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Title: The American in Paris; vol. 2 of 2
Author: John Sanderson
Release date: January 8, 2025 [eBook #75060]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Henry Colburn, Publisher, 1838
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN IN PARIS; VOL. 2 OF 2 ***
THE AMERICAN
IN
PARIS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1838.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY,
OLD BAILEY.
CONTENTS.
LETTER XII.
Mass at St. Roch for Admiral de Rigny.--The Abbé Lacordaire at
Notre Dame.--State of the French Church.--St. Genevieve.--St.
Etienne du Mont.--The American child at Prayers.--St. Medard.--Its
Miracles.--Chapelle de St. Nicholas.--The Madelaine.--Notre
Dame.--St. Denis.--St. Sulpice.--The Church Service.--Celibacy of the
Clergy.--American Churches.--Manner of keeping Sunday p. 1-30
LETTER XIII.
Père la Chaise.--Funeral of Bellini.--Grave-Merchants.--Description
of the Cemetery.--Graves of the Rich and the Poor.--The Fête
des Morts.--Tomb of Abelard and Heloise.--Remarkable personages
buried there.--The Aristocracy of the Grave.--Monument of
Foy.--Inscription.--Grave yards in Cities and Towns.--French
regulations for the inhumation of the dead p. 31-71
LETTER XIV.
The Louvre.--Patronage of the Fine Arts.--The Luxembourg.--The Palais
des Beaux Arts.--The Sêvres Porcelain.--The Gobelins.--Manners
of the common People in Paris.--A fair Cicerone.--Her remarks on
Painting.--The French, Flemish, and Italian Schools.--English Patronage
of Art.--The New National Gallery.--Sir Christopher Wren.--A tender
Adieu p. 72-98
LETTER XV.
The Schools.--State of Literature.--Minister of Public
Instruction.--Education in France.--Prussian System.--Parochial
Schools.--Normal Schools.--Institutions of Paris.--Public
Libraries.--Machinery of French Justice.--The Judges.--Eloquence of the
Bar.--Medicine.--Corporations of Learning.--Their Evils.--The French
Institute.--Pretended New System of Instruction.--Professors of Paris
p. 99-138
LETTER XVI.
Ladies’ Boarding Schools.--Names of Professors in the
Prospectus.--System of Education.--American Schools.--Preference for
Science.--High Intellectual Acquirements not approved.--Learned
Women.--American Girls.--Comparison of French and American
Society.--The care to preserve Female Beauty.--Expression
of the Mouth.--Dress of American Women.--Notions of the
Maternal Character.--Studies in Ladies’ Schools.--Literary
Associations.--Société Geographique.--French Lady Authors.--Living
Writers.--Chateaubriand--Beranger--Lamartine--Victor Hugo--Casimir
de la Vigne--Alfred de Vigny--Guizot--Thiers--Thièrry
Ségur--Lacretelle--Sismondi p. 139-163
LETTER XVII.
The Theatres.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Théatre
Royal.--Italien.--Grisi.--Académie Royal de Musique.--Taglioni.--Miss
Fanny Elsler.--The Variètés.--The Odéon.--Mademoiselle
George.--Hamlet.--Republican Spirit of the Age.--Character of the
French Stage.--Machinery of the Drama.--The Claqueurs.--Supply of New
Pieces.--The Vaudevillists.--M. Scribe.--The Diorama.--Concerts.--Music
p. 164-187
LETTER XVIII.
Parisian habits.--The Chaussée d’Antin.--Season of Bonbons.--Jour de
l’An.--Commencement of the Season.--The Carnival.--Reception at the
Tuileries.--Lady Granville.--The Royal Family.--Court Ceremonies.--Ball
at the Hotel de Ville.--French Beauty.--A Bal de Charité.--Lord
Canterbury.--Bulwer.--Sir Sydney Smith.--The Court Balls.--Splendid
Scene.--The Princess Amelia.--Comparison between Country and City Life
p. 188-210
LETTER XIX.
Execution of Fieschi.--The French House of Commons.--French
Eloquence.--Thiers.--Guizot.--Berryer.--Abuse of America.--The Chamber
of Peers.--Interior of the Madelaine.--Bribery.--False Oaths.--The
Middle Classes.--America and England.--Opinions of America.--English
Travellers in America.--Mrs. Trollope.--Captain Basil Hall.--Miss Fanny
Kemble.--Test of good breeding in America.--American feelings towards
England.--Their mutual Interests p. 211-234
LETTER XX.
The Dancing Fever.--The Grand Masquerade.--Fooleries of the
Carnival.--Mardi Gras.--Splendid Equipages.--Masquerades.--An
Adventure.--Educated Women.--The Menus-Plaisirs.--A Fancy Ball.--Porte
St. Martin.--The Masked Balls.--Descente de la Courtille.--End of the
Carnival.--Birth-Day of Washington p. 235-252
LETTER XXI.
Evening Parties at the Duchess d’Abrantes.--Mode of
Admission.--The Weather.--Suicides.--Madame le Norman the
Sibyl.--Parisian Réunions.--Manners of Frenchwomen.--American
Soirées.--Furniture.--Hints on Etiquette.--Manners in Parisian
High Life.--Conversation.--Dress.--Qualifications for an
Exquisite.--Smoking.--Rules for Dinner p. 253-283
LETTER XXII.
The Lap-Dog.--The Dame Blanche.--The Beauty in a Gallery.--The
Lingère.--Madame Frederic.--Fête de Longchamps.--Parisian
Fashions.--Holy Concerts.--Pretty Women.--Empire of Fashion.--Reign of
Beauty.--The Fashionable Lady p. 284-303
LETTER XXIII.
Return of Spring.--A New Venus.--The Artesian
Well.--Montmartre.--Donjon of Vincennes.--St. Ouen.--St. Germain.--The
Pretender.--Machine de Marli.--Versailles.--The Water-works.--The
Swiss Garden.--Trianon.--Races at Chantilly.--Stables of the Great
Condé--Lodgings in a French Village.--A Domestic Occurrence.--The
Boots.--The Alarm.--The Bugs.--Extract from Pepys.--Delights of
Chantilly.--Unlucky Days.--Solitude in a Crowd.--The Cure.--The King’s
Birth-day.--The Concert.--The Fire-works.--The Illuminations.--The
Buffoons.--Punch.--The Eating Department.--The Mat de Cocagne p. 304-340
THE AMERICAN IN PARIS.
LETTER XII.
Mass at St. Roch for Admiral de Rigny.--The Abbé Lacordaire at
Notre Dame.--State of the French Church.--St. Genevieve.--St.
Etienne du Mont.--The American child at Prayers.--St. Medard.--Its
Miracles.--Chapelle de St. Nicholas.--The Madelaine.--Notre
Dame.--St. Denis.--St. Sulpice.--The Church Service.--Celibacy of
the Clergy.--American Churches.--Manner of keeping Sunday.
Paris, November 14th, 1835.
I attended yesterday a mass said at St. Roch’s for the soul of the
Admiral de Rigny, who was famous, you know, for much fighting at sea and
land, especially at Navarino, and for much talking in the Chamber of
Peers about the American Indemnity. He was never chary about dying, he
said, but he thought it unlucky to be snatched away just when he was
wanted to chastise “Old Hickory” for his impudent Message. By-the-bye,
all the world is talking of war here by the hour, with great fluency and
ignorance. Newspapers and conversation are full of abuse. They send out
privateers by five hundreds, and take our ships as kites catch chickens.
Worst of all, they don’t leave an American alive, and they kill us all
off without losing a man.--The Admiral’s hearse was rich with the spoils
of vanquished enemies, and was escorted by ten thousand French heroes to
_Pére la Chaise_, with thrilling music from all the military bands, and
with a pomp and circumstance suitable to the dignity of so great a
personage.
I went this morning with every body to Notre Dame, to hear the
celebrated Abbé Lacordaire preach. He was too eloquent! Oratory in this
country, at least in the pulpit, has her trumpet always at full blast,
and announces the smallest little news with the emphasis of a miracle.
Her method is to run up to the top of the voice and then pour out her
whole spirit, as your Methodists on Guinea Hill, until human nature is
exhausted, and then to take a drink and begin again. I will set you a
French sermon, if you please, to the gamut, and you may play it on the
piano.
You must know, that the Parisian young men having gained great credit at
the last Revolution, (and they were not oppressed with modesty before
that event,) now give the tone to society. The device of the nation is
“Young France.” It is young France that measures merit and deals out
reputation; so it is not strange that they should set up this Abbé for a
Bossuet or a Bourdaloue; any more than that an eye unpractised in
painting should set up a tawdry piece of daubing above the chaste and
excellent compositions of genius. It is true, there is not a class of
young men in any country more earnest in the pursuit of letters, than
these French; but youth is not the age of good taste, and is not the age
that ought to govern public sentiment in any department of life.
In old France, the church being rich and honourable, was filled by
persons well educated and refined by good society. For a long time,
there has been no permanent public esteem to encourage talent among the
clergy, or restrain them from vices degrading to their order. Religion,
which had nearly perished in the Revolution, had but a feeble health
under the Empire; and Louis XVIII. and Charles so favoured the
priesthood, especially the Jesuits, and at the same time so
mis-governed the nation, that they had again brought it to its last gasp
at the accession of Louis Philippe. There was a time when even admission
to the Duchess de Berri’s balls required one to go to the communion and
take the sacrament. The present king has fallen in with the popular
sentiment, and is gradually changing this sentiment to the side of the
clergy, showing in this, as in most things else, the ability of a good
statesman. He sends his own family to church, and it begins to be
fashionable to be seen there. Not indeed from any reverence for
religion.
Things venerable in this country have had their day, and, as far as
religion is concerned, the bump of veneration is worn out of the human
skull. But the world rushes to Notre Dame in the morning, and to the
Opera in the evening, and to both, for the same purpose; for the crowd,
for the music and dramatic effect, for the emotion, for the fashion. I
had a student with me this morning; a young gentleman, who has just made
his debut in the world of beards, and judging from his conversation, it
would take a fifty-parson power at least to get him to heaven; but he
was enthusiastic in admiration of the sermon. Let the Abbé Lacordaire
preach when he will, Notre Dame is mobbed with worshippers.
I believe I shall take advantage of my unusual seriousness, as it is
Sunday, to tell you all I know about such divine things as French
churches. Almost every saint in the Almanack has acquired the honours of
at least one. There are forty-five of Roman, one of Greek, and two of
Independent French Catholics; and the churches for Protestant service,
are three French, and two English, besides a synagogue; and there are
several places of worship in private houses and palaces.
All the Catholic churches are decorated with the most costly furniture;
with saints, virgins, and angels in statuary and painting by the best
masters. Why, the gold and silver expended in this old church of Notre
Dame upon Virgin Marys alone, would make a railroad to the Havre.
One of the most beautiful of these churches and my next neighbour too,
is _St. Genevieve_, now called the _Pantheon_, once the “abode of Gods
whose shrines no longer burn.” It is now the national sepulchre for
great men. It is two hundred and fifty feet high, and overtops
majestically all Paris. It was designed to rival the Great St. Paul’s of
London.
On one of the cupolas of the dome, which is surrounded by a colonnade of
Corinthian pillars, is painted the apotheosis of St. Geneviéve. Her
saintship is in the costume of a shepherdess, breathing all peace, all
happiness, all immortality. Nothing of earth is in her composition.
Beside her, is Louis XVIII. and little winged angels. They are very
busy--the angels--in scattering flowers about the saint. Above her, is
Louis XVI. and his queen, as elegant as she was upon the threshold of
Versailles, and Louis XVII. all surrounded by celestial glory. Before
her, are the persons the most illustrious of each race; Clovis, who
looks very savage; St. Clotilde, very pretty; Charlemagne, very heroic;
and St. Louis and Queen Margarite who look very pious. They are now
effacing these figures for something more suitable to the occasion.
The floor of this temple, incrusted with various-coloured marble, is
very remarkable, and very beautiful. It is exclusively occupied by
Voltaire and Rousseau, at opposite extremities.[1] Why did they not lay
them at the side of each other, that we might all learn how vain are the
jealousies, the petty competitions and animosities of men so soon to
come to this appointed and unavoidable term of all human contentions.
These are the only two who are buried above ground.
It was once the custom of these old countries to multiply a man by
burying him piecemeal, his heart at Rouen and his legs in Kent, because
the world was then on short allowance of heroes; but modern times have
reversed this practice; and Bonaparte has laid up together a whole batch
of them in the basement of this church, for eternity, as you lay up
potatoes in your cellar for winter. Here are the names graven overhead
in a catalogue, on the marble, of men famous for giving counsel to the
Emperor (who never took any) in the senate, and of men who gained a
great deal of celebrity by having their brains knocked out on the fields
of Austerlitz and Marengo.
When Marat was deified by the Convention, he was interred here in 1793,
and in 1794 he was disinterred and undeified, and then thrown into his
native element, the common sewer, in the Rue Montmartre--to purify him.
I have often sat an hour in a beautiful little temple adjoining this,
called _St. Etienne du Mont_. Its architecture is original and pretty,
and it is rich in statuary and paintings. The pulpit is a splendid piece
of workmanship, supported by a figure of Samson kneeling upon a dead
lion; allegorical figures are hovering over, and an archangel, with two
trumpets, is assembling the faithful. The painted glass, too, is
brilliant with colours glowing as the rainbow. In a morning walk, I have
often found an excuse for returning this way. A few persons, mostly
women, are seen kneeling through the church, upon the marble, before the
altar, silently--you hear but the little whispering prayers fluttering
towards Heaven--the tranquillity of early morning is so favourable to
devotion. It feels like giving to Heaven the first offerings of one’s
heart. I have often sat here on the fine summer evenings, too, when the
twilight shed its gray and glimmering rays through the windows upon the
statues of the venerable saints and martyrs, and listened to the voices
as they swelled in the sacred anthem, and then fell, with the departing
day, into silence. It seemed to me the very romance of religion. One
feels more the influence of such feelings when wandering alone in a
foreign country.
In visiting a boarding-school of this quarter, a few days ago, I entered
a room where the children were praying before retiring to bed; I
observed one with his hands clasped, and pouring out his little soul
with the fervency of a saint--an American child, of eight years, from
New York--I took him in my arms at the end of his prayer, saying: “_Vous
aimez donc bien, le bon Dieu?_”--“_Ah! oui_,” he replied, with a most
eloquent expression, “_on aime bien le bon Dieu quand on est loin de ses
parens._”--It is so natural to lay hold of heaven, when cut off from
one’s home and earthly affections. If I had the amiable society of your
“Two Hills,” and the other comforts and consolations of the village, I
should not be hovering so piously about this little church of St.
Etienne du Mont.
The great Pascal, in spite of the Jesuits’ noses, is buried here; and an
old tower, in the neighbourhood, recals the memory of the renowned Abbey
of St. Genevieve. I have visited, several times, the library of this
institution, and paid my respects to its one hundred and fifty thousand
volumes, and thirty thousand manuscripts. This, like all the other
places of Paris, where they keep books, is filled constantly with
readers, and, like every other institution of the kind, is open
gratuitously to the public.
I spoke of _Val de Grace_ in my last letter. A little to the east of it,
and of not less historical importance, is the church of _St. Medard_; to
which I stretched, also, one of my solitary walks, and took a seat among
the worshippers. Faint hymns, chanted at a distance, as the still
evening comes on, have lured many a wandering sinner from the wickedness
of the world. This is the church so famous for its miracles, called the
“convulsions,” which once filled the whole city with alarm; and were not
discontinued, until the archbishop had placed a strong military guard
around the tomb of father Paris. You know the placard put up by some wag
on this occasion:
“De par le roi, defense à Dieu,
De faire miracle en ce lieu.”
The young girls used to have fits at this tomb, which gave them comical
twitchings of the nerves. Some would bark all night long at the door of
their chambers, and others leap about like frogs all day. Sister Rose
supped the air with a spoon, as your babies do pap, and lived on it
forty days; another swallowed a New Testament, bound in calf. Some had
themselves hung, others crucified, and one, called Sister Rachel, when
nailed to a cross, said she was quite happy--“_qu’elle faisait dodo_.”
In their holy meetings, they beat, trampled, punctured, crucified, and
burnt one another, without the least sentiment of pain. All this was
done at St. Medard, under Louis XV., and attested by ten thousand
witnesses.
Large packages of the earth were exported to work miracles, in the
provinces and foreign countries. One of these miracles is told in a song
of the Duchesse de Maine.
“Un decrotteur à la royale,
Du talon gauche estropié,
Obtint par grace speciale,
D’etre boiteux de l’autre pied.”
Some of these fanatics were found, forty years afterwards, in the
dungeons of the Bastile, at its destruction in 1789.
There is one point in religion, in which there are no heretics out of
Scotland--the music. The choir of voices, which assisted the organs in
this church, seemed to be almost divine. One feminine voice, singing
occasionally alone, had all the powers of enchantment; swelling
sometimes into a strain of almost religious frenzy, and then melting
softly away till there was nothing between it and silence; and just in
front of me, and in full view, sat a handsome woman, wrapped entirely in
her devotional enjoyments, who seemed placed there expressly to give
effect to the music; her shoulders, arms, and features, all moved in
exact unison with its harmony. I wish you could have seen her beautiful
countenance as she presented it to the firmament; her sainted smile
which beamed out and waned away upon her lips; the devout expression of
her eyes, how illuminated as the music rose, how languishing in its
dying notes; how she expired, and then came to life again! I do not hope
to see again on the earth a more vivid picture of religious rapture.
Devotion, I believe, exalts a woman’s beauty to its highest perfection;
there is no picture so beautiful as the Madonna, and, if I were a woman,
I would be religious, if for no other motive, just from vanity. No one
doubts that the human countenance is modified by the feelings cherished
in the heart, and she who cherishes the mild and benevolent Christian
affections, cannot be otherwise than very pretty. If there are any ugly
women in the world, it is because they have not been brought up
religiously. I sat thinking all this over, till night came on, and I
felt one or two of sister Rose’s twitchings.
I am going to tell you next of the _Chapelle de St. Nicholas_; which you
will find intrenched under the _Palais de Justice_. This is the “_Sainte
Chapelle_,” made famous by the Lutrin of Boileau. It is the most
classical, as well as the most holy of the churches of Paris. It was
built by St. Louis. It was here he stowed away the relics he brought
from the Holy Land. The “real crown” was one of them, which he bought
for eighty thousand dollars, and which, walking barefooted, and
bareheaded, and preceded by all the prelates and dignitaries of the
kingdom, in solemn procession, he deposited in this shrine. There were,
besides, Moses’ rod and a great many other such miracles, which the
Emperor of Constantinople manufactured, they say, expressly for his use.
And, also, a great variety of presents from popes, cardinals, and other
holy men, of less equivocal value. A light was burnt here, as in the
Temple of Vesta, and a priest waked and watched over them at all hours
of the night. They are now--what remains from the sacrilegious and
pilfering fingers of the Revolution--in the sacristy of Notre Dame; and
their place is supplied by old musty records of the Palais de Justice;
lawyers’ declarations, and nasty crim. con. cases--even to the receipt
of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers for making the poison she tried so
effectually upon her father, husband, and brother. Boileau is buried in
this chapel, made immortal by his verses.
For architectural effect, the Madelaine has an unquestionable
superiority over all the churches of Paris. It has the advantage of a
very favourable site; terminating with one flank, the view from the
Boulevards, and fronting the Rue Royale, and Place Louis XV. It is
mounted on a basement of eight feet, ascended on its entire perimeter by
thirty steps. It is a parallelogram of three hundred and twenty-six, by
one hundred and thirty feet, surrounded in double peristyle, by
fifty-two Corinthian columns sixty feet high. On the south pediment, is
represented in bas-relief, the Day of Judgment; the figures of sixteen
feet. In the middle is Christ, and at his feet Madelaine, a suppliant.
The rest of the group, is of angels, and allegorical vices and virtues;
covering a triangular surface of one hundred and eighteen feet in
length, and twenty-two in height.
The interior is a rich and variegated picture. The eye is dazzled at the
glittering aspect of its gilding and fanciful decorations; its Ionic and
Corinthian pillars. On each flank are three chapels to be adorned with
painting, and at the extremity is the choir in the shape of a
demi-cylinder, with Ionic pilasters which extend along the two aisles.
It was begun in the year of our Independence; it was the “Temple of
Glory” in the Revolution, and has got back to its religious destination.
It has neither dome nor spire, nor any of the usual emblems of a
Christian church, except the sculpture; so that in the event of another
Revolution, it may be converted into an Exchange or Bank, or the temple
of some Pagan divinity, or a Mosque, without much expense of alteration.
The good lady, Notre Dame, is the largest of the Parisian churches. The
adjoining houses squat down in her presence and seem to worship her; and
she is not only admirable for her beauty and richness, but for her
sense. She has the history of eight centuries in her nave. She has the
whole of the Old and New Testament in pictures on her walls, or in
groups of statuary, in her chapels. When you sit down under the arched
vaults, one hundred and twenty feet over your head, and amidst these
massive columns, you see flitting about your imagination, such
personages as Queen Fredegonda; or if you please, you can see the pretty
Marchioness de Gourville confessing, instead of her sins, her tender
loves for the Archbishop of Paris. You can live back into those times
when Henry IV. was d----d, and Ravaillac, being anointed and prayed
over, in bad Latin, went to heaven.
The light is let in upon her dread abodes by one hundred and thirteen
windows, each bordered with a band of painted glass. There are three
circular ones painted in the thirteenth century which are not matched,
for the delicacy of the stone-work, and brilliancy of the colours, by
any thing of modern art.
The choir is paved with precious marble, and enclosed by a railing of
polished iron; in the centre of it, is an eagle in gilt brass seven feet
high, and three and a half from wing to wing, which serves as a reading
desk. Its wainscoting is sculptured with scriptural pieces, and a great
many sins in the shape of toads and lizards are carved upon it. It
terminates near the sanctuary with two archiepiscopal chairs of great
beauty.
The other day, in climbing up through one of the towers, from which
there is a splendid panoramic view of the city, two hundred and four
feet in the air, I fell in with that famous old bell, Emanuel, whose
clapper alone weighs nine hundred and seventy-six pounds. Clappers of
this kind do not speak on ordinary occasions. This one announces in a
very hoarse and solemn voice, only the approach of some great festival,
or an extraordinary event. On July 27th, five years ago, it pealed at
midnight, and all night long, the awful tocsin of revolt; and upon these
two towers, the tricoloured flag floated triumphant on the 29th.
It was to this church that the world used to come in their gala dresses
to thank Providence for all those victories which are carved on the
great triumphal column; every time a bulletin came in from Italy and
Germany announcing the event, and when a new prince ascended the throne.
They came here to thank God for Louis XVIII. then for Charles, and then
for Louis Philippe. Providence is always sure of its thanks in this
church, whichever side is uppermost.
In Paris, the meanest hovels are striving which shall be nearest the
church. Notre Dame is a venerable and noble lady, with a brood of filthy
and ragged children about her. We have the same ungracious image often
in America. In Philadelphia, there is but a step from St. Stephens’ to
the Stews. This is chiefly caused by the vicinity of grave yards; a
senseless arrangement, which has happily grown out of fashion in this
country. It is deplorable that we should patronize every silly practice
that Europe is shaking off.
The fashionable church, of all the churches, is St. Roch’s, of which I
have spoken in a former letter. To this, the old lady queen, and the
little queenies, and all the prettiest women of Paris, come to be
blessed every Sunday. A fine woman is a hymn to the Deity, said some old
philosopher. If you wish to see a great number of these hymns, praising
most eloquently the workmanship of their divine Author, come to St.
Roch’s about twelve. A priest told me there was more merit in saving a
pretty woman than an ugly one, on account of the enormity of her
temptations; an ugly one goes to heaven of herself. The skill of the
musician makes the only distinction between the hallelujahs of St.
Roch’s, and the addios of the Italien.
While on the chapter of churches, I must not forget the Cathedral of St.
Denis, a few miles out of town, the burial place of the French kings.
The village, which was built on account of the church, and its
monastery, and the number of pilgrims that resorted there, is now as
filthy and stupid as suburban villages always are. About ten thousand
persons are doing penance by living there; enough to take them to heaven
without any other effort. In 1436 it was taken and rifled by the
English, who frightened the nuns desperately, and carried off their most
precious things. A bit of the iron grate or gridiron on which St.
Francis was burnt, and the prophet Isaiah’s bones, with not a few of the
little nuns themselves, were amongst the articles stolen. The cathedral
is gothic and magnificent. On the first floor, you will see the tomb of
_Dagobert_, the founder; a splendid mausoleum of Francis I., in white
marble, and opposite, the tomb of Louis XII., surmounted by the naked
figures of the king and his consort in a recumbent posture, and the
tomb of Henry de Valois, with the images of Henry II., and Queen
Catharine de Medicis. In the centre of the basement, is a vault of
octagonal shape, which contains the ashes of the monarchs all in a lump.
----“Dead but sceptered sovereigns,
Who rule our spirits in their urns.”
These verses have lost their meaning: but the little urn saith “more
than a thousand homilies.”
Around the circumference are cenotaphs, upon which the several kings
repose in marble at the side of their marble wives. Two unanointed men
were admitted amongst them; Duguesclin and Turenne. Bonaparte removed
the latter to the Invalids, and Duguesclin was lost entirely in the
Revolution. The convention issued a decree for the total destruction of
this royal cemetery in 1793. The first graves examined were those of
Henry IV., and Marshal Turenne. Both these heroes were as fresh, as the
day they were killed, while all those who had died in the natural way,
were in a state of dissolution. The kings were transferred to a vulgar
grave, with the grass only of the field for a monument; the ghosts of
the mighty Bourbons were turned loose to range upon the commons: the
lead too was stripped from the cathedral to shoot the enemies of the
Republic. The church was repaired by Napoleon, who destined it to be the
burial place of “the Emperors.” _Diis aliter visum._ Fortune provided
him a much more remarkable grave. Future ages will no doubt go on a
pilgrimage to St. Helena; here he would have mingled with the rabble
dust of the French kings.
The farther reparation of the church was reserved for the piety of Louis
XVIII. I walked out to St. Denis as the saint did once himself, except
that he carried his head under his arm. Returning home, as I was no
saint, I got into a _coucou_ at the side of some queer old peasant women
and heard their conversation. I am sorry the dignity of my subject does
not allow me to report it to you in this letter.
Many others of these churches seem to me very entertaining, but I must
postpone them to another time; with only a respectful look upon the
great _St. Sulpice_ in front of my window, whose huge towers are staring
me reproachfully in the face; and I must say a word in parting with the
subject of the _Chapelle Expiatoire_ of the Madelaine. This chapel is
placed over the ground in which reposed for twenty-two years the bodies
of Louis XVI., and Marie Antoinette. The interior is in form of a cross.
In the centre, is the altar, exactly over the spot in which the royal
bodies were found, and in the lateral branches are their statues. The
entrance through an alley of yew trees, sycamores and cypresses, gives
it the air and solemnity of an antique tomb. It is the most mournful
spot of all Paris. On the Sunday mornings, mass is said here with great
solemnity; and early every day you will see a few persons kneeling in
silent worship by the altar, or in solitary corners through the church.
The duties of the Catholic churches are administered by an Archbishop
with an annual salary of 5,000 dollars; three vicars general, 800
dollars, and between two and three hundred priests at 300 dollars each.
The grand Rabbin has 1200; the little Rabbins from one to four hundred,
and a protestant clergyman has from two to six hundred dollars. So you
see, the French patronize all sorts of religions, and Moses and St.
Peter come in alike for their share of the church funds. But what a
change of circumstances! The church revenue of France was, before the
Revolution, twenty-seven millions of dollars; at present it is six
millions. The clergy of old France exceeded four hundred thousand; of
“young France,” they are rated at thirty thousand!
In the service of a French Catholic church, there are officers in a
military costume; there are processions and pageantry, and loud and
impassioned music. Every thing is prepared for vehement impressions, for
theatric effect. I should like a religion intermediate between this
Catholic vivacity and our Presbyterian dulness. Whoever believes that
any association of men can be held together without forms and ceremonies
has much yet to learn of the nature of his species, and whoever would
dispense with even the forms which are ridiculous in society, would be
himself the most ridiculous man in it. Still, some regard is to be had
in this to the popular sentiment and spirit of the age.
There is certainly much absurd and trumpery ceremony kept up in this
church, designed formerly for a mass of ignorant people, when the
general sense of the world and the infidel propensities of the French
have got far a-head of it. That Louis XVIII. should go all the way to
Rheims and be greased with some drops saved from the Jacobins, of that
same oil or “holy cream” brought by a dove from heaven to anoint king
Pepin, was presuming too far upon the stupidity of the times. Surely the
age of such nonsense and bigotry has gone by. The elevating the host and
processions through the church, are neither solemn nor dignified, and
what position has so little dignity as that of the priest kneeling at
the altar, with a little boy holding up the tail of his surplice in the
face of the congregation?
In these times of popular education, every body reads and reasons, and
general learning, by cheap publications, is brought within every one’s
reach. The common man, who is fed by twopenny knowledge, is almost as
learned upon common affairs, as the gentleman who feasts upon his guinea
a volume; so that a ceremony that was very solemn in the last age, may
be very notable for its absurdity in this. Not half a century ago, a
doctor of medicine did not visit a patient in this city unless his head
was first wrapped in a huge wig--_perruque à trois marteaux_; and if he
forgot his cane with the golden head he turned back for it, though his
patient in the mean time should die. A ring too, with a diamond on his
finger, and laced ruffles, were indispensable to his practice. In
condemning this Catholic flummery, I do not go into the opposite
Presbyterian extreme, and proscribe what is rational and sensible, the
music, the paintings, and statuary. There is no more occasion in these
times to take measures against idolatry than against witchcraft; and why
deprive our churches of what gratifies the senses innocently, excites
devotional feelings, and improves the taste and understanding?
But to keep a religion now in favour with the world, requires
unexceptionable virtue on the part of those who administer its duties;
and the celibacy of the priesthood seems to me directly adverse to such
a requirement. It is not likely, that human nature will be controlled in
one of her strongest impulses with impunity. When I see these rosy and
smart looking priests, who haunt the churches, and reflect upon the
penchant of the women for holy men, I cannot help wishing, for the sake
of the catholic religion, that they were married. I would not go bail
for any one of them under the merit of St. Anthony.
The intrigues and libertinism of the French and Italian clergy are
matters of authentic history. There was a time when a cardinal’s hat
depended on the patronage of the candidate’s mistresses. The Cardinals
de Retz, Richelieu, Mazarin and Dubois were the notorious roués of the
day. I see here every where a set of jovial-looking monks, with their
caps over the right eye, who would drink your health in the sacristy.
Besides, when the cares of men are limited to themselves, they lose some
of the best qualities of the human heart; they become selfish. I never
knew an old maid, a bachelor, or even a married woman without children,
who was not an insupportable _egoist_, unless the affections nourished
by matrimony were supplied from other sources; and the concern men have
for their children brings out their religious as well as their social
qualities into continual exercise. Not only the strongest defence
against immorality, but the foundation of every public virtue is laid in
the domestic affections. The Athenians would not allow any one to vote
who had not a child; if I were pope, I would not permit any one to
preach who had not a wife, and I would take one myself to set them the
good example.
I am sorry the interior arrangements of our American churches, both
catholic and protestant, are so opposed to architectural beauty. The
pew has an air of habitation; it has the comfort, it has the sacredness
of home. Families, accustomed to see each other, the year round, grow
into acquaintance; and, even without the intercourse of words,
experience the joy of a friendly meeting. The humble man, also, has the
satisfaction, one day in seven, of seeing himself in company with those
of better fortunes, on something like terms of equality. When one gets
the apostles and all the saints on one’s side, one rises almost to the
dignity of any body. A great man, too, can, in a church, associate a
little with his inferiors without compromising his importance: all which
is lost in this random and desultory way of sitting about upon chairs,
as in the French churches.
A great evil of our American churches is, their great respectability, or
exclusiveness. Here, being of a large size, and paid by government, the
church is open to all the citizens, with an equal right and equal chance
of accommodation. In ours, the dearness of pew-rent, especially in the
Episcopal and Presbyterian, turns poverty out of doors. Poor people have
a sense of shame; and I know many a one who, because he cannot go to
church decently, will not go at all. This is an evil we must bear, to
avoid the greater one of a church establishment. We suffer
disadvantages, also, from want of religious uniformity. A thin settled
community, which is just able to support one clergyman, starves three or
four, or dispenses altogether with their services. A first-rate
Methodist would rather not go to church at all, than take part in the
litany; and what good Presbyterian, would not rather be d--d, ten times
over, than be seen at a mass?
In a diversity of sects, also, we are given to dogmatise too much, and
define articles of faith; to follow the letter rather than the spirit of
religion. The French catholic believes (if he believes any thing) in the
power of absolution, in the real presence, and in the infallibility of
the pope; without inquiry into the absurdity of such belief, we
dogmatise and doubt and reason ourselves into infidelity; and, though we
can see no essential difference in the prayers and sermons of our
different clergymen, we cling to our own, as indispensable to our
salvation.
Our clergy, too, of the same denomination, are often falling into
schisms, in which they too often show jealousy, malice, and other bad
passions, which brings religion itself into disrepute. Are these things
worse than the abuses and corruptions of undivided church
establishments?
The manner of keeping Sunday is a subject of general censure amongst our
American visitors at Paris. There is no visible difference between this
day and the others, except that the gardens and public walks, the
churches in the morning, and the ball-rooms and theatres in the evening,
are more than usually crowded. In London, the bells toll on the Sunday
most solemnly; the theatres and dancing rooms are silent, and all the
shops (but the gin-shop) shut; yet the poor get drunk, and the equipages
of the gentry parade their magnificence in Hyde Park, of a Sunday
afternoon.
“How do you spend your Sundays,” said a Frenchman, condoling with
another, “in America?” He replied: “_Monsieur, je prends médecine._” A
Frenchman has a tormenting load of animal spirits that cannot live
without employment: he has no idea of happiness in a calm; and it is not
likely that he will remain _endimanché chez-lui_ during the twelve hours
of the day, or that his Sunday evenings would be better employed than in
the theatre and ball-room.
This is my opinion; but I have great doubts whether a man ought to have
an opinion of his own, when it does not correspond with that of others,
who are notoriously wiser than himself. I cannot easily persuade myself,
that nature has intended the whole of this life to be given up to a
preparation for the next, else had she not given us all these means of
enjoyment, all these “delicacies of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits
and flowers, walks and the melody of birds.”--Now this is enough about
French churches.
LETTER XIII.
Père la Chaise.--Funeral of Bellini.--Grave-Merchants. Description
of the Cemetery.--Graves of the Rich and the Poor.--The Fête des
Morts.--Tomb of Abelard and Heloise.--Remarkable personages buried
there.--The Aristocracy of the Grave.--Monument of
Foy.--Inscription.--Grave yards in Cities and Towns.--French
regulations for the inhumation of the dead.
Paris, October 29th, 1835.
I took advantage of a beautiful day, which peeped out yesterday, to pay
my respects to _Père la Chaise_, and I am going to give you some account
of this celebrated city of the dead. But what can I say? I feel scarce
wit enough to talk about the weather, and I am going to tell you of that
which all the world has described so beautifully. I know not the reason,
but I have even less sense and imagination than usual, since I am in
Paris. If it were not for Madame de Sevigné, and a few other such
characters, I would lay the blame upon the heavy, unthinking and hazy
influences of these northern climates. I followed the funeral of
_Bellini_, the composer, author of Pirati, Puritani, and other
first-rate operas. Is it not a pity to die with so much talent at
twenty-nine, when so many fools live out their four-score? I do not
recollect any thing that old Methusaleh said or did, with his nine
hundred years; and he could not have made such an opera as Puritani, if
he had lived as many more. He was accompanied (Bellini, I mean) by the
music of all Paris; and the music of the spheres must have played, this
day, a sweeter harmony.
The mass of Cherubini, so appropriate to the occasion, and so much
better than the archbishop’s prayers, was forbidden by the archbishop,
because it had feminine voices in it; and his worship would not have the
chapel of the Invalids, all hung over so beautifully with bloody flags,
profaned by musical women; not even by the exquisite Grisi. So we had
the 39th Psalm. Don’t you think the spirit of the composer must have
winced? But the march, with full band, along the Boulevards for several
miles, and the end of the ceremony at Père la Chaise, were imposing.
Speeches were pronounced in Italian and French by good orators; and,
among the listeners, some of us were queens and princesses. The breezes
whispered though the pines, and a thunder storm, as if expressly, came
over the sun, and played bass in the clouds, and the clouds themselves
wept as the grave closed upon Bellini.--I went to the Invalids, with a
pretty English woman, one of his scholars, who wailed his loss
inconsolably, and who, for certain, was in love with him. Women, you
know, always fall in love with their music masters; Mary Queen of Scots,
and the pretty Mrs. Thrale into the bargain.
This cemetery of Père la Chaise, thirty years ago, had fourteen tombs;
it counts, in the present year, fifty thousand. Hundreds of architects,
and sculptors, and statuaries, besides multitudes of labourers, find
here a new source of occupation, and improvement in the arts; so that a
goodly part of the present generation gets its living by the death of
its predecessors. Here is a whole street of marble yards, which
manufactures tombs for domestic and foreign commerce, near a mile long;
and mighty heaps of bronze, granite and marble, exquisitely chiselled,
recommending themselves to the notice of the public. Tombstones, urns,
bronze gates, iron railings, crosses, pillars, pyramids, statues and all
the furniture of the grave, are laid out, and exhibited here, as the
merchandise of the shops and bazaars of the latest and newest
fashions--“_Grand Magazin à la General Foy--à l’Abelard et Heloise_,”
&c.; as in the city, “_Grand Magazin du Doge de Venise_,” and by trying
to under-bury one another, they have reduced funeral expenses in every
branch to their minimum;--there is, perhaps, no place in the world where
one can die, and be buried so moderately, as in Paris. Here is one
selling out at first cost, to close a concern; and another’s whole stock
of tombs is brought to the hammer, by the death of the proprietor.
These grave-merchants used to follow the funeral processions, in swarms,
to the verge of the tomb, offering to the mourners bills and
advertisements, and specimens of their industry, but this emulation has
been lately forbidden, by an order of police. These people have got, by
professional habit, to think, like the philosophers, that the principal
business of man, upon this earth, is to die. The staple of conversation
is, the grave; and there is as much pedantry here about the dead people,
as in the Latin Quarter there is about the dead languages.--“When do
you think you can pay me that bill of marble, M. Grigou?”--“Ah, sir!
business is very slack just now; and the season, you see, is almost
over. M. Barbeau, I have been twenty years in the trade, and never saw
such times. It really seems as if people had left off dying. But, if
business becomes brisk, as we expect, towards Christmas, I will pay you
off then; if not, you will have to wait till next August.---- When the
cholera was here---- Helas! I fear we shall never see such times
again.”--“_Eh bien, patience_, M. Grigou, we must hope for the best.”
They have here, too, a kind of Exchange, where they meet to see the
state of the market--to see the newest fashions or inventions of urns
and crosses, and other sepulchral images, and to read over the bills of
mortality, as elsewhere one reads the price current. The joy of a death
is, of course, proportionate to the worth, fashion and distinction of
the individual who has died. When General Mortier was killed, on the
28th, stock rose one and a quarter.--“Well! what is there
to-day?”--“Nothing!--and getting worse and worse!--but what can one
expect else under such a detestable government? You remember how it was
under the Restoration. Then we had such persons as Marshal Suchet, and
Madame Demidoff to bury; now we bury nothing but the canaille. Even
under Charles, we had some few nobles left, who could pay for a snug
mausoleum; but what is a French nobleman now?--a poor, half-cut
gentleman, with a ribbon in his button-hole, which he calls a
decoration, and without money to pay the grave digger or the sexton.----
Ah! M. Grigou, things must have a change!”
The gate of the cemetery, which terminates the view at the end of this
street, is surmounted by statuary, and is magnificent, like that of some
great prince. It is always besieged by equipages, and vehicles of every
kind, of the visiters, who are coming and going at all hours--all except
one--his equipage goes home empty! Around this entrance is a great crowd
of women, all over smiles, who offer you wreaths, chaplets, and crosses
of orange blossom, amaranth, and other ever-green, very prettily
interwoven, and they get a living by this little trade. As you ascend
the hill, you see groups of visiters, noisy and talkative, who on
entering are suddenly silent, struck with the awfulness of the place. A
kind of death-chill runs through the blood. But after a closer view the
mind becomes serene, and even roams with a delightful curiosity amongst
the tombs.
Nearly all the ground is covered with small pines, and with fern,
woodbines, and jessamines twisted into tufted thickets. There is quite a
deficiency of cypress and willow, and hemlock; the vegetation is
generally stinted in its growth, and looks forlorn enough indeed.
Monuments of brightest marble and exquisite sculpture dazzle the eye on
all sides; and there are smooth and gravelled walks, terraces, and
flowery banks, paths winding along the hillside, and little scenery of
every variety; and nature has borrowed so many ornaments from art, and
wears them with so lively a grace, that one is disposed rather to
admiration than to melancholy musings; one would think that Hymen and
Cupid and not Death walked through her hills and valleys.
This city, like living cities, has its fashionable and rabble districts;
its Broadways and Chestnut streets, its Southwark, and Northern
Liberties. On the summits and flanks of all the hills, or apart, and
half hidden in groves of pines, are mausoleums rich with Egyptian,
Grecian, and modern luxury. It seems as if the dead, the business of
life being done, had retired here to their magnificent villas. Only
think of your scraggy grave-yards of Philadelphia--enough to disgust one
with dying. Distinguished and learned dust is collected here from all
nations, and virtues are puffed and advertised in all human languages.
Whatever one may think of the French people alive, one cannot hope to
meet any where a better set of dead people. Here are none but faithful
husbands and incorruptible wives, and you would think it had rained
patriots. As for great generals, they seem to come up in the parsley-bed
as they did in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Surely Père la Chaise still
exercises his office of absolution on these grounds.
At the foot of the hill are immense multitudes of dead in a level and
open field, assorted in rows, as the vegetables in the Garden of Plants.
These are the working people of the other world. They have no shelter of
marble, or of shrubbery, or of cypress; no weeping willow hangs its
branches upon the little hill of earth, but a small black board, shaped
into a cross, and standing up prim at the head of each one, reveals his
humble name and merits. You see the hearse arrive here with a few
attendants on foot. A priest in an old rusty gown, a boy in a frock no
longer white, and an officer under a cocked hat, attend. These form a
little procession from the hearse: the priest mutters an epitome of the
service, and sprinkles the holy water upon the grave; he, the
grave-digger, and the driver betraying not the slightest emotion in the
performance of these duties; and the whole escort disappears suddenly
and silently. Beyond this, is a field of a still humbler lot, where
anything is buried; this they call the _Fosses communs_. They who have
no money, consequently no friends, are buried here. It is a yawning
excavation, into which one cannot look without horror. The corpse is
carried down a long stairway, and placed without distinction of age or
sex in a row alongside the corpse which preceded it; and the name of the
individual is no more heard--upon the earth. He was perhaps a suicide,
or a victim of some accident or murder, a stranger without a friend, or
a labourer without a home. No priest attends here.--One other piece of
earth, retired from the rest, has a special designation. It is the only
religious distinction of the cemetery; the burial place of the Jews.
“Beneath her palm, here sad Judea weeps.”
The graves of the rich are mostly held in perpetuity; those of the poor
are disposable anew at the end of every six years; the first lessee
having always the right of pre-emption. There is a chapel on the highest
spot of the cemetery, and from its threshold the priest has a naked view
of all Paris. He has spread out before him his whole stock in trade, and
sees his customers winding up the hill; of which every day furnishes him
its contingent. If for the district of the poor, he performs the
service, as I have described, by his deputies.
But when you see the portals of the marble palace open between the
Corinthian columns, and winged angels, chiselled from the marble of
Genoa, and the priest kneeling in deep devotion before the altar, all of
gold; you will see at the same time the whole street leading up to the
Barrière d’Aulney filled with an immense cortége of gorgeous equipages,
all of crape; and you will see in the first carriages persons in deep
distress, mopping their eyes, all swollen with grief. Keep in your
tears, they are not the least vexed. On the contrary, they cry with a
great deal of pleasure. They are crying by the month, and getting their
living by it. This custom of crying by deputy was practised by the
Romans, and is common to all the refined nations of modern Europe; and
it is known that hired weepers can wail and cry a great deal better than
they who are really grieved; they have a greater quantity of salt water,
and have given it the habit of running out by the eyes. The coffin
descends from the hearse, glittering with the precious metals, and
whilst music wakes around, or speeches are pronounced in eloquent grief,
or masses chanted in classic Latin, it is conveyed with pomp into its
vault, and laid up for eternity upon its shelf. There is a person here,
who keeps a register of the names of the deceased, and is a kind of
chief clerk to the Fates.
There is one day of the year when all Paris comes hither dressed in
white robes, ten thousand at a time, to do honour to the dead. It looks
as if the sheeted dead themselves had risen from the earth. This is
called the _Fête des Morts_. Each one brings a garland or crown, and
hangs it over a friend or relative; and the whole city bends before the
graves of General Foy, Manuel, and Benjamin Constant. Indeed every day
of the year that the weather will permit, the cemetery is crowded,
either with strangers led by curiosity, or with friends busied in
trimming the foliage or flowers, or hanging funeral wreaths upon the
monuments. This may be partly vanity, but vanity is a very good quality,
if rightly directed, and a great many excellent virtues may be grafted
on it. As for myself, I have always found it exceedingly difficult to
practise several of the virtues when no one was looking on.
I observed, on entering, a gothic monument, and under its dome, two
figures of persons recumbent at the side of each other, who were not
always of marble. I will not tell you their names. If they had gone
quietly with their marriage articles to St. Sulpice, and to bed, and
distributed the wedding cake the next day to their cousins of St.
Germain, I should not now have the pleasure of musing upon this little
gothic chapel; we should have been deprived of one of the best
love-tales that ever was, and some of the best verses in our English
language, and _Nouvelle Heloise_ into the bargain. Unsuccessful wooing,
you see, has its uses. What would you gentle shepherdesses have done
without Petrarch’s sonnets, without Virgil’s fourth book, and Sappho’s
little ditty, Englished by Philips.
The Republic brought this pair of lovers from Chalons to Paris, where
they have been knocked about, till they have become as common as any
pair of students and grisettes of the Luxembourg, (the barbarians!)
instead of embowering them in the shady wood at a distance from the
road, by the side of a murmuring and romantic stream, where the
traveller might alight from his horse, just at setting sun, and give his
undisturbed and undivided feelings to their hapless fates. Here they
are, the unfortunates, alongside of any body, who has died in lawful
wedlock, and their history, as if no one knew it, written upon their
tomb, in fine round text, with their names. The children are learning to
spell on it: a, b, _ab_; _e_ by itself _e_; l, a, r, d, _lard_.--I am
now writing from the spot, perhaps the very spot in which their hearts
beat so high in love, and sank so deep in despair--in the very spot, for
all I know, in the very chamber--where she “hung upon his lips, and
drank delicious poison from his eye!”--where now, alas, no loves are
disappointed, and where there is no drinking of any thing stronger or
sweeter than a little _vin ordinaire_ after one’s potage.
On leaving this fairy spot, I wandered along a hundred little
footpaths, and read over a thousand crabbed names, which carried no
signification to the mind, of a thousand polite nothings, who had put on
their breeches in the morning and taken them off at night, and who have
monuments in Père la Chaise for such merits--to Monsieur _Doda_, who
made excellent _patés de foies gras_; besides, he made the Papage
_Vero-Doda_, and he has the mausoleum of a prince, splendid with
festoons, I believe of sausages, on the pediment; and a Monsieur
_Sebastian_, who made shoes for the Duchesse de Berri’s dear little
feet, has one still more magnificent,--this is the man who made the
slipper “_dans un moment d’enthousiasme_;” and lastly a
coiffeur--inexorable fate!
“Sensible et genereux, dont le cœur gouta l’ivresse
Du bonheur, du genie.” ... and so forth.
An obelisk of Carrara marble, forty feet high, was about to rise upon
the tomb of M. Boulard, “Upholsterer.” He had journeyed himself to Genoa
and chosen the marble, and a foundation trench forty feet deep had been
dug, and 400,000 francs devoted to the monument; but his heirs have
thought proper to depart from the intentions of the testator, and have
buried him in a chapel at St. Mandé which he had built himself at the
cost of a million of francs. The site of his grave here is occupied by
the pyramidal monument, with two lateral staircases of fifteen or twenty
steps descending to its base, of a rich Portuguese family, Dios Santos.
A Frenchman, who enjoys life so well, is, of all creatures, the least
concerned at leaving it. He selects his marble of the finest tints; and
has often his coffin made and grave dug in advance. I noticed several
open graves, which seemed to me yawning for their victims. They dig a
good many a-head, so as to have them on hand, like ready-made coats
(without the sleeves) at the mercer’s. If a Frenchman buries his wife,
he erects her a tomb and one (blanc) for himself, at the side of her.
Then frolics out life in wine and good dinners, and has his tomb at Père
la Chaise as his box at the opera. He buries his wife too the more
splendidly, having a half interest in the concern.
I found myself at length upon a street crowded with most remarkable
personages; but so many, that I must put you off as Homer did with his
ships. Here was _François Neufchatel_, a minister of the Interior, and
author in prose and rhyme, who sung, _tour à tour_, Marie Antoinette and
the Republic, who loved Napoleon and the Empire, and rejoiced at the
Restoration. In his vicinity was _Regnaud St. Jean d’Angely_, who used
to put off his brass for gold, his words for wisdom, and sometimes, in
America, his travelling mistress for his wife.
“Le meme jour a vu finir
Ses maux, son exil, et sa vie!”
And here too was the stern and philanthropic _Lanjuinais_, who conjured
up a devil he could not lay, in the revolution; and the great jurist
_Cambacérés_--under Louis XVI. a squire of Montpelier, under the
Convention, Citizen Cambacérés; Colleague of Bonaparte in the consulate,
and President, Duke, Prince, and Marshal of the Empire under Napoleon.
The sword sometimes yields to the gown, and the laurel to the toga. He
died with all the decorations of Europe about his neck. I would have
graven the Code Napoleon upon his tomb. Remember to give him the credit
for dissuading the execution of the Duke d’Enghein, the Russian and
Spanish campaigns, and the continuation of the war after Dresden. But he
never put his honours to the hazard of dissuading any thing very
strenuously; like Piso, the Roman, he never differed long in opinion
with a “man who had ten legions.”
Do let me introduce you to Monsieur _Denon_; he loved the ladies so,
and what is more, the ladies loved him; he first taught us to read
hieroglyphics, and brought us news out of Egypt about Pharoah and the
Ptolemies, and he brought over that great “Zodiac of Dendera” in the
king’s library;--and to M. _Messier_, who did not know there was a
Revolution in France, being very busy about the revolution of the stars.
While his wife was dying, he asked a few minutes’ absence to look after
a comet. He died himself in looking through a telescope, and his friends
had but one eye to close on that occasion. Not a word to _Chenier_, the
Jacobin poet; the world has not yet made up its mind about his merits;
nor to _Parny_, whose poetry is good enough to deserve your contempt,
pure and unqualified. A lyre hangs upon the tomb of _Grêtry_, and a
globe in flames upon Madame Blanchard.
If I had time, I would inveigh here against the audacity of woman. She
kills tyrants, commits suicide, and goes up in balloons. She leaves us
nothing, unless going to war, and scarcely that, to characterize our
manhood. A Roman Emperor was obliged to forbid her, by an edict, the
profession of the gladiators.--I must not pass unnoticed M. _Pinée_, who
passed his life, and with some success, in teaching crazy folks to be
reasonable--those in the mad-house. And those two brothers, not less
worthy than the best, they who gave eyes to the blind and ears to the
dumb, _Haüy_ and _Sicard_;--they must not be forgotten; and here is a
poor poet (excuse the tautology) who is buried as decently as if he had
made sausages.
I will conclude this part of my catalogue, already as long as Lloyd’s or
Homer’s, with a Scotch cousin of mine, Mr. _Justice_. He left his wife,
young, amiable, and beautiful as she was, in Edinburgh, for the
pleasures of Paris; which pleasures brought him in time to the prison of
St. Pelagie. His wife (I will inquire after her health when I go to
Scotland) flew to his rescue. She could not procure his enlargement on
account of the greatness of his debts, but she stayed with him in the
prison, attended him in his illness, and consoled him, and reformed him
in his dying moments. She has placed here a modest tomb upon his grave.
If you hear any one speak ill of a woman, have him taken out and fifty
lashes given him on my account. I will settle all the costs and damages
at the Common Pleas.
We are now upon the summit. This site is unrivalled in beauty.
Montroye, Sêvres, Meudon, Mount Calvary, and St. Cloud, are spread
before us in the distant prospect. The eye, too, rests upon the green
fields and flowery pastures of Montreuil, and forests of Vincennes; and
at our feet is that great miracle of the world, Paris; its gilded
towers, domes, and palaces, glittering in the sun; and the frequent
hearse is bringing up its daily contribution of the inhabitants. It is
near the close of a fine day of autumn. The yellow leaf detached from
its branch, comes lingering and flutters towards the earth, and is
trodden upon by the passers by; others on the same branch are yet green,
or tinged with the blight of the first frosts.
That Xerxes, in contemplating his multitudinous legions, should weep
over the prospect of their mortality, he being on the very errand of
killing men, seems to me a notable absurdity; but that I, who leave them
to die just as they please, should weep a little, in a place so
favourable to such emotions, would be reasonable enough. While I stood
here yesterday and looked down upon this hive of human beings; listened
to the hum of its many voices, and saw the silent earth open to receive
all this life and animation: when I looked upon the many graves of my
own countrymen here, and reflected that to-morrow--to-morrow, far from
my friends and native country, I might become one of the number! Why, I
would have wept outright, if my manhood had not interfered. After all,
such feelings were perhaps more remarkable in Xerxes; and Herodotus was
right to give him, and not me, credit with posterity. Common passions in
common men are not subjects of history; but that the “king of kings,”
who challenged mountains, and fettered oceans, and led myriads to
slaughter, should yet have his lucid intervals of humanity--this is a
matter worthy of record.
This is the choice spot of the cemetery. It is the spot distinguished
for the best society. It is covered with the richest array of tombs, and
all the arts of statuary, sculpture and architecture have employed their
best skill upon its embellishment. It is the aristocracy of the grave.
Here are the Peeresses, the Princesses, and High Mightinesses. The rich
house of Ormesson, Montausin and Montmorency, and “all the blood of all
the Howards,” are upon this Hill. “_Ici repose très haute, et très
puissante dame, Emma Coglan, Duchesse de Castries_;” and here is the
proud mausoleum of Russian Kate’s superb noblewoman, _Madame Demidoff_;
which, although in bad taste, deserves, for its richness, whole days of
admiration to itself. Not one of the cleverest of the Parisians is a
match for this fur-clad damsel of the Neva. Here, too, is Joseph, the
money changer, and other men of arithmetic; the Barings and the
Rothschilds of Père la Chaise, with winged goddesses perched upon their
tombs where ought to be Multiplication Tables. And finally ministers and
great marshals of France, all who have not been ashamed to come to the
term of life according to the due course of mortality, are buried here.
Here with images of their living features, upon pyramids that pierce the
skies,--
“Heroes in animated marble frown,
And legislators seem to think in stone.”
I thought of Washington by the way-side. I thought of Franklin at the
corner of Arch and Fifth--in the midst of a city so improved and adorned
by his genius, so honoured by his virtues, with no sculpture but the
letters of his name, no mausoleum but the grave-digger’s cell.
The monument of Foy is reared by the gratitude of the city of Paris,
with almost barbaric magnificence; “kings for such a tomb would wish to
die.” They have sculptured upon its façade the principal military events
of his life. His statue has a majestic and noble air such as becomes
the great Deputy, whose eloquence was lightning, and whose tongue was
armed with thunder. The countenance is solemn, and the arm outstretched
as if to announce some awful admonition.
Other great men, also, have monuments here, pre-eminent in splendour.
_Kellerman_, whose name recals the republican victories of Valmy and
Jemappes; _Suchet_, the oldest of the marshals; his ornaments are
Rivoli, Zurich, Genoa, Esling. Two winged _Victories_ hold a crown over
the head of _Lefebvre_, and a serpent, the symbol of immortality twines
around his sword; his trophies are Montmirail, Dantzig, the Passage of
the Rhine; and next _Jourdan_, _Serrurier_, _Davoust_, and choicer than
all, the great Duke of Tarento, the Prince of Eckmuhl, the rapacious
_Massena_. How silent! not a footstep is heard of all those who rushed
to the battle.
These military men outdo by far, in the splendour of their monuments,
all the other classes.--Ceres and Bacchus, on account of the pure,
universal and durable benefits they had conferred upon mankind, were
raised to the rank of supreme divinities, says Plutarch, but Hercules,
and Theseus, and the other heroes were placed only in the rank of
demi-gods, because their services were transitory, and intermixed with
the evils of war. The French have reversed this wisdom of the Greeks in
Père la Chaise.
But, indeed, if they would snatch a little of their fame from the
oblivious grave, there is scarce any other way left; they have so spoilt
the trade of glory, by competition. Why, Bonaparte used to send, of
these heroes, whole bulletins to Paris weekly; and in Great Britain
there are no longer ale-houses, and sign-posts to hang them upon;
Smiths, Auchmuties, Abercrombies, and Wellingtons;--memory has a surfeit
of their names. Human veneration is not infinite, and it is expanded
till, like the circle upon the stream, it terminates in naught. They who
lived before Agamemnon will soon have as good a chance as their
successors; Werter will be as good a hero as Cato, and the Red Rover as
Lord Nelson.
In the early ages, when events were rare, and men had scarce any thing
to do but live their nine hundred years, heroes had some chance to be
preserved. They could transmit even their mummied bodies to posterity;
but with us, loaded as we are with all this biography, all this history,
besides what science and letters are daily imposing upon us--with us,
who come here to Père la Chaise at threescore, to expect such advantage
is unreasonable. The truth is, we cannot get along under the accumulated
load, and we must sacrifice a part for the safety of the rest of the
crew. We must heave a few Massenas and Lord Wellingtons overboard. Ought
I not to say a word in this paragraph of the unfortunate Ney? He is
buried here, like his fellow martyr, Labedoyere, at the feet of the
Suchets. A single cypress is all that grows over the “bravest of the
brave!” Read; “_çi git le Marechal Ney, Duc d’Elchingen, Prince de la
Moscowa_: Decédé! * * * _le 7 December, 1815_. I humbly take my leave of
the Rivolis, and the Wagrams.”
Here is a most beautiful tomb of a lady surmounted by an image of
Silence, her finger on her lip. Does it intimate the lady could keep a
secret? Oh, no, it admonishes other ladies to hold their tongues. This
one is _all_ French. “_Ici repose Georgina, fille de_ MADEMOISELLE
_Mars_.” She adds, _Gardez vos larmes pour sa mère_. Whoever loves
Thalia, and the Graces will not disobey the admonition. And now let me
introduce you to _Bouffleur_, the _fleur des chevaliers_; to _Delille_,
who went down to posterity behind Virgil and Milton; and to _Bernardin
de St. Pierre_, of whom one forgets to remember only Paul and the
delicious Virginia. Here, too, is _Laplace_, allotted his six feet like
the rest. _Eheu! Quid prodest?_ and _Fourcroy_, undergoing one of his
own experiments. In the centre of all these is _Molière_ himself. They
should have left room beside him for Miss Mars, his best commentary--if,
in spite of time, she should chance ever to die. Here, too, is _Talma_,
and _Mademoiselle Raucourt_ immortal for feigning others’ passions, and
_Lafontaine_, for telling other people’s tales. He has no occasion to
think any thing new, who can dress others’ thoughts to such advantage. I
observed also a few learned ladies, Madame Guizot, Dufresnoy, and above
all, Madame _Cottin_. Are you not sorry she died at twenty-eight, when
so many fools never die at all. It is plain, Providence does not trouble
itself about what we call human greatness; or genius would not perish
thus in its infancy, and so many glorious and manly enterprises would
not die in the hatching. Virgil would have lived till the completion of
his Æneid; Apelles would have put the finishing hand upon his Venus. I
regret that I must pass with only a nod of recognition, Palissot,
Mercier, Millevoye, Guinguené, David the painter, and even the elegant,
the witty, and profligate Beaumarchais. Who can pass without a sigh the
grave of Lavallette? His head was stripped of its hair, and prepared for
the guillotine, when he was saved by his wife. Her agitation, and
excessive terror lest he should be retaken, affected her brain, and she
went mad. Her madness is of a calm and melancholy kind; she sits whole
hours in meditation, and has not spoken a word these several years. She
is lodged in a _maison de santé_ near Paris.
I strolled awhile amongst the “temporary cessions,” the graves of the
poor. There are no trees here, nor artificial tombs. A border of
boxwood, and sometimes a wire wicker work, with a wooden cross, is all
their decoration. I read the inscriptions upon the crosses.
---- Pierre Robin
Age de 67 ans
Unes des victimes du 28 Juillet, 1830.
By the side in the same wicker enclosure:
Ici repose une victime _inconnu_, du 28 Julliet, 1830.
A little tri-coloured flag was waving between them.
The following is of a mother, upon a child of four years:--
Prés de mourir, elle nous disait: Ne pleure pas,
Papa; ne pleure pas mamma; je me sens mieux,
Et elle mourut!
Of a son:
Passant, donne une larme à ma mere, en passant à la tienne.
Of a wife:
Elle vecut bien, elle aima bien, elle mourut bien.
Of an old woman of 81:
Une jour on dira de moi, ce qu’on a dit des autres;
Marie Anne Palet est morte, et l’on n’en parlera plus.
This one is pretty:
Pauvre Marie,
A 29 Ans!
There is a still prettier one of the same kind at New York. “My Mother.”
The simple language of the heart succeeds better in epitaphs than the
“lettered Muse;” for grief at the dissolution of natural ties is usually
more intense amongst the poor than the rich; this is notoriously
manifest in the funeral ceremonies of Père la Chaise. How indeed should
any lady not rejoice when her lord is dead, if she looks well in black?
and my young lord who has popped into an estate and title, how should he
be sorry? One ought not, however, to blame the rich for exhibiting the
signs of woe even where the reality is deficient. The affectation of a
virtue is better than the neglect of it; but I would not have it carried
to a ridiculous excess. I have heard of a French nobleman here, a M.
Brumoi, who, at his mother’s death, put his park into mourning; he
craped his deer; put black fish in his ponds; and brought from Paris
several barrels of ink to supply his _jets d’eaux_. And every one has
read of the Danish count, who had his statue placed by the grave of his
wife upon a spring, causing the water to spurt through one of the eyes.
This statue exists yet near Copenhagen, and is called the “Weeping
Eye.”--You will often see, amongst the poor of Père la Chaise, a
half-grown girl kneeling by the fresh earth after the convoy has
departed, or a mother lingering over the grave of her child.
I ascended the hill again by the east side. Only think of walking upon
the very earth consecrated so often by the pious footsteps of Madame de
Maintenon. It was here she poured out her little peccadillos into the
bosom of Père la Chaise. She brought him out from his obscurity of
schoolmaster of Lyons, and raised him to the dignity of confessor (some
say rival) to the king. This father was of extraordinary personal
beauty, and polished manners. When he had stepped into the graces of the
king, he used the royal favour to enrich himself and his order. His
style of living was magnificent, his equipages gorgeous, and in his
costly banquets he rivalled the most sumptuous monarchs. To gain
admission to his soirées was a favour solicited by princes. He was
crafty, wily, subtle, and eloquent, says Duclos, and he alarmed or
soothed the conscience of the king as best suited his interests. “He
surprises his Majesty,” says Madame de Maintenon, “into the most
boundless liberality, by the mere force of his eloquence.” The king
pronounced himself, the _éloge_ of his confessor at his death in 1709.
“He was always,” says his Majesty, “of a forgiving temper.”
On the site of these tombs, were once his pleasure grounds, and here the
proud Jesuit often stood and looked down upon the court and city at his
feet. The ruins of his elegant summer palace have perished, but a part
of his orchard still remains. I walked up through a low valley, once the
channel of a stream that had supplied the water pots, the cascades, and
fountains of this reverend father. It is a romantic spot, but barren of
trees and shrubbery. I would plant here the drooping willow, the cypress
of hoary gray; and I would teach the jay bird, in its plumage of crape,
to build here its nest; and, while ambition climbs the summit of the
hill, the tender poets and the unfortunate lovers should come to be
buried in this melancholy valley.
It is an advantage of eternity, that one may squander as much as one
pleases of it without diminishing the capital. I found that the sun of
our world was descending fast upon the roofs of St. Cloud, and I was
obliged to run over an acre or two of graves with only a general stare.
I hurried about in search of several I had heard distinguished for their
splendour, but in vain. There should be a “directory” to tell us where
the dead people live. I stumbled at last upon a whole plot of English,
coteried apart near the wall side; General Murray; Cochran, brother of
the admiral; Caroline Sydney Smith, my lady Campbell, Captain O’Conner,
and other august personages. Their tombs are very genteel. An Englishman
always seems to me (foolishly perhaps) a greater man than a Frenchman,
and a Roman than a Greek, with the same degree of merit. The one, I
believe, makes his wisdom pass for more, the other for less than it is
worth. The great polish of the human character diminishes its solidity.
Lord Chesterfield would have been a greater man if he had been more an
Englishman.
Lord Bacon and Shakspeare both say, that a certain reserve of speech and
manner adds to the general opinion of one’s merits. The Frenchman
wastes, and the Englishman husbands his greatness; the latter hides his
little passions, and does small things by deputy. Like Moses, he retires
into the mountain, and bids Aaron “speak unto the children of Israel.”
But the truth is, there is an illusion in my mind at present about all
that is English; I have been so long over head and ears in French
people. I read over these English graves as a studious school-boy his
lesson.
Whilst perusing this page of the great volume, I came with astonishment,
not expecting such a rencontre, upon the names of several of our own
countrymen, and even of our own townsmen. Of Philadelphia were William
Temple Franklin, Adam Seybert, our old congressman and chemist, Samuel
Rawlston and Jacob Girard Koch; he who used to “breakfast with the
Houris and quaff nectar with Jove at noon.” His great regret, they say,
in dying, was an apprehension that there might not be good dinners in
the other world. There is here an eloquent and simple tomb upon the
grave of Miss Butler, who was cut off in the expectation of unusual
accomplishments and in the roseate freshness of her youth.
“Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,
L’espace d’un matin.”----
I remarked, also, the names of K. M. Smith, New York, Harriet Lewis, New
London, Frances Morrison, Kentucky, Francina Wilder, and Mrs. Otis of
Boston. A cypress is planted by the grave of Dr. Campbell of Tennessee,
and some fresh garlands are hung upon its branches. Who is he who has
won these pious attentions from the hands of strangers? I am now writing
from the inkstand which once belonged to him, and which I will put with
my relics. I am lodging in his room, and with the person who attended
his fatal illness. She gave me his biography as follows: “He was always
good, always polite, and every one loved him;” and then she burst into
tears.
The last grave I looked upon, I will now read to you: “Died, March 1st,
1832, Frances Anne, Countess Colonna de Walewski, daughter of the late
John Bulkeley, Esq., of Lisbon, widow of the late General Humphreys, of
the United States, minister in Spain and Portugal.”--I could write a
romance at the foot of this monument. I lingered here until the last
glimmerings of day faded, and night covered all but the bleak and snowy
marble. I then descended the hill, and with many a solemn reflection,
reached my solitary lodge in the Faubourg St. Germain.
Let us reason awhile about the grave. The custom of locating grave yards
in cities and towns, so universal in America, has been discontinued in
nearly all these old countries of Europe. France has set the excellent
example, which has been followed through the continent, and the large
towns of England--London, Liverpool, Manchester, Cheltenham, and several
others--and all the world acknowledges its necessity. Such a measure was
not adopted here until the agency of burying grounds in corrupting the
air and producing disease, was proved by numerous examples and
experiments.
An account of these, contained in several hundred pages, was published
by Maset, secretary to the Academy of Dijon, the one-twentieth part of
which would fill with terror all those who live in dangerous contiguity
with a city grave-yard. It is high time your towns in America should
give this subject a serious attention. Your grave-yards are multiplying
in number and extent prodigiously in the midst of communities which are
likely, in a few years, to be numerously increased. Your Pottsville,
which is about eight years old, has already six grave-yards, whose
population nearly equals that of the village.
All those who die upon the railroads, mines, and canals, for twenty
miles around, have themselves carried in and buried in town--as if to be
convenient to market. A citizen of Pottsville does consent sometimes to
reside in the country during his lifetime, but he does not think it
genteel to pass his eternity out of town; and your miner soothes himself
with the consolation that though he has many toils and perils in life,
he will one day come out of the ground to be buried in Pottsville. It is
in their infancy that such evils ought to be averted. They are more
easily prevented than cured. And there are enough of other
considerations besides health to urge the importance of the subject.
Every body knows the indecent irreverence and general inattention with
which grave-yards are regarded in towns and cities. In many of them
monuments are defaced and scribbled on, and the place even desecrated
sometimes by the obscenity and brutal violation of visitors. To prevent
this, they are often enclosed by high walls and rendered invisible. If
the object were to forget one’s ancestors there could not be a better
contrivance. It is worth while to squander away the best parts of a city
to bring one’s deceased parents into oblivion or contempt! That this is
the case cannot be denied. The citizen, the clergyman, the grave-digger,
and the sexton, are all affected by the bones of their ancestors alike.
Who first brought this system of vampyrism into use? It was at least
modern. At Babylon they buried the dead in the valley of ... look into
your Bible; and the valley of Jehoshaphat, I believe, was out of town.
The interment of the dead within the precincts of the city was
prohibited at Rome by law. The Greeks had the same regulation, and
forbade expressly that the temples of the gods should be profaned by the
sepulture of the dead. The Achæans buried only one man in town,
Aratus--look into your Plutarch. If they had governed our city councils
they would have buried us all out of town, except “Benjamin Franklin,
and Deborah his wife.” The first Christians followed the Pagans and Jews
in this, and for a long time graves were not allowed to encroach upon
the sanctuary of the church. But some pious and popular bishop having
died in the course of time, I presume they buried him with his church,
as they bury an Indian with his canoe; and then another and another, or
perhaps some fat and lazy priest wished to have his dead family about
him for the convenience of praying upon them. Who is going all the way
to Père la Chaise? So he could just step out in his gown and slippers
and dismiss the poor soul to purgatory, and then step back again to his
_soupe à la Julien_. And then came avarice to sanction this convenience.
We can heap generation upon generation and sell a church-yard over and
over again to eternity.
Make me chief burgess of Pottsville, and I will provide a choice piece
of ground overlooking the village, and apart from the living
habitations--on a single plot, and with separate apartments for the
several denominations; and this I will cultivate tastefully with trees
and shrubbery, and lay it out with agreeable walks.
I will make the dead an ornament, instead of a nuisance and deformity to
the living; and I will bind your erratic population to the soil, by the
decency with which I will bury their fathers and mothers; and by
improving the kindred affections, I will improve, at the same time, the
moral and religious feelings of the community. I will carve out, from
one of your rugged hills, a decent and solitary retreat, where we may
sometimes escape from the business, the anxieties and frivolities of
life, and where we may peruse the last sad page of our own history, upon
the silent and solemn annals of the grave.
In a place of decent appearance, and of public resort and ample space,
we have the means (which we have not in our shabby and contracted
grave-yards of the towns) of paying honour to the memory of an eminent
citizen, or public benefactor; a duty in which we are negligent beyond
the example of all other nations; and emulating the princely splendour
of Europe in other things, we cannot excuse ourselves upon the
republicanism and simplicity of our tastes, in this. Are the virtues of
a great man so graven upon our memories, that he needs no other
memorial? And are we all so virtuous, ourselves and our children, as to
need no excitements to emulation?--To do honour to those who have
performed eminent service to the community, is as well a commendable
policy, as it is an act of justice and gratitude. It produces, in
generous minds, a rivalship of honourable actions. It makes one good
deed the parent of a numerous offspring. It is the seed of virtue--the
grain of corn that rewards the cultivator with a full and ripened ear.
On the other hand, neglect, the cold neglect that is practised in our
country, freezes the current of public spirit; and the people, who are
guilty of it, need not complain that they are barren of generous
actions, or that they, who have been fortunate in acquiring wealth,
should choose to spend it rather upon selfish and transitory interests,
than upon schemes of permanent public utility. Even our savages pay
respectful honours to the dead, and a luxury of grave-yards is of all
antiquity; it has even the most ancient scriptural authority in favour
of it.--“Thou art a mighty prince, in the _choicest_ of our sepulchres
bury thy dead.”--(Genesis).
I will now put an end to this long letter, with a few of the French
regulations for the inhumation of the dead of cities and towns.
All cemeteries are required to be located without the towns, avoiding
low, wet, or confined situations. On an elevated site, the fœtid
emanations are dispersed by the winds. The dead bodies are to be covered
with, at least, four feet of earth, and placed in such a manner that
there may be four feet of interval between each, and two feet at the
head and foot--about fifty-two square feet for each corpse. It is known,
from experiment, that animal decomposition requires about four years,
and the grave-yard is to be made four times greater than appears
necessary for the number of persons to be interred in it.
The graves are disposed of in perpetuity, or in temporary cessions of
six years; the former at twenty-five dollars per metre, of three feet;
two metres are required for a grave; and the latter at ten dollars.
_These_ are disposable anew at the end of the term--the first occupant
having the “refusal.” From the extent of the grounds, this has not yet
been required. But Death has nearly filled up the whole space, and is
looking out for additions to his estate. A miser, who lives next door to
him, taking advantage of his necessity, asks, for three-quarters of an
acre, twelve thousand dollars!
All the funerals are in the hands of a company, who have their office,
keep a registry of the dead, and attend to all their wants. Companies
having no souls, the French fulfil the scriptures, and “let the dead
bury the dead.” Having its stock of carriages, grave-diggers, weepers,
and all such things on hand, the company is enabled, they say, to bury
cheaper than the individuals themselves. It has, besides, a fixed price
for the rich, which enables it to eat an annual dinner, and to bury the
poor for nothing. The dinner is, no doubt good, but the burying of the
poor, as all things else which are done for nothing in Paris, is
performed in a niggardly and heartless manner. If you make any such
provision for your new grave-yard of Pottsville, let it honour the hand
that confers it. Give the poor man his priest, and apply to a life,
perhaps, of unmerited sorrows--a little extreme unction.
The leaves, nipt by the first frosts, are already strewed thick upon the
Luxembourg; and your hills are, no doubt, putting on their variegated
hues of the autumn. My advice is, that you dissolve the cold, by putting
largely of the anthracite upon your grate; that you bring out your old
wine, and be joyful, while your knees are green--see where Père la
Chaise stands beckoning from the heights of Mont-Louis.--I give my
compliments to the girls, and say you sweet, good night.
LETTER XIV.
The Louvre.--Patronage of the Fine Arts.--The Luxembourg.--The
Palais des Beaux Arts.--The Sêvres Porcelain.--The
Gobelins.--Manners of the common People in Paris.--A fair
Cicerone.--Her remarks on Painting.--The French, Flemish, and
Italian Schools.--English Patronage of Art.--The New National
Gallery.--Sir Christopher Wren.--A tender Adieu.
PARIS, Nov. 14th, 1835.
I have passed the morning in the _Louvre_, and have nothing in my head
but galleries and pictures; and you must expect nothing else through the
whole of this letter. You may dread a long letter too, for you know, the
less one is conversant with a subject the more one is likely to reason
upon it. In the Louvre, the pictures occupy both walls of a room, thirty
feet wide by a quarter of a mile long, and consist of about twelve
hundred pieces of native and foreign artists. In the same building also
is the _Musée des Antiques_ containing 736 statues, with bronzes and
precious vases; also the _Musée des Desseins_, with 25,000 engravings;
the _Musée de la Marine_, with models of vessels; and the _Musée
Egyptien_, with collections of Egyptian, Roman and Grecian antiquities.
An exhibition too is held here, from the first of March till May every
year, of the works of living artists, painters, sculptors, engravers,
architects, and lithographers.
Paris, in patronising the fine arts, has taken the lead of all the
cities of Europe. The government spends annually large sums, and
extensive purchases are made by the royal family, and wealthy
individuals. They do not hoard their pictures in private houses, as in
England, but place them, as in ancient Greece, in the public
collections. They improve, therefore, the public taste and embellish
their city. It is one of the means by which they entice amongst them
rich foreigners, who always pay back with usurious interest the money
spent for their entertainment.
There is, besides, a public gallery in the palace of the Luxembourg,
which contains collections of paintings and sculpture of living French
artists since 1825. The other museums are those of Natural History at
the Garden of Plants, and the _Musée d’Artillerie_, containing all kinds
of military weapons, used by the French from the remotest periods of
their history; also the “Conservatory of Arts and Trades,” where models
of every French invention, from a doll-baby to an orrery and
steam-engine, have been preserved--the greatest museum of gimcracks,
they say, in the world. This gives two courses of gratuitous lectures
under distinguished professors, and has a free school in which young men
are taught the arts.
To these you may add the “_Palais des Beaux Arts_,” begun in 1820, and
now near its completion, which is destined to be one of the splendid
miracles of Paris. The “Gallery of Architecture,” which is already rich,
is to be increased with copies of the choice sculpture, statuary, and
architecture of all the world, so that students will have no longer to
run after the originals into foreign countries.
There are two manufacturing establishments here with galleries of their
produce, which have dignity enough to be mentioned even with the Louvre;
the Sêvres Porcelain, and the weaving of the Gobelins. In the gallery of
the porcelain, some of the specimens are inconceivable. There was
scarcely less difference between mother Eve and the clay that made her
than there is between the original materials, and one of these exquisite
vases. Gold blushes to see itself outdone by the rude earth at the
tables of the Rothschilds and other lords. Plate of the precious metals
is mean in comparison. Porcelain has fragility in its favour. The best
mine, which sleeps between the Broad and Sharp Mountains would scarce
buy you a dinner-set. I priced you breakfast plates at 2,000 francs
each, and a table to set them on at 30,000; and a vase with American
scenery, as if Iris herself had painted it, 35,000. But why, after all,
put this exquisite art upon matter so destructible, and upon objects
destined to mean services? Why bake Vandykes upon your cream jugs, and
Raffaelles and Angelos on your wash-basin, and the Lord knows what else?
There are things which admit of ornament only to a certain extent.
At the Gobelins the most intricate groups of paintings are interwoven in
the carpets and tapestry, of churches and palaces. The great Peter
superintending the battle at Pultawa, the Duke d’Epernon carrying off
the queen, and St. Stephen pouring out his soul towards Heaven are all
under the shuttle or starting into life, from the woof and chain of a
weaver’s web. And here is Marie de Medicis, and two other ladies, just
out of the loom. The most effeminate tints, the nicest features, have a
glow and delicacy equalled but by the best paintings upon canvass. Only
think! the charms of the divinest female; her arched eye-brows, her
lips, like the opening flower, gently parted, as if going to speak; her
graceful smile, which steals away the senses, and all the heaven of her
features, may be expressed in wool.
Here are carpets to be trodden on only by queens, and to be purchased
only with queens’ revenues. One of the cheapest is 8,000 dollars. Two
hundred years have been employed upon a single piece. All that you have
read about the “weaving of the Dardan Dames,” of the webs of Penelope
and other ladies, is nothing but mythology. Here is a Bonaparte in the
plague of Egypt, so natural and so animate, of such questionable shapes
and features, one is almost ready to exclaim with Hamlet, “Be thou a
spirit”--(the temptation to a pun is not quite so bad as the offence.)
You are tempted almost to speak to him, so full is he of expression and
vitality. The workmen of the Gobelins require six years’
apprenticeship, and twenty years to become proficients. Under the
ancient government they were locked up for life, like old Dædalus,
within the walls, and no one is now permitted to buy or sell without an
order of the king. A dyeing establishment is kept up under an able
chemist, expressly to supply this factory with colours.
The doors of all the French galleries are opened on certain days of the
week to every body, and a special favour of every day is extended to
strangers. Minerva, like the others of her sex in Paris, cares not to be
rumpled a little by the crowd, or stared at by the vulgar. The rich are
refined always sufficiently for their own will and resources; but in the
condition of the poor man--his poverty, the contempt which follows
poverty, every thing tends to debasement. It is surely then wise in a
government to devise such institutions, and encourage such modes and
fashions as may ennoble the motives, refine the tastes, and employ
innocently the idle hours of the poor; and since one member of a
community cannot be badly affected without injury to the rest, it is the
proper business of the rich to second such measures of policy. It is
certain that no city in the world contains so many violent principles
of corruption as Paris, and it is equally certain that the common people
have an air of neatness and decency, not equalled by the same class in
any other country. As for grace, it is here (and it is no where else) a
mere bourgeois and plebeian quality. The distinction too is as
remarkable in conversation as in manners. There is not a milliner or
shop-girl at fifteen sous a-day, whose head is not a little museum of
pictures; she will converse with you too of the Malibrans, and
Taglionis, and Scribes, with nearly the same sense and the same
phraseology as the _Journal des Spectacles_. But the Frenchman seeks his
recreation in the dance, the theatre, in the pure air of his gardens,
and in these galleries of statues and paintings, whilst the Englishman
skulks into his gin-shop. No one can walk into these galleries on the
public days, and not see, that there is in man a natural attraction for
the arts which exalt and refine his nature. We follow our mother country
in many things, and we follow her especially in her whims and her vices.
She shuts out the public from her pictures, and then complains that
there is no public taste. And she imports her Lelys and Godfrey Knellers
from abroad. We have a gallery in Philadelphia, and though there is but
one picture in it, the admission to this one picture is a shilling
sterling. It is the “Last Supper;” and we have puffed in all the
newspapers the religious impressions which it inspires (for a shilling.)
I ask pardon of the “Academy of Fine Arts;” it also has pictures, which
are visited by fashionable people once a-year, admission twenty-five
cents.
The ancients set more value upon this silent kind of instruction than we
moderns. A Spartan mother rocked her baby in a shield, and she dressed
the household gods in armour, that her little Leonidas might have the
image of war before his eyes, even in his prayers. She even commenced
this course of education before the child’s birth. For she took care to
have bucklers and helmets, and portraits of Castor and Pollux, and other
heroes, hung around her chamber, and to have some martial air played
over her couch of a morning, that she might not, by pusillanimous
dreams, spoil her child. The “city councils” too of that country,
employed certain grave old men, good for nothing else, to inspect the
public morals, and especially to take care that the recreations of the
youth should be public. In a word, they thought it better, by such
impressions and such vigilance, to anticipate the dispositions of men
to be bad, than to build “Houses of Refuge,” and “Penitentiaries” to
correct them.
We prefer to connive at the opportunity of sin, till men have become
rogues, and then hang them. But, to take the example of a people nearer
our own manners, there can be no doubt that the excellent specimens of
the Fine Arts, exhibited daily to the Athenians in the embellishment of
their city, with the pomp of their games and festivals, gave them that
exquisite taste, that grace of movement, language, dress and manner, in
which they had an acknowledged superiority over all other people in the
world.
To enter the Louvre this morning, I used the stranger’s privilege; and
unfolding my passport, a lady, with so much the air of a lady, as to be
sure of meeting no repulse, taking my arm, said, “Sir, I will ask the
favour of going in with you. I will be your wife two minutes,” and we
went in together. A Frenchwoman says and does things sometimes at which
our American honour grows very indignant, yet does she say and do no
harm. In conversing with this woman, I did not doubt “two minutes” of
her being of the best breeding and education. She had resided at
Florence, and a long time at Rome, and had exactly that kind of
information which the necessities of my condition required. I entreated
her of course not to be divorced at the end of the “minutes.” She has
wit and learning, and is eloquent to the very ends of her fingers. Her
personal beauty, too, is of no common order, but just threatening to
fade; the period at which woman, to my taste, is much more interesting
than with the full blown charms of seventeen summers in her face. She
has then the interest of a possession which soon may escape; she has
maturity of intelligence, of feeling and expression, to which the
brilliancy of youthful beauty is as the tinsel to the pure gold.
The Louvre has nine divisions, bounded each by an arch resting on four
Corinthian columns, and pilasters of beautiful marble, having bases and
capitals of bronze-gilt; and between them are mirrors, and splendid
ancient and modern vases and busts. Three of these parts are assigned to
the French, three to the German, Flemish, and Dutch, and as many to the
Italian and Spanish masters. I walked with my amiable _virtuosa_ up and
down this enchanting gallery for an hour; gathering wisdom, not being
allowed to gather any thing else, from her lips.
And we conversed, not of politics, or the town scandal, but of what it
imported me more to know, of Florence, and of the treasures of that city
of the arts--of Florence, the birth-place of Dante, of Galileo, of
Machiavelli, of Michael Angelo; and we conversed of those two great
patrons of Florentine learning, Cosmo and Lorenzo de Medici,--how the
arts revived under their care, and flourished under their munificent
protection, and how much more one man often does towards the glory and
honour of a country, than ten thousand of his neighbours. And so we
walked, and then stood still, and looked up, to the great fatigue of our
legs, a contingency which the French foreseeing, had provided against by
placing sofas along each side the room, and in front of the finest
paintings; so down we sat opposite the “French School.”
Here I put the lady back to her rudiments, and I am going to give you a
tincture of her remarks. Before coming to this country I had seen
neither statues nor pictures. I had seen only Miss “Liberty,” on the bow
of an East Indiaman, and a General Washington or two, hospitably
inviting one to put up for the night. In a word I had studied only in
that great National Gallery of ours, the sign-posts. So the less I say
of my own wit upon this subject, the better.
“To improve your taste, sir, in painting, it is not the best way to
dissipate your attention upon all this variety. Select a few pieces of
the best and study these alone, for an hour a day, until by comparison
you can distinguish their beauties, with the style and character of each
master. You will then be able to read with satisfaction through the rest
of the great volume; you will know what to receive, what to reject, and
how to economise your time and attention. Here are the French masters.
It was under Louis XIV., and with Poussin, this school began. The great
number of pictures at this time brought to Paris and exhibited publicly
gave a general taste for the art; and we have attained since a very
eminent distinction, without, however, reaching the great masters of the
Flemish and Italian schools. We have all the dry particulars of
excellence, such as the labour of copying the fine classical models may
produce. All schools, under the authority of a master, lead off from
nature, to imitation--to a mean practice of mere copying, which fetters
and debases genius.
“How much better to have open galleries, as the ancient Greeks,
untrammelled; where the mind may follow its own impulses, and recommend
itself at once to the great tribunal, before which all human excellence
must come at last for its recompense and fame. Hogarth, Reynolds,
Wilson, and West, were all eminent before the birth of the Royal
Academy, and who does not know that Reynolds would have been more
eminent still, if he had not been thrust into its Presidency? Raphael
never read a treatise or heard a lecture on his art. All the great
painters under Leo X. were of no school; they were fostered by
individuals and the public, and all the efforts of the academy of St.
Luke have not been able to continue the race. When painting shows her
face in your country, be wise, and do not cramp her natural movements by
the trammels of an academy.
“In this French school you must admire the life, the movement, the
variety of _Lebrun_; the serene and noble expression, the correct, yet
grand and heroic style of the classical _Poussin_; and him, whose
landscapes, and tableaux contend for superiority, _Claude Lorraine_;
especially the trees, suns, moons, and lightning of his beautiful
landscapes; the fine sea pieces too, and landscapes of _Vernet_; and
_Lemoine_, immortal for his Hercules. This last died of melancholy from
the neglect of his patron and the envy of his rivals. The next time we
meet, I shall hear you all day praise the grace and sentiment of _Le
Sueur_, and the more animated grace of _Mignard_; you will have adored
his cupola of Val-de-Grace, and his virgins, too, and above all his St.
Cecilia, celebrated so magnificently by Molière.
“See what a different world!--The phlegmatic and laborious Hollander.
This is nature, as it is in Amsterdam, fat, Dutch nature; wrought out to
a neat and prudish perfection, to be accomplished only by Dutch
patience, admirable in animals, fruits, flowers, insects, night-scenes,
vessels, machines, and all the objects of commerce and arts; admirable,
too, in perspective; its clara obscura is magic, it paints the very
light of heaven; the shades in nature’s self are not better blended.
Don’t you love this shop; this peasant’s kitchen; and the grotesque
dresses, and comic expression of these figures? All, as you see, in this
school have the same face; the artist has no idea of a connection
between faces and minds. Scipio is a Dutch burgomaster.
“Here are Alexander and Diogenes; either in the tub will do for the
philosopher; both are Dutchmen. But what harmony of colours; what living
carnations; what relief; what truth and character!--these are
_Rembrandt’s_, and even these want spirit and dignity. Let us sit down
here and take a long look at _Rubens_, the Titian, the Raphael of the
Low Countries--of the singular beauty of his heads, his light and easy
pencil; the life, harmony and truth of all his compositions. The whole
world goes to Anvers, alone, to see the works of this extraordinary
genius; to see his “Crucifixion,” you would go any where; you can hear
his thief scream upon the cross. And here is _Jordaens_, almost his
equal, and the portraits, never to be surpassed, of _Vandyke_. Here,
too, the inimitable village fêtes, and grotesque peasantry, and soldiers
of _Teniers_; the landscapes and farms, and cattle of Potter; and
_Van-der-meer’s_ sheep, as natural as those which feed upon the
down.--These last, of nearly the same character, are the Germans,
_Durer_, _Holbein_, and _Kneller_.
“And now the divine Italy. The noble Florentines; _Michael Angelo_ and
_Vinci_ at their head;--the fruitful, the lively, the imaginative, the
graceful, the majestic, and every other excellence combined. If you
love the arts you will live always in Florence. There is nothing here of
Angelo, but this is the _Joconde_ of Vinci, the most finished portrait
in the world.
“Next is Lombardy, and her fine forms and expression; her masterly
composition, and colours, so sweetly blended; all the best qualities of
“excelling nature” are in this school formed by _Correggio_, who
received, they say, his pencil from the Graces. His drapery seems
agitated by the winds. And who are these others, who divide equally with
him the admiration of the world? you cannot remove your eyes from their
charming figures--it is _Permessan_ and the _Caraccis_, severe and
correct; and he who excels them all three in some of the principal
features of the art, he who paints nature in her defects, and with
irresistible force and truth, _Caravaggio_; and next _Guido_, who paints
her majesty and graces; and _Albano_, in her winning, and poetic
enchantments; and _Domenichino_, whose obstinate genius dragged him to
the very heights of Parnassus, in spite of the predictions of his
masters.
“In the Roman School, founded upon the antique models, you will have an
inexhaustible source of enjoyment. Who does not love _Raphael_; his
works are as well known as Virgil’s. Who can admire enough the natural
expression and attitude of his figures, and his composition, simple and
sublime. Here are _Titian’s_ lively portraits, and landscapes, never to
be surpassed in force and boldness of colouring. And here is the
fruitful, and lively, and dignified _Paul Veronese_, with his brilliant,
various and magnificent draperies. His “Marriage of Cana,” is one of the
chef-d’œuvres of Italy. And here are tableaux and landscapes by the wild
fancy of _Salvator Rosa_, excelling in savage nature; who paints the
arid plain and carnage of the battle as no one else. In America, he
would have painted your Mississippi, where its mighty flood rolls
through the silent wilderness, or your War Dance; or the Hut of the
Woodman, where the panther looks through his window, and the rattlesnake
coils upon his pillow, or the savage upon his lonely cliff; while
surveying the firmament, he reads God’s Holy Scriptures in the skies.
“---- Of this the composition is perfect; the passions are violent, but
natural, and without disagreeable distortion, and the drapery even
beyond ideal perfection.--The figures have less majesty than Michael
Angelo’s, and are more within our common nature.--His women, as you
see, are too plump, and his children too grave, whose is it?
“---- And this exquisite woman? with no sins of her ancestors in her
face, and none of their diseases and deformities in her limbs; with all
the sweet sensibilities, as the colours of the rainbow, in her
expression--Who is she?--Who gathered these fugitive charms into her
features, and who this divine grace about her limbs, to play upon her
tapering arms, and neck and bosom, as the soft moonlight upon the
stream?---- Who made her? * *
“---- All these eminent beauties, and this dove-like innocence to be
thrown away, as the fragrance of the wild rose upon a desert; no taste
to value; no * *
“* * To be sure, her unforbidden husband! * * * This other figure of the
same canvass you will no doubt easily recognise. * *
“---- It is no wonder; it is a bad likeness. It should have less of the
terrific attributes. Cloven feet and horns are the stupid imaginations
of the monks. Without the temptations to sin what exercise or
opportunity is there in virtue? What becomes of human greatness--of
honesty, piety, charity, continence and all that props up the dignity
of our race?--To be well painted he should have nothing of a
supernatural being; he should have human passions to enlist human
sympathies. He should be a gentleman; a gentleman too in his most
seducing and fascinating form. With such a nature only he can sustain
the functions assigned to him by Providence, especially amongst women;
and to corrupt the world you must begin by them.
“There is here, as you see, no _Ecole Britannique_. The English have
given us nothing in return for our Claudes and Poussins. Yet England
does not yield to any nation of Europe, in the munificence of her
patronage. One of her dukes pays for a picture of West’s 3,000 guineas;
another buys “Murillo’s” at half a million in a year. Walpole’s
collection at Houghton was valued at 200,000 pounds sterling. And she
has not only invited the arts from foreign countries, by sumptuous
presents, but has pensioned them, given them degrees in the
universities, knighted them, and married them with her proudest
nobility. Some pretend that she wants the lively and quick sensibilities
necessary to success in this art; that she raises paintings, as the
fruit of the Indies, not natural to her climate. But the climate of
Rubens, Vandyke and Rembrandt is quite as Bœotian as that of Great
Britain. Who ever heard of the sensibilities of the Hollander? The
atmosphere, which nourished a Milton, would not have smothered a
Raphael, or a Michael Angelo; nor would Salvator Rosa have withered,
where Shakspeare ‘warbled his native wood-notes wild.’
“One of the great stimulants to excellence has been wanting in England
altogether, and is now weakened throughout Europe--the wealth, the
influence, the enthusiasm of the Catholic Religion. This spirit which,
like the mythology of the Greeks, put a God in every niche of the
Temple; which produced the Angelos and Rubens, and breathed inspiration
into the artist and spectator, is quenched. Your Presbyterian prejudices
of the impressions produced by paintings, as well as by architecture and
music, are now obsolete. Idolatry is to be feared only among a savage or
very ignorant people. We have got beyond these limits; and a picture of
the Saviour or the Virgin can have no worse effect now in a church,
than the picture of a father or mother in the habitation of their
children.
“England will have a school of paintings, when she will have public
galleries and a public taste, when the artist shall hold the reins of
his imagination in his own hands, and shall paint, not for private
recompense, but public fame, and not for the Duke of Sutherland, but the
nation. In portraits, where vanity supplies a public taste, England
excels; and the engraver, who ministers to the common pride, and
supplies the furniture of the parlour, and the lady’s Annual, succeeds
as no where else. Vandyke, who painted the “Descent from the Cross,” in
his own country, painted in England only portraits; as affording him a
better remuneration than his exertions on historical subjects.
“These seven pieces every one admires for their mellow colouring, and
for their bold and vigorous expression--they are of the Spaniard
_Murillo_. With these, I beg leave to close my lecture, and to thank you
for your amiable and patient attention.”
Now this is the end of the Louvre--Are you not glad?--To designate by
single epithets persons, who have a hundred qualities, is too absurd;
but to seem to know something about paintings, is so very genteel!
As you cross the _Pont des Arts_, you will see, placed in its centre, a
bench to accommodate wearied travellers. You may now fancy me
seated--long enough, at least, to fill the rest of this page--upon this
bench. The breezes here fan you with their little wings, and the
landscape is covered with delightful images. The Seine flows under your
feet so smooth, you can count the stars on its surface. It is arched by
seventeen sumptuous bridges, many of them in sight; and the dwellings of
luxurious men, and the temples of the Divinity, vie with each other in
magnificence, upon its banks, and the steeples stand tip-toe upon the
neighbouring hills.
“The correspondence of the architecture is not accidental. You must look
at Paris as a picture, and examine the composition, as well as the
execution of the parts. Its monuments are not only beautiful in
themselves, but are made, as you see, to harmonise with each other. The
Louvre, the Institute, the Arch of Neuilly, the Tuileries and its
gardens, the Madelaine, the Palais Bourbon, the Seine and all its
turretted castles--all are but parts of the same tableau. In this
respect Paris, so inferior to London in wealth, and to Rome in
situation, is yet more beautiful than either. St. Paul’s harmonises with
nothing--Westminster Abbey, also, is lost in its individuality. The “New
Gallery” occupies one of the best situations in Europe, only cumbering
the ground, which the taste of a better age might have employed to the
ornament of the city. London monuments are built as at Thebes, _au son
du Tambour_; they are built for the job, and ours for the honour of
Paris and posterity. The Madelaine, yet under the architect, was begun
sixty years ago; St. Paul’s was built by the same architect, and the
same mason. Sir Christopher Wren was employed upon it, at two hundred
a-year, and had a suit at law for a few half-pence, which stood unpaid
upon his bill.
“This ‘_Palais des Beaux Arts_’ is now the Palace of the Institute. As
it stands at the head of our fine arts, as well as letters, I may as
well tell you the little I know of its organization. It is the old
_Academie Française_, expanded from forty to several hundred members.
They are separated into four divisions; having only the hall and library
in common; and their common funds are managed by a joint committee from
each; and they have a united meeting yearly, on the 1st of May. The
vacancies are filled by ballot of the members, with the approbation of
the king. Each member receives an annual salary of 1500 francs, except
honorary members, who are contented with the honours.
“The ‘_Academie des Beaux Arts_’ distributes prizes in painting,
sculpture, architecture, engraving, and musical composition; and the
successful candidates pursue their studies at Rome at the expense of the
state. The ‘_Academie des Belles Lettres_’ gives also a prize of 1500
francs, and medals for the best memoir on French antiquities. The
‘_Academie des Sciences_’ awards a prize of 3000 francs, on a subject
given, and smaller prizes upon specific branches of science; and
finally, the ‘_Academie Française_’, upon a proposed subject, pays a
prize of 1500 francs, and some of smaller amount. One is called the
‘Montyon Prize,’ for some act of virtue in the common class of society.”
Here my fair cicerone slipped through my fingers--not indeed without an
effort on my part to hold her fast. I threatened her not to survive.
“Yes, do; and you can put in for the Montyon prize of this year. We are
just under the tower of Philip Augustus, so the end like the beginning
of our acquaintance will have something of romance.---- Oh, no, my name
would spoil all the interest of the plot; what is a plot without a
mystery?”
“A romance beginning with a marriage, has usually a tragical end.”
“And so end the best romances--where could you find for the catastrophe
a more desirable place?--Here stood the _Tour de Nesle_ of tragical
memory, and you have in view the Pont Neuf, and there is the Morgue.”
“It is a pity,” said I in a pique, “that nature had not taken some of
the pains she has lavished upon your brains and your beauty, to give to
your heart. You see a stranger, never before a traveller, wandering in
your country----”
“A stranger never before a traveller is not to my taste. Such a
traveller’s views of human nature are very narrow. He judges of merit
always by some mode or fashion of his own, and sets up his whims as the
standard of propriety for others. One who has travelled does not think a
fellow-creature bad because she may deviate from the little etiquette
of his native village. He does not think any thing wrong that is not so
essentially. If he should meet for example, a lady, an entire stranger,
who would ask his arm, to see these fine pictures of the Louvre; in the
alternative of remaining out of doors, and should choose, in return for
his politeness, to be entertained an hour with his company, he would not
infer that she wanted either sense or good breeding; he would not
presume, on such appearances, to treat her with less respect--much
less----”
I dropped the hand I had taken without her leave. She then returned it,
and bade me adieu, crossing the bridge and traversing the _Quai de La
Monnaie_, where she disappeared among the narrow lanes of St.
Germain--and there was an end of her.
I intended in setting out to give you the cream of her conversation, but
it turns out to be the skim-milk only, and I have no time for revision.
There is nothing so insipid and creamless as the fine things people say
to one’s self, and especially the fine things one says in reply.
This, with a little package of music, will be handed you by Mr. D----,
who is going to accompany it all the way himself. The obliging man!
Please to give him your thanks; and to his prettiest little wife in the
world, a thousand compliments from your very devoted humble servant.
LETTER XV.
The Schools.--State of Literature.--Minister of Public
Instruction.--Education in France.--Prussian System.--Parochial
Schools.--Normal Schools.--Institutions of Paris.--Public
Libraries.--Machinery of French Justice.--The Judges.--Eloquence of
the Bar.--Medicine.--Corporations of Learning.--Their Evils.--The
French Institute.--Pretended New System of Instruction.--Professors
of Paris.
Paris, November 20th, 1835.
One of the eminent merits of the French character is the distinction
they bestow upon letters. A literary reputation is, at once, a passport
to the first respect in private life, and to the first honours in the
state. In Paris it gives the tone, which it does nowhere else, to
fashionable society. It is not that Paris loves money less than other
cities, but she loves learning more; and that titled rank being
curtailed of its natural influence, learning has taken the advance, and
now travels on in the highway to distinction and preferment, without a
patron, and without a rival. At the side of him, whose blood has
circulated through fifty generations, or has stood in the van of as many
battles, is the author of a French History, born without a father or
mother.
Who is Guizot, and who Villemain, Cousin, Collard, Arago, Lamartine,
that they should be set up at the head of one of the first nations in
Europe? Newspaper editors, schoolmasters, astronomers, and poets, who
have thrust the purpled nobles, and time-honoured patricians from the
market of public honours, and have sat down quietly in their seats. The
same marks of literary supremacy are seen through every feature of the
community. Who was at Madame Recamier’s last night? Chateaubriand; and
at the Duchesse d’Abrantes? Chateaubriand.--At the Pantheon, the whole
nave of the Temple is assigned to two literary men; and the Prince of
Eckmuhl, and such like, are crammed into the cellar. At Père la Chaise,
David wears the cross of St. Louis, by the side of Massena. Molière is
the only author in the world since the Greeks, whose birth-day is a
national festival. His statue is crowned on that day at the Theatre
Français, and his plays are represented, by order of government, upon
all the national theatres. We ought then to presume that the literary
and scientific institutions of the French should correspond with this
sentiment in favour of learning; and so they do.
Here are two sheets of large post, which I must try to fill with this
subject. I say _try_, because I write in obedience to your orders, and
in total defiance of inclination. This will be the only letter I have
written since I came here, to any of your bearded sex, and I feel
already very grave and dull. Not that I think ladies more frivolous than
men, or men more stupid than ladies, but it is my humour. I can write to
my lady acquaintance without thinking, which I esteem a special favour,
during my residence in Paris.--They do not expect me to be wise, and
what extravagant notions you may have on this subject I don’t know.--If
I write you nothing but what you know already, it will not be my fault,
for I am unacquainted with the extent of your information, and you have
not been specific in your inquiries.
The authority which presides over the Public Instruction in France, is
personified under the term “University,” at the head of which is a
minister, who has a salary of twenty thousand dollars, and a rank with
the other ministers. A “Central Board” of nine members, has a general
superintendence of the studies, and expense of the establishments. The
divisions of the kingdom for the “Royal Courts,” are the school
districts, which are called Academies; these have each a “Governor,”
representing the minister, and an “Academical Board,” the Central Board
at Paris; and each has its establishments, which are the Faculties, the
Royal and Communal Colleges, Primary Schools, and Private Institutions.
The Instruction is Superior, Secondary, and Primary.
The “Faculties” teach theology, law, medicine, science, and letters.
They confer degrees of Bachelor, Licentiate, and Doctor; and are
thirty-five in number. Three are Medical Faculties, at Paris, Montpelier
and Strasburg; eight are Theological; of the Catholic Religion, six; of
the Protestant, two; and nine are Faculties of Law. There are thirty
Royal, three hundred and twenty Communal; and two Private Colleges; one
hundred and twenty Private Institutions, or Boarding Schools, and one
thousand and twenty-five Select Private Schools. The studies of these
are Philosophy, Natural History, Elementary Mathematics, Latin, Greek,
and modern languages.
The Primary Schools embrace only reading, arithmetic, and writing: and
the “Primary Superior” add history, geography, elements of chemistry,
and surveying. Their number is about fifty thousand.
At Paris there is a “Normal School,” for the education of Professors;
and throughout the kingdom about sixty for masters of the Primary
Schools.
The minister is appointed by the king, and the other officers directly,
or indirectly by him. There are thirty General Inspectors, two for each
academy or district. The “Proviseurs” have a care of the household and
conduct of the students, and “Censors” superintend studies. Teachers are
selected at a distance from their own departments, so that no local
interests may grow up against the great central authority. Private
institutions are forbidden to teach any thing else than grammar,
elements of arithmetic, and geometry. Reports from the Academical Boards
are examined twice a-week by the Central Board of the University, and
the University presents a report every two years, to the Chamber of
Deputies.
Education in France is a universal and uninfringible monopoly, and has
the benefits and evils of such systems. The Central Board establishes
uniformity in books, and instruction; it decides whether you are to
teach your son pot-hooks, or straight strokes; but it impedes also
improvement in the school-books, and processes of teaching; it selects
competent instructors, but it represses the exercise of ingenuity by
prescribing their duties; it cuts up the Lancasters, the Fellenbergs,
and Pestalozzis by the roots. I say nothing of the independence of mind,
without which there is neither genius, nor virtue, which is repressed by
so absolute an authority. It suppresses also imposture in the teachers,
but it destroys, too, the spirit of competition which imparts life and
vigour to all human employments. It does not suppress the jobbing which
arises out of all government projects, or intrigue, or favouritism in
the appointment of its officers.
This is the system lately engrafted upon the great Prussian plan, which
it is the fashion to praise so much about in the world. Time will
perhaps reveal its merits; but this is by no means certain. There are
other causes at work for the diffusion of knowledge amongst the people,
and it is so easy to ascribe the merit to the Prussians; besides, it is
not likely that, once used to receive instruction from their
magistrates, as it were, for nothing, the people should consent to
educate themselves at their own cost; or that, seeing for a long time
effects produced by a certain machinery, especially so remote from their
causes, they should conceive them producible by any other.
I have looked at the working of this plan in Paris and several of the
neighbouring towns, and am sorry that I cannot share in the flattering
hopes entertained of its results. Burke lays it down as “one of the
finest problems of legislation” to know “what the state ought to
undertake to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave,
with as little interference as possible, to individual discretion.” “All
governments,” he observes, “fall into the error of legislating too
much.” I have no good hopes of any system of education under the
management of a government.
Nothing is so badly managed as a government itself all over the world;
and to have as little as possible of it seems to me the perfection of
social economy. The rich and middling classes will take care of their
own children always, and no one, I presume, will say that they will not
do it better under the impulse of parental feeling than they who act
only from delegated authority. Why do we not put the cultivation of the
earth under the management of a company? A parent, being able, feels as
strong a necessity to educate his son as to cultivate his field. To the
parent only, who is destitute, and to whom there is but the alternative
of a bad system or none; to him only whose instincts are frozen by
necessity, should the sceptre of legislation be extended--extended as
medicine to the health, with prudence, and only when the native vigour
is irrecoverable by the natural stimulus. You cannot by any human device
prevent the division of the poor and rich into different schools; they
do not attempt it even in arbitrary Prussia. And it is better the
government, with its broad shoulders, than individuals, should make the
distinction.
Under a general system the two parties mutually prejudice each other. On
the one hand, the current of private charity, so fruitful in its natural
channel, is dried up by it. A community of which the individuals give
cheerfully; one the timber, another the stone, another his personal
services, towards a building, will, under a public system, require to be
paid for their smallest contributions; and how many rich legacies have
we inherited in Philadelphia, not a dollar of which would have been
given under a public system. On the other hand, how many communities
through the country, able to support good private schools, without the
intermeddling of the government, have no longer the ability, and are
obliged either to send their children abroad, or place them, with a
total disregard of their morals and education, in a public school, where
sixty scholars are taught by an old gentleman of sixty. It is easy to
imagine what sort of schools are those in which the teacher receives, as
in New England, twenty, or as in Pennsylvania, thirty dollars a month,
for this wide diffusion of his services.
The Scotch have been putting this forty-pound-a-year system to the test
these two hundred years in their Parochial Schools, and with the most
tender nursing, their schools are in the same puny and ricketty
condition as at their seven months’ birth. The Scotch are a persevering
people, and if they begin by building a house at the roof, they keep
building on even after the inutility of their labours has been
demonstrated. So the turkeys in your Schuylkill county, their eggs being
removed, and stones substituted, continue hatching on as usual. The
Yankees, a shrewder people, are beginning to find out that their school
system, copied from the Scotch, notwithstanding the care with which they
starve their teachers, is actually getting worse every year. I have no
objection to the government giving money, the more, the better, but I
have no hesitation in saying that it will serve no useful purpose unless
the relation between parent and teacher is preserved, and the executive
department left to their management. In this delicate concern, the arm
of the government should be concealed; her virtues should be busy
without noise.
If I were the state; if I owned, for example, your community of
Pottsville, I would contribute all I could towards buildings, apparatus,
and libraries, and circulating useful books, and above all towards
elevating the character and acquirements of the teachers. I would devise
some way, by a succession of honours and profits, to make men teach, as
in the army they make them fight. For instance, I would pay a per
centage, up to a certain number of pupils, to each school; and the
teacher with ten years’ approved services should receive a state diploma
and the title of professor; thirty years’ services should entitle him
to half pay, and I would take care of his wife and children at his
decease. I would not encourage universities but for the advanced age of
the pupils, and the transcendent branches; so as to give them a higher
character, and leave the field of general instruction open to the common
teachers, and to a fair and equal competition of abilities. Thus I
should find abundant means of employing all my school funds; and this
without the Inspectors, Censors, Proviseurs, and the other expensive
apparatus of the “_Bureau Central de Paris_.”
If any one of the honourable and useful departments of a state is filled
with an inferior class of men, it shows a defect in the policy of such a
state. If I wished to devise some means the most direct, to degrade the
character of a teacher, I could not hit upon one more efficacious than
this French and Prussian system. All that the Prussian receives to
console his condition of absolute dependence, is two hundred dollars per
annum; the highest professor at the gymnasium, receives five hundred.
With this “appointment” he must be all schoolmaster, without any alloy
of gentleman about him. It is certain that not any of the respectable
literary circles of Europe will receive this working man of the Muses
into their society.
The Prussians are not addicted to commerce; nor do they read newspapers,
nor meddle with the state; their habits are quiet and agricultural; and
they care much less about the heads of their children, than that their
cabbages may have good heads for _sour crout_. If not educated by the
government, they would, no doubt, remain ignorant of letters. The
Prussian system may, then, be a very good system for Prussia; but it is
not, therefore, necessary or applicable to the United States;--except it
be to our German nests of Pennsylvania; but these are melting away, and
will soon be lost in the general improvements of the state.
A part of this system are the Normal Schools, which we are trying, also,
to introduce into New England. They seem to me of little value, for they
can teach but little that is not taught in any other place of education;
besides, under present circumstances, they defeat their own purpose. A
good school for educating teachers in America, would, perhaps, be the
very best place one could imagine to disqualify men for teaching. I know
the trustees of the “Girard College” think otherwise, and entertain
sanguine hopes of supplying the whole country with eminent teachers
from that institution. I do not see the reasonableness of their hopes;
unless we may suppose that the young gentlemen of talent, out of
gratitude, will forego the opportunities they may have of wealth and
distinction in other professions, to starve themselves for the benefit
of the state of Pennsylvania.
Several writers here express fears that this monopoly of education may
be turned to the prejudice of liberty; which I believe to be a vain
apprehension. The teachers being laymen, it is certain it will not be
turned to the profit of the hierarchy. The French literature, which
finds its way into every country of Europe, is a complete code of
ridicule of the priesthood and nobility; and the more people are taught
to read, the more difficult will be the re-establishment of these two
orders. Public opinion is but little modified by the books and lectures
of the schools; and the minister’s authority, however absolute in the
University of Paris, will be but little felt, if in contradiction with
that greater university--the world. The studies of the schools are
forced upon unripe and unwilling minds; those of society are voluntary,
and introduced as reason is developed. Besides, it is human nature to
relish most that which is most prohibited. Nothing ever brought the
works dangerous to religion more into reputation, than the denunciations
of the clergy. In crimes and errors, one cannot cure the patient, by
starving and checking perspiration. It happens, too, that the French
books, which are most replenished with wit and genius, are precisely
those which are most obnoxious. It is true, however unfortunate, that
education, liberty, and irreligion are sown here in the same soil, and
grow together under the same cultivation. To preserve the French student
from the contagion of principles dangerous to the aristocratic and
clerical institutions, he must be forbidden the whole of the national
classics down to Lafontaine’s Fables, including the history of his
country--I was going to say, the company of his father and mother, and
his schoolmasters.
I must now give you an account of the particular institutions of Paris.
You have your choice of five royal colleges; “_Louis le Grand_,” “_Henri
IV._,” and “_St. Louis_,” which receive boarders and externs; and
“_Charlemagne_,” and “_Bourbon_,” externs only. The average number of
pupils for each is about a thousand. The studies are ancient and modern
languages, mathematics, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history,
geography, penmanship, and drawing. They are superintended by a
“Proviseur” and a “Directeur General des Etudes.” In August, there is a
general competition for prizes, between a few pupils selected from each
college, conducted with pomp before the heads of the universities, and
other dignitaries of the city. A subject is given, the competitors are
locked up, and a council of the university decides, and the names of the
successful students, and the schools to which they belong, are published
in the journals; which excites a wonderful emulation amongst fifty, and
a wonderful jealousy and discontent amongst five hundred; and many get
prizes on these days who get nothing else all the rest of their lives.
The price of boarding and instruction is about 220 dollars per annum.
There are besides these, and of the same character, “_St. Barbe_ or
_Rollin_,” and “_Stanislaus_,” two private colleges. There are in the
city, and under the inspection of the university, 116 academies for
gentlemen, and 143 for ladies; and a great number of primary schools, in
which about 10,000 children are taught gratuitously or for a small
price; the boys by the “_Frères de la Doctrine Chretienne_,” and the
girls by the “_Sisters of Charity_,” or nearly the half by the “_Frères
Ignorantins_,” who profess reading and writing only, with the catechism;
any one having higher attainments being disqualified. There are schools
also for the blind and dumb.
This machinery of schools, or something equivalent, exists in other
countries, but the Parisians have two institutions, which they regard as
choice and pre-eminent. Science, which is elsewhere immured in the
cloisters of the universities, here breathes the wholesome and
ventilated air of social life. “Wisdom uttereth her voice in the
market-place; she crieth aloud in the streets.” These are the “_Academie
de Paris_,” and the “_College Royal de France_.” Every branch of human
knowledge has here its professors, and the doors of the temple are open
to the needy of all nations. In the former, which you will find on the
“_Place Sorbonne_,” are Faculties of Theology with six professors; of
Letters with twelve; and Science, twelve.
It is the theatre upon which Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, and others
acquired their professorial celebrity--a noble theatre for the
encouragement, exercise, and reward of eminent abilities. The Faculties
of Law and Medicine are held each in separate buildings. The “_College
de France_” has twenty-one professors, who give lectures on all the
higher branches of science and letters; also upon the Hebrew, Chaldaic,
Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Italian languages. There is
besides a Special Royal school for Oriental Languages, to which the
government allows annually 3600 dollars. The salaries of professors in
these schools seldom exceed 1200 dollars; a pension is given after
twenty years’ services.--Besides these, they have the “_Ecole
Polytechnique_,” with three hundred scholars, from sixteen to twenty
years: twenty-four at the expense of government; the charges of the
others 200 dollars a-year. In connection with this is the “_Ecole des
Ponts et Chaussés_,” in which eighty of the pupils are instructed
specially in the arts of projecting, and constructing roads, canals, &c.
There is a school for Astronomy at the Observatory; also, a “School of
Mines,” with an extensive cabinet and lectures, and a “School of
Pharmacy,” with a botanic garden. This gives a diploma and licence to
practice to Apothecaries.--There is a gratuitous school of Mathematics
and Drawing, and one of Drawing for ladies, and two courses of lectures
at the Garden of Plants. The Conservatory of Music has four hundred
pupils; twelve at the expense of government; it gives prizes, and
through the year several concerts. There is a Gymnasium too, and a
school of Equitation. Mercy! what a litter of schools.
The institutions also for encouragement and literary intercourse, are
numerous in all the branches of learning. At the head of these is the
“_Institut de France_.” Of the others, the most distinguished are the
“_Academie de Medicine_,” and the Geographical, Historical, and
Agricultural societies.
The Public Libraries are the “King’s,” containing four hundred and fifty
thousand volumes, sixty thousand manuscripts, one hundred thousand
medals, and more than a million of engravings; the Library of the
Arsenal, one hundred and eighty thousand volumes; of the Pantheon, one
hundred and fifty thousand, and thirty thousand manuscripts; the
Mazarine, one hundred thousand; and the City Library forty-eight
thousand; and others, as of the Institute and Sorbonne, to be consulted
occasionally. There are near two hundred Reading-Rooms, also
Circulating Libraries in all directions; and newspapers and reviews are
a part of the furniture of every café, and other public house--without
saying any thing of the Museums and Institutions of the Fine Arts.
In the Law School, a degree of Bachelor requires two years’ attendance
on lectures; a Licentiate three, and “Doctor of Laws,” four. Pleading in
court is preceded by a degree of Licentiate, three years’ study,
examination and thesis, and after oath of office a noviciate, or
constant attendance on the courts, of three years. The Lawyers are
_Avocats_ and _Avoués_. The latter enjoins twenty-five years of age,
certain years of study, a certificate of capacity from the Faculty of
Law, and a Clerkship of five years in a _Cour Royal_. The duties of the
_Avocat_ are subordinate. This arrangement brings the inconvenience to
the client of acting by two persons; the want of the best advice in the
beginning, of unity of action and undivided responsibility. The
advantage is that the _Avoué_, not being subjected to the details and
humbler duties of a suit, takes a higher professional rank and
character, and is less subject to undue influences, having no immediate
relation with the parties. In admission to the bar, there is no inquiry
about moral character, and the judges are selected immediately from the
schools. I will try to give you in two words the machinery of French
justice. I go out of my course in reverence for your profession.
There is a “Minister of Justice.” His office is to pursue and bring to
punishment all wrongs done to the state. It is a bad relation, being
that of vengeance and not mercy. Our principle is reversed, and the
accused is considered guilty until proved innocent. For the whole
kingdom there are 27 Royal Courts; and, corresponding with our Common
Pleas, 365 courts, called “Tribunals of the First Instance.” To each of
the former is attached a “_Procureur General_,” and under him a
“_Procureur du Roi_,” with a “_Judge d’Instruction_,” and justices of
the peace.--The plaintiff, or a police-officer, applies to a commissary,
or mayor, or justice, or _Procureur du Roi_, and if a criminal action,
the accused, who cannot be confined beyond twenty-four hours, is
summoned before a “_Juge d’Instruction_,” who questions, and releases,
or commits him.
In the latter case he produces him, of course with all possible proofs
of guilt (and to collect these proofs he may detain him, innocent or
not, nine months in prison)--before a Chamber of Council, having three
judges, himself one, to examine whether there is cause of trial; and
next before a Chamber of Accusation, which examines finally, and this
concurring, he is tried at the Assizes. A jury of thirty (taxables to
200 francs) are chosen by ballot, of whom the accuser and accused strike
off nine. The “_Procureur General_” then opens the trial, states the
crime and names the witnesses; and the “_Avocat General_” appeals to the
jury in behalf of the injured community, for justice.
The President questions first the prisoner, who if incautious or
foolish, may be led, as is the intention, to convict himself, or if
expert, as he has the right to question also, he may induce discussions
not always to the credit of the magistrate or the majesty of justice.
Secondly, he examines witnesses, the prisoner and counsel
cross-examining, and the _Avocat General_ then sums up the facts and
evidence. Last of all the accused speaks, either by counsel or
personally in defence; the court appointing counsel in case of his
inability. The President then sums up, gives his opinions, the jury
declares him guilty or not guilty, and the court determines the
punishment. Small offences are decided before a justice of the peace or
a minor court, with liberty of appeal. Civil actions, below 1,000
francs, are tried before a justice of peace and decided finally by a
_Juge d’Instruction_: above that sum there is an appeal to a Royal
Court. In the “Court of Cassation” at Paris, the decision of any
criminal or civil case may be re-examined, and if reversed it is
referred to another tribunal. If the original decision is confirmed, it
is reconsidered by this court, and if unanimous in the former opinion,
it is submitted to a third tribunal, whose decision concurring with the
first, is final. There are courts also expressly for the decision of
commercial affairs. One at Paris with a president and two judges elected
from the most respectable merchants. The number of judges of the kingdom
is 4,000; of justices of the peace 3,000; the Avoués of Paris are above
200. The salary of a justice is 2,400 francs, of a Judge of Cassation
15,000; of a President judge 20,000; and a Premier President 40,000; and
the entire expense of justice is above three millions and a half.
The judges are habited in black robes of silk, with a crimson sash about
the neck and across the breast, with golden tassels. The lawyers wear a
black gown, and a “_toque_” or cap. They usually hire this costume for
the occasion from a stall within the “_Palais de Justice_.” This cap
supplies the place of the old wig; it does more, for the pleader
occasionally takes it off and shakes it at the judge, or throws it upon
the table in the fury of debate, and then puts it on again. It is
certain that gesture was designed by nature to make up the deficiencies
of language. It is often the more expressive of the two, and whoever
omits it or misuses it, must leave imperfect his meanings or the
passions he attempts to represent. Cicero even sets down mimicry amongst
the accomplishments of an orator. Whoever converses in English and
French will feel, for some reason, a disposition to much action in the
one, and less in the other, in expressing the same feelings, which gives
rise to a diversity of taste.
But in all such matters there are standard rules in truth and nature
which cannot without bad effect be violated. In gesture the English sin
by neglect or awkwardness; the French chiefly by extravagance. Rapidity
and frequency impair dignity, and even gracefulness is acquired somewhat
at the expense of strength. A French orator will tear his ruffles when
the occasion does not warrant it; reserving nothing for a fiercer
passion. To tell you he has seen a ghost, and not heard of it, he will
apply a forefinger to the under lids of his two eyes; and to tell you
emphatically that he came on horseback, he will set two fingers to ride
upon a third. While the Englishman “on high and noble deeds intent,”
puts his right hand in his bosom and his left in his breeches pocket.
Propriety lies somewhere between these two extremes. There are two
choice lawyers at the French bar, at present, Berryer and Charles Dupin;
both eminent models of chaste and graceful oratory. This is enough of
the limping old Lady Justice.
A degree of Doctor of Medicine must be preceded by a degree of Bachelor
of Letters and Science, and four courses of lectures, a thesis sustained
in public, and five public examinations. A vacancy in a professorship is
supplied by a “_concour_” that is, the several candidates appear before
the Faculty, a subject is given, they retire, and in the prescribed time
return with their thesis, which they read and sustain in public, and the
choice is settled by a majority of the judges. The diligence of a French
doctor should take him to heaven. He rises in the night, and, long
before other men have left their pillows, has done a good day’s work. He
has visited from four to five hundred sick in the hospitals, prescribed
for each, made his autopses and other operations, and explained the
cases separately and conjointly to his pupils. He has then consultations
till ten, breakfasts, and is in his Professor’s chair at the hour,
visiting his patients and giving audience in the intervals of these
duties--and has the rest of the day to himself.
In his professorial capacity he wears a cap, a gown and crimson sash. He
has given up the wig and gold-headed cane to Molière. Medicine here is
divided into strict specialities. One man feels your pulse, and another
gives you physic. This exclusive attention to one object, at the same
time it impairs the general excellence of the profession, has made the
French the most expert operators in the world. Civiale in his
_Lithotritie_ has no equal amongst living men; Laënnec does wonders in
Auscultation with his Stethoscope, and Larrey, who has cut off the legs
of half Europe, and was knighted by Bonaparte for such merits, has been
far obscured by the fame of Dupuytren.
It is said here commonly by foreigners that in the French practice
there is a reckless sacrifice of life and disregard of humanity, by
adventurous and needless experiments; having, at least, no other object
than surgical instruction, and that, from neglect or ignorance of
treatment after operations, the loss of patients is greater than in any
other country. I should suppose, from what I have myself seen, that a
millstone, compared to a French surgeon’s heart, would be good pap to
feed one’s children upon. I may remark, also, that the science of
medicine seems to me less indebted for its improvement to the good
feelings, than to the pride, jealousy and avarice, and other bad
passions of its practitioners. They have, to be sure, the courtesies
they cannot well avoid for each other in social intercourse, but their
private and professional purpose appears to be to starve each other, to
persecute each other to the grave, and dissect each other after death.
Broussais whips all the world, and all the world Broussais. A lecture of
Lisfranc is a flourish of bludgeons and daggers; he lashes Velpeau and
Roux, even stabs Dupuytren in his winding-sheet, and has as many lashes
in return. It is surprising that the professors of humanity should be
precisely those who have the least of that commodity on hand. The great
disputes, just now, amongst the choice professors, are whether one ought
to bleed or not bleed in acute fevers;--this in the nineteenth century!
and whether one should administer purgatives in typhus and typhoid
affections.
M. Boulaud and Chaumel, and somebody else, are gaining famous
reputations for this “new practice,” which gained and lost reputations
in America forty-six years ago. However, from the facility of
dissections, the number of sick in the hospitals, as well as from the
eminence of the teachers, and cheapness of education, the School of
Medicine of Paris is called very generally the best school of the world.
It has at present twenty-three professors, besides honorary professors
and assistants, and the number of students is about four thousand five
hundred.
I have already said a great deal about these French schools, but I have
added another sheet and may as well go on to the end of it. From a bare
enumeration, you see that education is here thrown in every one’s face
as a thing without price. If books and instruction constitute learning,
the most literary people of this earth are assuredly the Parisians. But
there is scarce any error to which short-sighted mortals are more
subject than referring effects to wrong causes; and I believe a very
common application of it is, to attribute a vast number of virtues to
our learned institutions which they are not entitled to. I believe we
over-rate generally the advantages to be derived from abroad to the
prejudice of personal exertions; a source to which, after all, we must
resort for at least three-fourths of our acquirements.
Corporations of learning are altogether modern devices, and many nations
were eminent in learning before their invention. At the end of the
fifteenth century, all science was thought to be shut up in their halls.
Only think of ten thousand students in the University of Bologna at
once!--and it was not until Lord Bacon and some others had dissipated a
little of this error, and taught men to look into nature and experience,
and not into the cloisters of the monks, for mental improvement, that
any one sought it elsewhere.
But many persons are still wedded to the system, and still think that
all that is wanting to the discipline of the mind, is the munificence of
government in founding Universities; so some think that building
churches is all that is wanting to take one to heaven. There has never
been a law-school in Great Britain, and in no country of Europe has
there been an equal number of eminent lawyers, and teachers of the law.
It is since the Revolution that a law-school exists with any credit in
France, and her Hôpitals and d’Aguesseaus, and other distinguished
lawyers, are anterior to that date. And what did the old French Academy
for learning, which the members would not have done, and done better, in
their individual capacities? The unaided works of individuals of the
same period are as superior to her united labours, as the poetry of
Racine or Boileau to her prize poems, or Johnson’s Dictionary to the
Dictionary of the Academy.
When men have been used to see a certain assemblage of objects in
connection with learning, to imagine it attainable by any other process
is more difficult perhaps than you imagine. When Doctor Bell attempted
to introduce writing upon sand into his school at Calcutta, it was
opposed by the patrons of the school as a ridiculous innovation, and not
one of the regular instructors could be found, who would even aid in
making the experiment; all stuck out for the dignity of pot-hooks and
goose-quills, and this doctor was forced to train a few of his own
pupils to these new functions; which gave him the first idea of his
monitorial system of teaching. We perceive daily the inefficiency of our
present systems and practices, but we have been set a-going in a certain
direction, and we will not depart from it.
It is known that the Athenians were the people of the world, who set the
highest value upon learning, and that they had no Universities or
Colleges; and that they obtained a literary eminence, which modern
nations do not pretend to have equalled, without the instrumentality of
such institutions. The profession of teaching amongst them was left open
to the competition of professional ability, and the teacher received no
salary from government or any corporation; except that the academy was
assigned to Plato, as the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno,
in reward of extraordinary services. But the teachers of that country
were such men as Aristotle, Plato, Isocrates, Lysias, Longinus, and
Plutarch, who, be it said with much respect for the Cousins and the
Villemains, have had no superiors since their times; and the Lyceum,
Academy, and Portico, though private schools, and sustained only by the
teachers’ merits, and the public patronage, were the noblest
institutions of any age or country, not excepting the Sorbonne, and the
College de France.
The good which these corporate institutions do, seems to me doubtful;
the evil which they do is manifest. I will notice one or two instances;
and first, the injury they inflict upon the common or private schools,
which covering a greater surface of instruction and communicating the
knowledge most useful to mankind, should not hold a second place in the
public concern. It is a rule of all countries not to supply the
professorships of colleges from the inferior orders of the profession.
In other pursuits, promotion is the reward of actual services; from
lawyers are judges, from sailors admirals, and from cardinals popes; but
in teaching, the very fact of being a teacher acts as a disqualification
for any higher distinction.
But otherwise, the evil is still flagrant; for academical honours lie in
so narrow a circle, that a small number only can have a hope of reward;
and with the most impartial choice equal merit at least must be unjustly
rejected. Such honours are taken from a general stock. It is fencing in
part of a common; employing the manure upon one spot, which should
fertilise the whole field; or it is worse; for, in the exact proportion
that the professor rises into distinction, the common teacher is
degraded. The one advances, while the other is made to retrograde by the
same impetus. Thus in all modern nations the least important individual
of a community is the schoolmaster.
Either his talents are not called out by any high motives to exertion;
or if his ambition should attempt a rivalry with the institution, having
its diplomas, titular distinctions, public honours and endowments, and
so many things independent of professional ability to sustain it, what
chance has he of success?--That only of the individual who trades
against a chartered company: he must expect to be driven from the
market. On the other hand the college professor, being without a rival,
becomes lazy and inert. Voltaire says, that not one of the French
professors, except Rollin, had ever written any thing worthy of
remembrance, whilst in Greece, by far the greatest of their
distinguished writers had been either public or private instructors.
Another signal mischief of these schools is, the multiplying
professional aspirants beyond the necessities of the state, and filling
the professions with persons not competent by nature for such pursuits.
The ascent to literary and professional honours is exceedingly rugged in
all countries, and always crowded to excess with adventurers. The
brilliant honours which have attended the fortunes of a few persons
here, continually lure others from their useful employments, to try
their luck in the great lottery. All are tempted, by a single success,
to expect the prize; and the blanks pass for nothing. As soon as any
trader or mechanic has grown comfortable by his industry, instead of
raising his sons to his own useful employment, he resolves that one, at
least, shall be a gentleman, and therefore sends, generally, the most
lazy and stupid to college.
The common event is, that the young gentleman having acquired, from his
college associations, ambitious desires, and habits altogether adverse
to ordinary industry, and finding the avenues to success shut against
his little diligence or abilities, is driven to dishonourable expedients
for a living; he turns gambler or drunkard: or, at least, if he does not
make gunpowder to kill the “King of the French,”[2] he resorts to law,
or gospel, or medicine, and gleans the stubble for a miserable
subsistence during a long life, (for poor devils won’t die,) or he turns
common hack upon the high way of letters, and peddles and hucksters all
day, for his meagre provender at night. If you think this a caricature,
come and live in the “Latin Quarter,” and you will find it is a handsome
enough likeness.
However, I do not mean by all this reasoning, that you are to burn the
University of Pennsylvania; but, that a system which cannot be changed,
may be improved. I should like to see it confined to the highest
possible range of studies, so that a smaller number of persons may be
seduced from the laborious pursuits, and those common things, the
schoolmasters, may have a wider field of duties, and, consequently, a
larger share of the public consideration, and the dignity of human
nature. It is silly to talk of the prosperity, especially of a literary
employment, where honour and profit are not given to those who
administer its duties.
I know two or three members of the Institute, who will be angry if I
should tell you not a word of that “_bel etablissement_.” I have read
somewhere, that Fulton having sued the protection of this Institute in
vain, for a whole year, was afterwards enabled, by an individual,
called William Pitt, to bring his valuable invention into the service of
mankind; which seems to import, that “forty men” may not have always
“_de l’esprit comme quatre_.” Such institutions, when established, like
the geographical and other societies, for literary intercourse and
correspondence, are of manifest utility; but when they assume judicial
powers, and accord the world
“just as much wit,
As Johnson, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;”
standing between the author and the public; or when they become a
privileged class, invested with honours, which cannot be attained by
others of equal merit, I am a hardened heretic in all my opinions
respecting them. I know, moreover, no scheme of patronage that secures
such academical honours to the most worthy.
We used to see rejected in the old Academy, such names as Helvetius,
Molière, Arnault and Pascal, and the two Rousseaus; and such as Sismondi
and Beranger, in the present. Beranger, the poet, the most original and
philosophical, one of the most richly endowed with poetic genius of the
present age, “who, under the modest title of ‘Songs,’ makes odes worthy
the lyre of Pindar, and the lute of Anacreon,” was refused the vacant
place of this year, in the _Académie des Belles Lettres_, and it was
given to Mr. Somebody, who writes vaudevilles. Broussais, who has left
an impress upon his age, by his genius, was rejected in the “_Académie
des Sciences_” for a Monsieur Double--and who knows M. Double? And
Lisfranc, to whom surgery owes more than to any living Frenchman, was
excluded for a Monsieur Breschet--and who is M. Breschet? I might as
well ask, who, in the “_Académie de Medecine_,” are Messrs. Bouriat,
Chardel, Chereau, Clarion and Cornac.[3]
The students pass their nine years here upon Latin, as in America, and
by nearly the same processes; that is, the children are drilled as with
us upon the studies of mature age, and improve their memories without
much troubling the other faculties. A boy for instance, at ten and
twelve years, is made to strain after the beauties of Cicero and Horace,
which are conceivable only by a well-cultivated manhood; and in the
elementary schools, babies are taught, exactly as in Philadelphia, all
the incomprehensible nonsense of the grammars. Any child here can tell
you why a verb is “active, passive, and neuter,” and how the action must
pass from the agent to the object, to make it “transitive;” and they
study reading and punctuation on the “Beauties of the Classics,” as we
do:--“_vital spark_,” (a comma,) “_Heavenly flame_,” (a semicolon;)--and
the little things are taught to “Hic and Hac,” at a public examination
to please Mrs. Quickly just as with us. Paris is, also, full of
instructors, calling themselves Professors, who have introduced all the
different ways of turning dunces into wits, in six lessons, which are
practised so successfully in Philadelphia; and they have tapestried
every street with their “new systems,” under the very nose of the
Minister of Public Instruction. In the chamber adjoining mine is a young
Englishman, just arrived, without a knowledge of French, to a course of
medical study; he has taken a master, a venerable and noisy old man, who
humbly conceives that the whole English nation is stupid, because this
youth cannot pronounce _vertu_. He made, this morning, fifty persevering
efforts, each louder than the last, and still it was _verthu_. The old
gentleman sat afterwards in my room awhile, quite meditative, and at
length said, in a very feeling manner:--“I believe the English nation is
fool!”--I know another teacher, an Englishman, who retaliates upon the
French the violence done his countrymen. He begins by dislocating a
Frenchman’s jaws. His “system” is to commence with the difficulties, and
all the rest, he says, is “down hill.” So he has a little book of
phrases, “made hard for beginners,” as follows:--“_I snuff Scotch snuff,
my wife snuffs Scotch snuff_.”--“_A lump of red leather, and a red
leather lump_,” &c. The scholar, having overcome these preparatory
difficulties, takes up Sterne’s sentimental journey. It is, he says, as
one who learns to run, having put on leaden shoes: when relieved from
the weight he can almost fly.--I verily believe that the greatest fools,
all over the world, are those who communicate knowledge; as the greatest
knaves are usually those who teach men to be honest.--_Je ne sais si je
m’explique._
In the Parisian schools there is at present no corporal punishment. The
student used to be flogged in these same Halls till there were no more
birches.--Solomon may say what he pleases, I will not have my children
whipped. The only natural authority for whipping, is in the parent, and
it cannot be safely delegated to another. The discipline here is every
where good.
The professors of Paris are men of the world, and mix in its pleasures.
They have nothing in their air of awkward timidity, or haughty
arrogance, or ridiculous pedantry--the faults often of those who live
apart from fashionable society. They are as well bred as if there were
no scholars at all. And they do not set them up here as examples to
other men, or make them die, as with us, martyrs to virtue, at the rate
of five hundred dollars a-year, and find themselves.--I know several of
these professors, and one intimately; he attends to both the moral and
intellectual improvement of his pupils, and is most assiduous in his
duties. Moreover, he has three rooms in different parts of this “Latin
Quarter,” in one of which he has a very pretty little mistress, highly
cultivated in music and letters; in another he resides with his books,
and has frequent conversations with venerable men about the best systems
of education; the third he keeps for occasional adventures. He is much
esteemed, and would not be less were I to publish his name.
My opinion is, that America has little to learn from Europe on the
subject of schools; she wants but a wise and diligent application of the
knowledge she already possesses, and which future experience may
suggest; she runs at least as much risk of being led astray by European
errors, as enlightened by European wisdom. The better scholarship of
Europe, is not attributable to the better organisation of her schools.
I am aware there are opinions and doctrines in this letter which are not
orthodox, but you did not ask me to write after other men’s opinions,
but my own. On education the sentiments of men are yet unfortunately
unsettled, and the field is open for speculation. With great respect, I
remain your very humble servant.
LETTER XVI.
Ladies’ Boarding Schools.--Names of Professors in the
Prospectus.--System of Education.--American Schools.--Preference
for Science.--High Intellectual Acquirements not approved.--Learned
Women.--American Girls.--Comparison of French and American
Society.--The care to preserve Female Beauty.--Expression of the
Mouth.--Dress of American Women.--Notions of the Maternal
Character.--Studies in Ladies’ Schools.--Literary
Associations.--Société Geographique.--French Lady Authors.--Living
Writers.--Chateaubriand--Beranger--Lamartine--Victor Hugo--Casimir
de la Vigne--Alfred de Vigny--Guizot--Thiers--Thièrry
Ségur--Lacretelle--Sismondi.
Paris, December 25th, 1835.
I am going in my usual way to write you what has most engaged my
attention during the last week. I have been breaking into ladies’
boarding schools, and turning and twisting about the school-mistresses,
and making them explain their plans of education; which they have done
very obligingly, leading me through their dormitories, refectories, and
school-rooms. The French women are so kind in showing you any thing. In
the street, I often chose to lose myself a mile or two rather than
impose upon their good nature. The organization of their schools has
nothing different from the French boarding schools of Philadelphia.
Their elementary branches are the same. Their foreign languages are
German, English, and Italian; and these, with drawing, dancing, and
needlework, make up the programme of studies. Most of the schools are in
airy situations, with large gardens, having baths, and gymnastic
exercises attached. Rewards and punishments are as usual; bulletins of
conduct are sent to the parents, and public examinations are made to
astonish the grandmothers and bring the schools into notoriety.
All the professors are printed up ostentatiously in the prospectus. One
is “_Danseur de l’ Académie Royal de l’Opera_;” another is “_Professeur
du chant au Conservatoire_;” a “_Chevalier de la legion d’honneur_”
teaches you your “pot-hooks;” and an “_Instituteur du duc de
Bordeaux_,”--“_de la Reine de Portugal_,” _&c._ your parts of speech. In
the best schools the annual charge for boarding and education,
including the foreign languages, is about two hundred dollars. Dancing
and drawing are each three, and the piano six dollars per month.
A French woman is emphatically a social being, and prepares herself for
this destination. A philosophical apparatus is no part of the furniture
of her school-room; nor does she rashly study Latin, nor any of the
“inflammatory branches.” But she makes herself well acquainted with all
that is of daily use; her geography, history of France, mythology and
the fashionable literature, and tries to be very expert in the “use and
administration” of this learning; she talks of books and their authors,
especially the drama, of the fine arts, of social etiquette, of dress
and fashions, and all such common topics, better than other women. She
studies the graces of language, and all the rhetoric of society, as an
orator, that of public life. She learns to speak, not with the tongue
only, but with the action, gesture, voice, and expression, which may
give life and magic to her conversation.
You will hear her talk of the “_jeu du visage_,” and she thinks a woman,
who has no variety of face, had better have no face at all. I take the
liberty of thinking so too; extending only the rule to the whole woman,
body and soul. What is she, after all, without variety? any thing is
better; a fish without seasoning is better. I had almost said that a
woman much oftener palls the appetite of her husband by uniform
goodness, than by her caprices and levities. I have found it pleasant,
after having a chill, even to have a fever by way of variety. And why
should not the eloquence of common life be quite as important as that of
the bar, or senate, or pulpit? since it is of daily use, and the other
only occasional, and since much more important interests are affected by
it.
A French woman does not limit her views of education to her maiden
years, nor to her domestic and nursery duties, not being destined to be
imprisoned by her husband, or devoured by her own children; nor to her
marriage settlement; for this is the business of her mother; her aim is
to prepare the qualifications of womanhood; and her ambition is not to
win the unbearded admiration of boys, for her intercourse is to be with
men, competent, from taste and understanding to judge of her
acquirements, as well as to add something to the polish of her mind, by
their manners and conversation. But the taste of gentlemen here, even of
the learned, seeks not so much science in a lady as a certain knack in
conversation, which may give a good grace to all that she says.
In our American schools science has taken precedence every where of
letters; it has not only the principal seats at the universities, but in
our best female academies is thought to be the most exalted and
necessary kind of knowledge. It is so interesting to see a young miss
expert at her sines and tangents; and presiding over a cabinet of
minerals.
Why, a New England lady analyzes the atmosphere and gossips hydraulics
at her tea-table. I have been puzzled there upon theories of geology, or
meteorology, at a wedding. “Sir, this is a trap formation,--the angle
seventeen minutes and three seconds.”--I do not mean to depreciate this
kind of learning, but I would not make it the principal object of a
gentleman’s, much less, a lady’s education. Calculations of science have
little to do with the affections; they exercise only the mechanism of
the understanding; and leave the imaginative power--the power which
adorns and illustrates by images--unemployed; and the mind, under a
mathematical training, becomes too systematic for the irregularity of
human affairs.
The partiality for science prevails in gentlemen’s education, also in
Europe. The chief professorships of the colleges are scientific, and in
the Institute, the Academy of Sciences, like Aaron’s rod, has swallowed
up all the rest. But in the female schools such inquiries are postponed,
at least, to the ornamental and agreeable. A French lady is of the
romantic school, and thinks the classic too severe for feminine charms.
Therefore, all studies which do not supply the materials of daily
conversation, and have no immediate connection with some purpose of her
social existence are rejected from the general plan of female
instruction.
Acquirements highly intellectual in a lady, are not much approved by the
French tutors and others with whom I have conversed. They think them
dangerous to her domestic qualities. A Parisian lady living continually
in society, having such accomplishments, would become too much the
property of the other sex. Besides, such an education, they say, made
Madame de Stael a libertine, Madame Centlivre, and two or three more,
licentious, and Madame Montague a sloven and something else, and so
they run on. One might ask them in return what it made of Mesdames
Barbauld, Hamilton, Porter, Edgeworth, Hemans, and that good old
blue-stocking saint, Hannah More. It is true that learning is more
attractive, and will always be more courted and flattered than even
beauty; and in this sense it is dangerous. The Greeks gave Minerva a
shield, and turned Venus loose without one; it was apparently for this
reason. Learning in France always studies books and the world together;
the “Blue Stocking” is not known here, nor is there any equivalent term
in the language. The “_Precieuses Ridicules_” is of a different
character. So at least the learned woman has not to dread this
opprobrious designation, which so terrifies ladies in some other
countries. I know one, not of the Tuileries, but the Collieries, who,
under the awful apprehension of Blue Stockingism, almost repents of her
learning; hides her Virgil, and disowns her Horace altogether. There are
places where ladies think proper to apologise for their virtues, and ask
pardon for being in the right.
A French lady is not afraid to show her possessions. She shows her
learning, and knows how to show it without affectation. She displays it
as she does her pretty foot and ankle; she does not pull up her clothes
expressly for the purpose. As for me, I love a learned woman, even in
her blue stockings; and without them I love her to idolatry;--I mean a
reasonable idolatry, which leads to a higher reverence for the Creator
from an admiration of his best works. One of the grand purposes of a
Frenchwoman, is to seem natural; and, indeed, if a lady is natural, even
her singularities add to her perfections, whilst affectation makes even
her sense and beauty insipid and ridiculous.
I talked with one of these mistresses about you American girls. She says
you come too soon into the world, and take too many liberties when in
it. This, she thinks, interferes with education, and awakens
inclinations and passions which had better sleep until the girls have
grown up. She says that tender plants should be kept a long while in the
nursery; that to play well in the concert, one must play well at home,
and that the whole of youth is even too little for acquirement. “These
young ladies, you see, are not unhappy from the restraints they undergo;
and they are not less accomplished I assure you. By coming sooner into
society, they would acquire a bad tone, a bad manner, a bad air, which
a mature age and judgment might be unable to correct. In a word, sir, a
young lady below eighteen sees enough of the world over her mother’s
shoulders.” So talked this impertinent little woman.
A Frenchwoman has no attentions from society while a girl, and
consequently, no wit till she is married; exactly the period at which
American ladies generally lose theirs. A smile and a few timid glances
under the wing of her beautiful mamma, is all the little thing dares
venture. But the American girl has the reins of her conduct a good deal
in her own hands, and therefore grows prudent; she has her reason and
judgment sooner developed. She has all the serpentine wisdom and
columbine innocence so recommended in the Scriptures in her looks and
actions. I feel, my dear sisters, all the admiration and respect which
is due to you, but with my utmost efforts I cannot help falling a little
in love with this innocent indiscretion of the French.
It would have puzzled the evil spirit more to tempt Eve after the fall
than before it; yet I like her in the first state better. Their not
coming into the world before the full time, I like also well enough. My
tastes are not girlish. The eye indeed reposes with delight upon the
green corn, but the ripened ear is better. I know, indeed, all the
sweetness which a fine day pours out upon Chesnut-street; but ---- I like
better your mothers. They who give tone to society should have maturity
of mind; they should have refinement of taste, which is a quality of
experience and age. As long as college beaux and boarding school misses
take the lead, it must be an insipid society in whatever community it
may exist.
Middle age in this country never loses its sovereignty, nor does old age
lose its respect; and this respect, with the enjoyments which accompany
it, keeps the world young. It turns the clouds into drapery, and gilds
them with its sunshine; which presents as fine a prospect as the clear
and starry heavens. Even time seems to fall in with the general
observance. I know French women who retain to forty-five and often
beyond that age the most agreeable attractions of their sex.--Is it not
villanous in your Quakerships of Philadelphia to lay us, before we have
lived half our time out, upon the shelf? Some of our native tribes, more
merciful, eat the old folks out of the way.--Don’t be mad; you will one
day be as old as your mothers.
An important item here in a lady’s studies (and it should be a leading
branch of education every where) is her beauty. Sentiment and health
being the two chief ingredients and efficient causes of this quality,
have each its proper degree of cultivation. Every body knows that the
expression of the eye, the voice, and the whole physiognomy, is modified
by the thoughts or passions habitually entertained in the mind. Every
one sees their effects upon the face of the philosopher and the idiot;
upon that of the generous man and the niggard; but how few have
considered that not only is this outward and visible expression nothing
but the reflection of the mind; but that the very features are in a
material degree modelled by its sensations.
Give, for example, any woman a habit of self-complacency, and she will
have a little pursed up mouth; or give her a prying and busy
disposition, and you will give her a straight onward nose. What gives
the miser a mouth mean and contracted, or the open-hearted man his large
mouth, but the habitual series of thoughts with which we are
conversant? Determination stiffens the upper lip, and this is the lip
of a resolute man. Peevish women and churls have thin lips; and good
humour, or a generous feeling, or a habit of persuasion, rounds them
into beauty. I have read that it was common amongst the rakes about
Charles the Second to have “sleepy, half-shut, sly and meretricious
eyes,” and that this kind of eye became fashionable at court. So every
feature has its class of sensations by which it is modified; and this is
not forgotten in the education of the Parisian young ladies. They take
care that, while young and tender, they may cherish honest and amiable
feelings, if for no other reason than that they may have an amiable
expression of countenance--that they may have Greek noses, pouting lips,
and the other constituents of beauty.
Our climate is noted for three eminent qualities, extreme heat and cold,
and extreme suddenness of change. If a lady has bad teeth, or a bad
complexion, she blames it conveniently upon the climate; if her beauty,
like a tender flower, fades before noon, it is the climate; if she has a
bad temper or even a snub nose, still it is the climate. But our climate
is active and intellectual, especially in winter, and in all seasons
more pure and transparent than these inky skies of Europe. It sustains
the infancy of beauty, and why not its maturity? it spares the bud, and
why not the opened blossom or the ripened fruit? Our negroes are perfect
in teeth, and why not the whites?--The chief preservative of beauty in
any country is health, and there is no place in which this great
interest is so little attended to as in America.
To be sensible of this, you must visit Europe. You must see the
deep-bosomed maids of England upon the _Place Vendôme_, and the _Rue
Castiglione_. There you will see no pinched and mean-looking shoulders
overlooking the plumpness and round sufficiency of a luxuriant tournure.
As for the French women, a constant attention to the quantity and
quality of their food is an article of their faith; and bathing and
exercise are as regular as their meals. When children, they play abroad
in their gardens; they have their gymnastic exercises in their schools,
and their dancing and other social amusements keep up a healthful
temperament throughout life. Besides, a young lady here does not put her
waist in the inquisition. Fashion, usually insane, and an enemy to
health, has grown sensible in this; she regards a very small waist as a
defect, and points to the _Venus de Medicis_, who stands out boldly in
the Tuileries, in vindication and testimony of the human shapes; and now
among ladies of good breeding a waist which cannot dispense with tight
lacing is thought not worth the mantua-maker’s bill--not worth the
squeezing.
When I left America, the more a woman looked like an hour-glass, like
two funnels or two extinguishers converging, the more pretty she was
considered; and the waist in esteem by the cockney curiosity of the
town, was one you would pinch between thumb and finger; giving her a
withered complexion, bloated legs, consumptive lungs and ricketty
children.--If this is not reformed, alas the republic!--A Frenchwoman’s
beauty, such as it is, lasts her her lifetime, by the care she takes of
it. Her limbs are vigorous, her bosom well developed, her colour
healthy, and she has a greater moral courage, and is a hundred times
better fitted to dashing enterprises, than the women of our cities.
The motherly virtues of our women, so eulogised by foreigners, are not
entitled to unqualified praise. There is indeed no country in which
maternal care is so assiduous; but also there is none in which examples
of injudicious tenderness are so frequent. If a mother has eight or
nine children (the American number) and wears out her life with the
cares of nursing them, dies, and leaves them to a step-mother, she is
not entitled to any praise but at the expense of her judgment and common
sense; and this is one of our daily occurrences in America.--If a mother
should squander away upon the infancy of her child, all that health and
care which are so necessary to its youth and adolescence, or if by
anticipating its wants she destroys its sense of gratitude, and her own
authority, and impairs its constitution and temper by indiscreet
indulgences--instead of being the most tender, she is the most cruel of
all mothers--this happens commonly in all countries, and in none so much
as in America.--If a mother should toil thirty years, and kill herself
with cares, to procure for her son the glorious privilege of doing
nothing, perhaps the means of being a rake and prodigal; she is a stupid
mother, and such mothers----
But ---- I forget I have a reputation all the way from Mohontongo-street
to Adam-street, and I must take care how I lose it. Do you be a good
little mother, and economise your health and good looks; and remember
that a little judicious hard fare and exposure will not injure your
children’s happiness, and that not the quantity, so much as the quality
of your maternal cares is useful and commendable. I do not preach
rebellion, but if I were any body’s wife, and he should insist on
killing me off for the benefit of his children, or to get a new wife--I
should insist particularly on not being killed.
The system of ladies’ schools here, is more reasonable than that of
their worse halves. There is a better adaptation of studies to the
capacity and future destination of the scholars, and to the uses of
society; and being open to a fair competition, and to public patronage
only, there is a better management of the details.
The gentlemen’s colleges engross all the higher branches, and give them
a specific direction, embracing only three or four of the employments of
society, and these are, consequently, so overstocked, as to make success
in them no better than a lottery. The community is, therefore, filled
with a multitude of idlers, who falling often into desperate
circumstances, either plot some treason against the state, or prowl, for
a thievish subsistence about the gambling houses.--His Most Christian
Majesty must have as many lives as a cat to escape them.
There are also in Paris, a great many literary associations, to which
ladies have access; and this gives the opportunity of a decorous
intercourse of the sexes, which serves to elevate both in the eyes of
each other. Woman, associated with man in his intellectual, as in his
domestic pursuits, assumes the station, which, by nature, as by the
rules of every polished and literary society, she is entitled to. These
societies furnish agreeable entertainments for Sundays, or holidays; and
they have the good effect of introducing the Muses, naturally awkward,
into company, and making them acquainted a little with the Graces.
I attended, a Sunday ago, a meeting of one of these, the--“_Société
Polytechnique_,” in the great saloon of the _Hôtel de Ville_. At the one
end was an elevated platform, and mounted upon it a President and the
usual apparatus of a meeting. Along each side were arranged the readers
and orators, and distinguished guests. After a “_Rapport_,” read by the
secretary, of the doings of the society, the speakers recited pieces of
their own composition--some in rhyme, and many without rhyme or reason.
Some were designed to make us laugh, and others to cry, and we did both
with great acclamation.--Music closed the scene; a duo by “Italian
Artists,” and some one screamed a song on the piano. It is one of the
advantages of a large city, that its meetings never want the dignity of
a crowd, whatever be the occasion.--The bishop has his at Notre Dame,
and punch his at the Champs Elysées.
I have been, also, to the “_Société Geographique_.” There were Captain
Ross, from the North Pole, and--what remains of him from American bugs
and musquitoes--Captain Hall, and Baron Humboldt, and other Barons. An
honorary badge of the society was presented to Captain Ross, with warm
acclamation. I waited to the very end, for a lecture announced in the
bill about--what do you think?--the “_Beaux Arts en Amerique_.”--But it
was all about negroes and squaws, and such “copper fronts as
Pocahontas.” It gave a history, circumstantially, of a great crusade of
catguts, got up in Paris, a dozen of years ago, for Brazil, which
scraped an acquaintance with Don Pedro, and spread the gamut all over
Patagonia. Polyphemus threw away his pipe, and sang nothing but, “_Tanti
Palpiti_” to his sheep, and the sheep bleated nothing but _mamma mia_,
in reply.--“_Ainsi, Messieurs_, (this is the ending,) _cet immense
progrés est dù à la Grande Nation, dont nous nous honorons d’etre une
humble partie_.” From the “_rapport_” of this “société,” it seems to be
a most valuable institution. The topics are various and useful, and its
researches are carried by correspondence into every corner of the earth.
I must say a word of a school I visited this morning called the “_Ecole
Orthopedique_,” to correct physical deformities, and slovenly habits.
Here all that is gross in human nature is refined, all that is crooked
reformed. There are as many branches as at the university. One professor
ties strings a foot long about your ankles, to prevent too much stride,
and another “straightens legs for both sexes.” Angular knees, and stoop
shoulders, and such little freaks, are affairs of a fortnight. I have
seen, with my own eyes, a girl whose face, they say, was running one way
and her feet the other; people walking after her were continually
treading on her toes, and in less than six months she has been turned
round. The highest chair in this school is for teaching “sitting”--it is
occupied by the President. There is also a chair for “walking,” and one
for “standing still.” In some countries these are thought mere simple
operations to be performed by any one who has wherewith to stand or sit
upon.
Let me now introduce you to the French Lady Authors. The family is so
small I shall happily have room for them on the rest of this page. The
Dowager on the list is the _Duchesse d’ Abrantes_, with her Memoirs; and
next her the _Princesse de Salm_, who wrote an “Opera of Sappho” and
“Poetical Epistles,” very good for a Princess; also a work called
_Vingt-quatre heures d’une femme sensible_, in which there is a display
of rich and brilliant fancy. I never read it.
_Madame Tastu_ wrote a volume of little poetry very much loved for its
tenderness, and _Mademoiselle Delphine Gay_ (now Madame Girardin) also a
volume of miscellaneous poetry, very pretty and delicate, and she is
almost a Corinne for extemporising; last of all, the exquisite Baroness
_Du Devant_ (George Sand), the gayest little woman in all Paris, who has
written novels full of genius, and fit almost to stand along side of
Aphra Behn’s and Lady Mary Montague’s verses. When they publish an
edition, with little stars * * _in usum Delphini_, I will send you a
copy.--I shall perhaps have room also for the gentlemen.
The patriarch is _Chateaubriand_. It is idle to talk about him. He sold
the copyright of his works for twenty years only at five hundred and
fifty thousand francs. Who has not read his Génie du Christianisme,
Martyrs, Journey to Jerusalem, Amerique Sauvage, Atala, &c. He has
written also “Memoirs of his own Times,” not to be published till his
death. Every one is anxious to read them. The oldest of the poets is
_Beranger_. His songs are worthy of Pindar in boldness and sublimity,
and not unworthy of Anacreon in liveliness and grace. I have only room
for four lines:--Napoleon in his glory.
---- dans sa fortune altière,
Se fit un jeu des sceptres, et des lois;
Et de ses pieds on peut voir la poussière,
Empreinte encore sur le bandeau des rois.
At his death;
Il dort enfin, ce boulet invincible
Qui fracassa vingt trones â la fois!
Another special favourite, the poet of romance and melancholy, is
_Lamartine_. He has written “_Meditations_;” also _La Mort de Socrate_,
and the last canto of “Childe Harold.” Here are eight of his
lines.--The “Golfe de Baia.”
O, de la Liberté vieille et sainte patrie!
Terre autrefois féconde en sublime vertus!
Sous d’indignes Cæsars, maintenant asservie,
Ton empire est tombé! tes heroes ne sont plus!
Mais dans ton sein l’ame aggrandie,
Croit sur leurs monumens respirer leur génie,
Comme on respire, encore dans un temple aboli,
La majesté du Dieu dont il etait rempli.
He now makes eloquent speeches in the Chamber of Deputies.--Politics run
away with all the genius, and rob even the schools of their professors.
Only think of such a man as Arago prating radicalism in the Chamber of
Deputies. The Muses weep over his and Lamartine’s infidelity.
I have read _Victor Hugo_ lately, and love him and hate him. Like our
mocking-bird, he mingles the notes of the nightingale with the cacklings
of the hen. But I must not abuse him, the ladies all love him so. Only
think of “_Bug Jargal_,” the “_Dernier jour d’un Condamné_;” and above
all, “_Notre Dame de Paris_;” and think only of poor little Esmeralda,
put so tragically to death on the Place de Grêve in spite of her little
goat Djali, and her little shoe.--I have read his tragedies, _Hernan_,
_Le Roi s’amuse_, and _Marie Tudor_; parbleu! and “_Lucrece Borgia_.”
His poetic works are _Les Orientales_; a collection of odes; _Les
Feuilles d’Automne_, &c.
Victor Hugo is yet in the full tide of youth, and so is _Casimir de la
Vigne_. The latter represents to-night, at the Theatre Français, his
_Don Carlos_; he has already reaped much glory from his _Vêpres
Siciliennes_, _Paria_, _Comedienne_, and _Ecole des Vieillards_, and
still greater from his Poetic Lamentations, the Messeniennes, which are
full of patriotic sentiment, expressed in the richest graces of poetry.
_Alfred de Vigny_ has written a pretty poem, the _Frégate_, and two
biblical pieces, _Moïse_, and the _Femme Adultère_; but his great praise
is _Cinq Mars_, one of the best compositions of the French historical
romance.--Scribe, Picard, and Duval have written so many vaudevilles,
that one has a surfeit of their names. _Dumas_ is a dramatic writer of
first-rate merit for these days. His Antony, Therèse, Henry V., and
Catharine Howard, are all played with success. _Jules Janin_ has a great
fund of wit; his _Ane Mort_, _Femme Guillotinée_, _Chemin de Travers_,
you can read with the certainty of being pleased.
I have said nothing of Leclercq, Langon, Balsac, Meremy, and Lacroix,
who have all their share of admiration, especially from the fair sex.
When the vapours have smothered the sun, and when it rains, as it does
always, instead of inhaling charcoal, or leaping from the Pont Neuf, I
go into a “cabinet de lecture,” and read _Paul de Kock_. No author
living can carry one so laughingly through a wet day. If you are fond of
the genuine wit of low life, neither Fielding, nor Smollett, nor Pigault
Lebrun, will disgust you with Paul de Kock. But here comes the end of my
paper, what shall I do with the rest? I will just string them together
by the gills.--Give _Guizot_ credit for a History _de la Civilisation_,
a translation of Gibbon, and a score or two of volumes on the English
Revolution; _Mignet_ and _Thiers_ for a History of the French
Revolution, and _Barante_ for his Dukes of Burgundy; _Sismondi_ for a
History of the Italian Republics, of The French, and the Literature of
the South; and _Daru_, of Venice; _Thierry_, of the Conquest of England;
_Capefigue_, the Reform; _Lacretelle_, The 18th Century; _Ségur_, a
Universal History; _Michaud_, of the Crusades; _Delaure_, of Paris;
_Michelet_, of Rome; and _Précis de l’Histoire de France_. _Cousin_ has
written the “Philosophy of History;” _Keratry_, Metaphysics, and Novels;
and _Villemain_, _Melanges de Litterature_, and _M. de la Mennais_ is
praised for his “Indifference in matters of Religion.”--The French were
strangely deficient in history before the present century, not even
having furnished a good history of their own country; they have now
supplied their deficiency in this department of letters.--Now with all
due respect, and a full sense of the distinction, I place myself at the
bottom of this illustrious group. Your obedient, humble servant.
LETTER XVII.
The Theatres.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Théatre
Royal.--Italien.--Grisi.--Académie Royal de
Musique.--Taglioni.--Miss Fanny Elsler.--The Variètés.--The
Odéon.--Mademoiselle George.--Hamlet.--Republican Spirit of the
Age.--Character of the French Stage.--Machinery of the Drama.--The
Claqueurs.--Supply of New Pieces.--The Vaudevillists.--M.
Scribe.--The Diorama.--Concerts.--Music
Paris, December, 1835.
I will treat you this evening to the play. The bill of fare is the
_Théâtre Français_, _Opera Français_, _Italien_, _Opera Comique_,
_Gymnase_, _Vaudeville_, _Variètés_, _Gaité_, _Ambigù_ and _Palais
Royal_, with twice as many more which we will reserve for the side
dishes and the dessert.
The Post has brought me a letter from your mother, of November, which I
have just read, and could not help laughing at the vanity of her fears.
My morals indeed! fortified as they are by the good breeding I had from
my Scotch grandmother and Presbyterian catechism.--I went last night to
the play, and saw there a great many Sins, which came in their usual
shape of pretty women to tempt Saint Anthony. They danced about him, and
enticed him with voluptuous smiles and looks, and even set themselves at
last to turn somersets to overcome his virtue, but he stuck fast to the
faith.
So do I.--I should like to see all the pretty women of Paris come to
tempt me. If it had not been for your mother’s letter and St. Anthony, I
should not have thought of the theatre this evening.
What say you to the “Français” and Mademoiselle Mars?--Mademoiselle
Mars! why she was an old thing twenty years ago; and acts yet all the
charms and graces of the most amiable youth. Time flutters by and scarce
breathes upon her with his wings; he is loth to set his mark upon a face
which every one loves so. Why, what is younger than her voice? It is
clear as the whistlings of the nightingale, or it is soft and mellow as
the notes of the wood thrush; or if she pleases, it is wild as the song
of the whip-poor-will, and savage as the scream of the bald-eagle.
In gesture and the dramatic graces she is no longer subject to rules,
but, like Homer, gives rules to all others of her art. When you have
looked upon her divine countenance, so expressive of the seriousness of
age, or the vivacity of youth; when you have listened to her sweet and
honied sentences, you will say, what praise can be exaggerated of such
an actress? Molière could not have had a proper conception of his own
genius, not having seen Mademoiselle Mars. What a crowding and squeezing
we shall have for a place! I have bought this privilege often by more
than two hours attendance. Lady Mars is more chary of her favours now
than in her greenest age. Like the old Sibyl, she sets a higher value
upon her remnants than upon the whole piece.
This theatre, with its three tiers of boxes and two of galleries,
contains 1,500 persons. It is called the “_Theatre Royal_,” and is very
disposed to exercise its royalty despotically. It forbids the
representation of tragedy at the other theatres, and has a claim upon
every _élève_ of the Conservatory; which claim it does not fail to
assert as often as any one is likely to attain celebrity elsewhere; and
its old actors having a monopoly of the choice parts, it prevents easily
the advancement of the new aspirants, and weakens the rivalship of the
other houses. Its distinguished actors, besides Mars, are Plessy,
Chambaud, Dupont and Madame Volnys; its favourite writers Delavigne and
Hugo.--Scribe too being now a member of the Institute and assuming a
spirit equal to his new dignity, has abjured the ignoble vaudeville, and
writes only five acts. In the vestibule you will see an admirable statue
of Voltaire with the “sneering devil” in its marble features.
You must go two evenings of the week to the “Italien;” it commences in
October. In October, Paris is repeopled with its fashionables, and the
weeping country is forsaken. This Opera is crowded for the season with
the choicest of Parisian beauty, with all the upper sort of folks, as
high as the two Miss Princesses and their mamma the queen. A few
evenings ago I saw an English woman here, prettier than them all; she,
who with so much genius writes tales for the New Monthly, and poetry for
the annuals--Mrs. Norton. I analysed her elegant features from the pit,
and wondered how so pretty a woman could write verses. Of all the
gratifications of Paris this theatre is surely the most delectable.
I went, on her first night, to see Signora Grisi, and since this first
night, she is Grisi to me. Her melting voice and love-making features
live in the memory always. Whilst she sings, one is all ear, all sense,
and intellect is hushed; never did the quiet midnight listen to its
nightingale so attentively; and as the last note expires, _brava!
brava!_ exclaims the incontinent Frenchman, and a thousand _bravas_ and
_bravissimas_ are repeated through the house; _O beneditto!_ just
breathes the Italian expiring; _che gusto! piacer de morire!_ and the
unbreathing German goes silently home and lives upon her for a week.
At the close of the last song, and as the curtain threatens to descend,
the acclamation bursts into its loudest explosion, and seems for a while
inextinguishable; now every one who has a white handkerchief waves it,
and every one who can buy a wreath or a bouquet strews it upon the
stage. On Saturdays I steal into the third tier towards heaven, and
there drink the divine harmony, as one thirsty drinks the healthful
stream; or sit under a shower of bright eyes in the pit. The present
Italian company forms a union of talent (so say the best critics of the
world) such as the world has never seen excelled. Lablache explodes as
the thunder, when it mutters along the flinty ribs of the Tuscarora;
Rubini out-sings the spheres, so almost Tamburini, and almost Ivanoff.
But to thee, black-eyed and languishing Grisi--what are they to thee!
“Ye common people of the skies,
What are ye when the sun doth rise?”
At the risk of surfeiting you with sweetmeats, I will take you next to
the grand opera--the _Académie Royale de Musique_, where the best music
is Taglioni. If you have read in your Virgil of that namesake of yours,
who made no impression on the dust, nor bent the light corn or blade of
grass as she walked upon it; if you have seen a ghost curtseying along
the flank of the Sharp Mountain, and leaving no trace of its airy feet
upon the winnowed snows, then you can imagine Taglioni upon the scene of
the grand opera, as she flits along the boards, with just gravitation
enough to detain her upon the earth. But why absent in the very season
of her triumphs?--You must content yourself with her nearest
representative, Miss Fanny Elsler--second only in grace, but second to
none in any thing else.
I will describe you her performance. She will curtsey to her middle, and
then rise in a _pirouette_ two yards high. This is her preliminary step.
She will then set off, and skip over the whole area of the stage,
lighting on it only occasionally, trying her limbs, and, as it were,
provoking the dance from afar, and will present herself to the
spectators in all the variety of human shapes and appearances. One while
you will see her, “many twinkling feet” suspended in the air, then
twirling herself around till her face and hips will seem on the same
side of her: at last, (and this is the epic strain of the performance,
and, therefore, the last), she will poise herself upon the extremity of
the left toe, and bring the right gradually up to the level of the eye
(the house will hold its breath!) and then she will give herself a
rotary movement, continuing it _in crescendo_ till she becomes
invisible. You can no more count her legs, than the spokes of a rail
waggon carrying the President’s Message.--This is Fanny Elsler. The
description will seem bombast only to those who have not seen her, and
to those who have, it will seem tame and inadequate. This letter has a
great struggle between prose and poetry; it is like one who is set upon
a gallop against his will, gets out of breath, and comes panting in at
the end of the course. I should have kept Mars, Grisi, and Taglioni to
make an impression in the end--but you can begin with the last page, as
girls do the new novel. I was last week induced by an acquaintance to go
to the Variètés. It is a merry theatre, said he--“_il provoque le
rire_.” This is a kind of provocation I have had frequent need of since
I came to Paris. If you think there is no place for melancholy amongst
these unsighing French people, you are mistaken. I have sat in this
Bastille of a hotel, grave as a bust of Seneca, for a whole week, till
all the Paris blue devils ---- and so I went to the Variètés, and saw
_Frederic Lemaitre_ in his own “Robert Macaire,” and, above all, the
delightful _Jenny Vertprès_, and was not disappointed.
The French have a quick and lively observation, and can dress up a
simple anecdote, or vaudeville, or a fancy-shop at the Palais Royal,
with a prettiness no other nation need attempt to rival. There is a
general good humour, too, about a French audience, which exhibits as
much as the play.--There were several notable scenes in some of the
pieces, which would be worth telling you, if I had time. If you are not
frightened at little licenses, this is a delightful theatre. You will
see here _Achard_, who both sings and acts true comedy; and _Tansez_,
who “looks broad nonsense with a stare.” Brutus would have liked to have
such a face when he played the fool at Rome; and, above all, you will
see that exquisite rogue, _Madame Dejaret_.
I went to my next neighbour, the _Odéon_, not long ago, where I saw
_Néron, l’Empereur, et Madame sa mère_, and Monsieur Britannicus.
Mademoiselle George, once the delight of the capital and its emperor, is
yet a well-timbered and hale old woman. She has, in her favour, the
dignity of fat, and looks devil enough for Agrippina.--But the French
wear the sock more gracefully than the buskin. Their tragic Muse is
sublime always, and therefore always ridiculous. She puts on a _qu’il
mourut_ kind of face, and carries it about through the whole five acts.
She calls the dogs always with the same voice, as when she sees the
game. But tragedy, it seems, is in her decrepitude all over the world;
the sublime is worn out of our nature; all we can do, now-a-days, is to
be beautiful. Miss George, with a little help from _Anais_ and _Dorval_,
has been lugging the old cripple about Paris, for several years, on her
own back. Decent comedy has nearly the same service, but with more
vigour, from Mademoiselle Mars. I have got over just in time to see the
fag end of the two Goddesses.
The sterling old plays of Corneille and Crebillon, which recommended
dignity and energy of character, are played no more--even upon their
native scene, the Théâtre Français. It is not even _bon ton_ to speak
much of them, it is provincial and almost vulgar; if played at all, it
is only to revive, a little, the dying embers of Miss George.--I have
seen played other tragedies, and one notably called “Hamlet.” I was
lured by the name. It is so pleasant to meet an old friend in a foreign
country! But, alas! it was not “Hamlet the Dane,” but Monsieur Hamlet,
of the Théâtre Français---- When the French get hold of a foreign
author, as Shakspeare or Göethe, they civilise him a little--frenchify
him. It is not to be expected that he should have all the polish and all
the graces, as if he was brought up in Paris. They chasten the music,
too, in the same manner; and M. Hertz, Musard, and Co. spend whole lives
in adapting (as they call it) Rossini, Mozart, and other foreigners, to
French ears.
But in these light productions, the vaudevilles which are played at the
“Gaieté” and “Variètés,” and such theatres, and which are the fashion of
the day, the acting and composition are both perfect. Ligier, Bouffé,
Armand, and Pontier, and the ladies Anais, Vertprès, and Fay, are no
common-rate mimics. And there are many others of nearly the same merit,
seemingly all made expressly for their several parts, in this great
farce of human littleness. Who was that new comer (a Yankee) who said,
“They wanted to make me believe the actors on the stage were living
people, but I wasn’t such a novice as they took me for?” It has not been
a Parisian theatre that this incredulous man visited.
I ought to conduct you, but have not time, to some of the other
theatres--to the Porte St. Martin, where Mademoiselle George looks
“_Lucrece Borgia_;” to the “Gymnase,” which smells of the
counting-house, and Scribe’s plays, and where Bouffé plays, as no one
else can play, his “_Gamin de Paris_;” and especially to the
“Vaudeville,” to see the elegant _Brohan_, the lovely _Targueil_, the
sprightly _Mayer_, and tender _Thenard_, the scape-grace _Madame
Taigny_, and the inimitable old woman _Guillemin_, and _Lafont_ and
_Arnal_--or to the “Opera Comique,” where you would hear those two
mocking-birds Mesdame _Damoreau_ and _Lavasseur_; and finally to
Franconi’s, where you would see Madame Something else, on her head on
horseback, and _Auriol_ on his slack rope--the rest is stupid. I have
seen them all; even the Funambules and the Marionettes; I have seen
Madame Saqui’s little show, for six pence; and I have cried over a
melo-drama, at the “Petit Lazari,” for four sous.
If one comes to Paris, one ought to see Paris. This you cannot do in the
domestic circle--the stranger is not admitted there. And certainly not
in public places, for the world no more goes thither, in its natural
expression and opinions, than the fashionable lady in her natural
shapes. You must look at it in its looking glass. A stage, patronised by
twenty-five thousand spectators, every night, cannot be a very
unfaithful representation.
The dignity of human greatness; the highborn, hereditary authority, and
lowly reverence, which produced strong contrasts of passion with refined
and elegant manners, have withered away under the Republican spirit of
the age. Kings and lords, and heroes are no more held in veneration
than Pagan Gods; not so much; for these at least are poetical. And from
our universal reading and the easy intercourse which follows, a great
man can scarce be got up any more in the world; we are all as intimate,
with the imperfections of a hero as his valet de chambre. And the mock
majesty of the stage has lost its respect at the same time. _Dufresne_
used to say, “Sirrah, the hour”--to his hair dresser; who replied, “My
lord, I know not.” Mademoiselle Clairon kept her train, and equipage,
and her _femme de chambre_ addressed her as a queen. The patronage of a
splendid court then excited a spirit of emulation among the actors, and
gave them a sense of their dignity, which was sustained by the public
feeling.
To-day the tragic hero lives with the common herd undistinguished; he is
not even refused Christian burial when he dies. The world has been used,
too, these fifty years to gross sensuality and crime beyond the example
of all former times, and human sympathy has been staled by custom;
matrimonial jealousy, which held the wolf’s bane and dagger, is now
either comic or insipid; a Phædra excites no disgust, an Œdipus inspires
no horror. The passions, which sustained the deep tragic interest, are
quenched; or they have become prurient and emasculate, and require to be
tickled by a vaudeville. Farce has usurped the stage, and the dwarfish
imp limps, where tragedy dragged her flowing robes upon the scene.
The French, who, before their Revolution, declaimed against the murders
of the English drama, now out-kill all ages and countries. Rapes and
massacres have been the staple of their lower plays for many years, and
are not uncommon in the best. This taste is on the decline.--The
intrigues and amours of young girls in Parisian society--are almost
impossible. Danaë was not so guarded in her tower, as the unwedded
females in Paris. The loves of married women are therefore the common
plots of the French plays, as well as of French novels, and they are
publicly applauded, as in the ordinary and natural course of
society.--In our cities, the stage, ill attended, and not sustained by
original compositions, must be a faithless mirror; but I have no doubt
that in Paris it represents the general features correctly.
Each of the French theatres has its range of pieces assigned, and cannot
compete with, or injure another. Four of the principal ones, the
Italian and French Opera, Théâtre Français, and Opera Comique, pay
neither rent nor license, but have two hundred and sixty thousand
dollars annually from government. This sum is contributed from the five
and a half millions derived from the gambling houses.
They make the devil pay his own debts. The Opera alone has two hundred
thousand francs. And we expect in America to support two or three, and
bring all our performers and fiddlers from Europe, on the taste of the
community! A single singer may make her fortune in our cities, but a
company must perish. The annual receipts from all the Parisian Theatres
are about one and a half million of dollars. The author retains the
control of his pieces, and receives from the theatres of the capital and
provinces, a share of every night’s performance during life, with a
_post obit_ of ten years. Scribe’s revenue from this source is above
twenty-five thousand dollars. A five-act piece pays the author at the
“Théâtre Français” one twelfth.
There is a great deal of machinery about the French drama, which is but
little known in countries less advanced in the art. For example, each
theatre has attached to it a regular _troupe_ of applauders. These were
originally got up for occasions, but in course of time they have become
as an integral part of the corps dramatique;--they are called
_Clacqueurs_, (Anglice _Clappers_.) Their art requires a regular
apprenticeship, as the other branches of a histrionic education, though
not a branch at the “Repertoire.” A person of good capacity may make
himself master of it in two or three months.
They who have taken lessons in _Clacking_ under the professors, can clap
louder than ordinary people, and they know where to clap, which is
something. They can shew also a great deal more enthusiasm than if they
were really delighted;--as they who cry at funerals can cry better than
persons who are really grieved. On my first visits here, I could not
help remarking how much more feeling was a French than an American
audience. The Théâtre Français went off in a crash every now and then,
which one could hear to the Boulevards; and I could see no great reason
for the explosion. On nights of deep tragedy they bring out also the
female _Clacqueurs_. These are taught, one to sob, another to feign to
wipe away a tear, and another to scream when a pistol goes off, and they
are distributed in different parts of the house. If you see any lady
fainting on these occasions, don’t pick her up, she is getting her
living by it.
No piece succeeds, or actor either, unless these salaried critics are
employed. If neglected, they turn out among the hisses. Even Talma had
to pay to this High Chancery his regular tribute. In some of the houses
there are two rival companies, and the player is obliged to bribe both,
or the rival pack will rise up and bark against him. The actor has his
regular interviews with the chief officer, and they agree beforehand
upon what parts are to be applauded, with the quality and quantity of
the applause. “At this passage,” says Mars, “you must applaud gently, at
this a little louder, and at this moderately”--_Cependant Madame_, a
_beau sentiment_ like this----“_Quoi! Cependent Monsieur._--It is forty
years, sir, since I have been playing in this house, and no one has
dared to say to me, ‘_Cependant!_’ I tell you, you are to keep your
ardour to the end of the scene. I have no notion of being blown up to
heaven in the middle of a passion, and left dangling two feet in the air
at the end of it. Here is the place you are to applaud; here you may
give a clap and a _brava_; and here, (mark well this point,) at this
finale I must have the whole strength of your company.”
“Give me your hand, M. Gigolard; here are fifty francs, and a little
present for your wife. And, recollect, I must have this evening my
_Grand Entrée_; I have been absent these three months, and my return
requires that attention.” A _Grand Entrée_ is where the actress has a
burst of acclamation just at her entrance, which is kept up afterwards
louder and louder; she bows, and they applaud, and there must be a great
conflict between joy and gratitude until she has exhausted a clap worth
about ten francs.--These _Clacqueurs_ are, on all ordinary occasions,
arbiters of the fate of a play or the actor; it is only at a new piece,
and a very full house, that they are obliged to consult a little the
impressions of the audience.
The Parisians require to be fed continually upon new pieces, and are
seldom contented with less than three of an evening, as the epicure
prefers several courses, and does not throw away a good appetite upon a
single dish. This has given vogue to their short and piquante pieces,
the vaudevilles, and produces them several hundred new ones each season,
and the manufacture of these pieces has become a regular business on a
large scale. A prime vaudevillist does not pretend to furnish his pieces
single handed; he has his partners, his clerks, and his understrappers.
These last are a kind of circumforaneous wits, who frequent public
places, and run all over town in search of plots and ideas, or some
domestic scandal of dramatic interest, and they have their regular cafés
or places of rendezvous, where they work to each other’s hands. If you
have come just green from the country, and entering a café, see a number
of grave and lean persons seated about at tables, seeming entire
strangers to one another, and saying not a word about Louis Philipe, or
the “Procès Monstre,” this is a café of the vaudevillists. They hunt
particularly after persons who arrive with some originality from the
Provinces. In cities men are nearly all cast in the same mould; mixing
continually together, there is little departure from the fashionable
opinions and expressions.--You will see each one with a newspaper, a
pencil, and a bit of paper, reading and commenting.
You will see a smile sometimes crossing the serious features of the
divine man, and now and then he will start--he has harpooned an idea.
Soon after you enter, one will make your acquaintance, especially if you
have a comic face. He will treat you to rum and coffee, he will offer
you the journal, point out to you the amusing subjects, and set you
talking. And you will be delighted, and you will say, not without
reason, the Parisians are called the politest people upon the earth.
They will not let you go until they have sucked the last drop of your
blood, noted down your clownish looks, and airs, copied your features,
and robbed you of your very name. At last they will make you mad; for
they must see you under the influence of different passions; and if you
are impudent they will kick you out of doors.
When you are gone, they will very likely quarrel over your spoils--about
the right of ownership; and when the dispute is compromised, the most
needy will traffic you away for a consideration. One will sell one of
your _bon mots_ for a lemonade; and another one of your sheepish looks
for a _riz-au-lait_ or some more expensive dish according to its
dramatic interest and novelty. Some of these men keep regular offices,
and sell out plots and counter-plots and _bon-mots_, as brokers do
mortgages and bills of exchange. Others bring their rough materials to
the great manufactory under which they are employed, and receive from
Monsieur Scribe or some other master workman, their pay or an interest
in the piece proportionate to the value of the contribution. I know of
one who has been living upon the eighth of a vaudeville for several
years; and another, who is getting along tolerably on a piece of a joke;
being a partner with three or four others.
But you must not be running always to the theatre, there are other
amusements which claim a share of your attention. At the _Tivoli_ you
will find concerts, balls, and fire-works; and you may take an airing
every fine evening in a balloon. You have only to ride up to the
_Barrière de Clichy_, or it will stop for you at your garret-window.
Besides, you have to see the Panoramas, Cosmoramas, Neoramas, Georamas,
and the Dioramas.
The Diorama is amongst the prettiest things in Paris. But how to
describe it?--You find yourself seated in an immense church, into which
you have passed through a dark entry; and whilst you are contemplating
its august architecture, twilight comes on imperceptibly, and you see
suddenly around you a full congregation, seated, or standing and
kneeling, and very intent on their prayers; all which with a little
brighter light were invisible. You are then regaled with solemn church
music, and assist at the vespers. It is all enchantment. You forget it
is day. The voices of men and virgins die away in the distant space,
like the voices of unearthly beings. The light returns gradually, the
worshippers fade away into air, and you are seated as at first in the
silent and lonely cathedral.
You now enter another room, and a vast prospect of beautiful Swiss
scenery is opened upon your view, bounded only by the horizon. Before
you is a lake, and flocks and herds feeding, and all the glowing images
of a country life. How still the atmosphere, and a little hazy and
melancholy, as in our Indian summer; you can almost fancy the
wood-pigeon’s moan. In the mean time a storm is brewing beyond the
distant mountains; you see the gleams of the lightning, and hear the
muttering of the thunder. At length the storm gathers thick around you;
the end of a mountain is detached from its base, and the avalanche
covers the lake, the flocks, inhabitants, and huts, and you are seated
amidst the desolation. You are not conscious of the presence of any
painting; all is nature and reality.
A few words of the musical entertainment will fill up the measure of
this sinful letter. There is a rotunda in the Champs Elysées devoted to
concerts every evening from six till nine, throughout the summer season.
Here are played the fashionable airs and concertos, and all the
chef-d’oeuvres of Italian and German masters. The little quavers play
sometimes softly among the leaves of the trees, and now and then pour
down like a deluge crash upon your ears. There are sixty musicians; and
for all this ravishment a gentleman pays twenty sous, and a lady
half-price.
In the winter season the whole of this music and more takes refuge at
Musard’s, a central part of the city. Here is a large room fitted up
brilliantly with lustres and mirrors, with a gallery over-head, and a
room adjoining for refreshments. The orchestra is in the centre
surrounded by seats for the audience. There are seats also around the
extremities, and between is a wide promenade filled up every evening
with visitors all the way from Peru and Pegu; and with any quantity of
Parisian fashionables, who come hither to squeeze and quizz one
another, and see the music.
Only think of all this refreshment of the ears, and eyes, this
gratification and improvement of the taste at twenty sous a night! There
is a similar establishment in another section of the city; and these
with the concerts of the Conservatory, private concerts, and operas,
make up the musical entertainments of Paris.
The French are not, naturally, a very musical people. After all their
fuss about a royal “_Académie de Musique_,” and their twenty or thirty
pupils at the expense of government, and sent for the improvement of
their voices to Rome, they have produced little music. Their Boieldieu
and Auber are the only composers who can take seats (and this at some
distance) with the Rossinis, Mozarts, and Webers. Their great pianists,
Hertz and Kalkbrenner, are Germans; Beriot, the greatest violin, is a
Belgian; Lafont only is French. Their natural music, the Troubadour and
the rest, has been so wailed in the nursery, and so screamed in the
theatre, that the world is sick of it. A man advertised for a servant
lately, who could not sing “_Robin du Bois_.”
LETTER XVIII.
Parisian habits.--The Chaussée d’Antin.--Season of Bon-bons.--Jour
de l’An.--Commencement of the Season.--The Carnival.--Reception at
the Tuileries.--Lady Granville.--The Royal Family.--Court
Ceremonies.--Ball at the Hotel de Ville.--French Beauty.--A Bal de
Charité.--Lord Canterbury.--Bulwer.--Sir Sydney Smith.--The Court
Balls.--Splendid Scene.--The Princess Amelia.--Comparison between
Country and City Life.
PARIS, January 25th, 1836.
As your husband has gallantly allowed me the exclusive pleasure of
writing to you this week, I am going to use the privilege in giving you
his biography for the year 1836. For a wife to judge of her husband’s
conduct from her husband’s letters, is absolute folly.--He rises at
day-break, which occurs in this country, at this season, about nine; he
makes his toilet with Parisian nicety, breakfasts at eleven, and then
attends his consultations, till three. After this hour he runs upon
errands. Paris covers eight thousand five hundred square acres, and he
has business at both ends of it; I have to run after him, just as a
man’s shadow would, if people in this country had shadows, a league to
the east, and then a league to the west, only because he don’t know a
Frenchman calls his mother a _mare_, and a horse a _shovel_. As he and
his partner do not comprehend each other, and he cannot communicate with
the world out of doors, you may imagine I have got myself into a
business.
And here are all nations of the earth to be interpreted, and all sexes;
French, Spaniards, Italians, Poles, and modern Greeks. “God’s life, my
lords, I have had to rub up my Latin.” One might as well have been
interpreter at Babel. We dine at six, and have all the rest of the day
to ourselves.--Then comes smoking of Turkish tobacco in a long pipe,
then a cup of good coffee and the little glass of quirsh; and then
conversations--conversations, not about burning Moscara, and the Bedouin
brothers; or whether beet sugar should be taxed; but that which it
imports more our happiness to know, what vintage is the wine, and
whether we are to pass the evening at the Italien, or Grand Opera. Our
host, who is a French gentleman, a man of the world, and refined in
learning, adds the perfume of his wit to the little minutes as they go
fluttering by.
_A propos_ of good coffee, I will tell you how to make it. Make it very
strong, and then pour out with your right hand half a cup, and with your
left the milk, foaming and smoking like Vesuvius upon it; it is reduced
thus to a proper consistency and complexion, retaining its heat.
Strange! that so simple a process should not have superseded the
premeditated dishwater of our American cities. This is the _café au
lait_ of the breakfast; the coffee of the dinner is without milk.
At length conversation flags, and we sit each in a “_Fauteuil_,”
recumbent, and looking silently upon the Turkish vapour as it ascends to
the upper region of the room, till it has obscured the atmosphere in
clouds as dark as science metaphysic; and then we sweeten ourselves with
open air and evening recreations--
“Vive Henri Quatre! vive ce roi vaillant!”
And so we stroll, arm in arm, through the Boulevards to the “Rue
Favart,” and there drink down Grisi until the unwelcome midnight sends
us to our pillows. This repairs us from the cares of the day, and raises
us up fresh and vegetated to the duties of to-morrow. I must not forget
to tell you, we live now in the _Rue Neuve des Maturins_, a little east
of the Boulevards. I was quite disdainful of this unclassic ground after
so long an abode among the Muses; but this street is more than classic,
it runs right-angled into the aristocratic _Chaussée d’Antin_; is full
of honour and high fare, and ennobled by some of the best Parisian
blood.
Your husband--I suppose by living here, has got into the _bel air_ of
the French. (I forgot to put a _dash_ under his name.) He has his share
of Favoris, and mustachios, and a coat from Barde’s that would win the
ear of a countess. Barde makes coats for “crowned heads,” and takes
measures at Moscow;--and he never ties his cravat--(I mean your
husband)--just in front, but always a quarter of an inch or so to the
left; nor sends a lady a red rose, when white roses are in the fashion;
and though he speaks nothing yet of the French jargon, he makes Paris
agreeable to every one. Folks, to be liked in this country, are obliged
to be amiable--a violent effort sometimes for me. In this respect we
have an advantage at home, where poor people only are required to have
wit, and twenty thousand a-year may be as big a fool as it pleases.
This is the season of _bon-bons_. I think I see you, and little Jack and
Sall, parading your littleness upon the Boulevards--which I presume you
will do this time next year. Here is the whole animal creation in paste,
and all the fine arts in _sucre d’orge_. You can buy an epigram in
dough, and a pun in soda-biscuit; a “Constitutional Charter” all in
jumbles; and a “Revolution of July” just out of the frying-pan. Or, if
you love American history, here is a United States’ frigate, two inches
long, and a belly-gut commodore bombarding Paris--(with
“shin-plasters”)--and the French women and children stretching out their
little arms, three quarters of an inch long, towards heaven, and
supplicating the mercy of the victors, in molasses candy.
You will see also a General Jackson, with the head of a hickory-nut,
with a purse, I believe, of “carraway comfits,” and in a great hurry
pouring out the “twenty-five millions,” a king, a queen, and a royal
family, all of plaster of Paris. If you step into one of these stores
you will see a gentleman in mustachios, whom you will mistake for a
nobleman, who will ask you “to give yourself the pain to sit down,” and
he will put you up a paper of _bon-bons_, and he will send it home for
you, and he will accompany you to the door, and he will have “the honour
to salute you”--all for four sous.--But I must get on with my biography.
We went, the first day of the year, to the Palace, and saw the king and
the queen with our own eyes. I must tell you all about it. Paris usually
comes to town three months before this. The gentry, and the woodcock,
and all the Italian singers come in October, and every thing runs over
with the reflux of the natives, and the influx of foreigners. Of the
latter, the greater part are English, who, to escape the ignominy of
staying in London at this season, or being uneasy on their seats, (I
mean their country seats,) come hither to walk in the Rue de la Paix,
and sleep in the Rue Castiglione. You will see now and then a knot of
American girls, who sun themselves upon the Boulevards, or sit in the
Tuileries to do mischief with their looks upon bearded Frenchmen.
But the gaieties at this season only essay their little wings; they do
not venture beyond the opera and private parties, and a display of
black eyes and fashionable equipages at the Bois de Boulogne, until the
close of the year. Then all the sluices are set loose. Then magnificent
beauty encircles the boxes at the opera, decked in all the gems which
the “swart Indian culls from the green sea,” and overlooks the gazing
deluge of spectators from the pit, and the nut-brown maids of Italy and
France wave around the ball-room in all the swimming voluptuousness of
the waltz. Grisi warbles more divinely at the Italien, and, at the Grand
Opera, more sweetly, Taglioni
“Twirls her light limbs, and bares her breasts of snow.”
“Due pome acerbe, e pur d’ivorio fatte,
Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo,
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.”
Harlequin now puts on his fustian mantle, and all Paris, her caps and
bells, turning out upon the Boulevards, and men and women run wild
through the streets. This is the Carnival, which will continue gathering
force as it goes, till the end of February, as a snow-ball upon your
Pine-Hill comes down an avalanche into the valley. On Shrove-Tuesday all
will be still--operas, balls, concerts, fêtes, the racket of the
fashionable soirée, and the orgies of the Carnival will be hushed; and
then the quiet and social parties will employ the rest of the season.
My Lord Granville will be “at home” on Monday, and the Duchess de
Broglie “at home” on Saturday; in a word, every one that can afford it
will be “at home” one evening in the week, receiving and entertaining
with gaiety and simplicity his friends, until the dogstar shall send
again the idle world to its shady retreats of Montmorency and St. Cloud.
The first drawing-room or “reception” at court, on the New Year’s night
gives the watch-word, and announces that the season of mirth has begun.
This is followed by the regular court-balls, and balls ministerial and
diplomatic; and the balls of the bankers and other opulent individuals
bring up the rear.
We put ourselves in a black suit, in silk stockings and pumps, with a
little, military tinsel, under the arm; stepped into a _remise_ (a
remise is a public carriage disguised as a private one) and in a few
minutes stood upon the broad steps of the Tuileries; from which we were
conducted up into the rooms, with no more ceremony than writing our
names upon a registry in the hall.--The English and French books say
that we Americans have a great _penchant_ for kings, and that we run
after nobility and titles more than becomes republicans. Whether this be
true or not, and whether it is really an inclination of human nature
that, like other passions, will have its way, I do not stop to inquire;
with me I declare it to be mere curiosity; I had the same when a mere
child, for a puppet show, without wishing to be “Punch” or “Judy.” But
here I am moralising again when I should be telling you of the
“Reception.”
You must imagine a long suite of rooms, and the edges all round
embroidered with ladies, strung together like pearls--ladies dressed in
the excess of the toilet, and many hundred lustres pouring down a blaze
of light upon their charms; and the interior of the rooms filled with
gentlemen clad in various liveries, mostly military--in all you may
reckon about four thousand, including Doctor C. and _me_. Here was my
Lady Granville ambassadress and her Lord; I love a broad pair of
shoulders on a woman--even a little too broad; and here was the fair
Countess of Comar Plotocka. The richest mine that sleeps between your
Broad and Sharp Mountains would not buy this lady’s neck. I have heard
it valued at three millions. It would make a rail-road from here to
Havre.
I have half-a-mind to put in here as a note, that we Americans in our
citizen coats, and other republican simplicities, make no kind of figure
at a court. When one contemplates brother Jonathan by the side of Prince
Rousimouski, all gorgeous in the furs of the Neva--I can’t find any
other comparison than that character of arithmetic they call _zero_; for
he seems of no other use than to give significance to some figure that
is next to him. It is strange how much human dignity is improved by a
fashionable wardrobe; I have seen a nobleman spoiled altogether by a few
holes in his breeches.
The king, the queen, the princes and princesses entered about nine; they
passed slowly round the rooms, saluting the ladies, saying a few words
to each, with a gentle inclination of the head, and a proportionate
jutting out at the head’s antipodes:--the latter part of the compliment
intended for us gentlemen. At the end of this fatiguing ceremony the
royal family retired, bowing to us all in the lump.--I forgot to say,
that being apart in a corner, as a modest maid who sits alone, the queen
in passing dropped me a curtsey for myself. When her Majesty bowed to
the whole multitude the honour was wasted by diffusion. To have one all
to one’s self was very gratifying. They now posted themselves in a room
at the south end of the company, accessible by two doors, through one of
which gentlemen were admitted Indian file, and introduced personally to
the king, the king standing on the right, the queen on the left of the
room, and the little queens in the middle.
It was an imposing ceremony; and this was the manner of the
introduction. For example, the Doctor, entering, gave his name and
nation to the Aid-de-Camp, who pronounced it aloud; the king then _prit
la parole, et un verre d’eau sucrée, de la manière suivante_: “You are
from Philadelphia, I am glad to see you.”--And then the Doctor, who had
studied his speech in the ante-chamber, replied, “Yes.”--After this he
bowed a little to the queen, and walked out with an imperturbable
gravity at the left door, as I had just done before him. We then went
home, and told people we had spoken to the king.--This is a Reception at
the Tuileries. To give you an account of the other charming fêtes we
have seen this month, will require another sheet.--The hour is late, I
bid you good night.
January 26th.
The first fête of which we partook was a great ball given at the Hotel
de Ville, to relieve the poor of the “Quartier St. Germain.” Here, as
every place else, where there is a chance of an innocent squeezing,
there was a crowd. There were two thousand souls, all dancing in the
same room; and the ladies, whom I include in the article of souls, were
dressed _dans l’excès de la belle coiffure_. The Queen and Madame
Adelaide, and other such like fine people, who were announced in the
newspapers, hoaxed us by not coming. However, we danced all the poor out
of the hospitals. We put on our rustling silks that the grisettes might
get a blanket for their shivering babies, and our dear little prunellas,
that they might have a pair of sabots, and a little bit of wool about
their feet in the Faubourg St. Germain. Charity affects people in
different ways. In Philadelphia it gives one a chill, or it sends one
with a long face to pray at St. Stephens’; here, to “cut pigeon wing” at
the Hotel de Ville.--The bill of fare was only ices, lemonades and eau
sucrée--no liquors.
A Frenchman is always fuddled enough with his own animal spirits, and
needs no rum. In all French parties in high life there is little
ceremony about eating and drinking; it is economical to be well bred.
Dancing is performed in the same monotonous dull way as in America. The
“_pirouettes_ and _entrechats_” are a monopoly of the Opera Français.
English gravity was always afraid of being caught cutting a caper, and
John Bull leads his lady through a dance as if conducting her to her
pew. The fashion of now-a-days is any thing English, especially English
whims and nonsense. “They are not dancing, but only walking in their
sleep,” is a _bon mot_ of his Majesty, who is not much addicted to
wit--better if he were; Fieschi would never have thought of killing him.
But they are better walkers than we are. They are better dressed, too,
though with less cost. In our country the same dress suits all ladies of
the same size, being always made after the last doll that came over by
the packet, only a little more fashionable. And so we are
“Laced
From the full bosom to the slender waist,
Fine by degrees and beautifully less.”
And some of us
“Gaunt all at once and hideously little.”
In Paris, a mantua-maker is a _bel esprit_, and does not follow rigidly
but studies to soften a little the tyranny and caprices of fashion, and
she knows the value of the natural appearances in the constitution of
beauty. The fashions have, to be sure, their general feature, but the
shades of differences are infinite. The woman and the frock, though not
indissolubly united, seem made for each other. The French lead fashion;
we follow it: their genius is brought out by invention; ours quenched by
imitation. I looked on upon this ball with all the gaze of young
astonishment. Staring is an expression of countenance you will never see
among savages and well-bred people; I am somewhere between the two.
Your husband dived into the crowd, to try to discover some pearl of
French beauty; ineffectually. One is at a loss, he says, for a
temptation. He is so anatomical! he would like better Helen’s skeleton
than Helen herself. We don’t see the same thing in a woman by a great
deal--or in anything else. Travellers don’t see the same things in
Paris. Baron Rothschild and Sir Humphrey saw not the same thing in a
guinea; and how many things did not Phidias see in his Venus, which
neither you nor I will ever see in it.
The French women are nearer ugliness than beauty; but what women in the
world can so dispense with beauty? Their cavaliers are handsomer, yet
the exquisite creatures are loved just the same. I wonder if the peacock
loves less his hen for the inferiority of her plumage, or she him the
more for the elegance of his? The principal charm of a woman is not in
the features; a lesson useful to be learnt. A turn-up nose once
overturned the Harem, so says Marmontelle; Madame Cottin was an ugly
thing, and yet killed two of her lovers; there are on record the
examples of two women with only an eye each, who made the conquest of a
king; La Vallière supplanted all her rivals, with a crooked foot. Ninon
was not handsome, but who knows not the number of her victims?
Self-flattery and the flatteries of admirers spoil pretty women, till at
last, like sovereigns, they receive your homage as a tribute that is
due, and enjoins no acknowledgment, and thereby they counteract the
influence of their charms.--“But as I was saying--Pray, my dear, what
was I saying?”--I will think of it to-morrow.
January 27th.
I cannot afford to give you all these sweetmeats at a single meal; I
must serve you up a small portion for the dessert of each day. Ball the
second. This was one of the most splendid and fashionable of the season;
also a _bal de charité_--given at the theatre Ventadour a few nights
ago. A great number of Carlist nobles having lost their pensions and
places, by the disaster of Charles X., have become poor, and this was to
comfort them with a little cash. The parterre and stage formed an area
for the dancing, and an array of mirrors at the furthest end doubled to
the eye its dimensions, and the number of the dancers.
It was a vast surface waving like the sea gently troubled; and the
boxes, filled with ladies, exhibited the usual display of snowy necks,
and glittering ornaments overhead. The saloon and lobbies too, adorned
with little groves of shrubbery, had their full share of the multitude.
Here was the late Speaker of the Commons, Sutton, now better named for a
ball-room, my Lord Canterbury, and my Lady Canterbury; and here was
Bulwer, brother of Bulwer; and Sir Sydney Smith and other knights from
afar; and all the _bel air_ of the Paris fashionables; not the old swarm
of St. Germain, the Condés and Turennes, the Rochefoucaulds,
Montausiers, Beauvilliers and Montespans; but all that Paris has now
the most elegant and aristocratic.
Here was Madame la Duchesse de Guiche, and who can be more beautiful?
And the Duchesse de Plaisance, airy and light as Taglioni; and the
prettiest of all Belgian ambassadresses, Madame le Hon--_coiffé à
ravir_. And the night went round in the dance, or in circulating through
the room, or in sitting retired upon couches among the oranges and
laurels, where sage philosophy looked on, and beauty bound the willing
listeners in its spell. The music was loud and most exhilarating. In
some parts of the house were all the comforts of elbowings, shufflings,
crammings and squeezings, and on the outside all the racket that was
possible of screaming women, and wrangling coachmen, from miles of
carriages through every avenue. Some were arriving towards morning, and
others have not arrived yet. This is the ball of the Ventadour.
We reached home just as Aurora was opening her curtains with her rosy
fingers, and we crept into bed. The tickets were at twenty francs; ices,
_eau d’orgéat_, and _eau sucrée_, were the amount of refreshments.
I have just room for a word of the Court Balls; and they are so much
prettier than any thing else in the world, I am glad they come in last
to your notice. They are held at the king’s palace, the Tuileries; where
a long suite of rooms are opened into one, and filled with a stream of
light so thick and transparent, that the men and women seem to swim in
it as fish in their liquid element. Between three and four thousand
persons are exposed to a single coup-d’œil; the men gorgeously attired
in their court-dresses; the women in all the sweetness of the toilet.
It is impossible to look in here without recognising at once the justice
of Parisian claims upon the empire of fashion. Here is the throne and
sceptre of the many-coloured goddess; and here from every corner of the
earth her courtiers come to do her homage.
The king, on entering, repeats nearly the same ceremony as at his
“Reception” of the new year; others of the royal family follow his
example. A pair of cavaliers at length lead out the two princesses, and
the ball begins through the whole area of the rooms.
To see so many persons, elegantly and richly attired at once entangled
in the dance; crossing, pursuing and overtaking each other; now at
rest, now in movement; and seeming to have no other movement than that
communicated by the music; and to see a hundred couples whirling around
in the waltz, with airy feet that seem scarce to kiss the slippery
boards; first flushed and palpitating; then wearying by degrees and
retiring, to the last pair, to the last one--and she the most healthful,
graceful and beautiful of the choir, her partner’s arm sustaining her
taper waist, foot against foot, knee against knee, in simultaneous
movement, turns and turns, till nature at length overcome, she
languishes, she faints, she dies!--A scene of such excitement and
brilliancy, you will easily excuse my modesty for not attempting to
describe.
As an episode to the dancing, there is a supper in the _Salle de Diane_,
where you have a chance of seeing how royal people eat; with a remote
chance of eating something yourself. A thousand or more ladies sit down,
and are served upon the precious metals, or more precious porcelain; the
king and princes standing at the place of honour, and a file of
military-looking gentlemen dressed richly, along the flanks of the
table. What a spectacle! Ladies eating out of gold, and kings to wait
upon them.
I sat opposite the royal ladies, and looked particularly at the little
Princess Amelia, with her pouting lip “as if some bee had stung it
lately.” She just tasted a little of the roast beef, and the fish, and
the capon, and other delicacies of the season; and then a bit of
plum-pudding, and some grapes, and peaches, and apricots, and
strawberries; and then she sipped a glass of port, and when her glass
was out, my Lord Granville with great presence of mind filled her
another; and then she finished off with a little burgundy, champagne,
hermitage, Frontignac, bucella, and old hock--all which she drank with
her own dear little lips.
These delicate creatures do almost every thing else by deputy, but
eating and drinking. After the ladies, we gentlemen were admitted _en
masse_, with not a little scrambling; which was the objectionable part
of the _fête_. I was hungry enough to have sold my birthright, but did
not taste of any thing; it required not only physical strength, but
effrontery, and I have been labouring under the oppression of modesty
all my life. Have you ever been to a dinner at the--“White House?”
that’s like the finale of the king’s supper in the _Salle de Diane_.
In my greener days, I saw the dance in my native Tuscarora, and went to
see it twenty miles of a night upon a fleet horse, my partner behind,
twining around my waist her “marriageable arms.” I have now seen the
balls of the French court, which are called the most splendid in the
world. The difference of dress, of graces, and such particulars, how
vastly in favour of the Tuileries!--but as far as I can recollect and
judge from the outward signs, the enjoyment was as vastly on the side of
the Tuscarora.--Beauty is of every clime, as of every condition. I have
seen Alcina’s foot upon the floors of the Ventadour, and upon a rock of
the Juniatta, and all the varieties of human expression through all the
ranges of human society. I have seen the humble violet upon the hill
top, and the saucy lily in the valley. As for the pure and rapturous
admiration of beauty and female accomplishment--alas, I fear it is not
the growth of the libertine capital.--I am persuaded, that to have lived
much in the country, conversant with natural objects, and subject to the
privations of a country life, is essential to the perfection of the
human character, and of human enjoyments. In a city, the pursuits are
frivolous; they narrow the mind, and are pernicious to its most
delightful faculty--the imagination. The passions are developed there
too early, and worn out by use.--The Tuileries, lighted with its tapers,
and “glittering with the golden coats,” is beautiful; the ladies’ bright
eyes, and the pure gems that sparkle upon their snowy necks too are
beautiful. But I have been at Moon’s Drawing Room upon your “Two Hills,”
and have gathered its pure light from your piny leaves; the stars and
heavenly bodies looking on in their court dresses.
To walk in the Rue Rivoli as the sun descends towards the west is
delightful, and in the Tuileries amidst its marble deities, or upon the
broad eastern terrace, which overlooks its two rows of fashionable
belles.--But I have walked in the lone valleys of the Shamoken, and have
seen the Naiads plunge into their fountains; I have walked upon the
Sharp Mountain top, exhilarated with its pure air and liberty, raised
above the grovelling species, and held communion with the angels--this
is more delightful still. Numa communed with his Egeria in the sacred
grove; Minos with his Nymph under the low-browed rock, and Moses
retired to the mountain to converse with the Almighty. The pleasures of
a city life stale upon the appetite by use; the delights of the country
life “bring to their sweetness no satiety.”
I had intended to put you up the whole of the Paris Balls in this
letter, but the Masquerades remain for another occasion. My time has run
out; the last grain of sand is in the dial. Good night.
LETTER XIX.
Execution of Fieschi.--The French House of Commons.--French
Eloquence.--Thiers.--Guizot.--Berryer.--Abuse of America.--The
Chamber of Peers.--Interior of Madelaine.--Bribery.---False
Oaths.--The Middle Classes.--America and England.--Opinions of
America.--English Travellers in America.--Mrs. Trollope.--Captain
Basil Hall.--Miss Fanny Kemble.--Test of good breeding in
America.--American feelings towards England.--Their mutual
Interests.
Paris, February, 1836.
The great state criminal Fieschi was executed yesterday morning on the
_Place St. Jaques_, with his two accomplices, Maury and Pepin. He did
not care a straw for mere dying, but he did not like the style of
appearing barefooted before so large and respectable a company. He made
a speech with as much dignity as could be expected, and quoted Cicero.
This fellow has been for a while the hero of the age: none of the
French generals can bear a comparison with him; and the dramatic
interest given to his trial will no doubt produce a good crop of rivals.
His behaviour was ostentatious, but intrepid to the last. He was none of
your sneaking scoundrels, who are half honest through fear of the
gallows. His mistress, Nina Lasave, is showing herself (what is of her,
for she is less by an eye) upon the Place de la Bourse, and five
thousand at a time are crowding to see her at twenty-five cents each.
Signor Fieschi has not only acquired distinction for himself, but
imparted a tincture of this quality to all that he has touched. Nina’s
fortune is made; I wonder if this sympathy for the mistress of an
atrocious murderer would be felt any where out of Paris? I went to see
her with the rest.
I was guilty (no easy matter in Paris), of an act of uncommon
foolishness, in going to see this execution. The French way is so
elegant and classic--it is none of your vulgar hangings on a gibbet,
with a fellow creeping like a spider up the gallows, or the chopping off
a head upon a block, as a butcher does a pig’s. The guillotine is itself
a piece of ingenious mechanism, and the executioner a gentleman; he
wears white gloves, and is called “Monsieur de Paris.” So, I went with
other amateurs, and I have seen nothing but men without heads ever
since.
For a change, I went this morning to the Chamber of Deputies. Don’t you
want to know something of this great council of the nation? I shall be
glad if you do, for I have nothing else of sufficient dignity to come
after this paragraph.
This is the French House of Commons. It has been in session these two
months, and holds its meetings in one of the great architectural
monuments of the capital, the Palais Bourbon. At its entrance, you will
see four colossal statues upon curule seats, Sully, Colbert, Hopital and
d’Aguesseau. The chamber is lighted from above, and is semi-circular,
having at the centre a tribune just in front of the President’s Chair,
and over-head the reporters. The members are ranged according to their
parties, on seats rising in amphitheatre. On the very left, or _extreme
gauche_, are the Liberals; and on the right, or _extreme droit_, are the
extreme Royalists; the hues of each party softening gradually, and
blending as they recede from the extremes. On a gallery overhead are the
spectators of both sexes.
The reading of speeches, which is common, and mounting the Tribune, even
for a short remark, are precautions taken against eloquence. I have
heard that attempts are often made by several persons to speak at once,
or to preoccupy the tribune to the great disturbance of order. Persons
are seen discoursing, generally with great animation, during the
orator’s speech. When there is a little too much noise the president
taps with his paper-knife on the desk, and when a little more, he rings
a bell; when this fails, he puts on his hat. The constant assent or
dissent expressed at nearly every sentence, seems to me to touch upon
the ridiculous--it drives all one’s classic notions of a senate out of
one’s head. It is, perhaps, a necessary safeguard against being talked
to death by some stupid and loquacious member, as happens occasionally
in other countries.
The great man of the chamber is, at present, Thiers, Minister of the
Interior. He is seldom at a loss for sense, and never for words; but
neither his face nor his manner has any thing of eloquence. He is merely
a facetious talker, and is nearly as expert at a _bon mot_, as the old
Prince Talleyrand himself--a kind of merit that makes its fortune more
readily at Paris than elsewhere. He is said also to emulate the great
diplomatist in the flexibility of his politics; having the same skill
of being always of the strong party, without compromising his
principles.
In society he is a good actor, and plays with grave diplomatists, or
with little girls of fifteen, and pleases both. Not the least essential
of his qualifications, is a revenue of two or three hundred thousand
livres, which he has had the discretion to make, the gossiping world
says, from his position of minister, by gambling in the stocks.
That censorial tribunal, which is called public opinion, and which
forces a man in the United States sometimes to be honest against his
will, is scarce known in this country. Indeed, I have not seen that any
vice renders a man publicly infamous here, except it be giving bad
dinners. On the other hand, they have one virtue, which I believe does
not exist in the same degree amongst the statesmen of other
countries--they are not so barefaced as to commend one another’s
honesty. Every body cries up parts, and poor honesty has not a rag to
her back. Guizot, who is also minister of something, made a speech
ethical and pedagogical, about education. He is the opposite of Thiers,
of a stern and inflexible nature, and has an air of solemnity in his
face; you would think he had just arrived from the Holy Land. He
decomposes and analyses till he is blinded in the smoke of his own
furnace. He is the great type of the “Doctrinaires.” Though he does not
throw his wisdom in every one’s face, he has few equals in facility.
After translating Gibbon, and writing several volumes on the English
Revolution, he may well claim some praise for this quality. He has been
for several years a leader; but I have heard he is lately, for I know
not which of his virtues, of less influence in the House. He and the
Doctrinaires have the odium of the rigid censorships set up a few months
since against the Press.
The other greatest men are De Broglie, Minister of Foreign Affairs;
Barrot, Mauguin, and Dupin the President. The last is ranked amongst the
most eloquent of the French speakers. I have not heard him in any thing
but the ringing of the bell. But the great ornament of French eloquence,
at the bar, and in the tribune, is Berryer. He has an exceedingly happy
physiognomy; a broad and high brow, shaded with jet black hair; a bland
and persuasive expression of the mouth, and his voice is grave and
impressive. The French generally impair the strength and dignity of
their oratory by too much action; Berryer in this is economical and
prudent. Though leader _en chef_ of the Legitimists, he defended
strenuously Cambron and Marshal Ney. He spoke also against the American
Indemnity, and gave us very little reason to be satisfied with his
eloquence.
I must tell you that the great staple of conversation here at present,
is abuse of America, and that every thing looks warlike.--I heard a
member of the Deputies say: “There are not ten men in the chamber who
believe in the justice of your claims; we have been inveigled into the
acknowledgment by our king, and bullied into it by your President.” If
you know any nice computer of national honesty you had better get him to
tell you the difference between the notorious rogue who robs his
neighbours, and the four hundred and fifty-nine rogues who refuse to
make restitution of the robbery.
This chamber is composed of men all above the middle age--none being
eligible below thirty. They have a venerable and decent appearance, and
for learning, I believe they do not suffer in comparison with any of the
legislative assemblies of Europe. They are chosen from thirty millions
of people, by two hundred and fifty thousand electors, while the English
House of Commons is selected by near a million of electors, from
twenty-five millions. Their hours of sitting are from one to five
o’clock. Spectators are admitted on the written order of a member.
We had a little spurt to-day upon rail-roads, and steam-boats; in which
M. Thiers said there was in the United States a reckless disregard of
human life; (_a prolonged sensation!_) and George Lafayette, his
American partialities getting the better of his judgment, got up and
defended our humanity. He gave himself as an example of the possibility
of descending the Mississippi without being blown up--but nobody
believed him; (_grand mouvement dissentient!_)
Since on the subject of Chambers, why not pay a visit to the “Chamber of
Peers.” For this you must ascend the Seine to the Pont Neuf, and half a
mile thence towards the south will bring you to the Palace of
Luxembourg, the place of its sittings.
I wished a few days ago to see the interior of Madelaine, into which
there is no admission; “not for the queen,” said the door-keeper; but
after a little fuss about honesty, and receiving thirty sous, he
permitted me to go in. In traversing the Luxembourg the same day, as I
went whistling along, innocent of thought, I fell upon the ice against
the statue of a goddess. In returning to my senses, I found a pair of
fair arms about my neck; it was not the Queen of Love, who had stepped
from her pedestal, but a servant maid, who did me this service, she
said, by order of her mistress; and the incorruptible little wench
refused, either for love or money, to tell me her mistress’s name.
I attempted a few days after to enter the Chamber of Peers, and was
refused by the door-keeper; but, on placing in his hands a few francs,
he furnished me the necessary passport.--What is the reason we find in
no country the same fidelity from the public servants as from those in
private life?
This anecdote is to introduce you with proper ceremony to the Peers. The
etiquette of great houses always requires the guests to be detained a
reasonable time in the ante-chamber. But since I am on the subject of
bribery and corruption--your agent here, Mr. R., told me in excuse for
high commissions, he had to hire witnesses to prove the decease of
heirs; this he mentioned as a common business transaction.--“And did
you succeed?” “Oh, yes, we killed them all off,” was his reply. I have
seen also in Philadelphia an Irish labourer, taken at random from the
street, who swore before a magistrate, a false oath, for a bribe of five
dollars.
Now if this bribery is so easy in all the worlds, old and new, ask your
husband, if you please, who makes laws, whether it ought not to suggest
to the statesman, the impropriety of exacting oaths at all; which do not
make the honest man more faithful, and certainly make the dishonest more
corrupt.
The Peers have their chamber in the second story of this Palace. It is a
semicircle on a diameter of eighty feet. A beautiful row of Corinthian
pillars of veined stucco sustains the vault, upon which Le Sueur has
painted the usual number of Virtues, civil and military; and between
these pillars are statues of the most famous ancient orators and
statesmen; Solon, Aristides, Scipio, Demosthenes, Cicero, Camillus,
Cincinnatus, Cato of Utica, Phocion, and Leonidas. The disposition of
the chairs and benches is the same as in the Chamber of Deputies. It is
tapestried with blue velvet, wainscotted with looking-glasses, and a
beautiful lustre descending in the centre produces the light of five
hundred tapers.
It is a rich and elegant chamber--a kind of boudoir of the French
nobility. The staircase which leads to it is the most magnificent, they
say, of all Europe.--The Peers are either dukes, marquises, counts,
viscounts, or barons, and except the members of the royal family, and
princes of the blood, are titled only for life. They sit at the same
time as the Deputies, under the Presidency of the Chancellor of France.
Their concurrence is necessary to all laws, and they try all cases of
state crimes and high treasons. They have had a long time on hand
Fieschi and the never ending “Procès Monstre.”
To set apart a few hundred individuals from the great herd, and give
them the highest opportunities of improvement and polish, would furnish,
one might suppose, at least a pretty ornament to a nation. However, it
turns out that, in a high degree of fortune men do not submit to the
labour necessary to intellectual improvement, and that they are exposed
to more vicious temptations; that they have less dread of public
opinion, and are spoilt in temper, by indulgences. In a word, we know
that human nature does not bear a very high degree of refinement.
As the taste may be rude and uncultivated, so it may be excessively
delicate; and fastidiousness is almost as disagreeable as grossness. But
inequalities are an ordinance of nature in society, as much as in the
structure of the globe we inhabit; nor can we level the hills, or so
raise the valleys that the hills will lose their eminence. The three
great classes, besides the other reasons for their existence, may, for
aught I know, be necessary to the improvement, and well-being of each
other; the upper communicating emulation and refinement to that
immediately below, and the lower furnishing nerve and industry to that
immediately above.
“Wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighboured by fruits of baser quality.”
However this may be, it is certain that the middle class is the most
sound and respectable of every community; and this is the class which is
now ascendant in France. The Chamber of Peers is hardly noticed in the
machinery of the government. This is partly owing to the democratic
spirit transmitted from the Revolution, but chiefly to the want of
hereditary titles and estates. A lordship, without money, is a weight
about the neck of its owner. Shabby peasants look well enough, but one
has no patience with ordinary people of quality. Nobility holds the same
relation to society, as poetry to prose; it does not suffer mediocrity.
The too indiscriminate and common use of the French titles, has done
much, also, to their discredit.
“On ne porte plus qu’étoiles;
On les prodigue par boisseaux,
Au pekins comme aux genereaux,
Jusqu’aux marchands de toiles.”
M. Decaze made, during his ministry, as many as sixty nobles in a week.
These gentlemen do not, themselves, seem to entertain a very high sense
of their rank. I have heard of more than one hiding his decoration, to
cheapen a piece of goods: as the Italian landlord, who passes himself
for the waiter, to have the _quelque chose à boire_. I do not mean you
to infer from this, that to be a nobleman it is necessary to be born so.
Nothing is so easy as to make any man think himself better than others;
the facility even increases in proportion as he is ignorant. The
footman advances his pretensions with a simple change of his livery--by
stepping only from an earl’s coach to a duke’s. A girl will change her
opinions of herself, from neat’s leather to prunella, and become prouder
and nobler from cotton to silk stockings; but nothing can make any one
noble who lacks the sense of superiority; in other words, who lacks
money.
I must gossip a little to fill the rest of this blank paper. I dined
with an American, this evening, at the Palais Royal, where he and a
young Englishman, whom we met there, talked of the merits and demerits
of their several countries, until their patriotism grew outrageous.
My rule is, to waive all discussions in which passion and prejudice have
the mastery of reason. As far as Paris is concerned, and the travelling
English whom I know here, America is yet undiscovered, and this
ignorance, to us who think we have strutted into great historical
importance, is sometimes quite offensive. To make it worse, they suppose
that we cannot possibly know much of Europe, or indeed of any thing--how
should we, being born so far from Paris?--and they began by teaching us
the elements.
A very complaisant man of the university told me over, the other day,
the Rape of the Sabines, with all its circumstances; and a French lady,
of good literary pretensions and wealth, has paraded me more than once
to amuse her company, by “talking _American_”--“_Quel accent
extraordinaire! cela ne ressemble à rien en Europe._”--“Ah! you are from
Boston,” said another; “I am glad, perhaps you know my brother; he lives
in Peru.”
---- The common people have a kind of indistinct notion, that all
Americans are negroes--and as negro sympathies are now uppermost in
Europe, we gain nothing by their disappointment.--The English know more;
but their information, as far as I have yet observed, is altogether
strained through Madame Trollope and Basil Hall, and the other
caricaturists. In what manner have the English travelled in our country?
An author, intent on making a book, comes over, and tells a lie; and the
next who comes over steals it, and passes it for his own; and, at last,
it is holy writ.
I read, twenty years ago, in English travels, that we gentlemen, at the
taverns, clean our teeth with the same brush. This has been repeated, I
presume, by Captains Hall and Hamilton, (for I have met it in all their
predecessors,) and is now told positively for the last time, by Miss
Fanny Kemble.--A propos, I saw Captain Hall, the other night, at the
Geographical Society; he is a big man, and I did not flog him.
As for Miss Kemble, she has such a pretty face, and so much genius, she
may just tell as many lies as she pleases. One prefers to go wrong with
her, than right with many a one else. I read her book aboard ship, and
was pleased and entertained with it. Indeed, I would go any time, ten
miles barefooted only to see a book that speaks what it thinks;--above
all, to see a woman of genius, who writes after her own impressions, and
sends her thoughts uncorrected by dunces to press.
But is it not a spite that we, who have been so lied upon by the
English, should have amongst them a most extensive reputation for lying?
It will be a worse spite if we deserve it. We certainly use more
licentiously than they do that pretty figure of rhetoric, they call
amplification. But from the little knowledge they possess of our country
I suspect one may acquire amongst them a notorious reputation for lying
by only telling the truth.
Long ago there travelled to the south, an ass, who talked to the king of
the beasts, of the length of days and nights, of the congelation of
rains into snows, of the Aurora Borealis, and skating on the ice, until
he destroyed entirely all credit for veracity, and was at last whipped
out of the country for an impostor. It is our business to profit by this
long-eared experience.
When you come to Paris, don’t forgot to tell them the Mississippi sends
its compliments to the Seine, and if you find in London that the horses
trot twelve miles an hour, don’t you say that ours trot fifteen. It is
laid down by several of the casuists that a man is not to tell truth
merely, but to consider what may be acceptable as such to his audience.
To make the current value of words in England the absolute test of good
breeding in America, appears to me scarce reasonable. Something indeed
is due to age, prescription, and to establish fame in letters; but I do
not see why we should not begin to use modestly our own weights and
measures; to pass our gold and silver even in an English market--if the
currency there happens to be brass; and I do not see why one may not
have a _bon-ton_ at Philadelphia, or New York, without speaking the
fashionable jargon of St. James’s.
Language is variable from year to year, and we are too far distant to
take the hue and air of an English court. Herodotus spoke in Ionic,
Xenophon in Attic, (and Ionia was a colony of Attica) and Plutarch in
Æolic, and were all three good Greeks. They did not despise one another
because the one said τοισι, and the other τωσι.
“I have known several of your countrymen,” said Mr. John Bull, “very
clever men, but not one who had the language of the best society.”
“Our misfortune is, sir, not to have a language of our own. The Henriade
and the Messiah are, in France and Germany, titles of distinction. To be
something in America, one must out-write Shakspeare and Milton. And how
are we to have original views and tastes, if our habits of thought, and
proprieties of language, are to be settled in a foreign country? It is
to be hoped the time will come when in the United States one may be
_sick_ without going to sea, and _raised_ in Kentucky without being a
horse or a head of cabbage.--And pray, sir, what is there in the
language of a well-educated American so distinguishable?”
“I should know you by your first six words. For example, you say _sir_
too often, and you use it to your equals, where an Englishman would omit
it. And I should know you by your many cant phrases, and by your
singularity of habits--by your easy familiarity with strangers, &c.”
“As I know you by your drinking your champagne alone, of which you find
no example in America.”
“And by your boasting of the future instead of the past.--‘The time will
come.’--An Englishman says--‘The time has come.’”
“And which is the more honourable boast, for one who is nothing
himself?”
“There is this difference; we are sure of our ancestors, and we are not
sure of our posterity.”
“There is another; our ancestors send us down many a rogue to dishonour
us, and we are never disgraced by our posterity. Besides, sir, it is
quite natural the old should boast of what they have done, and the young
of what they will do. Nestor was a more prolix and disagreeable boaster
than Achilles. Moreover, sir, there is no great arrogance in predicting
the strength of manhood from the vigour of youth.”
“But why should not we claim in posterity at least an equal chance?”
“Why not? It is certainly not your modesty that prevents it.”
“But without speaking of Shakspeare or Milton, what apology?”
“Whoever heard of a child apologising for not being as big as a man? We
have, sir, our Franklins and Washingtons for the past; our Clays,
Calhouns, and Websters for the present. And now, set our fifty years
against your five hundred; and our ten millions, and a rude continent,
against your twenty-five millions, and your cultivated island, and what
reason, sir, have we to be humbled by the comparison?”
“What could you do more grateful to a parent, than prove to her the
worthiness of her children? We should rejoice that their merits were
still greater.”
“We have imparted as much honour, sir, as we have received from the
connection--or relationship, if you please.”
“Oh, if you wish to disown the kindred, agreed with all my heart.”
“Yes, sir, there is nearly as much Dutch and Irish in the breed at
present, as English.”
“A kind of hybrid breed of Irish filth and Dutch stupidity.”
“It is known, sir, that the race is improved of all animals, by crossing
the breed.”
“Your remark is too general. It is known that a horse and an ass produce
nothing better than a mule.--In your crossing system, too, I remark you
have left out the negroes.--A propos of negroes--we have given liberty
to ours, and you hold yours in bondage.”
“Your slave proprietors have not given this liberty; the inhabitants of
Great Britain have not given liberty to slaves, of which they were
individually the proprietors; nor has the Parliament set loose three
millions of negroes in the midst of her white population--so the case is
not apposite.”
“Well, shall we end the argument, or shall I tell you of your riots and
your Lynch law--and all this vice in your republic of fifty years, where
we ought yet to expect the innocence of youth.”
“At your pleasure, sir--we expect nothing from England but injustice, in
this as in every other respect. After poisoning us with the sensuality
of her romances, and the billingsgate of newspapers, she is quite
amazed that the child has not the sweet lisp, the ruddy complexion, and
the graceful wildness of the infant. After filling our cities with
pickpockets, she calls us dishonest; with drunkards, and she calls us
intemperate; and with disorderly Irish, and then she tells all the world
we are riotous; she has covered our land with negroes, and now she
stigmatizes us for keeping slaves!”
“England has this advantage over you; she does not grow angry, when told
of her faults. You are so thin skinned in America, you do not bear the
least touch of the curry-comb without wincing.”
“England, sir, is surly, proud and phlegmatic, and thinks every one mad
who is not as coldblooded as herself. To be done, sir, America did not
crouch to the British Lion when an infant, will she do it now that she
is grown to maturity?--She stands abreast with Great Britain in the
estimation of the world, and to sustain this dignity she wears her
sword----”
“A sword is a very bad criterion of merit; why, a highway robber could
prove his right to your purse by the same argument----”
My Yankee friend now walked about the room, and upset a chair and picked
it up again, and then hummed a tune to show he was not mad. In the
meantime, the Englishman had poured out deliberately three
glasses--“Come,” said he, “I will be corrected by an American, at least
in one particular; I will not drink my champagne alone when I can find
two honest countrymen to share it with--we will drink America and
England!”
“England and America!” replied my companion with some reluctance.
Before parting, the disputants both agreed that their countries had a
mutual interest to cherish good feelings, and to rejoice at each other’s
prosperity; both agreed that England now reaped a better profit from our
Independence than she could have done from our colonial subjection; and
that America, by the service she derived from English commerce, science,
and letters, and from English industry in making her canals, working her
mines, and improving her manufactures, was much more than overpaid for
any injuries she had a right to complain of in asserting and maintaining
her liberty.
A cup of coffee now poured its balm upon our national jealousies, and we
parted with an invitation to visit our Englishman, who is a student of
the Temple, in London.
The packets are in--and have brought several fresh personages from
America, notwithstanding the season. They have arrived just in time to
have the last snuff of the carnival.
The fire at New York is horrible, but not astonishing. Our shingled
roofs are more combustible than any thing I know of--unless perhaps it
be gunpowder. There has been but one fire in Paris during the last year.
What you say about the wind blowing off your night-cap in your sleep, I
take to be mythology; it means to threaten that if Doctor ---- and I stay
away in this manner, Boreas, or Æolus, or some of the gods will be
coming to bed to you.--But think only of the vapours, the mud and slough
of Paris, and then look out upon your pines, clad in all the snowy
magnificence of winter. I can almost see old Hyems with his grisly chin,
grinning from the flanks of the Sharp Mountain. My advice is that you
dissipate the ice, with mirth, and bright fires and old wine; and that
you leave other things to the gods--and give my love to your mother.
LETTER XX.
The Dancing fever.--The Grand Masquerade.--Fooleries of the
Carnival.--Mardi Gras.--Splendid Equipages.--Masquerades.--An
Adventure.--Educated Women.--The Menus-Plaisirs.--A Fancy
Ball.--Porte St. Martin.--The Masked Balls.--Descente de la
Courtille.--End of the Carnival.--Birth-Day of Washington.
PARIS, February, 1836.
There has been raging, the whole of this month, a disease which prevails
here, usually about this season of the year--a kind of intermitting
fever. It affects the whole city with a violent agitation of limbs, and
often drives the features entirely out of the human countenance. You
can’t recognise your most intimate friends. The fit comes on exactly at
midnight, and then the whole of Paris rushes out of doors, like an
insurrection.
Men of the most sober habits, but ten minutes before--men and women,
who all day long were in the entire possession of their senses--the
moment it strikes twelve, pour out like a deluge upon the streets; some
scrambling into cabriolets, and others running through the mud up to, I
don’t know where, until they get together in the theatre, or some great
town-hall, and there they dance the whole night long, as if their legs
had taken leave of their senses. Towards morning, they get into a kind
of paroxysm--not a galloping consumption, but a _gallopade_--which being
over, they recover, and go quietly to bed, and the fit does not return
till the next midnight.
The doctor was seized with this disorder yesterday, at the usual hour,
and I never saw any more of him till this morning. After a little sleep,
he feels much calmer, and it is thought he will recover.---- But I am
getting alarmed about myself; the disease is catching.--In a word, I am
going to-night, exactly at twelve, to the Grand Masquerade, at the Grand
Opera; and I am, this minute, going to embellish myself for the
occasion. I have two days between me and the packets; and, consequently,
time enough for my correspondence. Good night.
What a silly old world this is! Nothing can be farther from my wishes,
than to say any thing rude of your dear French people; but, ’pon honour,
they are the greatest fools I have seen in my life, and I have seen a
good many. If you don’t believe me, you have but to say so; and then I
will take you to the mad-house, and prove to you that all the world is
reasonable. The Boulevards have been running over with the mob these
three days; and the galleries, and windows, and roofs of the adjacent
houses are bending under their multitudes; cavalcades, the most
fantastic, are passing up one side of the street, and returning by the
other for several miles, from the earliest to the latest sun; while the
margin, and middle, and all the interstices are filled with a nation of
buffoons, trying, each one, by some ridiculous figure, attitude, or
action, to outshine his neighbour in foolery: and all are as intent upon
this, as if pursuing some main purpose of their existence.
There goes the archbishop, with a pig by the tail; and there a nun on
the back of an ass, her heels kicking its sides most ridiculously,
without increasing its speed; and there a two-years’ baby, in breeches
and silk hose, is giving pap to its papa, a great Irish giant of a man,
seven feet or more, in a slobbered bib. I saw, yesterday, a dozen, male
and female, carried along upon a platform, leisurely eating their soup
out of--what do you think?--If any thing can beggar description
altogether ’tis a Carnival.
On the last day, the _Mardi gras_, there is an extraordinary exhibition
of sumptuous equipages. An American Colonel keeps immense stables,
inferior only to the great Condés, for these occasions. He has
thirty-six horses, all of the noblest blood, and on this last day, out
he comes, with my Lord S----, who lives also in great circumstances, in
elegant rivalry. His and my lord’s faces are well known upon the
Boulevards--“Delia is not better known to our dogs.” The Colonel popped
out yesterday, seventeen carriages-and-four, and knocked all the other
showmen upon the head. He is praised this morning in every one of the
newspapers.
Maskers and harlequins are horrid in day-light, especially in Paris with
their gay liveries all besmirched in mire; they are only tolerable in
moonlight and candlelight when half the mummery is concealed. That which
delights me most is the “Masquerades,” which I will now tell you of,
though I cannot pretend to describe them in all their pomp and
circumstance.
The most frequented are those at Musard’s, and the most fashionable
those at the Grand Opera. In the former, conversation is relieved by
dancing, and many of the gentlemen are in masks and fancy costume, and
every thing is intended here for vivid impressions. The orchestra has
the extraordinary addition of the tolling of a bell, and the dragging of
a chain, mixed with a full war-whoop of human voices. At this house
there is much liberty of action with entire liberty of speech.
I saw here one of the finest figures of a woman I have ever seen, in a
cook-maid’s dress, and looking as innocent as if she had lived before
Adam and Eve. I dialogued with her now and then as she came over to my
side in the dance.--“Have you a place?” “Yes.”--“Do you like your
master?” “Very much.”--“Would’nt change?” “No.”--“How much does he give
you?” “A hundred francs a month.”--“But if I give you five hundred?”
“_Ah! c’est une autre affaire._”
At the Grand Opera the ladies only are masked and all are in the same
dress, so as to be undistinguishable. If they choose to be known for
special purposes they have then their signals. Here they are the
aggressors, and gentlemen are not allowed the first word, and no dancing
or noise interrupts the interest of the conversation. The women too, are
of the best breeding, but on these occasions, they are permitted to
knock off their fetters, and they indemnify themselves not a little for
the restraints, which tyrannic fashion imposes upon them under their
natural faces.
The Bacchanal ladies of the Greeks used to let off the steam of their
too great vivacity once a year in the same manner. The Opera contains
many thousands, and yet on all these masquerades it is filled. The
Orchestra is at the nether end, so that the music comes from afar, and
its harmony reaches the great saloon so softened that the gentlest
lady-whisper falls distinctly upon the ear. The parterre, which is
floored, and the immense stage, form an area apart for the more noisy
and romping world; and the boxes overhead have their company. The upper
ones of all are close and _grillées_, with locks, and keys, and
attendants, for persons of retired habits.
Several exquisite nymphs exhibit themselves mounted on a platform at the
extremity of the pit, having their innocent alabaster arms, and marble
necks and shoulders, naked; and other charms are trying to hide
themselves modestly behind a light gauze, but do not always succeed.
These dispose of various kinds of merchandise by lottery.
The hot-houses too pour out their treasures through the lobbies, and
amidst the blushing roses and dahlias, gallant gentlemen and ladies
whisper their loves in each others’ ears, or repose about in groves that
are full of ravishment.
----“Jamais les jardins d’Armide,
Non, jamais les jardins d’Armide,
N’ont vu de tels enchantements!”
A lady, of what beauty I know not, but from a sweet voice and pretty
eyes, was pleased to give me here a half hour of her company and chat;
who is she? She would not tell me her name, nor even her country, but,
said in taking leave, “Give my compliments to Miss C----, or if you like
better her conjugal name, Mrs. G----, the only person I know in
Philadelphia.”
I begged much her name or some feature by which I might hope, in the
accidents and recontres of life, to recognise her; I asked her a single
line of poetry, or even a word, and she gave,--the malicious thing! two
French words only, which added nothing to the information I already
possessed of her person--she gave me “_beaux yeux_,” which I, like a
gallant knight, promised to carve upon the highest rock of the
Alleghany. She had like to have carved them some where else herself.
A half hour’s conversation with this lady would certainly be in the mind
of any one, of even less taste than I may modestly pretend to, a very
sensible regret at an endless or hopeless separation. Where there are
sense and sentiment, fine eyes, harmony of voice, and elegance of form,
it is difficult not to imagine the association of every other
perfection.
I was no sooner forsaken by this amiable lady, than I had the luck to
find almost a consolation for her absence, in another, who was not less
remarkable for wit, than for sentiment, and good sense. This second had
all the easy unembarrassed air of a fashionable Frenchwoman; was
exceedingly graceful, and had a shape, that to any lady of my
acquaintance, except one, would be unpardonable.
She mystified me, and (not a difficult thing for a woman) made a fool
of me.--“How could you exchange,” said she, “the sober Luxembourg, for
the frivolous Tuileries, and how the demure philosophy of the Faubourg
St. Germain for the gaieties and levities of the Rue Neuve des
Maturins?”--“You sorceress, how can you know where I live, or have
lived?”--“In the Luxembourg you had a better look; and there the angels
hovered over you to protect you. I sent you a volume to divert you under
the shade from your melancholy, and my servant to pick you up from the
ice.--When do you go home to America? You should have gone long ago, and
not be running about Europe getting vagabond habits in this manner; you
have now been absent eight months.” I offered her at last the New World
for her name.
“You are not the first of your profession who has offered worlds that
did not belong to him. * * * I cannot, I am afraid of your
rattlesnakes.”
“One encounters greater dangers daily in the midst of Paris.”
“The ladies?”
“They resemble snakes only in the power of charming.”
“I have seen gentlemen, sometimes, bit by them.”
“Yes, both young and rich.--What an impertinent question!--For the
beauty you shall judge for yourself; and I will not place you in the
unpleasant predicament of Paris; you will incur no displeasure of
Minerva or Juno in giving me the prize.” She then removed her mask,
under the light of a brillant lamp, and discovered, not only the
prettiest face I have seen in Europe, but the one I was most anxious to
see--the face of my quondam “wife of two minutes,” whom I had once met
at the Louvre, and of whom I have spoken in a former letter.
I would give you more of her conversation; but who, but a simpleton
relates dialogues with himself? Besides, what fop is there who writes a
play, or a novel, or a letter of travels, who does not promulgate some
foolish adventure of his, at a masquerade? * * * “You cannot either in
propriety or humanity leave me without your name or address.”
“_D’accord_,--the name _or_ the address?” I foolishly chose the latter;
and she gave me her residence, with an invitation to visit her at her
No.---- in the _Via di Sancto Spirito_, Florence.
“One might as well have an eel by the tail.”
“Better have an eel by the tail than a wolf by the ears;” with this
proverb she dropped into the great ocean, and all was smooth again. This
woman, notwithstanding my immense prudence, was near pinching me by the
heart. Love was just chirping, but Duty breathed her cold breath upon
him--and he remained unhatched.
I know of nothing that communicates half so much enjoyment to human
life, as an educated woman. I mean one who joins social accomplishment,
to literary instruction. Her conversation,
“More glad to me than to a miser money is.”
And a woman, I believe, is nowhere so admirable in wit, as under cover
of a mask. She then expresses her own thoughts; the rein and curb are
removed from her imagination, which expatiates more wildly from its
previous restraints.
Nor are her triumphs merely intellectual, though not shared with feature
or complexion, for in such cases the fancy outruns even the most vivid
reality. Pliny thought Apelles had improved his Venus by leaving her
unfinished; for the spectator would bring out beauties from the unformed
marble, beyond the skill even of the divine artist.
There is besides, the emotion, the excitement of curiosity, of mystery,
of adventure, and the interest of a first meeting and conversation, not
cooled by a gradual acquaintance, which lend many new attractions to a
woman, and which give a charm to the amusement of the masquerade, to
which few minds can be insensible.
But why have not our Solons allowed you ladies masks in
Pennsylvania?--Because they thought you better disguised in your own
faces. No such thing; they thought them dangerous to your morals. Ladies
think, like partridges, if their heads are hid, all is safe; but our
legislators, who were wise and provident, looked out for a better
security.
I have myself found one or two of the Christian virtues at a masquerade,
very inconvenient, to say the least of them. Such amusements add but
little to the immoralities of these old and refined communities;
but the later the day the better to introduce them into a new
country,--especially into the cloisters of your too innocent Hills. The
folly, the nonsense, the wickedness of the world is far beyond the
conception of you shepherdesses.
I placed myself last night under the escort of persons well versed in
all the menus-plaisirs of the town, and passed the night out to see
human nature in a part of her great book, which I had not yet perused. I
followed the two biggest rogues of Paris for information, as one follows
the pigs to get truffles.
The Palais Royal had our first visit. Here were both sexes in their
fancy dresses and masks, and here was the dance in all its wantonness;
“Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
Matura Virgo;”
not gross absolutely, but indecency could not easily conceal herself
under a thinner covering. Ladies do not venture here for the world,
unless sometimes for mere curiosity, and well masked, as the Pagan
deities used to travel about in mortal disguises to see the iniquities
of men.
Near this place we descended into an immense room under ground. Here
were trulls in visors, and scavengers in lily-tinctured cravats. It was
the rabble in its court dresses. At the farthest end of the room rushed
out a savage upon a stage and puffed upon twenty instruments; beat
furiously a range of drums with his toes, hands, head, heels, &c. to the
infinite delight of the merry spectators. Don’t think, gentlemen, you
have all the fun at the Tuileries.--My companions did not think it safe
to abide long in this place. “We are not concerned for ourselves,” said
they, “but we are afraid you might be mistaken for a gentleman;” and we
set out for Porte St. Martin.
Here we introduced ourselves to the Masked Balls. It was near morning
and the common world had danced itself into languors. The dance here is
_unique_; every motion of the limbs is an eloquent and pathetic
language, especially the _gallopade_. You would go a long way to see a
French woman of the Porte St. Martin _gallop_. The gray hairs, too, of
both sexes, dance here.
Every here and there we saw an old thing of a woman, whose follies long
ago have gone to seed, tricked out in all the magnificence of ribbons,
and kindling her last efforts in the dance. In the private rooms, many,
fagged out by the labours of the week, were strewed about upon chairs
and sofas, or upon the floor, either faint and languishing, or wrapped
in sleep. One, a beautiful woman, lay outstretched, her petticoats
dishevelled, her head upon the crossed-legs of her beau, a half sloven,
half fop in silk breeches and a dirty shirt, who slept upright upon a
chair; another supine, her mouth open, snored towards Heaven; and every
where were plenty of legs, arms and bosoms, disdaining any other
covering than the sky.--They are gloriously jolly at the _Porte St.
Martin_, of a _Mardigras_, that’s certain.
About daylight we arrived at the “_Descente de la Courtille_.” This is
the blackguard rendezvous outside the gate so celebrated. All the élite
of the Parisian ragamuffins was here.--“Stand out of the way, you fellow
without a shirt.”--“Stand out of the way yourself, you sloven. When you
die they’ll not think it necessary to bury you. You can’t smell worse.”
We got through this crowd with long struggles in a close carriage; for
the custom is to bespatter with filth any one appearing in a decent
garb. Paris furnishes for her general parades the most genteel rabble in
the world, and I was not aware she could rake together such an ungodly
multitude for this occasion.
I went from the street into some of their retired places of revelry.
Here many a one had lost his “upright shape,” and was sprawling, male
and female, about the rooms and entries; brawny men and weather beaten
_poissardes_, half covered with rags. In the streets were various
entertaining sights. One (a sober man by some miracle) was running after
his tipsy wife, and as unhappy about her as a hen that has hatched a
duck.
Another had come to an equilibrium, and was struggling forward, yet
standing still, as one in a night-mare, or as a weather-cock taking
resolutions against the wind; and another was rendering up to Bacchus an
account of the night’s debauch. Finally, there was one administering a
kicking to a retreating enemy, which seemed quite a novelty in Paris,
and excited great interest. I was glad to see that the French, when they
do resort to violence, prefer that which alone is founded on principles
of humanity.
This is the “_Descente de la Courtille_.” It is one of the places where
one sees the nearest approach of our race to the lower animals; it is
the connecting link.
We returned home at eight, the fashionable hour. To go to bed at night,
or rise in the morning, is all out of fashion. The sun was made for the
rabble.... _Carnival_ means, farewell to flesh, and indeed there will be
not much flesh on my bones when it is over. _Lent_ means quiet and rest,
and comes very properly immediately after it.
It is to-day the birth-day of Washington, and you are no doubt honouring
it with wine and mirth and festivity. I have paid also my tribute to its
sacred memory; and who knows but this humble respect, in the “Rue Neuve
des Maturins,” is as welcome to his great spirit, which is now above the
reach of human vanities, as the pomp of your national festivals.
It is purity of heart that makes devotion acceptable in Heaven, and not
the magnificence of the worship. I told my two French convives at table
(their glasses being filled) it was Washington’s _fête_, and they stood
up instinctively and drank to his memory, pronouncing his name only, in
looking towards Heaven.--To Heaven he has gone by the general consent of
mankind. “Not as Mahomet, for he needed not the fiction of a miracle to
make him immortal; nor as Elijah, since recorded time has not pointed
out the being upon whom his mantle may descend; but (in humble
imitation) as the Great Architect from created universe, to contemplate
the stupendous monument his wisdom had erected.” After this I may leave
the rest of this page blank. I bid you affectionately good night.
LETTER XXI.
Evening Parties at the Duchess d’Abrantes’.--Mode of
admission.--The Weather.--Suicides.--Madame le Norman the
Sibyl.--Parisian Réunions.--Manners of Frenchwomen.--American
Soirées.--Furniture.--Hints on Etiquette.--Manners in Parisian High
Life.--Conversation.--Dress.--Qualifications for an
Exquisite.--Smoking.--Rules for dinner.
PARIS, April 15th, 1836.
What shall I put in this letter? I have not thought of a thing, and here
is only a day between me and the mail, and not wit enough in my head to
“stop the eye of Helen’s needle.” I will tell you two words of the
Duchess d’Abrantes, an old acquaintance of yours, and her evening
parties to begin with; and leave the rest to chance.
Parties, here, are not very exclusive. The Romans used to allow an
invited guest to bring a friend along, as his “shadow;” so it is in
Paris, only that you are allowed sometimes two or three shadows,
according to your intimacy or favour. It is usual, if you know a friend
going to a party, to sue, through his interest, for the privilege of a
ticket. It is usual to say, Mr. S.--if you wish to go to M. Thiers’
to-morrow night I have a ticket for you. In this way without knowing any
thing of the hostess, you are admitted to her saloon.
M. Le Baron de B----, whose acquaintance I owe altogether to my own
merits, unlocks the doors of this upper story of the world to me as
often as I please to accept his politeness, which I do sparingly. The
Duchess is the centre of a literary circle which meets regularly at her
house, once a week, for conversation. They do not eat themselves into a
reputation for polite learning here, as with us. The old lady has come
down from the anti-revolutionary times, and is, no doubt, a good sample
of the ancient French.
And how do these upper sort of folks conduct a _soirée_? Suppose
yourself a Duchess, and I will tell you.--Your servants in livery will
introduce your guests from the ante-chamber, calling out their names;
and they, on entering, will make you bows and grimaces by the dozen.
You also must go through your exercise. If a Duke, stand up straight, if
a Marquis half way up, if a Count a little way up, if a Baron, just bend
a little the hinges of your knees; and as for a mere gentleman, why any
common week-day inclination of the head will suffice.
Your servants too will be drilled.--_Monsieur le Prince de
Talleyrand!_--This must be pronounced with a loud and distinct voice,
banging open both the folding doors; and the buzz for a while must cease
through the saloon. (_vive sensation!_)--And the note of dignity must be
observed down through the subordinate visitors; till you hear in a soft
soprano, on G flat, just audible, _Monsieur Gentigolard!_ Then you will
see squeezing in by the door a little ajar, an individual with his cloak
by the tip end, and his knees encouraging each other--blinking something
like an owl introduced to the day-light. (_Léger mouvement à gauche._)
It was my luck to be born in a little nook of the backwoods, by the side
of a hoar hill of the Tuscarora, where the eagle builds its eyrie, and
the wild cat rears its kittens; it was not my choice, but my mother, who
had the whole arrangement of the matter, would have it so; and I had
never seen a Duchess. In coming up the stairs I had to work myself up
into a fit of aristocracy. “Mr. John,” said I, “you are a good looking
man, and fashionably dressed; your father was a soldier in the
Revolution--a major at St. Clair’s defeat; besides, you are yourself of
rather a noble descent, your wife’s grandmother was the daughter of
James Blakely, admiral ----.” With these encouragements I stepped from
the Broad Mountain into the saloon of the Duchess.
However, I was not greatly diverted _chèz madame la Duchesse_. I did not
feel any of my faculties much tickled except curiosity, and the flutter
of novelty is soon over; one soon gets used to be surprised. I had a
kind of hum-drum talk with an old general, who fought me the Revolution
over again, beginning with the Bastille. I might have been numbered
among its victims, but I fortunately thought of a _bon-mot_ of
Aristotle: I wonder any one has ears to hear you, who has legs to run
away from you--so I ran home to bed and dreamt of the battle of
Waterloo.
The French in high life have become a more grave and thinking people
than formerly, but I believe they cannot substitute any qualities
without injury, in the place of their natural levity and cheerfulness.
They cannot make themselves more amiable than they were in the reign of
Madame du Deffand and Madame Geoffrin. The proportion of ladies in the
saloon of the Duchess was quite scanty. This ought to be the case where
a woman is the centre of attraction, but it is not to my taste. If I had
run foul of a woman this evening, instead of this _vieille moustache_, I
should not have had a night-mare of Lord Wellington.
And now, what shall I do with these two sheets, since I have done with
the Duchess? I will talk about the weather. Hezekiah would have made no
kind of figure here with his dial. Mothers feed their children on the
fog with a spoon, as you do them on pap. What a litter of idiots these
vapours will breed! I just swim about in them in a kind of unconscious
imbecility of intellect. I intend to try some, one of these days, if I
can count four. As for the streets, one cannot put a foot upon them,
without being splashed half way up to the chin, with every kind of
immundicity.
No one ever thinks of going into “Jean Jaques Rousseau,” except in a fit
of despair, as I do when I expect your letters. Why, there was a man,
who went through the streets a few days ago, to put a letter in the
office, and he sunk three leagues in the mud; he has not been heard of
since. The French remedy for such weather is charcoal; to be _asphyxied_
is a natural death here.
A French girl being crossed in love the other day, and killing herself
the usual charcoal way, kept a journal of her sensations:--“At twelve,
difficulty of respiration and cold sweat; at twelve and a quarter,
violent pain in the chest, &c.”--Speaking of suicide, here are some
curious statistics:--for love, two and a half women to one man; for
reverses of fortune, three men to a woman; and five men to a woman for
baffled ambition. Of the men, the greater number from thirty-five to
forty-five; of women, from twenty-five to thirty-five; and twice as many
girls as boys before the age of fifteen--so say Talset’s Tables. Two
women to a man for love, implies that either men have the greater
attractions, or women the greater sensibility--which is it? I will
finish this paragraph with an adventure of a few days ago, which comes
in apropos enough, talking about charcoal.
There lives in the Rue de Tournon an old Sibyl called _Madame le
Norman_, whom all persons of sense or nonsense, who are curious about
the future, visit. She can spell the stars, and she reads the destinies,
as I do the _Journal des Debats_, and she acquired such a fame by
predicting the overthrow of Napoleon, that her house has been literally
beset ever since by petitioners. You have to bespeak her a week a-head.
A great comfort she is to the young gentlemen, whose fathers won’t die,
and she gives hopes to married ladies, who have old husbands.
Well, this prophetic old woman told Doctor C.--he had a wife and two
children in a foreign land pining after him, which proves she can see
behind as well as before; and that he would make acquaintance this week
with a noble lady--all true! Then she held my hand, and cast a peering
look upon it, and thrice shook her head. Alas! she saw in my face a
great many “drowning marks.”
So you see there is no chance in the world, unless your prayers shall
reverse the fates, of my ever getting home. I will tell you why I was
induced to go on this expedition to Delphos, for which I am sorry now,
for I think, like Julius Cæsar, that the mind of man should be ignorant
of its fate--it was to accompany your old acquaintance, ----, who has
fallen desperately in love with a Frenchwoman--_Mais, ma chère, vous
n’en avez pas l’idée!_
In fine, he is so in love, that he has serious thoughts of leaving off
chewing tobacco. It was to gratify him that I went, as he wanted to see
the end of this Frenchwoman. And now, with this fortune-teller, and the
suicides, the bad weather, and a Virginia doctor, I have got rid of a
whole page of blank paper, and, ’pon honour, I had no other motive for
calling them to your notice.
I will go back to my original text, and try to be sensible. I did wish
to decline to-day all that required reflection; I am also no great
professor in this kind of lore, but I find no other subject.--Evening
visits and gossipings have now taken place of the tipsy rompings of the
carnival. The midnight orgies are hushed, and the blazing tapers and
glittering gems are quenched until the return of a new year. Society has
put on a light, easy, and decorous garb, which it will wear for the rest
of the season; fashion rigorously forbidding any departure from its
chaste simplicity.
Conversation is now the main object of social intercourse, and every
thing is made to contribute to its enjoyment. It is admitted by those
who are best able to judge, that the Paris “_Réunions_” of this season,
form the very best school that is known of colloquial accomplishment;
and that they have a charm which other nations have not found the secret
of communicating to such pastimes. The largest share of this praise is,
of course, due to the women. Whether it be the language, better suited
than ours to conversation, or a constitutional gaiety, or vanity, which
is so much more amiable than pride, I know not; but a well bred
Frenchwoman is certainly the most agreeable creature of which the world
has any example.
I have often seen between me and the heaven of a fine woman’s face in
America, an impracticable distance--a bright star in the firmament,
which one must be content to worship, without the hope of ever reaching
its elevation. I have often been confounded so, in my tenderer years, by
the awfulness of American dignity, as to be afraid of my own voice; and
I have often felt in the presence of a lady--as if made by a carpenter.
Such a feeling, in the humanity and gentleness of French affability, is
unknown. You breathe freely, and retain the natural use of your
faculties, physical and intellectual. A Frenchwoman’s politeness levels
every distinction; the modest man is relieved of his diffidence, and the
humble raised to self-esteem, by her gracious civilities; and a lady of
elevated rank always strips herself, before an ordinary mortal, of her
rays, that he may approach her without being consumed. Nor does the
Frenchwoman lose anything of her dignity in this familiarity; she speaks
with kindness, and even affection to her servants, and yet is secure of
their respect and obedience.
I have come into the opinion that a lady has no occasion to bristle up
her crest in defence of her quality, or bring around it the protection
of reserve or haughtiness; and that her honour, unless the garrison is
corrupt, is safe in its natural defences.--It is not necessary to say
that under such good instruction the French gentlemen are also highly
polished and amiable. There is not one of them who does not set apart
some portion of the twenty-four hours for social amusement, and it is
the evening, when the mind is weary of business or study, that most
requires such relaxations.
In the evening, then, all the world is abroad; and it is reasonable to
suppose that wit must have attained its highest degree of pungency, and
style every ingredient of perfection, with such advantages. A
Frenchman’s ambition is to shine, and he comes armed at all points,
exactly _cap-a-pie_ for the occasion; above all, he takes care that the
stimulus of ardent liquors, and a heavy indigestible meal at the dinner
table, may not for the rest of the day blunt the edge of his vivacity
and enjoyment.
I have seen a few of these parties, enough to judge of the rest. Each
house is “at home,” at least once a-week, and the invitations are
general for the season, or occasional, and the regular guests have the
privilege of bringing a friend. I went last night to Civiale’s, the
eminent surgeon’s. One room was filled with miscellaneous company,
another with gentlemen only, at billiards, &c.
All was in a buzz of merriment, and without any show of ceremonious
restraint--all was “fortuitous elegance, and unstudied grace,” and this
is one of Johnson’s definitions of happiness. “Come to-morrow night,”
said C----, “and you will hear one of your countrywomen play; her talent
is not second to any lady’s of Paris.”--Who is she? from Boston.--I
have said nothing of the American “soirées” here, which are nearly as
at home, but more lively; I suppose from the contagious example, and
from the natural warmth of a friendly meeting in a foreign country. To a
stranger who arrives, they are at once a consolation and an enjoyment;
and it is to be hoped that a vicious emulation of sumptuousness, every
day increasing, may not disturb their frequency and cordiality.
The furniture of fashionable rooms here is more tasteful, and usually
more elegant than in our richest houses. The propriety of colours, and
the harmony of arrangement, and such things are with many persons the
study of a whole life. Richness is the praise of the English dames, and
chasteness and concinnity of the French.
In England where primogeniture preserves property indivisible, a house
is furnished from a remote antiquity, and there is encouragement to
taste and expense; but what motive is there to furnish in our country,
where Joseph has as much as Reuben, and where the next day after the
owner’s decease, the furniture encounters the auctioneer’s hammer; and
where fashion, too, turns a house wrong side out every six years.
Besides, what serves it to put costly years. Besides, what serves it to
put costly sums upon what is destined to be scraped and cut up by one’s
dozen of spoilt children, or to be carved into notches by one’s cousins
of Kentucky?
Now with what shall I fill this immense space which remains?--Oh, I will
give you all the precepts and aphorisms I can think of, of Paris good
breeding. They will be so useful to you in the “coal region.”
You may give your arm to a gentleman in public, but don’t give him both
your arms.
Keep on your gloves at church; take them off when you go to bed.
Don’t lick your plate, but imbibe the sauce with a little bread in the
left hand; holding a silver fork in your right.
When you dine out, you may blow your nose with the table-cloth, if they
don’t give you napkins; otherwise it would be thought improper. Don’t
use the tail of your frock; this gives offence to refined people,
generally speaking.
Don’t ask for the _ankle_ of a chicken; ladies say _leg_ now at table
without impropriety.
When full tilt in the street, bow, and don’t curtsey. Just do you try
how inconvenient it is to curtsey in the operation of fast walking;
besides, your frock gets in the mud.
If you cannot go to the “Trinity” to prayers, don’t forget to send your
card.
If you meet a lady on the Boulevards of Pottsville, or other public
promenade, don’t salute her, unless she first gives you some token of
recognition; if you meet her in Mann and William’s Mine two miles under
ground, you may. This invisibility gives a lady a chance of doing in
public what she chooses;--of carrying some tripe, or a leg of mutton
home to dinner. If you see a lady at her door or window in dishabille,
to salute her is inexcusable. If you espy her straying with a gentleman
amongst romantic shades of the wizard Mill Creek, or by the wild cliff
which overhangs the Tumbling Run, tapestried with honeysuckles, you must
whistle Yankee Doodle, so as to leave her the impression that she is
unobserved.
If you take a walk on Guinea Hill, and Black Bill uncovers, take off
your hat also; if his _curvature vertebrale_ be forty-five degrees,
yours must be forty-six; it won’t do to be outdone by Congo negroes.
Never write a catalogue of your linen for the washer-woman. He is a
filthy man, who knows the number of his shirts. And get them made at
Formin’s of the Rue Richelieu. He makes shirts _à ravir_; see
advertisement; “_Une chemise bien faite a été jusqu’ici un phenomène,
&c._” Whatever position you may give your body, his shirts remained
unruffled: many a man’s skin don’t fit half so perfectly.
If you meet a lady in public with a strange gentleman, return her salute
with your hat in your left hand, and walk on; or if she stop you, bow to
the gentleman also, and respect his rights. I walked through the
Tuileries the other day with a lady, and met--I am sorry it was an
American, who, intervening, _bummed_ me out of the lady’s acquaintance,
without noticing me. This is excessively ill-bred, and an insult to the
lady. I have not forgotten him, and I don’t know that I shall.
A Parisian lady possesses greater moral, as well as physical strength
than the lady of our cities. In Philadelphia, she cannot, for her little
soul, venture out into a public place without a life guard, no more than
Louis Philippe; and even then she is shy, and picks her steps, trembling
in her knees and heart.--“Pa, don’t you go that way, there’s a man!” Now
a Frenchwoman does not care to go out of the way of a man--any more than
the French army out of the way of the Bedouins. She just takes hold of
her _caniche_ in one hand, and walks out without caring for the
king.--Oh my! and what’s a _caniche_?--A little curly dog: she holds it
by a string, and it walks alongside of her, and with the protection only
of this little shaggy animal she feels herself impregnably fortified
against the whole sex.
When a gentleman escorts a lady to dinner he must not stick his elbows
into her ribs, and hang her to him, as his mantle to a post. Politeness
requires him to move exactly two feet and a half behind her, and a
little to the left. The gait is not a light matter in feminine graces;
it is, indeed, one of the attributes by which a woman is most admired.
The Pious Æneas did not recognise his mother as a goddess, until she had
turned tail to him in this manner; and when Juno said, “I _walk_ the
queen of Heaven,” do you think she had Jupiter by the arm? French
etiquette allows a lady every chance of striking out a beauty--even to
giving her the black men at the chess-board to show off her white and
tapering fingers.
Never look at your glove when you take it off to shake hands.--You only
want to show that Walker made it, or draw attention to the gem that
sparkles under it. The grand rule is in bringing out a grace, that the
intention be concealed--besides, your attention is due to the
individual to whom you have proffered your civilities.
If you come to Paris, you are to have but one child--babies are going
out of fashion.--And you must call it “Emile” (after Rousseau’s) and
then put it out to nurse.
I intreat you to remember there is no cooing over one’s little wife
here; it looks uxorious, which is a great scandal. It is not reputable
to either party, implying either that the husband is jealous, (and he
would rather be hanged,) or that the wife is a disagreeable thing, (and
she would rather be crucified,) and cannot get a beau.
I have seen ladies here often obliged--not having any thing at hand but
their husbands--to forego the pleasure of the finest fêtes and parties.
I have often had wives thrown in my face on such occasions. This custom
has an exhilarating effect upon social vivacity. There is nothing so
stupid in nature as one’s husband generally speaking. He has travelled
his wife’s mind over and over, and what can he have to say?--and _vice
versa_; in his neighbour’s he has a new and unexplored territory; and a
stranger suggests new attentions, and gives a new tone of feeling.
Besides a little mixture of evil seems necessary with every good. The
conjugal feelings are pure, honest and domestic, but like all the
benevolent affections, are rather unentertaining, it is known that
nothing gives wit so abundantly as a little malice.
The Parisian public does not suffer a fine woman to be monopolised; she
has social as well as domestic duties; and if the husband wants her
company, why go abroad with her? Somebody’s lordship once said that a
married woman was nothing but an appropriated girl. His lordship had not
travelled on the Continent. I know that in your town, where a married
couple grow together like Juno’s swans, or like those “two cherries” in
Shakspeare, such a custom must seem abominable.
Ladies kiss and don’t shake hands in Paris. Gentlemen kiss too, but only
on great occasions. I was kissed the other day by a man for the first
time. It was one of the most trying situations of my life. I felt like
that personage who was strangled by Hercules.--See the picture in the
mythology.
In Parisian high life, husbands and wives do not lodge conjointly. They
visit at New-Years; they send also to inquire about each other’s
health, and they meet out occasionally at parties. Even among the less
fashionable, they occupy separate chambers, which has this
inconvenience, that that great court of Chancery, the “Curtain
Lectures,” leaves many important cases untried.--Recollect, however,
that the husband meeting the wife accidentally in company, always treats
her with marked attentions; he stops at the end of every five words to
say “My dear,” and then he needs not speak to her till they meet again
at the next party.
Ladies here never gossip of one another’s demerits, which goes well nigh
to make them all honest. Also a lady having “an affair,” makes no parade
of it. Her lover is the very last person in the community who runs any
risk of being suspected; and her gallantries, if known, bring no
ridicule upon her husband, or tarnish in the least his reputation among
other ladies. In all nature I know of nothing so unsuspicious as the
French husbands. They have got, each one, nearly into the state of that
most unbelieving Greek, who doubted of every thing, and at last doubted
that he doubted. I will tell you a story which made me laugh this
morning.
A gentleman called at the Hotel and asked the porter; “Where does M. O.
V. T. live?” “Sir, there are three of that name in Paris.” “I allude to
the physician.” “They are all three physicians.” “I mean the physician
to the Royal family.” “Sir, they are all three.” “_Que diable! je veux
dire celui qui est cocu._” “_Ah, Monsieur, ils le sont tous les trois!_”
I tell you this only for its pleasantry, and not to hint the frequency
of such cases. I have, indeed, heard of one French husband, who was
jealous a little while. He flew at his wife’s lover with a knife, and
perhaps would have killed him, but she rushed between, and seizing his
arm, exclaimed: “_Arrête, malheureux, tu vas tuer le père de tes
enfans!_” and the knife fell from his paternal hands.
In conversation there is a language of prudery, and a language of
grossness.--These are the extremes, and propriety is somewhere about the
middle. Human nature, especially in large cities, does not bear
exquisite refinement. To refine, is to be indelicate; to hide, is to
discover. In America, we get, in some places, into the very wantonness
of delicacy, and decency herself becomes absolutely indecent. There are
two sorts of persons affected in this way; the modest woman just
stepping into the world, and the woman, who has been in it too much.
The latter “adds to the bloom of her cheek in exact proportion to the
diminution of her modesty.”
You have acquitted me fully of this charge of prudery in several of your
letters--much obliged. I wish I could be as easily absolved from the
opposite offence. All I can say in mitigation, is, that living a whole
year in Paris, and describing Parisian manners makes it very difficult
not to incur such a blame from you Pottsvillians. I may observe,
however, that freedoms are often permitted in one person, which may be
very blameable in others, depending entirely upon the comparative
innocency of their lives. Is Lafontaine ever taxed with indecency? Yet
in words he is a libertine without a rival;--and your baby, too, may
kick up its heels and do a good many things that would be very
unbecoming in its mother.
When you come to Paris you may talk of the eloquent preacher and the
music at St. Roch with raptures; but recollect you cannot do a more
silly thing than to make any show of religion. Though you may know your
Bible by heart, it will be well sometimes to ask, who Samuel was, or
David, or Moses, by way of recommending your good breeding.
If a coach stops at your door and brings you an acquaintance up the
stairs, you must say in a fret; “Here is that sickening thing again; now
I shall be teazed with her insipid talk all the morning. Why did they
let her in?”--“My dear Caroline I am so rejoiced to see you!” and then
you must jump about her neck.--“I was so dull, and just wanted your
sweet countenance and wit to enliven me.”--This is only a little
fashionable air, and does not mean any thing. The French profess more
violent affection before your face and employ more saucy ridicule behind
your back, than any other people; but the mass of kindness and
benevolence is about as great here as in other countries.--Complimentary
phrases are in no country to be taken literally. In Paris, if a man
swears he loves you, and will share his last crumb with you, he means of
course that you are to pay for it.
In taking leave of a lady, see her to your chamber door, and then hold
the door a little ajar, and wait until she has turned round and given
you the valedictory smile; then it is an affair finished. You are not to
follow to the street. You rub your lamp, that is, you ring a bell, and
a genius appears to conduct her. This leaves her at liberty with respect
to her equipage.
Nothing is so ill-bred as officious assiduities. Good breeding never
makes a fuss; it takes good care of a lady when her safety and real
comfort are concerned, with kindness, but not officiousness. Anticipate
all her wants, gratify all her whims, and overload her with superfluous
civilities, and you make her ungrateful, selfish, disagreeable. She will
regard your neglects as offences, and your kindnesses as dues that
enjoin no acknowledgment. You know what unhappy, disagreeable things
spoiled children are, and in their infantine grace and innocence how
amiable; their mammas may be spoiled in the same way, and when spoiled
are equally detestable. _Nota bene_: the papas may be spoiled too.
When you pay a visit, go away rather too soon than too late; leave
people always a little hungry of your company; unless you are of the
class of ladies, who “make hungry where most they satisfy.”
I advise you in your dress not to follow too implicitly the fashions of
Europe, and especially not to exaggerate, which is so common with
imitators. In bowing with the reverence to French fashions, which is
becoming in all womankind, have a decent respect to the human shapes and
appearances. Why, I have seen bustles or bishops, or what do you call
them, put up even in Chestnut-street by some of you, who, under the Rump
Parliament, would have been taken up for a libel.
If you are well dressed, no one meeting you will ask who made your
frock. One stares at the woman, and the frock is unseen. Do you believe
that any one asks Madame la Hon who made her chapeau; or the pretty
Countess de Vaudrueil, or the Duchess de Guiche, who plaited those
diamonds, more beautiful than the starry firmament, upon their turbans;
or the Duchess de Plaisance who made her shoe? No, no, the heart is full
of the little foot, and there is no room there for the shoemakers and
mantua-makers.
Don’t do things always the same way. If, for example, you hand a
gentleman anything (a bit of anthracite of the “Peacock Vein,” or a
joint of the railroad) do it with a graceful simplicity. I know an
elegant of your village, polished, to be sure, only with coal-dust, who
always brings his hand inconveniently to his heart as the
starting-place, and then sets off in a beautiful hyperbola, and always
with a velocity geometrically progressive. Do you be various; look
sometimes beautiful; look sometimes well, and fore Haven’s sake, if you
can, look sometimes ugly. She who wears a pretty cap every day, because
it is a pretty cap, is “the cap of all the fools.”
In Paris scandal is reduced to a minimum, for two reasons; first, from
the variety of events;--a large city swallows at a meal, what would feed
your towns for a whole month: and secondly, because what we call
breaking three or four of the commandments is here no sin. As for
elopements there are none; no occasion to run away.
News and coffee are taken usually together, and both must be hot. It is
low breeding to talk of anything which happened three days ago; the news
of the last week is the last year’s almanack. A Parisian gentleman never
speaks but of great events, and those which are just born; nor does he
rashly speak of Racine or Corneille, or such like antiquated authors; it
smacks of the Provinces.
To be an exquisite, the qualifications are to talk of the opera and the
races, and play at whist, dine at the _Cercle des Etrangers_, make a
leg, walk in a quadrille, and _avoir la plus jolie maitresse de Paris_.
It also recommends one greatly to have a pale face, and emaciated
shanks; implying a long course of high living; besides it gives a modish
languor to one’s air; it is exceedingly genteel. It is understood of
course, that one must be a useful man about a woman, and have one’s
pocket stuffed with her little conveniences. If she wants a pin, his
pincushion is at her service; or a needle, he must have all the numbers
from six to a dozen.
To be a gentleman of the _bon ton_, it is necessary not to be suspected
of any useful employment, or of regulating life by any rule of order or
economy; above all, not to be without some intrigue. Three or four
persons should always be jealous of one at the same time.
With a moderate pair of whiskers and mustachios, with a little tuft on
the inferior lip, and all trimmed like the garden of Versailles, he is a
classic; but if you see a grisly monster, with the beard of a Scotch
boar, and his hair flowing in all its St. Simonian shagginess about his
shoulders, and with the sallow complexion of a quateroon, seated by the
side of a smooth and elegant female, of an afternoon in the Tuileries,
he is of the romantic school--I wonder you women don’t set your faces
against these beards!
Gentlemen smoke now in Europe every where, but chew and spit nowhere. I
have observed that the French Exchange, where several thousand persons
daily congregate upon a white marble floor, is always pure from the
contamination of spitting. The French are, however, often disagreeable,
by spitting in their handkerchiefs. The best model, they say, in such
matters, is an English gentleman. The ancient Persians were a still
better. An Englishman often gets into good, sometimes bad customs, from
a pure antigallic opposition, as Lord Burleigh turned out his toes,
because Sir Christopher Hatton turned his in.
The Frenchman is hyperbolical, and the Englishman not even emphatic; the
one makes loud expressions, the other none; the one spits in his pocket,
and the other refuses to spit at all. However, there is no need of
national antipathies to dissuade mankind from chewing tobacco, which is
certainly one of the most aggravated indecencies that human nature has
been guilty of. How it should exist where there are ladies, I do not
conceive, and, least of all, do I conceive how it should exist in
Philadelphia, the most gynocratic of all cities.
But I smell the dinner, and since I am in the way of aphorisms, I will
give you a few to eat as a dessert, and to fill the rest of this page.
In your cookery, avoid all high seasonings, and coarse flavours, they
are vulgar. Cayenne, curry, allspice, and walnut pickles, and all such
inflammatory dishes, are banished from the French kitchen entirely. If
even the butter has a little crumb of salt in it, it is obliged, like
the President’s Message, to make an apology for its sauciness. Every
thing is served, as far as possible, in its own juices.
Even the ladies have left off aromatics and Eau de Cologne only keeps
its place upon the toilet. High seasonings for meat are used only as
antiseptics. If you ask a company to dinner, either dine out yourself,
or conceal your authority, by mixing, as they do in Paris,
undistinguishably with your guests. The guest must feel at his ease.
And, take care to observe antipathies and affinities in the distribution
of the seats. How many sin against this rule. I have known a lawyer put
alongside of a judge!
The French used to place a gentleman by a lady, and both drank from the
same cup, and ate from the same plate; sometimes the gentleman would put
the bite into the lady’s mouth. I am sorry--sometimes I am glad--that
this turtledove way of eating has gone out of fashion.
The table in America presents you the entire meal at a single view--in
some houses including the dessert; and while the dishes are lugged fifty
yards from the kitchen, and await then the ladies, fixing themselves,
what do you think has happened? Why, the jellies are coddled, the
drawn-butter has gone into _blanc-mange_, the beef gravy to tallow, and
the chickens to goose-flesh--in a word, nothing is hot but the butter.
It may be laid down as a rule, that no man can dine who sees his dinner.
Pray you observe a succession and analogy of dishes. I entreat you at
least that the fish may be hot, and that it may not wait an hour for its
sauce. And take care that your waiters have a proper acquaintance with
human nature and its wants, and that they be penetrated with a sense of
their duties. They must understand congruities, and know the desires
and appetites of a guest from his countenance.
I have seen countries, where if one asks for mutton, he has to ask for
turnips also! I have seen servants in our country, who, all the while
you are in agony for a dish, are standing and gaping at the
ceiling--fellows whom Heliogabalus would have crucified immediately
after dinner. A French garçon told me he knew a man’s wants--if a
gentlemanly eater--by the back of his neck. “I was puzzled,” said he,
“the other day by an American--he wanted a glass of milk just after his
soup.”
To remove a plate too soon by officiousness, is a monstrous fault; and
to make a clatter among the dishes is excessively annoying. What a
hurly-burly at an American dinner!--At the Rocher Cancale you would
think the servants were bearing along the sacred things of Mother
Vesta--their feet are muffled, the dishes are of velvet. In barbarous
times, a monstrous baron used to bring the dinner into his hall, by
servants on horseback. A good housekeeper now, by placing his
dining-room and kitchen in contiguity, and all accessories at the side
of their principals, studies that their services may be almost
invisible.--A host of a delicate taste never introduces one, but as
they do a ghost at a play, where the occasion is indispensable--_nodus
nisi vindice dignus_. These four words of Latin just saved their
distance, and I have only room to add--good night.
LETTER XXII.
The Lap-dog.--The Dame Blanche.--The Beauty in a Gallery.--The
Lingère.--Madame Frederic.--Fête de Longchamps.--Parisian
Fashions.--Holy Concerts.--Pretty Women.--Empire of Fashion.--Reign
of Beauty.--The Fashionable Lady.
May, 1836.
I have just had yours of the 4th of April, and have seen two of Miss
Kitty’s, very acid. Doctor ---- let one of them fall in the Seine from
the Pont Neuf, and it made lemonade to St. Cloud. Poor Miss Kitty! I
wish she had such a husband as her mother, who, instead of going to
carnivals, and masquerades, and receptions, and such places, and giving
uneasiness to his wife, stays at home and looks cross all the evening,
by the fire-side.--I walked out this morning in one of these domestic
fits, and kicked a lady’s lap-dog in the Tuileries, and was called to
account for it by a pair of mustachios like the horns of a centipede,
and I got off only by making an apology to the lady and the
puppy--(smiling to her and patting the dog a little) which I would not
have done under the administration of James Madison.
This happened just by the statue of Lucretia, who used to stay at home
also in the same way of an evening in spinning; it would have been,
perhaps, better for both of us to have mixed a little more in the
amusements of the town. The fact is, it puzzles the best of us to know
how to behave ourselves. One may fall, like the Roman lady into
difficulties at home, and another into temptations abroad. But alas,
poor Kitty!--Beware of telling her what I am going to relate to you. You
know what a thing jealousy is. Doctor ---- has fallen in love with a
French woman. To be sure, she is one of the most glorious beauties of
Paris, admired by the very first nobility--by the Duke of Orleans, by
the Duke of Nemours, and by the Duke of I don’t know what else; and if
the truth was known, I believe the king himself is fond of her. If you
had only seen her last night at her harp!--a fine woman is dangerous in
any shape whatever; but when she adds music to her charms--one
surrenders at discretion.
If you had heard her wild notes, as they thrilled upon the wires, and as
her fluttering voice softened and expired upon the listening ear, you
would not yourself have blamed a little infidelity towards one’s wife,
especially all the way to Paris. I hate to keep you in pain, so I will
tell you at once her name.--What makes it a little more unhappy perhaps
is, that she is a lady of rather a doubtful reputation; and belongs at
present to the “Opera Comique:” In fine, if you will absolutely know, it
was the “_Dame Blanche_.”
And now that I am in the chapter of accidents, I may as well tell you
that your old acquaintance, D. D--, on Saturday night, was found
dead--(say nothing of this to his sister, she will be so afflicted)--he
was found dead drunk in the _Place du Carrousel_; and on Monday he got
up at six in the morning, and went deliberately into a tippling-shop in
the neighbourhood, and ran himself through the body--(being mad at his
father for not sending him money)--with a pint of rum.
I have now prepared you for a story of a much more serious import--a
story which concerns myself. I would not tell it to you but in obedience
to my invariable rule of concealing nothing from you. What a place this
Paris is! No virtue is under shelter from its temptations. Solomon had a
great deal more wisdom than I can pretend to, and he was seduced away by
foreigners, who, I dare say, were not half so tempting as these French.
I was looking out a few days ago to see what kind of weather it
was;--there was not a cloud in the firmament; but there was a very
beautiful woman standing in a gallery almost opposite; so I left off
looking at the heavens just to look at this woman a little, never
supposing any harm would come of it. But nothing is so dangerous as this
cross-the-street kind of acquaintance. The silent conversation of looks,
so much more expressive than words; the mysterious conjectures about
what each other’s thoughts may be, and above all, the obstacle of the
intervening space--you know what amorous things obstacles are.
If it had not been the wall with the crack in it at Babylon, I dare say
Pyramus and Thisbe would not have cared for each other a French
sou.--She kept looking and looking (I mean the woman in the gallery) and
now and then I looked back at her. And if I have been looking into the
looking-glass, more than usual, and if the tailor has just brought me
home an entire new suit, which I could not well afford, it is all owing
to her. I wish you could have seen the elegant creature this morning, as
I did, at her toilette; as she stood like our first mother combing down
to her ankles (the prettiest pair but one you ever saw) her long hair,
which hung around her as a misty cloud about the full moon.
The little shoe soon embraced her foot and the garter her knee; the maid
laced up her corsets, giving graceful folds to her _jupe_, gracility to
her waist, and relief to her tournure; and incased her fair form in a
frock, “soft as the dove’s down and as white;”--her glossy tresses
having already received their fittest harmony from her nimble and
tapering fingers.
And now she sat at her mirror, and perused her elegant features; she
looked joyful, then sad, then cruel, then tender, and brought out each
sentiment into its most eloquent and dangerous expression; she studied a
frown and then put on the magic of a smile.--The fine rhetoric of the
bosom came next--the rock upon which taste so often is wrecked. Here she
meditated and pondered much and inquired of the Graces, how far she
might adventure--“how much to the curious eye disclose, how much to
fancy leave.”
I walked with her yesterday, amidst the elegant life of the Tuileries,
at her return from an airing in the Bois de Boulogne. Unless you see a
woman at all her fashionable hours, as well as in all her attitudes and
passions, you know nothing of her beauty. She wore a little airy hat, _à
la Duchesse de la Vallière_, the bird of Paradise waving over her
stately brow;
“Suave a guisa va di un bel pavone,
Diritta sopra se, come una grua;”
with cock-feathers in weeping willow upon the crown.--I went in the
evening to the ball with her--_parole d’honneur_; in her dress of satin,
citron colour, trimmed in _gauze volant_, and a tunique of the same,
with wreaths of roses; and in her hair a garland of forget-me-not, with
gems assorted by Beaudran, and beautiful as the stars upon the azure
firmament. In her morning walk, if she condescends ever to walk in the
mornings, her mantle is of deep colours. She wears in half dress, a
_chapeau bibi_; in negligé, her tresses are parted under a _capote_, and
her thin gauze handkerchief zig-zag, is narrow by an inch;
---- “’neath which you see
Two crisp young ivory apples come and go,
Like waves that on the shore beat tenderly,
When a sweet air is ruffling to and fro.”
I send you a copy of her washerwoman’s list for the last week. I have
seen one of the Queen Elizabeth’s somewhere, which began thus:
Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, Ireland and France,
Defender of the Faith. _Two petticoats, &c._ This Frenchwoman’s is
without preface as follows: One frock, _à l’abri galant_; one ditto,
_souris effrayé_; two ditto, _rassurées_; one jupon _inexorable_; two
ditto, _implacables_; with other articles too tedious to enumerate.
Apropos. The department of the wash-tub is important, and I may as well
give you here its statistics. There is the _Bourgeoise_, who
superintends, and under her in order, the _savoneuse_, the _empeseuse_
and _refineuse_. A plain washerwoman has forty-two sous per day, and a
starcher, clear starcher and ironer, three francs. There is scarcely
any thing in Paris more neat and elegant than a _Lingère_. Each branch
is brought, by a division of labour, to a nice perfection, which you
will see in no other country; but, to find a single person, who can put
a shirt through all its varieties, is nearly impossible. A gentleman’s
account stands thus: Une chemise, _trois sous_; une veste, _trois sous_;
une pantalon de drap, _six sous_; un collet, _un sou_; pair de bas,
_deux sous_. And the washerwoman, when she brings you in your linen,
will come in her court dress, and counting your shirts, she will inquire
after your health, and as she retires she will have the “honour to
salute you.” Madame Frederic is one of the notabilities of Paris, and no
one who has a proper respect for clean linen ever speaks to her but with
his hat in his hand; she has a _reputation Européenne_, but she refuses
to wash any thing under a ministerial shirt--and not even that, if it be
worn twice.
And now I will proceed to tell you who this elegant woman is, in whom,
by this time, you must have taken some interest. She is a Parisian by
birth and education, a married woman, and the greatest coquette and most
capricious creature of all Paris; and yet all Paris--alas, more than
all Paris, does nothing but run after her. As for me, I declare with
Cicero, “_malle me errare cum illa, quam aliis recte sapere_.”
She has a brother too, as much admired by the ladies as she by the
gentlemen, and is so exquisite in taste and dress, that many doubt
whether he himself may not be of the softer gender. I wish I had time to
describe to you his wardrobe also. His _petite redingote_ of blue, and
his white _pantalons_ in contrast with his black vest and azure cravat,
for the morning promenade; his graceful _Polonaise_ trousers black, and
vest white, for the field sports, and his----
---- But he is a proud and insolent fellow, and I hate him because he
always has an eye upon his sister, and unless you ruin yourself
altogether, in expenses for new coats, he won’t speak to you. In fine,
to keep you no longer in suspense about this elegant couple ---- they are
called “The Fashions.” Enough of parables; to-morrow I will treat you to
matters of fact.
To-morrow, May 8th.
This old fool, Paris, has turned out again upon the Boulevards, three
days of this week, as thick as a _Mardi gras_; it is called the _fête de
Longchamps_, and the object is to determine the fashions for the coming
season. The most important decision of this year seems to be the entire
suppression of “gigot sleeves.” Only think; they were last year as wide
as the British Channel, and now they are to be all at once razed to the
quick. The public, however, does not submit quietly to the curtailment.
Nothing else indeed but mutton sleeves and the President’s message is
thought fit for conversation, or discussion in the newspapers, this
month past. It is found to be exceedingly difficult to legislate for the
head and shoulders, and lower parts at the same time; what is a benefit
to one section being a prejudice to the other. The waist especially is
indignant; it has been straightened enough and squeezed enough in all
conscience ever since it was first invented. It has remonstrated; and
petition after petition has been sent in, signed by all the neighbouring
states, threatening to nullify the union, unless these restrictions are
taken off. However, by relieving a little the flatness and nakedness of
the arm with a row or two of _point d’Angleterre_, it is supposed a
compromise may be effected. Indeed I have already seen several pairs of
these sleeves venturing abroad, and two yesterday amidst the _bravas_
of the Tuileries. But what a figure is a woman, shrunk into those narrow
circumstances above, and so prominent beneath! she seems scarcely of the
same species. She is Horace’s _mulier formosa superné_ reversed.
Another decree of the Longchamps is to lengthen the frock still more at
the tail; though longer already than cleanliness or mercy to many a
reluctant pair of ankles should have permitted. Ankles are said to be
very beautiful in Paris, and they resisted with all their might this
innovation the last season; they had enjoyed the privilege of being seen
for years, and it was natural they should take some steps to maintain
it; but did it avail? In this you see only another signal example of the
despotism of Fashion. Not two years ago a frock was circumcised
midleg--no one indeed looked at a lady’s legs, as a matter of curiosity,
much below the knee--and now, unless in a whirlwind or stepping into a
coach, not a “peeping ankle” is to be seen upon the whole pavé of Paris.
Alas, all you can see now-a-days is
“The feet, that from each petticoat
Like little mice creep in and out.”
Formerly, the cause of going to Longchamps was to say mass; now it is a
mutton-sleeve. This Longchamps was once a Convent, and was founded by
St. Louis’s sister, Isabelle de France, who after her death performed in
this place (a pretty good number for a woman) forty miracles. The place
therefore became very celebrated; pilgrims visited it by thousands, and
the sick were carried there to be cured, and princesses shut themselves
up in it from the temptations of the world. But these nuns were very
pretty, and the rakes of Paris went thither on pilgrimage also; amongst
the rest went Henry the Fourth to court Mademoiselle Catherine de
Vérdun.
In the course of time every one heard certain holy concerts spoken of,
that were given there on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays of the Holy
week, (the days now celebrated.) On which occasions the church was
illuminated, embalmed with incense, and the little nuns sang so sweetly,
that many pious people thought their songs not of this earth, but hymns
that came directly from the celestial choirs: and the crowds that
frequented Longchamps was immense.
Not the inhabitants of Paris only came, but of London and other foreign
cities, striving to rival each other in the richness of their dresses,
and the magnificence of their equipages. Their emulation went so far at
last, that the very wheels of the chariots were often gilt, and the
shoes of the horses were also of the precious metals; and the coachmen
and footmen more gold than gold (κρυσω κρυσοτερα.) But again libertinism
broke into the sacred cloisters, and the concerts were suppressed;
finally the Revolution came, and the convent was demolished; not a stone
was left to testify the miracles of Isabelle de France. But the
multitude still continues its annual pilgrimage to Longchamps.
In the present fêtes there is scarcely any thing which recals the
sumptuousness of ancient times. Coaches indeed are varnished, stirrups
are burnished, and lacqueys have a new livery; and here and there an
English lord, or an American Colonel blazes out with chariots,
postilions, and mounted gens d’armes. The French aristocracy has been so
unvarnished by the Revolution, that twenty thousand a year has got very
little chance of being exceedingly magnificent.
The procession is an uninterrupted train of vehicles of all sorts in
motion the whole length of the Boulevards; and up through the Champs
Elysées to the Bois de Boulogne, a distance of about four miles, and
having arrived at a certain spot, the cavalcade wheels about and
returns in the same manner; the one side of the way being used for going
and the other for coming. The chief concern of the day is, the
exhibition of pretty women in open barouches, clad in the splendours and
novelties of the season. Mounted beaux, too, on steeds richly
caparisoned are exceedingly in favour.
The decrees of Longchamps, like Cæsar’s, go forth upon the whole earth;
and it is the only tribunal that can claim upon the earth this extensive
jurisdiction. A revolution has passed, like a hurricane, over its very
throne, and left its authority undisturbed; and there is no reason to
believe that this supreme and universal power will ever pass away.
Causes and effects both co-operate to perpetuate its existence. In other
countries, men and women, follow fashion, and have consequently little
exercise of taste or invention; but the Parisians are by general consent
inventors; they are gay, vain and ostentatious, and from the nature of
their commerce, and from the number of strangers who are induced to
reside amongst them, they will give always to dress and fashion an
importance they can have no where else. Let us then recognise our
legitimate sovereigns, and bow graciously to their natural and
indisputable authority. Let us recognise, too, the wisdom of Providence,
which by giving a diversity of products to the earth, and of capacities
to the civilised nations, who inhabit it, has bound them by ties of
mutual necessity, to live together in peace and harmony. The savages of
our country, who have no such ties, who have but the same pursuits and
capacities, have also but one passion, the destruction of each other.
To compare the American and French modiste, is to compare the mere
manual operation, to the imaginative and intelligent exercise of the
mind. A French bonnet maker is not made, she is born; she meditates, she
invents, she conceives a hat--as much as Pindar did a lyric poem. And
when she has made you a hat, your only wonder is, whether the hat was
made for you, or you were made for the hat.
Why, in Philadelphia a hat may be worn by two faces; here it is a
constituent part of the woman it was invented for, and they cannot be
separated from each other without injury to both. Do you believe that
_Madame Palmyre_ ever makes two frocks alike? it would be the ruin of
the woman’s reputation. What kind of feelings must a lady have, coming
into an assembly, and finding another woman’s frock having the same
physiognomy as her own! I have seen more than one in a fit of hysterics
from this very occurrence. And do you believe that _Simon’s_ chapeaux
are formed upon the cold precepts of the schools, or Herbault’s _bibis_?
Do you think that _Michael’s_ shoes, or those exquisite bottines of
_Gelot_, or those kid gloves of _Boivin_ are produced without
enthusiasm? or _Batton’s_ flowers or _Cartier’s_ plumes, without
inspiration?
A modiste in America indeed!--why the same woman cuts out a frock and
makes it! The same woman who does the head-work of a bonnet, does the
stitchings! In France there is an adaptation of labour to the abilities
of the artist; and a modiste _en chef_ no more thinks of the
manipulation of a frock, than Scribe of a vaudeville, or Carème of a
dinner.
Nor does she suffer her genius to be dissipated and wasted upon
varieties even the most important. Each branch has its professor, whose
whole mind is concentrated upon this one object. Even the invention has
its specialities. One adapts colours to complexions, and another studies
the proportions of the human form, and its shapes, and the congruity of
dresses with its various sizes; how to bring out an attraction more
seductive by the sacrifice of one less potent; where to enhance a beauty
by a defect; and how to discover a charm under pretext of concealing it;
one is a kind of Minister of the Interior, another of Foreign Affairs.
In the manual operations, too, the same series is observed. One folds,
another crimples, one bastes, another rips; one spends her days in
“undoing,” another in “trying-on,” another again grows old in puckering,
and so in crisping, pranking, curling, and flouncing--all have their
several functions, and all their tasks assorted to their several
abilities.
At the fête of the Longchamps the eye is dazzled by the splendour, and
the attention is distracted by the variety. A fashion, to have vogue,
must present itself in a more “questionable shape.” A pretty woman is
therefore selected, who for a season may personate the many-coloured
goddess; she is called during her reign the “Most fashionable”--not
indeed as the king is called the “Most Christian,” for truly, she is the
most fashionable--“_la plus à la mode de Paris_.”
The Parisians have a way of getting this fashionable woman up, pretty
much as we get up a great man in the United States. A few of the
leaders of fashion, young gentlemen in their first down, having made
choice of a fit person, first direct upon her all the rays of their
admiration. She is not required to be a duchess, or to have any more
beauty or accomplishments than her neighbours, but she had better be the
wife of a rich banker. If she rides out of an afternoon to the Bois de
Boulogne, then will a dozen of these fashionables gather around her
barouche; and hats in hand, they will canter alongside; they will be
unable to contain their admiration, and they will set the multitude
gaping. Thus in the crowd one stares at the heavens, and another, till
at last the world is on the gaze; and as all see different wonders in
the skies, one a whale, another a weasel, and many phantasms and idle
visions; so in the heaven of this lady’s face, beauties are now struck
out that had remained, but for this general regard, for ever
undiscovered; beauties which herself, if possible, had never seen.
----“As learned critics view
In Homer, beauties Homer never knew.”
The same gallants pursue her to the opera, and there gather into her
box with noise and bustle and assiduities, till they have drawn the
whole house upon her, and every glass is pointed; as in the chase, where
the hare stands at bay, and the hunters have but a single aim; only that
here the danger is reversed.
So at the concert, and so at the ball, where she is engaged for twenty
sets a-head, before half up the stairs; so every where the same ardour,
the same _empressement_, the same adoration. She is gazetted too in the
newspapers, and all her particulars, jetty hair, inky eye-brows, turn-up
nose, pouting lips; every thing circumstantially described. Every one
knows her, every one loves her, and every one not wishing to pass for a
clown, without taste, swears she is adorable. She is in every one’s
mouth, she is in every one’s heart, she is ---- in a word, she is _la
femme la plus à la mode de Paris_.
Thus our fashionable lady is turned about in the vortex of dissipation
till Spring, and enjoys a flood of frothy adulation beyond the lot of
all other monarchs. The spring arrives, and then the summer; and being
fashionable, she leaves of course during the warm months for the
Waterings, or her castle in a distant province, and returns in the
Autumn: and in the Autumn she finds another “Fashionable Lady” in her
place. It is scarce to be expected that such violent admiration should
be bestowed on the same person for more than a season. She now abdicates
and sinks into obscurity, or which is more common, being unable to
endure the reverse of fortune, dies of mortification and spite.
I send you this by Mr. C----, of Philadelphia, with a single sheet of
music, a delightful air from the Puritani--an air which is graven upon
ten thousand hearts. Oh, if you had heard Rubini sing it over the coffin
of Bellini at the Invalids! The sexton wept. It stole upon the ear as if
from the spheres--mournful as the wood-pigeon’s moan:--
----“Soft as the mother’s lullaby
When babies sleep.”
Learn to sing it in your most plaintive voice. I will love you the more
for recalling one of the tenderest scenes of my absence. Good night.
LETTER XXIII.
Return of Spring.--A New Venus.--The Artesian
Well.--Montmartre--Donjon of Vincennes.--St. Ouen.--St.
Germain.--The Pretender.--Machine de Marli.--Versailles.--The
Water-works.--The Swiss Garden.--Trianon.--Races at
Chantilly.--Stables of the Great Condé--Lodgings in a French
Village.--A Domestic Occurrence.--The Boots.--The Alarm.--The
Bugs.--Extract from Pepys.--Delights of Chantilly.--Unlucky
Days.--Solitude in a Crowd.--The Cure.--The King’s Birth-day.--The
Concert.--The Fire-works.--The Illuminations.--The
Buffoons.--Punch.--The Eating Department.--The Mat de Cocagne.
Paris, May 6th, 1836.
Your letter, of March the 25th, has arrived. I am sorry to hear the
north wind has given himself such airs. Here he has been quite
reasonable. The lilacs of the Luxembourg are again in their pride. The
gardener is stirring up the loose earth, while May recals the roses
with refreshing showers. How delightful to see the Spring thus repairing
the desolations of Winter! Your trees of Pine Hill, which persevere in
being green the year round, do not please so much as those which strip
off in November, and put on their green and flowery robes in April.
Pines are called rightly, the dress of winter and the mourning of
summer.
What has immutability to do with this earth? where one tires even with a
uniformity of excellence. If I were to make, like Ovid, a golden age, I
would say not a word of eternal Spring. How delightful is this morning!
The sun has just poured out its first rays upon the dews, and every
lilac has a pearl in its ear. They are setting out, in the Palais Royal,
a new Venus of the whitest marble. Look at the jade, in the south-east
corner, in her impudent attitude; she is stooping, and ungartering a
snake from her leg. Pretty, to be sure, if one had a taste for a
hieroglyphic woman; as for me, I like the little thing in its natural
attributes of flesh and blood, in its straight nose; lips double dyed;
and overlooking the humid eye of gray, or dark, or blue, and the
“darling little foot.”
They are also setting out chairs for the Summer, and the gallery of
Orleans already weeps its empty halls. These chairs are let at two sous
the sitting, and bring money to the private purse of our “citizen king.”
The “right of location” is 32,000 francs, and the lessee gets rich by
the bargain. This sitting out upon chairs is an ancient custom; it is
the way Frenchwomen take a walk. I have read in Scarron some verses in
allusion to it.
Tous les jours une chaise
Me coute un écu,
Pour porter a l’aise
Votre chien, &c. &c.
A poetic husband is out of humour with his wife, whose sedentary habits
have become a serious item in the household expenses.
As I am about to leave Paris I have taken several flights to the
country, to satisfy what yet remains of unsatiated curiosity; to
Fontainbleau, where I walked upon the footsteps of the _Belle
Gabrielle_, and stood upon the spot where the thunder of retributive
justice fell upon the head of Napoleon. I stood this morning at nine by
the _Barrière des Martyrs_ accompanied by Mr. ----, of Philadelphia. We
went to see an Artesian well they are boring there towards the centre of
the earth; and through which we are to have a short passage to the
Indies; and to get a peep of the sun at midnight. It is already nine
hundred feet; the temperature increasing; and they are going to make
mother Earth keep us in hot water. She is to heat our baths, warm our
houses, make the tea, and spoil your trade in Anthracite coal; so says
M. Arago, secretary of the Institute, member of the Chamber of Deputies,
&c. But I have little taste for wells, except in very hot
weather--unless it be those
----“delicate _wells_
Which a sweet smile forms in a lovely cheek.”
These are agreeable in all weathers.
We breakfasted in coming along, on the Heights of Montmartre, where we
surveyed the great village, and stood on a level with its steeples. This
was Henry the Fourth’s Camp at his taking of Paris; and lately of the
English on a similar errand. Here were a great many John Bullish looking
children with jovial rubicund faces, running about the hill. They have
profited, the little rogues, by the gallantry of their mothers. The
French children of the poorer classes have generally a sallow and
unhealthy look.
Next we walked around the “Donjon of Vincennes,” its ditches and its
towers. It has great titles stuck on its scutcheon. It has imprisoned
the great Condé, Retz, Fouquet, Vendome, and Conti; also in later times,
Diderot and Mirabeau: and it contains in its chapel the remains of the
Duc d’Enghein, who was shot here. It was formerly the residence of
kings. Philip Augustus lived here, and St. Louis, and Francis I., and
Henry IV., and Blanche of Castile, and Agnes, called the “Lady of
Beauty.” Charles IX. died here, and Mazarin, and that wicked creature
_Isabelle de Bavière_. I visited this village last summer in fête-time,
and had a dance in the _Rotonde de Mars_, and excellent music in the
_Grand salon des Chorybantes_.
On this excursion we strolled also into the village of St. Ouen, four
and a half miles from Paris. Here is a royal chateau, where Louis XVIII.
reposed the second of May 1814, before his solemn entrance into the
city. It is a delightful situation, overlooking the Seine, and the old
kings as far back as Dagobert had a place here, which Louis XI. gave to
the monks of St. Denis, “_Afin qu’ils priassent Dieu pour la
conservation de sa personne_.” The Pavilion of Queen Blanche is yet
remaining. On the site of the old palace is the elegant mansion of M.
Terneaux, whose predecessors were M. and Madame Necker.
One of the curiosities of the place is the cradle, which rocked Madame
de Staël. M. Terneaux is a member of the Deputies; he makes laws and
Cashmere shawls--the shawls equal in tissue and beauty to those of
Indus. Every body comes hither to see his Thibet goats and merinoes, and
his _silos_, which are immense excavations in which grain is preserved
fresh for many years.
We now went two leagues and a half further to St. Germain, and walked
upon its elegant Terrace. The Pretender is buried here, and several of
the little Pretenders; and in going along we looked at the _Machine de
Marli_, which desires to be remembered to the Falls of Niagara. The
water is climbing up an immense hill by dribbles to supply the little
squirting Cupids at Versailles.
St. Germain was once the seat of the pleasures and magnificence of the
Grand Monarch. He left it, because St. Denis, standing upon a high
eastern eminence, overtopped his palace, a _memento mori_ amidst the
royal cups. Kings do not choose that these telltales of mortality shall
look in at their windows.
We then walked in the chestnut groves and deep solitudes of Montmorency,
till we grew sentimental--till we could almost hear Heloise wail her
unhappy lover. We saw a tree that had fallen to the earth, and the vine
which had entwined it in its prosperity still clinging to it in its
fall; it had refused to climb any other tree, but died with the trunk
that had supported it. We thought of the perfidy and ingratitude of men,
and we had serious thoughts of quitting their society and living
altogether among trees. We visited the Hermitage and plucked each a leaf
from the rose-bush, and sat upon Jean Jacques’s chair. We intended to
visit Meudon on our return, to laugh at Rabelais, and to fly to the
rocks of Vitry to kiss the footsteps of Madame de Sevigné, but did not.
I have now given you my journey of a day.
I announced to you pompously, by the last boat, my departure for London,
and you will be surprised to receive yet a letter from Paris. I stayed
chiefly to see the waters “play” at Versailles. It is an amazing
spectacle, and every body stays to see it. You must imagine a hundred
little Cupids squirting away with all their might, and Diana,
Amphitrite, and several other grown-up goddesses doing the same; and
Apollo’s horses, which breathe the surge from their nostrils, and
Neptune, astride of a whale, which vomits the ocean from its gills; with
jets-d’eaux innumerable, spouting water, with fantastic figures along
the main walks and vistas of the garden.
For the grand scene of all, you must imagine a wide avenue the fourth of
a mile, and a row of watery trees at each side, and at the closed end a
circular lake, with a liquid pillar rising from the centre, and several
concentric circles jetting around at different heights, and scattering
the drizzly vapour which makes rainbows as it descends. If you have
imagined all this, with a temple, and Thetis and her nymphs seated in
it, and plenty of cascades, waterspouts, and cataracts pouring down upon
them--this is the “Play of the waters at Versailles.”
The multitude of the spectators was like a forest of the Mahonoy. The
women were as thick as Catullus’s kisses. With one of them, whom I knew,
I walked awhile, in the “Swiss Garden,” with its air of gentility and
modesty. Here the Royal Family used to abdicate their greatness and
play one week of the year a peasant’s life; and the royal girls romped
about the garden in their linsey frocks, and check aprons, and coarse
petticoats, and had bonny-clabber for supper. Louis XVI. was a miller,
and Maria Antoinette was a dear little dairy-maid; but--
“More water glides by the mill
Than wots the miller of.”
The mill, and the dairy, and the cottages, and other monuments of these
royal Saturnalia, are yet remaining. These were anciently the pastimes
of monarchs, who had thirty millions of subjects; and they complain that
the judgments of Heaven have overtaken them!
In strolling along a silent path through the woods, we came unexpectedly
into a little retreat, which so lurked in a corner, that, after a week’s
stay here, I had not observed it. They call it the ball-room. It is a
circle, having an orchestra in the centre, and an area for dancing
between it and the circumference; and here are two rows of columns of
coloured marble, united by thirty arches, and beneath each, on the night
of ceremony, is a jet-d’eau falling in _fleur de lis_, and seeming to
sustain lighted lustres, which are suspended by an invisible thread
from the arches. It is inclosed by a hedge, and overshaded by branches
from the surrounding trees. It seems as if made for some king of the
elves, or fairy queen, to play her midnight gambols in.
The great palace of Versailles is a long squat edifice, which inspires
no great reverence. It has one magnificent room, two hundred feet by
thirty, now converted into a National Museum of pictures. There are two
smaller palaces half a mile distant, graceful and elegant, called the
great and little _Trianon_. With the latter is connected, an English
garden, in all the pretty disorder of nature, and in open contrast with
the garden in general, which is tricked out in all the embellishments of
art.
Nature has furnished the raw materials, and of a good quality; but a
tree here is scarcely more like a tree in its natural shapes, than a
_paté de foie gras_ is like a goose. The sums expended upon this royal
residence are reckoned at near forty millions sterling. The population
of the town is twenty-eight thousand. I remained here a week last
August, and then wrote you a detailed account of its garden and its
palaces; Maria Antoinette's room, Josephine's room, and all the rooms,
and the pictures and the beautiful Cathedral; and though I may presume
from your silence this letter is lost, like so many others, I have no
mind to return to the subject.
Apropos. I sent you more than three months ago, written by an amiable
Parisienne, "the Literary Ladies of Paris;" I hope they are not
miscarried. I am tired of consuming whole days for Louis Philippe's
Post-office establishment.
With great expectation of pleasure I went to the Races at Chantilly,
which are among the events of this week. This town is at ten leagues
distance and has an elegant view, over the Seine, and a fine turf,
which was trodden on this occasion by the prettiest little feet that
ever went to Chantilly. And here were the full blooded coursers, which
champed the bit and pawed the earth, and devoured the road and made
gallant show and promise of their mettle. What a pity you had not been
there You would have seen Miss Annette outstrip Volante; you would
have been glad the one gained and the other lost without caring a pin
for either, and you would have paid for a mutton chop the price of the
whole sheep, and as for a bed, you would have got none either for love
or money.
A little slice of hard fare is not without its advantages to pampered
citizens, it works off the bad humours engendered by an idle life; and
fits of poverty now and then in the country are grateful and genteel
recreations of the rich, and have been praised by the poets,--You would
have dreamed of slumbering by the waving pines, and soft murmurs of your
little Schuylkills, and then of wandering alone in a foreign land, and
then sitting the live-long night upon a chair in the stables of the
Great Condé; of having jockeys and grooms for your chamber-maids and
race horses for your bed curtains.--These stables, if you please, cost
thirty millions, and it is an old saying in France, _"que les cheveaux
du Prince de Condé, sont mieux logés que les rois d'Angleterre."_ Famous
knights used to mount here in full panoply, to carry terrors beyond the
Duro and the Rhine. Alas, that stables should be sometimes the only
memorials of one's earthly possessions! The castle of the Great Prince
is demolished; the _"magnifique maison de Plaisance,"_ which opened its
folding doors to a thousand guests of a night, is now with the
house of Priam, and the grass has grown upon its altars:--
----“Where one seeks for Ilion’s walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.”
Indeed, castles in general in France, may be written in the catalogue of
its ruins. The French nobles and princes are no longer great feudal
barons or idlers. The aristocracy of now-a-days has to attend to
business--to the Chamber of Peers and Deputies--and to go to market.
Even the retreats of monarchy are moss-grown with neglect. The nation
murmurs at the expense, and lets its ruins go to wreck for want of
repair. The number of royal palaces are a dozen, and their annual
expense of keeping, 160,000 dollars. Fontainebleau is content with a
yearly visit; and the magnificent Versailles has become a national
museum. I looked all about here for the eloquent Bossuet, but he too is
so broken up, you scarce find the fragments. His magnificent gardens,
jets-d’eaux, and chestnut groves, are the commons of Chantilly--and
“Thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,
Now sweep the alleys they were born to shade.”
Paris and the neighbouring country poured out upon the plains of
Chantilly, this day, such multitudes as never went to Troy. To obtain a
vehicle to return in was impossible, and to stay another night at
Chantilly was impossible also; but I had to set my foot upon this latter
impossibility. I was so lucky as to meet Mr. ---- of New York, and by a
long search together we found lodgings for the night; and what we little
thought of finding in a French village, a fat landlady; but so fat, she
is silently taking leave of her knees; before this reaches you she will
have seen them, perhaps, for the last time; and her husband, still more
ill favoured, sat by, his lower lip hanging towards the waistband of his
breeches. At the lady’s feet was a chubby baby, nearly naked, resembling
an unfeathered owl.
My companion, a man of address, nursed this brat, and called it tender
names to please the mother. One grows so polite in this country; besides
what does not one do for a lodging at Chantilly? Also in the back ground
was a female, acting in the double capacity of chambermaid and _bonne_,
who had her share in the general effect. She had been frightened, when
young, till her eyes had started out of her head, and had stayed there,
staring ever since; and her lips being too short for her teeth, gave
her a look of affability without the trouble of smiling. To complete the
interest of her physiognomy, she had a long beaky nose with the tip red.
She was so ugly, the child would not cry after her. These were the
protections, which it pleased Providence to put around our honesty at
the races of Chantilly.
I describe this family only to introduce with more interest, a domestic
occurrence, which I am going to relate, in order to relieve a little the
serious details of this letter.--Night already held its middle course in
the heavens, and a lady, our fellow-lodger, tired of waiting the
untimely hours of her husband, had retired for the evening to her
chamber; and there, being relieved from the apparel of the day, she took
a look under the bed; a prudent caution, which she always observed, and
which she says, her mother had observed before her;--and what do you
think she discovered under the bed? The legs of a man! She fled, and
forgetting the nakedness of her condition, rushed into the hall, where
we, in the midst of the family circle, sat over a mug of French beer,
with long pipes, smoking and watching the curling smoke as it ascended
gracefully towards the ceiling. In the precipitation of her flight she
fell over a stool, at full length, upon the floor--exhibiting the
incomprehensible mechanism of the human figure in all its proportions.
It fell to my lot, being nearest, to bring her to, which I did, wrapping
her in a cloak, placing her on a couch, and encouraging her to speak. As
soon as she had explained, the alarm became general; pipes were
extinguished, and candles lighted, and we proceeded into the suspicious
bed-chamber; the “bonne,” with her eyes farther out, smiling
nevertheless, and the fat madame, and her husband walking on his lip;
one carried the poker, one the boot-jack, and one the flat-iron, and we
moved on in close file to the bed-side; and here we made a halt. I felt,
(I will confess it,) my respiration stop; I stood in the van, being
unwillingly placed there by the pride of sustaining American bravery in
a foreign country. I thought of my little children, and then moved aside
the curtain, respectfully. You have, perhaps, seen a man kill a
rattle-snake with a short stick.--And after all, what do you think it
was? A pair of boots;--the lady’s husband having gone out in his shoes.
We retired now to our chambers, where Dr. B. and I were eaten up by
bugs; and there was a Frenchman in the adjoining room, who passed also
a melancholy night; we presumed from the same cause, for we heard him
every now and then say----, which is the French for bug. So you see that
not Americans alone are subject to these unsavoury afflictions--_non
soli dant sanguine pœnas_. Get thee to Chantilly, Mrs. Butler. Indeed, I
have learned from inquiry, and personal experience, too, that this kind
of vermin and some others, creep higher up into good society here, than
in the United States.
Our better houses, I mean, which keep servants, and pique themselves on
their gentility, do not suffer such inmates at all. It is true, that the
poorer sort of folks, and even the better sort of country taverns, do
not care a straw for all the bugs of Christendom. They look upon them as
the natural bleeders, provided for the poor, providentially, and a
saving of expense, in cupping, leeching, and other kinds of phlebotomy.
But these English people, when did they all at once become so clean,
that they should turn up their noses so fastidiously at others? Why, in
Queen Elizabeth’s time, in Shakspeare’s time, in my Lord Bacon’s time,
in my Lord Coke’s time, courtiers used to offend the very nose of
majesty by coming with dirty feet into the presence. Oh, here is a
quotation apropos, in Pepys’s Journal, which I have just been reading.
“February 12th; Up, finding the beds good, but _lousy_.” Now, this is in
London, and this Pepys, who found the beds so “good,” was secretary of
the admiralty, only one hundred and fifty years ago. Besides our judges,
I guess, don’t carry posies in their button holes--(though, it is not
because they have not frequent need of them.)
These are the delights of Chantilly. If any one should go thither twice,
he must be a much greater fool than I am, which I deem impossible. Yet
here was the whole habitable earth; all the peasantry with their baked
faces, and caps like your winnowed snows, and all the trim rabble of the
towns, the _beau monde_ of the Halles, and all that is richest in
beauty, education, and blood, too, was here--not forgetting my Lord
S----, who keeps horses for the turf, and liveries for Longchamps, nor
him, so enviable for his skin and bones, so recommendable by his
thinness, and who makes himself lighter on a pinch, by holding his
breath, who rode Miss Annette, though Volante came up like a storm from
the south, victoriously to the stake--Mr. Robinson. Now all these were
at the races, and the newspapers have done nothing else for a week than
describe their inexpressible enjoyments.
The truth is, I set out upon this excursion on one of my unlucky days. I
have read of a giant somewhere, who one day swallowed down windmills
without choking, and who was suffocated by a piece of fresh butter the
next. Unlucky days are an old woman’s superstition. But there is scarce
a wise man, who does not tell you some of his days that were nothing but
a series of mishaps.
In the same manner, good fortune appears to attend some persons in all
their enterprises, while others again seem marked for special
persecution; adversity keeps barking at their heels through the whole
course of their lives.
My grandmother, who brought me up, besides being a Presbyterian, was a
Scotchwoman; she believed she was compelled to snuff out the candle by
predestination; and it is not so easy a matter as you think, to get rid
of one’s grandmother. My silly jaunt to Chantilly occurred on one of
these days. It was not enough that I should be run against by a
diligence, and almost irretrievably smashed; that I should be crammed
into a stable; be destroyed by bugs, and frightened to death by a pair
of boots; the same fortune pursued me on my return home. I hung up my
watch by a nail, which had sustained it for six months; but it was my
unlucky day; it fell, to its entire destruction, upon the brick floor. I
gathered up the fragments, and to close my window curtains, mounted upon
a chair, which tilted; I fell against an opposite table, which also
upset, breaking the marble cover into several pieces; and there I was,
with a broken head, amidst the ruins. I then crawled into bed, where I
remained the next day with a fever, and sent for the doctor.
Now I will conclude this very absurd doctrine, with a sensible advice;
namely, that you never set out to the Races, on any such abominable,
horse-play, excursions of pleasure, in a melancholy, or ill-natured
mood; it is the sure precursor of ill-luck; both because you will
extract evil out of every occurrence, and, in your froward temper, you
will be continually running into difficulties, which, in good humour,
you would either have escaped, or turned to a merry account.
If you come to Paris without a soul with you, having been spoiled a
little at home with your domestic affections, you will every now and
then fall into a fit of melancholy, which the doctors will call a
“_nostalgia_;” and you will wish the very devil had Paris; and you will
detest all French people, whatever be their merits; and, to be revenged
of them, you will write home to your friends, and you will call the men
all rogues, and the women all something else, and then you will feel a
little better. I have been in the midst of this wilderness of men, as
solitary as Robinson Crusoe, in his island. And I know of no kind of
solitude half so distressful, as the aspect of a large city, especially
to tender-hearted gentlemen, who have been brought up in villages.
To walk in the midst of multitudes of one’s own species, without a sign,
or a look, or a smile of recognition, impresses one with a very
humiliating sense of one’s own insignificance; besides, one feels the
necessity of loving somebody, and of being loved. These feelings will be
exceedingly bitter on your first arrival, and your fits of “blue devils”
more frequent. My advice is, that you seek the distractions of
gentlemanly amusements. For this, you must make the acquaintance of some
French gentleman, (a French lady is much better,) who is well versed in
the genteel world, and she will lead you into such consolations and
mischiefs, as your unfortunate situation may require. She must be
sufficiently attached to you, to take the trouble to instruct you, and
you must take the trouble, by your amiability and assiduities, to win
this attachment. How much better is this than sitting alone, and killing
the minutes one by one, in your bachelor’s chamber; it is better, though
you should gain nothing else from her acquaintance than hanging yourself
in her garters.
Depend upon it, nature did not intend the whole of this life as a
preparation for the next; else had she not opened to us so many means of
enjoyment of the senses here. And, depend upon it, there is a world of
delightful and genteel pleasures in Paris, if one has but the address to
hunt for them. My special advice is, that you do not seek a cure for
home-sickness, in excesses; if in wine, be assured that your spirits
will soon pass from the vinous to the acetous fermentation; if in
gambling in Paris, your ruin is accomplished. I repeat, there is but one
effectual cure, it is the acquaintance of an amiable and sensible woman.
This was the first remedy for solitude prescribed by Him, who knew best
the heart and dispositions of man. Adam, I doubt not, while Eve slept,
yet a rib in his bosom, was afflicted often with home-sickness; and I
dare say he was never troubled with it afterwards.
Recollect, when I speak of women, I claim the right of being interpreted
on the side of mercy. I speak of them with an entire sense of the
respect due to the sex; as a gentleman should, who does not forget that
his mother is a woman, his sisters, wife, and daughters are women. When
I recommend woman’s society, you will please to think of the intercourse
of the bee with the flowers; it gathers its honied treasures, where most
rich and succulent, but meditates no injury to the plant by which they
are supplied. But I am relapsing into morality; good night. I will fill
the rest of this blank to-morrow.
May 7th.
When I was just ready to go to London, what should have occurred but the
king’s birth-day; it fell out exactly on the first of May, and I had to
stay to see it; and I am going now to give you a brief abstract of its
entertainments, to finish this letter; it is already long, but remember
it is the last. At half-past five, P.M., the king made a bow, and the
queen made one of the prettiest curtsies imaginable, from a gallery of
the Tuileries; for we had all assembled there to listen to a concert
served up, _al fresco_, in a hail storm. A platform was erected in front
of the palace, and several hundred musicians were mounted on it; but a
wintery rain from the north-east, mixed occasionally with snow, poured
down the whole afternoon; and it rained, and rained, as if heaven had no
ears for music. A howling storm, now and then, raved through an _adagio_
of Mozart, and Jove descended on the fiddle-strings.
At the end of each piece there was a pause--not of the rain, but the
music--and then came criticisms on all sides.--“Oh! that air of Bellini!
said the lady; and then her eyes trotted about the garden. “Exquisite!
said her cavalier, and took a pinch of snuff.--“_Lafond? c’est un talent
superbe.--Inférieur à Beriot? du tout, du tout, il n’y a que
Pagga_--(Une prise s’il vous plait.) _Le Message du President est donc
arrivé._ What are they going to determine?--Determine?--To pay. (Dieu,
quelle jolie femme!) _On ne fait que payer dans ce pays-ci._” “As for
the concerts of the Conservatory, I find them stupid beyond
sufferance;”--the poor musician, in the mean time, turning up his eyes
towards heaven, and, with supplicating looks, imploring mercy from the
clouds.
I did not take off my hat and shout with the rest, when his majesty
bowed. I was not quite sure whether the law of nations would justify me
in making a bow, until he has paid the “twenty-five millions.” However,
I said, quietly to myself, “_Vive le roi!_” He is, _sans compliment_,
the most sensible head of a king that is in Europe; and I wish him, from
the good will I bear the French nation, to live out his time.--But I did
not let the paltry sum of “twenty-five millions” interfere with the
respect I owed her majesty’s curtsey.
They have fire-works always ready made here for such occasions; and keep
them by them in a closet. On this birth-day they were more sublime and
beautiful, than is common, even in Paris. To look down from the terrace
of the Tuileries, upon the immense crowd covered with its umbrellas,
moving and whirling about in the twilight, all over the Place Louis XI.,
and its environs, was a fantastic spectacle, and worth seeing. Have you
ever looked at a million of crabs in vinegar, through a microscope?--We
remained, a long time, in expectation, and the mud. What a delightful
thing a public _fête_ is, especially when one is expressly ordered to be
diverted ten days a-head, by ordinance of the Police.
Suddenly, ten thousand sky-rockets hissed through the air, and exploded
in constellations of stars, pale, pink, and vermilion, which dropped
down slowly towards the earth. This was the note of preparation. Then
went off Mount Ætna, and Vesuvius, and Hecla; and a Niagara of liquid
fire poured down in a cataract, covering up a little Herculaneum and
Pompeii; and the whole _Pyrotechnie_ was by degrees unfolded of Sieur
Ruggieri, Ingénieur of Paris.
There were bouquets of all the flowers in the field, in their most
brilliant and harmonious tints; and there was a fierce encounter of
knights in the air, and lions ready to spring on you; and there was the
devil on a pale horse; and, all at once, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, as
large as life, stood blazing before us; its huge pillars, its pulpit,
its sacristy, and a little fiery congregation, who exploded one after
another; a lady went off, and then a gentleman; and, last of all, the
priest went out at the altar, and suddenly all was night.--The
atmosphere was sick with saltpetre, and the heavens wept tricoloured
stars.--This was forty million times prettier than anything you ever saw
in your life.
In the meantime, the illuminations blazed out through the town. The
Madelaine stood in a basin of glimmering fire, and wore a garland of
flaming beads upon her brows; and a belt of gas-lights, like sparkling
diamonds, encircled the queen of streets, the Rue Rivoli; it was a mile
long. The Pantheon too, and the Invalids, and the Arch of Neuilly, afar
off, poured their ineffectual fires upon the thick night; and all the
orchards of the Luxembourg, the Tuileries, and Champs Elysées, were
bending under the load of their golden fruits.--How jealous the moon and
stars would have been, if they could have looked out upon the French
capital this night.--If we don’t get up such _fêtes_ in America, it is
not because we can’t, it is because we don’t feel in the humour, it is
because ---- in fine, it is because we don’t want to----
I had intended to pass over the recreations of the morning for want of
room; but here is, unfortunately, room enough.--I generally walk out
here, as in America, alone; for if one takes a companion one is obliged
to walk his way; besides you can’t imagine what an effort it is to be
always agreeable. I like sometimes, in a solitary walk, to think you all
over; to stray with you by the Mill Creek and Tumbling Run, or to sit
down on your piny eminence and overlook the village, and enjoy your
nonsense, which is enjoyed nowhere else in such perfection. In a word,
if alone, I can get into a reverie; alone, I can fight duels, rout
armies, save ladies from ruin, and do things that are impracticable.
It was only this morning that I fought the battle of Waterloo over
again, and beat Lord Wellington; and when I take a companion along with
me, he puts me out. So I went out this morning alone. I was in rather an
ill humour, and I had resolved not to be pleased, or to laugh at
anything, much less this buffoonery of a _jour de fête_;--in this mood I
arrived in the Champs Elysées.
All the world was flowing in here from all quarters, as the little
streams into the great ocean; and the immense plain was fitted up with
scaffoldings for various representations, and tents and booths stood in
long rows for the sale of all sorts of nick-nacks, and cakes and
sweetmeats, and refreshments; and here were all the _marionettes_ and
_funambulaires_, the buffoons, the harlequins and scaramouches, the
most famous of Paris; and the jugglers
“Who teach you knacks
Of eating flax,
And out of their noses
Draw ribbons and posies.”
Are men, thought I, intelligent beings? Is there any essential
difference between those who dishonour themselves in representing these
fooleries, and those who are entertained by them? And here I stepped
into a crowd of persons who were listening to a serious individual who
sat upon a platform; he held a cat, and discoursed thus: “_Voilà,
Messieurs, un animal, qui est digne de fixer l’attention du public. Il a
les oreilles du chat, les pattes d’un chat; enfin la queue, le poil, la
tête, et le corps du chat. Eh bien! Messieurs, ce n’est pas un
chat._--_Qu’est ce donc que cet animal?_--_C’est une_ CHATTE.”
At a few steps farther was another individual, who recommended remedies
for all diseases;--“Here is my powder, gentlemen, patented by the king;
it cures the ear-ache, the tooth-ache and scabby dogs; _à six sous,
Messieurs! c’est incroyable! c’est pour rien! à six sous!_--And here,
gentlemen, is something worthy to fix the attention of the naturalist
and man of letters. It is a little black powder, which results from the
incineration of a little animal, which does not weigh more than four
ounces, and which lays eggs that weigh fifteen pounds. It was with these
eggs, gentlemen, that General Lafayette nourished his army in Egypt
during forty days; here it is--_c’est incroyable!_ And now, _Messieurs
et Mesdames_, here is my _poudre dentifrique_ which is designed to
destroy the tartar of the teeth of both sexes. Tartar, gentlemen, is the
declared enemy of both. Every thing human is subject to tartar; from the
innocent virgin to the venerable matron, all is subject to tartar.
Napoleon himself, at the head of 150,000 men of cavalry, was not exempt
from tartar. You see this child, (here he exhibited a boy whose teeth
were in a ‘frightful condition,’ being painted black.) You see this boy,
‘_simple gamin_,’ he has the teeth neither more nor less black than
pitch, and his breath--You may come, gentlemen, and smell for
yourselves--_Eh bien, Messieurs_; you take my _poudre dentifrique_, you
just dip your finger into water, spring water, well water, no matter
what water, and you just rub lightly, (here he laid the child across his
knees, and in the same way as if sawing a log of wood, rubbed
off the paint, and exhibited him with teeth of ivory to the
spectators;)--Behold, gentlemen, the effect of my _poudre dentifrique_,
(and here he sold several boxes.)
The oldest hero, I believe, of the modern stage is Punch, and I am glad
to see that he retains yet his place at these public solemnities. His
harangues here are not always a ludicrous or unmeaning prattle, but
often critical, satirical, and even treasonable; and occasionally, he
falls under the reprehension of the police. Several punches have been
arrested under the late laws. I penetrated an immense crowd, and heard a
little deputy of the “_extrême gauche_” just end his harangue--“the
greatest king of these times, I don’t care who is the other one.” We
have been trying kings, one after the other, and have never had a
tolerable one since King Pepin. Idiots we have had enough, God knows; we
have now our Tarquin, whom we have sent to travel for his health in
Germany. We have had our Nero too, and our Otho and Vitellius as well as
our Cæsar; the _Bon Henri_, and he was a great rogue, is the only
national boast. In fine, gentlemen, we never had any thing of a king
down to Louis Philippe. My wife has called three children after him
successively; but when they were born, they all turned out to be girls.
“Gentlemen, we have done more for the glory of France under this king in
five years, than under all the kings who preceded him, in all years. We
have guillotined Fieschi, conquered the Bedouins, and paved the _Rue
Neuve des Augustins_; and finally, gentlemen, we have paid off the
‘twenty-five millions’ to General Jackson, and the sword that was half
drawn has been thrust back into its scabbard. Gentlemen, when we want to
gather cocoa-nuts in the West Indies, we throw stones at the apes on the
trees, at which, they getting mad, shower down the nuts in our faces;
and this is the way the American General has got the twenty-five
millions.” He bowed, and retired with acclamations. This is enough for
the Mountebanks and the Punches, and not too much; for even the tragic
Muse, dignified as she now is, in her robe and buskins, took her first
lessons from the Harlequins.
In the eating department, in the _sucrerie_ and _charcuiterie_, there
was of course a display--gimblettes, gaufres, echaudés, and
croquignolles. Their very names give one ideas of eating. Do you know
how to sell cakes piping hot that were baked eight days ago? The bottom
of your basket is to be a vessel with water in it, reduced by a secret
fire into vapour, which penetrates up through the crevices of your
cakes. How appetising they look, just smoking from the frying-pan! If I
should attempt to tell you the tricks of the jugglers, I should never be
done. The prettiest of all these are the lady rope-dancers of Madame
Saqui, whom you will see thirty feet in the air, and ten thousand eyes
upturned in admiration. The clown beneath holds his cocked hat to catch
any one that may fall.
The most athletic and dramatic of all these amusements, is the _Mat de
Cocagne_. This is a long pole of about eighteen inches diameter at the
base, well polished and greased from head to foot, with soft soap,
tallow, and other slippery ingredients. To climb up this pole to the top
is the eminent exploit, which crowns the victorious adventurer with a
rich prize, and gains him the acclamation of ten thousand spectators.
The pretenders strip off their upper gear altogether, and roll up their
trousers mid-thigh, and thus accoutred, present themselves at the bottom
of the mast.
“The first who attempt the ascent look for no honour; their office is to
prepare the way, and put things in train for their successors; they rub
off the grease from the bottom, the least practicable part of the mast.
In every thing the first steps are the most difficult, though seldom the
most glorious; and scarcely ever does the same person commence an
enterprise and reap the fruits of its accomplishment. They ascend higher
by degrees, and the expert climbers now come forth, the heroes of the
list; they who have been accustomed to gain prizes, whose prowess is
known, and whose fame is established. These do not expend their strength
in the beginning; they climb up gently, and patiently, and modestly, and
repose from time to time; and they carry, as is permitted, a little sack
at their girdle filled with ashes to neutralise the grease, and render
it less slippery.
“All efforts, however, for a long time prove ineffectual. There seems to
be an ultimate point, which no one can scan, the measure and term of
human strength; and to overreach it, is at last deemed impossible. Now
and then a pretender essays his awkward limbs, and reaching scarce
half-way even to this point, falls back clumsily amidst the hisses and
laughter of the spectators; so in the world empyrical pretension comes
out into notoriety for a moment only, to return with ridicule and scorn,
to its original obscurity.
“But the charm is at length broken; a victorious climber has transcended
the point at which his predecessors were arrested. Every one now does
the same; such are men; they want but a precedent; as soon as it is
proved that a thing is possible, it is no longer difficult. Our climber
continues his success, further and further still; he is at a few feet
only from the summit, but he is wearied, he relents; alas, is the prize
almost in his grasp to escape from him! He makes another effort, but of
no avail. He does not, however, lose ground; he reposes. In the
meantime, exclamations are heard, of doubt, of success, of
encouragement.
“After a lapse of two or three minutes, which is itself a fatigue, he
essays again--it is in vain. He begins even to shrink--he has slipped
downwards a few inches, and recovers his loss by an obstinate struggle
(applauses), but it is a supernatural effort, and his last. Soon after,
a murmur is heard from the crowd, half raillery, half compassion, and
the poor adventurer slides down, mortified and exhausted, upon the
earth. So a courtier, having planned from his youth, his career of
ambition, struggles up the ladder, lubrick and precipitous, to the top,
to the very consummation of his hopes, and then falls back into the
rubbish from which he has issued, and they who envied his fortune, now
rejoice in his fall. What lessons of philosophy in a greasy pole! What
moral reflections in a spectacle so empty to the common world! What
wholesome sermons are here upon the vanity of human hopes, the
disappointments of ambition, and the difficulties of success in the
slippery path of fortune and human greatness! But the defeat of the last
adventurer has shown the possibility of success, and prepared the way
for his successor, who mounts up, and perches on the summit of the mast,
bears off the crown, and descends amidst the shouts and applauses of the
multitude. It is Americus Vespucius, who bears away from Columbus the
recompense of his toils.”
I have placed commas over a few of the preceding paragraphs, to tell you
that they are taken chiefly from a French description, much prettier
than any thing I could offer you of my own.
And now, farewell, Paris! thou Pandora’s box of all good and all evil,
farewell! I ought not to take leave without making _amende honorable_
for the ill I have said and thought of the French people in my fretful
humours. I know some of them I cannot think ill of, for the life of me.
I can scarce hate the knaves and fools on their account. Then, farewell,
Paris! Thrice I have bid thee adieu, and still am lingering at thy
threshold.
THE END.
LONDON: STEWART AND MURRAY, OLD BAILEY.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Who would have thought that these two champions of Infidelity,
who were refused Christian burial, would one day, have assigned to
their remains, the first church of France, and one of the first in
Christendom, as their mausoleum. I wonder if Jean Jaques, in his
prophetic visions, foresaw this?
[2] A nest of students has lately been detected in this employment.
[3] Racine told the Duc de Maine, who was anxious for a place at the
old Academy, that there was no place vacant; but there was no member,
he said, who would not be glad to die to accommodate him--“_qui ne tint
à grand honneur de mourir, pour lui en faire une_”--and Racine said
this seriously.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
One called the ‘Montyon Prize,’=> One is called the ‘Montyon Prize,’ {pg
95}
Their number about fifty thousand=> Their number is about fifty thousand
{pg 103}
and so screamed on the theatre=> and so screamed in the theatre {pg 187}
I attemped a few days=> I attempted a few days {pg 219}
Clays, Calhoun’s=> Clays, Calhouns {pg 230}
description alogether=> description altogether {pg 238}
seen in Eurpoe=> seen in Europe {pg 244}
wit an invitation=> with an invitation {pg 244}
entertainng sights=> entertaining sights {pg 250}
he is a a=> he is a {pg 278}
once razeed=> once razed {pg 293}
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