THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS IN PARIS.
The Englishman Abroad--M. Lemoinne’s Analysis--The Englishwoman--Sunday
in London and in Paris--Americans in Par--The American Girl.
Hitherto the types of character which we have noticed have been native.
Let us vary them by a glance at the typical foreigner or rather
foreigners residing or sojourning in Paris.
To begin with the Englishman. In Paris, although there are a great
number of Englishmen, it can hardly be said that an English Society
exists. Samuel Johnson once complained that Englishmen did not
fraternise with one another; that if two visitors called upon a lady
about the same time and were shown into her drawing-room, they would,
until the lady made her appearance--say for five minutes--simply glare
at one other in silence, whereas a couple of foreigners would, although
they had never met before, have entered into a conversation.
Without, perhaps, being aware of Johnson’s stricture on the social
frigidity of his own countrymen, an excellent French writer, John
Lemoinne, has noticed the same insular peculiarity in English visitors
to Paris. “The English,” he says, “do not seek one another’s
acquaintance; they do not come into other lands to find themselves. If
they easily form acquaintanceship with foreigners, they are more
fastidious in approaching each other. An Englishman will make friends
with a Frenchman without the ceremony of presentation, I mean of
introduction, but never with another Englishman. A couple of Englishmen
stare at each other very hard before saying, ‘How do you do?’”
_Punch_ many years ago noticed this national characteristic in a picture
which represented two English visitors to Paris breakfasting at the same
table in the Hôtel Meurice, and, although the only guests in the room,
solemnly ignoring each other’s existence.
But M. Lemoinne goes further than _Punch_. “If the English leave their
native land,” he says, “it is not to find their own compatriots; it is
to see new men and new things. Even when you understand their language,
they prefer to talk to you in their bad French. The thing is
intelligible enough: they wish to learn, and have no desire to teach.
You are regarded simply as a book and a grammar. The foreigner must be
turned to some account.”
So far excellent. But let us return to Samuel Johnson. When he visited
Paris did he air his “bad French”? No, he absolutely refused to speak a
word of anything but English. This by no means confirms M. Lemoinne’s
proposition. Yet in fairness, let it be said, Johnson’s chief objection
to talking French in Paris was a fear lest he should “put his foot in
it,” and, lexicographer as he was, excite by some grammatical blunder
the ridicule of irreverent Parisians.
Let us see, however, to what lengths M. Lemoinne is prepared to go. “If
there was ever a people who have the sentiment of nationality, it is,”
he says, “the English. They are impregnated, petrified with it; the
thing is fatiguing and offensive. But in order to affirm and manifest
this sentiment the English have no need to group themselves, to form
themselves into a society. An Englishman is to himself England alone; he
carries his nation in him, with him, on him; he does not require to be
several. Everywhere he is at home: the atmosphere is his kingdom and the
ambient air his property. Religion enters largely into this temperament.
The Englishman carries not only his nation, but his religion with him;
he scours the whole earth with his Bible for companion; the Frenchman,
habitually catholic, requires a bell and a priest--he does not know how
to converse directly with Heaven. From a social point of view, moreover,
the English find France freer, more liberal, more open than their own
country. English society, at home, is regulated like music-paper; it has
a severe hierarchy, in which the most idiotic little lord stands before
a man of genius without a title. Geographically, it is a very narrow
space which separates England from France; but this space is a gulf. The
two countries are in constant relationship; but they never arrive at any
resemblance to each other. We have not the political liberty of the
English, and they have not our social equality. An Englishman could not
live with laws like those which, in France, regulate the right of
speaking, the right of writing, the right of petitioning, the right of
assembling, the right of going and coming; but a Frenchman would be
stifled amidst those thousand conventional bonds which form English
society. The influence of convention in England is such that it equals
and even surpasses the tyranny of the political and administrative laws
of the Continent. That is why the Englishman, after a stay of some time,
and when the ice of his nature is a little melted, moves amongst
foreigners as freely as he moves at home. No possible comparison can be
made between the Frenchman in London and the Englishman in Paris; or at
all events the comparison can only be an antithesis. The Frenchman who
pays a visit to England will, so soon as presented, be welcomed with a
boundless hospitality, provided his visit is only a flying one; but if
he apparently wishes to take root, the soil refuses, and society shuts
itself up and retires as though a descent were being made upon its
territory. It must be confessed, moreover, that France is not usually
represented in England by the cream or flower of her population; and for
a simple reason, namely, that a Frenchman does not go to England for
pleasure or from choice, and that he has no idea but that of returning
as quickly as possible. But apart, even, from these particular
circumstances, the mere pressure of the English social atmosphere
suffices to asphyxiate a Frenchman. It is a world, an order of ideas, an
assemblage of laws and customs entirely different from all others.
“A Parisian may for years walk round English society as he would walk
round the wall of China, without being able to find either a door or a
window. He understands absolutely nothing about it.
“In France, on the contrary, Englishmen find a greater social liberty.
French society is an open society; French manners are cosmopolitan
manners. The most diverse peoples can in France find their place without
losing their national character. In our country everyone is at home, and
the Englishman gets on comfortably enough. In the Englishman, however,
it is necessary to distinguish between the citizen and the individual;
for he is both. When the national interests or passions are in question
he does not scruple to intrigue and conspire; when he is unconcerned
with the politics of the country where he happens to find himself, he
practises the greatest reserve and mixes in nothing. See the English at
Paris. They assist at all our revolutions as mere spectators; their sole
care is to get a good seat. They always come to their ambassador to
request a presentation at the Tuileries and tickets for the court ball.”
So far we have presented the observations of M. Lemoinne for what they
may be worth. That his skilful pen, however, penetrates sometimes into
the regions of truth is shown by the fact that his remarks not
infrequently recall those of foreign writers so famous as to be regarded
more or less as oracular. Heine, after visiting London, complained that
at an English dinner party the gentlemen, after the ladies had retired
from the dining-room, remained at table for an hour or two to saturate
themselves with port. Heine, it must be remembered, took a perverse
delight in satirising everything English. But that we, in England, do
leave the ladies to drink their after-dinner coffee in the desolation of
the drawing-room must be handsomely admitted. M. Lemoinne notices this
peculiarity.
“The time has passed,” he says--with burlesque drollery--“when the true
Englishman remained at table for several hours after dinner and ended by
slumbering beneath it. Now, when the ladies have quitted the
dining-room, the gentlemen content themselves with circulating the
Bordeaux for twenty minutes. In France we are beginning to divest
ourselves of certain prejudices concerning the English. For a long time
we regarded the English character as synonymous with ‘spleen.’ It was an
old French author who said of the English: ‘They amuse themselves sadly,
after the custom of their country.’
“The fact is the English are gay in their own fashion, and sometimes
even expansive and noisy; but they are not gay with everybody, nor on a
first acquaintance. They must unfreeze; they are like the wine of
Bordeaux, which, to give forth its fragrance, has to be warmed.”
* * * * *
After this, however, a very dubious compliment is paid to our
compatriots. “It is certain that this race is robuster than others, the
women as well as the men. It spends more, consumes more, and absorbs
more. See how well these pretty white and red-complexioned Englishwomen
can take their sherry and their champagne! Observe them in the middle of
the day going to exercise their palate at the pastry-cook’s with coffee,
chocolate, ices, all kinds of cakes and sandwiches; you are staggered at
the quantity of these delicacies they can put out of sight. See them at
the buffets of all those official fêtes of which they form the finest
ornament. It is a pleasure to see them, especially when you know that
their appetite is not destructive of sentiment.” Now, however, for a
compliment which is absolutely sincere. “We venture to say that English
society in Paris has exercised a salutary influence on French society,
and that it has introduced cordiality into intimate relationships. The
handshake of the English lady, for instance, has long shocked, and still
shocks our purists. Their fault is that they believe an amiable woman
must be too accessible, and that a certain liberty of manners implies an
equal liberty of conduct. With such ideas as these they bring up
daughters who, having given the tips of their fingers, imagine that they
have given everything and have no longer anything to protect; whereas a
pretty little English girl who gives her hand gives nothing else, and
knows how to defend the rest.”
Another trait of the English character is, we are assured, an “interest
in religious questions.” English ladies are “all more or less
theologians--veritable doctors in petticoats. English girls will hold
forth to you on the subject of grace and free will. You will meet them
at church, listening to sermons and going through services, and even
taking notes. But what does that matter, since it does not prevent them
from serving out the tea admirably, from rearing their children later
on, and from being model housewives and model mothers? If our
Frenchwomen cry ‘Fie’ upon the blue-stocking, that is perhaps because it
is too green; a little theology would not hurt them. It is at church
that you get the most comprehensive view of English society in Paris. On
Sunday you have only to visit the Faubourg St.-Honoré towards two
o’clock; you will encounter quite a procession of English men and women
coming from the Rue d’Agnesseau, with their prayer-books and their
Sunday demeanour. I say the church, but I ought to say the churches; for
the English have nowadays in Paris almost as many chapels as religions.
There is the Embassy chapel for Anglicans of the established religion,
an English episcopal chapel in the Rue Bayard, another English chapel in
the Rue Royale, a Scotch Presbyterian chapel and two English Methodist
places of worship in the Rue Roquepine, independently of American
chapels. This is not to say that the English observe Sunday in Paris as
strictly as they are obliged to do in their own country. Respect for the
Sabbath is an observance which they know very well how to dispense with
amongst foreigners. On Sunday, from time to time, you see some
individual in black attire, and invariably adorned with an umbrella,
who, seated on one of the seats in a public garden, pretends to ignore a
little pamphlet which is intended to be picked up by the first
pedestrian who passes, and which turns out to be a dissertation on the
observance of the Sabbath. There are still, perhaps, a few hotels
specially designed for English people, where the Bible Society causes to
be placed in every bedroom a copy of the Scriptures bearing its own
stamp. This ardour of propagandism has begun, however, to abate, and the
English in general are by no means the last to take advantage of the
Paris Sunday. Anyone who has seen the Sabbath of London must feel the
difference. Every Frenchman who has just missed dying, not only of
ennui, but of hunger and thirst, during the hours of service in
England--hearing his footsteps resound in the desolate streets--will
understand the solace experienced by an Englishman on finding that the
coast is clear for him at Paris and Versailles. There are, it is true, a
certain number of English families who do not receive on Saturday
evening because the festivity or the dancing might encroach upon the
Sabbath; but what is a sin on English territory is not so on French
territory, and the English do not scruple to pass midnight in a Parisian
drawing-room.”
This drolly severe but, from a literary point of view, admirable writer
seems to think that an Englishman is a sort of fox-terrier, or mastiff,
which having been chained up for a length of time becomes, when you let
him loose, extremely rampant and ill-conducted. “There are so many
things the English would not do at home, that they do without scruple
amongst foreigners. Once abroad they indemnify themselves for their
national reserve; it is on the foreigner that they revenge themselves
for the shackles of their own etiquette and social laws. In crossing the
Channel they pitch their solemn vestments into the sea. In London they
will not go to the opera dressed in anything but black; here they go in
a tweed coat and a slouch hat.” After this Monsieur Lemoinne seems very
much upset by the moustaches which Englishmen display as they promenade
in the Boulevards. There was a time, he assures us, when a Frenchman
crossing the Channel and wishing to have a fashionable air was obliged
to sacrifice his moustache--a time when English caricaturists never
represented a Frenchman without a pair of long, ill-combed moustaches.
To-day the thing is reversed. It is the Englishman who wears this
grotesque appendage which proclaims his nationality from afar. Thus
moustached, the Englishman goes to Paris--so M. Lemoinne evidently
thinks--to have his full fling. “Amongst us,” he says, “a grave man may
occasionally dress up to go to a ball, wear fancy costume, or take part
in a quadrille, and next morning resume his function as state councillor
or referendary. So the Englishman precipitates himself into the French
world as into a great masked ball, puts on a false nose, dances at Paris
extravagant steps which he calls French dances, cuts capers, sups and
gets maudlin, and when he has finished his French tour, tranquilly
resumes his duties as member of parliament or no matter what.”
To English ladies M. Lemoinne is a good deal more gallant. He is obliged
to point out that they over-dress and stride along the Boulevards like
dismounted dragoons. “Yet, make no mistake,” he adds. “In that still
crude block there are all the elements of a superb work of art. What
fine construction, what solid layers, what grand architecture! Wait till
art has put her hand to these materials; wait till the Englishwoman has
learned how to walk, carry herself, and dress, and until, to her native
beauty, she has added acquired grace--then you will have the finest type
of creation and of civilisation. The native Englishwoman who has become
a naturalised Parisian is perfection.”
In spite of the modified tribute which this writer pays to Englishwomen,
it may be said that he has handled our nation very roughly. In the
present day England and France would no longer, in a European war, fight
side by side as they did in the Crimea; and a little unconscious
Anglophobia tinctures the writings even of such a skilful and impartial
essayist as M. Lemoinne. The Americans in Paris are regarded, by French
writers generally, from a much more favourable point of view. Let us, in
the first place, hear what M. André Léo has to say on this subject. “If
you walk through the Champs Élysées, from the Place de la Concorde to
the Arc de l’Étoile, or through the avenues which converge there, from
the direction of the Madeleine, in the Quartier St.-Honoré towards the
Parc Monceaux, you will frequently meet women richly adorned, men with
light-coloured beards, tranquil and placid; young women of lively and
decided mien, pretty children with curly hair, whose physiognomy is at
once full of candour and of assurance. All these individuals, isolated
or grouped, offer you pretty nearly the same type; a countenance which
is strong in comparison with the small, piercing grey eyes, and
flexible features, often agreeable, and sometimes beautiful.... All
nationalities, indeed, meet and knock against each other in this new
quarter with its fine avenues and its sylvan groves. But there is an
evident predominance of English and American language and customs, as
appears from the signs over the chemists’ shops, the stores, the
boarding-houses, and the special pastry-cooks, where cakes, pies, and
puddings are displayed in the window. Yet although in this region a
unity of language and conformity of habits unite the English and the
Americans, the two societies intermix very little. Anglophobia, as a
national and popular sentiment, is perhaps more ardent in the United
States than amongst us.”
[Illustration: IN THE FLOWER MARKET.]
In a general way the resident American population of Paris consists of
the Diplomatic body, bankers, families who have come for the education
of their children, and artists eager to study the masterpieces of the
Parisian galleries. The American nation is accused of being devoid of
artistic sentiment; but M. André Léo stoutly protests that “such a
criticism passed upon a new people, who have been obliged to occupy
themselves before everything with work and industry, is too hasty.
American artists already exist; and already their efforts and their
ambitions foretell the development of that noble and precious human
faculty the germ of which exists in every people and every man, but
which necessitates a certain leisure and a certain mental education.”
Apart from the American residing in Paris, and the American who, binding
himself to the nation by more than lengthened residence, has married
into some French family--an occurrence by no means rare--there is the
flying American visitor to Paris, whose headquarters are the Grand Hotel
on the Boulevard des Italiens. This establishment, by its central
position, its interior arrangements, its luxury and its comfort, enjoys
an enormous reputation on the other side of the Atlantic. The Yankee
leaves New York for the Grand Hotel. It is not till he passes its
threshold that he feels himself on terra firma again; it is here that he
finds out where he is and gets his information. If his means or his
projects permit it, he installs himself at this hotel for three or four
months; if not, he goes on to some other hotel or boarding-house, or
else rents an apartment to live by himself. If you enter the courtyard
of the Grand Hotel, ascend the portico steps, and, making your way into
the stately readingroom, look out of the window for five minutes, you
will see that the innumerable vehicles which every few seconds stop at
the hotel deposit ten Americans to one Englishman.
From this centre the tourist easily gets to all those points of the city
to which necessity or curiosity impels him. The first visit he pays is
probably to his banker--to Bowles and Devritt, perhaps, in the Rue de la
Paix, or to Norton’s in the Rue Auber. Once he banked with the firm of
Rothschild, but now no longer. During the American war M. de
Rothschild’s attitude in reference to the planters was by no means
neutral, and this political indiscretion has cost him his American
clients.
When the New York party has cashed its cheque at the American
bank--which is quite a rendezvous for trans-Atlantics and at which all
the American newspapers can be seen--the feminine element hastens to
visit all the most fashionable shops. The ladies are eager to purchase,
at comparatively low prices, those Parisian costumes which their own
native custom-house raises to prices so exorbitant. Dressed ere long in
the richest and newest fashions, they step with their male companions
into a carriage and drive to the Bois de Boulogne; then they go to the
opera, to spectacles of every kind, and to the Legation. If there
happens to be a sovereign on the throne, they put their names down for
presentation at the Tuileries and order a court costume. For it must be
confessed that the Americans are fond of the pomps of this world, and
that, Republicans as they profess to be, they have no prejudice against
kings and princes outside their own country. The monarchs of other
nations neither shock nor terrify them. And the American tourist, apart
from the question of political sentiment, likes to see everything and do
everything before he recrosses the Atlantic. If an American family
visits a land where it is the fashion to be presented at court, they
will feel humiliated and ashamed should they have to confess afterwards
to their compatriots that they missed the presentation.
Under the last Empire the American visitors to Paris showed an eagerness
for court-presentations which would have entitled them to a place in
Thackeray’s Book of Snobs--which, nevertheless, directly or indirectly,
embraces pretty nearly the whole human species. But there were a certain
number of Americans then in France who got acclimatised to the
splendours of the court and became habitual guests at imperial
residences. The drawing-room of the United States minister is naturally
the centre of meeting for American society in Paris. “The aspect and
tone of these assemblies,” says a French writer, “is at once less solemn
and colder than our French social gatherings. The necessity of being
previously presented exists in this democratic society just as it does
in England, though on the other hand American conversation and behaviour
bear a natural impress of indifference and freedom, not even to the
exclusion, perhaps, of a little coarseness.”
Curiously enough, the Americans, although they despise or affect to
despise social and genealogical distinctions in their own country, turn
to some extent into aristocrats during the voyage across the Atlantic to
Europe. Frenchmen have noticed that if you wish to be presented to their
minister or at one of their drawing-rooms in Paris, you must never
forget your ancestry. “A certain author of my acquaintance,” says André
Léo, “a man of genuine fame, was sufficiently astonished, on reading his
American letter of introduction, to find that it recommended him much
less on his own account than on that of his grandfather. This is not an
isolated case; it results from a law much more human than national,
which consists in particularly prizing what one does not possess. The
Americans, a people without ancestors, naturally hold race distinctions
in high esteem. They boast, one against the other, of belonging to the
first founders of the colonies, and even in their own country these
pretensions sometimes provoke laughter.... As to nobilary titles, if you
possess any, be particularly careful to let them be known, and rest
assured that when once they have been declared the Americans will not
fail to apply them to you. These titles will win for you sweet glances,
and should you be contemplating marriage will turn the scale in your
favour with those blonde beauties who, for the most part, have
Californian dowries; for these Republican young women think that a ducal
coronet sits marvellously well on blonde hair, and that the title of
Countess is the finishing ornament required by an elegant lady. Hence it
is that at Paris numerous alliances are contracted between the France
of other days and the America of to-day.”
In the United States, so soon as a merchant has done some great stroke
of business, or has pierced a big vein of ore in his mine, or has seen
the petroleum spouting up on his land too fast for an adequate supply of
barrels, his daughters are consumed with a desire to visit Europe. They
sail thither, accompanied by the father, who pretends to despise the
Continent, but who, inwardly, is scarcely less curious to explore it
than his fair-haired children. And as a matter of fact the Americans may
well be desirous to see that region of the world whence they derive
everything but their liberty and their wealth. For their religion, their
language, their literature, their arts and sciences, their memories, and
the very blood which courses in their veins, they are indebted to
Europe. In America, although an enormous number of books and newspapers
are published, the English and French classics, not to mention the best
English and French modern authors, form the foundation of every good
library, and even the native writers fashion themselves after European
models.
As regards the American families residing in Paris for the education of
their children, it is music and the French language which they have
chiefly in view. Some years ago M. André Léo observed that young
American girls in Paris received a much severer education than their
brothers. The instruction of the daughters “is, or appears, very
complex; that of the sons much less so, for as a rule, having their own
fortune to make, they early precipitate themselves into commercial life.
But the young girl, whether intended for an instructress or working
merely for the development and adornment of her person, devotes herself
to studies which amongst us would pass for pedantic. Some of them learn
Latin, algebra, geometry, and even attack without alarm more special
sciences. Yet look at them and be reassured. The care of their toilette
has not suffered from all this, and the accusations of ungracefulness
cast against learned women fall before the display of their luxurious
frivolity. See if the waves of silk, of muslin, of lace, which surround
them are less abundant on that account; if the details of their exterior
show a lesser degree of feminine art, if the whole has a lesser
freshness.” This writer proceeds to insist on the superiority of the
American woman over her male compatriot. The explanation is, according
to him, that at fourteen years of age the American boy shuts up his
books to enter the office of his father or some other merchant, and
consecrates his whole intelligence to commercial speculations; whereas
the young girl pursues her studies, strengthens them sometimes by
teaching, and, spinster or wife, has always abundant leisure for mental
exercise. The one point on which, in M. André’s view, the studious
American woman exposes herself to reproach, is that hitherto she has not
used her intellectual superiority for the furtherance of her own dignity
and independence.
That she is nevertheless a powerful social factor, M. André himself
admits, though he attributes this less to her activity than to her
fascinations as a beauty in repose. “The first duty and the first pride
of an American husband is” he says, “to ensure the idleness of his wife
and provide for the expenses of her toilette.” There are in the United
States many women-workers, whether as preceptresses or clerks in the
postal, telegraphic, or even ministerial offices. These are nearly all
spinsters--the single state being frequent in New England, which vies
with the Mother Country for the supremacy of the feminine
population--and they give in their resignation when they get married. “I
will not let my wife work,” such is the husband’s proud determination.
Here, however, one imperative reason why women must resign their
employment on marriage is overlooked. In London the numberless women
engaged in the post and telegraph offices are required by the
authorities to abdicate their posts on becoming wives, simply because
they would obviously be unable to work their nine hours a day at a desk
or counter if they had absorbing domestic duties to attend to and
children to rear.
To Englishmen, who are already acquainted with their Transatlantic
brethren, a French view of the American in Paris would be more
instructive than an English one. What particularly strikes Parisians is
the freedom of American girls as contrasted with the restraint of
unmarried young women in France, whose training is notoriously very much
that of a convent. “American manners,” the French observe, “grant to
girls entire liberty. They are the guardians of their own virtue and
their own interests, and they preserve these things right well.
Instructed in the dangers of life, they are capable of braving them;
though it must be owned that their task is easy on account of the
respect which, throughout their country, is shown to them by men. A girl
can travel the length and breadth of the territory of the Union without
having to fear dishonourable pursuits or the slightest unpleasantness.
Therefore the American girl utterly differs from ours by her aspect
alone.” Her costume is more unstudied, and the mouse-like timidity of
the young Frenchwoman is replaced in her by a graceful carelessness.
[Illustration: AFTER THE THEATRE.]
To Americans, as M. André justly says, Paris must seem “a world upside
down. American mothers complain greatly of the little security and
respect shown to women in this capital, of the gallantry of the French
and the indulgence of public opinion in flagrant cases. They are right;”
and he thinks that it is because French girls are too severely
disciplined, too much caged up, that there is less reverence between the
two sexes in France than in America. “True chastity,” he maintains, “has
liberty for her sister.”
American girls staying in Paris are astonished and indignant at the
close surveillance to which unmarried young Frenchwomen are subjected,
although they themselves frequently sacrifice to opinion in the matter
of not appearing out of doors unaccompanied by a maid. M. André regrets
this on account of the countenance it gives to a prudish system, which
he is the last to admire in his own countrywomen. “O young ladies,” he
exclaims, “born on a soil where monarchical influences have never
flourished, why do you submit to this shameful spy system? Would it not
be better if you openly showed your disdain for it, and taught our women
the manners of liberty? Paris, after all, is not a forest, and a mere
glance, a shrug of the shoulders, or silence itself, will suffice to
shame away a leering lounger or an impertinent snob. Is it true, then,
that in default of other forms of tyranny, respect for opinion, whatever
that opinion be, is a yoke in America?”
Let us hope, in conclusion, that the American girl does not “let herself
go,” on her return from straitlaced Paris to the freedom of New York, at
all events to such an extent as suggested by this writer, who assures us
that, having once set foot again on native soil, she flirts furiously.
[Illustration: AT THE SALON.]