French & English

Still, the English are a remarkably active people, and they owe their activity chiefly to a love of rural amusements and of the open air. Thus, in an informal manner, they get a kind of unscientific training which is of immense advantage to their health and vigour. A criticism of this irregular training (which is not mine, as it comes from a scientific gymnast) affirms that it develops the legs better than the arms and chest, and that although it increases strength it does not much cultivate suppleness. According to scientific opinion, more might be made of the English people if they took as much interest in gymnastic training as they do in their active amusements. The advantage of these amusements is that they divert the mind, and so in turn have a healthy influence on the body, independently of muscular exertion.

There are exceptions to the usual English indifference about gymnastics, and it may happen that the lover of gymnastics cares less than others for the usual English sports. This was the case with Professor Clifford. His biographer says: “At school he showed little taste for the ordinary games, but made himself proficient in gymnastics; a pursuit which at Cambridge he carried out, in fellowship with a few like-minded companions,[2] not only into the performance of the most difficult feats habitual to the gymnasium, but into the invention of other new and adventurous ones. His accomplishments of this kind were the only ones in which he ever manifested pride.”

Many distinguished Englishmen have had some favourite physical amusement that we associate with their names. It is almost a part of an Englishman’s nature to select a physical pursuit and make it especially his own. His countrymen like him the better for having a taste of this kind. Mr. Gladstone’s practised skill in tree-felling is a help to his popularity. The readers of Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron, all remember that the first was a pedestrian, the second a keen sportsman, and the third the best swimmer of his time. The readers of Keats are sorry for the ill-health that spoiled the latter years of his short life, but they remember with satisfaction that the ethereal poet was once muscular enough to administer “a severe drubbing to a butcher whom he caught beating a little boy, to the enthusiastic admiration of a crowd of bystanders.” Shelley’s name is associated for ever with his love of boating and its disastrous ending. In our own day, when we learn something about the private life of our celebrated contemporaries, we have a satisfaction in knowing that they enjoy some physical recreation, as, for example, that Tyndall is a mountaineer, Millais a grouse-shooter, John Bright a salmon-fisher; and it is characteristic of the inveteracy of English physical habits that Mr. Fawcett should have gone on riding and skating after he was blind, and that Anthony Trollope was still passionately fond of fox-hunting when he was old and heavy and could hardly see. The English have such a respect for physical energy that they still remember with pleasure how Palmerston hunted in his old age, and how, almost to the last, he would go down to Epsom on horseback. There was a little difficulty about getting him into the saddle, but, once there, he was safe till the end of his journey.

Cricket and boating are the trainers of English youth, and foreigners, when they visit Eton, are astonished at the important place assigned to these two pursuits. It is always amusing to an Englishman to read the descriptions of the national game by which French writers attempt (of course without success) to make it intelligible to their countrymen. These descriptions are generally erroneous, occasionally correct, but invariably as much from the outside as if the writer were describing the gambols of strange animals. Whilst English and French have billiards and many other games in common, cricket remains exclusively and peculiarly English. It cannot be acclimatised in France. I believe that some feeble attempts have been made, but without result. The game could not be played in the gravelled courts of French lycées, under a hundred windows, but this difficulty would be overcome if there were any natural genius for cricket in the French race. A few of the lycées are in large towns, and far from possible cricket fields; the majority are in small towns, not a mile from pasture and meadow. The French seem to believe that all English youths delight in the national game, but that is a foreigner’s generalisation. Some English boys dislike it, and play only to please others, or because it is the fashion amongst boys. However, most English boys have gone through the training of cricket, though many give it up when they abandon Latin. It is useful because it does not exercise the legs only, like walking, or the arms and chest only, like rowing, but all the body.

The French would have had a tolerable equivalent for cricket if they had kept up their own fine national game of tennis. Unfortunately the costliness of tennis-courts has caused the abandonment of the game, and this is the more to be regretted that the French system of education in large public schools might have harmonised so conveniently with it. Field tennis, the parent of modern English lawn tennis, might have been kept up in the country. The present French tendency in exercises is towards gymnastics and military drill. No one who has observed the two peoples closely can doubt that the French have more natural affinity for gymnastics than the English. This may be due in part to their less lively interest in physical amusements. Not being so ready to amuse themselves freely in active pastimes, they are more ready to accept gymnastics as a discipline.[3] As for military drill, it is more and more imposed upon the French by the military situation in Europe, so that they would practise it whether they liked it or not; still, it is certain that they have a natural liking and aptitude for military exercises. The authorities who have directed public education in France in the middle of the nineteenth century have treated physical exercise with such complete neglect that a reaction is now setting in. It may be doubted whether in any age or country the brain has been worked with such complete disregard of the body as in France from 1830 to 1870. An observer may see the consequences of that absurd education even now in the stiff elderly men who never knew what activity is, the men who cannot get into a boat quickly or safely, who never mounted a horse, and who take curious precautions in getting down from a carriage. The present generation is more active—the effects of gymnastics are beginning to tell. The comprehensive conscription, which imposes military exercises on almost every valid citizen, has also been, and will be still more in the future, a great bodily benefit to the French race. The maintenance of duelling in France, after its abandonment in England, gives the French a certain advantage in the habitual practice of fencing, which is learned seriously, as men only learn those things on which living or life may one day depend. I need not expatiate on the merits of fencing as an exercise. It increases both strength and grace, as it is at the same time extremely fatiguing and exacting with regard to posture and attitude. I am inclined to believe that fencing is the finest exercise known.

In ordinary pedestrianism there is not much difference between the two countries except in the female sex, and there it is strongly marked. Englishwomen who have leisure walk perhaps three or four times as much as Frenchwomen in the same position. Young men in both countries may be equally good walkers if they have the advantage of rural life. The French peasants are slow pedestrians but remarkably enduring; they will go forty or fifty miles in the twenty-four hours, being out all night, and think nothing of it. Riding on horseback is much more practised in England; the economy of the carriage, by which one horse can transport several persons, and the excellent modern roads, had almost killed equestrianism in France, but now there are some signs of a revival. Here, too, the large national army has an excellent influence. Great numbers of Frenchmen learn to ride in the cavalry and artillery, and the captains of infantry are all mounted. There is not, in France, the most valuable training of all, that of riding to hounds in the English sense; and therefore it is probable that England could produce a far greater number of horsemen able to leap well. As for style in riding, that is a matter of taste, and national ideas differ. The French style is derived chiefly from military examples, the English indirectly from the hunting-field.

False ideals of dignity are very inimical to effective bodily exercise. A foolish notion that it is more dignified to be seen in a carriage than on horseback, has deprived all French ecclesiastics of the use of the saddle. Their modes of locomotion are settled by a fixed rule; they may walk (generally with the breviary in their hands, which they read whilst walking), and the poor curé may now keep a small pony carriage. A bishop must always ride in a close carriage drawn by a pair of horses. A curé may drive himself; a bishop may not drive. In England these rules are not so strict, as the clergy are not so widely different from the laity. The English clergyman may ride on horseback and be active in other ways; still, there is a prejudice even in England against too much healthy activity in clergymen. Being on a visit to a vicar in the north of England, I found that he possessed a complete apparatus for archery. “That is a good thing for you,” I said; but he looked melancholy, and answered, “It would be if my parishioners permitted the use of it, but they talked so much that I was forced to give up archery. They considered it unbecoming in a clergyman, who ought to be attending to his parish. Had I spent the same time over a decanter of port wine in my dining-room they would have raised no objection.” The same clergyman was fond of leaping, but indulged that passion in secret, as if it had been a sin. Still, these prejudices are stronger in France. I never saw a French priest shoot, or hunt, or row in a boat. It cannot be the cruelty of shooting and hunting which prevents him, as he is allowed to fish with hooks; it is simply the activity of the manlier sports that excites disapprobation. All Frenchmen who care for their dignity avoid velocipedes of all kinds, which are used only by young men, who are generally in the middle class, such as clerks and shopkeepers’ assistants. In England, where the prejudice against activity is not so strong, velocipedes are often used by rather elderly gentlemen, who are not ashamed of being active.

There was formerly an intense prejudice against boating in France. It was considered low, and even immoral, being inextricably associated in the popular mind with excursions in the worst possible feminine society. Nobody in those days understood that sailing and rowing could both be refined and pure pleasures. The first book published on amateur boating in France appeared to authorise these prejudices by its own intense vulgarity. Since then boating has gained in dignity, and there are now regattas at most of the river-side towns, with beautifully constructed boats and perfectly respectable crews. The whole tone of the pursuit has changed; it has got rid of vulgar pleasantry, and has become scientific, an improvement greatly helped by the excellent scientific review Le Yacht. Many French boating men have been led by their pursuit to a thorough study of construction and nautical qualities. The only objection I have to make to French boating as it exists to-day, is that it seems too dependent on the stimulus of regattas, and carried on too exclusively with that object. The best lover of boating follows it for itself, as a lover of reading does not read only for a degree.

Although the French are now little, if at all, inferior to the English either in rowing or sailing, the taste for these pursuits is limited to comparatively few persons in France. If such a marvellously perfect river as the Saône existed in England it would swarm with pleasure craft of all kinds, but as it happens to be in France you may travel upon it all day without seeing one white sail. There are, however, three or four regatta clubs with excellent boats. I know one Frenchman who delights in possessing sailing vessels, but never uses them, and I remember a yachtsman whose ship floated idly on the water from one regatta to another. Now and then you meet with the genuine nautical passion in all its strength, with the consequence that it is perfectly unintelligible to all wise and dignified citizens.

Swimming is much more cultivated and practised in France than in England. This is probably due in some degree to the hot French summers, which warm the water so thoroughly that one may remain in it a long time without chill. All along the Saône the boys learn swimming at a very early age. It is the boast of the village of St. Laurent, opposite Mâcon, that every male can swim. Ask one of the villagers if he is a swimmer, and he does not answer “Yes,” but smiles significantly, and says, “Je suis de St. Laurent.” Wherever a river provides a deep pool it is used as a swimming bath. In England the accomplishment is much more rare, and is usually confined to the middle and upper classes, especially in the rural districts. When we read in the newspaper that an English boat has capsized we always expect to find that most of the occupants were unable to swim and sank to rise no more. Amongst English sailors the art seems to be nearly unknown, and they have even a prejudice against it as tending to prolong the agonies of drowning. In the female sex, also, France takes the lead by the number of ladies who can swim a little, though they have not a Miss Beckwith amongst them, any more than Frenchmen can produce a Captain Webb. It is characteristic of England, with her vigorous race, to produce the finest and strongest swimmers, though her general average is so deplorably low. One English family may be long remembered, that of Vice-Chancellor Shadwell, who progressed grandly in the Thames, followed by his nine sons.

Dancing used to be an essentially French exercise, and as it was much practised in the open air it was conducive to healthy activity. The best kind of dancing was that which used to bring together a few peasant families in the summer evenings. The reader observes that I am speaking of the past. In the present day dancing of that kind seems to be almost entirely abandoned. Unhealthy dancing in small crowded rooms is practised to some extent by the middle classes. As for the bals publics, the fewer of them there are the better. In obvious ways, and in ways that I can only hint at, they are injurious to the public health.

In field sports the chief difference between France and England is not a difference of taste for sport itself, but a difference in game-preserving. In England this is carried to the utmost perfection by the most artificial means and at enormous cost; in France this is done only on a few estates, and ordinary game-preserving is very lax and very economical. Often it is merely nominal. Some man with another occupation is supposed to be the garde, and he walks over the estate occasionally with a gun, killing a hare or a partridge for his private use, and seldom arresting a poacher. Still, the shootings are supposed to be worth something, as they are let, though at low prices. The English believe that there is no game at all in France, except a few partridges; and they might quote French humorists in support of this opinion, as they have laughed at the Parisian sportsman and his empty bags from time immemorial. However, as this is not a comic account, but an attempt to tell the truth, I may say that for several years my sons kept my larder very fairly supplied with game in the shooting season, including hares, partridges, woodcocks, snipes, and wild ducks. The neighbouring squires occasionally kill a deer or a wild boar, and one nobleman has killed many wild boars, some of them magnificent beasts. As a rule, a French sportsman walks much for little game, and is himself quite aware that the game is a mere pretext; the exercise is the real object. If the English reader thinks this ridiculous, I may remind him that English fox-hunting is an application of the same principle. A hundred horsemen follow a single fox, and when he is killed they do not even eat him.[4]

There is nothing that resembles English hunting in France. French hunting is pretty and picturesque, with some remnant of old-world costume and ceremonial, and it affords some exercise in riding about the roads through the dense forests, but as a training in horsemanship it is not comparable to such hunting as I have witnessed in Yorkshire. French farmers and peasant proprietors would never permit a regiment of gentlemen to spoil their fences; that can only be done in a very aristocratic country.

As to the physical life, both England and France present the same contrasts, but they are more striking in England. There you have an active and vigorous upper class much enjoying the open air, and a lower class in the big towns living without either pure air or healthy exercise. The physical quality of the race is well maintained, and even improved, at one end of the scale, and deteriorated at the other. Unfortunately the class which deteriorates, the lowest urban class, is not only the more numerous, but also reckless in reproduction, so that its power for degradation is greater than the aristocratic conservative or improving power. The ideal would be a whole nation physically equal to the English aristocracy. That aristocracy has undoubtedly set the example of healthy living, but the objection is that its fine health costs too much. With its immense apparatus of guns, yachts, and horses, its great army of servants, its extensive playgrounds, the aristocracy sets an example that cannot be followed by the poor man, shut up in the atmosphere of a factory all day and sleeping in an ill-drained street at night. The rich have another immense advantage in the free access to natural beauty, which is favourable to cheerfulness and therefore indirectly to health. The ancient Greeks, who led the perfect physical life, were surrounded by noble scenery, glorious in colour. Compare the foul sky and spoilt landscape of Manchester with the purple hills, brilliant sunlight, wondrously clear atmosphere, and waters of intensest azure, that surrounded the City of the Violet Crown!

Putting aside the aristocracies of both countries, which may live as healthily as they please, let us examine the state of the middle classes and the common people. The middle classes in both take insufficient out-door exercise, their occupations are too confining and too sedentary, they stiffen prematurely, and after that are fit for nothing but formal walks. Their physical life is lower than that of the aristocracy and lower than that of the agricultural population. The two greatest blessings in our time for the English of the middle class have been velocipedes and volunteering. France has one advantage over England in the numbers of the peasant class, which leads a healthy and active life, though its activity is of a slow and plodding kind. The factory population, proportionally much larger in England, is more unfavourably situated. It undergoes wasting fatigue in bad over-heated air, but it does not get real exercise; consequently, whilst the aristocracy keeps up its strength, the factory population deteriorates.

A comparison of English and French physical qualities leads to the following conclusions. The English are by nature incomparably the finer and handsomer race of the two; but their industrial system, and the increasing concentration in large towns, are rapidly diminishing their collective superiority, though it still remains strikingly visible in the upper classes. The French are generally of small stature,[5] so that a man of middle height in England is a tall man in France, and French soldiers in their summer fatigue blouses look to an Englishman like boys. Still, though the ordinary Frenchman is short, he is often muscular and capable of bearing great fatigue, as a good pony will. His shortness is mainly in the legs, yet he strides vigorously in marching.

One cannot look to the physical future of either race without the gravest anxiety. Unless some means be found for arresting the decline caused by industrialism and the rapid using-up of life in large cities, it will ruin both races in course of time. Already the French physicians recognise a new type, sharp and sarcastic mentally, with visible physical inferiority, the special product of Paris. The general spread of a certain education is indisposing the French for that rural peasant life which was their source of national health, and the population of England is crowding into the large towns. There are two grounds of hope, and only two. The first is the modern scientific spirit, with its louder and louder warnings against the neglect of the body; the second is the extension of military training, of which I shall have more to say in another chapter.