Delicacy in France and in England.--Causes of the difference
between them.
There is nothing perhaps which marks the national variety of manners
between the French and the English more distinctly than the different
estimate they form of what is delicate or indelicate, modest or
immodest, decent or indecent: nor does it appear to me that all the
intimacy of intercourse which for the last twenty years has subsisted
between the two nations has greatly lessened this difference.
Nevertheless, I believe that it is more superficial than many suppose
it to be; and that it arises rather from contingent circumstances,
than from any original and native difference in the capability of
refinement in the two nations.
Among the most obvious of these varieties of manner, is the astounding
freedom with which many things are alluded to here in good society,
the slightest reference to which is in our country banished from even
the most homely class. It seems that the opinion of Martine is by no
means peculiar to herself, and that it is pretty generally thought
that
"Quand on se fait entendre, on parle toujours bien."
In other ways, too, it is impossible not to allow that there exists in
France a very perceptible want of refinement as compared to England.
No Englishman, I believe, has ever returned from a visit to Paris
without adding his testimony to this fact; and notwithstanding the
Gallomania so prevalent amongst us, all acknowledge that, however
striking may be the elegance and grace of the higher classes, there is
still a national want of that uniform delicacy so highly valued by all
ranks, above the very lowest, with us. Sights are seen and
inconveniences endured with philosophy, which would go nigh to rob us
of our wits in July, and lead us to hang ourselves in November.
To a fact so well known, and so little agreeable in the detail of its
examination, it would be worse than useless to draw your attention,
were it not that there is something curious in tracing the manner in
which different circumstances, seemingly unconnected, do in reality
hang together and form a whole.
The time certainly has been, when it was the fashion in England, as it
is now in France, to call things, as some one coarsely expresses it,
_by their right names_; very grave proof of which might be found even
in sermons--and from thence downwards through treatises, essays,
poems, romances, and plays.
Were we indeed to form our ideas of the tone of conversation in
England a century ago from the familiar colloquy found in the comedies
then written and acted, we must acknowledge that we were at that time
at a greater distance from the refinement we now boast, than our
French neighbours are at present.
I do not here refer to licentiousness of morals, or the coarse avowal
of it; but to a species of indelicacy which might perhaps have been
quite compatible with virtue, as the absence of it is unhappily no
security against vice.
The remedy of this has proceeded, if I mistake not, from causes much
more connected with the luxurious wealth of England, than with the
severity of her virtue. You will say, perhaps, that I have started off
to an immense distance from the point whence I set out; but I think
not--for both in France and England I find abundant reason to believe
that I am right in tracing this remarkable difference between the two
countries, less to natural disposition or character, than to the
accidental facilities for improvement possessed by the one people, and
not by the other.
It would be very easy to ascertain, by reference to the various
literary records I have named, that the improvement in English
delicacy has been gradual, and in very just proportion to the
increase of her wealth, and the fastidious keeping out of sight of
everything that can in any way annoy the senses.
When we cease to hear, see, and smell things which are disagreeable,
it is natural that we should cease to speak of them; and it is, I
believe, quite certain that the English take more pains than any other
people in the world that the senses--those conductors of sensation
from the body to the soul--shall convey to the spirit as little
disagreeable intelligence of what befalls the case in which it dwells,
as possible. The whole continent of Europe, with the exception of some
portion of Holland perhaps, (which shows a brotherly affinity to us in
many things,) might be cited for its inferiority to England in this
respect. I remember being much amused last year, when landing at
Calais, at the answer made by an old traveller to a novice who was
making his first voyage.
"What a dreadful smell!" said the uninitiated stranger, enveloping his
nose in his pocket-handkerchief.
"It is the smell of the continent, sir," replied the man of
experience. And so it was.
There are parts of this subject which it is quite impossible to dwell
upon, and which unhappily require no pen to point them out to notice.
These, if it were possible, I would willingly leave more in the dark
than I find them. But there are other circumstances, all arising from
the comparative poverty of the people, which tend to produce, with a
most obvious dependency of thing on thing, that deficiency of
refinement of which I am speaking.
Let any one examine the interior construction of a Paris dwelling of
the middle class, and compare it to a house prepared for occupants of
the same rank in London. It so happens that everything appertaining to
decoration is to be had _à bon marché_ at Paris, and we therefore find
every article of the ornamental kind almost in profusion. Mirrors,
silk hangings, or-molu in all forms; china vases, alabaster lamps, and
timepieces, in which the onward step that never returns is marked with
a grace and prettiness that conceals the solemnity of its pace,--all
these are in abundance; and the tenth part of what would be considered
necessary to dress up a common lodging in Paris, would set the London
fine lady in this respect upon an enviable elevation above her
neighbours.
But having admired their number and elegant arrangement, pass on and
enter the ordinary bed-rooms--nay, enter the kitchens too, or you will
not be able to judge how great the difference is between the two
residences.
In London, up to the second floor, and often to the third, water is
forced, which furnishes an almost unlimited supply of that luxurious
article, to be obtained with no greater trouble to the servants than
would be required to draw it from a tea-urn. In one kitchen of every
house, generally in two, and often in three, the same accommodation is
found; and when, in opposition to this, it is remembered that very
nearly every family in Paris receives this precious gift of nature
doled out by two buckets at a time, laboriously brought to them by
porters, clambering in _sabots_, often up the same stairs which lead
to their drawing-rooms, it can hardly be supposed that the use of it
is as liberal and unrestrained as with us.
Against this may be placed fairly enough the cheapness and facility of
the access to the public baths. But though personal ablutions may thus
be very satisfactorily performed by those who do not rigorously
require that every personal comfort should be found at home, yet still
the want of water, or any restraint upon the freedom with which it is
used, is a vital impediment to that perfection of neatness, in every
part of the establishment, which we consider as so necessary to our
comfort.
Much as I admire the Church of the Madeleine, I conceive that the city
of Paris would have been infinitely more benefited, had the sums
expended upon it been used for the purpose of constructing pipes for
the conveyance of water to private dwellings, than by all the
splendour received from the beauty of this imposing structure.
But great and manifold as are the evils entailed by the scarcity of
water in the bed-rooms and kitchens of Paris, there is another
deficiency greater still, and infinitely worse in its effects. The
want of drains and sewers is the great defect of all the cities in
France; and a tremendous defect it is. That people who from their
first breath of life have been obliged to accustom their senses and
submit without a struggle to the sufferings this evil entails upon
them,--that people so circumstanced should have less refinement in
their thoughts and words than ourselves, I hold to be natural and
inevitable. Thus, you see, I have come round like a preacher to his
text, and have explained, as I think, very satisfactorily, what I mean
by saying that the indelicacy which so often offends us in France does
not arise from any natural coarseness of mind, but is the unavoidable
result of circumstances, which may, and doubtless will change, as the
wealth of the country and its familiarity with the manners of England
increases.
This withdrawing from the perception of the senses everything that can
annoy them,--this lulling of the spirit by the absence of whatever
might awaken it to a sensation of pain,--is probably the last point to
which the ingenuity of man can reach in its efforts to embellish
existence.
The search after pleasure and amusement certainly betokens less
refinement than this sedulous care to avoid annoyance; and it may be,
that as we have gone farthest of all modern nations in this tender
care of ourselves, so may we be the first to fall from our delicate
elevation into that receptacle of things past and gone which has
engulfed old Greece and Rome. Is it thus that the Reform Bill, and all
the other horrible Bills in its train, are to be interpreted?
As to that other species of refinement which belongs altogether to the
intellect, and which, if less obvious to a passing glance, is more
deep and permanent in its dye than anything which relates to manners
only, it is less easy either to think or to speak with confidence.
France and England both have so long a list of mighty names that may
be quoted on either side to prove their claim to rank high as literary
contributors to refinement, that the struggle as to which ranks
highest can only be fairly settled by both parties agreeing that each
country has a fair right to prefer what they have produced themselves.
But, alas! at the present moment, neither can have great cause to
boast. What is good, is overpowered and stifled by what is bad. The
uncontrolled press of both countries has thrown so much abominable
trash upon literature during the last few years, that at present it
might be difficult to say whether general reading would be most
dangerous to the young and the pure in England or in France.
That the Hugo school has brought more nonsense with its mischief, is,
I think, clear: but it is not impossible that this may act as an
antidote to its own poison. It is a sort of humbug assumption of
talent which will pass out of fashion as quickly as Morrison's pills.
We have nothing quite so silly as this; but much I fear that, as it
concerns our welfare as a nation, we have what is more deeply
dangerous.
As to what is moral and what is not so, plain as at first sight the
question seems to be, there is much that is puzzling in it. In looking
over a volume of "Adèle et Théodore" the other day,--a work written
expressly "_sur l'éducation_," and by an author that we must presume
meant honestly and spoke sincerely,--I found this passage:--
"Je ne connais que trois romans véritablement moraux;--Clarisse, le
plus beau de tous; Grandison, et Pamela. Ma fille les lira en Anglais
lorsqu'elle aura dix-huit ans."
The venerable Grandison, though by no means _sans tache_, I will let
pass: but that any mother should talk of letting her daughter of
"dix-huit ans" read the others, is a mystery difficult to comprehend,
especially in a country where the young girls are reared, fostered,
and sheltered from every species of harm, with the most incessant and
sedulous watchfulness. I presume that Madame de Genlis conceived that,
as the object and moral purpose of these works were good, the
revolting coarseness with which some of their most powerful passages
are written could not lead to evil. But this is a bold and dangerous
judgment to pass when the question relates to the studies of a young
girl.
I think we may see symptoms of the feeling which would produce such a
judgment, in the tone of biting satire with which Molière attacks
those who wished to banish what might "faire insulte à la pudeur des
femmes." Spoken as he makes Philaminte speak it, we cannot fail to
laugh at the notion: yet ridicule on the same subject would hardly be
accepted, even from Sheridan, as jesting matter with us.
"Mais le plus beau projet de notre académie,
Une entreprise noble, et dont je suis ravie,
Un dessein plein de gloire, et qui sera vanté
Chez tous les beaux-esprits de la postérité,
C'est le retranchement de ces syllabes sales
Qui dans les plus beaux mots produisent des scandales;
Ces jouets éternels des sots de tous les temps,
Ces fades lieux communs de nos méchans plaisans;
Ces sources d'un amas d'équivoques infâmes
Dont on vient faire insulte à la pudeur des femmes."
Such an academy might be a very comical institution, certainly; but
the duties it would have to perform would not suffer a professor's
place to become a sinecure in France.