French & English

[1] Here is an instance of misleading by mistranslation. The English newspapers speak of Parisian “Communists” when they ought to say Communards. A Communist is a Socialist of a particular kind, who wants to have goods in common after the fashion of the early Christians. A Communard is a person who wishes for an extreme development of local government. He thinks that the Commune (something like a township) ought to have more autonomy—be more independent of the State. M. Charles Beslay, an old friend of mine, became a Communard and was Governor of the Bank of France under the Commune. He was a most upright and honourable gentleman, and so far from being a Communist that he defended the treasure of the Bank of France throughout the civil war of 1871, and afterwards handed it over intact to the proper authorities. I do not accuse English journalists of intentional dishonesty in this case; there is no English equivalent for Communard, the nearest English rendering would be township home-rule-man.

[2] Observe that the like-minded companions were “few.”

[3] It is curious that the French gymnastic societies should be rather discouraged by the Church, as giving too much attention to the body. I have seen formal expressions of clerical disapprobation. There may be some other reason. Everything has a political colour in France, and I believe that the gymnastic societies, now very numerous, are mainly republican.

[4] A French friend of one of my sons was invited to shoot at Ferrières, on the preserves of Baron Rothschild, but he said he soon had enough of it, as the game was so abundant that the interest in the pursuit of it was entirely destroyed. He compared it, as an amusement, with the shooting of fowls in a poultry yard.

[5] There are some remarkable exceptions. It would be possible to form one French regiment of very fine men, but I doubt if there are enough for two regiments. Napoleon’s Cent Gardes were specimens.

[6] “In that case,” it may be objected, “boys who left school at fourteen would miss Latin altogether.” Yes, it is Professor Seeley’s desire that they should omit Latin, and those who left at sixteen would omit Greek. The time so gained would be devoted to real culture through English.

[7] Since the above paragraph was written I have consulted a very able Professeur de Faculté and Latin examiner on this Question du Latin. He says: “The young men who come up for examination have an imperfect knowledge of Latin, and the standard of attainment falls lower and lower. The remedy that I should propose would be to reduce to fifteen the number of lycées where Latin and Greek are taught. In those fifteen lycées I would maintain a really high standard of genuine scholarship. That would be sufficient for all the real scholars that the country wants, and then the teaching in the ordinary lycées, being relieved of false pretension about Latin and Greek, might itself become genuine in other ways.”

[8] In an article in the Revue Internationale de l’Enseignement for April 13, 1885. The article contains many interesting details.

[9] The following is a genuine English address from pupils in a Parisian lycée to their master:—

“My dear and respected Professor—I take the liberty of testifying the feelings of gratitude which animate us all since we have been under your tutorship.

“No doubt we have been lacking in zeal and attention, but we nevertheless appreciate fully the pains you have evidently taken for our benefit. We therefore assure you that if you are not satisfied, we take the engagement to strive to do better hereafter; and you shall see that we will be faithful to our word.

“We terminate with the desire that you will sincerely accept this as a true testimonial of our real affection and respect.”

Creditable, though not faultless.

[10] There have been a few exceptions, such as Lord Egremont and the Duc de Luynes.

[11] French carters are superior to English in providing two-wheeled carts with breaks. I remember seeing the horses suffer very much for the want of them in steep roads and streets in England. The French, too, are usually very careful about balancing loads so as not to press heavily on the shaft-horse, but they are merciless in first overloading a cart and then beating the horse because the weight is beyond his strength.

[12] My wife had no rest till she had procured the abolition of this custom by an edict from the Mayor of Sens, but very likely it went on in private afterwards.

[13] The University decorations of Officier de l’Instruction Publique and Officier d’Académie confer no social position. The fellowship of the University confers none either outside of the University itself.

[14] The reason for the cheapness of the lycées is because they are not intended to be paying concerns (deficits being filled up by the State), and because the pupils benefit by the wholesale scale of all purchases, on which, of course, no profit is made. The buildings, being supplied by the towns and the State, are rent free. Some of the newer ones are magnificent. The Lycée Lakanal, near Paris, cost £400,000, and is a model of practical modern arrangement.

[15] An English friend of mine, himself a man of the very highest culture, says that the cultivated English keep their talk down to a low level from a dread of the watchful jealousy of their intellectual inferiors. They only dare venture to talk in their own way between themselves in privacy.

[16] I can speak from experience on this matter, having had in youth an intensely strong local affection for the wilder parts of northern England, a feeling that afterwards extended itself to Scotland, but I remember that when this feeling was strongest, the midland and southern counties were quite like a foreign country to me—a very dull, uninteresting foreign country—and I had no home feeling whatever in London, nor any desire to revisit it.

[17] It is needless to quote Moore, but the reader may thank me for stealing for his benefit a short lyric by an Irish poet, Mr. Robert Joyce, which is full of the tender sentiment of patriotism, associating love and death in the most touching manner with the often-repeated name of one Irish valley—Glenara.

[18] During the Franco-German war I knew French people who could not utter the word “Patrie” with dry eyes.

[19] During and after the invasion the intensity of the patriotic sentiment was always in exact proportion to the harm done by the invader. It was very feeble where he did not appear, and stronger in proportion to the duration of his presence and the harm that he inflicted. It is still intense in Alsatia and Lorraine, and especially intense in the French who have been expelled from those provinces.

[20] I regret not to have preserved some letters written to the English newspapers by private soldiers, in which they described how they were avoided by civilians even of the humbler classes. They appear to have felt themselves more despised in uniform than if they had been out of uniform. This is simply because the English people have never witnessed the sufferings undergone by soldiers in time of war.

[21] For example, at the time when I am writing these pages, a young gentleman, who is an intimate friend of mine, and who has received a scientific education, is diligently preparing himself to pass an examination for a commission in the artillery next month. Being obliged to serve in the army in any case, and having a right degree of amour-propre, he wishes to be an officer, and in a scientific branch of the service.

[22] The throne of Louis Philippe was itself a democratic institution.

[23] For the reader’s convenience I quote four passages from Dicey on the sovereignty in England. The references are to the first English edition.

“If the true ruler or political sovereign of England were, as was once the case, the King, legislation might be carried out in accordance with the King’s will by one of two methods.”—The Law of the Constitution, p. 354.

“Parliament is, from a merely legal point of view, the absolute sovereign of the British Empire.”—Ibid.

“The electorate is, in fact, the sovereign of England. It is a body which does not, and from its nature hardly can, itself legislate, and which, owing chiefly to historical causes, has left in existence a theoretically supreme legislature.”—Ibid., p. 355.

“Our modern mode of constitutional morality secures, though in a roundabout way, what is called abroad ‘the sovereignty of the people.’”—Ibid.

[24] The American system would not have succeeded in France. If the president had exercised the authority of an American president the Chamber would not have endured it, and there would have been a presidential crisis, with a new presidential election, every six months. The present system is not ideally perfect, but it suits the French temper better than any other that modern ingenuity can devise.

[25] It may be answered that this could be done by refusing to vote the supplies, but if the Sovereign were perfectly obstinate the House of Commons could not long put a stop to the working of the public service.

[26] It is an English habit to represent égalité as an Utopian aspiration for equality in all things. The French understand it to mean nothing more than equality before the law.

[27] Article in the Contemporary Review for March 1888.

[28] The reader will observe that I have substituted “nobility” for “House of Lords,” as there is no House of Lords in France, and “clerical” for “academical” education, as there is nothing corresponding to Oxford and Cambridge.

[29] Popular Government, Essay III.

[30] An English critic once said that the decimal monetary system had not yet been accepted by the French people because they counted in sous. They do not invariably count in sous, but they often do, and that without being unfaithful to the decimal principle, as may be seen by the following table:—

The five-franc piece	=	100	sous.
The half-franc piece	=	10	sous.
The one-sou piece	=	1	sou.

[31] The word “conservative” is not used in this place with reference to the Tory party alone. There is much conservative sentiment in other parties.

[32] Even if the English did ultimately adopt the French weights and measures, without the coinage, they would not enjoy the full convenience of those systems, which consists in great part in their relation to the coinage. For example, in English land measure (what is called “square measure”) you have 160 poles to the acre. A farmer takes an acre at thirty-seven shillings, how much is that per pole? I do not know; I must make an elaborate calculation to find it out. A French farmer takes a hectare at sixty-seven francs, how much is that per are? Owing to the intentional relation between measures and money, the answer comes instantaneously, without calculation, sixty-seven centimes.

[33] M. de Freycinet, at the time when he was Foreign Minister in France, expressed a feeling of regret, that owing to the instability of English cabinets, it was not easy to carry on protracted negotiations.—Speech of the 27th of November 1886.

[34] Memoirs of Mrs. Jameson, by her niece Gerardine Macpherson, First Edition, p. 154.

[35] This curé was an acquaintance of mine. His sister-in-law told me the amount of the subscription as an example of clerical influence.

[36] Here is a case well known to me. The income of the commune is 3000 francs, that of the curé about 1000. To offer the free disposal of the curé’s income to the municipal council is to offer a great temptation.

[37]

[38] This excellent lady went on a visit to an old friend, who found her appearance so miserable that she took the liberty of clothing her from head to foot. The saint was aware that she had been clothed, but neither pleased nor offended. She only laughed, and I believe her secret satisfaction in the matter was that she could give the old clothes to some beggar. I hope, but feel by no means sure, that she did not give away the new ones, which were a surprising improvement to her appearance.

[39]

[40]

Hardly any one with the least pretension to rank or station, unless he might be some republican functionary, would venture to attend a civil interment in a French provincial town. A lady who knows the interest I take in these matters, wrote me a letter in March 1886, from which I make the following extract:—

“Il vient de passer sous mes fenêtres un convoi de la Libre Pensée, ce titre étant brodé en lettres d’argent sur tous les côtés du corbillard, qui est très beau avec ses franges d’argent. Une très grosse couronne d’immortelles rouges est placée sur le cercueil, et tous les assistants en portaient à la boutonnière. Le convoi marchait très lentement, très silencieusement. Que de méchants propos se disaient sur le passage du cortège! Nous n’avons pas encore le droit à l’indépendance. Il faudra bien des années pour que nous ayons notre libre arbitre sans être calomniés.”

Insults addressed to a funeral procession are immensely significant in France, where so much outward respect is usually paid to the dead.

[41] For Mr. Arnold the Trinity was “the fairy tale of the Three Supernatural Men.”

[42] This is a religion entirely without dogma, and Christian only in the sense that it would cultivate a Christian spirit.

[43] I have even known a sincere and severe Catholic who told me that no one who disobeyed habitually the moral law, whatever his beliefs, could be a Catholic. Giving drunkenness as an example, he said that there had never been such a person as a Catholic drunkard, because by the mere fact of being a drunkard a man proved that he was not a Catholic.

[44]

How much intellectual liberty is now enjoyed within the Roman pale may be seen in Mr. Mivart’s most interesting article on “The Catholic Church and Biblical Criticism” published in The Nineteenth Century for July 1887. Mr. Mivart does not think it probable that a line of the Bible was written by Moses, whilst it is “in the highest degree unlikely that Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob ever really existed, and no passage of the history of any one of them is of the slightest historical value in the old sense.” The book of Jonah is a parable, that of Daniel quite untrustworthy and little more than a mass of fiction. With regard to the Deluge Mr. Mivart says, “I well recollect dining at a priest’s house (in or about 1870) when one of the party, the late accomplished Mr. Richard Simpson of Clapham (a most pious Catholic and weekly communicant), expressed some ordinary scientific views on the subject of the Deluge. A startled auditor asked anxiously, ‘But is not, then, the account in the Bible of the Deluge true?’ To which Mr. Simpson replied, ‘True! of course it is true. There was a local inundation, and some of the sacerdotal caste saved themselves in a punt, with their cocks and hens.’”

[45] “L’Angleterre est instruite, élevée, gouvernée par ses clergymen.”—Philippe Daryl.

[46] An essential difference between France and England. “No one,” says Professor Dicey, “can maintain that the law of England recognises anything like that natural right to the free communication of thoughts and opinions which was proclaimed in France nearly a hundred years ago to be one of the most valuable rights of man.”—The Law of the Constitution, first edition, pp. 257, 258.

[47]

The ordinary law about associations was declared by some English journals to be “obsolete,” and revived only for persecution. It was so little obsolete that it was steadily applied to lay associations. I was at one time an honorary member of a French club limited to eighteen in order that an “authorisation” might not be required; and I have been vice-president of another club, not limited in numbers, so that we had to send our statutes to be approved by the prefect, and whenever the slightest change was made in them they had to be submitted again to the same authority. It was a very simple formality, costing three sous for a postage stamp. Had we acted like the unauthorised religious orders, which declined to submit to this not very terrible piece of tyranny, we should have been dissolved as they were, and turned out of our club-house as they were turned out of their establishments.

[48] Author of L’Irréligion de l’Avenir, Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, Les Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine, La Morale d’Epicure et ses Rapports avec les Doctrines Contemporaines, etc. Guyau died in 1888 at the age of thirty-three.

[49] The reverend father is speaking of Her Majesty’s visit to the Grande Chartreuse, which she was able to make by taking advantage of an ancient rule made before the Church could foresee the monstrous anomaly of an heretical king or queen. By that rule, which still remains in force, a bishop or a reigning sovereign can visit a house of cloistered monks or nuns. The Archbishop of Canterbury could, however, scarcely get into a nunnery, as the Rev. Father du Lac informs us that the ancient English sees were erased by Pius IX. from the list of the bishoprics of Christendom.

[50] In the number for 23d July 1887.

[51] A Natural History Society was founded in Autun (a small old town in Burgundy) two or three years ago. It now includes more than four hundred members. Their principal pleasure is to take long walks in the neighbourhood for geological and botanical purposes. They have meetings, lectures, and a museum. Anything more moral or more healthy it is impossible to imagine.

[52] There have been years in the memory of living men when anybody who would take two barrels to a wine-grower might carry away one of them full of wine (the wine being worth less than the wood); and when for the payment of one sou a man might drink wine as if it were water.

[53] An interesting example of English improvidence came to my knowledge recently. A professional man of great talent, who had been eminently successful, died, leaving a widow and a large family of children. At the time of his death the children were all married. The widow was left without a penny, and was anxious to find a situation, because the married children all living up to the extreme limit of their incomes, as their father had done, were unable to subscribe an annuity. In France they would probably all have had savings, and, with the national love of the mother and sense of filial duty, would have cheerfully hastened to provide for her old age.

[54] This is rather too favourable to the English of that day, as they certainly did not take warm baths so frequently as French people do now. They had not the conveniences. Few private houses had a bath-room and few towns had public baths.

[55] Especially in combination with the beautiful colour of the waxed walnut furniture and the red hangings of the beds.

[56] What follows is sketched from life.

[57] Plays were performed on Sunday at the court of Queen Elizabeth.

[58] Dancing, archery, leaping, May-games, and morris dances, were expressly permitted by James I. on Sunday in his Book of Sports. He forbade brutal sports only.

[59] The idea that governs the action of the Church of Rome with regard to the observation of Sunday in countries where she is free to do what she thinks best, appears to be simply the protection of toilers from their own drudgery on one day of the week. She herself keeps the day as a festival, and requires the attendance of the laity at one mass, which may be short and early.

[60] I made inquiry afterwards to ascertain what the parish priest thought of these proceedings, and discovered that he made a distinction. He did not approve of dancing on the public dancing-floors in the village, especially at night, because it sometimes led to wrong, but he was not opposed in any way to Sunday dancing in private houses.

[61] The distinction between sacred and profane music is fictitious, merely depending on the title that a musician chooses to give to his composition. The distinction between serious and light music is real, whatever the title. This is so well understood in the Church of Rome that the priests allow any music to be performed in their churches which is the expression of a serious or sublime idea.

[62] M. de St. Victor managed the estates belonging to the Countess de Talleyrand, and he lived at her old château of Montjeu, one of the most romantically situated places in France, in the midst of a large well-wooded park upon the hills.

[63] The passage is very well known, but I may quote it for the convenience of some readers:—

“And how is it possible that a man who has nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no prætorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am I not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or ever falling into that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance? And how do I meet with those whom ye are afraid of and admire? Do not I treat them like slaves? Who, when he sees me, does not think that he sees his king and master?”—Epictetus, Long’s Translation, Book III. chap. xxii.

[64] A friend of mine knows an impoverished French Marquis, the head of an old family, who lives like a peasant in a bare old house that is never repaired. He and his sister consume one bottle of common wine between them each week, and they are served by one old faithful female domestic. Their ruin was caused by lavish uncalculating generosity, by what Herbert Spencer would call the culpable excess of altruism.

[65] It is very significant that as the spirit of luxury has increased in France, the width and costliness of picture-frames have increased along with it.

[66] This reminds me of a French proverb often quoted by an old naval officer whom I knew. Rien n’est bien fait qui n’est pas fait habituellement.

[67] I am myself old enough to remember how, when I was a boy, two gentlemen of good family quarrelled over their port wine after dinner, and one of them shouted to the other, “I’ll pull your nose, sir, I’ll pull your nose!” Some highly polished young reviewer of the present day will say that I had fallen into low company, but those gentlemen of a past time were quite as good as he is likely to be with all his polish, and it is probable that the aristocratic spirit was far more genuine in them than it is in anybody now.

[68] For example, in the French neighbourhood best known to me it is contrary to peasant decorum for a farmer and his wife to walk to church together. He must go first with his male companions, and she must follow with the women. It is also contrary to decorum for a man to be seen giving his arm to his wife, under any circumstances.

[69] I have heard of two cases that ended fatally, simply in consequence of obedience to English decorum.

[70] A French gentleman wanted to let me a country house, and said, with an air of conscious superiority, “It would be quiet and convenient for the prosecution of your—your industry.”

[71] As a system of recruiting party adherents, it has the great advantage of catching rather rich and influential people, especially landowners. Very poor families would gain nothing by the “de,” and, in fact, they drop it when it is theirs by right.

[72] This is stated simply as a fact and not in depreciation. There is not a more respectable class in France than the peasantry.

[73] He also takes precedence of the bishop. An intimate friend of mine was appointed to a prefecture. On his arrival the archbishop sent to say that he would receive him at his palace. This was an attempt to put the prefect in an inferior position, so he answered that it was not further from the palace to the prefecture than from the prefecture to the palace. The archbishop then came.

[74] George du Maurier attributes this happiness in the wealth of others to what he calls “The British Passion for inequality,” illustrated by him in Punch. An Englishman is walking with a Frenchman in Hyde Park, and gives utterance to that passion in these words:—

“Sturdy Briton. It’s all very well to turn up your nose at your own beggarly Counts and Barons, Mossoo! But you can’t find fault with our nobility! Take a man like our Dook o’ Bayswater, now! Why, he could buy up your Foreign Dukes and Princes by the dozen! and as for you and me, he’d look upon us as so much dirt beneath his feet! Now, that’s something like a nobleman, that is! That’s a kind o’ nobleman that I, as an Englishman, feel as I’ve got some right to be proud of!”

[75] The want of money, in these days, very frequently induces a French nobleman to marry an heiress in the middle classes. This is the most powerful cause of infractions of French exclusiveness.

[76] The essential difference between the scientific and the religious views is that the one sees a special Providential commission, where the other only perceives an undesigned accumulation of natural force.

[77] There is more English poetry of the same order, for example the following, also quoted from Mr. Gerald Massey—

[78] “Well, before I’d put on stockings no better washed than those!”

[79] “Paid for, is it? It would not have been if thou hadst had to earn the money.”

[80] Just before returning the proof-sheet of this chapter I heard one French peasant describing his landlord to another in these terms:—

“Monsieur le Comte is one of the best landlords in this neighbourhood. He thoroughly understands agriculture, he looks after everything on the estate, but he never presses his tenants, never asks them for rent. On the contrary, he is always ready to help a tenant in any reasonable outlay.”

The landlord in question is a rich nobleman, living on his own land, and not by any means regarded with “the most savage enmity,” though he happens to be a Frenchman. I have seen his château and estate, a fine property, beautifully situated.

[81] Probably her chief reason, unexpressed, was that to have been asked in marriage for her good looks would have implied a deficiency of dowry, or, at least, left room for the supposition that there had not been dowry enough, of itself, to attract an offer of marriage.

[82] I was permitted to read a letter from the young lady’s father, in which he said, “The offer was quite beyond anything that my daughter could have hoped for, but after full consideration she decided to decline it, and I think she acted wisely, as money is not everything in this world.” The girl was left entirely free, as if she had been in England.

[83] A girl with £200 a year will expect, in marriage, a household expenditure of £800 a year. I proposed this theoretical proportion to a French gentleman of much experience, and he said that the estimate was moderate.

[84] Of course I mean with reference to aristocratic rank. A duke who has talent of his own is likely to recognise it in others.

[85]

The public knows something of Madame Boucicaut’s acts of public beneficence (though they were so numerous that it is impossible to remember such a list), but I have learned through several different private channels how thoughtful her kindness was to individuals. By long practice she had become quite an artist in goodness, having cultivated her talent in that way as another might have learned to paint or to sing. There was an inventiveness about her beneficence that made it as original as poetry, and as beautiful in its originality.

[86] In any case a French officer cannot marry without an authorisation emanating from the Ministry of War. A military friend told me that the following mishap occurred to an officer in his regiment who thought he would like to marry a certain girl in a certain town. He applied for permission, which was refused. The regiment was sent elsewhere, and the sensitive officer was smitten a second time, so he applied for permission again. It came in the form of an authorisation to marry not the second, but the first young lady. The officer did so, and discovered, when too late, that she was one of those governing women who order about their husbands like children, so he has leisure to deplore the decision of the authorities.