Return of Spring.--A New Venus.--The Artesian
Well.--Montmartre--Donjon of Vincennes.--St. Ouen.--St.
Germain.--The Pretender.--Machine de Marli.--Versailles.--The
Water-works.--The Swiss Garden.--Trianon.--Races at
Chantilly.--Stables of the Great Condé--Lodgings in a French
Village.--A Domestic Occurrence.--The Boots.--The Alarm.--The
Bugs.--Extract from Pepys.--Delights of Chantilly.--Unlucky
Days.--Solitude in a Crowd.--The Cure.--The King’s Birth-day.--The
Concert.--The Fire-works.--The Illuminations.--The
Buffoons.--Punch.--The Eating Department.--The Mat de Cocagne.
Paris, May 6th, 1836.
Your letter, of March the 25th, has arrived. I am sorry to hear the
north wind has given himself such airs. Here he has been quite
reasonable. The lilacs of the Luxembourg are again in their pride. The
gardener is stirring up the loose earth, while May recals the roses
with refreshing showers. How delightful to see the Spring thus repairing
the desolations of Winter! Your trees of Pine Hill, which persevere in
being green the year round, do not please so much as those which strip
off in November, and put on their green and flowery robes in April.
Pines are called rightly, the dress of winter and the mourning of
summer.
What has immutability to do with this earth? where one tires even with a
uniformity of excellence. If I were to make, like Ovid, a golden age, I
would say not a word of eternal Spring. How delightful is this morning!
The sun has just poured out its first rays upon the dews, and every
lilac has a pearl in its ear. They are setting out, in the Palais Royal,
a new Venus of the whitest marble. Look at the jade, in the south-east
corner, in her impudent attitude; she is stooping, and ungartering a
snake from her leg. Pretty, to be sure, if one had a taste for a
hieroglyphic woman; as for me, I like the little thing in its natural
attributes of flesh and blood, in its straight nose; lips double dyed;
and overlooking the humid eye of gray, or dark, or blue, and the
“darling little foot.”
They are also setting out chairs for the Summer, and the gallery of
Orleans already weeps its empty halls. These chairs are let at two sous
the sitting, and bring money to the private purse of our “citizen king.”
The “right of location” is 32,000 francs, and the lessee gets rich by
the bargain. This sitting out upon chairs is an ancient custom; it is
the way Frenchwomen take a walk. I have read in Scarron some verses in
allusion to it.
Tous les jours une chaise
Me coute un écu,
Pour porter a l’aise
Votre chien, &c. &c.
A poetic husband is out of humour with his wife, whose sedentary habits
have become a serious item in the household expenses.
As I am about to leave Paris I have taken several flights to the
country, to satisfy what yet remains of unsatiated curiosity; to
Fontainbleau, where I walked upon the footsteps of the _Belle
Gabrielle_, and stood upon the spot where the thunder of retributive
justice fell upon the head of Napoleon. I stood this morning at nine by
the _Barrière des Martyrs_ accompanied by Mr. ----, of Philadelphia. We
went to see an Artesian well they are boring there towards the centre of
the earth; and through which we are to have a short passage to the
Indies; and to get a peep of the sun at midnight. It is already nine
hundred feet; the temperature increasing; and they are going to make
mother Earth keep us in hot water. She is to heat our baths, warm our
houses, make the tea, and spoil your trade in Anthracite coal; so says
M. Arago, secretary of the Institute, member of the Chamber of Deputies,
&c. But I have little taste for wells, except in very hot
weather--unless it be those
----“delicate _wells_
Which a sweet smile forms in a lovely cheek.”
These are agreeable in all weathers.
We breakfasted in coming along, on the Heights of Montmartre, where we
surveyed the great village, and stood on a level with its steeples. This
was Henry the Fourth’s Camp at his taking of Paris; and lately of the
English on a similar errand. Here were a great many John Bullish looking
children with jovial rubicund faces, running about the hill. They have
profited, the little rogues, by the gallantry of their mothers. The
French children of the poorer classes have generally a sallow and
unhealthy look.
Next we walked around the “Donjon of Vincennes,” its ditches and its
towers. It has great titles stuck on its scutcheon. It has imprisoned
the great Condé, Retz, Fouquet, Vendome, and Conti; also in later times,
Diderot and Mirabeau: and it contains in its chapel the remains of the
Duc d’Enghein, who was shot here. It was formerly the residence of
kings. Philip Augustus lived here, and St. Louis, and Francis I., and
Henry IV., and Blanche of Castile, and Agnes, called the “Lady of
Beauty.” Charles IX. died here, and Mazarin, and that wicked creature
_Isabelle de Bavière_. I visited this village last summer in fête-time,
and had a dance in the _Rotonde de Mars_, and excellent music in the
_Grand salon des Chorybantes_.
On this excursion we strolled also into the village of St. Ouen, four
and a half miles from Paris. Here is a royal chateau, where Louis XVIII.
reposed the second of May 1814, before his solemn entrance into the
city. It is a delightful situation, overlooking the Seine, and the old
kings as far back as Dagobert had a place here, which Louis XI. gave to
the monks of St. Denis, “_Afin qu’ils priassent Dieu pour la
conservation de sa personne_.” The Pavilion of Queen Blanche is yet
remaining. On the site of the old palace is the elegant mansion of M.
Terneaux, whose predecessors were M. and Madame Necker.
One of the curiosities of the place is the cradle, which rocked Madame
de Staël. M. Terneaux is a member of the Deputies; he makes laws and
Cashmere shawls--the shawls equal in tissue and beauty to those of
Indus. Every body comes hither to see his Thibet goats and merinoes, and
his _silos_, which are immense excavations in which grain is preserved
fresh for many years.
We now went two leagues and a half further to St. Germain, and walked
upon its elegant Terrace. The Pretender is buried here, and several of
the little Pretenders; and in going along we looked at the _Machine de
Marli_, which desires to be remembered to the Falls of Niagara. The
water is climbing up an immense hill by dribbles to supply the little
squirting Cupids at Versailles.
St. Germain was once the seat of the pleasures and magnificence of the
Grand Monarch. He left it, because St. Denis, standing upon a high
eastern eminence, overtopped his palace, a _memento mori_ amidst the
royal cups. Kings do not choose that these telltales of mortality shall
look in at their windows.
We then walked in the chestnut groves and deep solitudes of Montmorency,
till we grew sentimental--till we could almost hear Heloise wail her
unhappy lover. We saw a tree that had fallen to the earth, and the vine
which had entwined it in its prosperity still clinging to it in its
fall; it had refused to climb any other tree, but died with the trunk
that had supported it. We thought of the perfidy and ingratitude of men,
and we had serious thoughts of quitting their society and living
altogether among trees. We visited the Hermitage and plucked each a leaf
from the rose-bush, and sat upon Jean Jacques’s chair. We intended to
visit Meudon on our return, to laugh at Rabelais, and to fly to the
rocks of Vitry to kiss the footsteps of Madame de Sevigné, but did not.
I have now given you my journey of a day.
I announced to you pompously, by the last boat, my departure for London,
and you will be surprised to receive yet a letter from Paris. I stayed
chiefly to see the waters “play” at Versailles. It is an amazing
spectacle, and every body stays to see it. You must imagine a hundred
little Cupids squirting away with all their might, and Diana,
Amphitrite, and several other grown-up goddesses doing the same; and
Apollo’s horses, which breathe the surge from their nostrils, and
Neptune, astride of a whale, which vomits the ocean from its gills; with
jets-d’eaux innumerable, spouting water, with fantastic figures along
the main walks and vistas of the garden.
For the grand scene of all, you must imagine a wide avenue the fourth of
a mile, and a row of watery trees at each side, and at the closed end a
circular lake, with a liquid pillar rising from the centre, and several
concentric circles jetting around at different heights, and scattering
the drizzly vapour which makes rainbows as it descends. If you have
imagined all this, with a temple, and Thetis and her nymphs seated in
it, and plenty of cascades, waterspouts, and cataracts pouring down upon
them--this is the “Play of the waters at Versailles.”
The multitude of the spectators was like a forest of the Mahonoy. The
women were as thick as Catullus’s kisses. With one of them, whom I knew,
I walked awhile, in the “Swiss Garden,” with its air of gentility and
modesty. Here the Royal Family used to abdicate their greatness and
play one week of the year a peasant’s life; and the royal girls romped
about the garden in their linsey frocks, and check aprons, and coarse
petticoats, and had bonny-clabber for supper. Louis XVI. was a miller,
and Maria Antoinette was a dear little dairy-maid; but--
“More water glides by the mill
Than wots the miller of.”
The mill, and the dairy, and the cottages, and other monuments of these
royal Saturnalia, are yet remaining. These were anciently the pastimes
of monarchs, who had thirty millions of subjects; and they complain that
the judgments of Heaven have overtaken them!
In strolling along a silent path through the woods, we came unexpectedly
into a little retreat, which so lurked in a corner, that, after a week’s
stay here, I had not observed it. They call it the ball-room. It is a
circle, having an orchestra in the centre, and an area for dancing
between it and the circumference; and here are two rows of columns of
coloured marble, united by thirty arches, and beneath each, on the night
of ceremony, is a jet-d’eau falling in _fleur de lis_, and seeming to
sustain lighted lustres, which are suspended by an invisible thread
from the arches. It is inclosed by a hedge, and overshaded by branches
from the surrounding trees. It seems as if made for some king of the
elves, or fairy queen, to play her midnight gambols in.
The great palace of Versailles is a long squat edifice, which inspires
no great reverence. It has one magnificent room, two hundred feet by
thirty, now converted into a National Museum of pictures. There are two
smaller palaces half a mile distant, graceful and elegant, called the
great and little _Trianon_. With the latter is connected, an English
garden, in all the pretty disorder of nature, and in open contrast with
the garden in general, which is tricked out in all the embellishments of
art.
Nature has furnished the raw materials, and of a good quality; but a
tree here is scarcely more like a tree in its natural shapes, than a
_paté de foie gras_ is like a goose. The sums expended upon this royal
residence are reckoned at near forty millions sterling. The population
of the town is twenty-eight thousand. I remained here a week last
August, and then wrote you a detailed account of its garden and its
palaces; Maria Antoinette's room, Josephine's room, and all the rooms,
and the pictures and the beautiful Cathedral; and though I may presume
from your silence this letter is lost, like so many others, I have no
mind to return to the subject.
Apropos. I sent you more than three months ago, written by an amiable
Parisienne, "the Literary Ladies of Paris;" I hope they are not
miscarried. I am tired of consuming whole days for Louis Philippe's
Post-office establishment.
With great expectation of pleasure I went to the Races at Chantilly,
which are among the events of this week. This town is at ten leagues
distance and has an elegant view, over the Seine, and a fine turf,
which was trodden on this occasion by the prettiest little feet that
ever went to Chantilly. And here were the full blooded coursers, which
champed the bit and pawed the earth, and devoured the road and made
gallant show and promise of their mettle. What a pity you had not been
there You would have seen Miss Annette outstrip Volante; you would
have been glad the one gained and the other lost without caring a pin
for either, and you would have paid for a mutton chop the price of the
whole sheep, and as for a bed, you would have got none either for love
or money.
A little slice of hard fare is not without its advantages to pampered
citizens, it works off the bad humours engendered by an idle life; and
fits of poverty now and then in the country are grateful and genteel
recreations of the rich, and have been praised by the poets,--You would
have dreamed of slumbering by the waving pines, and soft murmurs of your
little Schuylkills, and then of wandering alone in a foreign land, and
then sitting the live-long night upon a chair in the stables of the
Great Condé; of having jockeys and grooms for your chamber-maids and
race horses for your bed curtains.--These stables, if you please, cost
thirty millions, and it is an old saying in France, _"que les cheveaux
du Prince de Condé, sont mieux logés que les rois d'Angleterre."_ Famous
knights used to mount here in full panoply, to carry terrors beyond the
Duro and the Rhine. Alas, that stables should be sometimes the only
memorials of one's earthly possessions! The castle of the Great Prince
is demolished; the _"magnifique maison de Plaisance,"_ which opened its
folding doors to a thousand guests of a night, is now with the
house of Priam, and the grass has grown upon its altars:--
----“Where one seeks for Ilion’s walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.”
Indeed, castles in general in France, may be written in the catalogue of
its ruins. The French nobles and princes are no longer great feudal
barons or idlers. The aristocracy of now-a-days has to attend to
business--to the Chamber of Peers and Deputies--and to go to market.
Even the retreats of monarchy are moss-grown with neglect. The nation
murmurs at the expense, and lets its ruins go to wreck for want of
repair. The number of royal palaces are a dozen, and their annual
expense of keeping, 160,000 dollars. Fontainebleau is content with a
yearly visit; and the magnificent Versailles has become a national
museum. I looked all about here for the eloquent Bossuet, but he too is
so broken up, you scarce find the fragments. His magnificent gardens,
jets-d’eaux, and chestnut groves, are the commons of Chantilly--and
“Thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,
Now sweep the alleys they were born to shade.”
Paris and the neighbouring country poured out upon the plains of
Chantilly, this day, such multitudes as never went to Troy. To obtain a
vehicle to return in was impossible, and to stay another night at
Chantilly was impossible also; but I had to set my foot upon this latter
impossibility. I was so lucky as to meet Mr. ---- of New York, and by a
long search together we found lodgings for the night; and what we little
thought of finding in a French village, a fat landlady; but so fat, she
is silently taking leave of her knees; before this reaches you she will
have seen them, perhaps, for the last time; and her husband, still more
ill favoured, sat by, his lower lip hanging towards the waistband of his
breeches. At the lady’s feet was a chubby baby, nearly naked, resembling
an unfeathered owl.
My companion, a man of address, nursed this brat, and called it tender
names to please the mother. One grows so polite in this country; besides
what does not one do for a lodging at Chantilly? Also in the back ground
was a female, acting in the double capacity of chambermaid and _bonne_,
who had her share in the general effect. She had been frightened, when
young, till her eyes had started out of her head, and had stayed there,
staring ever since; and her lips being too short for her teeth, gave
her a look of affability without the trouble of smiling. To complete the
interest of her physiognomy, she had a long beaky nose with the tip red.
She was so ugly, the child would not cry after her. These were the
protections, which it pleased Providence to put around our honesty at
the races of Chantilly.
I describe this family only to introduce with more interest, a domestic
occurrence, which I am going to relate, in order to relieve a little the
serious details of this letter.--Night already held its middle course in
the heavens, and a lady, our fellow-lodger, tired of waiting the
untimely hours of her husband, had retired for the evening to her
chamber; and there, being relieved from the apparel of the day, she took
a look under the bed; a prudent caution, which she always observed, and
which she says, her mother had observed before her;--and what do you
think she discovered under the bed? The legs of a man! She fled, and
forgetting the nakedness of her condition, rushed into the hall, where
we, in the midst of the family circle, sat over a mug of French beer,
with long pipes, smoking and watching the curling smoke as it ascended
gracefully towards the ceiling. In the precipitation of her flight she
fell over a stool, at full length, upon the floor--exhibiting the
incomprehensible mechanism of the human figure in all its proportions.
It fell to my lot, being nearest, to bring her to, which I did, wrapping
her in a cloak, placing her on a couch, and encouraging her to speak. As
soon as she had explained, the alarm became general; pipes were
extinguished, and candles lighted, and we proceeded into the suspicious
bed-chamber; the “bonne,” with her eyes farther out, smiling
nevertheless, and the fat madame, and her husband walking on his lip;
one carried the poker, one the boot-jack, and one the flat-iron, and we
moved on in close file to the bed-side; and here we made a halt. I felt,
(I will confess it,) my respiration stop; I stood in the van, being
unwillingly placed there by the pride of sustaining American bravery in
a foreign country. I thought of my little children, and then moved aside
the curtain, respectfully. You have, perhaps, seen a man kill a
rattle-snake with a short stick.--And after all, what do you think it
was? A pair of boots;--the lady’s husband having gone out in his shoes.
We retired now to our chambers, where Dr. B. and I were eaten up by
bugs; and there was a Frenchman in the adjoining room, who passed also
a melancholy night; we presumed from the same cause, for we heard him
every now and then say----, which is the French for bug. So you see that
not Americans alone are subject to these unsavoury afflictions--_non
soli dant sanguine pœnas_. Get thee to Chantilly, Mrs. Butler. Indeed, I
have learned from inquiry, and personal experience, too, that this kind
of vermin and some others, creep higher up into good society here, than
in the United States.
Our better houses, I mean, which keep servants, and pique themselves on
their gentility, do not suffer such inmates at all. It is true, that the
poorer sort of folks, and even the better sort of country taverns, do
not care a straw for all the bugs of Christendom. They look upon them as
the natural bleeders, provided for the poor, providentially, and a
saving of expense, in cupping, leeching, and other kinds of phlebotomy.
But these English people, when did they all at once become so clean,
that they should turn up their noses so fastidiously at others? Why, in
Queen Elizabeth’s time, in Shakspeare’s time, in my Lord Bacon’s time,
in my Lord Coke’s time, courtiers used to offend the very nose of
majesty by coming with dirty feet into the presence. Oh, here is a
quotation apropos, in Pepys’s Journal, which I have just been reading.
“February 12th; Up, finding the beds good, but _lousy_.” Now, this is in
London, and this Pepys, who found the beds so “good,” was secretary of
the admiralty, only one hundred and fifty years ago. Besides our judges,
I guess, don’t carry posies in their button holes--(though, it is not
because they have not frequent need of them.)
These are the delights of Chantilly. If any one should go thither twice,
he must be a much greater fool than I am, which I deem impossible. Yet
here was the whole habitable earth; all the peasantry with their baked
faces, and caps like your winnowed snows, and all the trim rabble of the
towns, the _beau monde_ of the Halles, and all that is richest in
beauty, education, and blood, too, was here--not forgetting my Lord
S----, who keeps horses for the turf, and liveries for Longchamps, nor
him, so enviable for his skin and bones, so recommendable by his
thinness, and who makes himself lighter on a pinch, by holding his
breath, who rode Miss Annette, though Volante came up like a storm from
the south, victoriously to the stake--Mr. Robinson. Now all these were
at the races, and the newspapers have done nothing else for a week than
describe their inexpressible enjoyments.
The truth is, I set out upon this excursion on one of my unlucky days. I
have read of a giant somewhere, who one day swallowed down windmills
without choking, and who was suffocated by a piece of fresh butter the
next. Unlucky days are an old woman’s superstition. But there is scarce
a wise man, who does not tell you some of his days that were nothing but
a series of mishaps.
In the same manner, good fortune appears to attend some persons in all
their enterprises, while others again seem marked for special
persecution; adversity keeps barking at their heels through the whole
course of their lives.
My grandmother, who brought me up, besides being a Presbyterian, was a
Scotchwoman; she believed she was compelled to snuff out the candle by
predestination; and it is not so easy a matter as you think, to get rid
of one’s grandmother. My silly jaunt to Chantilly occurred on one of
these days. It was not enough that I should be run against by a
diligence, and almost irretrievably smashed; that I should be crammed
into a stable; be destroyed by bugs, and frightened to death by a pair
of boots; the same fortune pursued me on my return home. I hung up my
watch by a nail, which had sustained it for six months; but it was my
unlucky day; it fell, to its entire destruction, upon the brick floor. I
gathered up the fragments, and to close my window curtains, mounted upon
a chair, which tilted; I fell against an opposite table, which also
upset, breaking the marble cover into several pieces; and there I was,
with a broken head, amidst the ruins. I then crawled into bed, where I
remained the next day with a fever, and sent for the doctor.
Now I will conclude this very absurd doctrine, with a sensible advice;
namely, that you never set out to the Races, on any such abominable,
horse-play, excursions of pleasure, in a melancholy, or ill-natured
mood; it is the sure precursor of ill-luck; both because you will
extract evil out of every occurrence, and, in your froward temper, you
will be continually running into difficulties, which, in good humour,
you would either have escaped, or turned to a merry account.
If you come to Paris without a soul with you, having been spoiled a
little at home with your domestic affections, you will every now and
then fall into a fit of melancholy, which the doctors will call a
“_nostalgia_;” and you will wish the very devil had Paris; and you will
detest all French people, whatever be their merits; and, to be revenged
of them, you will write home to your friends, and you will call the men
all rogues, and the women all something else, and then you will feel a
little better. I have been in the midst of this wilderness of men, as
solitary as Robinson Crusoe, in his island. And I know of no kind of
solitude half so distressful, as the aspect of a large city, especially
to tender-hearted gentlemen, who have been brought up in villages.
To walk in the midst of multitudes of one’s own species, without a sign,
or a look, or a smile of recognition, impresses one with a very
humiliating sense of one’s own insignificance; besides, one feels the
necessity of loving somebody, and of being loved. These feelings will be
exceedingly bitter on your first arrival, and your fits of “blue devils”
more frequent. My advice is, that you seek the distractions of
gentlemanly amusements. For this, you must make the acquaintance of some
French gentleman, (a French lady is much better,) who is well versed in
the genteel world, and she will lead you into such consolations and
mischiefs, as your unfortunate situation may require. She must be
sufficiently attached to you, to take the trouble to instruct you, and
you must take the trouble, by your amiability and assiduities, to win
this attachment. How much better is this than sitting alone, and killing
the minutes one by one, in your bachelor’s chamber; it is better, though
you should gain nothing else from her acquaintance than hanging yourself
in her garters.
Depend upon it, nature did not intend the whole of this life as a
preparation for the next; else had she not opened to us so many means of
enjoyment of the senses here. And, depend upon it, there is a world of
delightful and genteel pleasures in Paris, if one has but the address to
hunt for them. My special advice is, that you do not seek a cure for
home-sickness, in excesses; if in wine, be assured that your spirits
will soon pass from the vinous to the acetous fermentation; if in
gambling in Paris, your ruin is accomplished. I repeat, there is but one
effectual cure, it is the acquaintance of an amiable and sensible woman.
This was the first remedy for solitude prescribed by Him, who knew best
the heart and dispositions of man. Adam, I doubt not, while Eve slept,
yet a rib in his bosom, was afflicted often with home-sickness; and I
dare say he was never troubled with it afterwards.
Recollect, when I speak of women, I claim the right of being interpreted
on the side of mercy. I speak of them with an entire sense of the
respect due to the sex; as a gentleman should, who does not forget that
his mother is a woman, his sisters, wife, and daughters are women. When
I recommend woman’s society, you will please to think of the intercourse
of the bee with the flowers; it gathers its honied treasures, where most
rich and succulent, but meditates no injury to the plant by which they
are supplied. But I am relapsing into morality; good night. I will fill
the rest of this blank to-morrow.
May 7th.
When I was just ready to go to London, what should have occurred but the
king’s birth-day; it fell out exactly on the first of May, and I had to
stay to see it; and I am going now to give you a brief abstract of its
entertainments, to finish this letter; it is already long, but remember
it is the last. At half-past five, P.M., the king made a bow, and the
queen made one of the prettiest curtsies imaginable, from a gallery of
the Tuileries; for we had all assembled there to listen to a concert
served up, _al fresco_, in a hail storm. A platform was erected in front
of the palace, and several hundred musicians were mounted on it; but a
wintery rain from the north-east, mixed occasionally with snow, poured
down the whole afternoon; and it rained, and rained, as if heaven had no
ears for music. A howling storm, now and then, raved through an _adagio_
of Mozart, and Jove descended on the fiddle-strings.
At the end of each piece there was a pause--not of the rain, but the
music--and then came criticisms on all sides.--“Oh! that air of Bellini!
said the lady; and then her eyes trotted about the garden. “Exquisite!
said her cavalier, and took a pinch of snuff.--“_Lafond? c’est un talent
superbe.--Inférieur à Beriot? du tout, du tout, il n’y a que
Pagga_--(Une prise s’il vous plait.) _Le Message du President est donc
arrivé._ What are they going to determine?--Determine?--To pay. (Dieu,
quelle jolie femme!) _On ne fait que payer dans ce pays-ci._” “As for
the concerts of the Conservatory, I find them stupid beyond
sufferance;”--the poor musician, in the mean time, turning up his eyes
towards heaven, and, with supplicating looks, imploring mercy from the
clouds.
I did not take off my hat and shout with the rest, when his majesty
bowed. I was not quite sure whether the law of nations would justify me
in making a bow, until he has paid the “twenty-five millions.” However,
I said, quietly to myself, “_Vive le roi!_” He is, _sans compliment_,
the most sensible head of a king that is in Europe; and I wish him, from
the good will I bear the French nation, to live out his time.--But I did
not let the paltry sum of “twenty-five millions” interfere with the
respect I owed her majesty’s curtsey.
They have fire-works always ready made here for such occasions; and keep
them by them in a closet. On this birth-day they were more sublime and
beautiful, than is common, even in Paris. To look down from the terrace
of the Tuileries, upon the immense crowd covered with its umbrellas,
moving and whirling about in the twilight, all over the Place Louis XI.,
and its environs, was a fantastic spectacle, and worth seeing. Have you
ever looked at a million of crabs in vinegar, through a microscope?--We
remained, a long time, in expectation, and the mud. What a delightful
thing a public _fête_ is, especially when one is expressly ordered to be
diverted ten days a-head, by ordinance of the Police.
Suddenly, ten thousand sky-rockets hissed through the air, and exploded
in constellations of stars, pale, pink, and vermilion, which dropped
down slowly towards the earth. This was the note of preparation. Then
went off Mount Ætna, and Vesuvius, and Hecla; and a Niagara of liquid
fire poured down in a cataract, covering up a little Herculaneum and
Pompeii; and the whole _Pyrotechnie_ was by degrees unfolded of Sieur
Ruggieri, Ingénieur of Paris.
There were bouquets of all the flowers in the field, in their most
brilliant and harmonious tints; and there was a fierce encounter of
knights in the air, and lions ready to spring on you; and there was the
devil on a pale horse; and, all at once, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, as
large as life, stood blazing before us; its huge pillars, its pulpit,
its sacristy, and a little fiery congregation, who exploded one after
another; a lady went off, and then a gentleman; and, last of all, the
priest went out at the altar, and suddenly all was night.--The
atmosphere was sick with saltpetre, and the heavens wept tricoloured
stars.--This was forty million times prettier than anything you ever saw
in your life.
In the meantime, the illuminations blazed out through the town. The
Madelaine stood in a basin of glimmering fire, and wore a garland of
flaming beads upon her brows; and a belt of gas-lights, like sparkling
diamonds, encircled the queen of streets, the Rue Rivoli; it was a mile
long. The Pantheon too, and the Invalids, and the Arch of Neuilly, afar
off, poured their ineffectual fires upon the thick night; and all the
orchards of the Luxembourg, the Tuileries, and Champs Elysées, were
bending under the load of their golden fruits.--How jealous the moon and
stars would have been, if they could have looked out upon the French
capital this night.--If we don’t get up such _fêtes_ in America, it is
not because we can’t, it is because we don’t feel in the humour, it is
because ---- in fine, it is because we don’t want to----
I had intended to pass over the recreations of the morning for want of
room; but here is, unfortunately, room enough.--I generally walk out
here, as in America, alone; for if one takes a companion one is obliged
to walk his way; besides you can’t imagine what an effort it is to be
always agreeable. I like sometimes, in a solitary walk, to think you all
over; to stray with you by the Mill Creek and Tumbling Run, or to sit
down on your piny eminence and overlook the village, and enjoy your
nonsense, which is enjoyed nowhere else in such perfection. In a word,
if alone, I can get into a reverie; alone, I can fight duels, rout
armies, save ladies from ruin, and do things that are impracticable.
It was only this morning that I fought the battle of Waterloo over
again, and beat Lord Wellington; and when I take a companion along with
me, he puts me out. So I went out this morning alone. I was in rather an
ill humour, and I had resolved not to be pleased, or to laugh at
anything, much less this buffoonery of a _jour de fête_;--in this mood I
arrived in the Champs Elysées.
All the world was flowing in here from all quarters, as the little
streams into the great ocean; and the immense plain was fitted up with
scaffoldings for various representations, and tents and booths stood in
long rows for the sale of all sorts of nick-nacks, and cakes and
sweetmeats, and refreshments; and here were all the _marionettes_ and
_funambulaires_, the buffoons, the harlequins and scaramouches, the
most famous of Paris; and the jugglers
“Who teach you knacks
Of eating flax,
And out of their noses
Draw ribbons and posies.”
Are men, thought I, intelligent beings? Is there any essential
difference between those who dishonour themselves in representing these
fooleries, and those who are entertained by them? And here I stepped
into a crowd of persons who were listening to a serious individual who
sat upon a platform; he held a cat, and discoursed thus: “_Voilà,
Messieurs, un animal, qui est digne de fixer l’attention du public. Il a
les oreilles du chat, les pattes d’un chat; enfin la queue, le poil, la
tête, et le corps du chat. Eh bien! Messieurs, ce n’est pas un
chat._--_Qu’est ce donc que cet animal?_--_C’est une_ CHATTE.”
At a few steps farther was another individual, who recommended remedies
for all diseases;--“Here is my powder, gentlemen, patented by the king;
it cures the ear-ache, the tooth-ache and scabby dogs; _à six sous,
Messieurs! c’est incroyable! c’est pour rien! à six sous!_--And here,
gentlemen, is something worthy to fix the attention of the naturalist
and man of letters. It is a little black powder, which results from the
incineration of a little animal, which does not weigh more than four
ounces, and which lays eggs that weigh fifteen pounds. It was with these
eggs, gentlemen, that General Lafayette nourished his army in Egypt
during forty days; here it is--_c’est incroyable!_ And now, _Messieurs
et Mesdames_, here is my _poudre dentifrique_ which is designed to
destroy the tartar of the teeth of both sexes. Tartar, gentlemen, is the
declared enemy of both. Every thing human is subject to tartar; from the
innocent virgin to the venerable matron, all is subject to tartar.
Napoleon himself, at the head of 150,000 men of cavalry, was not exempt
from tartar. You see this child, (here he exhibited a boy whose teeth
were in a ‘frightful condition,’ being painted black.) You see this boy,
‘_simple gamin_,’ he has the teeth neither more nor less black than
pitch, and his breath--You may come, gentlemen, and smell for
yourselves--_Eh bien, Messieurs_; you take my _poudre dentifrique_, you
just dip your finger into water, spring water, well water, no matter
what water, and you just rub lightly, (here he laid the child across his
knees, and in the same way as if sawing a log of wood, rubbed
off the paint, and exhibited him with teeth of ivory to the
spectators;)--Behold, gentlemen, the effect of my _poudre dentifrique_,
(and here he sold several boxes.)
The oldest hero, I believe, of the modern stage is Punch, and I am glad
to see that he retains yet his place at these public solemnities. His
harangues here are not always a ludicrous or unmeaning prattle, but
often critical, satirical, and even treasonable; and occasionally, he
falls under the reprehension of the police. Several punches have been
arrested under the late laws. I penetrated an immense crowd, and heard a
little deputy of the “_extrême gauche_” just end his harangue--“the
greatest king of these times, I don’t care who is the other one.” We
have been trying kings, one after the other, and have never had a
tolerable one since King Pepin. Idiots we have had enough, God knows; we
have now our Tarquin, whom we have sent to travel for his health in
Germany. We have had our Nero too, and our Otho and Vitellius as well as
our Cæsar; the _Bon Henri_, and he was a great rogue, is the only
national boast. In fine, gentlemen, we never had any thing of a king
down to Louis Philippe. My wife has called three children after him
successively; but when they were born, they all turned out to be girls.
“Gentlemen, we have done more for the glory of France under this king in
five years, than under all the kings who preceded him, in all years. We
have guillotined Fieschi, conquered the Bedouins, and paved the _Rue
Neuve des Augustins_; and finally, gentlemen, we have paid off the
‘twenty-five millions’ to General Jackson, and the sword that was half
drawn has been thrust back into its scabbard. Gentlemen, when we want to
gather cocoa-nuts in the West Indies, we throw stones at the apes on the
trees, at which, they getting mad, shower down the nuts in our faces;
and this is the way the American General has got the twenty-five
millions.” He bowed, and retired with acclamations. This is enough for
the Mountebanks and the Punches, and not too much; for even the tragic
Muse, dignified as she now is, in her robe and buskins, took her first
lessons from the Harlequins.
In the eating department, in the _sucrerie_ and _charcuiterie_, there
was of course a display--gimblettes, gaufres, echaudés, and
croquignolles. Their very names give one ideas of eating. Do you know
how to sell cakes piping hot that were baked eight days ago? The bottom
of your basket is to be a vessel with water in it, reduced by a secret
fire into vapour, which penetrates up through the crevices of your
cakes. How appetising they look, just smoking from the frying-pan! If I
should attempt to tell you the tricks of the jugglers, I should never be
done. The prettiest of all these are the lady rope-dancers of Madame
Saqui, whom you will see thirty feet in the air, and ten thousand eyes
upturned in admiration. The clown beneath holds his cocked hat to catch
any one that may fall.
The most athletic and dramatic of all these amusements, is the _Mat de
Cocagne_. This is a long pole of about eighteen inches diameter at the
base, well polished and greased from head to foot, with soft soap,
tallow, and other slippery ingredients. To climb up this pole to the top
is the eminent exploit, which crowns the victorious adventurer with a
rich prize, and gains him the acclamation of ten thousand spectators.
The pretenders strip off their upper gear altogether, and roll up their
trousers mid-thigh, and thus accoutred, present themselves at the bottom
of the mast.
“The first who attempt the ascent look for no honour; their office is to
prepare the way, and put things in train for their successors; they rub
off the grease from the bottom, the least practicable part of the mast.
In every thing the first steps are the most difficult, though seldom the
most glorious; and scarcely ever does the same person commence an
enterprise and reap the fruits of its accomplishment. They ascend higher
by degrees, and the expert climbers now come forth, the heroes of the
list; they who have been accustomed to gain prizes, whose prowess is
known, and whose fame is established. These do not expend their strength
in the beginning; they climb up gently, and patiently, and modestly, and
repose from time to time; and they carry, as is permitted, a little sack
at their girdle filled with ashes to neutralise the grease, and render
it less slippery.
“All efforts, however, for a long time prove ineffectual. There seems to
be an ultimate point, which no one can scan, the measure and term of
human strength; and to overreach it, is at last deemed impossible. Now
and then a pretender essays his awkward limbs, and reaching scarce
half-way even to this point, falls back clumsily amidst the hisses and
laughter of the spectators; so in the world empyrical pretension comes
out into notoriety for a moment only, to return with ridicule and scorn,
to its original obscurity.
“But the charm is at length broken; a victorious climber has transcended
the point at which his predecessors were arrested. Every one now does
the same; such are men; they want but a precedent; as soon as it is
proved that a thing is possible, it is no longer difficult. Our climber
continues his success, further and further still; he is at a few feet
only from the summit, but he is wearied, he relents; alas, is the prize
almost in his grasp to escape from him! He makes another effort, but of
no avail. He does not, however, lose ground; he reposes. In the
meantime, exclamations are heard, of doubt, of success, of
encouragement.
“After a lapse of two or three minutes, which is itself a fatigue, he
essays again--it is in vain. He begins even to shrink--he has slipped
downwards a few inches, and recovers his loss by an obstinate struggle
(applauses), but it is a supernatural effort, and his last. Soon after,
a murmur is heard from the crowd, half raillery, half compassion, and
the poor adventurer slides down, mortified and exhausted, upon the
earth. So a courtier, having planned from his youth, his career of
ambition, struggles up the ladder, lubrick and precipitous, to the top,
to the very consummation of his hopes, and then falls back into the
rubbish from which he has issued, and they who envied his fortune, now
rejoice in his fall. What lessons of philosophy in a greasy pole! What
moral reflections in a spectacle so empty to the common world! What
wholesome sermons are here upon the vanity of human hopes, the
disappointments of ambition, and the difficulties of success in the
slippery path of fortune and human greatness! But the defeat of the last
adventurer has shown the possibility of success, and prepared the way
for his successor, who mounts up, and perches on the summit of the mast,
bears off the crown, and descends amidst the shouts and applauses of the
multitude. It is Americus Vespucius, who bears away from Columbus the
recompense of his toils.”
I have placed commas over a few of the preceding paragraphs, to tell you
that they are taken chiefly from a French description, much prettier
than any thing I could offer you of my own.
And now, farewell, Paris! thou Pandora’s box of all good and all evil,
farewell! I ought not to take leave without making _amende honorable_
for the ill I have said and thought of the French people in my fretful
humours. I know some of them I cannot think ill of, for the life of me.
I can scarce hate the knaves and fools on their account. Then, farewell,
Paris! Thrice I have bid thee adieu, and still am lingering at thy
threshold.