Louis-Philippe just before the introduction of railways; and good
roads, as Mr Hamerton justly observes, are 'one of the very greatest
blessings of a civilised country.' In looking out for and choosing
his house he had thought very little of the society in which his lot
might be cast, and yet he did not intend to live like a hermit; he
was ready to make friends, but it must be in his own way. In England,
when a stranger settles in a neighbourhood, the families around call
upon him; but in France it is quite the reverse. There a new-comer
must push his own way, and card in hand, call upon every one with whom
he would like to become acquainted; and blowing his own trumpet as
judiciously as he can, endeavour to impress them with the desirability
of his acquaintance. This Mr Hamerton refused to do; and finally his
neighbours, becoming convinced of his respectability, called upon him
in the English fashion, and he had as much society as he desired. He
found, however, that he had in a sense fallen upon evil times; the
easy old-fashioned hospitality of the good country folks around him
was beginning to decline, stifled by the demon of the state dinner,
which some ambitious wretch had had the inhumanity to introduce from
Paris; and which, with its many courses, expensive wines, and grandes
toilettes, threatened to annihilate the enjoyable family meal, at
which the only difference made for a guest was the addition of a few
flowers, sweets, and candles. The society 'round my house' was not
distinguished for intellectual culture, although there were a few
brilliant exceptions to the general dullness of the small squires of
the neighbourhood. One or two, he found, had studied painting in Paris
under Delacroix; another was an enthusiastic ornithologist; another
was an excellent botanist and entomologist; and there were one or two
antiquaries; and a really first-rate musician, who was so modest, that
when he wished to practise, he always locked himself and his violin
into a cellar.
The ladies he found decidedly behind the gentlemen in point of culture
and attainments. They invariably belonged to one of two classes--the
women of the world, and the women who preferred domesticity and
home. The latter were most respectable individuals, deeply read in
cookery-books, and _au fait_ in every housekeeping detail, but not
interesting as companions. Nor were their more ambitious rivals greatly
preferable to them in this respect; they were dressy, and had plenty
of small-talk, but their conversation was confined to the gossip of
the neighbourhood, or the latest things in the ever-changing Paris
fashions. It is to this cause that Mr Hamerton assigns that separation
of the sexes which most travellers have remarked as characteristic of
French society. There is nothing else to account for it; the English
custom of leaving the gentlemen alone over their wine after dinner is
unknown; but still in most provincial salons it will be found that the
men collect into one corner, and the women into another, and there
discuss undisturbed the separate questions which interest them.
We are accustomed to consider the aristocratic feeling as much stronger
with us than in France; but this Mr Hamerton found was a great mistake.
Around his house, the caste feeling in all its genuine feudal intensity
was peculiarly strong. Without the all-important _de_ prefixed to
a man's surname he was a _roturier_, an ignoble wretch, a creature
sent into the world only to be snubbed. The social value of these two
letters is incalculable, and as a matter of course, they are often
fraudulently assumed by the vulgar rich; nor does it, curiously enough,
when the transition is once accomplished, seem to make much difference
whether the coveted prefix is real or borrowed. A false title steadily
kept up for a series of years is found to answer quite as well as a
true one; and while a constant manufacture of this _pseudo_-nobility
is going on, there is side by side with it a continual process of
degradation, by which the true nobles lose their nobility. They
become poor; the necessity of earning their bread by manual labour
is forced upon them; they drop the _de_, or if they try to cling to
it, their neighbours drop it for them, and in the crucible of poverty
the transmutation soon becomes complete: the gold is changed by the
roughness of daily toil into simple clay. The _de_, which is not to be
sneezed at, at any time of life, becomes supremely important to the
Frenchman when he is about to marry; then, without any trouble on his
part, merely by getting a friend to act as his ambassador, it may, and
often does procure for him the hand of a rich heiress.
Sometimes people are ennobled in spite of themselves, as when Mr
Hamerton, much to his own annoyance, had the title of 'My Lord'
bestowed upon him by his French neighbours. It was in vain that he
protested against it; he was shewn the title duly registered in an
official book at the prefecture; and half-angry, half-amused, he at
last accepted his fate, and settled tranquilly down into the dignity of
the peerage.
From the noble of the earth, who may be, and sometimes are very poor
indeed, one glides by a natural transition into a consideration of the
very wealthy. These do not abound in France. As a rule, it is difficult
to find a Crœsus; but gentlemen with comfortable incomes, which,
with careful management, may be made to procure all the luxuries of
life, are very common. The law of the division of property militates
against either very large estates or very large incomes, and has
made great nobles, such as were common in the days of Louis XIV., an
impossibility. The great castles built by these men still exist, and
are out of all keeping with the establishments maintained in them. It
is not unusual to find a stable with stalls for forty horses, and in
a corner the family stud of four unobtrusively munching their oats;
while in the great house beyond, the proprietor lives quietly with two
or three servants in a tower or wing of his ancestral palace, often
thinking very little of himself at all, and a great deal of those who
are to come after him, and pinching and saving, that the old place may
not require to be sold.
No one is ashamed of saving; thrift is the rule in France; and Mr
Samuel Smiles himself cannot have a more genuine admiration of it
than the French middle classes have. They are economical to a fault,
and their thrifty habits form the great financial strength of their
country. A middle-class Frenchman almost invariably lives so as to
have something to his credit at the end of the year; if he is rich the
balance is large; if he is poor it is small; but, unless in exceptional
circumstances, it is always there. In the country the French rise
early; five in summer and seven in winter is the usual hour. Ladies in
the morning have generally a cup of coffee when they rise and a piece
of bread; but the majority of men eat nothing until breakfast, which
is the great meal of the day. There is always at breakfast one or two
dishes of meat, vegetables, and dessert, and the beverage used is wine,
_vin ordinaire_. A Frenchman never tastes tea except when ill, and then
he regards it as a kind of medicine. In summer, white wine mixed with
seltzer-water is often used at breakfast; and after the meal, coffee
is drunk. Breakfast is usually served between ten and eleven in the
forenoon, and dinner at six in the evening. Unless when guests are
present, it is a much lighter meal than breakfast, and often consists
of an omelette and salad, or _soupe maigre_ and cold chicken.
In rural districts the usual hour for retiring at night is nine
o'clock; and after dinner it is not unusual to find some of the elderly
gentlemen so sleepy that they are almost incapable of conversation.
This drowsiness is caused by their open-air habits and the great amount
of exercise they take.
In the country, all the gentlemen shoot; the game consists of
partridges, rabbits, hares, snipe, woodcock, wolves, and wild
boars; the hunting of which last is by no means child's play. Few
country-gentlemen ride; they all of them drive a little, and are most
of them great walkers, thinking nothing of what we would count very
long distances, such as fifteen miles and back in a day.
Formerly, country-life in France had a certain charming rural rusticity
about it, which admitted of the utmost freedom in matters of dress and
housekeeping; but now, Mr Hamerton tells us, the old liberty to do
exactly as one pleased is disappearing, and fashion and a superficial
veneer of external polish are greatly increasing the cost of living,
without improving in any way the minds, manners, or constitutions of
the people.
On one most important point, however, the old freedom is still
maintained--no Frenchman burdens himself with more servants than are
absolutely necessary for the requirements of his household. Mr Hamerton
relates a case in point: he had an intimate friend in Paris, who went
out into the best society and received at his house the greatest people
in Europe, yet this man kept only three servants and had no carriage.
It is in this liberty to spend or not as you choose, in this freedom
from the tyranny of custom in the matter of expenditure, that the
cheapness of continental life lies. Added to this is the pre-eminently
practical tone of the French mind, which is always striving with
incessant activity to solve the problem, how to make the best of life.
As a means to this end, the French almost invariably get on comfortably
with their servants; and French servants, when frankly and familiarly
treated, and considered as human beings and not as mere machines,
generally make very good servants indeed; and the tenure of service,
which with us is not unfrequently a matter of months, often continues
unbroken in France until the servant is married or dies.
Such is life in the country. Life in a small French city is very
different in many respects. It is full of a lazy, purposeless
enjoyment, which is always ready with some trifling amusement to
fill up every vacant moment in the too abundant leisure of men, who
are either independent in fortune, or have professions yielding them
an easy maintenance without engrossing much of their time. To such
individuals the cafés and clubs of a small town, with their good eating
and drinking and sociable small-talk, form a realisation of contented
felicity beyond which they do not care to aspire, although it stifles
all that is noblest in their nature, and too often lays the foundation
of what we would call drinking habits.
The peasantry in France form a class, a world by themselves, full of
prejudices, devoid of culture, and very independent in their tone of
feeling. The French peasant is inconceivably ignorant, and yet very
intelligent; his manners are good, and he can talk well; but he can
neither read nor write, and his knowledge of geography is so small,
that he cannot comprehend what France is, much less any foreign
state. Freed from the grinding oppressions of the past, he is still
under bondage to the iron slavery of custom. Every other Frenchman
may dress as he chooses, but the peasant must always wear a blue
blouse, a brownish-gray cloak, and a hat of a peculiar shape. Custom
also prescribes to him the furniture of his house; he must have a
linen press, a clock and a bed, and these must be all of walnut wood.
Cookery, which is the national talent _par excellence_, does not exist
for him. In the morning he has soup, cheaply compounded of hot water,
in which float a few scraps of rusty bacon, a handful or two of peas,
and a few potatoes; and if there is not enough of soup to satisfy
his hunger, he finishes his meal with dry bread and cold water _ad
libitum_. At noon he dines on potatoes, followed (as an occasional
variety in his perennial diet) either with a pancake, a salad, or
clotted milk. He never tastes wine or meat except during hay-making and
harvest, when he has a little bit of salt pork, and a modest allowance
of wine with a liberal admixture of water. Among the peasantry, many of
the old superstitions are still prevalent.
Between husband and wife there is little love, but there is also little
wrangling or disputing, and they are mutually true and helpful each to
each. The children grow up in this cold home, under a rigid patriarchal
discipline, in which personal chastisement plays an important part,
and is continued even to mature age. In peasant as in town life,
however, the tendency is towards change; the children now are in course
of being educated; and the young men, although frugal still, are not
so parsimonious as their fathers were. They smoke, heedless of the
expense, a piece of extravagance which their stoic ancestors would have
most sternly denounced; and in the train of tobacco the common comforts
of life are slowly finding their way into the houses of the more
wealthy peasants.
No subject is more interesting to the English observer in France
than marriage, a subject, however, which has already been adverted
to in these columns.[3] We conclude this notice of Mr Hamerton's
interesting work by relating how he remained in the country during
the Franco-Prussian war, and how he shared to the full the anxiety
of his French neighbours, for he was constantly expecting that the
district around his house would be included in the circle of the
invasion, as eventually it was. First came Garibaldi and his army, a
very unwelcome sight to the bishop and clergy, to whom the Italian hero
seemed the very impersonation of evil. Then came the Prussians quite
suddenly and unexpectedly; and naturally Mr Hamerton has very lively
recollections of that day, which he spent in a garret of his house,
surrounded by a bevy of ladies, reconnoitring the enemy through a very
excellent telescope. Throughout the day he remained on the outlook,
and when evening fell he went out into the birchwood above his house
to bury a certain precious strong-box. When he had concealed his
treasure, he returned home in the twilight, watching in the distance,
as he descended from the wood, the red flashes of flame leaping from
the cannon's mouths, and illuminating with their dusky glow all the
surrounding scenery, and then--what does the reader think he did? Take
refuge in immediate flight? He did no such thing; he went to bed,
and had a comfortable night's sleep. The Prussians were still at the
distance of a few miles, and there the armistice stopped them; peace
soon followed; and the pleasant little house, which the Englishman had
beautified and made comfortable and home-like, escaped the devastation
which its occupation by a detachment of Uhlans would in all probability
have entailed.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Round my House; Notes on Rural Life in France._ By Philip Gilbert
Hamerton. London, Seeley.
[3] _Journal_, No. 578, January 23, 1875.
A CURATE'S HOLIDAY.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.--CHAPTER I.
Fifteen years ago I was a slim, tolerably good-looking young curate,
addicted to long coats and Roman collars, condemned by poverty
to celibacy, and supporting myself upon the liberal salary of
seventy pounds a year. I am now a Liverpool merchant in flourishing
circumstances, 'fat and forty,' with a wife, lots of children, and
religious views somewhat latitudinarian. 'What a change was there!' it
may well be exclaimed. And indeed, when I look back upon what I once
was, and compare my present with my past self, I can scarcely believe
I am the same man. I shall, therefore, conceal my name, in relating,
as I am about to do, certain occurrences accidentally connected with
my change of state, and substitute for that of each person and place
concerned in the little narrative, some fictitious appellation.
To commence then. I had been for three years curate of St Jude's
Church, Ollyhill, a populous agricultural district in Lancashire,
when one morning in Easter-week, as I was disrobing after an early
celebration, I fell upon the vestry floor in a dead-faint. The
sacristan, who fortunately was at hand to render assistance, after
accompanying me home, and observing that I was still weak and
indisposed, thought proper to convey intelligence of what had happened
to the vicar. The result was that in the course of the morning I
received a visit from that gentleman, the Rev. Fitz-Herbert Hastings.
He found me stretched upon the typical horse-hair-covered sofa of a
poor curate's lodgings, suffering from a severe nervous headache,
and to judge from his exclamation of concern, looking, as I felt,
really ill. Taking a seat by my side, he condoled with me very kindly,
expressed his opinion that I had been overworking myself; and went on
to prove the sincerity of his sympathy by offering me a fortnight's
holiday, with the very requisite addition of a cheque for expenses.
Most gladly did I hail his proposition, affording me as it did an
opportunity for which I had just been longing, of getting away for a
time from Ollyhill. But neither my desire for change of scene, nor my
illness, arose from the cause to which the vicar attributed them. It
was true that I had of late, during Lent, been working very hard, as
also had Mr Hastings himself.
But in producing the state of utter physical and mental prostration
in which I now found myself, these duties of my sacred calling had
had little share. My malady, unhappily, was not the effect of any
mere temporary reaction of overstrained faculties--its seat was the
heart. In that tender, though not hitherto susceptible region, I had
been sorely wounded--loath as I am to admit it--by the mischievous
little god of Love. Six months ago, Lily, only daughter of Squire
Thornton, our principal churchwarden and most wealthy parishioner,
had returned home from her Parisian boarding-school a lovely girl of
eighteen, with rippling auburn hair and distracting violet eyes, but
with tastes and manners which I considered a little frivolous. Fenced
about by celibacy, and little dreaming of any dangerous result, I had,
from our first introduction, set myself to effect an improvement in
her taste, and to take a general interest in her spiritual welfare.
Only too abundant had been the success which rewarded my efforts. Lily
had proved an excellent pupil, looking up to her self-elected monitor
(at the superior but not altogether fatherly age of twenty-five) with
the utmost reverence, and obeying with an unquestioning childlikeness
eminently charming, my slightest wish or suggestion. Under my
directions she had given up novel-reading, and had become an active
member of the Dorcas Society, a teacher in the Sunday school, and a
visitor of the sick. As a matter of course, her attention to these
good works had involved frequent meetings and consultations; and the
constant intercourse had by degrees proved destructive of my peace of
mind. In vain had I, tardily awakening to a knowledge of the truth,
made every endeavour to exercise self-discipline. The mischief, almost
before I was aware of its existence, had gone too far for remedy. There
had been nothing for it, as I had eventually seen, but to avoid as far
as possible all further intercourse with my charmer; and upon that
principle I had accordingly shaped my action. Then had followed a time
of very severe trial. Unable to understand my coldness, Lily at first
had treated me to reproachful glances whenever we chanced to meet;
subsequently, growing indignant at the continuance of what seemed to
her my unaccountable change of demeanour, she had scornfully seconded
the avoidance. And finally, my breast had been wrung in perceiving that
she too suffered, as was evidenced by her sorrowful air, and by the
fact that she was becoming pale and thin.
For several days before that upon which my fainting-fit had occurred,
I had missed her from her accustomed place in the church; forbearing,
however, to make inquiries concerning her, I had failed to learn, as I
might have done, that she had been sent for the benefit of her health
to visit a relative residing at a sea-bathing place in North Wales. In
ignorance of this, I set off on the morning following my vicar's visit,
for the same country, bent upon a pedestrian excursion, and determined,
during my absence from Ollyhill, to make vigorous efforts towards
conquering my unfortunate passion.
About a week afterwards I found myself, at the close of a day's hard
walking, at a small fishing village on the south-west coast, frequented
during the summer season as I learned, from the cards in two or three
lodging-house windows, by a few visitors. But as yet Lleyrudrigg was,
I surmised, empty of all save its ordinary inhabitants. At anyrate,
there appeared to be no other stranger than myself in the rather large
hotel in which I had taken up my quarters for the night. It was a
dismal dispiriting evening. The rain, which had been threatening all
day, was now descending in torrents, beating against the windows of the
coffee-room and swelling the gutters of the narrow street.
Not a living thing was to be seen; and the long, scantily furnished
apartment of which I was sole tenant, looked very dreary as I turned
away from the cheerless prospect. Its gloom was increased rather than
otherwise, however, when presently that prospect was shut out and
two uncompromising tallow-candles were set upon the table. On their
appearance I drew a volume from my knapsack, and eliciting a feeble
blaze from the smouldering fire, seated myself in front of it and
commenced to read. But all endeavours to concentrate my attention
upon the book failed; and at length, depressed by the solitude and my
melancholy thoughts, I determined upon ringing the bell and begging
the landlord to give me his company. I had just risen for the purpose
of putting this resolve into execution, when my attention was arrested
by the sound of approaching footsteps, and in another instant the
door was unclosed and a gentleman entered the room. I say gentleman
advisedly, although at a cursory glance there was little about the
appearance of the new-comer to indicate his right to the title. He was
a small spare man, with large features, and a head almost ludicrously
out of proportion with his body. His dress, which was black, was of
an unfashionable cut and very shabby, and he wore a voluminous white
neckcloth. Pausing at a few paces from the door, he gave orders to
the waiter for chops and tea. Then advancing towards the fireplace,
energetically rubbing his hands together, he addressed me in perfectly
good English, but with a strong Welsh accent, telling me that he had
arrived at the inn some quarter of an hour ago, drenched through with
the rain--having carried his own carpet-bag from a station distant
about a mile--and that in consequence, he had been obliged to change
all his clothes. 'And by the way,' he continued somewhat abruptly,
'I had the misfortune whilst doing so to drop my purse, and several
pieces of money rolled out amongst the furniture of the room. I feel
almost sure that I managed to collect all again; but if you would
excuse me doing so in your presence, I should like to satisfy myself
completely upon that point. The fact is,' he added with a frank smile,
'that the money in question does not belong to me, and I am the more
anxious about it on that account.'
Whilst thus speaking, the little man had drawn from his pocket a huge
wash-leather purse, and after waiting until I had bowed permission, he
proceeded to empty its contents upon the table. They consisted of a
large roll of bank-notes and a considerable sum in gold and silver--and
as I watched him furtively over the edges of my book, which I had
again taken up--I saw him carefully count and arrange the latter into
heaps. A sigh of relief accompanied the announcement which he shortly
made to me, that he had found the money correct; and he was in the
act of opening his purse to replace it, when the landlord--a meagre,
sharp-nosed individual--entered the room with a tray. Happening to
glance at this man as he stood by cloth in hand, I detected a gleam
of intense avarice crossing his face; and although the expression was
but momentary--vanishing as the glittering piles were swept into their
receptacle--it left me with the impression that the small Welshman's
exhibition of his riches in the presence of strangers had not been
an altogether judicious proceeding. No suspicion of its imprudence,
however, appeared to disturb that gentleman's mind, and I soon forgot
all about the little incident in the interest of the conversation which
ensued between us.