Execution of Fieschi.--The French House of Commons.--French
Eloquence.--Thiers.--Guizot.--Berryer.--Abuse of America.--The
Chamber of Peers.--Interior of Madelaine.--Bribery.---False
Oaths.--The Middle Classes.--America and England.--Opinions of
America.--English Travellers in America.--Mrs. Trollope.--Captain
Basil Hall.--Miss Fanny Kemble.--Test of good breeding in
America.--American feelings towards England.--Their mutual
Interests.
Paris, February, 1836.
The great state criminal Fieschi was executed yesterday morning on the
_Place St. Jaques_, with his two accomplices, Maury and Pepin. He did
not care a straw for mere dying, but he did not like the style of
appearing barefooted before so large and respectable a company. He made
a speech with as much dignity as could be expected, and quoted Cicero.
This fellow has been for a while the hero of the age: none of the
French generals can bear a comparison with him; and the dramatic
interest given to his trial will no doubt produce a good crop of rivals.
His behaviour was ostentatious, but intrepid to the last. He was none of
your sneaking scoundrels, who are half honest through fear of the
gallows. His mistress, Nina Lasave, is showing herself (what is of her,
for she is less by an eye) upon the Place de la Bourse, and five
thousand at a time are crowding to see her at twenty-five cents each.
Signor Fieschi has not only acquired distinction for himself, but
imparted a tincture of this quality to all that he has touched. Nina’s
fortune is made; I wonder if this sympathy for the mistress of an
atrocious murderer would be felt any where out of Paris? I went to see
her with the rest.
I was guilty (no easy matter in Paris), of an act of uncommon
foolishness, in going to see this execution. The French way is so
elegant and classic--it is none of your vulgar hangings on a gibbet,
with a fellow creeping like a spider up the gallows, or the chopping off
a head upon a block, as a butcher does a pig’s. The guillotine is itself
a piece of ingenious mechanism, and the executioner a gentleman; he
wears white gloves, and is called “Monsieur de Paris.” So, I went with
other amateurs, and I have seen nothing but men without heads ever
since.
For a change, I went this morning to the Chamber of Deputies. Don’t you
want to know something of this great council of the nation? I shall be
glad if you do, for I have nothing else of sufficient dignity to come
after this paragraph.
This is the French House of Commons. It has been in session these two
months, and holds its meetings in one of the great architectural
monuments of the capital, the Palais Bourbon. At its entrance, you will
see four colossal statues upon curule seats, Sully, Colbert, Hopital and
d’Aguesseau. The chamber is lighted from above, and is semi-circular,
having at the centre a tribune just in front of the President’s Chair,
and over-head the reporters. The members are ranged according to their
parties, on seats rising in amphitheatre. On the very left, or _extreme
gauche_, are the Liberals; and on the right, or _extreme droit_, are the
extreme Royalists; the hues of each party softening gradually, and
blending as they recede from the extremes. On a gallery overhead are the
spectators of both sexes.
The reading of speeches, which is common, and mounting the Tribune, even
for a short remark, are precautions taken against eloquence. I have
heard that attempts are often made by several persons to speak at once,
or to preoccupy the tribune to the great disturbance of order. Persons
are seen discoursing, generally with great animation, during the
orator’s speech. When there is a little too much noise the president
taps with his paper-knife on the desk, and when a little more, he rings
a bell; when this fails, he puts on his hat. The constant assent or
dissent expressed at nearly every sentence, seems to me to touch upon
the ridiculous--it drives all one’s classic notions of a senate out of
one’s head. It is, perhaps, a necessary safeguard against being talked
to death by some stupid and loquacious member, as happens occasionally
in other countries.
The great man of the chamber is, at present, Thiers, Minister of the
Interior. He is seldom at a loss for sense, and never for words; but
neither his face nor his manner has any thing of eloquence. He is merely
a facetious talker, and is nearly as expert at a _bon mot_, as the old
Prince Talleyrand himself--a kind of merit that makes its fortune more
readily at Paris than elsewhere. He is said also to emulate the great
diplomatist in the flexibility of his politics; having the same skill
of being always of the strong party, without compromising his
principles.
In society he is a good actor, and plays with grave diplomatists, or
with little girls of fifteen, and pleases both. Not the least essential
of his qualifications, is a revenue of two or three hundred thousand
livres, which he has had the discretion to make, the gossiping world
says, from his position of minister, by gambling in the stocks.
That censorial tribunal, which is called public opinion, and which
forces a man in the United States sometimes to be honest against his
will, is scarce known in this country. Indeed, I have not seen that any
vice renders a man publicly infamous here, except it be giving bad
dinners. On the other hand, they have one virtue, which I believe does
not exist in the same degree amongst the statesmen of other
countries--they are not so barefaced as to commend one another’s
honesty. Every body cries up parts, and poor honesty has not a rag to
her back. Guizot, who is also minister of something, made a speech
ethical and pedagogical, about education. He is the opposite of Thiers,
of a stern and inflexible nature, and has an air of solemnity in his
face; you would think he had just arrived from the Holy Land. He
decomposes and analyses till he is blinded in the smoke of his own
furnace. He is the great type of the “Doctrinaires.” Though he does not
throw his wisdom in every one’s face, he has few equals in facility.
After translating Gibbon, and writing several volumes on the English
Revolution, he may well claim some praise for this quality. He has been
for several years a leader; but I have heard he is lately, for I know
not which of his virtues, of less influence in the House. He and the
Doctrinaires have the odium of the rigid censorships set up a few months
since against the Press.
The other greatest men are De Broglie, Minister of Foreign Affairs;
Barrot, Mauguin, and Dupin the President. The last is ranked amongst the
most eloquent of the French speakers. I have not heard him in any thing
but the ringing of the bell. But the great ornament of French eloquence,
at the bar, and in the tribune, is Berryer. He has an exceedingly happy
physiognomy; a broad and high brow, shaded with jet black hair; a bland
and persuasive expression of the mouth, and his voice is grave and
impressive. The French generally impair the strength and dignity of
their oratory by too much action; Berryer in this is economical and
prudent. Though leader _en chef_ of the Legitimists, he defended
strenuously Cambron and Marshal Ney. He spoke also against the American
Indemnity, and gave us very little reason to be satisfied with his
eloquence.
I must tell you that the great staple of conversation here at present,
is abuse of America, and that every thing looks warlike.--I heard a
member of the Deputies say: “There are not ten men in the chamber who
believe in the justice of your claims; we have been inveigled into the
acknowledgment by our king, and bullied into it by your President.” If
you know any nice computer of national honesty you had better get him to
tell you the difference between the notorious rogue who robs his
neighbours, and the four hundred and fifty-nine rogues who refuse to
make restitution of the robbery.
This chamber is composed of men all above the middle age--none being
eligible below thirty. They have a venerable and decent appearance, and
for learning, I believe they do not suffer in comparison with any of the
legislative assemblies of Europe. They are chosen from thirty millions
of people, by two hundred and fifty thousand electors, while the English
House of Commons is selected by near a million of electors, from
twenty-five millions. Their hours of sitting are from one to five
o’clock. Spectators are admitted on the written order of a member.
We had a little spurt to-day upon rail-roads, and steam-boats; in which
M. Thiers said there was in the United States a reckless disregard of
human life; (_a prolonged sensation!_) and George Lafayette, his
American partialities getting the better of his judgment, got up and
defended our humanity. He gave himself as an example of the possibility
of descending the Mississippi without being blown up--but nobody
believed him; (_grand mouvement dissentient!_)
Since on the subject of Chambers, why not pay a visit to the “Chamber of
Peers.” For this you must ascend the Seine to the Pont Neuf, and half a
mile thence towards the south will bring you to the Palace of
Luxembourg, the place of its sittings.
I wished a few days ago to see the interior of Madelaine, into which
there is no admission; “not for the queen,” said the door-keeper; but
after a little fuss about honesty, and receiving thirty sous, he
permitted me to go in. In traversing the Luxembourg the same day, as I
went whistling along, innocent of thought, I fell upon the ice against
the statue of a goddess. In returning to my senses, I found a pair of
fair arms about my neck; it was not the Queen of Love, who had stepped
from her pedestal, but a servant maid, who did me this service, she
said, by order of her mistress; and the incorruptible little wench
refused, either for love or money, to tell me her mistress’s name.
I attempted a few days after to enter the Chamber of Peers, and was
refused by the door-keeper; but, on placing in his hands a few francs,
he furnished me the necessary passport.--What is the reason we find in
no country the same fidelity from the public servants as from those in
private life?
This anecdote is to introduce you with proper ceremony to the Peers. The
etiquette of great houses always requires the guests to be detained a
reasonable time in the ante-chamber. But since I am on the subject of
bribery and corruption--your agent here, Mr. R., told me in excuse for
high commissions, he had to hire witnesses to prove the decease of
heirs; this he mentioned as a common business transaction.--“And did
you succeed?” “Oh, yes, we killed them all off,” was his reply. I have
seen also in Philadelphia an Irish labourer, taken at random from the
street, who swore before a magistrate, a false oath, for a bribe of five
dollars.
Now if this bribery is so easy in all the worlds, old and new, ask your
husband, if you please, who makes laws, whether it ought not to suggest
to the statesman, the impropriety of exacting oaths at all; which do not
make the honest man more faithful, and certainly make the dishonest more
corrupt.
The Peers have their chamber in the second story of this Palace. It is a
semicircle on a diameter of eighty feet. A beautiful row of Corinthian
pillars of veined stucco sustains the vault, upon which Le Sueur has
painted the usual number of Virtues, civil and military; and between
these pillars are statues of the most famous ancient orators and
statesmen; Solon, Aristides, Scipio, Demosthenes, Cicero, Camillus,
Cincinnatus, Cato of Utica, Phocion, and Leonidas. The disposition of
the chairs and benches is the same as in the Chamber of Deputies. It is
tapestried with blue velvet, wainscotted with looking-glasses, and a
beautiful lustre descending in the centre produces the light of five
hundred tapers.
It is a rich and elegant chamber--a kind of boudoir of the French
nobility. The staircase which leads to it is the most magnificent, they
say, of all Europe.--The Peers are either dukes, marquises, counts,
viscounts, or barons, and except the members of the royal family, and
princes of the blood, are titled only for life. They sit at the same
time as the Deputies, under the Presidency of the Chancellor of France.
Their concurrence is necessary to all laws, and they try all cases of
state crimes and high treasons. They have had a long time on hand
Fieschi and the never ending “Procès Monstre.”
To set apart a few hundred individuals from the great herd, and give
them the highest opportunities of improvement and polish, would furnish,
one might suppose, at least a pretty ornament to a nation. However, it
turns out that, in a high degree of fortune men do not submit to the
labour necessary to intellectual improvement, and that they are exposed
to more vicious temptations; that they have less dread of public
opinion, and are spoilt in temper, by indulgences. In a word, we know
that human nature does not bear a very high degree of refinement.
As the taste may be rude and uncultivated, so it may be excessively
delicate; and fastidiousness is almost as disagreeable as grossness. But
inequalities are an ordinance of nature in society, as much as in the
structure of the globe we inhabit; nor can we level the hills, or so
raise the valleys that the hills will lose their eminence. The three
great classes, besides the other reasons for their existence, may, for
aught I know, be necessary to the improvement, and well-being of each
other; the upper communicating emulation and refinement to that
immediately below, and the lower furnishing nerve and industry to that
immediately above.
“Wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighboured by fruits of baser quality.”
However this may be, it is certain that the middle class is the most
sound and respectable of every community; and this is the class which is
now ascendant in France. The Chamber of Peers is hardly noticed in the
machinery of the government. This is partly owing to the democratic
spirit transmitted from the Revolution, but chiefly to the want of
hereditary titles and estates. A lordship, without money, is a weight
about the neck of its owner. Shabby peasants look well enough, but one
has no patience with ordinary people of quality. Nobility holds the same
relation to society, as poetry to prose; it does not suffer mediocrity.
The too indiscriminate and common use of the French titles, has done
much, also, to their discredit.
“On ne porte plus qu’étoiles;
On les prodigue par boisseaux,
Au pekins comme aux genereaux,
Jusqu’aux marchands de toiles.”
M. Decaze made, during his ministry, as many as sixty nobles in a week.
These gentlemen do not, themselves, seem to entertain a very high sense
of their rank. I have heard of more than one hiding his decoration, to
cheapen a piece of goods: as the Italian landlord, who passes himself
for the waiter, to have the _quelque chose à boire_. I do not mean you
to infer from this, that to be a nobleman it is necessary to be born so.
Nothing is so easy as to make any man think himself better than others;
the facility even increases in proportion as he is ignorant. The
footman advances his pretensions with a simple change of his livery--by
stepping only from an earl’s coach to a duke’s. A girl will change her
opinions of herself, from neat’s leather to prunella, and become prouder
and nobler from cotton to silk stockings; but nothing can make any one
noble who lacks the sense of superiority; in other words, who lacks
money.
I must gossip a little to fill the rest of this blank paper. I dined
with an American, this evening, at the Palais Royal, where he and a
young Englishman, whom we met there, talked of the merits and demerits
of their several countries, until their patriotism grew outrageous.
My rule is, to waive all discussions in which passion and prejudice have
the mastery of reason. As far as Paris is concerned, and the travelling
English whom I know here, America is yet undiscovered, and this
ignorance, to us who think we have strutted into great historical
importance, is sometimes quite offensive. To make it worse, they suppose
that we cannot possibly know much of Europe, or indeed of any thing--how
should we, being born so far from Paris?--and they began by teaching us
the elements.
A very complaisant man of the university told me over, the other day,
the Rape of the Sabines, with all its circumstances; and a French lady,
of good literary pretensions and wealth, has paraded me more than once
to amuse her company, by “talking _American_”--“_Quel accent
extraordinaire! cela ne ressemble à rien en Europe._”--“Ah! you are from
Boston,” said another; “I am glad, perhaps you know my brother; he lives
in Peru.”
---- The common people have a kind of indistinct notion, that all
Americans are negroes--and as negro sympathies are now uppermost in
Europe, we gain nothing by their disappointment.--The English know more;
but their information, as far as I have yet observed, is altogether
strained through Madame Trollope and Basil Hall, and the other
caricaturists. In what manner have the English travelled in our country?
An author, intent on making a book, comes over, and tells a lie; and the
next who comes over steals it, and passes it for his own; and, at last,
it is holy writ.
I read, twenty years ago, in English travels, that we gentlemen, at the
taverns, clean our teeth with the same brush. This has been repeated, I
presume, by Captains Hall and Hamilton, (for I have met it in all their
predecessors,) and is now told positively for the last time, by Miss
Fanny Kemble.--A propos, I saw Captain Hall, the other night, at the
Geographical Society; he is a big man, and I did not flog him.
As for Miss Kemble, she has such a pretty face, and so much genius, she
may just tell as many lies as she pleases. One prefers to go wrong with
her, than right with many a one else. I read her book aboard ship, and
was pleased and entertained with it. Indeed, I would go any time, ten
miles barefooted only to see a book that speaks what it thinks;--above
all, to see a woman of genius, who writes after her own impressions, and
sends her thoughts uncorrected by dunces to press.
But is it not a spite that we, who have been so lied upon by the
English, should have amongst them a most extensive reputation for lying?
It will be a worse spite if we deserve it. We certainly use more
licentiously than they do that pretty figure of rhetoric, they call
amplification. But from the little knowledge they possess of our country
I suspect one may acquire amongst them a notorious reputation for lying
by only telling the truth.
Long ago there travelled to the south, an ass, who talked to the king of
the beasts, of the length of days and nights, of the congelation of
rains into snows, of the Aurora Borealis, and skating on the ice, until
he destroyed entirely all credit for veracity, and was at last whipped
out of the country for an impostor. It is our business to profit by this
long-eared experience.
When you come to Paris, don’t forgot to tell them the Mississippi sends
its compliments to the Seine, and if you find in London that the horses
trot twelve miles an hour, don’t you say that ours trot fifteen. It is
laid down by several of the casuists that a man is not to tell truth
merely, but to consider what may be acceptable as such to his audience.
To make the current value of words in England the absolute test of good
breeding in America, appears to me scarce reasonable. Something indeed
is due to age, prescription, and to establish fame in letters; but I do
not see why we should not begin to use modestly our own weights and
measures; to pass our gold and silver even in an English market--if the
currency there happens to be brass; and I do not see why one may not
have a _bon-ton_ at Philadelphia, or New York, without speaking the
fashionable jargon of St. James’s.
Language is variable from year to year, and we are too far distant to
take the hue and air of an English court. Herodotus spoke in Ionic,
Xenophon in Attic, (and Ionia was a colony of Attica) and Plutarch in
Æolic, and were all three good Greeks. They did not despise one another
because the one said τοισι, and the other τωσι.
“I have known several of your countrymen,” said Mr. John Bull, “very
clever men, but not one who had the language of the best society.”
“Our misfortune is, sir, not to have a language of our own. The Henriade
and the Messiah are, in France and Germany, titles of distinction. To be
something in America, one must out-write Shakspeare and Milton. And how
are we to have original views and tastes, if our habits of thought, and
proprieties of language, are to be settled in a foreign country? It is
to be hoped the time will come when in the United States one may be
_sick_ without going to sea, and _raised_ in Kentucky without being a
horse or a head of cabbage.--And pray, sir, what is there in the
language of a well-educated American so distinguishable?”
“I should know you by your first six words. For example, you say _sir_
too often, and you use it to your equals, where an Englishman would omit
it. And I should know you by your many cant phrases, and by your
singularity of habits--by your easy familiarity with strangers, &c.”
“As I know you by your drinking your champagne alone, of which you find
no example in America.”
“And by your boasting of the future instead of the past.--‘The time will
come.’--An Englishman says--‘The time has come.’”
“And which is the more honourable boast, for one who is nothing
himself?”
“There is this difference; we are sure of our ancestors, and we are not
sure of our posterity.”
“There is another; our ancestors send us down many a rogue to dishonour
us, and we are never disgraced by our posterity. Besides, sir, it is
quite natural the old should boast of what they have done, and the young
of what they will do. Nestor was a more prolix and disagreeable boaster
than Achilles. Moreover, sir, there is no great arrogance in predicting
the strength of manhood from the vigour of youth.”
“But why should not we claim in posterity at least an equal chance?”
“Why not? It is certainly not your modesty that prevents it.”
“But without speaking of Shakspeare or Milton, what apology?”
“Whoever heard of a child apologising for not being as big as a man? We
have, sir, our Franklins and Washingtons for the past; our Clays,
Calhouns, and Websters for the present. And now, set our fifty years
against your five hundred; and our ten millions, and a rude continent,
against your twenty-five millions, and your cultivated island, and what
reason, sir, have we to be humbled by the comparison?”
“What could you do more grateful to a parent, than prove to her the
worthiness of her children? We should rejoice that their merits were
still greater.”
“We have imparted as much honour, sir, as we have received from the
connection--or relationship, if you please.”
“Oh, if you wish to disown the kindred, agreed with all my heart.”
“Yes, sir, there is nearly as much Dutch and Irish in the breed at
present, as English.”
“A kind of hybrid breed of Irish filth and Dutch stupidity.”
“It is known, sir, that the race is improved of all animals, by crossing
the breed.”
“Your remark is too general. It is known that a horse and an ass produce
nothing better than a mule.--In your crossing system, too, I remark you
have left out the negroes.--A propos of negroes--we have given liberty
to ours, and you hold yours in bondage.”
“Your slave proprietors have not given this liberty; the inhabitants of
Great Britain have not given liberty to slaves, of which they were
individually the proprietors; nor has the Parliament set loose three
millions of negroes in the midst of her white population--so the case is
not apposite.”
“Well, shall we end the argument, or shall I tell you of your riots and
your Lynch law--and all this vice in your republic of fifty years, where
we ought yet to expect the innocence of youth.”
“At your pleasure, sir--we expect nothing from England but injustice, in
this as in every other respect. After poisoning us with the sensuality
of her romances, and the billingsgate of newspapers, she is quite
amazed that the child has not the sweet lisp, the ruddy complexion, and
the graceful wildness of the infant. After filling our cities with
pickpockets, she calls us dishonest; with drunkards, and she calls us
intemperate; and with disorderly Irish, and then she tells all the world
we are riotous; she has covered our land with negroes, and now she
stigmatizes us for keeping slaves!”
“England has this advantage over you; she does not grow angry, when told
of her faults. You are so thin skinned in America, you do not bear the
least touch of the curry-comb without wincing.”
“England, sir, is surly, proud and phlegmatic, and thinks every one mad
who is not as coldblooded as herself. To be done, sir, America did not
crouch to the British Lion when an infant, will she do it now that she
is grown to maturity?--She stands abreast with Great Britain in the
estimation of the world, and to sustain this dignity she wears her
sword----”
“A sword is a very bad criterion of merit; why, a highway robber could
prove his right to your purse by the same argument----”
My Yankee friend now walked about the room, and upset a chair and picked
it up again, and then hummed a tune to show he was not mad. In the
meantime, the Englishman had poured out deliberately three
glasses--“Come,” said he, “I will be corrected by an American, at least
in one particular; I will not drink my champagne alone when I can find
two honest countrymen to share it with--we will drink America and
England!”
“England and America!” replied my companion with some reluctance.
Before parting, the disputants both agreed that their countries had a
mutual interest to cherish good feelings, and to rejoice at each other’s
prosperity; both agreed that England now reaped a better profit from our
Independence than she could have done from our colonial subjection; and
that America, by the service she derived from English commerce, science,
and letters, and from English industry in making her canals, working her
mines, and improving her manufactures, was much more than overpaid for
any injuries she had a right to complain of in asserting and maintaining
her liberty.
A cup of coffee now poured its balm upon our national jealousies, and we
parted with an invitation to visit our Englishman, who is a student of
the Temple, in London.
The packets are in--and have brought several fresh personages from
America, notwithstanding the season. They have arrived just in time to
have the last snuff of the carnival.
The fire at New York is horrible, but not astonishing. Our shingled
roofs are more combustible than any thing I know of--unless perhaps it
be gunpowder. There has been but one fire in Paris during the last year.
What you say about the wind blowing off your night-cap in your sleep, I
take to be mythology; it means to threaten that if Doctor ---- and I stay
away in this manner, Boreas, or Æolus, or some of the gods will be
coming to bed to you.--But think only of the vapours, the mud and slough
of Paris, and then look out upon your pines, clad in all the snowy
magnificence of winter. I can almost see old Hyems with his grisly chin,
grinning from the flanks of the Sharp Mountain. My advice is that you
dissipate the ice, with mirth, and bright fires and old wine; and that
you leave other things to the gods--and give my love to your mother.