Faubourg St. Germain--Quartier Latin--The
Book-stalls--Phrenologists--Dupuytren’s Room--Medical
Students--Lodgings--Bill at the Sorbonne--French Cookery--A
Gentleman’s Boarding-house--The Locomotive Cook--Fruit--The
Pension--The Landlady--Pleasure in being duped--Smile of a French
Landlady--The Boarding-house--Amiable Ladies--The Luxembourg
Gardens--The Grisettes--Their naïveté and simplicity--Americans
sent to Paris--Parisian Morals--Advantages in visiting Old
Countries--American Society in Paris.
_Paris, November 24th, 1835._
Nearly all who love to woo the silent muses are assembled in this
region, the _Faubourg St. Germain_. Here are the libraries bending under
their ponderous loads, and here are the schools and colleges, and all
the establishments devoted to science and letters; for which reason, no
doubt, it is dignified by the name of the _Quartier Latin_. When the
west of the river was yet overspread with its forests, this quarter was
covered with houses, and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, baths,
an aqueduct, and a “Field of Mars” for the parade of the Roman troops,
where Julius Cæsar used to make them shoulder their firelocks.
But now, though it contains a fourth of the population of the town, and
retains its literary character, so far has luxury got ahead of
philosophy, that it has no greater dignity of name than the
“_Faubourgs_.” It stands apart as if the city of some other people. Some
few, indeed, from the fashionable districts, in a desperate Captain Ross
kind of expedition, do sometimes come over here, and have got back safe,
but having found nothing but books and such things of little interest,
it remains unexplored.
The population has become new by retaining its old customs. By standing
still it shews the “march of intellect” through the rest of the city.
Here you see yet that venerable old man who wears a cue and powder, and
buckles his shoes, and calls his shop a _boutique_; who garters up his
stockings over the knees, goes to bed at eight, and snuffs the candle
with his fingers; and you see everywhere the innumerable people,
clattering through the muddy and narrow lanes in their _sabots_. Poverty
not being able to get lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, the Palais Royal, and,
though she tried hard, in the Boulevards, has been obliged, on account
of the cheap rents, to come over here and to strike up a sort of
partnership with science, and they now carry on various kinds of
industry, under the firm of _Misère et Compagnie_.
In the central section of this Latin country, the staple is the
bookshop. Everywhere you will see the little store embossed with its
innumerable volumes inside and out, on the ceilings, on the floor, and
on screens throughout the room, leaving just a little space for a little
bookseller; and stalls are covered with the same article in the open
air, in all those positions where, in other towns, you find mutton and
fat beef. When you see a long file of Institutes and Bartholos wrapped
in their yellow parchment, you are near the Temple of Themis--the _Ecole
des Lois_.
When you see in descending St. Jaques, a morose, surly, bibliomaniacal
little man, entrenched behind a Homer, a Horace, and a Euclid’s
Elements, that is the _Collège de France_; and when you stumble over a
pile of the Martyrs, it is the _Sorbonne_; and as you approach the
_Ecole Médecine_, five hundred Bichats and Richerands beckon you to its
threshold. Besides, you will see ladies and gentlemen looking out from
the neighbouring windows, and recommending themselves in their various
anatomical appearances; _en squellette_, or half dissected, or turned
wrong side out. There is a shop, too, of phrenological skulls, and a
lady who will explain you the bumps; and if you like, you can get
yourself felt for a franc or two, and she will tell you where is your
_Philo-pro_--what do you call it? She told me our intellectual qualities
were placed in front, and the sensual in the back part of the skull,
very happily, because the former could look out ahead, and keep the
latter in order. And next door is a shop of all the wax preparations of
human forms and diseases, and here is another lady who will point you
out their resemblances with originals, who will analyse you a man into
all his component parts, and put him up again; and she puts up, also,
“magnificent skeletons” and mannikins for foreign countries.
Now and then you will see arrive a cart, which pours out a dozen, or so,
of naked men and women, as you do a cord of wood, upon the pavement,
which are distributed into the dissecting rooms, after the ladies and
gentlemen standing about have sufficiently entertained themselves with
the spectacle. And just step into “Dupuytren’s Room,” and you will see
all the human diseases, arranged beautifully in families; here is the
plague, and there is the cholera morbus; here is the gout, and there is
the palsy staring you in the face; and there are whole cabinets of
sprained ankles, broken legs, dislocated shoulders, and cracked skulls.
In a word, every thing is literary in this quarter. One evening you are
invited to a party for squaring the circle, another for finding out the
longitude; and another:--“My dear sir, come this evening, we have just
got in a subject. The autopsis will begin at six.”
The medical students are about four thousand; those of law and theology
about the same number; and many a one lodges, eats, and clothes himself,
and keeps his sweetheart, all for twelve dollars per month. With the
exception of the last, I am living a kind of student’s life. I have a
room twenty feet square, overlooking, from the second story, the
beautiful garden of the Luxembourg, and the great gate opening from the
_Rue d’Enfer_. This is my parlour during the day, and a cabinet having
a bed, and opening into it, converts the two into a bed-chamber for the
night; and the price, including services, is eight dollars per month.
I find at ten, a small table covered with white porcelain, and a very
neat little Frenchwoman comes smiling in with a coffee-pot in one hand,
and a pitcher of boiling milk in the other, and pours me out with her
rosy fingers a large cup of the best _café au lait_ in the world, and
sits down herself, and descants fluently on the manners and customs of
the capital, and improves my facilities in French.
If you wish bad coffee, it is not to be had in this country. The
accompaniments are two eggs, or some equivalent relish, a piece of fresh
butter, and a small loaf of bread--all this for eighteen sous, (a sou is
a twentieth less than our cent.) I dine out wherever I may chance to be,
and according to the voracity or temperance of my appetite, from one and
a half to five francs, at six o’clock. A French dinner comes at the most
sociable hour, when the cares and labours of the day are past, and the
mind can give itself up entirely to its enjoyments, or its repose.
I have dined sometimes at the illustrious Flicoteau’s on the Place
Sorbonne, with the medical students, and have looked upon the rooms once
occupied by J. Jaques Rousseau, and upon the very dial on which he could
not teach Thérése, his grisette wife, to count the hours. I have dined,
too, at Viot’s, with the law students, and have taken coffee with
Molière, and Fontenelle, and Voltaire, at the Procope. The following is
a bill at the Sorbonne.
A service of Soup, 3 Sous.
Vegetables, 3 “
Meat, 6 “
Fish, 6 “
Bread, 2 “
--
20
You have also, which serves at once for vinegar and wine, a half bottle
of claret, at six sous; and a dessert, a bunch of grapes or three
cherries, for two; or of sweetmeats, a most delicate portion--one of
those infinitesimals of a dose, such as the Homœopathists administer in
desperate cases. Yet this--if a dish were only what it professes to be
on its face, the soup, not the rinsings of the dishcloth, the fricassee
not poached upon the swill-tub,--this would still be supportable--if a
macaroni were only a macaroni; which in a cheap Paris fare, I
understand, is not to be presumed. In sober sadness, this is very bad.
We have a right to expect that a thing which calls itself a hare, should
not be a cat. But, alas! it is the end of all human refinement, that
hypocrisy should take the place of truth. You can discern no better the
component parts of a French dish in a French cookery, than you can a
virtue in a condiment of French affability. But ----. It is an homage
which a horse’s rump renders to a beefsteak. At my last dinner here, I
had two little ribs held together in indissoluble matrimony of mutton. I
tried to divorce them, but to no purpose, till the perspiration began to
flow abundantly. I called the “garçon,” and exhibited to him their
toughness.--“_Cependant, Monsieur, le mouton était magnifique!_” I
offered him five francs if he would sit down and eat it; he refused. He
had perhaps a mother or some poor relation depending on him; I did not
insist.
M. Flicoteau belongs to the romantic school. I prefer the classical. I
need hardly say that the French students, who dine here, have an
unhealthy and shrivelled appearance--you recollect the last run of the
shad on the Juniatta. It is the very spot on which the Sorbonne used to
starve its monks, and M. Flicoteau, for his own sake, keeps starving
people here ever since? Sixteen sous is a student’s ordinary dinner. His
common allowance for clothing, and other expenses by the year, is three
hundred dollars.
He eats for a hundred, lodges for fifty, and has the remainder for his
wardrobe and amusements. The students of medicine are mostly poor and
laborious, and being obliged to follow their filthy occupation of
dissecting, are negligent of dress and manners. The disciples of the law
are more from the richer classes, have idle time, keep better company,
and have an air _plus distingué_.
The doctors of law in all countries take rank above medicine. The
question of precedence, I recollect, was determined by the Duke of
Mantua’s fool, who observed that the “rogue always walks ahead of the
executioner.” Theology, alas! hides her head in a peaceful corner of the
Sorbonne, where once she domineered, and begs to be unnoticed in her
humble and abject fortunes. A student of Divinity eats a _soup maigre_,
a _riz-au-lait_, flanked by a dessert of sour grapes. His meals would
take him to Heaven, if he had no other merits.
The other resorts of eating, besides the restaurants, are as follow:
the _Gargotte_, the _Cuisine Bourgeoise_, and, of a higher grade, the
_Pension Bourgeoise_. In the Gargotte you don’t get partridges. Your
dinner costs seven sous. You have a little meat, dry and somewhat
stringy, veal or mutton, whichever Monsieur pleases. Whether it died the
natural way, or a violent death by the hands of the butcher, it is
impossible to know. You have, besides, a thick soup, a loaf of bread
three feet long, standing in the corner by the broom, and fried
potatoes; also, water and the servant girl _à discretion_. At seventeen
sous, you have all the aforesaid delicacies, with a table cloth into the
bargain; and at twenty, the luxurious addition of a napkin, and a fork
of Algiers metal. This is the Gargotte.
When you have got to twenty-five sous, you are in the Cuisine
Bourgeoise. Here your “couvert,” consists of a spoon, a fork, a knife, a
napkin, a glass, and a small bottle, called a caraffon; your plate is
changed--already a step towards civilization; and you have a cucumber a
foot long, radishes a little withered, asparagus just getting to seed,
and salt and pepper, artistly arranged; and a horse’s rump cooked into a
beefsteak, and washed down with “_veritable macon_”--that is, the best
sort of logwood alcoholised. You have, also, a little dessert here of
sour grapes, wrinkled apricots, or green figs, which are exhibited for
sale, at the window, between meals.
The flaps of mutton and the drumsticks of turkeys, which you get so
tender, have been served up, once or twice, at the Hotel Ordinary; but
they are preferred much to the original dishes. One likes sometimes
better Ephraim’s gleanings, than Abiezer’s vintage. The French have a
knack of letting nothing go to loss. Why they make more of a dead horse
or cow than others of the living ones. They do not even waste the putrid
offals of the butcheries; they sell the maggots to feed chickens.
But when you pay forty sous, that’s quite another affair. You are now in
the _monde gourmande_. Spinage has butter in it; custards have sugar in
them; soup is called _potage_;--everything now has an honest name;
bouilli is _bœuf à la mode_; fried potatoes _pomme de terre à la maitre
d’hotel_; and a baked cat is, _lapin sauté a l’estragon_. This is the
gentleman’s boarding-house.
I mean by gentleman, a youth, who has just come over from England or
America, to the lectures, or a French clerk of the _corps
bureaucratique_, or an apprentice philosopher, who calls himself a “man
of letters.” It is one of the advantages of this place, that you are not
often oppressed by the intelligence and gravity of your convives, and
have a chance of shining. It is in the power of any man to have wit, if
he but knows how to select his company. In this _pension_, the dishes
succeed one another, and are not crammed, as on our tables, _roti
fricandeau_, _salade_, _vol au vent_--all into the same service, to
distract and pall the appetite, or get cold waiting on each other.
The coquetry of a French kitchen keeps alive expectation, and enhances
enjoyment by surprise. You have here, too, the advantage of a male cook;
the kitchen prefers the masculine to the feminine, like the grammars;
and, besides, you have the tranquillity of a private house. If you ask a
dish at Flicoteau’s, the waiter bawls it down to the kitchen, and as
they are continually asking, he is continually bawling. At the end of
the feast, you will see, standing before you, a tumbler full of
toothpicks, one of which you will keep fumbling in your mouth the whole
afternoon, as an evidence you have dined; and especially if you have
not dined--for then you must keep up appearances;--some grease their
mouths with a candle, and then you think they have been eating _paté de
foie gras_.
I am sorry to have forgotten the locomotive cook; I mean a woman with an
_appareil de cuisine_ about her neck, having meat and fish hung, by
hooks, on both her haunches, and sausages, or fish, or potatoes, hissing
in a frying-pan; and diffusing, for twenty yards around, a most
appetising flavour. She haunts, usually, the Pont Neuf and its vicinity,
and looks like gastronomy personified. She will give you, for four sous,
of potatoes, with yesterday’s gazette, and, reclining under the parapet
of the Quai--the king perhaps, all the while, envying you from the
heights of the Louvre--you eat a more wholesome dinner at ten sous, than
at the Place Sorbonne at twenty-four.
All the common world of Paris buys its provisions second-hand. The
farmer arrives about two in the morning--he sells out to the hucksters,
and these latter to the public, mixing in the leavings of the preceding
day, a rotten egg with a fresh one, &c. A patient old woman, having
nothing else to do, speculates over a bushel of potatoes, or a _botte_
of onions, twice twenty-four hours; and your milkwoman, perhaps, never
saw a cow; cows are expensive in slops and provender, and snails and
plaster of Paris are to be had almost for nothing. The French eat
greater quantities of bread than their neighbours--and why at a cheaper
rate?--The price is fixed, by the police, every fortnight, and its
average is two-and-a-half cents--sixty per cent. lower than in London;
and how much lower than with us? 450 millions of lbs. are consumed in
Paris annually; each man eating twelve dollars’ worth. If you establish
a Frenchman’s expense at 100, you will find 19 parts for bread, 22 for
meat, 27 for wine and spirits.
Peaches, and apples, and melons, are not to be spoken of, in comparison
with ours; but cherries, plums, and especially pears, are in great
variety and abundance; and the fine grapes of Fontainebleau are eight
cents per pound. In England, they have all the fruits of the Indies in
the noblemen’s hot-houses; but who can buy them? There are men there who
have the conscience to pay £150 for the fruits of a breakfast. “The
strawberries at my Lady Stormont’s, last Saturday, cost £150,” says
Hannah More. But I must bridle in my muse: she is getting a fit of
statistics.
If a gentleman comes to Paris in the dog days, when his countrymen are
spread over Europe, at watering places, and elsewhere, and when every
soul of a Frenchman is out of town--if he is used to love his friends at
home, and be loved by them, and to see them gather around him in the
evenings--let him not set a foot in that unnatural thing, a bachelor’s
apartment in a furnished hotel, to live alone, to eat alone, and to
sleep alone! If he does, let him take leave of his wife and children,
and settle his affairs.
Nor let him seek company at the Tavern Ordinary; here the guest arrives
just at the hour, hangs up his hat, sits down in his usual place,
crosses his legs, runs his fingers through his hair, dines, and then
disappears, all the year round, without farther acquaintance. But let
him look out a “Pension,” having an amiable landlady, or, which is the
same, amiable lodgers. He will become domiciliated here after some time,
and find some relief from one of the trying situations of life. You know
nothing yet, happily, of the solitude, the desolation, of a populous
city to a stranger. How often did I wish, during the first three months,
for a cot by the side of some hoar hill of the Mahonoy. Go to a
“Pension,” especially if you are a sucking child, like me, in the ways
of the world; and the lady of the house, usually a pretty woman, will
feel it enjoined upon her humanity to counsel and protect you, and
comfort you, or she will manage an acquaintance between you and some
countess or baroness, who lodges with her, or at some neighbour’s.
I live now with a most spiritual little creature; she tells me so many
obliging lies, and no offensive truths, which I take to be the
perfection of politeness in a landlady; and she admits me to her private
parties--little family “réunions”--where I play at loto with Madame
Thomas, and her three amiable daughters, just for a little cider, or
cakes, or chestnuts, to keep up the spirit of the play; and then we have
a song, a solo on the violin, or harp, and then a dance; and, finally,
we play at little games, which inflict kisses, embraces, and other such
penalties.
French people are always so merry; whatever be the amusement, they never
let conversation flag, and I don’t see any reason why it should. One,
for example, begins to talk of Paris, then the Passage Panorama, then of
Mrs. Alexander’s fine cakes, and then the pretty girl that sits behind
the counter, and then of pretty girls that sit anywhere; and so one
just lets oneself run with the association of ideas, or one makes a
digression from the main story, and returns or not, just as one pleases.
A Frenchman is always a mimic, an actor, and all that nonsense which we
suffer to go to waste in our country, he economises for the enjoyment of
society.
I am settled down in the family; I am adopted; the lady gives me, to be
sure, now and then “a chance,” as she calls it, of a ticket in a lottery
(“the only one left”) of some distinguished lady now reduced, or some
lady who has had three children, where one never draws anything; or “a
chance” of conducting her and a pretty cousin of hers, who has taken a
fancy to me, to the play, who adores the innocency of American manners,
and hates the dissipation of the French.
Have you never felt the pleasure of letting yourself be duped? Have you
never felt the pleasure of letting your little bark float down the
stream when you knew the port lay the other way. I look upon all this as
a cheap return for the kindnesses I have so much need of; I am anxious
to be cheated, and the truth is, if you do not let a French landlady
cheat you now and then, she will drop your acquaintance. Never dispute
any small items overcharged in her monthly bill, or she that was smooth
as the ermine, will be suddenly bristled as the porcupine; and why, for
the sake of limiting some petty encroachment upon your purse, should you
turn the bright heaven of her pretty face into a hurricane?
Your actions should always leave a suspicion that you are rich, and then
you are sure she will anticipate every want and wish you may have with
the liveliest affection; she will be all ravishment at your successes;
she will be in an abyss of chagrin at your disappointments. _Helas! oh,
mon Dieu!_ and if you cry, she will cry with you! We love money well
enough in America, but we do not feel such touches of human kindness,
and cannot work ourselves up into such fits of amiability for those who
have it. I do not say it is hypocrisy; a French woman really does love
you if you have a long purse; and if you have not (I do not say it is
hypocrisy neither) she really does hate you.
A great advantage to a French landlady is the sweetness and variety of
her smile--a quality in which French women excel universally. Our Madam
Gibou keeps her little artillery at play during the whole of the dinner
time, and has brought her smile under such a discipline as to suit it
exactly to the passion to be represented, or the dignity of the person
with whom she exchanges looks.
You can tell any one who is in arrears as if you were her private
secretary, or the wealth and liberality of a guest better than his
banker, by her smile. If it be a surly knave who counts the pennies with
her, the little thing is strangled in its birth; and if one who owes his
meals, it miscarries altogether; and for a mere visiter she lets off one
worth only three francs and a half; but if a favourite, who never looks
into the particulars of her bill, and takes her lottery tickets, then
you will see the whole heaven of her face in a blaze, and it does not
expire suddenly, but like the fine twilight of a summer evening, dies
away gently on her lips.
Sometimes I have seen one flash out like a squib, and leave you at once
in the dark; it had lit on the wrong person; and at other times I have
seen one struggling long for its life; I have watched it while it was
gasping its last; she has a way, too, of knocking a smile on the head; I
observed one at dinner to-day, from the very height and bloom of health
fall down and die without a kick.
It is strange (that I may praise myself)--but I have a share of
attentions in this little circle even greater than they who are amiable.
If I say not a word, I am witty, and I am excessively agreeable by
sitting still. “The silence often of pure innocence persuades when
speaking fails.” My unacquaintance with life and wickedness puts me in
immediate _rapport_ with women, and removes many of the little obstacles
which suspicious etiquette has set up between the sexes. Ladies, they
say, never blush when talking to a blind man.
While a man of address is sailing about and about a woman, as Captain
Ross hunting the North-west passage, I am looked upon either as a ship
in distress and claiming a generous sympathy and protection, or a prize
which belongs to the wreckers, and am towed at once into harbour.
Sometimes, indeed, my ignorance of Paris and its ways is taken for
affectation, and they suspect me for behaving as great ambassadors do,
who affect simplicity to hide their diplomatic rogueries; but he cannot
long pass himself for a rogue who is really honest. It is perhaps a mere
complexion of physiognomy. I see, every day, faces which remind one of
those doors which have written on them, “No admission,” and others,
“Walk in without knocking.” It is certain that what we call dignity,
however admired on parade, is not a good social quality. “_Dignitas et
amor_”--I forget what Ovid says about it.
And women, too, are more familiar and easy of access to modesty of rank.
Jupiter, you know, when he made love to Antiope, with all his rays about
him, was rejected, and he succeeded afterwards as a satyr. I knew a
pretty American woman once, who, gartering up her stockings in the
garden, was reminded, that the gardener was looking. “Well! he is only a
working man,” she replied, and went on with the exhibition; she would
have been frightened to death if it had been a lord. I make these
remarks because other travellers would be likely to leave them out, and
because it is good to know how to live to advantage in all the various
circumstances of life.
In recommending you a French boarding-house, it is my duty at the same
time to warn you of some of its dangers, which are as follows: Your
landlady will be in arrears for her rent 200 francs, and will confide to
you her embarrassment. Having a rigid, inexorable _propriètaire_, and
getting into an emergency, she will at length ask you, with many
blushes and amiable scruples, the loan of the said money; and her
gratitude, poor thing! at the very expectation of getting it, will
overcome her so, she will offer you, her arms about your neck, her
pretty self, as security for the debt.
This is not all; the baroness (her husband being absent at Moscow, or
anywhere else,) will invite you to a supper. She will live in a fine
parlour, chamber adjoining, and will entertain you with sprightly and
sensible conversation, and all the delicacies of the table, until the
stars have climbed half way up the heavens; and you will find yourself
_tête-à-tête_ with a lady at midnight, the third bottle of champagne
sparkling on the board.--I am glad I did not leave my virtue in America;
I should have had such need of it in this country! Indeed, if it had
been anybody else, not softened by the experience of nine lustrums; not
fortified like me by other affections--if it had been anybody else in
the world, he would have been ruined by Madame la Baronne. Nor when you
have resisted Russia, have you won all the victories. On a fine summer’s
morning, when all is joyous and good-humoured, your landlady will
present you the following cards, with notes and explanations. “This is
from the belle Gabrielle. She assists her uncle in the store, and is
quite disheartened with her business. Uncles are such cross things! This
is from one of my acquaintances, Flora--oh, beautiful _au possible_! She
paints birds and other objects for the print shops, but she finds the
confinement injurious to her health. You must call and see them,
especially Flora, she has such a variety of talent besides painting; and
she will give you the most convincing proofs of good character and
connexions. Gabrielle also is very pretty, but she is a young and
innocent creature, and her education, especially her music, not so far
advanced.”
The garden of the Luxembourg comes next. It contains near a hundred
acres, and lies in the midst of this classical district. It is not so
gaily ornamented as the Tuileries, but is rich in picturesque and rural
scenery. It has, indeed, two very beautiful ornaments. At the north end,
the noble edifice, constructed by Marie de Medicis, the palace of the
Luxembourg, which contains a gallery of paintings, the chamber of Peers,
and other curiosities; and the Observatory, a stately building, is in
symmetry with this palace on the south.
In the interior there are groves of trees and grass plots surrounded by
flower-beds; and numerous statues, most of which have seen better days;
ranges of trees, and an octagonal piece of water inhabited by two swans,
which are now swimming about in graceful solemnity, adorn the parterre
in front of the palace. All these objects I have in view of my windows.
The garden has altogether an air of philosophy very grateful to men of
studious dispositions. Many persons are seated about, in reading or
conversation, or strolling with books through its groves, and squads of
students are now and then traversing it to their college recitations.
On benches overlooking the parterre is seated, all day long, the veteran
of the war, the old soldier, in his regimentals, his sword as a
companion laid beside him on the bench; he finds a repose here for his
old age amidst the recreations of childhood; and five or six hundred
little men in red breeches, whose profession it is to have their brains
knocked out for their country at sixpence a day, are drilled here every
morning early, to keep step and to handle their firelocks. There is one
corner in which there is a fountain surmounted by a nymph, and which has
a gloomy and tufted wood, and an appearance of sanctity, which makes it
respected by the common world, and by the sun.
One man only is seen walking there at a time, the rest retiring out of
respect for his devotions. For a week past it has been frequented daily
by a poet. He recites with appropriate action his verses, heedless of
the profane crowd. He appears pleased with his compositions, and smiles
often, no doubt in anticipation of their immortality. I often sit an
hour of an evening at my window, and look down upon the stream of people
which flows in and out, and the sentinel who walks up and down by the
gate ridiculously grim.
I love to read the views and dispositions of men in their faces. I
witness some pleasant flirtations, too, under the adjacent lime trees,
and many gratified and disappointed assignations. Now, a lady wrapped in
her cloak walks up and down the most secret avenue, upon the anxious
watch; the lover comes at length, and she hastens to his embraces, and
they vanish; and next in his turn a gentleman walks sentinel, until his
lady comes, or, impatient and disappointed, goes off in a rage, or night
covers him with her sable mantle.--Were I not bound by so many endearing
affections of kindred and friendship to my native country, there is not
one spot upon the earth I would prefer to the sweet tranquillity of this
delicious retirement.
When you visit the Luxembourg you will see multitudes every where of
bouncing demoiselles, with nymph-looking faces, caps without bonnets,
and baskets in their hands, traversing the garden from all quarters,
running briskly to their work in the morning, and strolling slowly
homewards towards evening--These are the _grisettes_. They are very
pretty, and have the laudable little custom of falling deeply in love
with one. They are common enough all over Paris, but in this classical
region they are as the leaves in Vallambrosa. They are in the train of
the muses, and love the groves of the Academy. A grisette, in this Latin
Quarter, is a branch of education. If a student is ill, his faithful
grisette nurses him and cures him; if he is destitute, she works for
him; and if he falls into irretrievable misfortune, she dies with him.
Thus a mutual dependence endears them to each other; he defends her with
his life, and, sure of his protection, she feels her consequence, and
struts in her new starched cap the reigning monarch of the Luxembourg.
A grisette never obtrudes her acquaintance, but question her and you
will find her circumstantially communicative. Such information as she
possesses, and a great deal more, she will retail to you with a naïveté
and simplicity, you would swear she was brought up amongst your innocent
lambs and turtle-doves of the Shamoken. She is the most ingenious
imitation of an innocent woman in the world; and never was language
employed more happily for the concealment of thought (I ask pardon of
Prince Talleyrand) than in the mouth of a grisette. The Devil is called
the father of lies (I ask pardon again of the Prince), but there is not
one of these little imps but can outdo her papa in this particular.
When sent with goods from shopkeepers to their customers--the common
practice of this place--she will lie and wrestle for her patron, and
perjure herself like a Greek; when accused, she will listen to
reproaches, insults, even abuse, as long as there is any point of
defence, with the resignation of Saint Michael; and there is no trick of
the stage, no artifice of rhetoric, recommended by Cicero, that she
leaves out in her pleadings; if at last overcome--why, she surrenders.
She remains awhile mute, and then sets herself to look sorry with all
her might; at last she bursts into tears, with sighs and sobs, until she
disarms you. “Well, let me see what you have got.” She will now wipe
away gracefully the briny drops with the corner of her apron, brighten
up again, shew you her goods again, and cheat you once more by way of
reparation for her former rogueries.
There is a modiste, lodged in the adjoining room, from New Orleans, who
entertains about twenty of these every morning at her levee. I make
sometimes one of the group, and from this opportunity, and from the
lady’s information, I am thus learned about grisettes.
It is important for one’s mamma to know whether it is a good or bad
fashion that, so common now-a-days, of sending a young gentleman, just
stepping from youth into manhood, to Europe, especially to Paris. I will
venture some remarks for your information, though I have no very settled
opinion on the subject. I know several Americans engaged here, some in
medical and scientific schools, and some in painting and other arts, who
appear to me to be exceedingly diligent, and to make as profitable a use
of their time as they would anywhere else. I know some who mix pleasure
with business, and a little folly with their wisdom; and some (you will
please to put me in this class) who do not taste dissipation with their
“extremest lips.”
But I know some also, who, under pretext of law and medicine, study
mischief only, and return home worse, if possible, than when they came
out. I know one now, who, having too much health, overruns his revenues
occasionally, and draws upon home for a doctor’s and apothecary’s bill;
and another poor devil who has gone to Mont Pieté with his last trinket.
There came one from the Mississippi lately, who being very young and
rich, and unmarried, set up a kind of seraglio, and died of love
yesterday; they are burying him to-day at Père la Chaise.
I know one also, who has lived here nine years, who reads Voltaire,
keeps a French cook, and his principles are as French as his stomach;
and another who entertains the French noblesse with fêtes and soirées,
to the tune of a hundred thousand per annum; from his stable, thirty-six
horses, full bred, better than many of his Majesty’s subjects, come
prancing out on days of jubilee upon the Boulevards.
If a young man’s morals should get out of order at home, Paris is not
exactly the place I would send him to be cured. It is true, if
drunkenness be the complaint, it is not a vice of the place; and, if
curable at all, which I do not believe, Paris, from its common use of
light wines, and variety of amusements, is perhaps the best place to
make the attempt. It is certainly not the most dangerous place for
falling into this vice. If he be fond of gambling, here it is a genteel
accomplishment, and brought out under the patronage of the government.
And to keep a mistress is not only not disgraceful in French society,
but is always mentioned to one’s credit. It is a part of a gentleman’s
equipage, and adds to his gentility; for it implies that he possesses
that most considerable merit that a gentleman can aspire to in this
country, and most others--money. “_Il a la plus jolie maitresse de
Paris!_” you cannot say anything more complimentary if it were of the
prime minister, and it would scarce be an injurious imputation if said
of one’s father confessor.
If you send, then, your son to Paris, am I uncharitable in surmising
that he may sometimes use the privilege of the place? It is, indeed, a
question for philosophy to determine (and not for me), which of the two
may be the less injurious to his health and morals--the gross
intercourse he is exposed to in some other towns, or the more refined
gallantries of the French capital. If you can preserve him, by religious
and other influences, from either, as well as from the dangers of an
ascetic and solitary abstinence--for solitude has its vices as well as
dissipation--so much the better. He will be a better husband, a better
citizen, and a better man.
But let me tell you that to educate a young man of fortune and leisure,
to live through a youth of honesty, has become excessively difficult,
even in the chaste nunnery of your “Two Hills;” and to expect that, with
money and address, he will live entirely honest in Paris, where women of
good quality are thrown in his face--women of art, beauty, and refined
education--is to attribute virtues to human nature she is in no way
entitled to in any country. He may have some trouble with his
conscience, perhaps, the first month or two, but by degrees, he will
become reconciled, and get along well enough. If he comes over with some
refinement of taste, and moral inclinations and habits, or only on a
transient visit, he will be secure from all the dangers (except,
perhaps, gambling) to which I have alluded; he will live only in
American society, which is quite as good and pure here as at home; he
will have no acquaintance with the natives, but of that class in which
a gentleman’s morals run less risk of temptation than even from the
vulgar intercourse of American towns.
All that part of a city like Paris, that comes into relation with
strangers, and lives by deceiving and plundering them, is of course
gross and corrupt; yet I do not know any community in which the honesty
of a gentleman is so safe from contamination.
It is certainly of much value in the life of an American gentleman to
visit these old countries, if it were only to form a just estimate of
his own, which he is continually liable to mistake, and always to
overrate without objects of comparison; “_nimium se æstimet necesse est,
qui se nemini comparat_.” He will always think himself wise who sees
nobody wiser; and to know the customs and institutions of foreign
countries, which one cannot know well without residing there, is
certainly the complement of a good education.
The American society at Paris, taken altogether, is of a good
composition. It consists of several hundred persons, of families of
fortune, and young men of liberal instruction. Here are lords of cotton
from Carolina, and of sugarcane from the Mississippi, millionaires from
all the Canadas, and pursers from all the navies; and their social
qualities, from a sense of mutual dependence or partnership in absence,
or some such causes, are more active abroad than at home. The benevolent
affections act in a contrary way from gravitation; they increase as the
square of the distance from the centre.
The plain fact is, that Americans in Paris are hospitable in a very high
degree; they have no fear of being dogged with company, and have leisure
here, which they have nowhere else, to be amiable; the new comer, too,
is more tender and thankful, and has a higher relish of hospitality and
kindness; and the general example of the place has its effect on their
animal spirits.
They form a little republic apart, and when a stranger arrives, he finds
himself at home; he finds himself also under the censorial inspection of
a public opinion, a salutary restraint, not always the luck of those who
travel into foreign countries. One thing only is to be blamed: it
becomes every day more the fashion for the _élite_ of our cities to
settle themselves here permanently. We cannot but deplore this
exportation of the precious metals, since our country is drained of what
the supply is not too abundant. They who have resided here a few years,
having fortune and leisure, do not choose, as I perceive, to reside
anywhere else.
It is now midnight, and more. I have said so much in this letter about
grisettes, that I shall have a night-mare of them before morning. This
“Latin Quarter,” is one of the most instructing volumes of Paris, but
all I can do is just to open you here and there some of its pages, and
shew you the pictures. Pictures in this country, recollect, are more _à
decouvert_ than in America. Please to make the allowance. Good night!