French & English

England and France are alike in this, that caste is not yet abolished in either country, and they also resemble each other in passing through a state of false caste which appears to be intermediary between true caste and a future casteless condition of society. The two nations differ, however, in the kinds of false caste through which they are passing, and the purpose of the present chapter will be to examine the nature of the difference.

True caste is a social condition existing by authority and general consent, in which every human being has, by birth, his fixed place in the social organism, and receives exactly the degree of respect or contempt which is accorded to the place independently of his personal efforts or qualities.

The state of false caste is a condition of things in which there is still a sort of social hierarchy, but the positions in it are neither fixed nor well defended, so that impostors may get possession of them and enjoy the consideration which formerly belonged only to those who were born in the caste. This is the present condition of England and France, in different ways and in different degrees. It is better than true caste in giving openings to ability, but worse in offering temptations and prizes to imposture.

The caste spirit is not by any means confined to an aristocracy. The social state of true caste includes all classes of society, fixing the relative inferiorities of the humble as strictly as the superiorities of the great. It will be convenient, however, to consider the aristocratic spirit first and by itself. Are there still genuine aristocracies in England and France?

I have observed elsewhere that England has been able to pass through a highly convenient intermediate stage, that of an aristocratic republic, preserving monarchical appearances, and that France has not been able to do this, not having the kind and quality of aristocracy that was necessary for the work. I said this, but I did not say (what some Englishmen believe) that France has no real aristocracy at all.

On the contrary, I agree with Littré in the belief that the real aristocratic spirit still lives vigorously in France, but only in the aristocracy itself; and I should say that the great difference between England and France in this respect is that what there is of the aristocratic spirit in England is shared by classes outside of the aristocracy, whereas in France very few people have the aristocratic sentiment unless it has been implanted in them by the traditions of an aristocratic house, and cultivated by a training apart from the ordinary training of Frenchmen.

Again, it does not appear that the aristocratic spirit in England, though widely diffused, is of a pure or elevated kind. Perhaps it may be for this very reason, perhaps it is just because it is not pure or elevated, that it is so general and so commonly understood.

The want of purity and elevation in the present English ideal of aristocracy is evident from the undeniable fact that title is now little more than a supreme sanction given to the popular adoration of wealth. From the idea that it is inconvenient for a peer of England to be poor, a further advance has been made to the idea that a very rich man has a sort of claim to a title; and when peerages are bestowed on obscure men as a reward for having enriched themselves, the proceeding is thought so natural as to excite no comment, except, perhaps, from Mr. Labouchere. When, on the other hand, a distinguished man, not exceptionally rich, is made the recipient of a peerage, his promotion is a surprise to the public, unless it can be explained as a reward for political services to the party that happens to be in power. The Tennyson peerage is a curious example of this. Some friends of the Poet Laureate thought it rather a degradation for a man of genius to accept the prize of a lower ambition than that which they had believed to be his, whilst his enemies made quotations from Maud, applicable to new titles and new mansions. If Tennyson had been a successful brewer or banker, nobody would have made a remark; his peerage would not have been considered either above him or below him, but simply the natural English consecration of new riches.

Forty years before the elevation of Tennyson to the English peerage, his contemporary, Victor Hugo, was made a peer of France. It is probable that not a single Frenchman perceived anything incongruous in that promotion, or wondered whether the new peer had money enough to support his dignity.

The reader may call to mind a few strong words of Matthew Arnold about the present condition of aristocracy in England: “Aristocracy now sets up in our country a false ideal, which materialises our upper class, vulgarises our middle class, brutalises our lower class. It misleads the young, makes the worldly more worldly, the limited more limited, the stationary more stationary.”

These evils are due to the transformation of the English aristocracy into a plutocracy that is not, as in America, a plainly avowed plutocracy, but disguises itself in aristocratic costumes.

The distinction of a true aristocracy is that it is not a plutocracy, but a noble caste, including poor members as well as rich, and having certain ideals which, however foreign they may be to the spirit of the present age, did certainly, in their own time, tend to lift men and women above vulgarity. The most ennobling of those ideals was the notion that money was not the highest object of pursuit. The poor gentleman could be contented with ill-paid service in the army or the Church, because he did not serve for money; and it was believed within the caste, rightly or wrongly, that to labour for pecuniary rewards as the main object had a degrading effect upon the mind. The army was a chosen profession, because it was the school of courage, obedience, and self-sacrifice; the Church, because it was the school of piety and morality, as well as the home of learning. I know that I am describing a narrow ideal, but most ideals that have had any power in the world have been narrow, and I am anxious to show how in the old aristocratic prejudices there were elements of real nobleness, which may have given them dignity and vitality. Those prejudices were hostile to some things that we now value. They were hostile, for example, to the pursuit of the fine arts, but it was from an apprehension, which I now see to have been only too well founded, that in struggling for the acquirement of brilliant manual skill, the student might spend his efforts on a low object. Those prejudices looked doubtfully upon commerce; it was thought that a gentleman did better not to go into trade; but the reason was because a heavy business ties a man down so much, and leaves him so little leisure for study or society, so little liberty for travel, that it is really somewhat of a misfortune to be fastened to such a business during the best years of youth and manhood. This aristocracy was selfish, but its selfishness was of a high kind. It was not given up either to avarice or to self-indulgence, but it valued what is best in life.

The reader may remember how Mr. Bagehot defended titles on the ground that they counterbalanced in some degree the power of wealth by setting up something else to be respected, and he even argued that title was a roundabout means of making intelligence respected:—

“Nobility is the symbol of mind. It has the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence, but the ‘old squire’ will get reverence. Even after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man’s sense. An old lord will get infinite reverence. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind.”

This passage contains, I think, a condemnation of the very use of nobility that the author intended to eulogise. If the common peasantry will listen more submissively to the nonsense of an old squire than they will to a new man’s sense, it is hard to see how aristocracy, in this instance, can be really on the side of mind. Again, if the old lord gets infinite reverence, whether he is wise or foolish, it is a mere chance whether the reverence is favourable to the influence of mind or against it. If the old lord is a fool, and there is a wise man in the neighbourhood who is not listened to because the lord has the ear of the peasantry, the strength of title is not the candlestick of mind, but its extinguisher.

Frenchmen who write about England usually remark that mind is overshadowed by aristocracy; that mediocrities with titles get more consideration, and are listened to more respectfully, than better men without them. The exact truth is more as follows. Political celebrity in England is quite as strong as title. Any one who has the ear of the House of Commons, however humble his birth, is listened to in the country quite as attentively, quite as respectfully, as a lord. But title certainly overshadows literary and artistic celebrity. Not that this is of any real importance, for literary and artistic celebrity is not in its nature powerful, except over the intelligent, who are a minority in every population.

If the aristocracies have not done much for the intellectual life, or for art, they have been serviceable in setting up a model of generally refined life, not for people of culture specially, but for all who had means enough to copy it. This is not to be despised. A real aristocracy is a school of national refinement, and nations that are destitute of an aristocracy have to look to some fluctuating upper class, less perfectly regulated than aristocracy is by hereditary custom.

Again, an aristocracy is a school of contentment. In conjunction with its natural ally, the Church, it encourages in every one a spirit of contentment with his lot in life, an acceptance of the lot as a settled thing, which, though it is not favourable to progress, is unquestionably favourable to happiness. A genuine aristocracy is also favourable to simplicity of life in every noblesse that has poor, yet honoured members.

The faults of the French noblesse have not led to its absolute destruction, for it still survives, but they have deprived it of political power. Unteachableness, rigidity, want of sympathy with the rest of the nation, lack of practical sense,—these are some of the defects that have reduced the French aristocracy to a plight which, politically speaking, is pitiable and without a future. Since they allowed themselves to be enslaved by Louis XIV. the nobles have been out of sympathy with the common people, and since the Revolution they have been hostile to them, except in the way of charity to the poor. It would, perhaps, be expecting too much of human nature to hope that an ancient noblesse could forget the rough treatment it received in the first unreasoning outburst of popular vengeance; but it would not have been so dealt with if it had lived less selfishly, and cared for other interests than its own. It had brilliant intelligence, it had charming graces, and all the éclat of personal bravery, in combination with the rarest degree of polish, yet it lost the due rewards of its admirable superiorities by its unkind scorn of the manant and the roturier. The “manant” and the “roturier” avenged themselves roughly when the time came. The people have improved their condition wonderfully, but it has been entirely by their own efforts, the consequence being that the aristocracy survives only as a caste, and has no political leadership.

The present influence of the aristocratic caste in France is an evil influence in its discouragement of work. The caste includes a great number of people who have all been brought up to despise and abstain from the labour that earns bread. If the harm were confined to the caste itself it would be only a limited evil—unfortunately, it extends to all aspirants to aristocracy, to all the would-be genteel. This throws a degree of relative discredit on all money-earning occupations which certainly exceeds the prejudice of English gentility against them. Even literature and the fine arts become degrading as soon as they are lucrative,[70] a sentiment quite opposed to the more intelligent modern opinion in France. All the forms of trade are despicable for aristocrats, and when they hear of a family that has been in trade they say, with an air of genteel ignorance about the nature of the business, “Ils ont vendu quelque chose.” Their manners towards shopkeepers are often unpleasant, and exhibit a degree of morgue that is peculiarly irritating to a French tradesman.

An aristocratic caste may be an institution for which there is no further necessity, it may be a survival that has become useless, but one likes to see it genuine of its kind, even in its latter days. Unfortunately the present French aristocracy, whilst encouraging idle habits by its contempt for work, encourages habits of imposture by the fatal facility with which it permits the encroachments of the false noblesse. I have often wondered how the old noble families ever tolerated these intruders, and I believe the only explanation to be that the intruders are such sure and subservient allies in politics and religion. It is really a system of recruiting.[71] The false noble fortifies his position by all available means, and there are none better than an ardent profession of those opinions that the genuine aristocracy approves. I said long ago in Round my House that the particle “de,” which is popularly supposed to indicate nobility, was extensively assumed by families belonging really to the bourgeoisie, but I was not fully aware at that time on what a prodigiously extensive scale these usurpations have been made. Here is a single example. A public functionary, whose duties required frequent reference to registers in a particular locality, told me that he had at first been embarrassed by the changes of name in certain families. Plain names of the bourgeoisie had been laid aside for territorial designations with the “de” before them, and it was difficult at first sight to understand and remember these transformations. Having a curious and investigating disposition, the functionary amused himself by tracing out as many of these cases as he could discover, and he told me that in a single neighbourhood he had found no less than fifty families who had raised themselves into what is ignorantly but generally considered to be the noble caste by the addition of the “de.” Amidst such an influx of new recruits the authentic old nobility is, in these days, completely overwhelmed. There being no strictly-kept peerage, as in England, there is nothing authoritative to refer to, and an injurious doubt is cast upon real coronets by the perplexing abundance of false ones. Besides the “de,” the most positive titles are coolly assumed and worn. You may meet with people who live in an old château and are very comme il faut, very simple and well bred, without any appearance of false pretension whatever, yet they have just one little bit of false pretension—their title. They call themselves Count and Countess, yet are not Count and Countess at all. Their fortune was made in business two generations ago, and the château purchased, and the title of the old family that once lived there gradually assumed by a too familiar process.

The French noblesse, as a caste, is spoiled by this intrusion and acceptance of false nobles, but if there were not this fatal objection it would be much more truly a caste than the British nobility and gentry. There is, in fact, no pure and well-guarded upper caste in England except simply the holders of titles. You may belong to the highest nobility in England by descent, and there will be nothing to distinguish you from a plebeian unless you are a son of the representative of the family. In every genuine noblesse noble blood continues to bear some distinctive mark of caste. The English way is more convenient, because it constantly throws off the poorer branches into the general mixture that we vaguely call “the middle classes”; the continental way of preserving a noble caste, even in its poorer members, is more faithful to the principle of descent. The way of selecting new men for the English peerage is also a violation of the caste principle. They are not usually taken from well-descended families, but from the new rich, and in this way we constantly see men of low birth elevated to a position which instantly gives them precedence over the most ancient untitled families in England. In short, we live in a time of confusion between the true caste principle and the true democratic principle, a confusion that will ultimately be cleared away by the abolition of titles, though that is still in the distant future. Meanwhile the new rich in France may fairly argue that as they have not, like their English brethren, a sovereign to ennoble them, they have no resource but to ennoble themselves.

A moderate degree of poverty does not abolish caste in France, provided that the nobleman is just able to maintain external decency of appearance without working. In England it is impossible to maintain high caste without a complete staff of domestics. In both countries real poverty abolishes caste.

It is impossible in England to assume and maintain falsely the position of a titled nobleman, but coats-of-arms are constantly assumed without right, and it is not uncommon in these days for people to take a name that does not belong to them by inheritance. If a plebeian Englishman chooses to adopt the name, and the arms too, of an old family, he can do so in perfect security.

I pass now from the noble to the professional castes.

The clergy in England are said to form part of the aristocracy, but this is true only of the Anglican clergy. The Dissenting clergy form part of the middle classes. The Anglican clergy itself is less aristocratic than it was in the earlier part of the nineteenth century; in fact, its position has varied greatly from one century to another. It is now said to be rather declining, as the clergy are recruited from an inferior class, both as to position and ability. A father may put his son into the Church because the lad is not keen-witted enough to be a successful attorney, or because there is not capital enough in the family to set him up as a manufacturer. There are also ways of entering the Church without the training of Oxford or Cambridge. Nevertheless, in spite of this decline, the Anglican clergy are still, as a body, incomparably superior to the French Roman Catholic clergy in the social sense. The French clergy are now almost exclusively recruited from the humble classes. Nine out of ten are sons of peasants, the tenth may be the son of an artisan or a gendarme. It is curious that the French aristocracy, which professes such deep respect for the Church, should no longer supply recruits for the clergy. Fewer and fewer of the sons of the noblesse become priests every year, and those who do now become priests shut themselves up in the religious orders, and are of no use for the common work of the parishes, many of which are left empty, in country places, for want of working priests to fill them. It would seem as if it were no longer thought comme il faut to be a parish priest, whilst it may be comme il faut to belong to one of the recognised orders, such as the Marists, the Jesuits, etc. The practical result is that in the country parishes many of the priests are burdened with extra duty, sometimes far from their homes, merely from an insufficient supply of ecclesiastics. This plain fact—which I do not give merely on my own authority, but on that of a French bishop who deplored it lately in an episcopal charge—is a valuable commentary on that devotion to the Church which the French aristocracy still professes so long as it entails no greater inconvenience than a perfunctory attendance at mass. There is, consequently, a social severance between the clergy and the aristocracy, though there may be a political alliance. The priest may have patrons in the château, he may have real friends there, but his relations and his equals are generally in the farm-houses.[72] The reason lies no deeper than the obvious fact that the duties of a parish priest are irksome and his life is austere. He is confined to one place, without amusements, and with society limited to peasants and to the few gentry who happen to be there for a part of the year only; his work is a continual servitude, and it is never done. He is allowed by law to marry, but not by the rules of his Church or the opinion of society, and his conduct is watched with the most jealous and unceasing scrutiny. To devote oneself to such an existence requires not merely the pretence to religious belief but its reality. That, and that alone, can make a human being happy in a life which is deprived of all worldly pleasures, and has no earthly rewards.

The difference between the parish priest and the bishop, though great in England, is much greater in France. In England it is the difference between a gentleman and a peer, in France it is that between a common soldier and his colonel. Since royalty is dead, and the great nobles politically paralysed by universal suffrage, the bishop seems all the greater as the sole survivor of the splendid personages of the middle ages. The grandeur of the Church is represented by the bishops, both in their social position, which, in the absence of royalty, is much higher than any other, and also in externals, such as the stately residence, the violet and gold of the costume, and the customary carriage and pair. It must be remembered, too, that the “Church” in Catholic language means the bishops, who are alone summoned to Œcumenical Councils, and not the inferior clergy, who have no vote, direct or indirect, the bishops not being elected by them.

Since the French army has become national, the military caste is not so much an aristocratic caste as it is in England. It is difficult for an Englishman to realise the position of officers in a French garrison town. They live very much amongst themselves, and spend many of their leisure hours in a café chosen specially by them, and called “le café des officiers.” Some of them are admitted into local society, but on their individual merits or in consequence of family connections; the uniform is not the passport that it is, or used to be, in England. I remember how, on the arrival of a new regiment, the English squires in the neighbourhood would go and call upon the officers to give them a welcome, and would very soon ask them to dinner. Before long the officers were on sufficiently friendly terms to join in country amusements and invite themselves to lunch. If there was a ball, they were invited as a matter of course. This intimacy between military officers and the local gentry was strongly marked in the English society of the Wellingtonian age. In a French town there is no such ready welcome on the part of the leading inhabitants. The officers are treated like strangers staying in the hotels until some accident brings about an acquaintanceship.

Still, although the military class in France is not one with the aristocracy, it is quite true that the military profession is the only career, in French opinion, for a gentleman of birth, unless he studies for the bar, which he generally does without any intent to practise.

The official class of prefects, sub-prefects, and other members of the administrative hierarchy, form a caste quite apart from high society, which will not recognise office-holders under the Republic. I have known several of these officials who were thorough gentlemen, and had good private fortunes besides, but the higher classes ignored them as completely as if they had been personally unfit for society. The fact that the prefect is by virtue of his office the greatest personage in the department only makes him the more disliked. His rank is officially equal to that of an English lord-lieutenant, and he is more important in the sense of having more work to do and more real authority to exercise.[73] When, however, we compare the social position of the two we see how France is divided. England is not yet divided in the same way because the Crown makes the great official appointments, or at least seems to make them. There is not now any political authority left standing in France which commands the respect of the upper classes. They do not respect authorities emanating from the people.

Now, with regard to the professional and trading classes I should say that they are nearer to one another in France than in England. The old division of Noblesse, Bourgeoisie, Peuple, is still in constant use, and is extremely convenient as a general division of French classes. The noblesse, true or false, lives on its means, and has generally landed property; the bourgeoisie lives in more or less comfort, either on private means or on the gains of professions and trades; the peuple lives by manual labour and on wages. An artist, a solicitor, a doctor, belong to the bourgeoisie, and they are all three nearer to the shopkeepers and more familiar and friendly with them than are men who belong to the liberal professions in England.

A distinction of the greatest importance between England and France is indicated by the untranslatableness of the word “gentleman.” The English reader knows what the word means. It is the sign of an ideal which may constitute caste or something else, for it often traverses caste. You frequently, in England, meet with men who are not of high birth, who are not very rich, yet whom all recognise as gentlemen, and this simple recognition places them on an equality, of a certain kind, with people of higher rank. In France, this peculiar kind of equality is unknown. The bourgeois is never the equal of the noble, though he may be the better gentleman of the two. It is undeniable that, in this peculiar sense, English society is more égalitaire than French.

The teaching classes are in some respects a lower caste in France than in England. This difference may be in part due to the clerical character of English education, which gave a dignity and almost a sacred character to schoolmasters. In France the numerous professors in the University are not well paid, and often eke out a slender income by private lessons. Many of them are cultivated gentlemen, others are much less refined, as may be expected in a very mixed class, and an old principal tells me that the body as a whole has less tenue and self-respect than it had formerly. “In my time,” he said, “you might always recognise an universitaire by the correctness of his appearance and bearing, but to-day he is not distinguishable from anybody else.” In England university degrees confer some social position, especially if they have been gained at Oxford or Cambridge; in France they confer little or none, certainly they do not make the recipient du monde. The consequence is more and more a severance between the fashionable and the educated classes, and it may even come, in course of time, to this, that a high degree of education may be taken as evidence that a man does not belong to “good society.”

There is a difference between England and France in the strictness of rural caste. Amongst the French peasants we find a set of rigid caste-customs separating the class completely from the bourgeois and the ouvrier. There is nothing answering to this with the same universality and rigour in English rural life. The English farmer answers more to the French rural bourgeois of different grades; his life is more the general life of the nation, it is not peculiar and behind the time. There are signs that the true peasant life, with its austerity, its self-denial, its patriarchal rules and traditions, will not, in France itself, very long survive the influences of the town, the railway, and the newspaper. It will be a severe loss to the country when it passes away. The peasants do not themselves know how superior they are to the classes they are beginning to imitate.

The strength of caste may be measured by the degradation of the Pariah. As the caste-principle declines he rises, and when it dies he is no longer distinguishable by his vileness, but is lost in the general equality.

English intolerance having been chiefly religious, its Pariah has been the Infidel. France is the country of political intolerance, and there the Pariah is the Republican. “What!” I may be asked, “you speak of the Republicans as Pariahs at a time when they hold all the ministries and receive all the ambassadors?” The answer to this objection is that they have never been more under the ban of high society than since they won political power. In England the Infidel is not quite the Pariah that he used to be when Deists were “pestiferous vermin.” To-day, under his new name of “Agnostic,” he is beginning to be tolerated. On the contrary, the French intolerance of the Republican is more intense than ever. Canaille is the mildest term that the charity of the bien pensant would apply to him—