"OH, YES!" AND "ALL RIGHT!"
Lucy was privileged to read the following:--
_Miss Carrie Cockayne to Miss Emily Sharp._
"Rue Millevoye, Paris.
"MY DEAREST EMMY,--I should certainly not venture to offer any
remarks on taste to you, my love, under ordinary circumstances. But I am
provoked. I have passed a severe round of _soirées_ of every
description. Jaded with the fantastic activities of a fancy-dress
genteel riot, I have been compelled to respond to the intimation of the
Vicomtesse de Bois de Rose, that "_on sautera_". I have jumped with the
rest. I have half killed myself with _sirops, petit-fours_, those
microscopic caricatures of detestable British preparation--sandwiches
(pronounced _sonveetch_), _bouillon_, and chocolate, in the small hours;
ices in tropical heats; _foie-gras_ and champagne about two hours after
healthy bedtime, and tea like that which provoked old Lady Gargoyle to
kick over the tea-table in her boudoir--in her eightieth year, too. The
Gargoyles (I shall have much to tell you about them when we meet) were
always an energetic race; and I feel the blood tingling in me while my
eye wanders over the impertinences of the French chroniqueurs, when they
are pleased to be merry at the expense of _la vieille Angleterre_. I
hold I am right; am I not?--that when even a chroniqueur--that smallest
of literary minnows--undertakes to criticize a foreign nation, at least
the equal of his own, he should start with some knowledge of its
language, history, manners, and customs. But what do we find? The
profoundest ignorance of the rudiments of English. The special
correspondent sent to London by the _Figaro_ to be amusing on our darker
side, cannot spell the word theatre; but he is trenchant when dealing
with what he saw at the Adelphi _Theater_. How completely he must have
understood the dialogue, he who describes Webster as a _comique de
premier ordre!_ In the same paper the dramatic critic, after explaining
that at the rehearsals of _L'Abime_, the actors, who continually are
complaining that they are ordered off on the wrong side, are quieted
with the information that matters dramatic are managed in this way in
bizzare England--prints in a line apart, and by way of most humorous
comment, these words, 'English spoken here.' Conceive, my dear, an
English humorous writer interlarding his picture of a French incident
with the occasional interjection of _Parlez-vous Français?_ Yet the
comic writers of Paris imagine that they show wit when they pepper their
comments with disjointed, irrelevant, and misspelt ejaculations in our
vernacular. We have a friend here (we have made dozens) who has a cat
she calls To-be--the godfather being 'To-be or not to be! 'All right'
appears daily as a witticism; 'Oh, yes!' serves for the thousandth time
as a touch of humour. The reason is obvious. French critics are wholly
ignorant of our language. Very few of them have crossed the Channel,
even to obtain a Leicester Square idea of our dear England. But they are
not diffident on this account. They have never seen samples of the
Britisher--except on the Boulevards, or whistling in the cafés--where
our countrymen, I beg leave to say, do not shine; and these to them are
representations of our English society. Suppose we took our estimate of
French manners and culture from the small shopkeepers of the Quartier
St. Antoine! My protest is against those who judge us by our vulgar and
coarse types. The Manchester bully who lounges into the Café Anglais
with his hat on the back of his head; the woman who wears a hat and a
long blue veil, and shuffles in in the wake of the _malhonnête_ to whom
she is married; again, the boor who can speak only such French as 'moa
besoin' and 'j'avais faim,' represent English men and women just as
fairly as the rude, hoggish, French egg-and-poultry speculators
represent the great seigneurs of France.
[Illustration: SMITH BRINGS HIS ALPENSTOCK.]
"I say I have, by this time, more than a tolerable experience, not only
of French _salons_, but also of those over which foreign residents in
Paris preside. I have watched the American successes in Paris of this
season, which is now closing its gilded gates, dismissing the slaves of
pleasure to the bitter waters of the German springs and gaming-tables. I
have seen our people put aside for Madame de Lhuile de Petrole and the
great M. Caligula Shoddy. The beauties of the season have been
'calculating' and 'going round' in the best _salons_, and they have
themselves given some of the most successful entertainments we have had.
Dixie's land has been fairyland. Strange and gorgeous Princesses from
the East have entered mighty appearances. One has captivated the Prince,
said to be the handsomest man in Paris. Russian and Polish great ladies
have done the honours--according to the newspapers--with their
'habitual charm.' The Misses Bickers have had their beauties sung by a
chorus of chroniqueurs. Here the shoulders of ladies at a party are as
open to criticism as the ankles of a stage dancer. The beauties of our
blonde Misses have made whole bundles of goose-quills tremble. Paris
society is made up not even chiefly of Parisians; the rich of all
nations flock to us, and are content to pay a few hundred pounds per
month for a floor of glass and gilding. The Emperor has made a show
capital as a speculation. All Europe contributes to the grandeur of the
fashionable world of Paris. And suddenly what do we hear?
"That we, whose blood is good enough for England; who _can_ speak a few
foreign languages in addition to our own; who know our neighbours by
having lived among them; who have travelled enough to learn that good
breeding is not confined to England or to France, are accused of having
destroyed the high tone of the Opera audiences in this city. We are good
enough, as to manners, for Her Majesty's Theatre, but not for the
Italiens. Tell Mrs. Sandhurst of this: she will be _so_ mad!
"A few nights before La Patti left us, to degrade herself by warbling
her wood-notes in the ignorant ears of the Opera public whom Mr. Gye is
about to assemble, and on whom the leadership of Costa is thrown away,
an unfortunate incident happened at the Italiens. Patti had been
announced, and Mdlle. Harris appeared instead. Whereupon there was an
uproar that could not be stilled. La Patti wept; la Harris wept also.
Finally, the spoilt child appeared, like Niobe, all tears. Who created
the uproar? The French chroniqueur answers: a cosmopolitan audience--an
audience from the Grand Hôtel. He is good enough not to pick us out, but
we are included with the rest. The foreign residents have degraded the
Opera. The audience which greets Patti is a rabble compared with that
which listened to Sontag. 'The exquisite urbanity which is proverbially
French,' and which was apparent at the Italiens fifteen or twenty years
ago, has disappeared since Paris has become the world's railway
terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the
observation, proceeds to be very clever. Scratch the Russian, and you
know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale
proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is
great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate
Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the
one barbarous material! The ladies of these are charming, seductive,
irresistible, but they want _ton_, and lack the delicacy of the _monde_.
We foreigners are too proud of our beauty and our dollars, have an
unquenchable thirst for pleasure, and we are socially daring. M. Villars
is funny in the fashion of his class. He says that we English-speaking
class of foreigners bear aloft a banner with the strange device 'All
right.' M. Villars proceeds to remark, 'We take from foreigners what we
should leave to them, their feet upon chairs, and their hats upon
their heads, as at the Italiens the other night.' He finds that a
cosmopolitan invasion has made French society less delicate, less
gallant, less polite.
[Illustration: JONES ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]
"We are to blame! Belgravia is not refined enough for the Avenue de
l'Impératrice. Clapham, I infer, would not be tolerated at Batignolles.
I repeat, I have gone through some arduous times here, in the midst of
the foreign invasion of polite society. I have scratched neither Russ,
nor German, nor Servian, nor Wallachian. But I must be permitted to
observe, that I have found their manners quite equal to any that were
native. Shall I go further, Emmy, and speak all my mind? There is a race
of the new-rich--of the recently honoured, here, who are French from
their shoe-rosettes to their chignons. They come direct from the Bourse,
and from the Pereire fortune-manufactory of the Place Vendôme. They
bring noise and extravagance, but not manners. I have seen many of my
countrymen in Parisian drawing-rooms, in the midst of Frenchmen,
Russians, Princes of various lands; and, do you know, I have not seen
anything _much_ better in the way of bearing, manners, and mental
culture and natural refinement than the English gentleman. I feel quite
positive that it is not he who has lowered the manners or morals of
Napoleon the Third's subjects. I am bold enough to think that a
probationary tour through some of our London drawing-rooms would do good
to the saucy young seigneurs I see leaning on the balcony of the Jockey
Club when we are driving past.
"I will remind M. Villars that his proverb has been parodied, and that
it has been said, 'Scratch a Frenchman, and you find a dancing-master.'
But I know this proverb to be foolish; and I am candid and liberal
enough to say so.
"I hope you are not too lonely, and don't keep too much to your room.
Now I know by experience what life in a boarding-house means. How must
you feel, dearest Emmy, alone! Je t'embrasse. How gets on the German?
"We have such a specimen of the gandin here--the Vicomte de Gars. I
think John Catt had better make haste over.
"Yours affectionately,
"CARRIE."