French & English

Of all subjects this is the most difficult to treat satisfactorily; because there is, and must be, an inevitable reticence that is sure to weaken the argument at the most important points. Besides this, the subject, more than any other, is steeped in conventionalisms, some of which it is considered right or pardonable to act upon, but not pardonable to express. There are tacit tolerations which it is an offence to avow, as if the avowal incurred a new and personal responsibility. And even the most frank and courageous of writers might well shrink from a subject that cannot be fully discussed, at least in an English book.

There is, however, one point of great importance which has never, so far as I know, been frankly touched upon before, and which may help us to understand the varieties and inconsistencies of public opinion.

We all know that the relation between the sexes is of a dual nature; that it is both physical and mental. A man may be attracted to a woman by a physical impulse, or by a desire for her companionship, or by both at the same time. This we all know and admit; but the fiction of our conventionalism, and a very curious and wonderful fiction it is, excludes one or the other of the two reasons for cohabitation after ascertaining whether it is, or is not, in accordance with received usages. If the cohabitation is not of a customary kind, it is at once assumed that physical pleasure is the only object of it; and that pleasure is spoken of in terms of disgust, as vile, sensual, and degrading. If, however, the cohabitation is of a customary kind, not only is the physical pleasure permitted without reproach, but it is conventionally ignored as non-existent, and the motive for cohabitation is held to be the pure desire for companionship. One of the best examples of this contrast is the different way of regarding the marriage of ecclesiastics in a Catholic and in a Protestant community. An Anglican clergyman gets married, and the incident, being in accordance with custom, conveys no idea to the Protestant mind beyond this—that the clergyman may have felt lonely by himself, and wanted the help, the companionship, the gentle affection of a wife. The physical relation is set aside, it is simply not thought about, and even this slight and passing allusion to it may be condemned as unbecoming. Now let us turn to the state of opinion in Roman Catholic countries. There, when people hear of the marriage of an ecclesiastic, they think of nothing but the physical relation, and they think of it as disgusting, filthy, and obscene, though, in fact, it is simply natural and no more. In this case the desire for companionship is ignored, and physical appetite alone is assumed to be the motive for the union. A case has occurred of a Protestant ecclesiastic, who married after his elevation to a bishopric. I despair of conveying to the English reader any idea of the aspect that such a union must have for Catholics who have never lived amongst Protestants. For them it is not only monstrous as an outrage against custom, but it even seems monstrous in the sense of being unnatural. Something of this Catholic horror remained even in the strong mind of Queen Elizabeth. She was near enough to Catholic times, and had still enough of Catholic sentiment, to be unable to look upon a bishop’s wife without loathing.

When custom partly but not entirely tolerates cohabitation, we find the two ideas predominating in different people. Marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is, for those who are favourable to it, the desire for affectionate companionship or for motherly tenderness towards children already existing; for those who are unfavourable it is a lust of the flesh. In like manner there are two estimates of the conduct of a divorced woman who marries again during her first husband’s lifetime.

We may now approach the subject of illegitimate unions. In societies where they are tolerated the idea of companionship prevails; in societies where they are not tolerated the physical aspect of the union immediately suggests itself. In the large towns both of England and France it is not rare amongst the lower classes for men and women to live together without formal marriage. With reference to these cases the complaint of moralists is that the people have no proper sense of the necessity of marriage, they have not the proper consciousness that they are doing wrong. The reason is that these unions are permitted by the customs of the lower classes, and are scarcely blamed when the man remains faithful to the woman and treats her well; therefore the physical relation is as much ignored as it is in formal marriage, and companionship alone is thought of.

The same great power of custom, in casting a veil over the grosser side of the sexual relation, is seen in higher classes whenever illicit unions are tolerated by public opinion, and they often are so in the artistic and intellectual classes of great capitals when it is evident that the union is one of genuine companionship, and when it is of a lasting character, and both parties remain at least apparently faithful to it. Here is an expression of this toleration by M. Alfred Asseline, true for Paris, but not true for the provinces. I give it in the original, because the exact shades of expression could not easily be reproduced in a translation.

“Dans l’état où sont nos mœurs, il est admis que les hommes supérieurs ont le privilège d’imposer à ce qu’on appelle le monde, à la société dont ils sont le charme et l’honneur, une amie,—l’amie,—la femme qu’il leur a plu de choisir comme le témoin voilé de leurs travaux, celle qui, légitime ou non, se tient dans l’ombre, confidente discrète du génie, au moment ou ses rayons s’allument.

“Ce n’est pas la vulgaire Égérie, c’est la Muse, c’est l’âme même du poète qu’il nous est permis, dans les épanchements de l’amitié, de voir, d’admirer, de respecter.”

The reader will observe in these carefully chosen words how deliberately all suggestion of impurity is excluded, and how the writer dwells upon intellectual companionship alone. He may understand this still better by reference to a special case.

About the year 1833 there was an actress at the theatre of the Porte-Saint-Martin, named Juliette Drouet, who performed in two of Victor Hugo’s plays, Lucrèce Borgia and Marie Tudor. The poet was pleased with her performance, and thought well of her intelligence. In this way he was attracted to herself, and she became his mistress, and lived either with him, or very near him, till she died many years afterwards. She had a residence close to his own at Guernsey, which Victor Hugo arranged and decorated. When he returned to Paris she returned with him and continued to be his very near neighbour. It was the fashion in Paris to think only of the intellectual side of this liaison, and to speak of Madame Drouet with the utmost respect as the poet’s wise and discreet friend, a kind of living Muse for him. The lawful wife herself, who knew all, spoke without bitterness of her rival. “These gentlemen,” she said one day to her cousin, meaning her husband and son, “have arranged a little fête at Madame Drouet’s, and they are expecting you. I insist on your going, it will please my husband.” When Madame Drouet died, the notices in the newspapers were most respectful to her, and sympathetic with the old poet who had lost “the faithful friend and wise and gentle adviser of so many years.”

It will be seen from these extracts that illicit unions may under certain favourable circumstances (especially that of intellectual or artistic companionship) come to be conventionally protected, as marriage itself is, by the use of the purest possible language. There have been cases in London more or less resembling that of Victor Hugo, which it would be considered an offence against good taste to speak about in the plain terms of old-fashioned morality.

M. André Theuriet, in his excellent novel Amour d’Automne, says that adulterous liaisons are conventionally tolerated in Paris, but judged very severely by the stricter provincial opinion. Those who feel disposed to tolerate them, speak of them in words so carefully selected that they may be used before virgins and children. There was “an affectionate friendship” between the gentleman and lady, or “an old attachment.” Fidelity in these cases gives them an air of positive virtue:—

“Le temps, vieillard divin, honore et blanchit tout!”

This kind of toleration is not by any means confined to London and Paris; it has long existed in Italy and Germany. Lewes might have counted upon it in Liszt, yet at Weimar he asked if he might present Miss Evans to the musician, not feeling sure “as their position was irregular.” Liszt himself was living at Weimar with the Princess of Wittgenstein, who had left her husband for his sake; and the duke had been so accommodating as to lend them the Altenburg residence, where they dispensed a graceful hospitality to many friends. The long series of Liszt’s successes with distinguished ladies did not exclude him from the world of London and Paris.

Every great capital believes that some other great capital is the most vicious in the world. London accords that distinction to Paris, Paris to Vienna, but these accusations are vague, and it is impossible to know the truth. The evidence in the Divorce Courts reveals a little of it now and then, and is good evidence so far as it extends, but it is never published in France. Statistics of prostitution are also admissible as evidence, but it is difficult to found any comparative argument upon them; because, in great cities, there is so much clandestine prostitution, so much eking out of miserable incomes by that means. The decent, modestly-dressed girl, the sad-looking young widow whom nobody suspects, may have yielded to the pressure of want.

I am unable to follow the English habit of taking French novels as evidence of the general corruption of French life, and will give good reasons for this rejection. Before doing so let me observe that I am equally unwilling to believe evil, on insufficient evidence, of the English. For example, I have never attached the slightest weight to what were called the “revelations of the Pall Mall Gazette,” which all the viler French newspapers affected to believe merely because they would have been, if true, such precious facts for the enemy.

The English argument usually assumes one of two forms:—

1. Novelists draw from life; consequently, as adultery is almost universal in French novels it must be equally common in French life.

2. French people purchase novels about adultery in great numbers; consequently, the readers of these books must commit adultery themselves.

With regard to the first of these propositions, I should say that crimes of all kinds occur more frequently in all imaginative literature than they do in the dull routine of everyday existence. Murder, for example, is much more frequent in Shakespeare than it is in ordinary English life. Even stories that are considered innocent enough to be read by the young, such as The Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, and, in recent times, Mr. Stevenson’s Treasure Island, are full of villainy and homicide, introduced for no purpose in the world but to excite the interest of the reader. What would English critics say to a Frenchman who should affirm that there are suicide clubs in England like the mutual murder society described with such circumstantial detail in the New Arabian Nights? If we think of a few famous English novels we shall find that they often describe situations which are certainly not common in the ordinary lives of respectable people like ourselves. We are not generally either bigamists, or seducers, or wife-slayers, yet Jane Eyre turned upon an intended bigamy, Adam Bede turned upon a case of seduction and infanticide, and Paul Ferroll fascinated us by the wonderfully self-possessed behaviour of a gentleman who had quietly murdered his wife, as she lay in bed, early one summer morning. In Daniel Deronda the most polished gentleman in the book has a family of illegitimate children, and the most brilliant young lady becomes, in intention, a murderess, whilst the sweetest girl is rescued from attempted suicide. These things may happen, which is enough for the purposes of the novelist. In France the great difficulty of that artist is the uninteresting nature of the usual preliminaries of marriage, so that he is thrown back upon adulterous love as the only kind that is adventurous and romantic.

The argument that the world of reality must be like the world of fiction fails in another way. Real people are almost infinitely more numerous than the creations of novelists, therefore, if every immoral adventure in novels were drawn from life, it would only prove that the novelist had collected cases, as a medical student might collect cases of disease in a fairly healthy population. As a matter of fact, however, the novelist does not usually take his incidents from reality; he will often go to nature for his characters, and to invention for his situations. The material in real life that suggests the stories need not be very abundant. The cases of immorality found in the English newspapers alone would be more than enough to keep the principal French novelists at work all the year round.

The novelists themselves are a small class working under immense temptations. They live in Paris, where life is terribly expensive, rents enormous, habits luxurious. It is part of their business to see society, and that entails an expenditure above the ordinary gains of quiet unsensational literature. The temptation to gain more money is, in such a situation, almost irresistible. Money is to be earned by exciting the reader. Writers for the populace do this chiefly by murders; but murders are not so attractive to the richer and more refined classes as adventures of pleasure and sensuality. The novelist works for his public, and enjoys both a world-wide notoriety and a handsome income. The most successful novelists describe the pleasures of luxury and vice, and the excitement to be derived from their pursuit. They are simply acute tradesmen, like their publishers, who supply what is in demand.

Now with regard to the second proposition, that the readers of immoral stories must themselves be immoral, observation of actual cases entirely fails to confirm it. People read these stories because they feel dull, and seek the interest of exciting situations. Here is a case well known to me. A lady lives in a very out-of-the-way country house and sees very little society; so reading is her only resource. Fiction is naturally an important part of her reading, and as she is not a linguist she is confined to the works of French authors and a few translations. In this way she has read a good deal about adultery, but her own life is unimpeachable. In like manner, for the sake of a little excitement, an English old maid always read about the murders of the day, and was accurately informed about the horrible details; yet she never murdered anybody, nor even betrayed any homicidal impulse.

It is quietly assumed that French novels are written only for the depraved tastes of French readers. French novels are, in fact, the most cosmopolitan of all literatures since the Latin classics. They have a great circulation in Russia, Germany, Italy, England, and other countries. It appears that they answer accurately to the present state of civilisation. In England they are bought by thousands both in the originals and in translations. In a London drawing-room some years ago I found that everybody could talk about Daudet except myself, and this made me read some of his books that I might appear less ignorant. A writer in the Saturday Review[50] speaks of those music halls and restaurants which are chiefly frequented by the demi-monde, and then goes on to say: “There is the same fascination in going to these places that there is in reading French novels of more than doubtful morality. Let it be known that there is a book that is hardly decent, and the rush for it is immense amongst our young married ladies, and even among some of the elder spinsters. Indeed, not to have read any book that is more indecent than usual is to be out of the fashion.” This is probably exaggerated, as many books are perfectly decorous in expression whilst depicting an immoral kind of life, and a life may preserve the strictest purity of language though given over to unbridled desires. But, however bad may be the books they read, no one supposes that Englishwomen misconduct themselves in a practical manner because they have read them. Would it be more than fair to extend the same charity to Frenchwomen? It might, at least, be borne in mind that all Frenchwomen are not novel-readers. Many do not read novels at all, others are extremely careful in their choice. All pious women naturally avoid impure literature, and they are a numerous class. Girls are usually limited, in fiction, to translations from English stories and to a few harmless French ones. The habit of novel-reading seems even to vary with localities. The Prefect of the Seine procured some interesting statistics in 1886 about the lending libraries on the outskirts of Paris (for a purpose connected with the budget of the department), and from these it appears that there are the most surprising degrees of variety in the habit of novel-reading in different localities. At Asnières, out of a hundred volumes asked for in the libraries, eighty-six are novels, whilst at St. Denis we find them suddenly falling to twelve in the hundred. At Courbevoie the demand for this class of literature is represented by eighty-two per cent, at St. Ouen by twelve and three-quarters. Other places vary between these extremes.

The Saturday Review, never very charitable in its judgments about France, and not often very well informed, has spoken as follows about public education in that country: “France has taken a great step forward in these days. It has gone all the way to an expenditure of ninety millions of francs a year, and although Mr. Matthew Arnold does not say so, has materially added to its now permanent deficit by lavish outlay on schools, in which it trains thousands of children to read.” (Well, surely there can be no harm in teaching children to read, but international malevolence is ingenious enough to find evil even here. I resume my suspended quotation:) “Thousands of children to read who will never use their knowledge again, or will use it only to read obscenity, to the great and manifest advantage of their minds and morals.”

This is the kind of information about France which appears to satisfy the readers of the Saturday Review. It is on a level with the surprising statements about the English that we find in the most ignorant French newspapers.

The principal reading of the lower classes is the newspapers published at one sou. Some of these are very ably conducted (for example, the Lyon Républicain), some others at the same price are much inferior, but the better class of these journals have a great circulation and are doing more good than harm. The inferior ones publish the sort of trash, in the way of novels, that suits an uncultivated taste. The principal difference between these novels and those read by educated people does not seem to be so much in morality as in the more abundant variety of horrible situations supplied by the writer for the populace. In France, as in England and elsewhere, the desire for excitement which characterises the beginner in reading seems to turn naturally to harrowing scenes. But the poor Frenchman is not confined to his newspaper. He has now plenty of opportunities for purchasing cheap scientific and literary works, and also for borrowing them. The collection of Cent Bons Livres, published by Félix Vernay, contains books of both classes issued in a legible type at two sous, and not one of them is immoral. The Bibliothèque Populaire, also at two sous, consists of selections from French and foreign literature. The texts are very accurately printed, the translations are good, and the publishers are strict in the exclusion of immoral works; yet the sale of the collection is extensive, and it is found in the dwellings of the humbler classes. The same may be said of the Bibliothèque Utile, published by Alcan. But perhaps the best evidence on this subject is in the popular lending libraries instituted by the Government. The books for these libraries are specially examined by a commission appointed for the purpose, which excludes indecent publications. There are also the bibliothèques scolaires or lending libraries in the schools, and regimental libraries in the barracks, besides the older town libraries, often extensive and valuable, which are open to all. With regard to the providing of literature in a form suitable for readers of limited education, I may add that this class of literature, simple in expression, yet neither deficient in intelligence nor behind the age in knowledge, scarcely existed in France twenty-five years ago, but is now produced in constantly increasing quantity. Even in former times, however, when facilities were so few, men of the humbler classes frequently rose in the world, and they could not have done that without self-education, nor without better reading than the “obscenity” of the Saturday Review. I have known several such Frenchmen, and have always found their minds preoccupied with creditable pursuits, generally of a scientific character.[51]

The wild statements of anonymous and irresponsible writers are hardly deserving of serious attention, but I have always deeply regretted that several English writers of note, and especially Matthew Arnold, should have allowed their patriotism to express itself in similar accusations. In 1885 Arnold wrote an article on America for the Nineteenth Century, and went out of his way to say that “the French” are “at present vowed to the worship of the great goddess Lubricity.”

This is one of those statements about France which obtain ready currency in England, because they gratify the patriotic desire to feel better than the neighbours across the water. The ordinary Englishman, learning on the authority of a distinguished writer that the French are vowed to the worship of such a goddess, can think to himself, “Well, we have our faults, perhaps we worship money too much, but at any rate we do not bow down to such a filthy idol as that,” and he has a sense of inward satisfaction. I, for my part, have never understood how anybody can derive satisfaction from anything but well-tested truth, and when I hear a comprehensive statement of this kind, my way is always to think of living examples known to me. I invite the reader to follow me, from a settled conviction that my method is a good one.

Have I ever known any Frenchman of whom it could be fairly said that he was vowed to the worship of the great goddess Lubricity? Yes, I have known one absolutely given over to that vice. His life had been that of a Sultan entirely absorbed in the pleasures of the harem; he was rich, idle, “noble,” with no pursuits but that, and nature paid him with a terrible penalty. In his premature old age he would cynically boast of the exploits of that which, for his bestial nature, had been a sort of manhood. I have known a similar case in England, a man of some rank, whose whole mind centred itself on that one pleasure, till at length it led him to conduct of such a character as to involve utter social ruin. Applied to these men Mr. Arnold’s expression would be absolutely just.

But this state of mind, which amounts to a species of insanity or monomania, is rare. Men have other interests and pursuits. Those of the middle class have business, those of the upper have field sports, horses, yachting, travelling. A few have special studies, in France generally archæology, natural history, music, or painting. Are they all strictly virtuous in France? No. Are they all strictly virtuous in England? No. It is often suspected that when a young Englishman goes to town he yields to certain temptations, and when a provincial Frenchman va à Paris pour s’amuser, his friends imagine very frequently that he is tired of the strict surveillance of public opinion in the country. That rural public opinion is almost as strict in France as in England. A rich lady near a provincial town that I know committed adultery many years ago, and has been living in forced retirement ever since. Another rich lady in another provincial town, very beautiful, very charming, had a romantic adventure, and she, too, has been left alone in her great house. A wealthy young man brought a mistress down from Paris; she had not been out three times in her little pony carriage before it became a public scandal. In a similar neighbourhood in England it was perfectly well known that some of the rich young men had mistresses at a distance, but they could not bring them near to their own homes for fear of the same scandal. I remember asking a French gentleman if he received a clever young man who had rendered services to his political party. “No,” he said, “he is immoral, and I have a fixed rule never to receive immoral men.”

Whilst writing this chapter I have got a letter from a well-known Englishman who asks me if Zola’s picture of rustic morals in La Terre is true. I have never read any of Zola’s novels, preferring the study of life in nature, but I am told that the book is disgusting. In that case it cannot be true as a general representation of nature. I have lived in the country in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and in the French department of Saône-et-Loire, and so far as my observation has extended I should say that rustic morals are very nearly on the same level in both places. Cases of adultery are rare in both though not unknown. Illegitimate births occur occasionally in both. Our servants have conducted themselves as well in France as in England, and as well in England as in France. There have been a very few mishaps. It is not uncommon in the north of England for a child to be born too soon after marriage, and the same thing occurs in Saône-et-Loire. The daughters of the better class of farmers are, so far as I know, a most respectable class both in England and France. Some of the best quiet manners I have met with have been in that class—modest and simple manners, without any pretension, but with dignity and self-respect.

For the country gentlefolks here are parallel examples. I had a neighbour in England who lived quietly in the country, had certain rather refined tastes, and was respected by every one. I have a neighbour in France who lives quietly in the country, has precisely the same tastes as the Englishman, and lives with his family exactly in the same way, except, perhaps, that he has déjeuner at eleven when the Englishman had luncheon at one. The Frenchman and his wife are also respected by everybody, and I have not the faintest reason for supposing that they do not deserve it. Yet I am asked to believe that they are intensely vicious, and if I inquire for proofs I am referred to novels written by some Parisian who has never seen my neighbours.

A large class, both in France and England, whose general good conduct is doubted by nobody who knows the countries, is that of unmarried girls in the middle and upper classes. Here a fall is so rare as to be practically unknown. The English girl is less retiring than the French jeune fille, and she knows more, but she is equally safe. It is something that the two civilisations should have produced at least one class that is so very nearly immaculate.

There are a few flagrant cases of immorality every year amongst the French clergy; but although surrounded by enemies eager to publish every fault, and powerless now to impose or procure silence, they keep, on the whole, a reputation equal to that of the Catholic clergy anywhere. Even their enemies believe them to be far more moral than the Italian priesthood, for example. The clergy in England have an equally good reputation, in spite of occasional scandals, and there is no reason for supposing it to be undeserved; but they have the safeguard of marriage.

With the armies the case is different. Soldiers and sailors enjoy a reputation for bravery, but not for sexual morality in either country. There is terribly strong medical evidence on this subject which I cannot go into, real evidence, better than the inventions of novelists. English medical opinions are of the gravest possible import, as they point to a danger to the military strength of the country in comparison with which the Channel tunnel would be a trifle; but it may be argued, as regards the health of the nation generally, that the English army is but a part of the nation, whereas the French army represents the nation itself. Another difficulty in the comparison arises from the fact that, although the French may be quite as immoral as the English, their sanitary legislation is more rigorously prudent, so that the consequent physical evils are much diminished. This subject is almost forbidden me in a book intended for general reading; but if any one cares to form a just opinion, I recommend him to study authentic statistics of the health of armies.

English student life is, on the whole, quieter and more moral than French. France has plenty of public schools in the country, or at least in country towns, where the boys are kept under the most rigorous restraint; but she has no country universities, she has no Oxford and Cambridge, where young men live under a sort of gentle restraint, and in places of comparatively small size, where the army of vice is not in full force, but represented only by a detachment. French student life is chiefly concentrated in Paris, and resembles that of medical students and art students in London, which may, of course, be perfectly moral if they choose to make it so, but which, in the midst of innumerable facilities and temptations, depends entirely upon themselves. Student life in Edinburgh has the same liberty as in Paris, but is probably more moral on account of the greater seriousness of the Scottish character, and the intellectual ambition of Scottish youth. Both in England and France the errors of young men are very lightly passed over and excused; but in France they are more expected, more taken as a matter of course, and there is more of a settled tradition of immorality amongst French students than amongst English. Still, there is nothing in the French system to prevent a young man from living like a good Scotchman if he likes. Foreigners know nothing about the struggling student who is at Paris for his work and has neither time nor money for much else. The reader is probably aware that amongst Scottish students there are striking examples of courage and self-denial, but he is not likely to know that Paris abounds with instances that, for a richer country, are precisely of the same kind. I will mention two cases, those of young men whom I know personally and regard with all the respect which they deserve. One of them, in consequence of a family misfortune, was dependent upon his mother’s labour, and by hard work and close economy she was able to support him when at school. She could not undertake the expense of his student life at Paris, but she had a relation there who offered two great helps, a bed and one meal every day. This was absolutely all the young man had to count upon; the rest had to be won by his own labour. He contrived—I have not space to tell how—to earn all the money necessary for everything else, and became an army surgeon, after which, by further hard work, he gained the medical agrégation (a sort of fellowship won by a severe medical examination). I know from his companions that during his student days he carefully kept aloof from idle and dissipated society. The other case is that of a young man whose mother, a widow, could do nothing for him. His earlier education was paid for by the bounty of a rich lady, but as soon as he could earn money by teaching he did so, and went on vigorously with his studies at the same time. He even managed to keep his mother by his labour without hindering his own advancement. He won a fellowship, and is now occupying the chair of a professor of history—I do not mean in a school, but as a professeur de faculté. He is one of the most cultivated men I ever knew, and probably one of the happiest. Such a career as his is not the usual consequence of a frivolous and dissipated youth. I was talking, an hour before writing this page, with a Frenchman whose own life has been a remarkable example of labour and self-denial, and he told me that there are at this moment hundreds of students in Paris who are supporting themselves, at least in part, by means of lessons and humble literary work, in order that they may enter the professions.

One or two indications have reached me which seem to imply that in England there exists a belief that French school life is immoral. This may be founded on the mutual amenities of the clerical and lay parties in France, which profess a complete disbelief in each other’s morality, and would equally accuse each other of murder, if that were as difficult to test. Nobody knows much about the morality of boys, but I may observe that the government of French schools, both lay and clerical, is too strict for any immorality that can be detected to make way there. The very few instances of it in school life that have come to my knowledge have been followed by instant expulsion. I have heard something about school immorality in England, especially in one great public school, coupled with an expression of the desire that the rigorous French system could be established there, not in all things, but for this one safeguard.

With regard to the class of domestic servants, I am told that in Paris the morality of servants is generally much lower than in the country; but never having kept house in Paris I know nothing about it, except by hearsay. Statistics show a remarkably large proportion of illegitimate births for the capital; this, however, is rather favourable in a certain sense, I mean in the sense of natural morality, as the worst women are sterile. An ecclesiastic of high rank, who has had exceptional opportunities for studying the moral aspects of Paris, told me that he attributed the greater laxity there in the class of domestics to the system of lodging, by which the servants are often separated from the family life of the household, and sent to sleep up in the attics, where they are in a world of their own.

Here I leave this subject, the most difficult to treat in the volume, and the most unsatisfactory in many ways. It is unsatisfactory because the facts are usually concealed, and that leaves room for uncharitable minds to assume a concealed immorality in others, as, for example, when it is assumed, without any proof, that respectable French people are immoral. It is unsatisfactory, because there are two codes of morality, a severe one that is expressed, and a laxer one that is understood and acted upon. It is unsatisfactory, because language itself is so employed as to make the same actions pure or impure as they are or are not admitted by the customs of society. But the subject is most unsatisfactory because there is a permanent conflict between the animal nature of man and the situation in which a safe and peaceful civilisation places him. He is gifted with reproductive powers well adapted to fill up the ranks of primitive societies as they were continually decimated by disease, by famine, and by violent death; but in a state of civilisation in which diseased people live on, in which famine is all but unknown, and wars continually postponed, the reproductive force is so much in excess of the need for it that it bursts forth in tremendous moral evils. Nor is the difficulty lessening; it is, on the contrary, increasing year by year. The prudent classes avoid marriage more and more, thus exposing young men to the snare of the kept mistress or the peril of promiscuous concubinage. The imprudent classes marry with perfect recklessness, and even their marriages themselves are indirectly favourable to immorality, because they supply recruits for the army of vice by bringing up children in conditions that make decency impossible. The crowding of people together in industrial centres and the craving for town excitements all tend towards the one greatest and most natural of all excitements; the vast increase of military life tends to it also in other ways. But of all the influences directly or indirectly tending towards immorality Gentility is the most subtle and deadly in its operation. Genteel young men dare not marry on small incomes because poverty will take the polish off their style of living; genteel young ladies cannot marry unless they are assured of incomes large enough to dress fashionably and have all the housework done by servants. In France, and not in France only, but much more in France than in England, the number of offspring is limited that the family may maintain a genteel position in life and not fall down into the working classes. In the poorer classes themselves the desire for a genteel appearance is the great temptation of women. I remember a dangerously beautiful young Frenchwoman married to a professional man who earned a wretchedly small income, yet she dressed most expensively, and had but one means of paying her milliner’s bills. She was the representative of a class. When we look these truths and their consequences in the face, we come to understand the close connection that there is between natural morality and simplicity of life. It is of no use to preach morality to people so long as we show by our language, by our manners, by every kind of expression or implication, that we despise them for living plainly and respect them for living luxuriously. By the help of the tailor, the cook, and the carriage-builder I can be a “gentleman” in England, and a “monsieur comme il faut” in France; by the help of Epictetus I can live simply and be a common man whom the luxurious man will patronise.