SOMETHING ABOUT PARIS AND THE PARISIANS.
Paris covers an area of thirty square miles, has five hundred and thirty
miles of public streets, and has a resident population of nearly two
millions, all engaged in trading in articles of luxury for the rest of
the world. It supports about one hundred and fifteen thousand paupers.
Its religion is a very mild form of Catholicism tinged with infidelity,
or infidelity flavored with Catholicism, as you choose. Which flavor
predominates in the average Parisian I have not been able to determine.
I should say Catholicism Sunday forenoon, and infidelity the remainder
of the week. At all events, the cafés are always crowded, while the
churches never are, except by strangers, who go religiously and devoutly
thither--to see the buildings and the decorations. The Parisian
generally puts off going to church till next Sunday, and goes this
Sunday to the country instead. One-fourth of the births are
illegitimate, which is doing very well for Paris.
The city consumes annually eighty-six millions gallons of wine, and
three millions five hundred thousand gallons of spirits; the latter
going very largely into the seasoned stomachs of foreigners, the French
themselves being altogether too acute to use anything of the kind.
However, they are very willing to sell it, and welcome the Englishman or
American with hospitable hands to drunkards' graves--if they have the
money to pay for it--with great politeness and suavity.
I have not yet been in any country which did not extend a hearty welcome
to any stranger with money.
[Sidenote: SOMETHING ABOUT WINE.]
About ninety-five millions of gallons of water per day come from the
water-works, which is mostly used in keeping the streets clean. I have
not yet seen a Frenchman who ever used any as a beverage or on his
person. For economy he mixes some of it with his wine, and his ablutions
may require a pint or such matter a day, but that is all the use he has
for water.
[Illustration: PARISIAN BREAD CARRIER.]
The very first thing that strikes an American in Paris with
astonishment is the meagreness of the water supply in the houses. You
look for the faucets which supply your room with hot and cold water, as
at home, but you don't find them. A chambermaid pours out about two
quarts in a diminutive pitcher, and that is expected to last you for
purposes of ablution twenty-four hours. And this with the Seine running
directly through the center of the city. The houses are from five to
seven stories high, but all the water used in them, for all purposes, is
carted up to the top by men. My landlord told me it was cheaper to have
it so carried than to put plumbing in his house, and pay the water-tax,
"and we don't use much of it, anyway," he remarked, and he was right.
Still, accustomed as I have always been to the use of a great deal of
it, it took me some time to fall into their ways. Pure water is a very
good thing to have plenty of, but it's all a matter of habit, I suppose.
A man can get to be a Frenchman, in time, if he tries hard enough.
Nothing is impossible, where there's a will and a stubborn purpose. But
to keep oneself clean with a pint, or thereabouts, of water per day
looks rather difficult to a novice.
John Leech was very fond of illustrating this peculiarity of the French
people, in _Punch_, years ago. When the first English Exposition was in
progress in London, the city was overrun with French. One picture he
made was of two elegantly dressed young Frenchmen, standing in front of
an ordinary wash-stand, on which was the usual pitcher, washbowl,
soap-dish, etc., and underneath was this conversation:--
_Alphonse_--What is this?
_Henri_--I do not know. It is queer!
The good Leech doubtless exaggerated, as all satirists do, but he had
sufficient foundation for his skit.
[Sidenote: FRENCH CLEANLINESS.]
But whatever may be the condition of the French, man or woman,
interiorally, the outside is as delightfully clean as could be desired.
The blouse of the workman is outwardly as fresh and clean as the coat of
the swell on the boulevards, and the said swell would sooner lie down
and die than to wear soiled linen or uncleaned boots. The women, high
and low, are invariably neat and tidy in appearance--immaculately so.
The chambermaid, who cares for your room; the washerwoman who brings you
your linen; equally with my lady in her drawing room or in her carriage,
is neatness itself, and not only that, but elegance itself. Condition is
no excuse for outward slovenliness in Paris. The servants in the house
always have white about the throat and wrist, and it _is_ white. And
then their dresses are made with some degree of taste, and are worn in
such a way as to make the cheapest and most common goods attractive.
With the same eye to appearance, and with the devotion to comfort that
is a part of French nature, the streets of Paris are the best kept in
the world. I do not wonder that the Frenchman, condemned by business or
other considerations to live in New York, considers himself a sort of
Napoleon, after Waterloo, and New York his St. Helena. The streets of
London are kept clean; the dirt from the throngs of horses and vehicles
is carefully removed, and it is done thoroughly, but not so much because
of cleanliness as for want of manure. The streets of Paris are kept
absolutely clean, simply for comfort and appearance. The neatly polished
boots of Monsieur and Madame must not be soiled on crossings, nor must
the skirts of its women be made unwearable by dragging through dust and
filth. The streets of New York would send a French woman to a
mad-house--they are nasty enough to send any one there compelled to wade
through them.
[Illustration: QUEER--TO FRENCHMEN.]
There are no people in the world who are so delightfully polite as the
Parisians. I might say the French, but Paris is
[Illustration: THE PORTE ST. MARTIN.]
[Sidenote: TIBBITTS' ENGLISH.]
France, and it is the same all over the country. It is a delight to be
swindled by a French shopkeeper, man or woman, they do it so neatly and
with such infinite grace. There is so much patience, so much suavity,
such a general oiling of the rough places, and such a delightful
smoothing out of creases. It is Monsieur who is the obliged party if you
come into his place. He feels the honor that you have conferred upon
him, and he makes you feel that he feels it. True, you pay for all this
politeness, and pay for it at very high rates, but it is, like all
high-priced commodities, very pleasant.
He never wearies of showing you goods; your atrocious French is
laboriously translated, and if you buy a franc's worth Monsieur seems as
much delighted as though you had beggared yourself by taking his whole
stock. And if you have taken an hour of his time and purchased nothing,
he seems to be even more pleased. Indeed, his politeness on occasions
that to an English or American tradesman would be depressing, is even
more marked. He bows and smiles, not grimaces, as has been vainly
written, but a most gracious bow and a most delightful smile, which, if
not genuine, is a most natural substitute for it, and he modestly hopes
that if Monsieur or Madame desires anything in his line that they will
give him the preference. Possibly he says "_sacre_" to himself after you
are on the sidewalk, and possibly he launches all sorts of curses after
you, but you don't know it, and so it doesn't hurt you. Go back within
five minutes and you will find him with the same smile, ready and
willing to go through the same operation over again.
Tibbitts tried to worry one of them, and for once succeeded. He stopped
the party promenading with him on the Boulevard des Italiens, at a
jeweler's, who displayed in his window the legend, "English spoken." The
"English spoken" in the shops is good enough, as a rule, to explain the
nature and quality of the goods, and that is all. Further than this, the
English-speaking salesman has no more idea of English than he has of
Ashantee. Tibbitts marched in boldly, and the English-speaking man
appeared. He was a very well-preserved, bald-headed man of fifty, and at
him Tibbitts went.
"Do you speak English?"
"Oui--yees, Monsieur."
Tibbitts grasped his hand enthusiastically.
"It's refreshing to meet one in a strange land who can speak one's own
language."
"Yees, Monsieur."
"Well, what I want to know is, is the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad
cutting rates the same as the other roads, and do they cut for
Western-bound passengers the same as for Eastern, and have you the
remotest idea that the cutting will be kept up till September when I
return, and does the Pullman Sleeping Car Company cut the same as the
railroad companies?"
"Eh, Monsieur? Zeese watches--"
"You don't quite understand me. You see the Pullman Sleeping Car Company
is quite distinct from the railroad companies, and one may cut rates
without the other. See? Now what I want to know is--"
The bewildered Frenchman who spoke English stared in a wild sort of way,
but his politeness did not desert him.
"Ees eet ze watch, ze diamond, ze--"
"Not yet. What I want to know is, who is this Lapham and Miller who have
been elected to fill the vacancies occasioned by the resignations of
Platt and Conkling, and is Miller going to be a tail to Lapham's kite,
or are they both square, bang-up men, and--"
"Will Monsieur look at ze goods?"
"No, no! Is the Chicago & Northwestern in this row?"
By this time the Frenchman was out of patience.
"Monsieur, talks--wat you call 'im--gibberish. I 'ave not ze time to
waste. Eef it ees ze watch--"
"Sir," replies Tibbitts, severely, "when you announce 'English spoken,'
you should speak English, or at least understand it. Good morning, or,
as you don't understand the plainest English, _bong-swoir_."
He had succeeded this time, and should have rested on his laurels. But
Tibbittses, alas, always overdo what they undertake. He had extracted so
much amusement from his first experiment that he tried it over again the
next day. He entered a similar place and commenced the same thing.
"What I want to know, is the Chicago & Northwestern in the railroad war,
and do you suppose the cutting of rates will continue till September,
when I return, and--"
"Indeed I cannot tell you, sir. It is something I do not keep the run
of. You had better apply at the American Exchange, or the _Herald_
office."
[Sidenote: THE POLITE FRENCH.]
This in the best and clearest American English. Poor Tibbitts had
fallen upon a bright American who was turning his knowledge of French to
account by serving as a salesman in Paris. He smiled a ghastly smile as
he bowed himself out of the place. Bad marksmen who by chance hit the
bull's eye, should be very modest and refuse to shoot again. Even
Napoleon, great as he was, fought one battle too many.
Politeness with the French is a matter of education as well as nature.
The French child is taught that lesson from the beginning of its
existence, and it is made a part of its life. It is the one thing that
is never forgotten and lack of it is never forgiven. A shipwrecked
Frenchman who could not get into a boat, as he was disappearing under
the waves, raised his hat, and with such a bow as he could make under
the circumstances, said, "Adieu, Mesdames; Adieu, Messieurs," and went
to the fishes. I doubt not that it really occurred, for I have seen
ladies splashed by a cab on a rainy day, smile politely at the driver. A
race that has women of that degree of politeness can never be anything
but polite. When such exasperation as splashed skirts and stockings will
not ruffle them, nothing will.
[Illustration: A VERY POLITE FRENCHMAN.]
The children are delightful in this particular. French children do not
go about clamoring for the best places and sulking if they do not get
them, and talking in a rude, boisterous way. They do not take favors and
attentions as a matter of course and unacknowledged. The slightest
attention shown them is acknowledged by the sweetest kind of a bow--not
the dancing-master's bow, but a genuine one--and the invariable "Merci,
Monsieur!" or Madame, or Mademoiselle, as the case may be.
I was in a compartment with a little French boy of twelve, the precise
age at which American children, as a rule, deserve killing for their
rudeness and general disagreeableness. He was dressed faultlessly, but
his clothes were not the chief charm. I sat between him and the open
window, and he was eating pears. Now an American boy of that age would
either have dropped the cores upon the floor, or tossed them out of the
window without a word to anybody. But this small gentleman every time,
with a "permit me, Monsieur," said in the most pleasant way, rose and
came to the window and dropped them out, and then, "Merci, Monsieur," as
he quietly took his seat. It was a delight. I am sorry to say that such
small boys do not travel on American railroad trains to any alarming
extent. Would they were more frequent.
And when in his seat, if an elderly person or any one else came in, he
was the very first to rise and offer his place if it were in the
slightest degree more comfortable than the one vacant, and the good
nature in which he insisted upon the new comer taking it was something
"altogether too sweet for anything," as the faro bankeress would say.
And this boy was no exception. He was not a show boy, out posing before
the great American republic, or such of it as happened to be in France
at the time, but he was a sample, a perfect type of the regulation
French child. I have seen just as much politeness in the ragged waifs in
the Faubourg St. Antoine, where the child never saw the blue sky more
than the little patches that could be seen over the tops of
seven-storied houses, as I ever did in the Champs Elysées. One Sunday at
St. Cloud, where the ragged children of poverty are taken by their
mothers for air and light, it was a delight to fill the pockets with
sweets to give them. They had no money to buy, and the little human rats
looked longingly at the riches of the candy stands, and a sou's worth
made the difference between perfect happiness and half-pleasure. You
gave them the sou's worth, and what a glad smile came to the lips, and
accompanied with it was the delicious half bow and half courtesy, and
invariable "Merci, Monsieur." One little tot, who could not speak,
filled her tiny mouth with the unheard of delicacies she had received,
and, too young to say "_Merci_," put up her lips to be kissed.
[Sidenote: THE DISGUST OF TIBBITTS.]
Tibbitts gave some confectionery to her elder sister, a young girl of
eighteen, but she merely said "Merci, Monsieur," and that was all. She
took the candy, but declined to kiss him, much to Tibbitts' disgust.
[Illustration: "MERCI, MONSIEUR."]
Oh, ye thoughtless, heedless mothers of America, would that you could
all see these children and take lessons from their mothers. There is a
difference in people, and a still greater difference in children. Our
American Congress could well afford a commission of ladies to learn the
secret of training children, and a school for mothers should be
established in every city for their preparation for this important duty.
It would pay better than any monetary conference.
The French family is an unknown quantity. Monsieur, the husband and
father, spends his time at his café according to his quality, while
Madame the wife receives her friends, or admirers, if she be not too old
to have them, in her drawing-room. There are no homes in France, as the
English and Americans understand the word. It would drive a Frenchman
crazy if, when business hours are over, he should be compelled to eat
his dinner and afterward go up stairs, sit with his wife and children
quietly till bed-time, and then retire in good order. Likewise would it
be distasteful to the French wife. She may be in love--in fact, she
always is--but not with her husband.
A Frenchman once, who was too fond of the softer sex, pledged himself to
avoid women. Later he was asked if he had kept his pledge. "Certainly,
or rather partially. I have religiously avoided Madame; I can keep that
pledge always, so far as she is concerned."
He meets his wife with, "Good evening, Madame. I trust you have had a
pleasant day."
"Merci, Monsieur; very pleasant."
He does not ask her whether she has been driving out with the children,
or with a lover; in fact, he does not care. He knows she has a lover,
but that is nothing to him so long as he himself sees nothing wrong.
And after dinner he bids her "Good evening," and goes to his favorite
café, where he, and other similar husbands, save the country over
innumerable bottles of wine, and when the cafés are shut, and there is
no other earthly place to visit, he goes home and retires to his room,
only to meet Madame the next morning at breakfast.
This is not singular. The French girl is kept by her mother under the
strictest possible guardianship till she is of the age to marry. She
might as well be in a prison, for she is never out from under the sharp
eye of her mother, or aunt, or in default of these, a governess. Her
life, when she gets to be about fourteen, and begins to know something
of what life really is, and wants to enjoy it, is most intolerable.
[Sidenote: MARRIAGE IN PARIS.]
She is married in due time, but she has very little to do with it. A
husband is selected for her, and she accepts him scarcely knowing or
hardly caring who it is she is to wed, for she wants that liberty which
in France comes with marriage, and marriage only. She knows that a wife
may do that which a maiden may not--that matrimony means in France what
it does not in any other country--almost absolute freedom. Once married,
the mother washes her hands of her, considering that she has discharged
her whole duty by her child.
[Illustration: PARIS UNDERGROUND--MAKING THE TOUR OF THE SEWERS.]
The whole idea of French matrimony from the girl's standpoint is well
illustrated in the picture of the French caricaturist. Two girls are
discussing the approaching marriage of one of them. The bargained-for
girl exclaims lugubriously, "But I love Henri!" "Very good, my child,"
replies her elder and wiser friend, "you _love_ Henri; then _marry_
Alphonse."
Her marrying Alphonse made love for Henri possible. It was all there in
one small picture and two lines of print, but a page of small type could
not explain the situation more clearly.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PARIS BOURSE.]
[Sidenote: BARGAIN AND SALE.]
Marriages are arranged by the parents of the parties, and an exceedingly
curious performance it is. The girl's parents actually buy her a
husband. The two old cats who have one a son and the other a daughter,
meet like two gray-headed diplomatists, and there ensues a series of
negotiations that would put to shame traders in anything else. The girl
has to have a _dot_, which is to say, a dowry, and the son must have
money or property settled upon him. The mother of the girl proposes to
give her one hundred thousand francs as the _dot_. The mother of the son
insists that it is not enough, and enlarges upon the perfections of the
young man. He is educated, he is polished, he is handsome, he is
amiable. He isn't a brute who would make a wife miserable; not he.
Clearly one hundred thousand francs is not enough for such a paragon.
The mother of the girl strikes in. The girl is the handsomest in Paris,
and has had every advantage. She is a lady, and would make a desirable
addition to the house of any man in Paris; but finally she names one
hundred and ten thousand francs.
It will not do. "_Mon dieu!_" exclaims the mother, "you must remember I
have three other daughters to provide for, and the estate is not large.
If I give one hundred and ten thousand francs to one, what will become
of the others? There is reason in all things, even in marrying off a
daughter!"
And thus they haggle and haggle, just as though they were trading
horses, until finally it is fixed. The happy pair are permitted to see
each other; so much is settled upon the young man and so much upon the
girl, and they are married, and by the laws of France and the sanction
of the holy church, are man and wife. They are man and wife legally but
in no other sense.
Of course there can be nothing of love, or affection, or even esteem in
such marriages. Monsieur wants Madame to be handsome and accomplished,
precisely as he wants a handsome horse--it pleases his eye and gratifies
his tastes--but the main point after all is the _dot_. He has that
additional income to live upon. Madame desires Monsieur to be likewise
prepossessing, for she wants the world to believe that she married
something beside the title of Madame, though all the world knows better.
Each wants the other to be amiable, for even living separate, as they
do, they are necessarily under one roof, and bad temper on either side
would make things uncomfortable. Above all, they want no jealousy or
inquisitiveness. Each wants to be let alone; each desires to follow the
bent of his or her inclination, undisturbed and unmolested. And they get
up, doubtless, some sort of an esteem for each other, which may in time
ripen into something like what outside barbarians call love. But that
occurs, probably, after one of them is dead, provided the survivor is
too old to marry again. It looks well for a widow of fifty or sixty to
revere the memory of her dear departed, and they generally do it, no
matter on what terms they lived.
[Illustration: THE ARC DU CARROUSEL.]
Of course they have children born to them, for there must be heirs to
the estate. Madame loves them very much, or appears to, but she sees
very little of them. She puts them out to nurse at once. Children are
tiresome and wearying to a woman whose day is divided into so much for
dressing, so much for riding, so much for eating, and so much for balls
or opera. She sees them and admires them, and when they are old enough,
marries them off. The father is pleased to see that Henri is growing
into a fine boy, or Marie into a fine girl, but he has his business and
pleasures to attend to, and besides, there is invariably some woman,
somewhere in Paris, that he does love, and she has children also. And so
the children grow up, Monsieuring their father and Madaming their mother
till they escape from under the paternal and maternal charge, only to go
and do the same things for themselves.
[Sidenote: MARRIAGE IN LOW LIFE.]
Curious notions "our lively neighbors, the Gauls," as Mr. Micawber says,
have of domestic life. There is no such thing in Paris.
This among the upper classes. Jean and Jeannette, the baker and the
milliner, are not so particular about the _dot_, and for a very good
reason--neither of them or their parents have a sou to give more than
the wedding clothes and a holiday, with an extra bottle of wine on the
occasion of the wedding. They dispense with the _dot_, and, in very many
cases, with the legal and religious ceremonies, which are considered
necessary among other classes, and among all classes in other countries.
Having nothing else to marry for, they marry for love, and very good
husbands and wives they make. True, Jean goes to his café every night,
to save the country in his way, and Jeannette expects him to, but as
they do not inhabit large houses they are naturally brought closer
together, and, consequently, are more in sympathy with each other. Jean,
with two francs a day, even with the help of Jeannette, who may earn
quite as much, cannot afford the luxury of separate rooms or separate
beds. One answers them both, and not infrequently they have not that
one.
But with their cheap wine and their very cheap bread, and, above all,
their careless, happy-go-lucky dispositions, they manage to get along
very comfortably. So long as they can work, and they do work, both of
them, they live very well; and when sickness or old age comes there are
excellent hospitals to go to, and after that--why, the church has fixed
their hereafter, and so everything is smooth with them.
Poverty has its uses, though, desirable as it is, I find I can get on
with a very little of it. I firmly believe that in time I could accustom
myself to riches, and really enjoy myself. But it may never be.
Madame, the faro bankeress, is at the same hotel with us, and is getting
on famously in French. This morning at breakfast--she calls it
"dejuner"--much to the waiter's astonishment, she ordered "café
o'lay--_with milk_," and at dinner, "_frozen_ champagne glace," never
knowing, poor woman, that _café au lait_ means, simply, coffee with
milk, and _champagne glacé_ is simply chilled champagne. But it did
nobody else any harm except the waiter, and it pleased her. She
remarked to the other lady that she was sure she would have no trouble
in getting along--which she would not, as the waiter, being an
Englishman, could understand even her English, except when she plunged
too much into French.
"Have you been to the Louvre?" asked the other lady, or _the_ lady, to
be accurate.
"Oh, no, not yet. I have no doubt it is altogether too sweet for
anything, but I have not had time. I dote on art. But I have found a new
place where you can get such lovely laces, for almost nothing, and
another where silk hosiery can be had for less than half what you have
to pay in New York. And I bought such a lovely dress for Lulu, a pearl
silk, with such a lovely waist, and an embroidered front, with roses
embroidered in the skirt. It is just like the one she wore at the
children's ball, at Mrs. Thompson's, last Winter, which cost me more
than twice what this one did and wasn't half so nice. But Lulu looked
altogether too sweet for anything in that, though, and everybody at the
ball was in perfect rapture over her. And then I bought a sweet suit for
little Alfred, my youngest child, nine years old. It is such a perfectly
sweet little pair of pants with a waist that buttons on just lovely, and
with red stockings and purple shoes he will be altogether too sweet for
anything. They will fit, for I have the measure of both the children
with me. I have found out that when one travels to see nature and
things, one ought always to be prepared. That's why I brought their
measure with me."
At this point the husband of the other lady, who could not help hearing
all this, as he had for many weary days, told me an anecdote like
this:--
"A young man with a very bad voice, but who firmly and steadfastly
believed that in the article of voice he was the superior of Brignoli,
engaged a teacher to give him lessons. When asked how he liked his
teacher his reply was that he was a good master, but he was altogether
too religious for him.
"How too religious?"
"Why, while I am practicing, he walks up and down the room wringing his
hands and praying."
"What is his prayer? What does he pray about?"
[Sidenote: THE STRATEGY OF TIBBITS.]
"I can't exactly say, but I caught the words, 'Heavenly Father! how long
must I endure this?' There was doubtless something the matter with him."
There was no necessity for him to point to the moral of this, for the
stream of gabble flowed on in a smooth and continuous flow, finding no
rocks of thought to give it picturesqueness, or no impediment of fact to
make it pause. It was simply the wagging of a tongue that was hung on a
swivel in the middle--a tongue which would wag so long as the lungs
furnished breath and the muscles that moved it held out. Inasmuch as she
has pleasant rooms and likes the hotel, and will not move, we are going
to find another. But probably we shall find another just like her at the
new place. They are the people who delight in travel and are everywhere.
Tibbitts has made the acquaintance of a wholesale liquor dealer, who is
going to "do" Switzerland, and Tibbitts has determined to join him.
[Illustration: "HOW LONG MUST I ENDURE THIS?"]
"Why join a wholesale liquor dealer?"
"With an eye solely to the future. In the coming years what may happen
to me? Will it not be handy to drop into his place, and, after remarking
about the weather, say, 'Thompson, do you remember it was just five
years ago to-day that we climbed Mont Blanc? And do you remember when
you gave out at the foot of the first glacier how I pulled you up?' Or,
'What day of the month is this? 16th? Yes; exactly six years ago to-day
we were skimming over the Brunig Pass, on our way to Lucerne.' Then he
can't do less than to ask me to take something. And then we will sit and
sit, talking over our European experiences and drinking his liquor. I
shall live very near his place, so as to have it handy. It is a
provision for a doubtful future. You are altogether too careless about
such things. You haven't common prudence. A man who in his youth do'n't
lay up provision for his old age is very reckless indeed. I count the
association with this delightful man as good as half my living all my
life. I shall try to strike a merchant tailor after I have fixed myself
in this man's memory, and after that, if I stay long enough, a boot and
shoe man. The past is safe; the present I am satisfied with. What I want
now is an assured future. Then I am heeled."
[Illustration]