To MRS. M--. PARIS, October, 12, 1763.
MADAM,--I shall be much pleased if the remarks I have made on the
characters of the French people, can afford you the satisfaction you
require. With respect to the ladies I can only judge from their
exteriors: but, indeed, these are so characteristic, that one can
hardly judge amiss; unless we suppose that a woman of taste and
sentiment may be so overruled by the absurdity of what is called
fashion, as to reject reason, and disguise nature, in order to become
ridiculous or frightful. That this may be the case with some
individuals, is very possible. I have known it happen in our own
country, where the follies of the French are adopted and exhibited in
the most aukward imitation: but the general prevalence of those
preposterous modes, is a plain proof that there is a general want of
taste, and a general depravity of nature. I shall not pretend to
describe the particulars of a French lady's dress. These you are much
better acquainted with than I can pretend to be: but this I will be
bold to affirm, that France is the general reservoir from which all the
absurdities of false taste, luxury, and extravagance have overflowed
the different kingdoms and states of Europe. The springs that fill this
reservoir, are no other than vanity and ignorance. It would be
superfluous to attempt proving from the nature of things, from the
first principles and use of dress, as well as from the consideration of
natural beauty, and the practice of the ancients, who certainly
understood it as well as the connoisseurs of these days, that nothing
can be more monstrous, inconvenient, and contemptible, than the fashion
of modern drapery. You yourself are well aware of all its defects, and
have often ridiculed them in my hearing. I shall only mention one
particular of dress essential to the fashion in this country, which
seems to me to carry human affectation to the very farthest verge of
folly and extravagance; that is, the manner in which the faces of the
ladies are primed and painted. When the Indian chiefs were in England
every body ridiculed their preposterous method of painting their cheeks
and eye-lids; but this ridicule was wrong placed. Those critics ought
to have considered, that the Indians do not use paint to make
themselves agreeable; but in order to be the more terrible to their
enemies. It is generally supposed, I think, that your sex make use of
fard and vermillion for very different purposes; namely, to help a bad
or faded complexion, to heighten the graces, or conceal the defects of
nature, as well as the ravages of time. I shall not enquire at present,
whether it is just and honest to impose in this manner on mankind: if
it is not honest, it may be allowed to be artful and politic, and
shews, at least, a desire of being agreeable. But to lay it on as the
fashion in France prescribes to all the ladies of condition, who indeed
cannot appear without this badge of distinction, is to disguise
themselves in such a manner, as to render them odious and detestable to
every spectator, who has the least relish left for nature and
propriety. As for the fard or white, with which their necks and
shoulders are plaistered, it may be in some measure excusable, as their
skins are naturally brown, or sallow; but the rouge, which is daubed on
their faces, from the chin up to the eyes, without the least art or
dexterity, not only destroys all distinction of features, but renders
the aspect really frightful, or at best conveys nothing but ideas of
disgust and aversion. You know, that without this horrible masque no
married lady is admitted at court, or in any polite assembly; and that
it is a mark of distinction which no bourgeoise dare assume. Ladies of
fashion only have the privilege of exposing themselves in these
ungracious colours. As their faces are concealed under a false
complexion, so their heads are covered with a vast load of false hair,
which is frizzled on the forehead, so as exactly to resemble the wooly
heads of the Guinea negroes. As to the natural hue of it, this is a
matter of no consequence, for powder makes every head of hair of the
same colour; and no woman appears in this country, from the moment she
rises till night, without being compleatly whitened. Powder or meal was
first used in Europe by the Poles, to conceal their scald heads; but
the present fashion of using it, as well as the modish method of
dressing the hair, must have been borrowed from the Hottentots, who
grease their wooly heads with mutton suet and then paste it over with
the powder called buchu. In like manner, the hair of our fine ladies is
frizzled into the appearance of negroes wool, and stiffened with an
abominable paste of hog's grease, tallow, and white powder. The present
fashion, therefore, of painting the face, and adorning the head,
adopted by the beau monde in France, is taken from those two polite
nations the Chickesaws of America and the Hottentots of Africa. On the
whole, when I see one of those fine creatures sailing along, in her
taudry robes of silk and gauze, frilled, and flounced, and furbelowed,
with her false locks, her false jewels, her paint, her patches, and
perfumes; I cannot help looking upon her as the vilest piece of
sophistication that art ever produced.
This hideous masque of painting, though destructive of all beauty, is,
however, favourable to natural homeliness and deformity. It accustoms
the eyes of the other sex, and in time reconciles them to frightfull
objects; it disables them from perceiving any distinction of features
between woman and woman; and, by reducing all faces to a level, gives
every female an equal chance for an admirer; being in this particular
analogous to the practice of the antient Lacedemonians, who were
obliged to chuse their helpmates in the dark. In what manner the
insides of their heads are furnished, I would not presume to judge from
the conversation of a very few to whom I have had access: but from the
nature of their education, which I have heard described, and the
natural vivacity of their tempers, I should expect neither sense,
sentiment, nor discretion. From the nursery they are allowed, and even
encouraged, to say every thing that comes uppermost; by which means
they acquire a volubility of tongue, and a set of phrases, which
constitutes what is called polite conversation. At the same time they
obtain an absolute conquest over all sense of shame, or rather, they
avoid acquiring this troublesome sensation; for it is certainly no
innate idea. Those who have not governesses at home, are sent, for a
few years, to a convent, where they lay in a fund of superstition that
serves them for life: but I never heard they had the least opportunity
of cultivating the mind, of exercising the powers of reason, or of
imbibing a taste for letters, or any rational or useful accomplishment.
After being taught to prattle, to dance and play at cards, they are
deemed sufficiently qualified to appear in the grand monde, and to
perform all the duties of that high rank and station in life. In
mentioning cards, I ought to observe, that they learn to play not
barely for amusement, but also with a view to advantage; and, indeed,
you seldom meet with a native of France, whether male or female, who is
not a compleat gamester, well versed in all the subtleties and finesses
of the art. This is likewise the case all over Italy. A lady of a great
house in Piedmont, having four sons, makes no scruple to declare, that
the first shall represent the family, the second enter into the army,
the third into the church, and that she will breed the fourth a
gamester. These noble adventurers devote themselves in a particular
manner to the entertainment of travellers from our country, because the
English are supposed to be full of money, rash, incautious, and utterly
ignorant of play. But such a sharper is most dangerous, when he hunts
in couple with a female. I have known a French count and his wife, who
found means to lay the most wary under contribution. He was smooth,
supple, officious, and attentive: she was young, handsome,
unprincipled, and artful. If the Englishman marked for prey was found
upon his guard against the designs of the husband, then madam plied him
on the side of gallantry. She displayed all the attractions of her
person. She sung, danced, ogled, sighed, complimented, and complained.
If he was insensible to all her charms, she flattered his vanity, and
piqued his pride, by extolling the wealth and generosity of the
English; and if he proved deaf to all these insinuations she, as her
last stake, endeavoured to interest his humanity and compassion. She
expatiated, with tears in her eyes, on the cruelty and indifference of
her great relations; represented that her husband was no more than the
cadet of a noble family--, that his provision was by no means suitable.
either to the dignity of his rank, or the generosity of his
disposition: that he had a law-suit of great consequence depending,
which had drained all his finances; and, finally, that they should be
both ruined, if they could not find some generous friend, who would
accommodate them with a sum of money to bring the cause to a
determination. Those who are not actuated by such scandalous motives,
become gamesters from meer habit, and, having nothing more solid to
engage their thoughts, or employ their time, consume the best part of
their lives, in this worst of all dissipation. I am not ignorant that
there are exceptions from this general rule: I know that France has
produced a Maintenon, a Sevigine, a Scuderi, a Dacier, and a Chatelet;
but I would no more deduce the general character of the French ladies
from these examples, than I would call a field of hemp a flower-garden.
because there might be in it a few lillies or renunculas planted by the
hand of accident.
Woman has been defined a weaker man; but in this country the men are,
in my opinion, more ridiculous and insignificant than the women. They
certainly are more disagreeable to a rational enquirer, because they
are more troublesome. Of all the coxcombs on the face of the earth, a
French petit maitre is the most impertinent: and they are all petit
maitres from the marquis who glitters in lace and embroidery, to the
garcon barbier covered with meal, who struts with his hair in a long
queue, and his hat under his arm. I have already observed, that vanity
is the great and universal mover among all ranks and degrees of people
in this nation; and as they take no pains to conceal or controul it,
they are hurried by it into the most ridiculous and indeed intolerable
extravagance.
When I talk of the French nation, I must again except a great number of
individuals, from the general censure. Though I have a hearty contempt
for the ignorance, folly, and presumption which characterise the
generality, I cannot but respect the talents of many great men, who
have eminently distinguished themselves in every art and science: these
I shall always revere and esteem as creatures of a superior species,
produced, for the wise purposes of providence, among the refuse of
mankind. It would be absurd to conclude that the Welch or Highlanders
are a gigantic people, because those mountains may have produced a few
individuals near seven feet high. It would be equally absurd to suppose
the French are a nation of philosophers, because France has given birth
to a Des Cartes, a Maupertuis, a Reaumur, and a Buffon.
I shall not even deny, that the French are by no means deficient in
natural capacity; but they are at the same time remarkable for a
natural levity, which hinders their youth from cultivating that
capacity. This is reinforced by the most preposterous education, and
the example of a giddy people, engaged in the most frivolous pursuits.
A Frenchman is by some Jesuit, or other monk, taught to read his mother
tongue, and to say his prayers in a language he does not understand. He
learns to dance and to fence, by the masters of those noble sciences.
He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his
own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de
chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is
altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished
above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the
fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is
indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the
whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases
ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately
to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of
address, which is here distinguished by the name of gallantry: it is no
more than his making love to every woman who will give him the hearing.
It is an exercise, by the repetition of which he becomes very pert,
very familiar, and very impertinent. Modesty, or diffidence, I have
already said, is utterly unknown among them, and therefore I wonder
there should be a term to express it in their language.
If I was obliged to define politeness, I should call it, the art of
making one's self agreeable. I think it an art that necessarily implies
a sense of decorum, and a delicacy of sentiment. These are qualities,
of which (as far as I have been able to observe) a Frenchman has no
idea; therefore he never can be deemed polite, except by those persons
among whom they are as little understood. His first aim is to adorn his
own person with what he calls fine cloaths, that is the frippery of the
fashion. It is no wonder that the heart of a female, unimproved by
reason, and untinctured with natural good sense, should flutter at the
sight of such a gaudy thing, among the number of her admirers: this
impression is enforced by fustian compliments, which her own vanity
interprets in a literal sense, and still more confirmed by the
assiduous attention of the gallant, who, indeed, has nothing else to
mind. A Frenchman in consequence of his mingling with the females from
his infancy, not only becomes acquainted with all their customs and
humours; but grows wonderfully alert in performing a thousand little
offices, which are overlooked by other men, whose time hath been spent
in making more valuable acquisitions. He enters, without ceremony, a
lady's bed-chamber, while she is in bed, reaches her whatever she
wants, airs her shift, and helps to put it on. He attends at her
toilette, regulates the distribution of her patches, and advises where
to lay on the paint. If he visits her when she is dressed, and
perceives the least impropriety in her coeffure, he insists upon
adjusting it with his own hands: if he sees a curl, or even a single
hair amiss, he produces his comb, his scissars, and pomatum, and sets
it to rights with the dexterity of a professed friseur. He 'squires her
to every place she visits, either on business, or pleasure; and, by
dedicating his whole time to her, renders himself necessary to her
occasions. This I take to be the most agreeable side of his character:
let us view him on the quarter of impertinence. A Frenchman pries into
all your secrets with the most impudent and importunate curiosity, and
then discloses them without remorse. If you are indisposed, he
questions you about the symptoms of your disorder, with more freedom
than your physician would presume to use; very often in the grossest
terms. He then proposes his remedy (for they are all quacks), he
prepares it without your knowledge, and worries you with solicitation
to take it, without paying the least regard to the opinion of those
whom you have chosen to take care of your health. Let you be ever so
ill, or averse to company, he forces himself at all times into your
bed-chamber, and if it is necessary to give him a peremptory refusal,
he is affronted. I have known one of those petit maitres insist upon
paying regular visits twice a day to a poor gentleman who was
delirious; and he conversed with him on different subjects, till he was
in his last agonies. This attendance is not the effect of attachment,
or regard, but of sheer vanity, that he may afterwards boast of his
charity and humane disposition: though, of all the people I have ever
known, I think the French are the least capable of feeling for the
distresses of their fellow creatures. Their hearts are not susceptible
of deep impressions; and, such is their levity, that the imagination
has not time to brood long over any disagreeable idea, or sensation. As
a Frenchman piques himself on his gallantry, he no sooner makes a
conquest of a female's heart, than he exposes her character, for the
gratification of his vanity. Nay, if he should miscarry in his schemes,
he will forge letters and stories, to the ruin of the lady's
reputation. This is a species of perfidy which one would think should
render them odious and detestable to the whole sex; but the case is
otherwise. I beg your pardon, Madam; but women are never better
pleased, than when they see one another exposed; and every individual
has such confidence in her own superior charms and discretion, that she
thinks she can fix the most volatile, and reform the most treacherous
lover.
If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished by
repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return he makes
for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is handsome;
if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he suffers a repulse
from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your
daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with
his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one,
but in one shape or another, he will find means to ruin the peace of a
family, in which he has been so kindly entertained. What he cannot
accomplish by dint of compliment, and personal attendance, he will
endeavour to effect, by reinforcing these with billets-doux, songs, and
verses, of which he always makes a provision for such purposes. If he
is detected in these efforts of treachery, and reproached with his
ingratitude, he impudently declares, that what he had done was no more
than simple gallantry, considered in France as an indispensible duty on
every man who pretended to good breeding. Nay, he will even affirm,
that his endeavours to corrupt your wife, or your daughter, were the
most genuine proofs he could give of his particular regard for your
family.
If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly be the
most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man of a true
English character, You know, Madam, we are naturally taciturn, soon
tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of disgust. Your French
friend intrudes upon you at all hours: he stuns you with his loquacity:
he teases you with impertinent questions about your domestic and
private affairs: he attempts to meddle in all your concerns; and forces
his advice upon you with the most unwearied importunity: he asks the
price of every thing you wear, and, so sure as you tell him undervalues
it, without hesitation: he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill-contrived,
ill-made; that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the
fashion and the price; that the marquise of this, or the countess of
that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton, and yet
it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that nobody would
wear.
If there were five hundred dishes at table, a Frenchman will eat of all
of them, and then complain he has no appetite. This I have several
times remarked. A friend of mine gained a considerable wager upon an
experiment of this kind: the petit maitre ate of fourteen different
plats, besides the dessert; then disparaged the cook, declaring he was
no better than a marmiton, or turnspit.
The French have the most ridiculous fondness for their hair, and this I
believe they inherit from their remote ancestors. The first race of
French kings were distinguished by their long hair, and certainly the
people of this country consider it as an indispensible ornament. A
Frenchman will sooner part with his religion than with his hair, which,
indeed, no consideration will induce him to forego. I know a gentleman
afflicted with a continual head-ach, and a defluxion on his eyes, who
was told by his physician that the best chance he had for being cured,
would be to have his head close shaved, and bathed every day in cold
water. "How (cried he) cut my hair? Mr. Doctor, your most humble
servant!" He dismissed his physician, lost his eye-sight, and almost
his senses, and is now led about with his hair in a bag, and a piece of
green silk hanging like a screen before his face. Count Saxe, and other
military writers have demonstrated the absurdity of a soldier's wearing
a long head of hair; nevertheless, every soldier in this country wears
a long queue, which makes a delicate mark on his white cloathing; and
this ridiculous foppery has descended even to the lowest class of
people. The decrotteur, who cleans your shoes at the corner of the Pont
Neuf, has a tail of this kind hanging down to his rump, and even the
peasant who drives an ass loaded with dung, wears his hair en queue,
though, perhaps, he has neither shirt nor breeches. This is the
ornament upon which he bestows much time and pains, and in the
exhibition of which he finds full gratification for his vanity.
Considering the harsh features of the common people in this country,
their diminutive stature, their grimaces, and that long appendage, they
have no small resemblance to large baboons walking upright; and perhaps
this similitude has helped to entail upon them the ridicule of their
neighbours.
A French friend tires out your patience with long visits; and, far from
taking the most palpable hints to withdraw, when he perceives you
uneasy he observes you are low-spirited, and therefore he will keep you
company. This perseverance shews that he must either be void of
penetration, or that his disposition must be truly diabolical. Rather
than be tormented with such a fiend, a man had better turn him out of
doors, even though at the hazard of being run thro' the body.
The French are generally counted insincere, and taxed with want of
generosity. But I think these reproaches are not well founded.
High-flown professions of friendship and attachment constitute the
language of common compliment in this country, and are never supposed
to be understood in the literal acceptation of the words; and, if their
acts of generosity are but very rare, we ought to ascribe that rarity,
not so much to a deficiency of generous sentiments, as to their vanity
and ostentation, which engrossing all their funds, utterly disable them
from exerting the virtues of beneficence. Vanity, indeed, predominates
among all ranks, to such a degree, that they are the greatest egotists
in the world; and the most insignificant individual talks in company
with the same conceit and arrogance, as a person of the greatest
importance. Neither conscious poverty nor disgrace will restrain him in
the least either from assuming his full share of the conversation, or
making big addresses to the finest lady, whom he has the smallest
opportunity to approach: nor is he restrained by any other
consideration whatsoever. It is all one to him whether he himself has a
wife of his own, or the lady a husband; whether she is designed for the
cloister, or pre-ingaged to his best friend and benefactor. He takes it
for granted that his addresses cannot but be acceptable; and, if he
meets with a repulse, he condemns her taste; but never doubts his own
qualifications.
I have a great many things to say of their military character, and
their punctilios of honour, which last are equally absurd and
pernicious; but as this letter has run to an unconscionable length, I
shall defer them till another opportunity. Mean-while, I have the
honour to be, with very particular esteem--Madam, Your most obedient
servant.