Julius Cæsar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.
The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
And what have we here?—so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had
been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia;
and that Julius Cæsar’s family name had been John Churchill;—the fact
would have stood in history, thus:—
“Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia.”
And why not?—we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated
that—
“The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and Cæsar,
writing home to his mamma, said, ‘Madame, tout est perdu fors
l’honneur.’”
What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner’s
Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the
names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by
learning Walker’s “Gazetteer,” or getting by heart a fifty-years-old
edition of the “Court Guide.”
Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
question—the novelists.
On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked,
that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as “copies” and
“compositions.” Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly
stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according
to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them) and, for
compositions, we intend to favor the public with some studies of French
modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of
the English public.
Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by the
French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works
political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical,
theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a
plea—novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time and
study. And passing from novels in general to French novels, let us
confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a
great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal
observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has
dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for
the purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)—let an
English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he
knows of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how
many French friends he has made?—He has enjoyed, at the end of the
year, say—
At the English Ambassador’s, so many soirées.
At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
At Cafés, so many dinners.
At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea,
glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the
same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the
people. Year by year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no more.
We play écarté with Monsieur de Trêfle every night; but what know we of
the heart of the man—of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of
Trêfle? If we have good legs, and love the amusement, we dance with
Countess Flicflac, Tuesday’s and Thursdays, ever since the Peace; and
how far are we advanced in acquaintance with her since we first twirled
her round a room? We know her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about
three-fourths of them are sham, by the way); we know her smiles, and
her simpers, and her rouge—but no more: she may turn into a kitchen
wench at twelve on Thursday night, for aught we know; her voiture, a
pumpkin; and her gens, so many rats: but the real, rougeless, intime
Flicflac, we know not. This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we
may understand the French language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but
never can penetrate into Flicflac’s confidence: our ways are not her
ways; our manners of thinking, not hers: when we say a good thing, in
the course of the night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac
will trill you off fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the bêtise of
the Briton, who has never a word to say. We are married, and have
fourteen children, and would just as soon make love to the Pope of Rome
as to any one but our own wife. If you do not make love to Flicflac,
from the day after her marriage to the day she reaches sixty, she
thinks you a fool. We won’t play at écarté with Trêfle on Sunday
nights; and are seen walking, about one o’clock (accompanied by
fourteen red-haired children, with fourteen gleaming prayer-books),
away from the church. “Grand Dieu!” cries Trêfle, “is that man mad? He
won’t play at cards on a Sunday; he goes to church on a Sunday: he has
fourteen children!”
Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise? Pass we on to our argument,
which is, that with our English notions and moral and physical
constitution, it is quite impossible that we should become intimate
with our brisk neighbors; and when such authors as Lady Morgan and Mrs.
Trollope, having frequented a certain number of tea-parties in the
French capital, begin to prattle about French manners and men,—with all
respect for the talents of those ladies, we do believe their
information not to be worth a sixpence; they speak to us not of men but
of tea-parties. Tea-parties are the same all the world over; with the
exception that, with the French, there are more lights and prettier
dresses; and with us, a mighty deal more tea in the pot.
There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a man
may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or
post-boys. On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library,
he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people
and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume
bears us whithersoever we will;—back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or
to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up the
heights of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork
school; or, better still, to the snug inn-parlor, or the jovial
tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure
that a man who, a hundred years hence should sit down to write the
history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary
history of “Pickwick” aside as a frivolous work. It contains true
character under false names; and, like “Roderick Random,” an inferior
work, and “Tom Jones” (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a
better idea of the state and ways of the people than one could gather
from any more pompous or authentic histories.
We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short
reviews of French fiction writers, of particular classes, whose Paris
sketches may give the reader some notion of manners in that capital. If
not original, at least the drawings are accurate; for, as a Frenchman
might have lived a thousand years in England, and never could have
written “Pickwick,” an Englishman cannot hope to give a good
description of the inward thoughts and ways of his neighbors.
To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing fashion
in which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the works of a new
writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual manners, without
those monstrous and terrible exaggerations in which late French writers
have indulged; and who, if he occasionally wounds the English sense of
propriety (as what French man or woman alive will not?) does so more by
slighting than by outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of
all sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press
have done. M. de Bernard’s characters are men and women of genteel
society—rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes;
and we follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners,
without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas has
provided for us.
Let us give an instance:—it is from the amusing novel called “Les Ailes
d’Icare,” and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a French
fashionable rogue. The fashions will change in a few years, and the
rogue, of course, with them. Let us catch this delightful fellow ere he
flies. It is impossible to sketch the character in a more sparkling,
gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard’s; but such light things are very
difficult of translation, and the sparkle sadly evaporates during the
process of DECANTING.