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[Illustration: MI LORD ANGLAIS AT MABILLE.
_He is smiling, he is splendid, he is full of graceful enjoyment; on
the table are a few of the beverages he admires; but above all he adores
the ease of the French ladies in the dance._]
THE
COCKAYNES IN PARIS
OR
"GONE ABROAD."
BY
BLANCHARD JERROLD.
[Illustration]
WITH SKETCHES BY
GUSTAVE DORÉ,
AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ENGLISH ABROAD FROM A FRENCH POINT OF
VIEW.
LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 & 75, PICCADILLY.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
PREFACE.
The story of the Cockaynes was written some years ago,--in the days when
Paris was at her best and brightest; and the English quarter was
crowded; and the Emperor was at St. Cloud; and France appeared destined
to become the wealthiest and strongest country in the world.
Where the Cockaynes carried their guide-books and opera-glasses, and
fell into raptures at every footstep, there are dismal ruins now. The
Vendôme Column is a stump, wreathed with a gigantic _immortelle_, and
capped with the tri-color. The Hall of the Marshals is a black hole.
Those noble rooms in which the first magistrate of the city of
Boulevards gave welcome to crowds of English guests, are destroyed. In
the name of Liberty some of the most precious art-work of modern days
has been fired. The Communists' defiling fingers have passed over the
canvas of Ingrès. Auber and Dumas have gone from the scene in the
saddest hour of their country's history. The Anglo-French alliance--that
surest rock of enduring peace--has been rent asunder, through the
timorous hesitation of English ministers, and the hardly disguised
Bourbon sympathies of English society. We are not welcome now in Paris,
as we were when I followed in the wake of the prying Cockaynes. My old
concierge is very cold in his greeting, and carries my valise to my
rooms sulkily. Jerome, my particular waiter at the Grand Café, no longer
deigns to discuss the news of the day with me. Good Monsieur Giraudet,
who could suggest the happiest little _menus_, when I went to his
admirable restaurant, and who kept the _Rappel_ for me, now bows
silently and sends an underling to see what the Englishman requires.
It is a sad, and a woful change; and one of ominous import for our
children. Most woful to those of my countrymen who, like the reader's
humble servant, have passed a happy half-score of years in the
delightful society and the incomparable capital of the French people.
BLANCHARD JERROLD.
RUE DE ROME, PARIS,
_July_, 1871.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. MRS. ROWE'S 13
II. HE'S HERE AGAIN! 30
III. MRS. ROWE'S COMPANY 39
IV. THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS 45
V. THE COCKAYNE FAMILY 62
VI. A "GRANDE OCCASION" 91
VII. OUR FOOLISH COUNTRYWOMEN 104
VIII. "OH, YES!" AND "ALL RIGHT!" 111
IX. MISS CARRIE COCKAYNE TO MISS SHARP 122
X. "THE PEOPLE OF THE HOUSE" 129
XI. MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLERS 140
XII. MRS. DAKER 154
XIII. AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER 174
XIV. THE CASTAWAY 192
XV. THE FIRST TO BE MARRIED 210
XVI. GATHERING A FEW THREADS 231
[Illustration: MAMMA ANGLAISE. (_A French design._)]
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
MY LORD ANGLAIS AT MABILLE Frontispiece
CROSSING THE CHANNEL--A SMOOTH PASSAGE 13
CROSSING THE CHANNEL--RATHER SQUALLY 14
ROBINSON CRUSOE AND FRIDAY 16
PAPA AND THE DEAR BOYS 18
THE DOWAGER AND TALL FOOTMAN 20
ON THE BOULEVARDS 42
A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES" 46
BEAUTY AND THE B---- 68
PALAIS DU LOUVRE.--THE ROAD TO THE BOIS 72
MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG 77
THE INFLEXIBLE "MEESSES ANGLAISES" 105
ENGLISH VISITORS TO THE CLOSERIE DE LILAS--SHOCKING!! 109
SMITH BRINGS HIS ALPENSTOCK 114
JONES ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE 118
FRENCH RECOLLECTION OF MEESS TAKING HER BATH 125
THE BRAVE MEESS AMONG THE BILLOWS HOLDING ON
BY THE TAIL OF HER NEWFOUNDLAND 125
VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH STOCK.--COMPATRIOTS
MEETING IN THE FRENCH EXHIBITION 126
A PIC-NIC AT ENGHIEN 147
EXCURSIONISTS AND EMIGRANTS 152
BOIS DE BOULOGNE 164
[Illustration: CROSSING THE CHANNEL--A SMOOTH PASSAGE]
THE
COCKAYNES IN PARIS.
CHAPTER I.
MRS. ROWE'S.
The story I have to tell is disjointed. I throw it out as I picked it
up. My duties, the nature of which is neither here nor there, have
borne me to various parts of Europe. I am a man, not with an
establishment--but with two portmanteaus. I have two hats in Paris and
two in London always. I have seen everything in both cities, and like
Paris, on the whole, best. There are many reasons, it seems to me, why
an Englishman who has the tastes of a duke and the means of a half-pay
major, should prefer the banks of the Seine to those of the Thames--even
with the new Embankment. Everybody affects a distinct and deep
knowledge of Paris in these times; and most people do know how to get
the dearest dinner Bignon can supply for their money; and to secure the
apartments which are let by the people of the West whom nature has
provided with an infinitesimal quantity of conscience. But there are now
crowds of English men and women who know their Paris well; men who never
dine in the restaurant of the stranger, and women who are equal to a
controversy with a French cook. These sons and daughters of Albion who
have transplanted themselves to French soil, can show good and true
reasons why they prefer the French to the English life. The wearying
comparative estimates of household expenses in Westbournia, and
household expenses in the Faubourg St. Honoré! One of the disadvantages
of living in Paris is the constant contact with the odious atmosphere of
comparisons.
"Pray, sir--you have been in London lately--what did you pay for veal
cutlet?"
[Illustration: CROSSING THE CHANNEL--RATHER SQUALLY.]
The new arrivals are the keenest torments. "In London, where I have kept
house for over twenty years, and have had to endure every conceivable
development of servants' extortion, no cook ever demanded a supply of
white aprons yet." You explain for the hundredth time that it is the
custom in Paris. There are people who believe Kensington is the domestic
model of the civilized world, and travel only to prove at every stage
how far the rest of the universe is behind that favoured spot. He who
desires to see how narrow his countrymen and countrywomen can be abroad,
and how completely the mass of British travellers lay themselves open to
the charge of insularity, and an overweening estimate of themselves and
their native customs, should spend a few weeks in a Paris
boarding-house, somewhere in the Faubourg St. Honoré--if he would have
the full aroma of British conceit. The most surprising feature of the
English quarter of the French capital is the eccentricity of the English
visitors, as it strikes their own countrymen. I cannot find it in me to
blame Gallican caricaturists. The statuettes which enliven the bronze
shops; the gaunt figures which are in the chocolate establishments; the
prints in the windows under the Rivoli colonnade; the monsters with
fangs, red hair, and Glengarry caps, of Cham, and Doré, and Bertall, and
the female sticks with ringlets who pass in the terra-cotta show of the
Palais Royal for our countrywomen, have long ago ceased to warm my
indignation. All I can say now is, that the artists and modellers have
not travelled. They have studied the strange British apparitions which
disfigure the Boulevard des Italiens in the autumn, their knowledge of
our race is limited to the unfortunate selection of specimens who strut
about their streets, and--according to their light--they are not guilty
of outrageous exaggeration. I venture to assert that an Englishman will
meet more unpleasant samples of his countrymen and countrywomen in an
August day's walk in Paris, than he will come across during a month in
London. To begin with, we English treat Paris as though it were a back
garden, in which a person may lounge in his old clothes, or indulge his
fancy for the ugly and slovenly. Why, on broiling days, men and women
should sally forth from their hotel with a travelling-bag and an
opera-glass slung about their shoulders, passes my comprehension.
Conceive the condition of mind of that man who imagines that he is an
impressive presence when he is patrolling the Rue de la Paix with an
alpenstock in his hand! At home we are a plain, well-dressed,
well-behaved people, fully up in Art and Letters--that is, among our
educated classes, to any other nation--in most elegant studies before
all; but our travellers in France and Switzerland slander us, and the
"Paris in 10 hours" system has lowered Frenchmen's estimate of the
national character. The Exhibition of 1867, far from promoting the
brotherhood of the peoples, and hinting to the soldier that his vocation
was coming to an end, spread a dislike of Englishmen through Paris. It
attracted rough men from the North, and ill-bred men from the South,
whose swagger, and noise, and unceremonious manners in cafés and
restaurants chafed the polite Frenchman. They could not bring themselves
to salute the _dame de comptoir_, they were loud at the table d'hôte and
commanding in their airs to the waiter. In brief, the English mass
jarred upon their neighbours; and Frenchmen went the length of saying
that the two peoples--like relatives--would remain better friends apart.
The disadvantage is, beyond doubt, with us; since the _froissement_ was
produced by the British lack of that suavity which the French
cultivate--and which may be hollow, but is pleasant, and oils the wheels
of life.
[Illustration: ROBINSON CRUSOE AND FRIDAY.
_From French designs._]
Mrs. Rowe's was in the Rue--say the Rue Millevoye, so that we may not
interfere with possible vested interests. Was it respectable? Was it
genteel? Did good country families frequent it? Were all the comforts of
an English home to be had? Had Mrs. Grundy cast an approving eye into
every nook and corner? Of course there were Bibles in the bedrooms; and
you were not made to pay a franc for every cake of soap. Mrs. Rowe had
her tea direct from Twinings'. Twinings' tea she had drunk through her
better time, when Rowe had one of the finest houses in all Shepherd's
Bush, and come what might, Twinings' tea she would drink while she was
permitted to drink tea at all. Brown Windsor--no other soap for Mrs.
Rowe, if you please. People who wanted any of the fanciful soaps of
Rimmel or Piver must buy them. Brown Windsor was all she kept. Yes, she
was obliged to have Gruyère--and people did ask occasionally for
Roquefort; but her opinion was that the person who did not prefer a good
Cheshire to any other cheese, deserved to go without any. She had been
twenty-one years in Paris, and seven times only had she missed morning
service on Sundays. Hereupon, a particular history of each occasion, and
the superhuman difficulty which had bound Mrs. Rowe hand and foot to the
Rue Millevoye from eleven till one. She had a faithful note of a
beautiful sermon preached in the year 1850 by the Rev. John Bobbin, in
which he compared life to a boarding-house. He was staying with Mrs.
Howe at the time. He was an earnest worker in the true way; and she
distinctly saw her _salle-à-manger_ in his eye, when he enlarged on
the bounteous table spread by Nature, and the little that was needed
from man to secure all its blessings.
[Illustration: PAPA & THE DEAR BOYS.]
Mrs. Rowe took a maternal interest in me. I had made an economical
arrangement by which I secured a little room to myself throughout the
year, under the slates. I had many friends. I constantly arrived,
bringing new lodgers in my wake. For the house was quiet, well-ordered,
cheap, and tremendously respectable. I say, Mrs. Rowe took a maternal
interest in me--that is, she said so. There were ill-natured people who
had another description for her solicitude; but she had brought herself
to believe that she had an unselfish regard for your humble servant,
and that she was necessary to my comfort in the world, and I was pleased
at the innocent humbug. It afforded me excellent creature comforts; and
I was indebted to it for a constant welcome when I got to Paris--which
is something to the traveller. We cling to an old hotel, after we have
found the service bad, the cooking execrable, and the rooms dirty. It is
an ancient house, and the people know us, and have a cheery word and a
home look.
[Illustration: THE DOWAGER AND TALL FOOTMAN.]
Many years were passed in the Rue Millevoye by Mrs. Rowe and her niece,
without more incident than the packing and unpacking of luggage, and
genteel disputes over items in the bills conducted with icy politeness
on both sides, and concluded by Mrs. Rowe invariably with the withering
observation, that it was the first remark of the kind which had ever
been made on one of her little notes. People usually came to a
settlement with complimentary expressions of surprise at the
extreme--almost reckless--moderation of her charges; and expressed
themselves as at a loss to understand how she could make it worth her
while to do so very much for so very little. The people who came and
went were alike in the mass. The reader is requested to bear in mind
that Mrs. Rowe had a connexion of her own. She was seldom angry; but
when an advertising agent made his way to her business parlour, and took
the liberty of submitting the value of a Western States paper as a
medium for making her establishment known, she confessed that the
impertinence was too much for her temper. Mrs. Rowe advertise! Mrs. Rowe
would just as soon throw herself off the Pont Neuf, or--miss church next
Sunday.
"They don't come a second time!" Mrs. Rowe would say to me, with a
fierce compression of the lip, that might lead a nervous person to
imagine she made away with them in the cellars.
When Mrs. Rowe took you into her confidence--a slow and tedious
admission--she was pleased, usually, to fortify your stock of knowledge
with a comprehensive view of her family connexions; intended to set the
Whytes of Battersea (from whom she derived, before the vulgar Park was
there) upon an eminence of glory, with a circle of cringing and
designing Rowes at the base. How she--Whyte on both sides, for her
father married his first cousin--ever came to marry Joshua Rowe, was
something her mother never understood to her dying day. She was
graciously open to consolation in the reflection that nobles and princes
had made humble matches before her; and particularly in this, that the
Prince Regent married Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Lucy Rowe was favoured with these observations, heightened by occasional
hits at her own misfortune in that she was a Rowe, and could not boast
one thimbleful of Whyte blood in her veins.
It was the almost daily care of Mrs. Rowe to impress the people with
whom her business brought her in contact, with the gulf that lay between
her and her niece; although, through the early and inexplicable
condescension of a Miss Harriet Whyte, of Battersea, they bore the same
name, Miss Rowe was no blood relation _whatever_.
It was surprising to see how Lucy bore up under the misfortune. She was
not a Whyte, but she had lived beside one. Youth is so elastic! Lucy,
albeit she had the Rowe lip and nose, and, worse than all, the Rowe hair
(a warm auburn, which Mrs. Rowe described in one syllable, with a
picturesque and popular comparison comprehended in two), was daring
enough to meet the daylight, without showing the smallest signs of
giving way to melancholy. When new comers, as a common effort of
politeness, saw a strong likeness between Mrs. Rowe and her niece, the
representative of the Whytes of Battersea drew herself to her full
height, which was a trifle above her niece's shoulders, and
answered--"Oh dear, no, madam! It would be very strange if there were,
as there is not the slightest blood relationship between us."
Lucy Rowe was about fifteen when I first saw her. A slender,
golden-haired, shy and quiet girl, much in bashful and sensitive
demeanour like her romantic namesake of "the untrodden ways." It is
quite true that she had no Whyte blood in her veins, and Mrs. Rowe could
most conscientiously declare that there was not the least resemblance
between them. The Whyte features were of a type which none would envy
the possessor, save as the stamp of the illustrious house of Battersea.
The House of Savoy is not attractive by reason of its faultless profile;
but there are persons of almost matchless grace who would exchange their
beauty for its blood. In her very early days, I have no doubt. Lucy Rowe
would have given her sweet blue eyes, her pouting lips, and pretty head
(just enough to fold lovingly between the palms of a man's hand), for
the square jaw and high cheek-bone of the Whytes. She felt very humble
when she contemplated the grandeur of her aunt's family, and very
grateful to her aunt who had stooped so far as to give her shelter when
she was left alone in the world. She kept the accounts, ran errands,
looked after the house linen, and made herself agreeable to the
boarders' children; but all this was the very least she could do to
express her humble thankfulness to the great lady-relative who had
befriended her, after having been good enough to commit the sacrifice of
marrying her uncle Joshua.
Lucy sat many hours alone in the business parlour--an apartment not
decorated with the distinct view of imparting cheerfulness to the human
temperament. The mantelpiece was covered with files of bills. There were
rows of numbered keys against the wall. Mrs. Rowe's old desk--_style
Empire_ she said, when any visitor noticed the handsome ruin--stood in a
corner by the window, covered with account books, prospectuses and cards
of the establishment, and heaps of old newspapers. Another corner showed
heaps of folded linen, parcels left for boarders, umbrellas and sticks,
which had been forgotten by old customers (Mrs. Rowe called them
clients), and aunt's walking-boots. One corner was Lucy's, which she
occupied in conjunction with a little table, at which, from seven in the
morning until bedtime, she worked with pen or needle (it was provoking
she could not learn to ply both at one time), when she was not running
about the house, or nursing a boarder's baby. On the rare evenings when
her aunt could not find work of any description for her, Lucy was
requested to take the Bible from the shelf, and read a chapter aloud.
When her aunt went to sleep during the reading Lucy continued steadily,
knowing that the scion of the illustrious house of Whyte would wake
directly her voice ceased.
Occasionally the clergyman would drop in; whereupon Lucy would hear much
improving discourse between her aunt and the reverend gentleman. Mrs.
Rowe poured all her griefs into the ear of the Reverend Horace
Mohun--griefs which she kept from the world. Before Lucy she spoke
freely--being accustomed to regard the timid girl as a child still,
whose mind could not gather the threads of her narrative. Lucy sate--not
listening, but hearing snatches of the mournful circumstances with which
Mrs. Rowe troubled Mr. Mohun. The reverend gentleman was a patient and
an attentive listener; and drank his tea and ate his toast (it was only
at Mrs. Rowe's he said he could ever get a good English round of toast),
shaking his head, or offering a consoling "dear, dear me!" as the
droning proceeded. Lucy was at work. If Mrs. Rowe caught her pausing she
would break her story to say--"If you have finished 42 account, put down
two candles to 10, and a foot-bath to 14." And Lucy--who seldom paused
because she had finished her task, as her aunt knew well--bent over the
table again, and was as content as she was weary. When she went up to
her bedroom (which the cook had peremptorily refused to occupy) she
prayed for good Aunt Rowe every night of her dull life, before she lay
upon her truckle bed to rest for the morrow's cheerful round of hard
duties. Was it likely that a child put thus into the harness of life,
would pass the talk of her aunt with Mr. Mohun as the idle wind?
The mysteries which lay in the talk, and perplexed her, were cleared up
in due time.