centre of English fashion, a position it holds to-day in spite of many
attractive rivals, and the defection of Victoria who comes now to Cimiez,
back of Nice, being unwilling to visit Cannes since the sudden death
there of the Duke of Albany. A statue of Lord Brougham, the "discoverer"
of the littoral, has been erected in the sunny little square at Cannes,
and the English have in many other ways, stamped the city for their own.
No other race carry their individuality with them as they do. They can
live years in a country and assimilate none of its customs; on the
contrary, imposing habits of their own. It is just this that makes them
such wonderful colonizers, and explains why you will find little groups
of English people drinking ale and playing golf in the shade of the
Pyramids or near the frozen slopes of Foosiyama. The real inwardness of
it is that they are a dull race, and, like dull people despise all that
they do not understand. To differ from them is to be in the wrong. They
cannot argue with you; they simply know, and that ends the matter.
I had a discussion recently with a Briton on the pronunciation of a word.
As there is no "Institute," as in France, to settle matters of this kind,
I maintained that we Americans had as much authority for our
pronunciation of this particular word as the English. The answer was
characteristic.
"I know I am right," said my Island friend, "because that is the way I
pronounce it!"
Walking along the principal streets of Cannes to-day, you might imagine
yourself (except for the climate) at Cowes or Brighton, so British are
the shops and the crowd that passes them. Every restaurant advertises
"afternoon tea" and Bass's ale, and every other sign bears a London name.
This little matter of tea is particularly characteristic of the way the
English have imposed a taste of their own on a rebellious nation. Nothing
is further from the French taste than tea-drinking, and yet a Parisian
lady will now invite you gravely to "five o'clocker" with her, although I
can remember when that beverage was abhorred by the French as a medicine;
if you had asked a Frenchman to take a cup of tea, he would have
answered:
"Why? I am not ill!"
Even Paris (that supreme and undisputed arbiter of taste) has submitted
to English influence; tailor-made dresses and low-heeled shoes have
become as "good form" in France as in London. The last two Presidents of
the French Republic have taken the oath of office dressed in frock-coats
instead of the dress clothes to which French officials formerly clung as
to the sacraments.
The municipalities of the little Southern cities were quick to seize
their golden opportunity, and everything was done to detain the rich
English wandering down towards Italy. Millions were spent in
transforming their cramped, dirty, little towns. Wide boulevards
bordered with palm and eucalyptus spread their sunny lines in all
directions, being baptized _Promenade des Anglais_ or _Boulevard
Victoria_, in artful flattery. The narrow mountain roads were widened,
casinos and theatres built and carnival _fetes_ organized, the cities
offering "cups" for yacht- or horse-races, and giving grounds for tennis
and golf clubs. Clever Southern people! The money returned to them a
hundredfold, and they lived to see their wild coast become the chosen
residence of the wealthiest aristocracy in Europe, and the rocky
hillsides blossom into terrace above terrace of villa gardens, where palm
and rose and geranium vie with the olive and the mimosa to shade the
white villas from the sun. To-day, no little town on the coast is
without its English chapel, British club, tennis ground, and golf links.
On a fair day at Monte Carlo, Nice, or Cannes, the prevailing
conversation is in English, and the handsome, well-dressed sons of Albion
lounge along beside their astonishing womankind as thoroughly at home as
on Bond Street.
Those wonderful English women are the source of unending marvel and
amusement to the French. They can never understand them, and small
wonder, for with the exception of the small "set" that surrounds the
Prince of Wales, who are dressed in the Parisian fashion, all English
women seem to be overwhelmed with regret at not being born men, and to
have spent their time and ingenuity since, in trying to make up for
nature's mistake. Every masculine garment is twisted by them to fit the
female figure; their conversation, like that of their brothers, is about
horses and dogs; their hats and gloves are the same as the men's; and
when with their fine, large feet in stout shoes they start off, with that
particular swinging gait that makes the skirt seem superfluous, for a
stroll of twenty miles or so, Englishwomen do seem to the uninitiated to
have succeeded in their ambition of obliterating the difference between
the sexes.
It is of an evening, however, when concealment is no longer possible,
that the native taste bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon standing declared in
all her plainness. Strong is the contrast here, where they are placed
side by side with all that Europe holds of elegant, and well-dressed
Frenchwomen, whether of the "world" or the "half-world," are invariably
marvels of fitness and freshness, the simplest materials being converted
by their skilful touch into toilettes, so artfully adapted to the
wearer's figure and complexion, as to raise such "creations" to the level
of a fine art.
An artist feels, he must fix on canvas that particular combination of
colors or that wonderful line of bust and hip. It is with a shudder that
he turns to the British matron, for she has probably, for this occasion,
draped herself in an "art material,"--principally "Liberty" silks of
dirty greens and blues (aesthetic shades!). He is tempted to cry out in
his disgust: "Oh, Liberty! Liberty! How many crimes are committed in
thy name!" It is one of the oddest things in the world that the English
should have elected to live so much in France, for there are probably
nowhere two peoples so diametrically opposed on every point, or who so
persistently and wilfully misunderstand each other, as the English and
the French.
It has been my fate to live a good deal on both sides of the Channel, and
nothing is more amusing than to hear the absurdities that are gravely
asserted by each of their neighbors. To a Briton, a Frenchman will
always be "either tiger or monkey" according to Voltaire; while to the
French mind English gravity is only hypocrisy to cover every vice.
Nothing pleases him so much as a great scandal in England; he will
gleefully bring you a paper containing the account of it, to prove how
true is his opinion. It is quite useless to explain to the British mind,
as I have often tried to do, that all Frenchmen do not pass their lives
drinking absinthe on the boulevards; and as Englishmen seem to leave
their morals in a valise at Dover when off for a visit to Paris, to be
picked up on their return, it is time lost to try to make a Gaul
understand what good husbands and fathers the sons of Albion are.
These two great nations seem to stand in the relation to each other that
Rome and Greece held. The English are the conquerors of the world, and
its great colonizers; with a vast capital in which wealth and misery
jostle each other on the streets; a hideous conglomeration of buildings
and monuments, without form and void, very much as old Rome must have
been under the Caesars, enormous buildings without taste, and enormous
wealth. The French have inherited the temperament of the Greeks. The
drama, painting, and sculpture are the preoccupation of the people. The
yearly exhibitions are, for a month before they open, the unique subject
of conversation in drawing-room or club. The state protects the artist
and buys his work. Their _conservatoires_ form the singers, and their
schools the painters and architects of Europe and America.
The English copy them in their big way, just as the Romans copied the
masterpieces of Greek art, while they despised the authors. It is rare
that a play succeeds in Paris which is not instantly translated and
produced in London, often with the adapter's name printed on the
programme in place of the author's, the Frenchman, who only wrote it,
being ignored. Just as the Greeks faded away and disappeared before
their Roman conquerors, it is to be feared that in our day this people of
a finer clay will succumb. The "defects of their qualities" will be
their ruin. They will stop at home, occupied with literature and art,
perfecting their dainty cities; while their tougher neighbors are
dominating the globe, imposing their language and customs on the
conquered peoples or the earth. One feels this on the Riviera. It
reminds you of the cuckoo who, once installed in a robin's nest, that
seems to him convenient and warmly located in the sunshine, ends by
kicking out all the young robins.
No. 23--A Common Weakness
Governments may change and all the conditions of life be modified, but
certain ambitions and needs of man remain immutable. Climates, customs,
centuries, have in no way diminished the craving for consideration, the
desire to be somebody, to bear some mark indicating to the world that one
is not as other men.
For centuries titles supplied the want. This satisfaction has been
denied to us, so ambitious souls are obliged to seek other means to feed
their vanity.
Even before we were born into the world of nations, an attempt was made
amongst the aristocratically minded court surrounding our chief
magistrate, to form a society that should (without the name) be the
beginning of a class apart.
The order of the Cincinnati was to have been the nucleus of an American
nobility. The tendencies of this society are revealed by the fact that
primogeniture was its fundamental law. Nothing could have been more
opposed to the spirit of the age, nor more at variance with the
declaration of our independence, than the insertion of such a clause.
This fact was discovered by the far-seeing eye of Washington, and the
society was suppressed in the hope (shared by almost all contemporaries)
that with new forms of government the nature of man would undergo a
transformation and rise above such puerile ambitions.
Time has shown the fallacy of these dreams. All that has been
accomplished is the displacement of the objective point; the desire, the
mania for a handle to one's name is as prevalent as ever. Leave the
centres of civilization and wander in the small towns and villages of our
country. Every other man you meet is introduced as the Colonel or the
Judge, and you will do well not to inquire too closely into the matter,
nor to ask to see the title-deeds to such distinctions. On the other
hand, to omit his prefix in addressing one of these local magnates, would
be to offend him deeply. The women-folk were quick to borrow a little of
this distinction, and in Washington to-day one is gravely presented to
Mrs. Senator Smith or Mrs. Colonel Jones. The climax being reached by
one aspiring female who styles herself on her visiting cards, "Mrs.
Acting-Assistant-Paymaster Robinson." If by any chance it should occur
to any one to ask her motive in sporting such an unwieldy handle, she
would say that she did it "because one can't be going about explaining
that one is not just ordinary Mrs. Robinson or Thompson, like the
thousand others in town." A woman who cannot find an excuse for assuming
such a prefix will sometime have recourse to another stratagem, to
particularize an ordinary surname. She remembers that her husband, who
ever since he was born has been known to everybody as Jim, is the proud
possessor of the middle name Ivanhoe, or Pericles (probably the result of
a romantic mother's reading); so one fine day the young couple bloom out
as Mr. and Mrs. J. Pericles Sparks, to the amusement of their friends,
their own satisfaction, and the hopeless confusion of their tradespeople.
Not long ago a Westerner, who went abroad with a travelling show, was
received with enthusiasm in England because it was thought "The
Honorable" which preceded his name on his cards implied that although an
American he was somehow the son of an earl. As a matter of fact he owed
this title to having sat, many years before in the Senate of a
far-western State. He will cling to that "Honorable" and print it on his
cards while life lasts. I was told the other day of an American carpet
warrior who appeared at court function abroad decorated with every
college badge, and football medal in his possession, to which he added at
the last moment a brass trunk check, to complete the brilliancy of the
effect. This latter decoration attracted the attention of the Heir
Apparent, who inquired the meaning of the mystic "416" upon it. This
would have been a "facer" to any but a true son of Uncle Sam. Nothing
daunted, however, our "General" replied "That, Sir, is the number of
pitched battles I have won."
I have my doubts as to the absolute veracity of this tale. But that the
son of one of our generals, appeared not long ago at a public reception
abroad, wearing his father's medals and decorations, is said to be true.
Decorations on the Continent are official badges of distinction conferred
and recognized by the different governments. An American who wears, out
of his own country, an army or college badge which has no official
existence, properly speaking, being recognized by no government, but
which is made intentionally to look as much as possible like the "Legion
d'Honneur," is deliberately imposing on the ignorance of foreigners, and
is but little less of a pretentious idiot than the owners of the trunk
check and the borrowed decorations.
There seems no end to the ways a little ambitious game can be played. One
device much in favor is for the wife to attach her own family name to
that of her husband by means of a hyphen. By this arrangement she does
not entirely lose her individuality; as a result we have a splendid
assortment of hybrid names, such as Van Cortland-Smith and Beekman-Brown.
Be they never so incongruous these double-barrelled cognomens serve their
purpose and raise ambitious mortals above the level of other Smiths and
Browns. Finding that this arrangement works well in their own case, it
is passed on to the next generation. There are no more Toms and Bills in
these aspiring days. The little boys are all Cadwalladers or Carrolls.
Their school-fellows, however, work sad havoc with these high-sounding
titles and quickly abbreviate them into humble "Cad" or "Rol."
It is surprising to notice what a number of middle-aged gentlemen have
blossomed out of late with decorations in their button-holes according to
the foreign fashion. On inquiry I have discovered that these ornaments
designate members of the G.A.R., the Loyal Legion, or some local Post,
for the rosettes differ in form and color. When these gentlemen travel
abroad, to reduce their waists or improve their minds, the effects on the
hotel waiters and cabmen must be immense. They will be charged three
times the ordinary tariff instead of only the double which is the
stranger's usual fate at the hands of simple-minded foreigners. The
satisfaction must be cheap, however, at that price.
Even our wise men and sages do not seem to have escaped the contagion.
One sees professors and clergymen (who ought to set a better example)
trailing half a dozen letters after their names, initials which to the
initiated doubtless mean something, but which are also intended to fill
the souls of the ignorant with envy. I can recall but one case of a
foreign decoration being refused by a compatriot. He was a genius and we
all know that geniuses are crazy. This gentleman had done something
particularly gratifying to an Eastern potentate, who in return offered
him one of his second-best orders. It was at once refused. When urged
on him a second time our countryman lost his temper and answered, "If you
want to give it to somebody, present it to my valet. He is most anxious
to be decorated." And it was done!
It does not require a deeply meditative mind to discover the motives of
ambitious struggles. The first and strongest illusion of the human mind
is to believe that we are different from our fellows, and our natural
impulse is to try and impress this belief upon others.
Pride of birth is but one of the manifestations of the universal
weakness--invariably taking stronger and stronger hold of the people, who
from the modest dimension of their income, or other untoward
circumstances, can find no outward and visible form with which to dazzle
the world. You will find that a desire to shine is the secret of most of
the tips and presents that are given while travelling or visiting, for
they can hardly be attributed to pure spontaneous generosity.
How many people does one meet who talk of their poor and unsuccessful
relatives while omitting to mention rich and powerful connections? We
are told that far from blaming such a tendency we are to admire it. That
it is proper pride to put one's best foot forward and keep an offending
member well out of sight, that the man who wears a rosette in the button-
hole of his coat and has half the alphabet galloping after his name, is
an honor to his family.
Far be it from me to deride this weakness in others, for in my heart I am
persuaded that if I lived in China, nothing would please me more than to
have my cap adorned with a coral button, while if fate had cast my life
in the pleasant places of central Africa, a ring in my nose would
doubtless have filled my soul with joy. The fact that I share this
weakness does not, however, prevent my laughing at such folly in others.
No. 24--Changing Paris
Paris is beginning to show signs of the coming "Exhibition of 1900," and
is in many ways going through a curious stage of transformation, socially
as well as materially. The _Palais De l'Industrie_, familiar to all
visitors here, as the home of the _Salons_, the Horse Shows, and a
thousand gay _fetes_ and merry-makings, is being torn down to make way
for the new avenue leading, with the bridge Alexander III., from the
Champs Elysees to the Esplanade des Invalides. This thoroughfare with
the gilded dome of Napoleon's tomb to close its perspective is intended
to be the feature of the coming "show."
Curious irony of things in this world! The _Palais De l'Industrie_ was
intended to be the one permanent building of the exhibition of 1854. An
old "Journal" I often read tells how the writer saw the long line of
gilded coaches (borrowed from Versailles for the occasion), eight horses
apiece, led by footmen--horses and men blazing in embroidered
trappings--leave the Tuileries and proceed at a walk to the great gateway
of the now disappearing palace. Victoria and Albert who were on an
official visit to the Emperor were the first to alight; then Eugenie in
the radiance of her perfect beauty stepped from the coach (sad omen!)
that fifty years before had taken Josephine in tears to Malmaison.
It may interest some ladies to know how an Empress was dressed on that
spring morning forty-four years ago. She wore rose-colored silk with an
over-dress (I think that is what it is called) of black lace flounces,
immense hoops, and a black _Chantilly_ lace shawl. Her hair, a brilliant
golden auburn, was dressed low on the temples, covering the ears, and
hung down her back in a gold net almost to her waist; at the extreme back
of her head was placed a black and rose-colored bonnet; open "flowing"
sleeves showed her bare arms, one-buttoned, straw-colored gloves, and
ruby bracelets; she carried a tiny rose-colored parasol not a foot in
diameter.
How England's great sovereign was dressed the writer of the journal does
not so well remember, for in those days Eugenie was the cynosure of all
eyes, and people rarely looked at anything else when they could get a
glimpse of her lovely face.
It appears, however, that the Queen sported an India shawl, hoops, and a
green bonnet, which was not particularly becoming to her red face. She
and Napoleon entered the building first; the Empress (who was in delicate
health) was carried in an open chair, with Prince Albert walking at her
side, a marvellously handsome couple to follow the two dowdy little
sovereigns who preceded them. The writer had by bribery succeeded in
getting places in an _entresol_ window under the archway, and was greatly
impressed to see those four great ones laughing and joking together over
Eugenie's trouble in getting her hoops into the narrow chair!
What changes have come to that laughing group! Two are dead, one dying
in exile and disgrace; and it would be hard to find in the two rheumatic
old ladies whom one sees pottering about the Riviera now, any trace of
those smiling wives. In France it is as if a tidal wave had swept over
Napoleon's court. Only the old palace stood severely back from the
Champs Elysees, as if guarding its souvenirs. The pick of the mason has
brought down the proud gateway which its imperial builder fondly imagined
was to last for ages. The Tuileries preceded it into oblivion. The
Alpha and Omega of that gorgeous pageant of the fifties vanished like a
mirage!
It is not here alone one finds Paris changing. A railway is being
brought along the quais with its depot at the Invalides. Another is to
find its terminus opposite the Louvre, where the picturesque ruin of the
Cour des Comptes has stood half-hidden by the trees since 1870. A line
of electric cars crosses the Rond Point, in spite of the opposition of
all the neighborhood, anxious to keep, at least that fine perspective
free from such desecration. And, last but not least, there is every
prospect of an immense system of elevated railways being inaugurated in
connection with the coming world's fair. The direction of this kind of
improvement is entirely in the hands of the Municipal Council, and that
body has become (here in Paris) extremely radical, not to say
communistic; and takes pleasure in annoying the inhabitants of the richer
quarters of the city, under pretext of improvements and facilities of
circulation.
It is easy to see how strong the feeling is against the aristocratic
class. Nor is it much to be wondered at! The aristocracy seem to try to
make themselves unpopular. They detest the republic, which has shorn
them of their splendor, and do everything in their power (socially and
diplomatically their power is still great) to interfere with and
frustrate the plans of the government. Only last year they seized an
opportunity at the funerals of the Duchesse d'Alencon and the Duc
d'Aumale to make a royalist manifestation of the most pronounced
character. The young Duchesse d'Orleans was publicly spoken of and
treated as the "Queen of France;" at the private receptions given during
her stay in Paris the same ceremonial was observed as if she had been
really on the throne. The young Duke, her husband, was not present,
being in exile as a pretender, but armorial bearings of the "reigning
family," as their followers insist on calling them, were hung around the
Madeleine and on the funeral-cars of both the illustrious dead.
The government is singularly lenient to the aristocrats. If a poor man
cries "Long live the Commune!" in the street, he is arrested. The
police, however, stood quietly by and let a group of the old nobility
shout "Long live the Queen!" as the train containing the young Duchesse
d'Orleans moved out of the station. The secret of this leniency toward
the "pretenders" to the throne, is that they are very little feared. If
it amuses a set of wealthy people to play at holding a court, the strong
government of the republic cares not one jot. The Orleans family have
never been popular in France, and the young pretender's marriage to an
Austrian Archduchess last year has not improved matters.