CHAPTER III
SOCIAL DIVERSIONS AND DISTINCTIONS
With a race that has so thoroughly mastered the art of living, and not merely working or vegetating, the question of diversion is of paramount interest. In the fashionable world, sport monopolises the better part of man’s hours. This is an overseas passion, adopted with frenzy and fervour. M. Rémy de Saint Maurice has given us the odyssey of the record cyclist in an amusing and humorous book, Le Recordman, where we see the wealthy idlers of France in awed adoration before the prowess of the racing-wheel. The champion cyclist raises storms of emotion wherever he runs, be it in Paris or in the provinces. When he returns to his native town, all the authorities come to meet him and do him honour.
The French race is essentially a conversational and not a sporting one. It has a natural predilection for the amenities of life, and we feel how inappropriate is this present craze for rude and unsocial games. You need only watch a Frenchman on horseback, and contrast him with a British horseman to assure yourself of the fact that the point of view of each is quite different. The Anglo-Saxon rides ahead with the air of thinking only of his horse. The Frenchman trains his beast, like himself, to have an eye to the arts and graces, to curvet and prance minuettingly, to arch its neck as he himself bows, and he brings a suggestion of the salon among the shadows of the Bois de Boulogne. Should there be a mortuary chapel on their road to this sophisticated paradise, stand and note the pretty way these dashing creatures will salute death. Spaniards would do it, I admit, much more gracefully, for in the art of salutation the Spaniard comes first beyond a doubt. But you will not see anywhere in the British Isles so pleasing a spectacle. Some bend altogether over their steeds, hat curved outward on a wide sweep; others pause midway, less ostentatious and theatrical in their respect, and hold their hats in a direct line from their eyebrows, admirably suggestive of diplomatic reticence, younger and elder men all expressing every shade of effective recognition of alien grief with a subtlety, a dramatic felicity of movement and line the stiff Anglo-Saxon could never hope to achieve. Of course the supercilious Englishman would say he had no mind to play the monkey, and find a cause for just pride in the rigidity of his body, and the stoniness of his well-trained and inexpressive visage. But here I differ from him. A man loses nothing by outward grace, and there is no reason on earth why he should rejoice in the fact that he cannot bow.
The motor craze has superseded the cycle craze. The bourgeois bicycles so much that the youth of fashion needs something to distinguish him on the road from his inferior brother. So somebody came to his rescue with the motor-car. Go to Paris if you would realise what a perilous thing the crossing of a street may be. In such a neighbourhood as the Place Pereire it is almost mortal. I imagine it as a machine invented by the upper classes to replace the guillotine, and run down the miserable foot-passengers to avenge the beheadings of a century ago. Whenever I return home, and discover that I have lost a purse, a book, a packet according to my invariable habit, I am so thankful to feel that I am still alive, in spite of the automobile which charges through the streets in such a dreadful way, that I balance loss and gain, and count myself still a winner in the game of life by every new day to my account. In London you are everywhere enveloped in a sense of public protection. The cab drivers know how to drive, a feature of their trade they are most imperfectly aware of in Paris. The policeman is there when he is wanted, and, thanks to him, the nervous passer-by is valiant and unafraid. But in Paris the driver regards him with an eloquent hostility. His one hope is to get a free chance of running over him. He is insolent, overbearing, and menacing, unfettered by policeman or law in his man-crushing career. And, as if regretting the very slight limits still left him, Paris cast forth upon the public way the motor-car. This machine of destruction hisses along, leaving a trail of petroleum in the air, and you have barely time to start back for its passage, such is the fury of the horror in the hands of its fashionable owner. There are many motor-cars in use for the big shops and public offices; but these, being in no sense competitive in luxury, measure the ground by a speed less fatal, the drivers seem to desire to leave you whole, and suggest by their pace and bearing, some glimmering of humanity in their heart. For it is only the rich young men who give one the notion of wishing to avenge the massacres of the French Revolution. For the benefit of these flowers of the race, exhibitions of motor-cars take place, under the patronage of dukes and counts more or less authentic. And, so encouraged, these wild Parisians set out in their automobiles for the harmless and distant provinces, and charge down the long French country roads with purpose often more deadly than that displayed in the capital. The newspapers acquaint us with frequent accidents; and whatever the general sentiment regarding these accidents may be, I always feel that they are a well-merited chastisement. Why must the poor, the obscure, the inoffensive clerk and shop-girl, go in fear and trembling of their lives, that the privileged few may add a fresh sensation to their list of entailed emotions? Is not the luxury of a horse good enough for those busy idlers, without adding heart disease to our inherited disorders?
Boxing and fencing are also favourite exercises, as well as polo and tennis amongst games. One of the more serious of diversions is the duel, the first of which must be fought in early youth, and the last when temperament and politics shall have said their final word. Then come the amusements of club life, which absorb a good deal of masculine leisure, of course, and where men meet to talk and be entertained, as well as to eat, and read the newspapers. The races and the horse-show are sources of pleasure at which every self-respecting Parisian drinks. Not to be connected with horses or exhibitions would be almost as bad as not to possess an automobile, not to be seen in the foyer on great theatrical nights, not to have fought a duel. But beyond even all these pleasures are the noisy suppers of the fashionable restaurant, where everybody who is anybody meets “tout Paris”; where the dresses of the women find rivalry in the decorations of the men, and the scene approaches the ideal paradise, the mundane city peopled with brilliant personages.
In all things the French bourgeoise is more difficult to divert than her aristocratic sister. She is much more particular and infinitely more restricted in her ideas upon feminine liberty. While the women of the upper class arrogate to themselves the right to amuse themselves in whatever fashion they like, with lovers or without them, bicycling, skating, shooting, on horseback, in automobile (the Duchesse d’Uzès was the first Frenchwoman to obtain a certificate as woman driver of the motor-car), private theatricals, they can smoke or scale the mountains of the moon with impunity. All these varied avenues of distraction are rigorously denied the bourgeoise. She is the most conventional of creatures, and anything like marked originality in one of her sex terrifies her and fills her with distrust. She was bred in the conviction that girls should resemble their great-grandmothers, be clothed until marriage in the integrity of imbecility, and after marriage in the narrowness of piety, and know no other amusements than those strictly suitable to a “feminine” woman. The path her mother and grandmother trod is the path she must never deviate from. She must be just as religious as they were, taking care, however, to follow the fashions of her own class, in order to guard from so dangerous and disreputable a pitfall as originality, which, with her, means pronounced eccentricity. When she lives in Paris she dresses well; but the province often transforms her into an inconceivable shape of dowdiness. In Paris, thanks to the lectures, music, drama, literature, the multiple elements of culture, it is impossible for her to escape, unless her days be entirely devoted to domestic economy and good works; she is rarely destitute of that agreeable worldliness that makes commerce with her, however shallow and superficial she may be, facile and often instructive. And when she has the hardihood to plunge into deeper waters and think for herself, when she ceases to be beset with a craving for the ordered in conventional circles, and to think ill of originality and individual character; there is no woman on earth more charming, more capable, of readier wit, of less intellectual prudery, wedded to a wholesome independence of judgment and principle.
But as I have said, the amusements of the bourgeoise, “big” or “little,” are very restricted: books, theatres, balls, dinner-parties, with the excitement of religious ceremonies, an academy reception, a noisy sitting of Parliament, the hourly expectation of revolution, a correct evening party,—the dullest thing on earth wherever it takes place. But, on the other hand, we may be sure she will find ample entertainment in looking after her admirably managed establishment, in making her own and her husband’s means go a very long way in accomplishing a thousand little domestic meannesses unknown to the thriftless Anglo-Saxon, and all with a certain geniality and discretion that win her the esteem and goodwill of her fellows. For of womankind she is the most genial and well-mannered, and though she may, in straitened circumstances, deny every pleasing luxury to her family, her good humour will keep those around her in good humour, and the counting of lumps of sugar and of grains of coffee will seem a slight matter compared with the flavour of domestic courtesy that accompanies the process. I have known of an English family where at table forced strawberries and peaches were daily eaten, and vegetables at a fabulous price, upon the finest damask and priceless china, to the accompaniment of glasses flung by sisters and brothers at an argumentative head, plates flying, and oaths showered like missiles. Who would not prefer the economical French middle-class table, where, in well-to-do families, lunch is often served on shining oilcloth or table as polished as a mirror, to save washing, and where the amenities are as carefully guarded as if the household were on view?
In this world the young men, as elsewhere, have the best of it. Theirs the licence of manhood in all things. The moment dinner is over they put on their evening suit and file off (filer, as they say themselves, in their pleasant French slang) in the quest of pleasure. If they are well-to-do they have no difficulty in getting accepted in the world of third-rate titles. Tarnished dukes will cordially shake their hands. As there is no peerage in France to control aristocratic pretensions, they may have as much as reasonable man can desire of the society of marquises and counts, provided they take these exalted personages on trust, and do not seek to examine too closely their blazons. The method of making one’s self a count or a baron in Paris under the Third Republic is very simple. You may purchase a Papal title at a not exorbitant cost. In Abel Hermant’s Le Faubourg, a porcelain manufacturer was awarded the title of count by the Pope in return for a dinner-service he sent him, which was explained on the grant as pour service exceptionelle. In France and America only are Papal titles taken with gravity, and pronounced with all the sounding magnificence of hereditary names. But a simpler way still, and less costly even than the interference of Rome, is to buy a plate, and have graven on it first a name prefixed by the particle de. When this has been accepted without demur, and the newspapers have a dozen times announced you here, there, and everywhere as M. de ⸺, then boldly apply the title of your predilection, and behold you are, without more ado, a noble of France. No need of papers or permissions. You are noble by the grace of your own goodwill; and as most of the people around you are playing the same game, there is no earthly reason why your friend should be more of a count than you are of a baron. And so you may aspire to a larger dot from your bride. If you are in the army, you may even look as high as your general’s daughter; and when you travel abroad or journey in the provinces, you will be made to understand what a fine thing it is to be able, thanks to your own valour and judgment, to inscribe yourself in hotel books as M. le Baron or M. le Comte. You will be served better than when you were plain Mr. So-and-So. Waiters will help you off and on with your coat with a deference hitherto not enjoyed by you in your anterior plebeian state, and the society papers will record your great doings with gusto and fervour. Who, under these circumstances, would not be a count or a marquis? Had I known years ago of the facilities and advantages offered in France to titled adventurers, I might have had the wit and wisdom to style myself countess of this or baroness of that, the sole existing representative of an Irish King or a Norman house. Indeed, such is the predisposition of the French bourgeois to believe in the noble origin of his acquaintance, that one stoutly maintained before me that O and Mac were the Irish equivalents of count; and my remark that every second washerwoman or policeman in Ireland rejoiced in those attributes of nobility was received with frosty incredulity. A French officer’s wife of the name of Mahon assured me that her husband was of noble origin, and related to Marshal MacMahon; but that, unfortunately, the papers identifying the relationship were lost, and, in consequence, they could not call themselves MacMahon. As the good lady really believed every word she was saying, I could not in courtesy point out to her that Mahon and MacMahon are equally common names in Ireland, and, for that matter, in the British Isles, and that every MacMahon deems himself a connexion of the late marshal, though not one would have thought of claiming the relationship if Marshal MacMahon had remained in obscurity.
A substantial source of income is occasionally derived by the authentic nobles for the presentation of the other kind into the halls of social greatness, and for standing sponsors for them in exclusive clubs. Another source of income for avid noblemen lies in their shooting and hunting grounds. So much is paid for an invitation, still more for the button, which permits parvenus to hunt on equal terms with their so-called betters. The extraordinary things these nobles will do passes the imagination. I know of a viscountess who possesses magnificent hunting land on which men from all parts are invited to hunt. The guests departing naturally tip gamekeepers and servants according to their means. Every tip, by order, under penalty of expulsion from the château, must be brought intact to the viscountess, and out of these tips are the servants paid their wages.
The life of fashion in Paris is pretty much the same as the life of fashion elsewhere. Men and women ride in the Bois in the early hours, and it must be admitted that they could not find a pleasanter spot to ride in anywhere. The landscape is charming, and if you break away from the Allée des Acacias—the Parisian Row—you may even make a feint at losing yourself under columns of tall trees, by little, moss-grown paths, where the branches meet overhead, with ever in view grassy rolls of sward and bright trellises of foliage above the broad white roads. In the early hours this trim paradise is cool and quiet; and even an Anarchist on foot will have no cause to envy his prosperous enemy on horseback, for the same delights of herb and leaf, of sky and water, are his at a cheaper rate. Indeed, there is no land on earth where a good-humoured taste of vicarious pleasures may be so freely and fully enjoyed as in France. Amiable petits gens sit on chairs and watch the great parade of the Bois without a trace of envy in their looks, comment on dresses, horses, equipages, bearing, as if it were but a pageant got up for their benefit. I am not sure that this is not one of the advantages of Society—one of its objects—to minister to the kindly and generous vanity of the workers of a country. These, by their labours, maintain it, dress it, wash for it, build for it, manufacture for it, keep in order for it the public roads, give the best of their blood, brains, nerve, and force to its triumphs, and are content to see how well the result of all this gigantic travail of a race looks in the show hours of national existence. The big dressmakers are repaid when, sitting in their loge of inspection, they watch the effect of their several creations on Varnishing Day, at Auteuil or Longchamps. The artistic temperament is at the root of all this contentedness, of these subtle gratifications which the Philistine workman does not apprehend. The Frenchman brings this sentiment of art into all he does. The word “artist” is applied to cook, dressmaker, milliner, hair-dresser. In many ways M. Demolins has shown us that the race is inferior to the Anglo-Saxon races, but it has one essential superiority—the absence of vulgarity in the artisan and shopkeeping classes. You can hold converse with pleasure and profit with your washerwoman, who also will, in all probability, be something of an artist, with the artist’s personal point of view; with your char-woman, your hair-dresser; and the grocer’s boy on his daily rounds, if you come in contact with him, you will find to be an intelligent and well-mannered youth. It is only when you get a little above this class that you light upon a trace of commercial vulgarity. The commis voyageur is something of a trial on the public road. He is not a pattern of manners, and he is apt to be aggressive in his desire to obtain the value of his money. Go still higher, among the wealthy bourgeois, and in no land of all the world will you find men who can comport themselves worse. In their attitude to women they seem to possess no standard of courtesy whatever. When a Frenchman of this class is polite to a woman, you may be in no doubt of his views in her regard, and you may be perfectly sure of her social and pecuniary value; for he is the least chivalrous, the least kind, the least disinterested of mortals, speaking generally, though here, as elsewhere, you will find noble exceptions. I hardly know an American or English woman who has travelled or stayed any time in France who has not had occasion to note how much less courteous to women Frenchmen are than their own men. Two young English ladies, finding themselves in some dilemma with regard to trains or luggage, had occasion to call on one of the chiefs of the Gare du Nord. This gentleman, elegant, disdainful, and fatuously rude, received them in a luxurious office, fitted up with such splendour as to suggest some of the complications of the Parisian drama, and bore himself towards them with such intolerable insolence, that, on going out, one of the travellers, to be even with him, said: “Everything may be found in Paris, I see, except a gentleman!” This, of course, is angry exaggeration, for nobody can be more delightful than a Frenchman, when he chooses to give himself the trouble to please and to serve; but it is as good an example as I can give of the attitude of the French functionary to the public. Put a uniform of any sort on a Frenchman, invest him in any kind of office, and he is apt to become insupportable. Rudeness he practises as part of his official dignity. It never occurs to him that he is there to assist the public. He conceives himself to be there to insult and domineer over the public.
In France, social distinctions are less insusceptible of permutation than elsewhere. Everything is possible in a land where a tanner may hobnob with a Czar, be embraced and addressed by that august personage as “friend.” The nations of Europe may object to this state of things, but the nations of Europe must put up with it. Amongst these same nations France cannot be left out of the reckoning. Her capital is always felt to be the best morsel of foreign travel. It is she who gives “tone,” for I do not speak of anything so obvious as the unquestioned prestige of her fashions. A day may come when this prestige shall have passed elsewhere, but even when that day comes Paris will continue for long years to subsist upon her ancient renown. Even now there are signs of revolt against her sovereignty. For in my own town, Dublin, contempt for her fashions is openly expressed, it being alleged here that the women of Dublin dress with far greater taste than their sisters of Paris. Those who are inclined to make light of these pretensions should go to Dublin in the Horse Show week, where I am assured that the dresses of the girls and women of Dublin leave Paris nowhere. So the good people of Dublin say, for they have a fine conceit over there, and profess to hold Europe in light esteem. But in spite of this it is not improbable that Paris will continue to maintain its superiority.
Under republican rule, woman has no official position, is in all matters of state a mere cipher. And so it is not possible for the President’s wife to start a fashion, or for any Minister’s wife to guide the vagaries of taste. This in itself suffices to explain to us the fact that a large majority of women are anti-republican. They feel that their sex is insulted by a Government which takes no recognition of their charm and influence, presumes to govern without the assistance of their presence, without any loophole for their unauthorised supremacy. There is no chance for a Pompadour under a Republic, and whatever other abuses may exist to-day, ladies of light morals cannot hope to attain heraldic glory and hereditary wealth by the “primrose path of dalliance” with royal Lotharios. And so social distinctions are now in France more complex and less stringent than under the ancien régime. Complexity lies in the variety of claims not known in former days, when the division between the classes was sharp and infrangible. In the world of toque and robe there are men who count themselves the superiors of the crusaders; in the army there are generals of plebeian origin who think themselves the first of Frenchmen; there are fashionable doctors and surgeons, painters, authors, politicians, men of science, and merchant princes who regard themselves almost as the equals of the crowned heads of Europe.
All these varied ranks of society meet at a general point—social pretension. Wealth is the sole degree they really acknowledge, though “good family” is their vaunted consideration. They are aware that fashion and birth are no longer synonymous terms, that the goal is quickest won by the longest purse. A duchess with a hundred a year may feast on her own prestige in the eyes of a few intimates, but the world at large will forget her existence to run after the capitalist of yesterday’s standing. With the suppression of the power of the aristocracy, its removal in a body from the governing centre, the field was left free to money and talent; and with industry and education both may now be said to be within reach of everybody. The aristocracy groan, ineffectual and undignified, while a large majority of the nation heeds them not. It is perfectly aware of the impotence of these discontented idlers, aware that, with a few chivalrous exceptions, who must be admired for their fidelity to tradition, it is not at all the good of the country they are working for, but their own personal triumph. Who to-day is going to stop to examine the rights, the promises, of the candidates of the three mutually destructive parties working for the hour conjointly in their vindictive hatred of a Government able to get on without them? But all know very well that should the Nationalists win and overthrow the Republic, as they desire to do, it is only then the country would be hurried into a ruinous civil war. The inoffensive President holds the balance between Legitimist, Imperialist, and Orleanist, and as soon as arms against the Republic shall be laid down by all three we may prepare to see them showing their teeth to each other. For one of the three parties must triumph, and how will the other two that have fought with it on equal terms tolerate this obvious consequence of its success?
While admitting that Frenchmen have brought much grace along with the continual gratification of the senses into the diversions of outdoor existence, it is questionable if they enjoy them really as the English do. We cannot easily conceive a French Minister shaking off the cares of office to refresh himself with all the gusto of a schoolboy on the golf links. Taste and national character would be much more likely to lead him to seek change and distraction in that temple of fame, the salon. Here we may picture him talking with the consummate and exquisite ease of his race. Their sports, like their clubs, the French have borrowed from England, and, according to the point of view, have improved or disfigured these noble institutions; but their salon is their own. No other race has even tried to compete with them on this famous ground, for the reason that no other race has the art of general conversation. You must have the instinct of good conversation, be yourself something of an artist in it, be able to bring an attention, a readiness of wit and intelligence and information, demanded in this national pastime. The French speak well because they know how to listen so well. With them there is no such thing as talking down the company. The deference given is duly claimed and granted, and the first thing that strikes you in a salon is the complete absence among the men of that vexatious British habit of lounging. Frenchmen in their families do not lounge as Englishmen lounge in strange drawing-rooms. I once heard a Russian woman who had sojourned in both countries say, Les Anglais n’ont pas de tenue. And this is true. An Englishman who counts himself a gentleman will put his feet on railway cushions when women are present, he will sprawl before women in rooms, keep his hands in his trousers pockets while talking to them, nurse his foot at an afternoon call—in a word, do everything but sit on the chairs or seats of civilisation in a simple and inoffensive attitude. Not one of these things have I ever seen Frenchmen do, even in intimacy. Their correctness in a drawing-room is scrupulous. Familiarity is the very last thing they suggest, though the house you meet them at may be one they have been in the habit of visiting once a week at least for many years. Englishwomen to whom I have remarked this peculiar characteristic of their countrymen retort that the behaviour of Frenchmen in dining-rooms is as inferior, compared with that of their compatriots, as ever could be the behaviour of Englishmen, tested by the same standard, in drawing-rooms. I willingly admit the accusation, and I confess I should find both races more delightful if each borrowed the best of the other, and so mended their ways and became perfect. I do not care on which side the lesson begins, if only Frenchmen will eat as well as Englishmen, and Englishmen will imitate the perfect “tone” of the Frenchman in a drawing-room. The niceties observed by each in its sphere are equally admirable and equally necessary if we are ever to arrive at that indefinable and still distant state called civilisation. But to hear the Anglophobe in France (or, still worse, read him), and the Gallophobe in England talk of one another, it might be believed that these two great races stood farthest off from the goal we all aspire to reach instead of being both in their several ways nearest to it.
I will be honest, and confess that the race of my predilection, France, is far the worse sinner of the two. To soothe her wounded vanity, and an imaginary hurt of honour skilfully exaggerated by the Press, she has descended to foolish misrepresentation of a neighbour with whom she had far better live on terms of amity. The Russian alliance turned her head, and for once she had not wit enough to see that she was being deliberately fooled for purposes not in the least connected with her own interests. Since that memorable date, she has gradually raised the tone of her hostility to England, till now her chief aspiration, if we are to believe the nonsensical Nationalist Press, is to avenge the old defeats of Crécy, Poictiers, and Agincourt. We will not speak of Waterloo. That victory is associated with Germany and Russia, and her intention is, for the moment, to pass as the very good friend of both. Left to herself, France would never have unearthed these ancient hostilities of the War of a Hundred Years, for she is in the main both sane and intelligent; but the Nationalists do not for nothing profess hostility to the Government, and they are ready for war, even if it but lead to the reversal of the ministry, and the removal of President Loubet. For they hate poor M. Loubet with ferocity; and I have seen in the eyes of some of my Nationalist friends, devout Catholics and Conservatives, that is, rabid partisans of the lost cause of the aristocracy, a gleam of joy when one night the late roars of the newspaper boys led us to fear that the President had been murdered. On a assassiné Emile! they shouted, leaping to their feet, and flinging down their cards. If their lips did not simultaneously pronounce the words, “Thank God!” there was not present an expression of countenance, a tone of voice, that did not eloquently utter the unchristian thanksgiving at the thought but my own. And yet these people are all excellent citizens; possess many lovable qualities, are capable of kindness to friends, to the poor, to foreigners even. And so I am led, from intimate knowledge of the “Boxers” of France, to conclude that the “Boxers” of China may not be in themselves reprehensible creatures, but only wild and misguided “patriots.” Patriotism is accounted one of the noble virtues of mankind; and when we obey the dictates of patriotism who is to pronounce them criminal even when they prompt us to massacre all the foreigners at our gate, and torture all their partisans within those same gates?
The pastimes of the “little people” are infinitely more interesting than those of their betters. Here is no idle waste of money on fashion and display. Every penny spent brings in compound interest in relaxation and enjoyment. For the “little people” are mighty careful of their sous. When the small shopkeeper, with his wife and limited family, go to dine at a restaurant, it is an excellent lesson in domestic economy to watch their proceedings. One good dinner will be ordered, and the waiter places this, with a second relay of plates, before the shopkeeper, who shares this dinner with his wife, and the children feed surreptitiously off the parents’ plates. Thus four persons will have dined, and well, at the restaurant price of one. As foreigners are not supposed to be up to these dodges, they will find their adaptation of them difficult and discouraging. Those who prefer to picnic in the public woods on a Sunday have a better time. They fill a lunch basket according to purse and palate, and set out on the impériale of the tram from the Louvre, which takes them for three sous each to the wood of Vincennes, one of the most charming of Parisian fringes. The people of Paris are more spoiled than any other, for public pleasure-grounds abound, and no one can complain that the rich have the monopoly of the best. Where will you find such an exquisite park as the dear little Parc Monceau, with its ruins, and emerald slopes cut and watered to look like carpets of plush, its alleys and gorgeous flower-beds? In London such a cultivated bit of fairy-land would be the exclusive property of the wealthy residents round this park; not so in Paris, where verdure and flowers are cared for for the public, to whom they belong. The people of Paris have won their freedom for ever, and the privileges of the wealthy are reduced to those they can pay for. Were they to attempt the appropriation of others, the Parisian workmen are quite ready to start another revolution. Their argument is that, so long as they are willing to work, they have a right to live, and living implies not only bread and meat, but a fair share of pleasures. These pleasures for them must be inexpensive, and their pleasure-grounds must be maintained at the cost of the public, which in turn is maintained at the cost of their labour. And so they are free of the Bois de Boulogne, a gem of public woods; of Vincennes, less prepared and perfumed and rigorously trimmed, with its wilder bits of scenery along the Marne, its hillsides and quaint solitudes; of Fontainebleau, that airy heaven of the artist, on the edge of one of the cemeteries of the ancien régime, the grand old palace of kings which now belongs to the nation, the little town asleep on its forest marge, where of old the Court played at life in high dramatic fashion, and “minuetted” itself with grace into the grave.
The surrounding scenery of Paris is unimaginably enchanting. Luckily for themselves, and unluckily for the fastidious dreamers, the people have spoiled all this beauty with their gingerbread fairs, their rowdy diversions, their feasts and improprieties. Bougival is given over to ladies of indecorous habits and their fugitive mates, Asnières is now a place where fast men take women at war with respectability and virtue to dwell at ease, so that these pretty resorts are closed to the puritan holiday maker. If you have not lived in the neighbourhood of a French fair for the traditional three weeks of its duration, you cannot understand to what extent a nation or a city may be martyrised for the pleasure of its people. The clamour of diverse sounds begins at ten A.M. and ends only at one A.M., fifteen hours later. There are the roars of the wild beasts, the tambour beating outside each booth at intervals, the whiz and whistle of the merry-go-rounds, the frightful music of the dancing halls, each repeating without intermission the same airs and all simultaneously, so that you hear the waltz of Faust, of Mme. Angot, the jingle of the Danse du Ventre, and polkas and marches in a maddening mingle. Add to this the uninterrupted popping of guns, and the shouting of the booth proprietors, and you have all the elements of an inferno never imagined by Dante. To complain were idle. The people are taking their pleasures, and the people must live. So the world of fashion, when a fair comes its way as it does at Neuilly, makes the best of it with the good-humoured philosophy of France, and goes down into its midst. At the fair of Neuilly it is the chic thing for the elegant diners to attend in evening dress, and admire the pugilist, the lions and tigers, the merry-go-rounds, and the exhibitions of the tents.
The behaviour of the people at these public entertainments is admirable. No rowdiness, or drunkenness, or ribald conduct, for the poorest devil in France has the art of taking his pleasures decently. But as the reverse of the medal, no people could be less innocent, less clean in its choice of amusements, and so these gingerbread fairs are well provided with obscene spectacles. I need cite only one case to prove how deep lie the roots of the national perversity of a race which reveals in all things such remarkable exterior grace and refinement. My servant, an excellent creature, well-bred, of the very highest moral character, and a delicacy of sentiment and instinct many a lady might envy, a woman a duchess might make her friend and count herself the gainer, has a child, a little lad of ten. She has brought up this boy so perfectly that if fate transformed him to-morrow into a prince, he would have nothing to learn. She has insisted in his training on an exquisite modesty, the delicacy of a girl, and a corresponding innocence. I gave this little fellow the other day half a franc to go down to the fair, then in my avenue, and told him to go and see a brown bear and a delightful young camel with which I had made friends; but before the child reached the wild-beast booth, an elderly gentleman, going into another booth, invited him to accompany him. Now, the elderly gentleman knew where he was going, and why; the child did not, and he trustingly went in, paid his twopence, and followed the elderly reprobate to see—what?—a series of anatomical models in wax; the man explained the spectacle to the child, and sent him back to his mother troubled and unhappy. François communicated all that had passed to my servant, who came to me with tears in her eyes, and we both felt it a hard thing that a boy in Paris could not be trusted to amuse himself in a harmless way while waiting for his mother, and almost within range of her glance, without disgusting snares being laid in wait for him, with no excuse even on the score that his elders were seeking entertainment where he was not expected to be found.
Other pastimes of the people, besides fairs and picnics, are the cheap excursions down the river with inexpensive refreshments on the water-edge, the public dancing of the 14th of July, and the illuminations, carnivals, and the feast of the washerwomen with the coronation of their queen, the free afternoons at the state theatres. All these are edifying sights, for they show you how decorously and charmingly the French people can take their diversions and how good-humoured and well-mannered a French crowd can be. If you venture up to Montmartre, the hill of impropriety, you will find a different quality in the entertainment offered. You will be less convinced of the moral and mental value of the nation. A great deal of hot blue wine is consumed, and the desperadoes of misprized genius meet to shock and shake the foundations of the hill by their stupid ruffianism in verse. Ladies display their underwear, and their havoc of virtue is gauged by the length of their laundress’s bill. Tenth-rate journalists, unread and unreadable authors, penniless, whose talent consists in their indecency, inane and flatulent “masters,” pose here and enjoy in their several ways the sensation of going to the dogs in a body. They drink out of skulls, and count themselves original. A waiter dressed as a devil addresses them, Que veux tu, damné? Satan at the counter, with hoofs, horns, and tail, welcomes them to hell, and they think they have accomplished unheard-of villainy when they get drunk. It is not unusual to hear that these amiable gentlemen live upon the profits of prostitution, while awaiting their merited recognition from a dense and ungrateful world. Sometimes, but rarely, real talent has travelled down to the Boulevards by way of Montmartre and the dull Red Mill of Folly. Maurice Donnay is a brilliant example. He dwelt awhile on his high perch of misprized genius, but he was speedily valued at his worth, and carried in triumph into a cleaner and more intelligent atmosphere. There is nothing drearier in Paris than its resorts of vice, such as the Moulin Rouge, Bullier, its “halls of brandy and song.” They are quite as vulgar as elsewhere, and infinitely more disgusting.
