SOCIAL DIVERSIONS AND DISTINCTIONS
With a race that has so thoroughly mastered the art of living, and not
merely working or vegetating, the question of diversion is of paramount
interest. In the fashionable world, sport monopolises the better part
of man’s hours. This is an overseas passion, adopted with frenzy and
fervour. M. Rémy de Saint Maurice has given us the odyssey of the record
cyclist in an amusing and humorous book, _Le Recordman_, where we see
the wealthy idlers of France in awed adoration before the prowess of the
racing-wheel. The champion cyclist raises storms of emotion wherever he
runs, be it in Paris or in the provinces. When he returns to his native
town, all the authorities come to meet him and do him honour.
The French race is essentially a conversational and not a sporting one.
It has a natural predilection for the amenities of life, and we feel how
inappropriate is this present craze for rude and unsocial games. You need
only watch a Frenchman on horseback, and contrast him with a British
horseman to assure yourself of the fact that the point of view of each
is quite different. The Anglo-Saxon rides ahead with the air of thinking
only of his horse. The Frenchman trains his beast, like himself, to have
an eye to the arts and graces, to curvet and prance minuettingly, to arch
its neck as he himself bows, and he brings a suggestion of the salon
among the shadows of the Bois de Boulogne. Should there be a mortuary
chapel on their road to this sophisticated paradise, stand and note the
pretty way these dashing creatures will salute death. Spaniards would
do it, I admit, much more gracefully, for in the art of salutation the
Spaniard comes first beyond a doubt. But you will not see anywhere in
the British Isles so pleasing a spectacle. Some bend altogether over
their steeds, hat curved outward on a wide sweep; others pause midway,
less ostentatious and theatrical in their respect, and hold their hats
in a direct line from their eyebrows, admirably suggestive of diplomatic
reticence, younger and elder men all expressing every shade of effective
recognition of alien grief with a subtlety, a dramatic felicity of
movement and line the stiff Anglo-Saxon could never hope to achieve. Of
course the supercilious Englishman would say he had no mind to play the
monkey, and find a cause for just pride in the rigidity of his body, and
the stoniness of his well-trained and inexpressive visage. But here I
differ from him. A man loses nothing by outward grace, and there is no
reason on earth why he should rejoice in the fact that he cannot bow.
The motor craze has superseded the cycle craze. The _bourgeois_ bicycles
so much that the youth of fashion needs something to distinguish him on
the road from his inferior brother. So somebody came to his rescue with
the motor-car. Go to Paris if you would realise what a perilous thing
the crossing of a street may be. In such a neighbourhood as the Place
Pereire it is almost mortal. I imagine it as a machine invented by the
upper classes to replace the guillotine, and run down the miserable
foot-passengers to avenge the beheadings of a century ago. Whenever I
return home, and discover that I have lost a purse, a book, a packet
according to my invariable habit, I am so thankful to feel that I am
still alive, in spite of the automobile which charges through the streets
in such a dreadful way, that I balance loss and gain, and count myself
still a winner in the game of life by every new day to my account. In
London you are everywhere enveloped in a sense of public protection. The
cab drivers know how to drive, a feature of their trade they are most
imperfectly aware of in Paris. The policeman is there when he is wanted,
and, thanks to him, the nervous passer-by is valiant and unafraid. But in
Paris the driver regards him with an eloquent hostility. His one hope is
to get a free chance of running over him. He is insolent, overbearing,
and menacing, unfettered by policeman or law in his man-crushing career.
And, as if regretting the very slight limits still left him, Paris cast
forth upon the public way the motor-car. This machine of destruction
hisses along, leaving a trail of petroleum in the air, and you have
barely time to start back for its passage, such is the fury of the horror
in the hands of its fashionable owner. There are many motor-cars in
use for the big shops and public offices; but these, being in no sense
competitive in luxury, measure the ground by a speed less fatal, the
drivers seem to desire to leave you whole, and suggest by their pace and
bearing, some glimmering of humanity in their heart. For it is only the
rich young men who give one the notion of wishing to avenge the massacres
of the French Revolution. For the benefit of these flowers of the race,
exhibitions of motor-cars take place, under the patronage of dukes and
counts more or less authentic. And, so encouraged, these wild Parisians
set out in their automobiles for the harmless and distant provinces,
and charge down the long French country roads with purpose often more
deadly than that displayed in the capital. The newspapers acquaint us
with frequent accidents; and whatever the general sentiment regarding
these accidents may be, I always feel that they are a well-merited
chastisement. Why must the poor, the obscure, the inoffensive clerk and
shop-girl, go in fear and trembling of their lives, that the privileged
few may add a fresh sensation to their list of entailed emotions? Is not
the luxury of a horse good enough for those busy idlers, without adding
heart disease to our inherited disorders?
Boxing and fencing are also favourite exercises, as well as polo and
tennis amongst games. One of the more serious of diversions is the duel,
the first of which must be fought in early youth, and the last when
temperament and politics shall have said their final word. Then come the
amusements of club life, which absorb a good deal of masculine leisure,
of course, and where men meet to talk and be entertained, as well as to
eat, and read the newspapers. The races and the horse-show are sources
of pleasure at which every self-respecting Parisian drinks. Not to be
connected with horses or exhibitions would be almost as bad as not to
possess an automobile, not to be seen in the _foyer_ on great theatrical
nights, not to have fought a duel. But beyond even all these pleasures
are the noisy suppers of the fashionable restaurant, where everybody
who is anybody meets “tout Paris”; where the dresses of the women find
rivalry in the decorations of the men, and the scene approaches the
ideal paradise, the mundane city peopled with brilliant personages.
In all things the French _bourgeoise_ is more difficult to divert than
her aristocratic sister. She is much more particular and infinitely
more restricted in her ideas upon feminine liberty. While the women of
the upper class arrogate to themselves the right to amuse themselves
in whatever fashion they like, with lovers or without them, bicycling,
skating, shooting, on horseback, in automobile (the Duchesse d’Uzès was
the first Frenchwoman to obtain a certificate as woman driver of the
motor-car), private theatricals, they can smoke or scale the mountains
of the moon with impunity. All these varied avenues of distraction
are rigorously denied the _bourgeoise_. She is the most conventional
of creatures, and anything like marked originality in one of her sex
terrifies her and fills her with distrust. She was bred in the conviction
that girls should resemble their great-grandmothers, be clothed until
marriage in the integrity of imbecility, and after marriage in the
narrowness of piety, and know no other amusements than those strictly
suitable to a “feminine” woman. The path her mother and grandmother trod
is the path she must never deviate from. She must be just as religious
as they were, taking care, however, to follow the fashions of her own
class, in order to guard from so dangerous and disreputable a pitfall
as originality, which, with her, means pronounced eccentricity. When
she lives in Paris she dresses well; but the province often transforms
her into an inconceivable shape of dowdiness. In Paris, thanks to the
lectures, music, drama, literature, the multiple elements of culture,
it is impossible for her to escape, unless her days be entirely devoted
to domestic economy and good works; she is rarely destitute of that
agreeable worldliness that makes commerce with her, however shallow and
superficial she may be, facile and often instructive. And when she has
the hardihood to plunge into deeper waters and think for herself, when
she ceases to be beset with a craving for the ordered in conventional
circles, and to think ill of originality and individual character; there
is no woman on earth more charming, more capable, of readier wit, of less
intellectual prudery, wedded to a wholesome independence of judgment and
principle.
But as I have said, the amusements of the _bourgeoise_, “big” or
“little,” are very restricted: books, theatres, balls, dinner-parties,
with the excitement of religious ceremonies, an academy reception, a
noisy sitting of Parliament, the hourly expectation of revolution, a
correct evening party,—the dullest thing on earth wherever it takes
place. But, on the other hand, we may be sure she will find ample
entertainment in looking after her admirably managed establishment,
in making her own and her husband’s means go a very long way in
accomplishing a thousand little domestic meannesses unknown to the
thriftless Anglo-Saxon, and all with a certain geniality and discretion
that win her the esteem and goodwill of her fellows. For of womankind she
is the most genial and well-mannered, and though she may, in straitened
circumstances, deny every pleasing luxury to her family, her good humour
will keep those around her in good humour, and the counting of lumps of
sugar and of grains of coffee will seem a slight matter compared with the
flavour of domestic courtesy that accompanies the process. I have known
of an English family where at table forced strawberries and peaches were
daily eaten, and vegetables at a fabulous price, upon the finest damask
and priceless china, to the accompaniment of glasses flung by sisters
and brothers at an argumentative head, plates flying, and oaths showered
like missiles. Who would not prefer the economical French middle-class
table, where, in well-to-do families, lunch is often served on shining
oilcloth or table as polished as a mirror, to save washing, and where the
amenities are as carefully guarded as if the household were on view?
In this world the young men, as elsewhere, have the best of it. Theirs
the licence of manhood in all things. The moment dinner is over they
put on their evening suit and file off (_filer_, as they say themselves,
in their pleasant French slang) in the quest of pleasure. If they are
well-to-do they have no difficulty in getting accepted in the world of
third-rate titles. Tarnished dukes will cordially shake their hands. As
there is no peerage in France to control aristocratic pretensions, they
may have as much as reasonable man can desire of the society of marquises
and counts, provided they take these exalted personages on trust, and
do not seek to examine too closely their blazons. The method of making
one’s self a count or a baron in Paris under the Third Republic is very
simple. You may purchase a Papal title at a not exorbitant cost. In Abel
Hermant’s _Le Faubourg_, a porcelain manufacturer was awarded the title
of count by the Pope in return for a dinner-service he sent him, which
was explained on the grant as _pour service exceptionelle_. In France and
America only are Papal titles taken with gravity, and pronounced with all
the sounding magnificence of hereditary names. But a simpler way still,
and less costly even than the interference of Rome, is to buy a plate,
and have graven on it first a name prefixed by the particle _de_. When
this has been accepted without demur, and the newspapers have a dozen
times announced you here, there, and everywhere as M. de ⸺, then boldly
apply the title of your predilection, and behold you are, without more
ado, a noble of France. No need of papers or permissions. You are noble
by the grace of your own goodwill; and as most of the people around you
are playing the same game, there is no earthly reason why your friend
should be more of a count than you are of a baron. And so you may
aspire to a larger _dot_ from your bride. If you are in the army, you
may even look as high as your general’s daughter; and when you travel
abroad or journey in the provinces, you will be made to understand what
a fine thing it is to be able, thanks to your own valour and judgment,
to inscribe yourself in hotel books as M. le Baron or M. le Comte. You
will be served better than when you were plain Mr. So-and-So. Waiters
will help you off and on with your coat with a deference hitherto not
enjoyed by you in your anterior plebeian state, and the society papers
will record your great doings with gusto and fervour. Who, under these
circumstances, would not be a count or a marquis? Had I known years ago
of the facilities and advantages offered in France to titled adventurers,
I might have had the wit and wisdom to style myself countess of this
or baroness of that, the sole existing representative of an Irish King
or a Norman house. Indeed, such is the predisposition of the French
_bourgeois_ to believe in the noble origin of his acquaintance, that one
stoutly maintained before me that O and Mac were the Irish equivalents
of count; and my remark that every second washerwoman or policeman in
Ireland rejoiced in those attributes of nobility was received with frosty
incredulity. A French officer’s wife of the name of Mahon assured me that
her husband was of noble origin, and related to Marshal MacMahon; but
that, unfortunately, the papers identifying the relationship were lost,
and, in consequence, they could not call themselves MacMahon. As the good
lady really believed every word she was saying, I could not in courtesy
point out to her that Mahon and MacMahon are equally common names in
Ireland, and, for that matter, in the British Isles, and that every
MacMahon deems himself a connexion of the late marshal, though not one
would have thought of claiming the relationship if Marshal MacMahon had
remained in obscurity.
A substantial source of income is occasionally derived by the authentic
nobles for the presentation of the other kind into the halls of social
greatness, and for standing sponsors for them in exclusive clubs.
Another source of income for avid noblemen lies in their shooting and
hunting grounds. So much is paid for an invitation, still more for
the button, which permits parvenus to hunt on equal terms with their
so-called betters. The extraordinary things these nobles will do passes
the imagination. I know of a viscountess who possesses magnificent
hunting land on which men from all parts are invited to hunt. The guests
departing naturally tip gamekeepers and servants according to their
means. Every tip, by order, under penalty of expulsion from the château,
must be brought intact to the viscountess, and out of these tips are the
servants paid their wages.
The life of fashion in Paris is pretty much the same as the life of
fashion elsewhere. Men and women ride in the Bois in the early hours, and
it must be admitted that they could not find a pleasanter spot to ride
in anywhere. The landscape is charming, and if you break away from the
Allée des Acacias—the Parisian Row—you may even make a feint at losing
yourself under columns of tall trees, by little, moss-grown paths, where
the branches meet overhead, with ever in view grassy rolls of sward
and bright trellises of foliage above the broad white roads. In the
early hours this trim paradise is cool and quiet; and even an Anarchist
on foot will have no cause to envy his prosperous enemy on horseback,
for the same delights of herb and leaf, of sky and water, are his at a
cheaper rate. Indeed, there is no land on earth where a good-humoured
taste of vicarious pleasures may be so freely and fully enjoyed as in
France. Amiable _petits gens_ sit on chairs and watch the great parade
of the Bois without a trace of envy in their looks, comment on dresses,
horses, equipages, bearing, as if it were but a pageant got up for
their benefit. I am not sure that this is not one of the advantages of
Society—one of its objects—to minister to the kindly and generous vanity
of the workers of a country. These, by their labours, maintain it, dress
it, wash for it, build for it, manufacture for it, keep in order for
it the public roads, give the best of their blood, brains, nerve, and
force to its triumphs, and are content to see how well the result of
all this gigantic travail of a race looks in the show hours of national
existence. The big dressmakers are repaid when, sitting in their _loge_
of inspection, they watch the effect of their several creations on
Varnishing Day, at Auteuil or Longchamps. The artistic temperament is
at the root of all this contentedness, of these subtle gratifications
which the Philistine workman does not apprehend. The Frenchman brings
this sentiment of art into all he does. The word “artist” is applied
to cook, dressmaker, milliner, hair-dresser. In many ways M. Demolins
has shown us that the race is inferior to the Anglo-Saxon races, but it
has one essential superiority—the absence of vulgarity in the artisan
and shopkeeping classes. You can hold converse with pleasure and profit
with your washerwoman, who also will, in all probability, be something
of an artist, with the artist’s personal point of view; with your
char-woman, your hair-dresser; and the grocer’s boy on his daily rounds,
if you come in contact with him, you will find to be an intelligent
and well-mannered youth. It is only when you get a little above this
class that you light upon a trace of commercial vulgarity. The _commis
voyageur_ is something of a trial on the public road. He is not a pattern
of manners, and he is apt to be aggressive in his desire to obtain the
value of his money. Go still higher, among the wealthy bourgeois, and in
no land of all the world will you find men who can comport themselves
worse. In their attitude to women they seem to possess no standard of
courtesy whatever. When a Frenchman of this class is polite to a woman,
you may be in no doubt of his views in her regard, and you may be
perfectly sure of her social and pecuniary value; for he is the least
chivalrous, the least kind, the least disinterested of mortals, speaking
generally, though here, as elsewhere, you will find noble exceptions. I
hardly know an American or English woman who has travelled or stayed any
time in France who has not had occasion to note how much less courteous
to women Frenchmen are than their own men. Two young English ladies,
finding themselves in some dilemma with regard to trains or luggage,
had occasion to call on one of the chiefs of the Gare du Nord. This
gentleman, elegant, disdainful, and fatuously rude, received them in a
luxurious office, fitted up with such splendour as to suggest some of the
complications of the Parisian drama, and bore himself towards them with
such intolerable insolence, that, on going out, one of the travellers,
to be even with him, said: “Everything may be found in Paris, I see,
except a gentleman!” This, of course, is angry exaggeration, for nobody
can be more delightful than a Frenchman, when he chooses to give himself
the trouble to please and to serve; but it is as good an example as I
can give of the attitude of the French functionary to the public. Put a
uniform of any sort on a Frenchman, invest him in any kind of office, and
he is apt to become insupportable. Rudeness he practises as part of his
official dignity. It never occurs to him that he is there to assist the
public. He conceives himself to be there to insult and domineer over the
public.
In France, social distinctions are less insusceptible of permutation
than elsewhere. Everything is possible in a land where a tanner may
hobnob with a Czar, be embraced and addressed by that august personage
as “friend.” The nations of Europe may object to this state of things,
but the nations of Europe must put up with it. Amongst these same nations
France cannot be left out of the reckoning. Her capital is always felt
to be the best morsel of foreign travel. It is she who gives “tone,”
for I do not speak of anything so obvious as the unquestioned prestige
of her fashions. A day may come when this prestige shall have passed
elsewhere, but even when that day comes Paris will continue for long
years to subsist upon her ancient renown. Even now there are signs of
revolt against her sovereignty. For in my own town, Dublin, contempt for
her fashions is openly expressed, it being alleged here that the women of
Dublin dress with far greater taste than their sisters of Paris. Those
who are inclined to make light of these pretensions should go to Dublin
in the Horse Show week, where I am assured that the dresses of the girls
and women of Dublin leave Paris nowhere. So the good people of Dublin
say, for they have a fine conceit over there, and profess to hold Europe
in light esteem. But in spite of this it is not improbable that Paris
will continue to maintain its superiority.
Under republican rule, woman has no official position, is in all matters
of state a mere cipher. And so it is not possible for the President’s
wife to start a fashion, or for any Minister’s wife to guide the vagaries
of taste. This in itself suffices to explain to us the fact that a large
majority of women are anti-republican. They feel that their sex is
insulted by a Government which takes no recognition of their charm and
influence, presumes to govern without the assistance of their presence,
without any loophole for their unauthorised supremacy. There is no chance
for a Pompadour under a Republic, and whatever other abuses may exist
to-day, ladies of light morals cannot hope to attain heraldic glory
and hereditary wealth by the “primrose path of dalliance” with royal
Lotharios. And so social distinctions are now in France more complex and
less stringent than under the _ancien régime_. Complexity lies in the
variety of claims not known in former days, when the division between the
classes was sharp and infrangible. In the world of toque and robe there
are men who count themselves the superiors of the crusaders; in the army
there are generals of plebeian origin who think themselves the first of
Frenchmen; there are fashionable doctors and surgeons, painters, authors,
politicians, men of science, and merchant princes who regard themselves
almost as the equals of the crowned heads of Europe.
All these varied ranks of society meet at a general point—social
pretension. Wealth is the sole degree they really acknowledge, though
“good family” is their vaunted consideration. They are aware that fashion
and birth are no longer synonymous terms, that the goal is quickest won
by the longest purse. A duchess with a hundred a year may feast on her
own prestige in the eyes of a few intimates, but the world at large will
forget her existence to run after the capitalist of yesterday’s standing.
With the suppression of the power of the aristocracy, its removal in a
body from the governing centre, the field was left free to money and
talent; and with industry and education both may now be said to be within
reach of everybody. The aristocracy groan, ineffectual and undignified,
while a large majority of the nation heeds them not. It is perfectly
aware of the impotence of these discontented idlers, aware that, with
a few chivalrous exceptions, who must be admired for their fidelity to
tradition, it is not at all the good of the country they are working
for, but their own personal triumph. Who to-day is going to stop to
examine the rights, the promises, of the candidates of the three mutually
destructive parties working for the hour conjointly in their vindictive
hatred of a Government able to get on without them? But all know very
well that should the Nationalists win and overthrow the Republic, as
they desire to do, it is only then the country would be hurried into a
ruinous civil war. The inoffensive President holds the balance between
Legitimist, Imperialist, and Orleanist, and as soon as arms against the
Republic shall be laid down by all three we may prepare to see them
showing their teeth to each other. For one of the three parties must
triumph, and how will the other two that have fought with it on equal
terms tolerate this obvious consequence of its success?
While admitting that Frenchmen have brought much grace along with the
continual gratification of the senses into the diversions of outdoor
existence, it is questionable if they enjoy them really as the English
do. We cannot easily conceive a French Minister shaking off the cares of
office to refresh himself with all the gusto of a schoolboy on the golf
links. Taste and national character would be much more likely to lead
him to seek change and distraction in that temple of fame, the _salon_.
Here we may picture him talking with the consummate and exquisite ease
of his race. Their sports, like their clubs, the French have borrowed
from England, and, according to the point of view, have improved or
disfigured these noble institutions; but their _salon_ is their own. No
other race has even tried to compete with them on this famous ground,
for the reason that no other race has the art of general conversation.
You must have the instinct of good conversation, be yourself something
of an artist in it, be able to bring an attention, a readiness of wit
and intelligence and information, demanded in this national pastime.
The French speak well because they know how to listen so well. With
them there is no such thing as talking down the company. The deference
given is duly claimed and granted, and the first thing that strikes you
in a _salon_ is the complete absence among the men of that vexatious
British habit of lounging. Frenchmen in their families do not lounge
as Englishmen lounge in strange drawing-rooms. I once heard a Russian
woman who had sojourned in both countries say, _Les Anglais n’ont pas de
tenue_. And this is true. An Englishman who counts himself a gentleman
will put his feet on railway cushions when women are present, he will
sprawl before women in rooms, keep his hands in his trousers pockets
while talking to them, nurse his foot at an afternoon call—in a word, do
everything but sit on the chairs or seats of civilisation in a simple and
inoffensive attitude. Not one of these things have I ever seen Frenchmen
do, even in intimacy. Their correctness in a drawing-room is scrupulous.
Familiarity is the very last thing they suggest, though the house you
meet them at may be one they have been in the habit of visiting once a
week at least for many years. Englishwomen to whom I have remarked this
peculiar characteristic of their countrymen retort that the behaviour of
Frenchmen in dining-rooms is as inferior, compared with that of their
compatriots, as ever could be the behaviour of Englishmen, tested by the
same standard, in drawing-rooms. I willingly admit the accusation, and I
confess I should find both races more delightful if each borrowed the
best of the other, and so mended their ways and became perfect. I do not
care on which side the lesson begins, if only Frenchmen will eat as well
as Englishmen, and Englishmen will imitate the perfect “tone” of the
Frenchman in a drawing-room. The niceties observed by each in its sphere
are equally admirable and equally necessary if we are ever to arrive at
that indefinable and still distant state called civilisation. But to hear
the Anglophobe in France (or, still worse, read him), and the Gallophobe
in England talk of one another, it might be believed that these two great
races stood farthest off from the goal we all aspire to reach instead of
being both in their several ways nearest to it.
I will be honest, and confess that the race of my predilection, France,
is far the worse sinner of the two. To soothe her wounded vanity, and
an imaginary hurt of honour skilfully exaggerated by the Press, she has
descended to foolish misrepresentation of a neighbour with whom she
had far better live on terms of amity. The Russian alliance turned her
head, and for once she had not wit enough to see that she was being
deliberately fooled for purposes not in the least connected with her own
interests. Since that memorable date, she has gradually raised the tone
of her hostility to England, till now her chief aspiration, if we are to
believe the nonsensical Nationalist Press, is to avenge the old defeats
of Crécy, Poictiers, and Agincourt. We will not speak of Waterloo.
That victory is associated with Germany and Russia, and her intention
is, for the moment, to pass as the very good friend of both. Left to
herself, France would never have unearthed these ancient hostilities
of the War of a Hundred Years, for she is in the main both sane and
intelligent; but the Nationalists do not for nothing profess hostility
to the Government, and they are ready for war, even if it but lead to
the reversal of the ministry, and the removal of President Loubet. For
they hate poor M. Loubet with ferocity; and I have seen in the eyes of
some of my Nationalist friends, devout Catholics and Conservatives,
that is, rabid partisans of the lost cause of the aristocracy, a gleam
of joy when one night the late roars of the newspaper boys led us to
fear that the President had been murdered. _On a assassiné Emile!_ they
shouted, leaping to their feet, and flinging down their cards. If their
lips did not simultaneously pronounce the words, “Thank God!” there was
not present an expression of countenance, a tone of voice, that did not
eloquently utter the unchristian thanksgiving at the thought but my own.
And yet these people are all excellent citizens; possess many lovable
qualities, are capable of kindness to friends, to the poor, to foreigners
even. And so I am led, from intimate knowledge of the “Boxers” of
France, to conclude that the “Boxers” of China may not be in themselves
reprehensible creatures, but only wild and misguided “patriots.”
Patriotism is accounted one of the noble virtues of mankind; and when
we obey the dictates of patriotism who is to pronounce them criminal
even when they prompt us to massacre all the foreigners at our gate, and
torture all their partisans within those same gates?
The pastimes of the “little people” are infinitely more interesting than
those of their betters. Here is no idle waste of money on fashion and
display. Every penny spent brings in compound interest in relaxation and
enjoyment. For the “little people” are mighty careful of their sous.
When the small shopkeeper, with his wife and limited family, go to dine
at a restaurant, it is an excellent lesson in domestic economy to watch
their proceedings. One good dinner will be ordered, and the waiter
places this, with a second relay of plates, before the shopkeeper, who
shares this dinner with his wife, and the children feed surreptitiously
off the parents’ plates. Thus four persons will have dined, and well,
at the restaurant price of one. As foreigners are not supposed to be up
to these dodges, they will find their adaptation of them difficult and
discouraging. Those who prefer to picnic in the public woods on a Sunday
have a better time. They fill a lunch basket according to purse and
palate, and set out on the _impériale_ of the tram from the Louvre, which
takes them for three sous each to the wood of Vincennes, one of the most
charming of Parisian fringes. The people of Paris are more spoiled than
any other, for public pleasure-grounds abound, and no one can complain
that the rich have the monopoly of the best. Where will you find such
an exquisite park as the dear little Parc Monceau, with its ruins, and
emerald slopes cut and watered to look like carpets of plush, its alleys
and gorgeous flower-beds? In London such a cultivated bit of fairy-land
would be the exclusive property of the wealthy residents round this park;
not so in Paris, where verdure and flowers are cared for for the public,
to whom they belong. The people of Paris have won their freedom for ever,
and the privileges of the wealthy are reduced to those they can pay for.
Were they to attempt the appropriation of others, the Parisian workmen
are quite ready to start another revolution. Their argument is that, so
long as they are willing to work, they have a right to live, and living
implies not only bread and meat, but a fair share of pleasures. These
pleasures for them must be inexpensive, and their pleasure-grounds must
be maintained at the cost of the public, which in turn is maintained at
the cost of their labour. And so they are free of the Bois de Boulogne,
a gem of public woods; of Vincennes, less prepared and perfumed and
rigorously trimmed, with its wilder bits of scenery along the Marne, its
hillsides and quaint solitudes; of Fontainebleau, that airy heaven of the
artist, on the edge of one of the cemeteries of the _ancien régime_, the
grand old palace of kings which now belongs to the nation, the little
town asleep on its forest marge, where of old the Court played at life in
high dramatic fashion, and “minuetted” itself with grace into the grave.
The surrounding scenery of Paris is unimaginably enchanting. Luckily
for themselves, and unluckily for the fastidious dreamers, the people
have spoiled all this beauty with their gingerbread fairs, their rowdy
diversions, their feasts and improprieties. Bougival is given over
to ladies of indecorous habits and their fugitive mates, Asnières is
now a place where fast men take women at war with respectability and
virtue to dwell at ease, so that these pretty resorts are closed to the
puritan holiday maker. If you have not lived in the neighbourhood of a
French fair for the traditional three weeks of its duration, you cannot
understand to what extent a nation or a city may be martyrised for the
pleasure of its people. The clamour of diverse sounds begins at ten A.M.
and ends only at one A.M., fifteen hours later. There are the roars of
the wild beasts, the tambour beating outside each booth at intervals,
the whiz and whistle of the merry-go-rounds, the frightful music of the
dancing halls, each repeating without intermission the same airs and all
simultaneously, so that you hear the waltz of Faust, of Mme. Angot, the
jingle of the _Danse du Ventre_, and polkas and marches in a maddening
mingle. Add to this the uninterrupted popping of guns, and the shouting
of the booth proprietors, and you have all the elements of an inferno
never imagined by Dante. To complain were idle. The people are taking
their pleasures, and the people must live. So the world of fashion, when
a fair comes its way as it does at Neuilly, makes the best of it with the
good-humoured philosophy of France, and goes down into its midst. At the
fair of Neuilly it is the _chic_ thing for the elegant diners to attend
in evening dress, and admire the pugilist, the lions and tigers, the
merry-go-rounds, and the exhibitions of the tents.
The behaviour of the people at these public entertainments is admirable.
No rowdiness, or drunkenness, or ribald conduct, for the poorest devil in
France has the art of taking his pleasures decently. But as the reverse
of the medal, no people could be less innocent, less clean in its choice
of amusements, and so these gingerbread fairs are well provided with
obscene spectacles. I need cite only one case to prove how deep lie the
roots of the national perversity of a race which reveals in all things
such remarkable exterior grace and refinement. My servant, an excellent
creature, well-bred, of the very highest moral character, and a delicacy
of sentiment and instinct many a lady might envy, a woman a duchess might
make her friend and count herself the gainer, has a child, a little lad
of ten. She has brought up this boy so perfectly that if fate transformed
him to-morrow into a prince, he would have nothing to learn. She has
insisted in his training on an exquisite modesty, the delicacy of a girl,
and a corresponding innocence. I gave this little fellow the other day
half a franc to go down to the fair, then in my avenue, and told him
to go and see a brown bear and a delightful young camel with which I
had made friends; but before the child reached the wild-beast booth, an
elderly gentleman, going into another booth, invited him to accompany
him. Now, the elderly gentleman knew where he was going, and why; the
child did not, and he trustingly went in, paid his twopence, and followed
the elderly reprobate to see—what?—a series of anatomical models in wax;
the man explained the spectacle to the child, and sent him back to his
mother troubled and unhappy. François communicated all that had passed to
my servant, who came to me with tears in her eyes, and we both felt it a
hard thing that a boy in Paris could not be trusted to amuse himself in
a harmless way while waiting for his mother, and almost within range of
her glance, without disgusting snares being laid in wait for him, with no
excuse even on the score that his elders were seeking entertainment where
he was not expected to be found.
Other pastimes of the people, besides fairs and picnics, are the
cheap excursions down the river with inexpensive refreshments on
the water-edge, the public dancing of the 14th of July, and the
illuminations, carnivals, and the feast of the washerwomen with the
coronation of their queen, the free afternoons at the state theatres.
All these are edifying sights, for they show you how decorously
and charmingly the French people can take their diversions and how
good-humoured and well-mannered a French crowd can be. If you venture
up to Montmartre, the hill of impropriety, you will find a different
quality in the entertainment offered. You will be less convinced of the
moral and mental value of the nation. A great deal of hot blue wine is
consumed, and the desperadoes of misprized genius meet to shock and
shake the foundations of the hill by their stupid ruffianism in verse.
Ladies display their underwear, and their havoc of virtue is gauged by
the length of their laundress’s bill. Tenth-rate journalists, unread and
unreadable authors, penniless, whose talent consists in their indecency,
inane and flatulent “masters,” pose here and enjoy in their several ways
the sensation of going to the dogs in a body. They drink out of skulls,
and count themselves original. A waiter dressed as a devil addresses
them, _Que veux tu, damné_? Satan at the counter, with hoofs, horns,
and tail, welcomes them to hell, and they think they have accomplished
unheard-of villainy when they get drunk. It is not unusual to hear that
these amiable gentlemen live upon the profits of prostitution, while
awaiting their merited recognition from a dense and ungrateful world.
Sometimes, but rarely, real talent has travelled down to the Boulevards
by way of Montmartre and the dull Red Mill of Folly. Maurice Donnay is a
brilliant example. He dwelt awhile on his high perch of misprized genius,
but he was speedily valued at his worth, and carried in triumph into a
cleaner and more intelligent atmosphere. There is nothing drearier in
Paris than its resorts of vice, such as the Moulin Rouge, Bullier, its
“halls of brandy and song.” They are quite as vulgar as elsewhere, and
infinitely more disgusting.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]