widows are generally the most docile and hard-working pupils; the head
master of an English public school will tell you that widows' sons are
generally lazy and wilful. An English banker will also tell you that
there are two classes of clients with whom he does not care to have
dealings: widows and clergymen. "They know nothing about business,"
said the manager of one of the large London banks to me one day.
"I fancy you calumniate the clergymen," said I.
I know a French widow who, a year before sending her son to school,
set herself to work to learn Latin and Greek, that she might help him
in his studies.
Having thus gained a year's start of her son, she went with him till
he reached the highest class. Every French reader will recognise this
French Cornelia, when I say that, on the occasion of her son's
carrying off the first prize at the _Grand Concours de la Sorbonne_,
she would not let him receive a wreath of laurels at the hands of the
Prince Imperial who was presiding over the distribution of prizes.
I know an English widow who, upon my remarking to her that mothers in
England seemed to have scarcely any authority over their sons, replied
that it was quite natural it should be so; each sex had its _rôle_ in
this world; men were made to command, and women to obey. _Look here,
upon this picture, and on this._
* * * * *
It is needless to say that when we affectionately caress our mothers,
we appear highly ridiculous in the eyes of Englishmen. But so long as
we love our mothers, tenderly as we do; so long as we make them our
guides, confidants and consolers, we shall have no need to be jealous
of the English.
The mother's influence, so great in France, so insignificant in
England, explains the difference in the men of the two countries. In
the Frenchman, you find, mixed with his manly qualities, qualities
and defects which are essentially feminine: quickness of perception,
amiability, the love of the graceful rather than of the beautiful, a
taste for _causerie_,[6] or even a little gossip occasionally; in the
Englishman, the qualities and defects are not tempered by the art or
the desire of pleasing; they have free play; whence inundations,
avalanches of virtue or vice.
[6] This pastime cannot be English, since the English language
has no word for it.
The Englishman is the worshipper of practical common sense, and if I
had to give him a title, I should call him His Solidity Master John
Bull.
The Englishman is modelled on his father; the Frenchman is modelled
rather on his mother.
* * * * *
If I had to name the most eminently English quality, without
hesitation I would name--hospitality.
And as it is difficult, when making observations on a foreign country,
not to be led into comparisons, I will add, at the risk of being taxed
with want of patriotism by those good French jingos who believe the
English to be semi-barbarians living in a kind of eternal darkness--I
will add, I say, that English hospitality is much more thoughtful and
generous than French hospitality. The Frenchwoman is a human ant; she
is no lender: she only half opens her door. The Englishwoman is like
the grasshopper: she flings wide the doors of her hospitality.
Go and pay a call in a French provincial house ... if you should
faint, your hostess will offer you a glass of _eau sucrée_; if she
invites you to a dance, she will offer you a cake and a cup of
chocolate. To be allowed a seat at her table, you must be one of her
own: her hospitality does not extend beyond the family circle. She
calls regularly on her friends, who religiously return her visits; but
they are dry, state calls; and arrived home, each one shuts herself
in, and double locks her door.
No one, who has lived long in the French provinces, can wonder at the
home life being a closed letter for foreigners. The absurdities,
retailed about us in books which pretend to describe our manners,
prove it abundantly.
English provincial life is much more intellectual and gay; people are
more sociable, and intercourse is freer. The young people of the
well-to-do classes belong to lawn-tennis and other athletic clubs, and
are constantly meeting together for recreation in the environs of the
town. These daily meetings are the occasion of frequent pleasure
parties and picnics. People dine, take tea or supper, at each others'
houses. The inhabitants of a little English town always seemed to me
like but one family. And the impromptu dances, the musical evenings,
the pleasant meetings of all kinds! Not a week passes without some
pretext arising for a sociable gathering. I know many a little town in
which, all through the winter, the inhabitants meet together in the
church schoolroom every Saturday. Some sing, others make music, good
readers read extracts of some amusing book. The price of admission is
one penny: the sum thus gathered pays for lighting and warming the
room; if there is any surplus, it is given to the poor. These
penny-readings are always well patronised.
This is a critical study which takes very much the form of a
panegyric, will perhaps exclaim some of my compatriots, on reading
these lines which have but one ambition, that of being faithful.
But I would remark to these compatriots, who, I must say, are not
numerous, that there are two kinds of patriotism, blind patriotism and
intelligent patriotism: that which will learn nothing from, nor praise
anything in, others, and that which seeks edification and
enlightenment, and knows how to recognise qualities of which no nation
is wholly destitute.
It is to the latter patriotism that my remarks are addressed.
XII.
Mrs. John Bull at Home, on the .... R.S.V.P.--An Intelligent
Landlord--Meaning of the word "Concert"--The Conversazione--The
Royal Academy.
When you hear the postman's loud rat-tat at your door, do not rush
with joy to your letter-box, for instead of a reply which you have
been impatiently awaiting, you may find a little snare, conceived in
the following terms:
+-----------------------------------------------+
| |
| _Mrs. John Bull |
| requests the pleasure |
| of Mr. X's. company._ |
| |
| _Music at 9 o'clock._ |
| _R.S.V.P._ |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------+
R.S.V.P.! The hint is good, act upon it: _Résistez Si Vous Pouvez._
Use a little diplomacy, of course: "Mr. X. presents his compliments
to Mrs. John Bull, and regrets exceedingly that an engagement already
made by Mrs. X. will prevent him from availing himself of her kind
invitation for the ....." That's it. Do not forget to name Mrs. X.,
and to make her responsible for your deep disappointment; by so doing,
you will allow Mrs. John Bull to suppose that if you had made the
engagement yourself, you would have done everything in your power to
get out of it, in order to be able to go to her _soirée musicale_.
In these matters, you must imitate the English, who are unequalled in
diplomacy: when they have something disagreeable to say to you, they
will invariably say it through their wives. For instance, ask your
landlord to do some repairs for you; tell him it rains in his house;
that you are subject to rheumatism, and that his cardboard barrack
will be your sepulchre, if he does not forthwith send you the mason
and the carpenter. Perhaps you think he will take pity upon you and
come to the rescue. Not he: not so silly. He sends his wife instead.
That lady makes her appearance, looking anything but agreeable, and
not over polite. She tells you that tenants are always full of
complaints and there is no satisfying them, that she wishes the house
were at Jericho, that the draughts are necessaries of existence, and
if there were none, you would soon be poisoned by the exhalations from
the bricks, and that it is evident you do not know when you are well
off. She wishes you a more contented mind in the future, and takes her
departure. Furious, you write to your landlord to complain of the
unsatisfactory result of the interview, and receive a reply somewhat
in this style: "Sir, if it only rested with me, you should not have to
complain long, but this is how the matter stands: the rent of the
house you occupy is my wife's pin-money (there is a good kind fellow
for you now!), and these matters concern her alone. I have done my
best to try and persuade her to do the repairs in question, but I
regret to have to tell you, without success." So, as the law in
England favours the landlord, and if your house should collapse while
you held an unexpired lease on it, your landlord would not be bound to
rebuild it, rather than be frozen or drowned within doors, you have
the repairs done at your own expense, and there is an end of it.
But let us come back to our _soirée musicale_, or rather let us go to
it, since, not suspecting what was in store for us, we have accepted
the invitation.
At nine o'clock you present yourself. Your hostess comes forward,
shakes hands with you, and makes you welcome.
"How good of you to come, Mr. X--."
----"It's very kind of you to say so."
----"Do you sing?"
----"No, I'm afraid I do not."
----"I congratulate you then," Mrs. Bull has more than once whispered
to me in reply.
----"Excuse me, but it is I who congratulate you. I should be sorry to
spoil your charming evening...."
----"I must leave you, the music is going to begin."
The executants follow one another with a rapidity that is bewildering.
I have sometimes witnessed prodigious feats at these private concerts.
I have heard as many as twenty-five songs in less than two hours, and
when I thought of the number of little black dots on all those pages
that had been turned over, and of the seeming inability of the
performers to hit one of them right, I have said to myself: "It is
really too unlucky; never was there anything so perverse. It is
wonderful when one comes to take into consideration the theory of
chances."
"_Concert_," says Littré, "is _action d'agir ensemble_." Not so in
England at musical parties: rather _the act of running after one
another without being able to catch one another_. These good folks in
their duets always seem to me to be singing vigorously at each other:
"You can't catch me, you can't catch me!"
The piano is generally good, I mean the instrument; although the
French piano has more sonority, and certainly more limpidity.
"_Nos pianos sont un peu sourds_," said an amiable hostess to me one
day in French.
"They are lucky," thought I.
The best thing to be done, when you find yourself in for an evening's
music of this kind, is to put a good face upon it, and keep quiet.
After all it is but an affair of ear scratches. One survives it.
I was ill-inspired enough one evening to move out of my corner. I had
been in torture for about two hours. "Come, old fellow," I said to
myself, "this will never do: you must rouse yourself and move about a
little, you are getting tipsy listening to this noise."
A young man, with a coppery, metallic voice, had just completed the
massacre of that beautiful song of Tito Mattel's "_Non è ver_." The
execution over, I rose, thinking the moment favourable, and advancing
to where the singer stood, I said to him,
"What a lovely song that is, to be sure! and how exquisitely you sing
it."
----"It is my favourite," he said to me, with a triumphant glance.
----"You sing it with such taste too. Do you know it in Italian?"
----"Sir! But I have just sung it in Italian."
----"Really? I beg your pardon, I was so much under the influence of
the melody that I was not listening to the words."
"I am not in luck to-night decidedly," I said to myself as I returned
to my seat, feeling rather silly. "But, after all, I brought it on
myself."
A quarter of an hour later, my Briton seated himself at the piano, and
played a nocturne rejoicing in the title of "Evening Breeze," or
something equally original. I was told in confidence that it was a
piece of his own composition. He played it correctly enough to satisfy
a mathematician, without putting more expression into it than a
musical-box would have done. For that matter, if you would please a
drawing-room audience here, you must sing or play like a machine; no
refractory muscle must compromise the British dignity.
The Englishman who shows his feelings loses his self-control, and
becomes an object for the contemptuous pity of his compatriots. It is
bad form.
The sympathetic voice is unknown: people sing more or less loudly,
more or less out of tune. When the hostess comes and tells you: "This
gentleman is going to sing; he has a magnificent voice," that means
that he has the voice of a Stentor.
If I had to describe the nearest approach to the effect produced on
one by Mrs. John Bull's _soirées musicales_, I should say, intense
pains which I can only compare to toothache in the intestines. Imagine
yourself to be having a molar tooth extracted from the depths of your
stomach.
* * * * *
The musical evenings, _passe encore_: people make a good deal of
noise, and you have the satisfaction of feeling that you are alive.
Besides, when the row is over, you sup; and, as I have told you, Mrs.
John Bull's suppers are very good.
But there is something worse than the musical party; it is the
_conversazione_, so called, because at this entertainment, you walk
about a great deal and converse very little.
On your arrival, you go and shake hands with your host and hostess,
then off you go: your card of invitation is as good as a _feuille de
route_. You walk at a funeral pace, with slow and solemn steps, until
your knees give way, or your head swims. Then you steer for the
buffet, and if you know how to use your elbows, you get a cup of tea
or coffee, an ice, or a few biscuits. The buffet, being generally the
great attraction of the evening, sustains a formidable siege, and you
will not get at it without a struggle or even a few bruises. But after
your first stage, you feel you must halt and take some refreshment,
even though it cost you two or three blows: it is a case of necessity.
As soon as the inner man is refreshed, you must put your best foot
foremost and be off once more. England expects every man to do his
duty. As to passing the evening at the buffet, it is not to be thought
of. You cast a sad glance at the ices _à la vanille_ and other nice
things that you turn your back on regretfully, and you start on your
second round, hoping on the way to be introduced to some lady and to
have an occasion to return to the buffet with her. No whist tables at
the _conversazione_, few chairs, some albums to turn over. These
meetings, called conversazioni, but which might as appropriately be
called walking parties (or _ambulazioni_?), are very favourite forms
of amusement. If they were not so crowded, you might perhaps feel
inclined to give your calves a good rubbing, and start ahead to do in
an hour the three or four miles that are expected of you. When you
feel your legs becoming a prey to thousands of needles and pins, you
seek out the master of the house, and say to him, "Thank you so much
for a very charming evening." He invariably answers, "I am so glad you
have enjoyed yourself." It is good form to make these remarks without
bursting out laughing in each other's faces.
John Bull, consummate master of the _art de s'ennuyer_, never invented
anything duller than the conversazione; it is the _ne plus ultra_ of
the art.
* * * * *
The Royal Academy of Paintings, the London _Salon_, opens on the 1st
of May. If you call on Mrs. John Bull during the months of May or
June, the first thing she will ask you is: "Have you been to the
Academy? What pictures did you like best?" Now, the English are very
good judges of painting, and I am ashamed to say that, for my part, I
do not know a Van Dyck from a Van Daub. As I might venture to reply:
"I noticed such and such a picture," and create a poor impression, I
have found a way out of the difficulty by the following very simple
means. I get some artist friend to point out to me a score of the best
pictures in the collection; I have a good look at them, carefully
commit their names to memory, and set off to pay my calls.
"Have you been to...?" says Mrs. Bull.
----"Oh! yes.... By-the-bye, did you notice such and such a
picture...?"
Thus I spare myself a great deal of trouble and many blunders: first,
two whole days looking at the pictures, a stiff neck ... and, last but
not least, the annoyance of passing for an ignoramus, which is always
unpleasant ... especially when it is the case.
I suspect many a worthy Englishwoman of going to the Academy to see
the new summer fashions. As to the sons of Old Merry England, I have
often seen them take up their position at the buffet, and devote their
attention to the whisky and brandy until the return of the ladies they
brought with them. By this means they are enabled to see at the
Academy twice as many pictures as the hanging Committee have admitted.
XIII.
Ladies of the Royal Family--Mrs. Christian--Minnie and Alec--The Noble
Lord the Poet-Laureate--Wanted an English Academy.
Say to an English Conservative that Gladstone is an old rascal, and
Chamberlain a dangerous demagogue, and he will exclaim: "You are
right."
Say to a Liberal that Salisbury is a humbug, Stafford Northcote an old
woman, and Randolph Churchill a political _gamin_, and he will reply:
"You have the measure of them."
But venture to speak jokingly of the Queen, and your Englishman, be he
Liberal or Conservative, will fly at you like a bull-dog.
The reason is simple enough.
According to the Conservatives, a Liberal Government never has done,
and never will do, anything right.
According to the Liberals, a Conservative Government never
accomplished, and never will accomplish, anything but blunders or
atrocities.
But in insulting the Queen, who can do nothing wrong, and is thus
placed in a position of safety, removed from all party jealousies, you
are insulting England, and on this point the Englishman is not to be
trifled with; and indeed, be not deceived, this is the very secret of
his strength.
Happy the country that has sons ready, when the hour of danger comes,
to forget their own quarrels, and rally as one man around her
standard!
Go to a theatre, a concert, to the athletic sports of schoolboys, and
when the band strikes up "God Save the Queen," to announce that the
entertainment is at an end, you will see every man and boy bare his
head, every face grow serious, and, in the midst of this imposing
silence, this solemn attitude, you will be struck with admiration and
respect for this nation in whom the sound of a monotonous hymn can
awaken the deepest feelings of love for the mother-country.
Yet this boundless respect is less an act of homage to the monarchy
than to a court, which is untainted by the breath of scandal, and a
virtuous Queen who understands the duties of a constitutional
sovereign so well, that the best informed statesmen, whether Liberals
or Conservatives, declare that they know not to which side her heart
leans.
Not that the Queen's conservatism is not known to be of the strongest
kind; but she has always had enough tact, and respect for the
convictions of her subjects, to dissimulate her personal sentiments so
far, that a statesman may always pretend not to know them without
seeming to insult the common sense of his audience.
To read the speeches and decrees of the Queen, studded as they are
with the phrase "_it is our royal pleasure_;" to hear her royal assent
given to bills passed by both Houses of Parliament under the formula
of _La reyne le veult_, you would believe yourself in the Middle Ages,
or at least in the seventeenth century, under a despotic, absolute
monarchy. All these vestiges of old royal prerogatives are carefully
preserved in England, but they are merely empty forms: the will of the
Queen is not more terrible than the Tower of London, from which you
can now emerge as easily as you enter, and more easily too, for you
must pay sixpence to go in, and you can come out for nothing at all.
If a photograph could sign documents, the Queen's would replace her
quite well.
"Gouvernement facile et beau,
A qui suffit, pour toute garde,
Un Suisse, avec sa hallebarde,
Peint sur la porte du château."
The royal speeches and decrees are ratified and signed by the Queen,
and no doubt she previously reads them or has them read to her, but
not one phrase is hers, and if you would form an exact idea of her as
a woman, it is not her speeches and decrees that will help you.
In the second volume of the Queen's "Life in the Highlands," published
this year, you will look in vain for the slightest allusion to
politics; it is the journal of a country gentleman's wife, who takes
but small interest in anything outside the family circle. It is the
diary of a queen that gives her people but one subject of complaint,
which is that they do not see enough of her.
Happy queen! happy nation!
With the exception of _table d'hôte_ colonels' widows, and Polish
counts, who, in England as in every other country trodden of man, know
all the secrets of all the royal families in the world, and will tell
you with a mysterious look: "Oh! the Princess of _So-and-So_? I know
on excellent authority that she had to be married in all haste." Or:
"You know that little baby the Countess of ... had the other day? Dear
child! it will never know what it owes to His Royal Highness;" with
the exception, as I say, of these worthies, you will never hear anyone
in England tell you shady stories about one of the ladies of this
court, so pure and strict on the subject of conduct, that it is said
the Queen will not suffer a woman separated from her husband to be
presented to her, even were she a marchioness or a duchess.
It is by setting the example of a pure life; by allowing her people to
govern themselves as they think fit; by sympathising in the joys and
sorrows of her humblest subjects; by creating bonds of affection
between the cottage and the throne, that this Queen, this model
mother, has inspired in her subjects a love that is akin to worship.
* * * * *
The Queen's daughters are artists. One has exhibited at the Royal
Academy; another has published some of her sketches in a monthly
magazine. You see them constantly visiting picture galleries and
painters' studios.
Their education has been such as a careful middle-class mother would
give to her daughters, and everyone knows that at the Swiss Cottage,
at Osborne, the young princesses learned to sew and keep house.
In 1866, Princess Alice, the wife of Prince Louis of Hesse, who in
1877 succeeded to the grand-ducal throne of Hesse-Darmstadt, wrote to
her mother, the ruler of the greatest empire in the world: "I have
made all the summer out walking dresses, seven in number, with
paletots for the girls, not embroidered, but entirely made from
beginning to end; likewise the new necessary flannel shawls for the
expected. I manage all the nursery accounts and everything myself,
which gives me plenty to do, as everything increases, and, on account
of the house, we must live very economically for these next years."
The letters of the Princess Alice, in which the house-mother is seen
in every line, were published in German a few years ago. Princess
Christian of Schleswig-Holstein has just given them to the world, in
English. The letters reveal in all its beauty the character of this
Princess, who lavished the care and tenderness of a heart full of
filial love upon her father in his last illness, and exactly seventeen
years after, fell a victim to the devotion with which she nursed her
husband and children through the terrible malady that was raging at
the time throughout the Grand-Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.
I was one day in Soho Bazaar with two or three English ladies. A few
steps from us the Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein,
accompanied by her husband, was making some purchases. After having
chosen what she required: "You will send me these things," she said to
the young person who had served her.
----"To what address?"
----"To Buckingham Palace."
----"What name, madam?"
----"Oh!... Mrs. Christian!" cried the Princess gaily, at the same
time glancing at her husband, with an expression that betrayed her
enjoyment of the fun of the thing.
Marie Antoinette, the haughtiest of queens, loved to play the
shepherdess.
* * * * *
In the month of September, 1883, the Poet Tennyson saw a little of the
King of Denmark's Court. Seated one evening near the young Empress of
Russia and her sister the Princess of Wales, he felt ill at ease, not
knowing by what title he ought rightly to address those royal ladies:
"I do not know," he said to them, "what I ought to call you?"
"Oh!" cried the charming Princess of Wales, "there is no difficulty:
Minnie and Alec, to be sure!"