The gravity of the French character is a no less remarkable (though a
less obvious) feature in it than its levity. The last is the quality
that strikes us most by contrast to ourselves, and that comes most into
play in the intercourse of common life; and therefore we are generally
disposed to set them down as an altogether frivolous and superficial
people. It is a mistake which we shall do well to correct on farther
acquaintance with them; or if we persist in it, we must call to our aid
an extraordinary degree of our native blindness and obstinacy. We ought
never to visit their Theatres, to walk along their streets, to enter
their houses, to look in their faces (when they do not think themselves
observed,) to open their books, or take a view of their
picture-galleries. Sterne seems to have been the first, as well as last
traveller, who found out their weak side in this respect. ‘If the French
have a fault, Monsieur le Comte,’ says he, ‘it is that they are too
serious.’ This contradiction in their character has been little noticed,
and they have never had the credit of it, though it stares one in the
face everywhere. How we are to piece the two extremes together is
another question. Is it that their whole character is a system of
_inconsequentiality_? Or are they gay and trifling in serious matters,
serious only in trifles? Or are their minds more of the cameleon-cast,
that reflects all objects alike, whether grave or gay, and give
themselves up entirely, and without resistance, to the prevailing
impulse? Or is it owing to a want of comprehension, so that they are
incapable of correcting one feeling by another, and thus run into
extremes? Or that they have a greater scope and variety of resources,
excelling us as much in gravity as in want of thought, outdoing us in
tragedy and comedy, as they betake themselves to each, in the poetical
or in the prosaic departments of life, only that they sometimes make a
transposition of the two characters a little oddly, and pass from the
one to the other without our well knowing why?
I have been frequently puzzled with this exception to the butterfly,
airy, thoughtless, fluttering character of the French (on which we
compliment ourselves,) and never more so than the first night I went to
the theatre. The order, the attention, the decorum were such as would
shame any London audience. The attention was more like that of a learned
society to a lecture on some scientific subject, than of a promiscuous
crowd collected together merely for amusement, and to pass away an idle
hour. There was a professional air, an unvarying gravity in the looks
and demeanour of the whole assembled multitude, as if every one had an
immediate interest in the character of the national poetry, in the
purity of the French accent, in the propriety of the declamation, in the
conceptions of the actor, and the developement of the story, instead of
its presenting a mob of idle boys and girls, of ignorant gaping
citizens, or supercilious box-lobby loungers, affecting a contempt for
the performance, and for every one around them. The least noise or
irregularity called forth the most instant and lively disapprobation;
and the vivacity of the French character displayed itself to advantage
in earnest gesticulations and expressions of impatience. Not only was
the strictest silence observed, as soon as the curtain drew up, but no
one moved or attempted to move. The spell thrown over the customary or
supposed restlessness and volatility of the French was in this respect
complete. The uniformity of the appearance was indeed almost ridiculous;
for the rows of heads in the seats of the pit no more stirred or
projected the breadth of a finger beyond the line, than those of a
regiment of recruits on parade, or than if a soldier were stationed to
keep each chin in its place. They may be reduced to the state of
automatons; but there were no traces of the _monkey_ character left.[17]
If the performance had been _at Court_, greater propriety could not have
been maintained; but it was a French play (one of Racine’s) and acted
before a Parisian audience: this seemed to be enough to ensure it a
proper reception. One would suppose, from their interest in dramatic
representations, that the French were a nation of actors. Perhaps it may
be asked, ‘Is not that the case? and is it not their vanity, their own
desire to shine, or their sympathy with whatever or whoever is a
candidate for applause, that accounts for their behaviour?’ At least,
their vanity makes them _grave_; and if it is this which rivets their
attention, and silences their eternal loquacity, it must be allowed to
produce effects which others would do well to imitate from better
motives, if they have them![18]
The play was not much; but there seemed to be an abstract interest felt
in the stage as such, in the sound of the verse, in the measured step of
the actors, in the recurrence of the same pauses, and of the same ideas;
in the correctness of the costume, in the very notion of the endeavour
after excellence, and in the creation of an artificial and imaginary
medium of thought. If the French are more susceptible of immediate,
sensible impressions, it would appear, judging from their behaviour at
their own theatres, that they are also more sensible of reflex and
refined ones. The bare suggestion of an interesting topic is to them
interesting: it may be said, on the most distant intimation, to excite
the most lively concern, and to collect their scattered spirits into a
focus. Their sensibility takes the alarm more easily; their
understanding is quicker of hearing. With them, to the sublime or
pathetic there is but one step—the _name_; the moment the subject is
started, they ‘jump at’ the catastrophe and all the consequences. We are
slow, and must have a thing made out to us in striking instances, and by
successive blows. We are sluggish, and must be lifted up to the heights
of a factitious enthusiasm by the complicated machinery of a powerful
imagination: we are obstinate, not to say selfish, and require to be
urged over the abyss of mental anguish by the utmost violence of terror
and pity. But with the French, all this is a matter of course, a verbal
process. Tears, as well as smiles, cost them less than they do us. Words
are more nearly allied to things in their minds; the one have a more
vital being, though it does not follow that the other are altogether
empty and barren of interest. But the French seem (in their dramatic
exhibitions) not to wish to get beyond, or (shall I speak it more
plainly?) to have no faculty for getting beyond the abstract conception,
the naked proposition of the subject. They are a people (I repeat it)
void and bare of the faculty of imagination, if by this we mean the
power of placing things in the most novel and striking point of view;
and they are so for this reason, that they have no need of it. It is to
them a superfluity—a thankless toil. Their quick, discursive
apprehension runs on before, and anticipates and defeats the efforts of
the highest poetry. They are contented to indulge in all the agony or
ecstacy of sounding and significant common-places. The words _charming_,
_delicious_, _indescribable_, &c. excite the same lively emotions in
their minds as the most vivid representations of what is said to be so;
and hence verbiage and the cant of sentiment fill the place, and stop
the road to genius—a vague, flaccid, enervated rhetoric being too often
substituted for the pith and marrow of truth and nature. The greatest
facility to feel or to comprehend will not produce the most intense
passion, or the most electrical expression of it. There must be a
resistance in the matter to do this—a collision, an obstacle to
overcome. The torrent rushes with fury from being impeded in its course:
the lightning splits the gnarled oak. There is no malice in this
statement; but I should think they may themselves allow it to be an
English version of the truth, containing a great deal that is favourable
to them, with a saving clause for our own use. The long (and to us
tiresome) speeches in French tragedy consist of a string of emphatic and
well-balanced lines, announcing general maxims and indefinite sentiments
applicable to human life. The poet seldom commits any excesses by giving
way to his own imagination, or identifying himself with individual
situations and sufferings. We are not now raised to the height of
passion, now plunged into its lowest depths; the whole finds its level,
like water, in the liquid, yielding susceptibility of the French
character, and in the unembarrassed scope of the French intellect. The
finest line in Racine, that is, in French poetry, is by common consent
understood to be the following:—
Craignez Dieu, mon cher Abner, et ne craignez que Dieu.
That is, _Fear God, my dear Abner, and fear only him_. A pious and just
exhortation, it is true; but, when this is referred to as the highest
point of elevation to which their dramatic genius has aspired, though we
may not be warranted in condemning their whole region of poetry as a
barren waste, we may consider it as very nearly a level plain, and
assert, that though the soil contains mines of useful truths within its
bosom and glitters with the graces of a polished style, it does not
abound in picturesque points of view or romantic interest! It is certain
that a thousand such lines would have no effect upon an English audience
but to set them to sleep, like a sermon, or to make them commence a
disturbance to avoid it. Yet, though the declamation of the French stage
is as monotonous as the dialogue, the French listen to it with the tears
in their eyes, holding in their breath, beating time to the cadence of
the verse, and following the actors with a book in their hands for hours
together. The English most assuredly do not pay the same attention to a
play of Shakspeare’s, or to any thing but a cock-fight or a
sparring-match. This is no great compliment to them; but it makes for
the gravity of the French, who have mistaken didactic for dramatic
poetry, who can sit out a play with the greatest patience and
complacency, that an Englishman would hoot off the stage, or yawn over
from beginning to end for its want of striking images and lively effect,
and with whom Saturn is a God no less than Mercury! I am inclined to
suspect the genius of their religion may have something to do with the
genius of their poetry. The first absorbs in a manner their powers of
imagination, their love of the romantic and the marvellous, and leaves
the last in possession of their sober reason and moral sense. Their
churches are theatres; their theatres are like churches. Their fancies
are satiated with the mummeries and pageantry of the Catholic faith,
with hieroglyphic obscurity and quaint devices; and, when they come to
the tangible ground of human affairs, they are willing to repose alike
from ornament and extravagance, in plain language and intelligible
ideas. They go to mass in the morning to dazzle their senses, and
bewilder their imagination, and inflame their enthusiasm; and they
resort to the theatre in the evening to seek relief from superstitious
intoxication in the prose of poetry, and from Gothic mysteries and
gloom, in classic elegance and costume. Be this as it may, the love of
the French for Racine is not a feeling of the moment, or left behind
them at the theatres; they can quote him by heart, and his sententious,
admirable lines occupy the next place in their minds to their _amatory
poetry_. There is nothing unpleasant in a French theatre but a certain
infusion of _soup-maigre_ into the composition of the air, (so that one
inhales a kind of thin pottage,) and an oily dinginess in the
complexions both of the men and women, which shews more by lamp-light.
It is not true (as has been said) that their theatres are nearly dark,
or that the men stand in the pit. It is true, none but men are admitted
into it, but they have seats just the same as with us, and a curious
custom of securing their places when they go out, by binding their
handkerchiefs round them, so that at the end of the play the benches
presented nothing but a row of knotted pocket handkerchiefs. Almost
every one returned and sat out the entertainment, which was not a farce,
but a sentimental comedy, and a very charming one too, founded on the
somewhat national subject of a seduction by an English nobleman in
France, and in which the fair sufferer was represented by a young
_debutante_, in natural expression and pathos little inferior to Miss
Kelly, (as far as we can translate French into English nature,) but
fatter and prettier. So much for their taste in theatricals, which does
not incline wholly to puppet-shows and gew-gaws. The Theatre, in short,
is the Throne of the French character, where it is mounted on its
pedestal of pride, and seen to every advantage. I like to contemplate it
there, for it reconciles me to them and to myself. It is a common and
amicable ground on which we meet. Their tears are such as others
shed—their interest in what happened three thousand years ago is not
exclusively French. They are no longer a distinct race or _caste_, but
human beings. To feel towards others as of a different species, is not
the way to increase our respect for ourselves or human nature. Their
defects and peculiarities, we may be almost sure, have corresponding
opposite vices in us—the excellences are confined pretty much to what
there is in common.
The ordinary prejudice entertained on this subject in England is, that
the French are little better than grown children—
‘Pleas’d with a feather—tickled with a straw—’
full of grimace and noise and shew, lively and pert, but with no turn or
capacity for serious thought or continued attention of any kind, and
hardly deserving the name of rational beings, any more than apes or
jackdaws. They may laugh and talk more than the English; but they read,
and, I suspect, think more, taking them as a people. You see an
apple-girl in Paris, sitting at a stall with her feet over a stove in
the coldest weather, or defended from the sun by an umbrella, reading
Racine or Voltaire. Who ever saw such a thing in London as a
barrow-woman reading Shakspeare or Fielding? You see a handsome, smart
_grisette_ at the back of every little shop or counter in Paris, if she
is not at work, reading perhaps one of Marmontel’s Tales, with all the
absorption and delicate interest of a heroine of romance. Yet we make
doleful complaints of the want of education among the common people, and
of the want of reflection in the female character in France. There is
something of the same turn for reading in Scotland; but then where is
the gaiety or the grace? They are more sour and formal even than the
English. The book-stalls all over Paris present a very delightful
appearance. They contain neatly-bound, cheap, and portable editions of
all their standard authors, which of itself refutes the charge of a want
of the knowledge or taste for books. The French read with avidity
whenever they can snatch the opportunity. They read standing in the open
air, into which they are driven by the want of air at home. They read in
garrets and in cellars. They read at one end of a counter, when a person
is hammering a lock or a piece of cabinet-work at the other, without
taking their eye from the book, or picking a quarrel with the person who
is making the noise. Society is the school of education in France; there
is a transparency in their intellects as in their atmosphere, which
makes the communication of thought or sound more rapid and general. The
_farina_ of knowledge floats in the air, and circulates at random. Alas!
it ‘quickens, even with blowing.’ A periwig-maker is an orator; a
fish-woman is a moralist; a woman of fashion is a metaphysician, armed
with all the topics; a pretty woman in Paris, who was not also a
_blue-stocking_, would make little figure in the circles. It would be in
vain for her to know how to dispose a knot of ribands or a bunch of
flowers in her hair, unless she could arrange a critical and analytical
argument in all the forms. It is nothing against her, if she excels in
personal and mental accomplishments at the same time. This turn for
literary or scientific topics in the women may indeed be accounted for
in part from the modes of social intercourse in France; but what does
this very circumstance prove, but that an interchange of ideas is
considered as one great charm in the society between men and women, and
that the thirst of knowledge is not banished by a grosser passion?
Knowledge and reason, however, descend; and where the women are
philosophers, the men are not quite block-heads or _petit-maitres_. They
are far from being the ignorant smatterers that we pretend. They are not
backward at asking for reasons, nor slow in giving them. They have a
theory for every thing, even for vice and folly. Their faces again are
grave and serious when they are by themselves, as they are gay and
animated in society. Their eyes have a vacant, absent stare; their
features set or lengthen all at once into ‘the melancholy of Moorditch.’
The _Conducteur_ of the Diligence from Rouen confirmed me agreeably in
my theory of the philosophical character of the French physiognomy. With
large grey eyes and drooping eye-lids, prominent distended nostrils, a
fine Fenelon expression of countenance, and a mouth open and eloquent,
with furrowed lines twisted round it like whip-cord, he stood on the
steps of the coach, and harangued to the gentlemen within on the
_bêtise_ of some _voyageur Anglois_ with the air of a professor, and in
a deep sonorous voice, worthy of an oration of Bossuet. I should like to
hear a Yorkshire guard, with his bluff, red face, bristly bullet head,
little peering eyes, round shoulders, and squeaking voice, ascend into
an imaginary rostrum in this manner, wave a florid speculation in one
hand, and hold fast by the coach-door with the other, or get beyond an
oath, a hearty curse, or his shrewd country gibberish! The face of the
French soldiery is a face of great humanity—it is manly, sedate,
thoughtful—it is equally free from fierceness and stupidity; and it
seems to bear in its eye defeat and victory, the eagle and the lilies! I
cannot help adding here, that a French gentleman (_un Rentier_) who
lodges in the hotel opposite to me, passes his time in reading all the
morning, dines, plays with his children after dinner, and takes a hand
at backgammon with an old _gouvernante_ in the evening. He does not
figure away with a couple of horses in the streets like our English
_jockeys_ (who really are nothing without a footman behind them,) nor
does his wife plague his life out to run after all the new sights. And
yet they are from the country. This looks like domestic comfort and
internal resources. How many disciples of Rousseau’s _Emilius_ are there
in France at the present day? I knew one twenty years ago.
The French are a people who practise the arts and sciences naturally. A
shoe-black is the _artiste du jour_ (artist of the day,) and a
rat-catcher approaches you under some insidious _nom de guerre_. Every
thing is with them imposing, grave, important. ‘Except (it may be said)
what really is so;’ and it may be insinuated, that all their pretensions
are equally idly mockery and grimace. Look, then, at their works of
science and of art—the one the most comprehensive and exact, the other
the most laborious and finished in the world. What are their chemists,
their astronomers, their naturalists, their painters, their sculptors?
If not the greatest and most inventive geniuses, the most accurate
compilers, and the most severe students in their several departments. La
Place, Lavoisier, Cuvier, David, Houdon, are not triflers or pretenders.
In science, if we have discovered the principles, they have gone more
into the details—in art we accuse them of being over-laboured, and of
finishing too minutely and mechanically; and they charge us (justly
enough) with a want of _finesse_, and with producing little more than
rude sketches and abortive caricatures. Their frigid, anatomical
inquiries—their studies after the antique, and acquaintance with all the
professional and scientific branches of their art, are notorious—and the
care with which they work up their draperies and back-grounds is obvious
to every one, and a standing subject of complaint and ridicule to
English artists and critics. Their refinement in art, I confess,
consists chiefly in an attention to rules and details, but then it does
imply an attention to these, which is contrary to our idea of the
flighty French character. I remember, some years ago, a young French
artist in the Louvre, who was making a chalk-drawing of a small _Virgin
and Child_, by Leonardo da Vinci, and he took eleven weeks to complete
it, sitting with his legs astride over a railing, looking up and talking
to those about him—consulting their opinion as to his unwearied
imperceptible progress—going to the fire to warm his hands, and
returning to _perfectionate himself_! There was a good deal of
‘laborious foolery’ in all this, but still he kept on with it, and did
not fly to fifty things one after the other. Another student had
undertaken to copy the _Titian’s Mistress_, and the method he took to do
it was to parcel out his canvass into squares like an engraver; after
which he began very deliberately, not with the face or hair, but with
the first square in the right-hand corner of the picture, containing a
piece of an old table. He did not care where he began, so that he went
through the whole regularly. _C’est égal_, is the common reply in all
such cases. This continuity of purpose, without any great effort or deep
interest, surprises an Englishman. We can do nothing without a strong
motive, and without violent exertion. But it is this very circumstance
probably that enables them to proceed: they take the matter quite
easily, and have not the same load of anxious thought to bear up
against, nor the same impatient eagerness to reach perfection at a
single stride, to stop them midway. They have not the English air
hanging at their backs, like the Old Man of the Sea at Sinbad’s! The
same freedom from any thing like morbid humour assists them to plod on
like the Dutch from mere phlegm, or to diverge into a variety of
pursuits, which is still more natural to them. Horace Vernet has in the
present Exhibition a portrait of a lady, (a rival to Sir T. Lawrence’s)
and close to it, a battle-piece, equal to Ward or Cooper. Who would not
be a Parisian born, to attain excellence with the wish to succeed from
mere confidence or indifference to success, to unite such a number of
accomplishments, or be equally satisfied without a single one!
The English are over-hasty in supposing a certain lightness and
petulance of manner in the French to be incompatible with sterling
thought or steady application, and flatter themselves that not to be
merry is to be wise. A French lady who had married an Englishman
remarkable for his dullness, used to apologise for his silence in
company by incessantly repeating ‘_C’est toujours Locke, toujours
Newton_,’ as if these were the subjects that occupied his thoughts. It
is well we have these names to appeal to in all cases of emergency; and
as far as mere gravity is concerned, let these celebrated persons have
been as wise as they would, they could not for the life of them have
appeared duller or more stupid than the generality of their countrymen.
The chief advantage I can find in the English over the French comes to
this, that though slower, if they once take a thing up, they are longer
in laying it down, provided it is a grievance or a _sore subject_. The
reason is, that the French do not delight in grievances or in sore
subjects; and that the English delight in nothing else, and battle their
way through them most manfully. Their _forte_ is the disagreeable and
repulsive. I think they would have fought the battle of Waterloo over
again! The English, besides being ‘good haters,’ are dogged and
downright, and have no salvos for their self-love. Their vanity does not
heal the wounds made in their pride. The French, on the contrary, are
soon reconciled to fate, and so enamoured of their own idea, that
nothing can put them out of conceit with it. Whatever their attachment
to their country, to liberty or glory, they are not so affected by the
loss of these as to make any desperate effort or sacrifice to recover
them. Their continuity of feeling is such, as to be no enemy to a whole
skin. They over-ran Europe like tigers, and defended their own territory
like deer. They are a nation of heroes—on this side of martyrdom!