Presents—The Emperor—Anecdote—The Abbé in London—A vert—Singing
girl—English bird—Model—Old friend—The Turks—Guzzling—The friture.
As they walked past the building where this travelled ship was shewn,
many of the visitors seemed each to be reading a paper in his hands,
while some have a gilt-edged book, and others a broadsheet with a large
woodcut on it.
These people have come past that other building, which seems to be all
windows; and let us stop there a few minutes to see why the groups crowd
round, and reach out their hands, and go away reading.
If you heard that it is “only some tracts” being given away, and then
turned away yourself, you have lost a wonderful sight: one that, well
pondered upon, has wide suggestions to the mind that thinks; and a sight
that, of its kind, was quite unexampled at any time and anywhere. Inside
this building, and another near it, were hundreds of thousands of Bibles,
Testaments, periodicals, papers, picture books and tracts, beautifully
printed in the languages of visitors from distant lands, and mostly given
free to those who will receive them.
Even in England, at none of our Exhibitions or any other place, had such
a proceeding been permitted, doubtless from prudential reasons,—the fear
of “giving offence” or exciting disturbance; so that it had been left to
France, at a time when pleasure seemed the chief and only object of all,
to brave these supposed dangers, and, despite all scruples, to give
utmost freedom to the distribution of God’s Word and of man’s comments
upon it. The example was not without fruit; at each subsequent Grand
Exhibition, and even under the Republic in 1878, the Book of Law and
Gospel has been freely given in the frivolous capital of France.
The fact is, if you mean to get at all the people, you cannot find them
in the same place or reach them by the same road, or treat them in the
same way; and all the people must be got at somehow.
As fast as they could give these books and papers out of the windows,
several persons were delivering them into the open hands of the people,
and when a window became vacant, and there was need of some one to help,
the post was filled by the crew of the yawl.
We intended to stay only a short time, but six hours often passed before
the interesting work could be left; I can never forget those hours, and
the subsequent occasions of the same sort.
Every variety of person came quickly before us, of nationality, of
manner, of dress, of language, and of bearing, as each drew near, took a
paper, read a few lines, thanked the donor, and then went off reading as
they walked, or with reflecting gaze, or simply astonished.
Hundreds of soldiers came to the window, sometimes a dozen of them at
once, and these all asked for their ‘Empereur.’ This meant the special
copy of the well-known periodical ‘British Workman,’ which was translated
into French, and had a very large and well-done woodcut of Napoleon III.
on its broad first page. The generosity of some good men supplied funds
to give one of these Emperor papers to every soldier, policeman, and
public employé; and much additional interest was attached to the paper
because it was actually printed before their eyes at a press in the
centre of the building, and because the press itself had borne off a gold
medal for excellence of workmanship. {110}
Priests came often, and even returned to get tracts for their villages in
distant parts of France. Germans asked for papers in “Allemand,” and
numerous Italians and Spaniards asked for them in their languages. Two
Russians came, but we had then no books in Russ; and at length four grave
Mussulmen stood before me in turbans and flowing robes, with a suppliant
but dignified air, while their interpreter said they wanted to buy a
“dictionary to learn English from.” Now they will easily get these
dictionaries in the “Beaconsfield Library” of Cyprus.
Although in frequent tours in foreign lands we had been accustomed to see
minglings of the people from many nations, the sight at this window was
more varied in the components of the constant flowing stream of human
beings for hours and hours than we ever saw before.
Some years ago, travelling in Algeria with an Arab guide, I put up for
the night at an old semaphore station, where was a French soldier in
charge. It was far from any houses, and on a high hill, and he had a
visit only every fortnight from his friends, who brought him provisions
on mules’ backs. He willingly let me in, and spread a mattress for me on
the floor alongside his own. The Arab he kept outside, and the poor
fellow had to sleep coiled up on the doorstep.
The Frenchman was courteous and intelligent; but he had only one thing to
read for many weeks, a vapid French novel. He said he would willingly
read something better if he had it. At the next French town I searched
for some better book, and this caused me to find the agent of the Bible
Society, and so a parcel of books, religious and secular, were sent off
to the telegraph station; but my attention once drawn to the French
soldiers and their reading, it was impossible not to follow a subject so
interesting and important. The regiment quartered in the town had but a
few Testaments. {112} By a little exertion about a hundred copies were
obtained and distributed. I saw the men reading these in the streets for
hours under the trees, and I sailed in a man-of-war carrying the regiment
to Mexico. Not one in five of these men survived that fearful campaign.
Priestly opposition to this giving of Testaments resulted in an appeal to
the General in command. He asked the priests if the book was a “bad
one,” and when it was not possible to say “yes,” he gave the book free
course. Inquiry was excited by this opposition, and 1500 Testaments were
received.
There was a remarkable contrast between the absence of public efforts by
French Romanists to disseminate their opinions at the Exhibition and the
unusual freedom for others, sanctioned by the late Archbishop of Paris.
Various causes were at work to produce this very unexpected state of
things, and they will not be alluded to here. But the points thus
noticed remind one forcibly of what actually occurred in 1851, when the
then Archbishop of Paris specially appointed the Abbé Miel, a learned and
able man, to go to London and to do his best to further Romanism here
during the Exhibition.
One of his first acts was to issue two small tracts on the supremacy of
the Pope and of St. Peter; and some hundred thousand of these,
beautifully printed, were distributed in London. A copy came to the
hands of a clever layman, well skilled in the Romish controversy; and he
saw immediately that this little tract, if not well answered, might do
much harm.
After careful study of the subject, he wrote to the Abbé, calling
attention to several important misquotations in the tract, which were
evident when it was compared with original documents in the British
Museum. The Abbé replied, that he was not responsible for the accuracy
of the extracts, but that they had been given to him by the late Cardinal
Wiseman.
The Protestant layman then wrote a series of letters in a well-known
English newspaper, _Bell’s Weekly Messenger_, upon the subject treated in
the tract, and for the time the matter dropped. Years afterwards he
received a letter from the Abbé, stating that these newspaper articles
had convinced him of the need of inquiry into the subject, and he went to
Rome to consult his former instructors. Finally, this Abbé, selected as
the champion of Rome by the Archbishop of Paris, and convinced by the
arguments adduced by a layman in London, renounced the Romish church, and
though offered promotion for his past services, he came to London and
went straight to the house of the layman, whom he had not yet seen.
Often have I walked with that clever Abbé, riveted by his deeply
interesting conversation, his new and fresh views of English life, his
forcible exposures of those false estimates of Protestant truth which had
for so many years blinded him, and his explanations of the machinery then
in action at the Oratory, near the Strand.
But his former allies could not brook the desertion of so formidable a
champion, and he was driven by their continual annoyance to seek another
home. So he went to Ireland, and soon became the best teacher of the
French language in Dublin, from whence he removed to America. Let us
hope that there, at least, he is free to profess the truth he had found,
and to be one of the instances—very rare indeed they are—of a consistent
and steady Protestant, who had for years before been thoroughly imbued
with those doctrines which gnaw at the very vitals of mental perception,
and obliterate the sense of fairness, and which very seldom leave enough
alive in the mind to hold even real truth firmly.
It will not be breaking the promise that our visit to the exhibition is
not to involve us in a description of all its wonders, if we walk
up-stairs and look into the Tunisian Café, attracted by the well-known
drumming and the moaning dirge which Easterns call music. Tunis is best
seen out of Tunis, for the broidered gold and bright-coloured slippers
can then be enjoyed without those horrible scenes of filth—dead camels,
open sewers, and maimed beggars which encase the shabby mud walls I have
seen so near the marble ruins of old Carthage.
The café was full of visitors. English and Americans were admiring a
pretty singing girl about fifteen years of age, who was beautifully
dressed, and sitting with four very demure and ugly Orientals in the
little orchestra.
Soon she rose and sang a song. Black eyes, blackest of hair, pale
cheeks, languid grace. She is a fair daughter from the rising sun.
“Yes, there is certainly something in their Eastern beauty which is quite
beyond what Britons or Yankees see at home!”
But the words and music of the song seemed known to me. Surely she is
now singing English while she shakes the golden sequins in her long jet
hair and rattles her tambourine? We asked a waiter, and he said she
could sing Turkish, Spanish, French, and English. At last being
persuaded that her pronunciation of English was too distinct for a
foreigner, we took the very bold measure of going up to the orchestra,
and saying to the young lady, “You are English, are you not?” She
stared, and held down her face, which still was pale, even if she blushed
and answered “Yes, sir.” “Are you here alone?—no relation, no woman
friend with you?” “Yes.” “And do they treat you well?” “Yes.” “From
what part of England?” “From ---shire.”
I said she seemed to mean the words of the song she had sung,
‘I wish I were a bird, and I would flee away.’
and I asked if she could read, and would like a nice book. “Oh yes, I
should, and very much.” Now there was a stall set up in the Exhibition
by “The Pure Literature Society,” from 11, Buckingham Street, Adelphi,
London, which selects about three thousand books from various publishers,
but publishes none itself; gets no profits on its sales except thanks and
satisfaction; so that its catalogue is likely to contain what it may wish
should be read. {117} Here we selected a very interesting volume with
many illustrations, suitable for the girl’s reading; and soon at the café
again, I bowed to the senior fiddler, who nodded assent, and then the
poor pale lonely girl had the pleasant book as a remembrance of home
placed in her hands, and a promise given her that a good Christian lady
would call that evening.
So perhaps our catalogue of nationalities at the Exhibition ought to be
somewhat abridged, and not wholly founded upon the variety it presents to
the eye; especially as in London, too, we may remember Punch’s
crossing-sweeper, who, being dressed in Hindoo garb, begged from a
passer-by with, “Take pity on the poor Irishman—Injun, I mane.”
On the Sunday the little dingey had its usual cargo, and the bargemen on
the Seine, in the heart of Paris, were just as glad as others elsewhere
to get something to read.
Among the curiosities exhibited in the English Naval Architecture
building here was a very beautiful model of the Rob Roy canoe, presented
to its owner by the builders, Messrs. Searle, who have already built some
hundreds of such canoes on the principles first applied in that above
mentioned; and to me it was even more gratifying to find in the Admiralty
Barge, the Rob Roy canoe itself, with sails set and the flag of the Royal
Canoe Club flying, and with maps of the paddling voyages through Europe.
Very speedily I launched my old travelling companion, and had a paddle up
the river by moonlight, and it was surprising to find that scarcely any
water leaked in, though the other boats which were hung up in the barge
were found to be a good deal injured by the strong draught of wind
rushing through the arch of the bridge, and then under the open sides of
the shed, covered only by a roof. But then those other boats were new,
and perhaps some were not built of such well-seasoned wood {119} as
Messrs. Searle employ beyond all other boat-builders I know; whereas the
weatherbeaten Rob Roy had been too long inured to wet and dry, sun and
wind, heat and cold, to be affected with the rheumatism and ague which
shook even the man-of-war’s boats on the barge.
The sketch (see next page), represents a man watering a horse, and who
swum it out to my boat to get a paper, and then carefully placed the gift
in a dry place ashore until he should be able to use it when he was
dressed again.
My life at the Exhibition soon settled into a somewhat regular one.
Seeing, seeing, seeing all day, and then returning to my quiet bed on the
river at night, with a ‘Times’ newspaper to study, and books and letters.
It was a variety to launch the dingey, and scull along the quays and
visit the other yachts, all of them most hospitable to the Rob Roy. I
ventured even to go alongside the Turkish vessel, the _Dahabeeh_, from
the Nile, full of specimen “fellahs,” all hidden by a curtain of grey
calico, except to those who had paid their franc for general entrance.
We never observed any visitor actually on board this vessel; indeed, it
required a bold inquirer to face those solemn Africans’ gaze, as they sat
cross-legged on deck, and ate their soup from a universal bowl, or calmly
inspired from their chibouques, and blew out a formal and composed puff
of the bluest tobacco-smoke. It did, indeed, soon forcibly recall the
feelings of Egyptian travel to see these men;—the red fiery sunsets, the
palm-trees, and crocodiles, and obelisks, and Indian corn, and, over all,
the thrumming, not unmusical sound of the _tarabookrah_—earthen drum—with
the wailing melodies in a minor key of the “Chaldæans whose cry is in the
ships.” {121}
[Picture: Sunday ride]
So I ventured near in my dingey, and the imperturbable Egyptians were
fairly taken by surprise. They soon rallied to a word or two in their
language and an Englishman’s smile, and rapidly we became friends, and
talked of Damascus and Constantinople, and finally decided that
“Englishman bono!” The shape and minute dimensions of my dingey much
astonished them; but they probably believed, that in that very craft I
had come all the way from London.
The luxury of Paris must have at least some effect in making _gourmands_
of the young generation, even if their fathers did not set the example.
The operation, or rather the solemn function, of breakfast or dinner, is
with many Frenchmen the only serious act in life. When people can afford
to order a dinner in exact accordance with the lofty standard of
excellence meant by its being “good,” the diner approaches the great
proceeding with a staid and watchful air, and we may well leave him now
he is involved in such important service. But with the _octroi_ duty for
even a single pheasant at two shillings and sixpence, there are many good
feeders who cannot afford to “dine well,” and the fuss they make about
their eatables is something preposterous. It is a vice—this systematic
gluttony—that seems to be steadily increasing in France for the last
twenty years, at least in its public manifestation, and moreover it is an
evil somewhat contagious.
One evening, while some of us had dinner at the Terrasse in St. Cloud, a
family entered the room, and were partly disrobing themselves of bonnets
and hats for a regular downright dinner, when the waiter came, and in
reply to the order of a “_friture_” he calmly said they had none.
At this awful news the whole party were struck dumb and pale, and they
leant back on their chairs as if in a swoon. The poor waiter prudently
retreated for reinforcements, and the landlady herself came in to face
the infuriate guests.
“No friture!” said the father. “No friture, and we come to St. Cloud?”
he muttered deeply in rage. His wife proceeded to make horribly wry
faces, whereat Rob Roy irreverently laughed, but he was not observed, for
they noticed nothing of the external trifling world. The daughters
heaved deep sighs, and then burst into voluble and loud denunciations.
Then the son (who wanted dinner at any rate, and the objurgations might
do afterwards) proposed at once to leave the desolate, famine-stricken
spot.
But though this was debated warmly, it was not carried. They had already
anchored, as it were, and they resolved to dine “starving,” and to
grumble all the time of dinner when no one subject was talked about
except the _friture_. It was a miserable spectacle to witness, but
confirming the proposition, not at all new, that the French care more
about eating than even John Bull.