PARIS, October 12, 1763.
DEAR SIR,--Of our journey from Boulogne I have little to say. The
weather was favourable, and the roads were in tolerable order. We found
good accommodation at Montreuil and Amiens; but in every other place
where we stopped, we met with abundance of dirt, and the most flagrant
imposition. I shall not pretend to describe the cities of Abbeville and
Amiens, which we saw only en passant; nor take up your time with an
account of the stables and palace of Chantilly, belonging to the prince
of Conde, which we visited the last day of our journey; nor shall I
detain you with a detail of the Trefors de St. Denis, which, together
with the tombs in the abbey church, afforded us some amusement while
our dinner was getting ready. All these particulars are mentioned in
twenty different books of tours, travels, and directions, which you
have often perused. I shall only observe, that the abbey church is the
lightest piece of Gothic architecture I have seen, and the air within
seems perfectly free from that damp and moisture, so perceivable in all
our old cathedrals. This must be owing to the nature of its situation.
There are some fine marble statues that adorn the tombs of certain
individuals here interred; but they are mostly in the French taste,
which is quite contrary to the simplicity of the antients. Their
attitudes are affected, unnatural, and desultory; and their draperies
fantastic; or, as one of our English artists expressed himself, they
are all of a flutter. As for the treasures, which are shewn on certain
days to the populace gratis, they are contained in a number of presses,
or armoires, and, if the stones are genuine, they must be inestimable:
but this I cannot believe. Indeed I have been told, that what they shew
as diamonds are no more than composition: nevertheless, exclusive of
these, there are some rough stones of great value, and many curiosities
worth seeing. The monk that shewed them was the very image of our
friend Hamilton, both in his looks and manner.
I have one thing very extraordinary to observe of the French auberges,
which seems to be a remarkable deviation from the general character of
the nation. The landlords, hostesses, and servants of the inns upon the
road, have not the least dash of complaisance in their behaviour to
strangers. Instead of coming to the door, to receive you as in England,
they take no manner of notice of you; but leave you to find or enquire
your way into the kitchen, and there you must ask several times for a
chamber, before they seem willing to conduct you up stairs. In general,
you are served with the appearance of the most mortifying indifference,
at the very time they are laying schemes for fleecing you of your
money. It is a very odd contrast between France and England; in the
former all the people are complaisant but the publicans; in the latter
there is hardly any complaisance but among the publicans. When I said
all the people in France, I ought also to except those vermin who
examine the baggage of travellers in different parts of the kingdom.
Although our portmanteaus were sealed with lead, and we were provided
with a passe-avant from the douane, our coach was searched at the gate
of Paris by which we entered; and the women were obliged to get out,
and stand in the open street, till this operation was performed.
I had desired a friend to provide lodgings for me at Paris, in the
Fauxbourg St. Germain; and accordingly we found ourselves accommodated
at the Hotel de Montmorency, with a first floor, which costs me ten
livres a day. I should have put up with it had it been less polite; but
as I have only a few days to stay in this place, and some visits to
receive, I am not sorry that my friend has exceeded his commission. I
have been guilty of another piece of extravagance in hiring a carosse
de remise, for which I pay twelve livres a day. Besides the article of
visiting, I could not leave Paris, without carrying my wife and the
girls to see the most remarkable places in and about this capital, such
as the Luxemburg, the Palais-Royal, the Thuilleries, the Louvre, the
Invalids, the Gobelins, &c. together with Versailles, Trianon, Marli,
Meudon, and Choissi; and therefore, I thought the difference in point
of expence would not be great, between a carosse de remise and a
hackney coach. The first are extremely elegant, if not too much
ornamented, the last are very shabby and disagreeable. Nothing gives me
such chagrin, as the necessity I am under to hire a valet de place, as
my own servant does not speak the language. You cannot conceive with
what eagerness and dexterity those rascally valets exert themselves in
pillaging strangers. There is always one ready in waiting on your
arrival, who begins by assisting your own servant to unload your
baggage, and interests himself in your affairs with such artful
officiousness, that you will find it difficult to shake him off, even
though you are determined beforehand against hiring any such domestic.
He produces recommendations from his former masters, and the people of
the house vouch for his honesty.
The truth is, those fellows are very handy, useful, and obliging; and
so far honest, that they will not steal in the usual way. You may
safely trust one of them to bring you a hundred loui'dores from your
banker; but they fleece you without mercy in every other article of
expence. They lay all your tradesmen under contribution; your taylor,
barber, mantua-maker, milliner, perfumer, shoe-maker, mercer, jeweller,
hatter, traiteur, and wine-merchant: even the bourgeois who owns your
coach pays him twenty sols per day. His wages amount to twice as much,
so that I imagine the fellow that serves me, makes above ten shillings
a day, besides his victuals, which, by the bye, he has no right to
demand. Living at Paris, to the best of my recollection, is very near
twice as dear as it was fifteen years ago; and, indeed, this is the
case in London; a circumstance that must be undoubtedly owing to an
increase of taxes; for I don't find that in the articles of eating and
drinking, the French people are more luxurious than they were
heretofore. I am told the entrees, or duties, payed upon provision
imported into Paris, are very heavy. All manner of butcher's meat and
poultry are extremely good in this place. The beef is excellent. The
wine, which is generally drank, is a very thin kind of Burgundy. I can
by no means relish their cookery; but one breakfasts deliciously upon
their petit pains and their pales of butter, which last is exquisite.
The common people, and even the bourgeois of Paris live, at this
season, chiefly on bread and grapes, which is undoubtedly very wholsome
fare. If the same simplicity of diet prevailed in England, we should
certainly undersell the French at all foreign markets for they are very
slothful with all their vivacity and the great number of their holidays
not only encourages this lazy disposition, but actually robs them of
one half of what their labour would otherwise produce; so that, if our
common people were not so expensive in their living, that is, in their
eating and drinking, labour might be afforded cheaper in England than
in France. There are three young lusty hussies, nieces or daughters of
a blacksmith, that lives just opposite to my windows, who do nothing
from morning till night. They eat grapes and bread from seven till
nine, from nine till twelve they dress their hair, and are all the
afternoon gaping at the window to view passengers. I don't perceive
that they give themselves the trouble either to make their beds, or
clean their apartment. The same spirit of idleness and dissipation I
have observed in every part of France, and among every class of people.
Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was last in
Paris. The Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the bridges, and the river Seine,
by no means answer the ideas I had formed of them from my former
observation. When the memory is not very correct, the imagination
always betrays her into such extravagances. When I first revisited my
own country, after an absence of fifteen years, I found every thing
diminished in the same manner, and I could scarce believe my own eyes.
Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses are all
gloomy. In spite of all the ornaments that have been lavished on
Versailles, it is a dismal habitation. The apartments are dark,
ill-furnished, dirty, and unprincely. Take the castle, chapel, and
garden all together, they make a most fantastic composition of
magnificence and littleness, taste, and foppery. After all, it is in
England only, where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay
furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a strange incongruity in
the French genius. With all their volatility, prattle, and fondness for
bons mots, they delight in a species of drawling, melancholy, church
music. Their most favourite dramatic pieces are almost without
incident; and the dialogue of their comedies consists of moral, insipid
apophthegms, intirely destitute of wit or repartee. I know what I
hazard by this opinion among the implicit admirers of Lully, Racine,
and Moliere.
I don't talk of the busts, the statues, and pictures which abound at
Versailles, and other places in and about Paris, particularly the great
collection of capital pieces in the Palais-royal, belonging to the duke
of Orleans. I have neither capacity, nor inclination, to give a
critique on these chef d'oeuvres, which indeed would take up a whole
volume. I have seen this great magazine of painting three times, with
astonishment; but I should have been better pleased, if there had not
been half the number: one is bewildered in such a profusion, as not to
know where to begin, and hurried away before there is time to consider
one piece with any sort of deliberation. Besides, the rooms are all
dark, and a great many of the pictures hang in a bad light. As for
Trianon, Marli, and Choissi, they are no more than pigeon-houses, in
respect to palaces; and, notwithstanding the extravagant eulogiums
which you have heard of the French king's houses, I will venture to
affirm that the king of England is better, I mean more comfortably,
lodged. I ought, however, to except Fontainebleau, which I have not
seen.
The city of Paris is said to be five leagues, or fifteen miles, in
circumference; and if it is really so, it must be much more populous
than London; for the streets are very narrow, and the houses very high,
with a different family on every floor. But I have measured the best
plans of these two royal cities, and am certain that Paris does not
take up near so much ground as London and Westminster occupy; and I
suspect the number of its inhabitants is also exaggerated by those who
say it amounts to eight hundred thousand, that is two hundred thousand
more than are contained in the bills of mortality. The hotels of the
French noblesse, at Paris, take up a great deal of room, with their
courtyards and gardens; and so do their convents and churches. It must
be owned, indeed, that their streets are wonderfully crouded with
people and carriages.
The French begin to imitate the English, but only in such particulars
as render them worthy of imitation. When I was last at Paris, no person
of any condition, male or female, appeared, but in full dress, even
when obliged to come out early in the morning, and there was not such a
thing to be seen as a perruque ronde; but at present I see a number of
frocks and scratches in a morning, in the streets of this metropolis.
They have set up a petite poste, on the plan of our penny-post, with
some improvements; and I am told there is a scheme on foot for
supplying every house with water, by leaden pipes, from the river
Seine. They have even adopted our practice of the cold bath, which is
taken very conveniently, in wooden houses, erected on the side of the
river, the water of which is let in and out occasionally, by cocks
fixed in the sides of the bath. There are different rooms for the
different sexes: the accommodations are good, and the expence is a
trifle. The tapestry of the Gobelins is brought to an amazing degree of
perfection; and I am surprised that this furniture is not more in
fashion among the great, who alone are able to purchase it. It would be
a most elegant and magnificent ornament, which would always nobly
distinguish their apartments from those, of an inferior rank; and in
this they would run no risk of being rivalled by the bourgeois. At the
village of Chaillot, in the neighbourhood of Paris, they make beautiful
carpets and screen-work; and this is the more extraordinary, as there
are hardly any carpets used in this kingdom. In almost all the
lodging-houses, the floors are of brick, and have no other kind of
cleaning, than that of being sprinkled with water, and swept once a
day. These brick floors, the stone stairs, the want of wainscotting in
the rooms, and the thick party-walls of stone, are, however, good
preservatives against fire, which seldom does any damage in this city.
Instead of wainscotting, the walls are covered with tapestry or damask.
The beds in general are very good, and well ornamented, with testers
and curtains.
Twenty years ago the river Seine, within a mile of Paris, was as
solitary as if it had run through a desert. At present the banks of it
are adorned with a number of elegant houses and plantations, as far as
Marli. I need not mention the machine at this place for raising water,
because I know you are well acquainted with its construction; nor shall
I say any thing more of the city of Paris, but that there is a new
square, built upon an elegant plan, at the end of the garden of the
Thuilleries: it is called Place de Louis XV. and, in the middle of it,
there is a good equestrian statue of the reigning king.
You have often heard that Louis XIV. frequently regretted, that his
country did not afford gravel for the walks of his gardens, which are
covered with a white, loose sand, very disagreeable both to the eyes
and feet of those who walk upon it; but this is a vulgar mistake. There
is plenty of gravel on the road between Paris and Versailles, as well
as in many other parts of this kingdom; but the French, who are all for
glare and glitter, think the other is more gay and agreeable: one would
imagine they did not feel the burning reflexion from the white sand,
which in summer is almost intolerable.
In the character of the French, considered as a people, there are
undoubtedly many circumstances truly ridiculous. You know the
fashionable people, who go a hunting, are equipped with their jack
boots, bag wigs, swords and pistols: but I saw the other day a scene
still more grotesque. On the road to Choissi, a fiacre, or
hackney-coach, stopped, and out came five or six men, armed with
musquets, who took post, each behind a separate tree. I asked our
servant who they were imagining they might be archers, or footpads of
justice, in pursuit of some malefactor. But guess my surprise, when the
fellow told me, they were gentlemen a la chasse. They were in fact come
out from Paris, in this equipage, to take the diversion of
hare-hunting; that is, of shooting from behind a tree at the hares that
chanced to pass. Indeed, if they had nothing more in view, but to
destroy the game, this was a very effectual method; for the hares are
in such plenty in this neighbourhood, that I have seen a dozen
together, in the same field. I think this way of hunting, in a coach or
chariot, might be properly adopted at London, in favour of those
aldermen of the city, who are too unwieldy to follow the hounds a
horseback.
The French, however, with all their absurdities, preserve a certain
ascendancy over us, which is very disgraceful to our nation; and this
appears in nothing more than in the article of dress. We are contented
to be thought their apes in fashion; but, in fact, we are slaves to
their taylors, mantua-makers, barbers, and other tradesmen. One would
be apt to imagine that our own tradesmen had joined them in a
combination against us. When the natives of France come to London, they
appear in all public places, with cloaths made according to the fashion
of their own country, and this fashion is generally admired by the
English. Why, therefore, don't we follow it implicitly? No, we pique
ourselves upon a most ridiculous deviation from the very modes we
admire, and please ourselves with thinking this deviation is a mark of
our spirit and liberty. But, we have not spirit enough to persist in
this deviation, when we visit their country: otherwise, perhaps, they
would come to admire and follow our example: for, certainly, in point
of true taste, the fashions of both countries are equally absurd. At
present, the skirts of the English descend from the fifth rib to the
calf of the leg, and give the coat the form of a Jewish gaberdine; and
our hats seem to be modelled after that which Pistol wears upon the
stage. In France, the haunch buttons and pocketholes are within half a
foot of the coat's extremity: their hats look as if they had been pared
round the brims, and the crown is covered with a kind of cordage,
which, in my opinion, produces a very beggarly effect. In every other
circumstance of dress, male and female, the contrast between the two
nations, appears equally glaring. What is the consequence? when an
Englishman comes to Paris, he cannot appear until he has undergone a
total metamorphosis. At his first arrival he finds it necessary to send
for the taylor, perruquier, hatter, shoemaker, and every other
tradesman concerned in the equipment of the human body. He must even
change his buckles, and the form of his ruffles; and, though at the
risque of his life, suit his cloaths to the mode of the season. For
example, though the weather should be never so cold, he must wear his
habit d'ete, or demi-saison. Without presuming to put on a warm dress
before the day which fashion has fixed for that purpose; and neither
old age nor infirmity will excuse a man for wearing his hat upon his
head, either at home or abroad. Females are (if possible) still more
subject to the caprices of fashion; and as the articles of their dress
are more manifold, it is enough to make a man's heart ake to see his
wife surrounded by a multitude of cotturieres, milliners, and
tire-women. All her sacks and negligees must be altered and new
trimmed. She must have new caps, new laces, new shoes, and her hair new
cut. She must have her taffaties for the summer, her flowered silks for
the spring and autumn, her sattins and damasks for winter. The good
man, who used to wear the beau drop d'Angleterre, quite plain all the
year round, with a long bob, or tye perriwig, must here provide himself
with a camblet suit trimmed with silver for spring and autumn, with
silk cloaths for summer, and cloth laced with gold, or velvet for
winter; and he must wear his bag-wig a la pigeon. This variety of dress
is absolutely indispensible for all those who pretend to any rank above
the meer bourgeois. On his return to his own country, all this frippery
is useless. He cannot appear in London until he has undergone another
thorough metamorphosis; so that he will have some reason to think, that
the tradesmen of Paris and London have combined to lay him under
contribution: and they, no doubt, are the directors who regulate the
fashions in both capitals; the English, however, in a subordinate
capacity: for the puppets of their making will not pass at Paris, nor
indeed in any other part of Europe; whereas a French petit maitre is
reckoned a complete figure every where, London not excepted. Since it
is so much the humour of the English at present to run abroad, I wish
they had anti-gallican spirit enough to produce themselves in their own
genuine English dress, and treat the French modes with the same
philosophical contempt, which was shewn by an honest gentleman,
distinguished by the name of Wig-Middleton. That unshaken patriot still
appears in the same kind of scratch perriwig, skimming-dish hat, and
slit sleeve, which were worn five-and-twenty years ago, and has
invariably persisted in this garb, in defiance of all the revolutions
of the mode. I remember a student in the temple, who, after a long and
learned investigation of the to kalon, or beautiful, had resolution
enough to let his beard grow, and wore it in all public places, until
his heir at law applied for a commission of lunacy against him; then he
submitted to the razor, rather than run any risque of being found non
compos.
Before I conclude, I must tell you, that the most reputable
shop-keepers and tradesmen of Paris think it no disgrace to practise
the most shameful imposition. I myself know an instance of one of the
most creditable marchands in this capital, who demanded six francs an
ell for some lutestring, laying his hand upon his breast at the same
time, and declaring en conscience, that it had cost him within three
sols of the money. Yet in less than three minutes, he sold it for four
and a half, and when the buyer upbraided him with his former
declaration, he shrugged up his shoulders, saying, il faut marchander.
I don't mention this as a particular instance. The same mean
disingenuity is universal all over France, as I have been informed by
several persons of veracity.
The next letter you have from me will probably be dated at Nismes, or
Montpellier. Mean-while, I am ever--Yours.