and I feel well-inclined to respect the peaceful tenor of a life, which
likes not to be broken in upon, for the sake of obtaining riches, which
when gotten must end only in the pleasure of counting them. A Frenchman
who should make his fortune by trade tomorrow, would be no nearer
advancement in society or situation: why then should he solicit, by arts
he is too lazy to delight in the practice of, that opulence which would
afford so slight an improvement to his comforts? He lives as well as he
wishes already; he goes to the Boulevards every night, treats his wife
with a glass of lemonade or ice, and holds up his babies by turns, to
hear the jokes of _Jean Pottage_. Were he to recommend his goods, like
the Londoner, with studied eloquence and attentive flattery, he could
not hope like him that the eloquence he now bestows on the decorations
of a hat, or the varnish of an equipage, may one day serve to torment a
minister, and obtain a post of honour for his son; he could not hope
that on some future day his flattery might be listened to by some lady
of more birth than beauty, or riches perhaps, when happily employed upon
a very different subject, and be the means of lifting himself into a
state of distinction, his children too into public notoriety.
Emulation, ambition, avarice, however, must in all arbitrary governments
be confined to the great; the _other_ set of mortals, for there are none
there of _middling_ rank, live, as it should seem, like eunuchs in a
seraglio; feel themselves irrevocably doomed to promote the pleasure of
their superiors, nor ever dream of sighing for enjoyments from which an
irremeable boundary divides them. They see at the beginning of their
lives how that life must necessarily end, and trot with a quiet,
contented, and unaltered pace down their long, straight, and shaded
avenue; while we, with anxious solicitude, and restless hurry, watch the
quick turnings of our serpentine walk; which still presents, either to
sight or expectation, some changes of variety in the ever-shifting
prospect, till the unthought-of, unexpected end comes suddenly upon us,
and finishes at once the fluctuating scene. Reflections must now give
way to facts for a moment, though few English people want to be told
that every hotel here, belonging to people of condition, is shut out
from the street like our Burlington-house, which gives a general gloom
to the look of this city so famed for its gaiety: the streets are narrow
too, and ill-paved; and very noisy, from the echo made by stone
buildings drawn up to a prodigious height, many of the houses having
seven, and some of them even eight stories from the bottom. The
contradictions one meets with every moment likewise strike even a
cursory observer--a countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with
diamonds too perhaps, a dirty black handkerchief about her neck, and a
flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a _femme publique_,
dressed avowedly for the purposes of alluring the men, with not a very
small crucifix hanging at her bosom;--and the Virgin Mary's sign at an
alehouse door, with these words,
Je suis la mere de mon Dieu,
Et la gardienne de ce lieu[C].
[Footnote C:
The mother of my God am I,
And keep this house right carefully.
]
I have, however, borrowed Bocage's Remarks upon the English nation,
which serve to damp my spirit of criticism exceedingly: She had more
opportunities than I for observation, not less quickness of discernment
surely; and her stay in London was longer than mine in Paris.--Yet, how
was she deceived in many points!
I will tell nothing that I did not _see_; and among the objects one
would certainly avoid seeing if it were possible, is the deformity of
the poor.--Such various modes of warping the human figure could hardly
be observed in England by a surgeon in high practice, as meet me about
this country incessantly.--I have seen them in the galleries and
outer-courts even of the palace itself, and am glad to turn my eyes for
relief on the Duke of Orleans's pictures; a glorious collection! The
Italian noblemen, in whose company we saw it, acknowledged with candour
the good taste of the selection; and I was glad to see again what had
delighted me so many years before: particularly, the three Marys, by
Annibale Caracci; and Rubens's odd conceit of making Juno's Peacock peck
Paris's leg, for having refused the apple to his mistress.
The manufacture at the Gobelins seems exceedingly improved; the
colouring less inharmonious, the drawing more correct; but our Parisians
are not just now thinking about such matters; they are all wild for love
of a new comedy, written by Mons. de Beaumarchais, and called, "Le
Mariage de Figaro," full of such wit as we were fond of in the reign of
Charles the Second, indecent merriment, and gross immorality; mixed,
however, with much acrimonious satire, as if Sir George Etherege and
Johnny Gay had clubbed their powers of ingenuity at once to divert and
to corrupt their auditors; who now carry the verses of this favourite
piece upon their fans, pocket-handkerchiefs, &c. as our women once did
those of the Beggar's Opera.
We have enjoyed some very agreeable society here in the company of Comte
Turconi, a Milanese Nobleman who, desirous to escape all the frivolous,
and petty distinction which birth alone bestows, has long fixed his
residence in Paris, where talents find their influence, and where a
great city affords that unobserved freedom of thought and action which
can scarcely be expected by a man of high rank in a smaller circle; but
which, when once tasted, will not seldom be preferred to the attentive
watchfulness of more confined society.
The famous Venetian too, who has written so many successful comedies,
and is now employed upon his own Memoirs, at the age of eighty-four,
was a delightful addition to our Coterie, _Goldoni_. He is garrulous,
good-humoured, and gay; resembling the late James Harris of Salisbury in
person not manner, and seems justly esteemed, and highly, by his
countrymen.
The conversation of the Marquis Trotti and the Abate Bucchetti is
likewise particularly pleasing; especially to me, who am naturally
desirous to live as much as possible among Italians of general
knowledge, good taste, and polished manners, before I enter their
country, where the language will be so very indispensable. Mean time I
have stolen a day to visit my old acquaintance the English Austin Nuns
at the Fossée, and found the whole community alive and cheerful; they
are many of them agreeable women, and having seen Dr. Johnson with me
when I was last abroad, enquired much for him: Mrs. Fermor, the
Prioress, niece to Belinda in the Rape of the Lock, taking occasion to
tell me, comically enough, "That she believed there was but little
comfort to be found in a house that harboured _poets_; for that she
remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome and
conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten
servants to wait on him; and he gave one" (said she) "no amends by his
talk neither, for he only sate dozing all day, when the sweet wine was
out, and made his verses chiefly in the night; during which season he
kept himself awake by drinking coffee, which it was one of the maids
business to make for him, and they took it by turns."
These ladies really live here as comfortably for aught I see as peace,
quietness, and the certainty of a good dinner every day can make them.
Just so much happier than as many old maids who inhabit Milman Street
and Chapel Row, as they are sure not to be robbed by a treacherous, or
insulted by a favoured, servant in the decline of life, when protection
is grown hopeless and resistance vain; and as they enjoy at least a
moral certainty of never living worse than they do to-day: while the
little knot of unmarried females turned fifty round Red Lion Square
_may_ always be ruined by a runaway agent, a bankrupted banker, or a
roguish steward; and even the petty pleasures of six-penny quadrille may
become by that misfortune too costly for their income.--_Aureste_, as
the French say, the difference is small: both coteries sit separate in
the morning, go to prayers at noon, and read the chapters for the day:
change their neat dress, eat their little dinner, and play at small
games for small sums in the evening; when recollection tires, and chat
runs low.
But more adventurous characters claim my present attention. All Paris I
think, myself among the rest, assembled to see the valiant brothers,
Robert and Charles, mount yesterday into the air, in company with a
certain Pilâtre de Rosier, who conducted them in the new-invented flying
chariot fastened to an air-balloon. It was from the middle of the
Tuilleries that they set out, a place very favourable and well-contrived
for such public purposes. But all was so nicely managed, so cleverly
carried on somehow, that the order and decorum of us who remained on
firm ground, struck me more than even the very strange sight of human
creatures floating in the wind: but I have really been witness to ten
times as much bustle and confusion at a crowded theatre in London, than
what these peaceable Parisians made when the whole city was gathered
together. Nobody was hurt, nobody was frighted, nobody could even
pretend to feel themselves incommoded. Such are among the few comforts
that result from a despotic government.
My republican spirit, however, boiled up a little last Monday, when I
had to petition Mons. de Calonne for the restoration of some trifles
detained in the custom-house at Calais. His politeness, indeed, and the
sight of others performing like acts of humiliation, reconciled me in
some measure to the drudgery of running from subaltern to subaltern,
intreating, in pathetic terms, the remission of a law which is at last
either just or unjust; if just, no felicitation should, methinks, be
permitted to change it; if unjust, what can be so grating as the
obligation to solicit?
We mean to quit Paris to-morrow; I therefore enquired this evening, what
was become of our aërial travellers. A very grave man replied, "_Je
crois, Madame, qu'ils sont dejá arrivès ces Messieurs là, au lieu ou
les vents se forment_[D]."
[Footnote D: I fancy, Ma'am, the gentlemen are gone to see the place
where all the winds blow from.]