French & English

The estimate of what constitutes personal success varies so much in the two countries, and in the different classes of each, that it is very difficult to arrive at any common standard. There is hardly any kind of success that a French gentleman desires and which is at the same time possible for him. He cannot desire success in trade, or even in any lucrative profession, because all the trades and professions are beneath him; his former possibilities of success lay in Court favour, but now there is no Court. It is bon ton to despise official posts under the Republic. The gentry do not enter the Church, except occasionally the regular orders, and therefore cannot look for bishoprics. The fine arts and professional work in literature are of course infinitely beneath them. Nothing remains but the army and navy, with the drawback that both of these are already crowded with plebeian ability.

A class that has nothing to look forward to in life, nothing to aim at, but only to live from day to day in dignity, often on very narrow means, is deprived of the possibilities of success, and cannot really know the delightful meaning of the word. The middle classes know it,—the shopkeepers, manufacturers, professional men. Even the peasant knows it when he has fought his way to the purchase of a little farm.

The women in the French middle classes, as is well known, often understand business quite as well as the men, and show quite as much energy, and govern great commercial houses with quite as much capacity both for large affairs and for details. Madame Boucicaut, of the Bon Marché in Paris, will probably remain the typical Frenchwoman of business of this century. She attained undeniable greatness, not merely as the possessor of I know not how many millions, but as an untitled queen actually reigning over a great number of human beings and constantly applying a most powerful intellect to answer one question satisfactorily, “How can I do most good to all these people who work for me?” A lower nature would have tried to get above the shopkeeping sphere; her ambition was satisfied with remaining where she was and being a great worker and a great philanthropist.[85] Her life was indeed a success, not only in the exercise of power, but in the development of character. It has sometimes appeared possible that studious philanthropy may have its origin in a kind of remorse. In the case of Madame Boucicaut it may have been at first suggested by regret for the injury done to thousands of petty tradesmen by a colossal cheap establishment like hers.

The influence of ancient philosophies, and also that of Christianity (so far as it has been taken seriously), have both been hostile to money-making; but the influence of all visible realities is so constantly in its favour that the word “success” in the middle classes both of France and England means money and nothing else. The phrases “Il a réussi, il est arrivé,” and the expressions “He has done well, he has risen in the world,” do not mean that one has attained any ideal excellence, but simply that he has netted money, and in certain classes a man is considered a poor creature if he has not realised a fortune. This view of success has led, especially in France, to increased gambling in all kinds of speculations, because there is hardly any kind of real work that a man or woman can do which brings in more than a pittance. The increased cost of living, both in necessary expenditure and in the useless expenditure that is imposed by the foolish customs of society, has made the payment for honest work seem even smaller than it really is. The desire for a little money is an incentive to work; the desire for much is an incentive to speculation, except in the few cases where there is capital enough for one to become a leader of industry on a large scale. The same cause has led to the success of lotteries in France, and it is this spirit which of late years has so much increased the amount of private gambling. These tendencies are not likely to diminish, since professional incomes, instead of increasing, have gone down as a result of competition. Physicians tell me that the facilities of cheap general and professional education are now overcrowding their professions by an immense influx of young men who settle anywhere, as birds do where they are likely to find food. An old physician who formerly had a good rural practice in a part of the country very little known, told me that he was now surrounded by active young doctors in the adjacent parishes, and saw his income reduced to £160 a year. Yes, that is about the figure to which competition is bringing down the gains in the liberal professions. The fine arts, both in England and France, offer a few very valuable prizes; and as a few artists live very luxuriously and with considerable ostentation in their showy houses, they give a false idea of the prosperity of their profession. As a matter of fact, the majority of artists form a peculiarly and especially anxious class, whose gains are so precarious that next year’s income is like the hope of a prize in a lottery. Nothing is more curious in the history of the nineteenth century than the prodigious increase in the number of artists both in England and France. A well-known French painter told me there were twenty thousand of his profession in Paris, working, of course, chiefly for exportation, as France produces painting to sell rather than to keep. The number of sculptors, though not nearly so great, is even more remarkable, because sculpture is so little bought. An English academician has an interesting theory about the intentions of Nature with regard to the fine arts; he says that pictures are produced now as coal was in prehistoric times, to serve long afterwards for fuel. Seriously, it appears that Nature follows in this matter her usual principle of “a thousand seeds for one to bear.” She produces a thousand workmen in the fine arts that there may be found amongst them a single artist of genius whose work is truly precious to the world. In France the great number of semi-artists has had the effect of infusing an artistic element into several of the handicrafts, and of disseminating artistic ideas, chiefly amongst the population of Paris. Artists who have failed as makers of pictures or statues fall back upon decorative painting or sculpture, upon designing for manufactures, and upon teaching elementary drawing in public schools. Painters often have recourse to another of the graphic arts when painting fails. There is hardly one of the French etchers who has not desired to be a painter.

From the point of view which regards worldly success, and which we are considering for the present, the French clergy is very inferior to the English. The highest pay of a parish priest is sixty pounds a year, the lowest thirty-six. There are some extras for wedding and funeral fees. There is also a priest’s house, and these dwellings have been much improved of late. When the parishioners are rich and generous the priest receives many presents of eatables, and in some parishes his cellar is kept well supplied with wine; but when the population is stingy he has to live strictly on his income, or even on less if he is of a charitable disposition. In towns, a favourite priest is often embarrassed with gifts for the comfort and elegance of his rooms; in rural parishes his rooms are likely to be bare. Each priest keeps one woman servant, usually plain, and, of course, invariably of mature age—his “rancid virgin,” as one curé wittily called her. It has always been an insoluble problem for me how the two manage to live so decently on so little money. A canon has sixty pounds a year, a bishop four hundred, and an archbishop six hundred, but in the case of prelates there is the casuel (different fees), which may increase their means considerably. In England the lowest ecclesiastical incomes are twice what they are in France, and the highest more than ten times as much. There are no prizes in the French Catholic Church answering to the richer English livings; even a bishopric (from the pecuniary point of view) is not so good as many an English rectory. We hear of the wealth and splendour of the Church; she is, no doubt, magnificent in display, but her priests are poor officials, and their celibacy is not a matter of choice but of necessity, which (from a sense of prudence) has been converted into a rule. It is only after fully realising the poverty of the Catholic priesthood that we can estimate the overwhelming importance of the Pope with his unlimited command of money. The difference between him and his prelates is not at all that between an English king and his great nobles, but rather that between the Emperor Napoleon and ordinary regimental officers, whilst the priests are relatively in the position of private soldiers and no more.

In England ecclesiastical incomes range between eighty pounds a year and fifteen thousand. Incomes of two or three hundred a year are common, and many exceed seven or eight. In fact, the Church answers with tolerable exactness to other liberal professions, such as medicine, the law, and painting. A splendidly successful lawyer, doctor, or painter has the income of the Archbishop of York, and there may be one in each generation with that of Canterbury, whilst the unsuccessful layman may equal the earnings of a small incumbent or a poor curate, and between the two we find all the degrees. It is more difficult, however, for an energetic man to make his own way in the Church than in more open professions.

The army, in both countries, is a poor profession except in the highest grades. It is essentially a bachelor’s profession. In France, officers are not permitted to marry any woman who has less than a certain dowry, and in England marriage is restricted to a few amongst the private soldiers.[86] Here we have an approach to the enforced celibacy of the Roman priesthood.

Almost all public offices in France are paid, but ill paid. In England they are either well paid or gratuitous. English Members of Parliament, in both houses, are unpaid; in France they receive a moderate salary. In England magistrates (except a small special class) are unpaid; in France they all receive a few thousand francs a year. On the other hand, English judges are splendidly paid in comparison with French judges, even when they sit only in the County Courts. The magistracy, in France, is so little lucrative that judicial functions usually imply private means.

The ordinary trades are perhaps equally lucrative in the two countries, and, with the exception of old landowners, most of the prosperous people are either tradesmen or the descendants of tradesmen. An antiquary in a certain neighbourhood told me that the local aristocracy there was descended, almost exclusively, from tanners of the Middle Ages. In the wine districts gold is chiefly consolidated, directly or indirectly, from grape-juice, as in Lancashire it is a concentrated form of cotton, and in Lyons of silk. Many fine new houses have been built in France since the Empire, and almost invariably by tradesmen.

For rapid increase in wealth and population there is nothing in France comparable to the manufacturing district within a radius of forty miles from the Manchester Exchange. The population of that region is greater than that within forty miles of Charing Cross; and notwithstanding times of depression it is probable that the wealth in it far exceeds that of any similar area in France. Manchester, and the congeries of minor yet still populous towns that crowd round it, are an example of rapidity in the increase of wealth and population together which is rather American than European, and there, at least, an American would find proofs of material success. I, who have lived in Lancashire, have known many surprising instances, and it is not so much this or that particular example that strikes one there as the prevalence of a plutocratic atmosphere. Money is as much in the air of Lancashire as the smell of flowers about Cannes and Nice, with this difference, that whilst flowers are delightful to most noses, the odour of money is so chiefly to those who possess it.

The reader may perhaps imagine that small professional incomes must be relatively larger in France than in England because living is cheaper there, but these ideas are founded upon a former state of things. Before the Second Empire, when there were few railways, living was very cheap in some out-of-the-way parts of France. Railways equalised prices, and since then various other causes have combined to raise them. At present, living is quite as expensive in France as in England. An Englishman, now settled in Kent after a residence in Burgundy, tells me that he finds it more economical to live in his own country. At the same time that prices have risen, the customs of society have become both more exacting and more costly, so that married people feel what has been called “the pinch of poverty” on means that would have seemed an ample competence to their fathers. The one conclusion to which accumulated experience seems now to be driving mankind is that without a large income there can be no success, and that a man’s life is a failure unless he can afford to live in society, to travel, and to provide handsomely for all the members of his family.

Another estimate of success is held by some, and I think by more people in France than in England. It is, and always has been, my own view, and I have never seen any reason to change it.

Real success is nothing more, and it is certainly nothing less, than the happy exercise and development of each man’s faculties, whatever they may be. Hence the error of supposing that one can be truly successful by following in the steps of another. Each man has to win his own happiness, or, in religious language, to work out his own salvation. The world’s estimate of him is important only just so far as it enables him to do this, or hinders him from doing it; beyond that it is no more to him than the wind on a distant sea. Now, this happy exercise of gifts may no doubt sometimes depend on money, but it usually depends far more on suitableness of situation. I have mentioned the poor incomes of French priests, the miserable incomes as they will appear to the English reader. The very poverty of these men is, in the best cases, a part of their success. If they want to leave all and follow Christ, a bare subsistence is all that they require for that. Their poverty is a part of the dignity and reality of their office. Success, for a priest, has absolutely nothing to do with money, or even with preferment; it consists in moral and religious influence, and in nothing else. The famous Curé d’Ars had immense success, and remained a poor village priest to the end of his saintly life; what need had he of wealth and dignities? In the army, as elsewhere, success is to be fit for the rank one occupies, and to attain exactly the rank that one is fit for; it is not to get up into a rank above one’s capacity. In literature, success is merely encouragement to express our genuine and best selves; it is not to be splendidly rewarded for producing work adapted for the market. In painting, success is nothing more than encouragement to paint the pictures that form themselves in the mind; it is not successful commerce. Corot, the French landscape painter, produced his own work and succeeded late, yet it was a pure success for him, and he could wait for it patiently on fifty pounds a year. Another instance of real though not apparent success is that of the Englishman David Cox, whom some have commiserated because he did not pocket the thousands that his drawings afterwards attained. One who knew him intimately said there was no occasion for pity, that Cox had enjoyed his life and work, and earned as much as was necessary for his independence.

There are two sides to the question whether a successful life must be in every case a pleasant one. The Epicurean philosopher would say that without happiness there can be no success; the Stoic would see the possibility of a high kind of success without anything like happiness; the Christian thinks life successful if it leads to heaven, though it be wretched and miserable upon earth. Both Christian and Epicurean agree in taking happiness as the measure of success, though one places it on the earth and the other elsewhere.

All three are to be found in France in their complete development. The dominant philosophy is the Epicurean, but Stoicism and Christianity have their small and great places with their own theories of success. It is the tendency of the French mind to follow every scheme of life to the extremity of its logical consequences. France is the country of the woman of the world, la mondaine, and of the Carmelite nun, the one living in the utmost luxury, the other in the hardest austerity, and a gleam of hope or a cloud of disappointment in the life of a young lady may determine for her which of the two she is to be. France is the country of conversation and of the silent trappists, the land of wine, and dance, and song, yet at the same time a land where life is often most dull, and dreary, and prosaic.

Still, if we consider the French nation broadly, after having given its due place to asceticism, catholic or parsimonious, I think it is evident that the dominant tendency is to make the present life agreeable, even to study to make it so, and to take trouble in order to enjoy a succession of little pleasures. In the care for the agreeableness of the present life there is a very strong contrast between the French and the Highlanders of Scotland, for example. The Highlanders are unsuccessful in making life agreeable, partly on account of their climate, which discourages effort, but also from their temperament, which prefers discomfort to trouble and forethought. The same contrast, in minor degrees, exists between the French and some other inhabitants of the British Islands. The Frenchman’s object is to make life a succession of little pleasures.

If he is able to do this, does that constitute success? It is success of a kind, if it can be carried on indefinitely and without any perceptible injury to health. The judicious Epicurean, who knows the necessity of moderation, arrives at a kind of happiness, and he includes mental pleasures, such as those of art and elegance, in his list.

Whether a life of little pleasures is a successful life or not, it seems plain that, from the simply rational point of view, a life of felt privations is a failure. The ordinary gifts of nature are sunlight, pure air, pure water, and some degree of natural beauty. These are the natural refreshers of human life, and without them it is impossible for it to be complete. The establishment of the industrial system is not a true success, because it has deprived great populations of these benefits. In this sense Manchester and Lyons are unsuccessful; they have not solved the problem of healthy and pleasant existence. Paris is apparently successful, because there is much external brilliance, if not beauty, but when we come to examine Parisian life in its details we find that it is wanting in space and freedom, that only the rich have elbow-room, and that ordinary existence is fatiguing as well as narrow. Londoners are rather more at ease, as their town covers more territory; but it is a dismal place, and if its inhabitants never left it they would not know the natural colour of the sky, or that of a flowing river.

If we compare the two countries, the most successful quiet life, with moderate expenditure and some enjoyment of unspoiled nature, combined with the conveniences of advanced civilisation, is to be found, I think, in the French provinces. There is, however, a drawback to that success, otherwise unquestionably considerable, in the intellectual dulness which afflicts French provincial life as with a kind of torpor. There is nothing in the French provinces answering to the intelligence of the English manufacturing districts, with their mechanics’ institutes, their lectures, concerts, and picture exhibitions. In Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire people are scarcely more cut off from the intelligent world than if they lived at a short distance from a metropolis. That perfect life which is so difficult to attain in modern times would require the union of natural beauty (including unsullied skies and healthy vegetation) with intellectual society and opportunities.

The question may be simplified by remembering that although public success may be measured by outward results, private success is always strictly personal, and is to be measured, at any particular time, only by the good mental and bodily condition of the man himself. All else is merely external. A good mental condition includes just as much culture as is necessary to the development of the faculties, but not any burden of erudition heavy enough to diminish (as erudition so often does) the promptitude or the elasticity of the mind. A good bodily condition includes health and the training which gives a similar promptitude and elasticity. Sufficient material well-being for the maintenance of body and mind in these favourable conditions is essential to true success, all beyond it is superfluous. Fame, or the opinion of others, is of no use except as an encouragement or a stimulus, and it has nothing to do with the reality of success.

On applying these tests to our modern industrial civilisation we find evidences of failure on all hands. The poor are not in conditions of existence favourable to the body, and they have not leisure enough for the activities of the mind. The rich leaders of industry have far more wealth than would be necessary to perfect human life, but they have not enough leisure for intellectual attainments; and they are prevented, by the presence of the multitudes that industry has called into being, from leading a life independent of great social cares. In short, from the purely human and private point of view, without reference to material results, industrialism has not hitherto proved itself a success. It is successful in the produce of commodities, but not in the government of life.

Mere cheerfulness of disposition is an element in every private success, and it might be argued that if any one is cheerful, say in the horrible English “Black Country,” he is living more successfully than a despondent spirit surrounded by the light and colour of Italy. The French consider themselves happier than the English because they have more external gaiety, but I do not accept this gaiety as good evidence of a happy life. Without looking upon it with any puritanical disapproval, I think it is very frequently no more than a reaction against the troubles that beset human existence everywhere, and of which the French, like others, have their share. A gay philosophy may seem wanting in seriousness, but a man must have a very superficial acquaintance with French people if he has not discovered that their gaiety often conceals many a private anxiety and care. One reason for it is the feeling, which is certainly healthy, that we ought not to trouble other people with private causes of sadness, but make an effort to be cheerful as a social duty. Another and a deeper reason is that a light philosophy seems wiser and more intelligent than a melancholy one, because the miseries of life are not worth dwelling upon unless they can be practically alleviated. The natural gravity of Englishmen causes them to be misunderstood in France, where it is taken for sadness. English gravity is not incompatible with happiness. The grave mind is happy in its gravity as the light mind in its levity; and the English are not so grave as the French believe them to be. Cheerfulness (a word for which there is no equivalent in the French language) is an English characteristic, though the English have not the champagne in the blood that bubbles up in merriment and nonsense on the top of a Frenchman’s brain. They had it long ago, in Shakespeare’s time.