache in combination with the _barbiche_ was looked upon as a

French fashion by the English, and very few contemporary Englishmen

adopted it for that reason. They forgot that it was an old English

fashion,--much older than the pair of whiskers with the shaven chin

and upper lip which used to be looked upon as national in the highest

degree. At the same time the English did not notice that the way of

shaving the chin and upper lip which they believed to be so much the

national mark of an Englishman was a rigorous contemporary French

fashion for two classes, namely, magistrates (with barristers) and

domestic servants. This is now somewhat relaxed, the tendency in both

nations being towards complete liberty about the wearing of the beard.

CHAPTER II

COMFORT

[Sidenote: The English hardy yet Comfort-loving.]

There seems to be a contradiction in the English character on this very

important subject, for the English are at the same time one of the

hardiest peoples in the world and quite the most self-indulgent up to

that point which is defined by the national word “comfort.”

[Sidenote: Real and Ideal Comfort.]

By “comfort” an Englishman understands perfect physical ease and

something more. The state of perfect comfort is partly ideal. Tapestry

on a wall is comfortable, yet we do not touch it, we do not wrap

ourselves up in it. The mind is cognisant of its presence as a warm,

soft tissue, and that is all. Carpets are a little nearer, physically,

as we walk upon them; but nine-tenths of the comfort they give is also

purely ideal, for it can matter very little to us that a whole floor

should be clothed with a soft pile when we can get as much softness on

bare boards by wearing slippers.

[Sidenote: Little Conveniences.]

An Englishman’s passion for comfort is also closely connected with his

love of despatch, and his ingenuity in devising little conveniences

that diminish friction. In this ingenuity he has no rival, but it

sometimes defeats itself by making the conveniences themselves an

embarrassment.

[Sidenote: Example given by Jesus.]

[Sidenote: Socrates and Epictetus.]

This is one of those matters which exhibit in a striking light the

powerlessness of education, as the English of the comfortable classes

have received their highest teaching from Greek philosophers and

Christian apostles, two classes of teachers who, both by example and

precept, inculcated the value of self-denial and simplicity of life.

We do not know very much of the life of Jesus, but the little that

we do know is entirely in favour of the belief that it was almost

destitute of physical comfort, and that he lived amongst a class of

poor people to whom comfort was unknown. On one occasion, as we all

remember, he expressly discouraged anxiety about eating and dress; and

as for lodging, there is no evidence either that he had a dwelling of

his own or that he ever intentionally sought the hospitality of the

rich. The lives of Socrates and Epictetus show an equal indifference to

comfort; Socrates lived just as it happened, caring only for the life

of thought; Epictetus, in a passage of splendid eloquence, rejoiced in

his mental freedom, and demonstrated that it was compatible with the

hardest and barest life.[63]

[Sidenote: Practical Difficulty of plain Living.]

[Sidenote: Individuals not Responsible.]

The English answer to Epictetus would be that he lived in another age,

that he was unmarried, and therefore had not to satisfy the claims of

others, and finally, that he did nothing notable except philosophising.

If a modern Englishman tried to live like Epictetus he would inflict a

kind of social paralysis upon himself, he would deny himself his due

share in English life. That is the great practical difficulty in the

way of hard living and high thinking. It is well for the philosopher,

but he cannot require the same austerity of his family and his guests.

No individual Englishman is responsible for the national standard of

comfort. It has grown as custom grows, and is now so firmly fixed that

Wisdom herself has to submit to it.

[Sidenote: The old Prejudice against Self-indulgence.]

[Sidenote: Old-fashioned Stoicism.]

[Sidenote: Stoicism in the French Peasantry.]

There is even a marked difference of opinion between the present

generation and that which has just passed away. I have known people,

born at the close of the eighteenth century, who still retained an

antique prejudice against self-indulgence. They still had the idea

that there was something shameful in excessive comfort, that a certain

discipline of hardness was necessary to manly dignity, and, in a minor

degree, even to womanly. I have known an English gentleman of the old

school, a vigorous and rich old man, who never would use a railway

rug or a travelling cap; such things seemed to him concessions to the

weakness of the age. At seventy, he would sit upright through a long

railway journey, and he preferred second-class carriages, as being

less luxurious. His sister belonged to the same school; she never

would lean back in a chair, and she disliked lounging habits of all

kinds, as being associated with the idea of laziness. People of that

kind maintained a strict discipline over themselves; the body had to

obey the will. I have since found the same stoicism in full strength

amongst the French peasantry. If any of their class betray too much

care for their own comfort the rest laugh at them. They are hard with

themselves, too, on principle, though there is certainly now a tendency

to admit comforts which were formerly unknown.

[Sidenote: Modern Acceptance of what is Pleasant.]

The idea that it is better not to be too comfortable is now, I believe,

extinct in the richer classes in England. They have not become

effeminate, but they think that it is well to accept all pleasant

things in the right time and place. Why not be snug and warm in a

railway carriage? Why not lounge in an easy-chair in the drawing-room?

The effect of such indulgences has not been, hitherto, so softening

as the austerity of a severer age apprehended. Extreme comfort, in

an energetic race, produces healthy reactions. It leads directly to

_ennui_, and _ennui_ leads to a desire for a more active physical life.

The age of the first-class carriage is also the age of the velocipede.

The most comfortable classes in England are also the most addicted to

field sports.

[Sidenote: Comfort favourable to Health.]

The truth is that the kinds of comfort most appreciated in England

include several things which are very favourable to health, especially

spacious habitations, pure air, plenty of water, thorough cleanliness,

and good food. The increase of comfort has been accompanied by an

increase of temperance. It has led to no serious evil, save one.

[Sidenote: The Strain of Expense.]

[Sidenote: Comfort combined with Anxiety.]

The one evil is the trying strain of expense to which an extremely

high standard of living subjects all except the rich. It keeps all

current expenses high, and therefore weighs pitilessly on those who

must be refined and have not large independent means. A prudent young

Englishman may well hesitate before he enters upon marriage with the

prospect of a large house full of children and servants in which no

shabbiness, bareness, or imperfection is to be tolerated. So far as

pecuniary prudence is concerned, he would probably do better to fill a

stable with fine horses. The Archbishop of Canterbury, whilst lamenting

the early marriages of the improvident classes, has declared that

the young men in the comfortable classes “are giving up the idea of

marriage.” This is the visible result. There is another consequence

not so visible to the world in the harassed lives of unnumbered heads

of families, the men whose days and nights are a combination of bodily

comfort with mental toil and anxiety, the men to whom physical hardship

would come, if they could only have it, as a counter-irritant and

relief.

[Sidenote: Comfort little known in France.]

[Sidenote: French Habitations.]

There has been little about the French in this chapter, and what there

is to say may be expressed in few words. They have not naturally a

genius for comfort like the English. Their natural way of living is

hard in poverty and luxurious in riches, austerity and luxury equally

belonging to the French nature. Of comfort they know what they have

imperfectly learned from their English neighbours. At Versailles, in

the days of Louis XIV., there was dazzling splendour, but comfort was

utterly unknown. Modern French country houses (I mean those built for

rich people in the second half of the nineteenth century) are planned

as intelligently as the English, but the older châteaux were incredibly

rough and wanting in the most elementary arrangements. Even yet, in the

old provincial towns, French people put up with lodgings so awkwardly

planned that an Englishman would not rent them. New town houses are

better contrived, but still deficient in space.

[Sidenote: Luxury less Indispensable than Comfort.]

The question of expenditure is favourable to the French in this way,

that they do without luxury more easily than the English do without

comfort. The Frenchman in adversity falls back on the austere side of

his nature; being both Sybarite and Spartan, he has the Spartan half of

himself always ready for hard times. An impoverished French gentleman

lodges in bare small rooms and lives principally on soup.[64] It is

ten times harder for an Englishman to give up his spacious house with

carpets on the floors.

[Sidenote: Comfort and Luxury equally Costly.]

The expenses of those who can afford to live largely are the same in

both countries. Comfort, in the ideal English degree, is not less

costly than luxury, though a careful analysis of details would prove

that it is not precisely the same thing.

CHAPTER III

LUXURY

[Sidenote: Want of a common Standard.]

It is most difficult to fix any common standard of luxury in two

different nations. In a single nation the question whether an

indulgence may be considered luxurious or not is settled by the

national public opinion. There is no public opinion common to France

and England.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of Definition.]

Even the definition of the word “luxury” is not so easy as it seems.

In practice, people define it for themselves according to their own

characters. An austere person would condemn as luxury what another

would call “comfort;” a very luxurious person would be proud of luxury

as a proof of taste and cultivation.

[Sidenote: Littré’s Definition.]

[Sidenote: Lafaye’s Definition.]

Littré defined luxury (_luxe_) as “magnificence in dress, in the

table, in furniture, an abundance of sumptuous things.” He made a

curious distinction between luxury and sumptuousness. In his opinion

sumptuousness expressed the costliness of things, whilst luxury was

the taste for what is sumptuous. Lafaye, in his valuable dictionary

of French synonyms, carried out the same idea further in the region

of morals. He said that luxury might belong to all conditions of

life, whereas magnificence and sumptuousness can only belong to lofty

positions. In Lafaye’s opinion luxury is a fault or a vice which

consists in the want of simplicity, or in offending against simplicity

in one’s manner of living, or in his way of doing things, or of showing

himself. Magnificence and splendour in great personages or in great

cities are not vices, according to Lafaye, but the expression of

generosity and grandeur.

[Sidenote: Cheap Pleasures not considered Luxurious.]

In private life the idea of luxury is connected more nearly with

expense than with enjoyment. Very cheap things are not considered

luxuries, though they may be delightful. A shepherd on a hillside has

access to a cool fountain, and in a hot summer he delights in drinking

the water and in resting under the shade of the trees. These are

clearly enjoyments of sense, and exquisite enjoyments, but they are not

luxuries for the shepherd. Iced water and green shade are luxuries in

the heart of Paris. In a good fruit year peaches, however delicious,

are not luxuries in central France, neither was wine in the happy times

before the phylloxera. The former abundance of wine has led to the free

employment of it in French cookery. This always strikes English people

as luxurious.

[Sidenote: Necessaries fixed by Custom.]

Independently of cheapness and abundance, the exigencies of custom

often determine that an indulgence is to be considered necessary, and

not a luxury, when in reality it is quite superfluous. Thus, carpets

are a necessity in England, in and above the middle classes, and a

luxury in France.

[Sidenote: Various Developments of Luxury.]

Luxury develops itself in different directions, even with reference to

the same enjoyment. The rich English and French both spend freely on

the pleasures of the table, but in England there is more pride in the

luxury of the service, and in France in that of the cookery.

[Sidenote: Exotic Indulgences of the English.]

One difference in the luxury of the two countries is that the English

are much more exotic in their indulgences than the French. Nearly all

English luxuries come from abroad, whilst by far the greater part of

French luxuries are procured at home. This may be connected with the

broad, far-reaching, world-embracing character of the English intellect

in its contrast with the narrower and more national French mind.

A religious theorist has maintained that Divine Providence gives to

every nation, in the products of its own soil, whatever is best for

the inhabitants. If that is so, the French carry out the intentions

of Providence much more completely than the English, but they are

more favourably situated for conformity. The English, however, have

so completely adopted some foreign luxuries as almost to believe them

indigenous. In this way tea has become an English beverage, and it used

to be more English to drink port than claret, though port was equally

foreign and came from a greater distance.

[Sidenote: Domestic Servants.]

Supposing an Englishman and a Frenchman to be in the same rank of life,

and in a rank requiring servants, the Englishman will have twice or

three times as many domestics as the Frenchman, and their service will

be more accurate and minute than that in the French establishment.

The English domestics will be more showy in liveries, and there will

be altogether more visible grandeur about the service. In France

domestics are kept because they are useful; in England, because they

are ornamental.

[Sidenote: State and Elegance.]

[Sidenote: Luxury in Dress.]

[Sidenote: French Feminine Tendencies.]

[Sidenote: The Luxury of Renewal.]

The key to the luxuries of the two nations may be found in two words,

_state_ and _elegance_. The desire of the English heart is for _state_,

implying size in the house and numbers in the retainers. French

ambition contents itself with a few small rooms and few servants;

but it seeks distinction in elegance. French elegance, like that of

antiquity, begins with the person, especially in women. In all kinds

of feminine luxuries, particularly dress, France has kept the lead

and gives the laws to England. The Church of Rome has settled that

matter in her own authoritative and decided way by imposing simple and

permanent uniforms on all women who belong to religious congregations;

but her power, alas! is unequal to the far greater task of imposing a

simple and rational dress upon all women whatsoever. The true French

female mind, when left to its own devices, loves neither permanence

nor simplicity in costume; it desires the utmost elaboration combined

with incessant change. It employs thousands of _couturières_ in

cutting valuable materials into shreds to be worn for a few days or

hours. This modern changefulness has one good effect, it is certainly

on the side of cleanliness. The French luxury of to-day is far more

closely associated with cleanliness than that of preceding ages. It

is especially the luxury of _renewal_, first in dress, and also in

furniture and habitation. The reconstruction of Paris has substituted

clean streets, well lighted and well aired, for dirty and dark ones.

The same process, in minor degrees, has been going on throughout France.

[Sidenote: Luxury and Art.]

[Sidenote: Art and Austerity.]

[Sidenote: Beautiful Materials.]

[Sidenote: The _Bibelot_.]

[Sidenote: Commonplace Character of French Luxury.]

I cannot examine in this place the question concerning the association

between luxury and the Fine Arts. It is most difficult to state the

exact truth on so complicated a subject in a few words. Some of the

French are artistic, and many of them are luxurious, so that art and

luxury may be seen together in France; but they are not inseparably

connected, and for my part I regret the accidental association.

Nothing, in my opinion, can be nobler than the combination of artistic

grandeur in the things which affect the mind with austere simplicity

in those that touch the body. In the magnificent old French cathedrals

you have the most sublime and the most costly architecture above you

and around you, with a rush-bottomed chair to sit upon, like the chairs

in the humblest cottage. In many an art gallery you have priceless

treasures on the walls; but neither curtains for the windows nor

carpets for the floor. The most precious engravings are often framed

with a beading of plain oak. The masterpieces of sculpture keep their

dignity best in rooms that are simple to severity. It is evident,

therefore, that the fine arts are absolutely independent of luxury;

but, on the other hand, it is also true that from the richness of the

materials employed in some of the fine arts a luxurious people may be

tempted to turn them to a lower use. Painting may be made luxurious

by the charm of colour, and also by sensuous or sensual suggestions

in the work itself. Besides these attractions, the modern spirit of

luxury likes a picture as an excuse for decorating a room with a

massive and glittering gilt frame.[65] The marble of a statue is also

an agreeable thing to look upon, because it is smooth to the touch,

and so soon as we descend to the minor arts we find great numbers

of precious and pleasant materials which may be used as hangings or

wrought into exquisite furniture. The love of beautiful objects,

comprised in French under the convenient generic term _bibelot_, is

strongly characteristic of the present stage of ultra-civilisation. The

true sign of it is the search for the exquisite in all things. To live

on dainties and be always surrounded with softness, to have plenty of

amusing and expensive toys, is the end of the luxurious modern French

development of the human faculties. How familiar, how commonplace, this

life of luxury has become, and how many far higher and more estimable

things are sacrificed to it! It is worse even than English comfort;

because it takes a false appearance of superior refinement. Only after

the first novelty has passed away do we discover that it is essentially

vulgar and dull, and truly the vanity of vanities.

CHAPTER IV

MANNERS

[Sidenote: National and Class Codes.]

Codes of manners have a very restricted rule. They are national, and

in the nation each class has its own code. If, therefore, one nation

judges another by its own standard, it is evident that abstract justice

must be impossible; yet it is difficult to find any other criterion.

The reader may try to discover some criterion outside of national

peculiarities, but he will certainly meet with this difficulty, that

although people of different nations might be induced to agree about

some virtue that manners ought to have, they are not likely to agree

about its practical application and expression.

[Sidenote: Courtesy.]

For example, let us take the virtue of courtesy. Are people to be

courteous or discourteous? We should find an almost universal agreement

on the general principle that courtesy is a part of good manners; but

we should disagree on the application of it. As a rule, the Frenchman

would be likely to think the Englishman’s courtesy too restricted and

reserved. Much of it, and that the best, would even escape his notice,

whilst the Englishman would consider French politeness overdone.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of interpreting Manners.]

The great difficulty in judging such a question as this is that we

require to have been long accustomed to manners of a peculiar kind

before we can estimate them at their precise significance. If they

are new to us we do not understand them, we are not able to read the

thoughts and intentions which express themselves in forms as in a sort

of language.

[Sidenote: Epistolary Forms.]

The words used in epistolary forms are the most familiar example of the

_second_ meaning, the only true meaning that there is in forms of any

kind. If a superior in rank subscribes himself my obedient servant,

I know that his meaning is as remote as possible from the dictionary

sense of the words. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to suppose

that the words, as he uses them, are meaningless. Such a form, in

English, is intended to convey the idea of distance without contempt.

It is as much as to say, in familiar English, “I don’t know you, and

don’t care to know you; but I have no desire to be rude to you.” The

form _Dear Sir_, in English, has nothing to do with affection. It

means, “I know very little of you; but wish to avoid the coldness

of _Sir_ by itself.” _My dear Sir_ means something of this kind, “I

remember meeting you in society.”

[Sidenote: No French Equivalents for English Forms.]

A literal translation of these forms into French would entirely fail to

convey their significance. You must be on the most intimate terms with

a Frenchman before he will venture to address you as _Cher Monsieur_.

There is absolutely no form of address in French that translates the

meanings of _Dear Sir_ and _My dear Sir_. They can only be translated

by _Monsieur_, which fails to differentiate them from _Sir_.

[Sidenote: Severity of French Forms.]

The French forms used in writing to ladies are still more severe. “How

would you begin a letter to Madame L----?” I asked a French gentleman

who is a model of accuracy in etiquette:--

“Well, in the first place, I should never presume to write to Madame

L---- at all.”

“But if circumstances made it imperative that you should write to her?”

“In that case I should address her as _Madame_, simply, and at the

close of the letter beg her to accept _mes hommages respectueux_.”

Perhaps the reader imagines that the lady was a distant acquaintance;

no, she was the wife of a most intimate friend, and the two families

met very frequently. In this case the point of interest is that the

lady would have been addressed as a stranger from a want of flexibility

in the French forms.

There is a Frenchman who receives me with the utmost kindness

and cordiality whenever I visit his neighbourhood. We correspond

occasionally, and his letters begin “_Monsieur_” just as if he

had never seen me, ending with the expression of his “_sentiments

respectueux_.”

A _very_ intimate friend in France will begin a letter with _Mon cher

Ami_. I have only known three Frenchmen who used that form of address

to myself. Two or three others would begin _Cher Monsieur et Ami_,

mingling the formal with the affectionate. Englishmen hardly ever write

_My dear Friend_; that is now an American form.

[Sidenote: French Ceremony.]

The French tendency to be ceremonious is not confined to

letter-writing. It comes upon French people in personal intercourse in

a curiously occasional way. I remember a physician, now dead, who had

excellent French manners of the old school. He talked with great ease

and without the least affectation, but on all those little occasions

when a Frenchman feels bound to be ceremonious he was so in the supreme

degree. After talking quite easily and intimately with some lady whom

he had known for many years, he would rise to take leave with graceful

old-fashioned attitudes and phrases, as if she were far his superior in

rank and he had spoken to her for the first time.

[Sidenote: Old-fashioned French Manners.]

[Sidenote: Reduction of old Forms.]

It has happened to me to know rather intimately six or eight old

French gentlemen who retained the manners which had come down from the

eighteenth century. They evidently took a pleasure, perhaps also some

pride, in being able to go through forms of politeness gracefully, and

without error. An Englishman would find it difficult to do that in

equal perfection, his northern nature would not take quite so fine a

polish. Even amongst French people, as manners become more democratic,

these old forms are continually reduced. They are no longer considered

indispensable, and the younger men, who have not continually practised

them, are not sufficiently skilful actors to play ceremonious parts

with ease.[66]

[Sidenote: Convenience of Formal Phrases.]

It is very difficult for a non-ceremonious people to understand the

precise value of old ceremonial forms. Even the poor and meagre

survivals of them seem devoid of meaning to those who do not practise

them at all, yet assuredly they had a meaning which was not exactly

that of the words employed. After much reflection and much studying

of the matter, as a barbarian, from the outside, I have come to the

conclusion that a great repertory of formal phrases would be valued as

a means of decently concealing the emptiness of genteel intercourse. To

us they are embarrassing because we have not learned our lesson well,

but the French upper classes of the eighteenth century knew them all

by heart, and could repeat them without thinking. When people take any

serious interest in a subject worth talking about, polite phrases are

forgotten, the only instance to the contrary that I remember being the

pretty one of a French professor lecturing in the royal presence, when

he announced that two gases would “have the honour of combining before

His Majesty.”

[Sidenote: Embarrassments of Social Intercourse.]

The real embarrassments of social intercourse are awkward silence,

stiffness, ignorance of conventional usages. As for the degree of

affectation or falsity that there may be in the expression of so many

amiable or deferential sentiments that one does not exactly feel,

everybody knows that they have only a secondary signification.

[Sidenote: Our Opinion about Foreign Manners.]

[Sidenote: English Simplicity.]

In any attempt to judge of manners, especially in a foreign nation,

we are liable to two mistakes. We are likely to think that a degree

of polish inferior to our own is rudeness, whilst the refinement

that surpasses ours is affectation, we ourselves having exactly that

perfection of good breeding which is neither one nor the other. An

Englishman is particularly liable to think in this way, because

the present English ideal of good manners is a studied simplicity.

We come to think that a simple manner is unaffected, whilst high

polish must have been learned from the etiquette-book. However, in a

perfectly bred French gentleman, a somewhat ceremonious manner with a

vigilant politeness is so habitual as to be second nature. It remains

constantly the same; if it were only assumed, it would be involuntarily

forgotten in privacy or in moments of fatigue or vexation.