KEEP your tempers, Messieurs; we shall not quarrel. There is a difference
between Impudence and Impertinence. The two words are often used
synonymously by the vulgar, but they are no more alike than any other two
words that begin with an I. 'When we behold an angel, not to fear is to be
IMPUDENT,' says DRYDEN: 'We should avoid the IMPERTINENCE of pedants,'
says SWIFT. These two great masters of the English tongue have well
defined the difference between the two words. There is always an air of
confident greatness about impudence that wins respect, and not
infrequently success. ALEXANDER was assuredly the most impudent man of his
time; so was CÆSAR; so was LUTHER. Even now, when half the human race has
grown impudent, we cannot but wonder at the impudence of that obscure
monk. GALILEO, too, was a very impudent fellow until the well-bred 'Rev.
and dear Sirs' of his time taught him modesty. And CROMWELL! what an
Arch-Impudence was he! And NAPOLEON! he put Impudence itself to the blush.
And have there been no Impudences among us? It cannot be denied that our
Fourth-of-July-men made a very impudent declaration, to say the least of
it. But these were all individual instances. The French are impudent as a
nation. They have no sense of modesty. They insist that all the world
shall eat French, drink French, talk French, dance French, and dress
French. Did ever any traveller visit a city or town in any quarter of the
globe in which a Frenchman had not set up a restaurant? FANNY ELLSLER was
astonished when she landed at the American Hotel, to find that her dinner
had been prepared by a Parisian cook; and yet she had come over here to
show us her French steps. Simple Fanny! How did she think we could live
without French cookery, if we could not live without French dancing? What
traveller has ever visited a remote village that a French _modiste_ had
not visited before him? Is it possible to dine any where, without having a
French bill of fare thrust into your hand, and some dish with an _à la_
under your nose? Is there a living being in any part of the world willing
to make oath to having visited a ball-room or a church without
encountering a French dress or a French bonnet? The Quakers cannot; they
would as soon wear scarlet ribbons as any other than French gloves and
French muslins.
Untravelled New-Yorkers as they walk through Broadway, and see the names
of Madame Grand-this and Mons. Grand-that '_from Paris_,' over every other
shop-door, and see the French shoes, the French gloves, the French
chocolate, the French clocks, the _liqueurs_, the _bon-bons,_ the
_bijouterie_, the _meringues_, the _pâtes-de-foi-gras,_ in the windows,
may think that the Gauls have marked us for their 'own peculiar;' but it
is so in St. Petersburgh, 'tis so in Constantinople, 'tis so in Lima, in
the Banda Orientale, in Rio, in Mexico, in Montreal, in London, in Vienna,
in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Grand Cairo--'tis so all over the earth.
The Sorbonne and the Louvre rule the world. Can any body be tired, or
weary, or dumpish? No. We must be _ennuyeèd_, or _blazè_, or _fatiguè_, or
something else ending in _è_. Does any lady ever give an evening party?
No. Nothing but a _soirée_. Are there any more gatherings of friends? No;
only _reünions_. Is it possible to dance a cotillion in English? Is there
any body in New-York with sufficient moral courage to sleep upon any thing
short of a French bed-stead? Is there a chamber-maid who will lie upon any
thing less than a _paliastre_? Are there any more fat, or plump, or round,
or full people? No. Even Falstaff would be inclined to _embonpoint_ if he
were alive, in these days of Gallic supremacy. Well might VICTOR COUSIN
and the rest of them declare that the French were not defeated at
Waterloo. The allied armies entered Paris it is true, but they made their
Exodus in slavery. The English, Germans and Russians went home from France
manacled with French fashions, and not a soul of them has dared to assert
his independence since.
We are by no means sure that French cookery has not done more to preserve
the peace of Europe, during the last twenty years, than all other causes
put together. It is impossible to think of a war with France. The mind
staggers under the supposititious case of the nations of the earth
deprived of French _bon-bons_. Imagine the commerce with France suspended!
Who would perfume us? who feast us? who dress us? Where would our gloves
come from? what should we do for slippers? how should we be off for soap?
Would there be any more ribbons? any more brandy fruits? any more
meringues? any more chocolate? Where should we look for another BLANCARD,
another FAUVEL-GOURAUD? Would there be any more dancing? any more
fashions? any more any thing? The true _Mystéres de Paris_ nobody knows
any thing about but the Parisians themselves, and they are too cunning to
pronounce their open sesame loud enough to be heard by the rest of the
world. How like gudgeons we all snapped at the bait of EUGENE SUE! But the
Mysteries of Paris are written in a kind of Parisian Coptic, which none
but the Parisian can read.
The English eat, or at least a portion of them do, and they cook, but who
ever heard of an English eating-house, or of an English cook? We have
heard of DOLLY'S chop-house, but its reputation was gained by the quality
of its guests rather than the merit of its cooks. For aught the world
knows to the contrary, there is not an eating-house in any of the European
capitals beside Paris. But every body knows the names, the situation, and
even the _carte du jour_ of at least a dozen restaurants in the French
capital without ever having been there. The 'Rocher' is as well known as
the Rock of Gibraltar, and Very and Châtelain have reputations as extended
as those of Guizot and Theirs. Vatel is more famous than Vattel, and the
cook will doubtless be remembered when the philosopher is forgotten: he
will never die, at least, while the memory of Sevignè lives.
Not long since we saw on a sign-board, stuck up at the entrance of a
cellar on the corner of Reade-street and Broadway, '_Au Rocher de
Cancale_,' painted in very soup-maigreish looking letters, with an attempt
at the representation of an oyster-shell. Now look at the impudence of the
thing; at the Frenchiness of it! Here we are with our Prince's Bays, our
York-rivers, our Mill-ponders, our Shrewsburys, and Blue pointers, a
shilling's worth of either worth all the shell-fish that ever grew on the
French coast; and this Parisian sets up his sign in the midst of these
marine riches, with a 'ROCHER DE CANCALE!' No other nation could have been
guilty of such arrogance. No Englishman has ever had the temerity to
insult us with an allusion to his dirty 'natives.'
What would be thought of an American who should have the presumption to
open a House of Refreshment in the Rue St. Jacques or the Palais Royale,
and announce to the Parisians that he would serve up for them Prince's Bay
oysters, fried, stewed, roasted or in the shell; clam soup, pumpkin-pies,
waffles, hoe-cakes and slap-jacks, or mush-and-milk and buck-wheats? Would
the most inquisitive or most vulgar man in France venture within the doors
of a house where such barbarisms were perpetrated? But why not, Monsieur?
Why not, as well as for us to crowd the _salons_ of the Messieurs who
tempt us with their equally outlandish _carte à manger_, or who exclaim to
us when we enter:
'MON salon est toujours gami,
Et mon buffet bien assorti,
Ou vante mon chablis,
Mes huitres, mes radis,
Ainsi que raes salmis
De perdrix:
Mes godiveaux au ris;
Mes tourtes, mes hachis;
Fameux pâlis, gros et petits;
Boeuf au naturel, au coulis;
Papillotes,
Gibelotes,
Matelotes,
Fines compotes,' etc., etc.
Why should not we send over some of our JENNINGSES and STETSONS, our
BERGALEWS and DOWNINGS, to repay our French friends for their many favors,
and instruct them in the art of making pumpkin-pies and eating
canvass-back ducks? The French at present know little more about us than
that Doctor FRANKLIN made lightning-rods, and that COOPER writes Indian
novels. They eat nothing that we raise, they wear nothing that we make,
they adopt none of our fashions, they use none of our phrases. You would
look in vain in the _carte_ of any restaurateur in Paris for such
delicacies as apple-dumplings or corn-bread, and you might call in a
Parisian café until you were hoarse, for a 'cobbler' or a julep, without
getting either. Yet our uppish people will eat nothing, drink nothing,
wear nothing that is not French. We have been told of certain brokers in
Wall-street who import even their _desserts_ from Paris; not their
_deserts_, my friend, for the guillotine is the only French thing which we
don't imitate or import. No wine is fit for our tables without the prefix
of a _chateau_ something; every thing that is composed of wool is
something _de laine_, and all our clothes are made of _drap de_ this or
_drap de_ that.
But let us not paint our Gallic friends a shade darker than they deserve.
They have taught us the use of napkins and silver forks; they give us the
best perfumery in the world, and make the best gravies for our meats. What
is the privilege of writing the songs of a nation, compared with the
privilege of setting its fashions? The supremacy of the French in all
matters of taste is not the effect of accident. Why do they rule the world
by their elegancies? There is a philosophy in these things, as well as in
every thing else, which is worthy of grave consideration.
The secret of French authority lies in the simple truth that they count
every thing worthy of being well done which is worth doing at all. We have
grades of usefulness. Not so with them. Whether they make a pâté or build
a palace, it is a grave matter; and the consequence is, that their pâtés
as well as their palaces excel those of the other kingdoms of Europe. The
Louvre is as much superior to Buckingham Palace as a Charlotte-Russe is to
a Yorkshire pudding. Cookery and Architecture are the first arts practised
by mankind, and the last in which they arrive at perfection. The French
excel all other nations in both. The condition of one art might be
ascertained with precision by examining the state of the other in any part
of the world, or in any age. When cooks served up pastry with peacocks'
tails sticking out of the top crust, architects built gothic churches and
campanile towers. Penault and Vatel ornamented the same age. One built a
palace and the other cooked a dinner, and they are both immortal. It would
be no difficult matter to guess at the extravagance and unhealthiness of
our kitchens, from a glance at our Exchange and Custom House. The
ponderous marble and granite boulders in these senseless structures have
their correspondents in many a lump of indigestible food; and the
bizarreterie of the new Trinity Church have their correspondents in many a
temple composed of macaronis and cocoanut candies.
We have grades of usefulness, but it is no easy matter to discover the
principles upon which our scale of respect is graduated: money is not
always the test of merit; it matters how you get it. If you earn it
yourself, it will not entitle you to half the respect it would if your
father or grandfather earned it for you. Any occupation which soils the
hands or the clothes, is looked upon with disfavor by the upper classes. A
broker who never does any thing that is either useful or ornamental, grows
nothing, invents nothing, imagines nothing; who instructs nobody, amuses
nobody, enriches nobody; who leaves the world in the same condition that
he found it, may be called a gentleman, visit in the first circles, have
those mysterious letters, E.S.Q., written after his name, and if he is
rich, will be elected a member of more societies than will be agreeable to
him. But a wig-maker who has invented a new spring for a toupée, or a new
dye for the hair, and thereby really done mankind a service, could no more
get into the first circles with us than he could go to heaven, like
Mahomet, on the back of an ass. Shoemakers' wives and bakers' daughters
are people of whose acquaintance nobody ever speaks boastingly. I once
knew the nephew of a barber who always blushed when his uncle was named in
his hearing. But an attorney's lady, or a banker's daughter, are often
paraded in an ostentatious manner before one by their friends, and I have
never known the nephew of a soldier-officer, whose business is to take
people's lives, blush at the profession of his relative. It cannot be
expected that men will labor in callings that gain them only the contempt
of their neighbors; and therefore while it is accounted disgraceful among
us to do any thing that is useful, we must be content to remain dependent
upon any people who have more sense in regard to this matter than
ourselves.
We are very well aware that shoemakers and pastry-cooks are not the kind
of people who compose the French court; but there can be no denial of the
fact that certain kinds of artisans are treated by the French people with
a greater degree of respect than they are with us. Very different from the
dogged surliness of an Englishman, or the who-cares-for-_you_ manner of
our own countrymen, is the air of conscious self-respect of certain
classes of French tradesmen. In the present condition of our society, we
hold it to be among the impossible things to make a decent pastry-cook out
of an American citizen, or a decent citizen out of a pastry-cook. But is
there any good reason why we should not? Do not pastry-cooks contribute as
much toward human happiness as sugar-refiners or importers of molasses?
Should you not feel as well disposed toward the individual who had made a
meringue to your liking, as toward him who had imported the materials of
which it was composed? The King of the French seats artists at his
dinner-table, bestows the 'legion of honor' upon them; pays them liberally
for their works, and settles pensions upon them. Artists with us, as
artists, do not often find their way into our upper circles; if they are
respectable in their habits and associates, they are rather countenanced
for their respectability than noticed for their genius. We know a
whiskey-distiller who refused his daughter to a portrait-painter, unless
he would abandon his profession; simply because it was a low calling.
It is very common with us to call the French triflers; but it is one of
the many bad habits which we have inherited from the English, and the
sooner we free ourselves from it, the better will it be for us. We shall
never be ambitious to excel a people whom we pretend to despise. If doing
small things well be trifling, then the French are triflers. But what must
we call them for their great works? There is no art, no science, no
department of learning in which the English excel them. They are the best
architects in Europe; the best physicians; the best chemists, the best
astronomers. They have cut off the head of one king and banished another;
what more have the English done? But they can afford to be called any
thing: they set the fashions of the whole world. Queen VICTORIA is as much
a subject of LOUIS PHILLIPE in her dress as any lady in France. With all
her immense territory, her great authority, she cannot change the fashion
of a bonnet.
The difference between French and English art is as great as the
difference between the Louvre and the National Gallery in Trafalgar
Square; and about the same relative difference prevails with regard to us.
At the last exhibition of the Louvre there were four thousand paintings
offered; at the last exhibition of the National Academy there were about
four hundred. This is not a very correct method of judging of the artistic
excellence of a nation, but it is not far from correct in this case.