French & English

The Special Committee of the London School Board issued a report in the early part of the year 1888, in which it declared that “fearless truth, bravery, honour, activity, manly skill, temperance, hardihood,” were objects of national education.

Some of these are very remarkable novelties in education, and if such a scheme should ever be carried into practice, it will produce unprecedented results. Fearless truth, bravery, and honour (if moral courage is understood to be a part of bravery) have usually been represented in education by their opposites, that is to say, by mental submission, by the timidity of the boy who expects to be browbeaten, and by the hypocritical expression of dictated opinions. The individuality of the boy and his honesty have not been encouraged, but repressed. He has been told what to think and what to say, and even what line of argument to follow, without pausing to consider whether he had any intellect or any conscience of his own. I remember a striking instance of this in the case of a French boy who was preparing an essay as a pupil of the philosophy class in a public school. We talked over the subject of his essay, and I thought he expressed his opinions, which were also mine, with great cogency and clearness. “There,” I said, “you have all that is wanted for your essay; why not say what you think in that manner?” He answered, “If I were to write like that, my essay would not be received, and I should get no marks. On all philosophical questions we are to express the opinions that are determined for us by the traditions of the University, so I shall say the contrary of what I think, and then I shall get marks.” This training of boys in intellectual dishonesty may be of the greatest value to them in after life, for in real life nothing is so useful to a man as to be able to profess, on occasion, the contrary of what he thinks, but surely it must rob education of all interest even for the educator, seeing that, as he does not hear the truth from his pupils, he can never adapt his reasoning to their case. He does not know their case.

“But,” it will be objected, “if you allow boys to express their crude opinions, it would be encouraging liberty of thought.” No, it would only be encouraging honesty of expression, the “fearless truth,” the “honour” of the School Board Committee. There is a happy provision of nature by which freedom of thought is, and always has been, the assured possession of every one who values it, only honesty of expression can be put down. You cannot make boys or men think otherwise than as they do think, but you may train them in habits of dissimulation.

One of the worst of these habits is that of sham admiration in literature and art, and this is a prevalent vice of the French mind. There may be some exceptions, but the general rule is that a Frenchman will profess to admire what he thinks he ought to admire, even when he has no genuine ardour of admiration at his disposal. The effect is to make conversations with Frenchmen uninteresting so soon as they turn upon famous masters. They will repeat the old laudatory commonplaces, and if you venture upon any criticism with the slightest originality in it, they will look upon you as an insular eccentric. They have been taught at school how to praise the famous men, they have been taught even the proper terms of laudation. I believe the Chinese learn to repeat the praises of their classics in the same way.

My own experience leads me to the conclusion that there is less of this sham admiration in England than in France. I grant that the English are often sham admirers of Shakespeare, and that the pretence to appreciate the national poet is not good for the habit of veracity, but I should say that any Englishman who was accustomed to reading would, as a rule, say truly what he thought of modern authors. I would not trust much to his honesty about the Greek and Latin classics, because the admiration of these is mixed up with ideas of culture and of caste. Mr. James Payn says that the habit of literary lying is almost universal in England. The temptation to it is certainly very strong. It is the same temptation that induces painters to over-colour for the exhibitions. Writing which guards and keeps the delicacy of an exquisite honesty, writing which says exactly what the writer feels, and refuses to go beyond his feeling, such writing can rarely appear forcible, especially in comparison with work that is done for force alone without any regard for truth. It will certainly seem weak if it comes after exaggerated writing on the same subject, and it is liable to be eclipsed at any time by coarser work that may be done afterwards. This is especially the case with regard to the criticism or appreciation of great men. The public likes to hear them loudly praised, and easily acquires a sort of partisan loyalty to their names even when it cares nothing for their work. To offend this partisan loyalty is to set it against ourselves, but there is no risk in judicious lying.

I cannot but think that the sentence of the court at Ipswich on George Frederick Wilfrid Ellis was excessively severe. He was condemned to seven years’ penal servitude for having pretended to be a clergyman of the Church of England. For five years he lived as Rector of Wetheringsett, and appears to have given perfect satisfaction in that capacity. He did no perceptible harm in that parish, for even the marriages that he solemnised are valid in English law. He only lied systematically and acted a part to perfection, that was all. But systematic lying is constantly practised by unbelieving laymen who conform outwardly, and they, too, act their part with skill. They may also, like the false Rector of Wetheringsett, often derive great pecuniary advantages from their falsehood, either by getting rich wives or lucrative situations that would be refused to them if their real opinions were known. Yet instead of being condemned to seven years’ hard labour as the sham clergyman was, these sham Christians get nothing but rewards for their lying. It becomes, therefore, an important question, in estimating the general truthfulness of a country, whether religious hypocrisy is encouraged in it or not, and to what degree. Is this kind of lying more encouraged in England or in France?

Having touched upon this question elsewhere, I need not dwell upon it here, but will give results only, in a few words. There cannot be a doubt that the kind of lying which belongs to outward conformity is, on the whole, a more useful accomplishment in England than in France. Of the extent to which it is practised we know little. Sham Christians pass for real Christians, and bear no outward mark by which they may be detected. It is certain, however, that the English are becoming much more outspoken than they used to be, and that the quality of “fearless truth” is gaining in esteem amongst them, whilst hypocrisy is considered less meritorious. As for the vulgar French idea that all Englishmen are hypocrites, it may be dismissed with the answer that a majority has no motive for hypocrisy, which is the vice of vituperated minorities. And again, with reference to French truthfulness and courage in the expression of heterodox religious opinion, I admire it, and consider it far preferable to hypocrisy and moral cowardice, but at the same time I remember that a Frenchman has less to risk and less to lose by veracity than an Englishman. A Frenchman can with difficulty conceive the force of that quiet pressure which is brought to bear upon an Englishman from his infancy. It is like hydraulic pressure, gentle and slow, but practically irresistible. He is taught and governed in boyhood by clergymen, their feminine allies compel him to go to church and to observe the English Sunday if he intends to marry in England. There is the discipline, too, of the daily family prayers, the Scripture readings, and the discipline of “good form” in conversation. Even the strong-minded Englishman is a little afraid of a clergyman. I once knew an English officer in Paris, a man of tried courage, who was not proof against this timidity. He possessed in his library a number of heterodox books, but when a clerical brother from England came to stay with him he packed up all that literature and sent it elsewhere for the time, as a boy puts a forbidden volume out of his master’s sight.[45]

Political lying must be very common in both countries, if we accept the testimony of the politicians themselves, for they always tell us that the newspapers opposed to their own are remarkable chiefly for their mendacity. This field of political lying is far too extensive for me to enter upon it. I prefer to confine myself to a few examples of international misrepresentation, as they will throw light upon the general subject of this book. Like political parties, the nations themselves are enemies, and consider it a legitimate part of the chronic warfare that is maintained between them to say whatever may be to each other’s disadvantage, provided only that it has a chance of being believed.

I notice, however, a difference in kind and quality between French and English lying. The French are daring enough, but they are not really clever in the art. They have much audacity, but little skill. They will say what is not true with wonderful decision, and they will stick to it afterwards; but the English surpass them infinitely in craft and guile. The typical French lie is a simple, shameless invention; the typical English lie is not merely half a truth; it is entangled with half a dozen truths, or semblances of truths, so that it becomes most difficult to separate them, unless by the exercise of great patience and judicial powers of analysis. Besides this, if the patient analyst came and put the falsehood on one side, and the semblances of truth on the other, the process of separation would be too long, too minute, and too wearisome, for a heedless world to follow him.

The French writer who publishes a falsehood always relies greatly upon the ignorance of his readers. He is audacious because he believes himself to be safe from detection; or he may be merely reckless in his statements, without intentional mendacity, knowing that any degree of carelessness is of little consequence in addressing his own careless public. The English writer, on the other hand, is aware that his public knows a little of everything, though its knowledge is inexact; and he pays some deference to this sort of inexact knowledge by referring to those facts that an indolent and confused memory may retain. His assertions have therefore a sufficiently good appearance both of truth and of knowledge, and they satisfy a public that has some information and a great theoretical respect for truth combined with much critical indolence.

The first example I shall give is of the reckless French kind. The critic has malevolent feelings towards England (the shadow cast by his French patriotism), and he indulges these feelings to the utmost by writing what is unfavourable to the country he detests, without stopping to inquire if it is true.

Toussenel is a very popular French author. His name is known to every Frenchman who reads, and he has a great reputation for wit. His book entitled L’Esprit des Bêtes appeared first in the year 1847, and is now almost a French classic. I find the following paragraph on page 35 of Hetzel’s popular edition. After speaking of the horse in past times, Toussenel directs our attention to the present:—

“Which is the country in Europe where the blood-horse plays the most brilliant part? It is England. Why? The horse continues to reign and govern in England because England is the country of all the world where oppression is most odious and most revolting. There we find a thousand Norman families which possess, by themselves, all the soil, which occupy all posts, and make all the laws, exactly as on the day after the Battle of Hastings. In England the conquering race is everything, the rest of the nation nothing. The English lord esteems his horse in proportion to the contempt he has for the Irishman, for the Saxon, inferior races that he has vanquished by his alliance with his horse. Take good heed, then, that you offend not one hair of the tail of a noble courser of Albion, you who care for your money and your liberty; for the horse is the appanage of the House of Lords, and these Lords have caused the law to declare their horse inviolable and sacred. You may knock down a man with your fist, you may take your wife to market with a halter round her neck, you may trail the wretched prostitute in the mud of the gutter, the daughter of the poverty-stricken artisan whom misery has condemned to infamy. The law of Great Britain tolerates these peccadilloes. For the Norman race of Albion, the English people has never formed part of humanity.”

What strikes us at once in writing of this kind is the astonishing confidence of the author in the profound ignorance of his readers. The confidence was fully justified. There are few Frenchmen even at the present day to whom anything in this passage would seem inaccurate or exaggerated. The statement that only the Norman families can be lords and landowners is quite one that the French mind would be prepared to accept, because it implies that England is in a more backward condition than France. I have met with an intelligent Frenchman who maintained that serfdom still exists in England—the serfdom of the Saxon, the serfdom of Gurth and Wamba; and when I happened to mention an English estate as belonging to a certain commoner, another Frenchman, a man of superior culture and gentle breeding, first looked politely sceptical, and then raised the unanswerable objection that in England, as everybody knew, land could only be held by peers. Others will repeat Toussenel’s statement that all the public posts (what we call places) are held by the nobility.

The kind of falsehood of which Toussenel’s statements are an example arises from complete indifference to truth. He pays no attention to it whatever, has no notion that a writer who fails to inform himself neglects a sacred duty, but sets down in malice any outrageous idea that comes uppermost, and then affirms it to be fact.

My next example is of less importance, because it is not spread abroad in a famous and permanent book; still, it shows a kind of falsehood that may be dictated by French malevolence. A Frenchman had been staying in England, and on his return to France he told any one who would listen to him that the English have a strange custom—the family bath. All the members of an English family, without regard to sex or age, bathe together every morning in a state of perfect nudity.

This, I think, is rather a representative specimen of a French lie. It is a pure invention, suggested by anger at the superior cleanliness of the English upper classes, and by a desire to make them pay for their cleanliness by a loss of reputation for decency.

By reckless invention on the one hand, and complete carelessness about verification on the other, the French have accumulated a mass of information about the English which is as valuable as the specimens here given. But there is no real interest in the study of artless French mendacity. It is but the inventiveness of children who say no matter what. It displays no intelligence. English falsehood is incomparably superior to it as an exercise of mental sharpness, and is always worth studying as an inexhaustible subject for the most watchful and interesting analysis. Nothing can surpass the ingenuity with which that marvellous patchwork of truth and its opposite is put together. The intelligent Englishman knows that truth is the most important ingredient in a well-concocted falsehood.

The following example has remained in my memory, and is worth quoting for its concentration. In scarcely more than twenty words it contains three deceptive phantoms of truths, and conveys three false impressions. I found it in an English newspaper of repute, but am unable to give the date. This, however, is in some degree indicated by the passage itself.

“The present atheistical government of France, after expelling the religious orders, has now decreed that the crosses shall be removed from the cemeteries.”

The adjective “atheistical” is here quietly substituted for the true one, which would be laïc. The French Government is not more atheistic than a board of railway directors. There are four antagonistic established religions in France, and the right to freedom of thought is recognised by law,[46] so that a French Government is necessarily non-theocratic and neutral. French cabinets no more profess atheism than they profess Judaism or Romanism; and since the establishment of the Third Republic they have never shown themselves more actively hostile to the idea of Deity than the Royal Society or any other purely secular institution in London.

The expression, “after expelling the religious orders,” was intended to convey the idea that the religious orders in general were expelled from France, that being the recognised English view of the Ferry decrees. In reality not a single monk was expelled from France, nor were the orders generally disturbed in any way. The religious orders were classed under two categories,—the authorised, which were recognised by the State, and the unauthorised, which existed only on sufferance. The laws, which required them to ask for “authorisation,” had not been passed under the republic but under the monarchy. What happened in 1880 was this. The authorised congregations were left entirely undisturbed. The unauthorised were not expelled from France, but invited to ask for an authorisation, which the Government was disposed to grant in every case except that of the Jesuits. They declined to ask, in obedience to commands from Rome, the object of which was to place the Government in the position of a persecutor, or compel it to retreat. Ferry would not retreat, and turned the unauthorised congregations out of their houses. This was represented as a persecution of religion; but, in truth, the monks were treated exactly as French laymen, for unauthorised associations of laymen were equally illegal, and lay associations were equally obliged to submit their statutes and ask for authorisation.[47] Sir Robert Peel said in 1843, “If a Church chooses to have the advantages of an establishment, and to hold those privileges which the law confers, that Church, whether it be the Church of Rome, or the Church of England, or the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, must conform to the law.” The French cabinet was therefore only acting upon a recognised English principle.

We may next examine the statement that the French Government ordered the crosses to be removed from the cemeteries. If the reader does not know the truth he is sure to receive the intended impression that this order, emanating from the Government, took effect throughout France. He will receive another impression, well calculated upon, that the crosses upon the graves were removed. In fact, this is what the English believed about the matter. What an unholy outrage on Christianity and on the feelings of pious relatives! What a perfect subject for indignant denunciation of republican tyranny and violence! However, English travellers still find the crosses on the graves, and they see the stone-cutters near the cemeteries continually carving new ones under their wooden sheds.

The explanation is very simple. The decree did not issue from the French Government at all, but from the town council of a single city—Paris. Even in Paris it had no application to the graves, but referred exclusively to the crosses on the gateways of the Parisian cemeteries. These crosses, which were very few in number, the municipal council decided to remove, because they appeared to indicate that Christians alone (or, perhaps, even Roman Catholics alone) had a right to interment in the public burial-grounds, whereas these were in fact open to Jews and unbelievers as well as to Catholics and Protestants.

Now, I would ask the reader to observe in how few words the false impressions are conveyed and how many have been needed for a reply. And how can one count upon the sustained attention necessary for the reception of the truth?

The English newspapers quite succeeded in conveying the impression that the religious congregations were expelled from France, as if they had been sent into exile. Since then there has been a second case of turning-out, and when it occurred I observed with great interest what the English press would make of it and what the English public could be induced to believe. Until the Duke of Aumale wrote an intentionally offensive letter to the President of the Republic, in a form which no Head of a State would have tolerated, only two members of the House of Orleans had been expelled—the Count of Paris and the Duke of Orleans. The English newspapers, in order to augment the appearance of tyranny on the part of the French Government, had the ingenuity to pervert this into an expulsion of the entire Orleans family, ladies, children, and all. The ladies and children were introduced to win the sympathy of the reader, and arouse his indignation against the republican persecutors. The daily papers announced the expulsion of the Orleans family in capital letters, but the best appeal to sympathy was made by the illustrated journals, which impartially engraved portraits of them all as interesting and illustrious exiles. Nor was this fiction temporary. The false legend which the English people seriously believe has already entered into history. See how neatly and briefly it is inserted in the following extract from the Saturday Review for 9th July 1887: “About the time of the expulsion of himself and his family from France, the Count of Paris advised his friends to abandon the practice of indiscriminate opposition.” Meanwhile, as a matter of fact, members of the house supposed to be languishing in exile were enjoying full liberty in France, travelling, staying, and receiving any guests they pleased.

In the year 1886 some English newspapers got up an account of a sort of French catechism, using the name of Mr. Matthew Arnold as an authority. The nature of this catechism may be understood from a speech at the Harvard celebration by Mr. Lowell, who trusted to these statements. Here are Mr. Lowell’s words: “Mr. Matthew Arnold has told us that in contemporary France, which seems doomed to try every theory of enlightenment by which the fingers may be burned or the house set on fire, the children of the public schools are taught, in answer to the question, ‘Who gives you all these fine things?’ to say, ‘The State.’ Ill fares the State in which the parental image is replaced by an abstraction.”

Being well aware of the extreme skill with which false impressions are conveyed in England, I said to myself that it would be interesting to institute a little inquiry into this matter, and did not rest till I had got to the bottom of it. “The public schools” is a very comprehensive expression, including and at once suggesting the lycées, so I began my inquiry in them. The result was as I expected; no such question and answer were known in the lycées, or had ever been heard of there. My next move was to cause inquiries to be made in the elementary schools. There, also, the question and answer were wholly unknown; but the masters added that since many manuals were used, no single manual being imposed by the Government, as implied by the newspaper statement, there might possibly be some school in which a manual might contain something resembling the question and answer quoted.

Finally, I wrote to Mr. Arnold himself, hoping to get from him the little scrap of truth on which the falsehood had grown. Mr. Arnold could not give me the name of any school in which anything resembling that question and answer had been heard; he only remembered that “in some school in Paris” he had made a note of the matter. Finally, Mr. Arnold frankly acknowledged that the word “State” (l’État) was not used at all. The word really used was le Pays, which is not an abstraction but a reality—the land of France with all its inhabitants. The question and answer seemed to Mr. Arnold to exhibit “the superficiality, nay silliness, of the French in treating religion and morals.” I see in it nothing but a truthful account of a matter of fact. The children were reminded that they owed their education to the country as a reason for serving the country when the time came.

Sir Walter Scott has often been severely blamed for defending the anonymous character of the Waverley novels by falsehoods, but he would not have been blamed for defending it by silence, even when silence was fully equivalent to a falsehood. This opens an important question in casuistry. It is likely that almost all French people would say that Sir Walter had a right to defend himself in that way, as the falsehood in self-defence against curiosity is usually considered legitimate in France. Many English people do not think that kind of falsehood legitimate, yet would practise the silence that deceives, or utter a sentence carefully worded so as to be literally true whilst it conveyed an erroneous idea. Everybody defends himself against impertinent curiosity in his own way, and it can seldom be done without some sacrifice of veracity. When Robert Chambers said he wondered how the author of Vestiges of Creation would have felt under Herschell’s attack, it was not true, he did not wonder, he knew accurately, being himself the author.

The French believe the English to be usually truthful in private transactions, but slippery and deceitful in great international affairs; the English have very little confidence in French truth, either in private or public matters. For my part, I have met with extremely deceitful and extremely honourable men in both countries. I have been cheated in both, and treated fairly and justly in both. If, however, I were asked to say which of the two nations is according to my own intimate convictions the more truthful, I should say decidedly the English, except on religious topics, and there the French are more truthful, or, if you will, more unreserved.