Web
and Book design, |
Click
Here to return to |
In coming over to France, I
noticed that the chalk-hills, which were stopped so abruptly by the sea
on the
British side of the Channel, began again on the French side, only they
had lost
their smooth, pastoral character, and were more broken and rocky, and
that they
continued all the way to Paris, walling in the Seine, and giving the
prevailing
tone and hue to the country, — scrape away the green and
brown epidermis of the
hills anywhere, and out shines their white framework, — and
that Paris itself
was built of stone evidently quarried from this formation, —
a light,
cream-colored stone, so soft that rifle-bullets bury themselves in it
nearly
their own depth, thus pitting some of the more exposed fronts during
the recent
strife in a very noticeable manner, and which, in building, is put up
in the
rough, all the carving, sculpturing, and finishing being done after the
blocks
are in position in the wall.
Disregarding the counsel of
friends, I braved the Channel at one of its wider points, taking the
vixen by
the waist instead of by the neck, and found her as placid as a lake, as
I did
also on my return a week later.
It was a bright October
morning as we steamed into the little harbor at Dieppe, and the first
scene
that met my eye was, I suppose, a characteristic one, — four
or five old men
and women towing a vessel into a dock. They bent beneath the rope that
passed
from shoulder to shoulder, and tugged away doggedly at it, the women
apparently
more than able to do their part. There is no equalizer of the sexes
like
poverty and misery, and then it very often happens that the gray mare
proves
the better horse. Throughout the agricultural regions, as we passed
along, the
men apparently all wore petticoats; at least, the petticoats were the
most
active and prominent in the field occupations. Then wearers were
digging
potatoes, pulling beets, following the harrow (in one instance a
thorn-bush
drawn by a cow), and stirring the wet, new-mown grass. I believe the
pantaloons
were doing the mowing. But I looked in vain for any Maud Mullers in the
meadows, and have concluded that these can be found only in New England
hay-fields! And herein is one of the first surprises that await one on
visiting
the Old World countries, — the absence of graceful, girlish
figures, and bright
girlish faces, among the peasantry or rural population. In France I
certainly
expected to see female beauty everywhere, but did not get one gleam all
that
sunny day till I got to Paris. Is it a plant that flourishes only in
cities on
this side of the Atlantic, or do all the pretty girls, as soon as they
are
grown, pack their trunks, and leave for the gay metropolis?
At Dieppe I first saw the
wooden shoe, and heard its dry, senseless clatter upon the pavement.
How
suggestive of the cramped and inflexible conditions with which human
nature has
borne so long in these lands!
A small paved square near
the wharf was the scene of an early market, and afforded my first
glimpse of the
neatness and good taste that characterize nearly everything in France.
Twenty
or thirty peasant women, coarse and masculine, but very tidy, with
their
snow-white caps and short petticoats, and perhaps half as many men,
were
chattering and chaffering over little heaps of fresh country produce.
The
onions and potatoes and cauliflowers were prettily arranged on the
clean
pavement, or on white linen cloths, and the scene was altogether
animated and
agreeable.
La belle France is the woman's country
clearly, and it seems a mistake or an anomaly that woman is not at the
top and
leading in all departments, compelling the other sex to play second
fiddle, as
she so frequently has done for a brief time in isolated cases in the
past; not
that the man is effeminate, but that the woman seems so nearly his
match and
equal, and so often proves even his superior. In no other nation,
during times
of popular excitement and insurrection or revolution, do women emerge
so
conspicuously, often in the front ranks, the most furious and
ungovernable of
any. I think even a female conscription might be advisable in the
present
condition of France, if I may judge of her soldiers from the specimens
I saw.
Small, spiritless, inferior-looking men, all of them. They were like
Number Three
mackerel or the last run of shad, as doubtless they were, —
the last pickings
and resiftings of the population.
I don't know how far it may
be a national custom, but I observed that the women of the humbler
classes, in
meeting or parting with friends at the stations, saluted each other on
both
cheeks, never upon the mouth, as our dear creatures do, and I commended
their
good taste, though I certainly approve the American custom, too.
Among the male population I
was struck with the frequent recurrence of the Louis Napoleon type of
face.
"Has this man," I said, "succeeded in impressing himself even
upon the physiognomy of the people? Has he taken such a hold of their
imaginations that they have grown to look like him?" The guard that
took
our train down to Paris might easily play the double to the ex-emperor;
and
many times in Paris and among different classes I saw the same
countenance.
Coming from England, the
traveling seems very slow in this part of France, taking eight or nine
hours to
go from Dieppe to Paris, with an hour's delay at Rouen. The valley of
the
Seine, which the road follows or skirts more than half the way, is very
winding, with immense flats or plains shut in by a wall of steep,
uniform
hills, and, in the progress of the journey, is from time to time laid
open to
the traveler in a way that is full of novelty and surprise. The day was
bright
and lovely, and I found my eyes running riot the same as they had done
during
my first ride on British soil. The contrast between the two countries
is quite
marked, France in this region being much more broken and picturesque,
with some
waste or sterile land, — a thing I did not see at all in
England. Had I awaked
from a long sleep just before reaching Paris, I should have guessed I
was
riding through Maryland, and should soon see the dome of the Capitol at
Washington rising above the trees. So much wild and bushy or barren and
half-cultivated land, almost under the walls of the French capital, was
a
surprise.
Then there are few or none
of those immense home-parks which one sees in England, the land being
mostly
held by a great number of small proprietors, and cultivated in strips,
or long,
narrow parallelograms, making the landscape look like many-colored
patchwork.
Everywhere along the Seine, stretching over the flats, or tilted up
against the
sides of the hills, in some places seeming almost to stand on end, were
these
acre or half-acre rectangular farms, without any dividing lines or
fences, and
of a great variety of shades and colors, according to the crop and the
tillage.
I was glad to see my old
friend, the beech-tree, all along the route. His bole wore the same
gray and
patched appearance it does at home, and no doubt Thoreau would have
found his
instep even fairer; for the beech on this side of the Atlantic is a
more fluent
and graceful tree than the American species, resembling, in its
branchings and
general form, our elm, though never developing such an immense green
dome as
our elm when standing alone, and I saw no European tree that does. The
European
elm is not unlike our beech in form and outline.
Going from London to Paris
is, in some respects, like getting out of the chimney on to the
housetop, — the
latter city is, by contrast, so light and airy, and so American in its
roominess. I had come to Paris for my dessert after my feast of London
joints,
and I suspect I was a little dainty in that most dainty of cities. In
fact, I
had become quite sated with sight-seeing, and the prospect of having to
go on
and "do" the rest of Europe after the usual manner of tourists, and
as my companions did, would have been quite appalling. Said companions
steered
off like a pack of foxhounds in full blast. The game they were in quest
of led
them a wild chase up the Rhine, off through Germany and Italy, taking a
turn
back through Switzerland, giving them no rest, and apparently eluding
them at
last. I had felt obliged to cut loose from them at the outset, my
capacity to
digest kingdoms and empires at short notice being far below that of the
average
of my countrymen. My interest and delight had been too intense at the
outset; I
had partaken too heartily of the first courses; and now, where other
travelers
begin to warm to the subject, and to have the keenest relish, I began
to wish
the whole thing well through with. So that Paris was no paradise to one
American at least. Yet the mere change of air and sky, and the escape
from that
sooty, all-pervasive, chimney-flue smell of London, was so sudden and
complete,
that the first hour of Paris was like a refreshing bath, and gave rise
to
satisfaction in which every pore of the skin participated. My room at
the hotel
was a gem of neatness and order, and the bed a marvel of art, comfort,
and
ease, three feet deep at least.
Then the uniform imperial
grace and éclat
of the city was a new experience. Here was the city of
cities, the capital of taste and fashion, the pride and flower of a
great race
and a great history, the city of kings and emperors, and of a people
which,
after all, loves kings and emperors, and will not long, I fear, be
happy
without them, — a gregarious, urbane people, a people of
genius and destiny,
whose God is Art and whose devil is Communism. London has long ago
outgrown
itself, has spread, and multiplied, and accumulated, without a
corresponding
inward expansion and unification; but in Paris they have pulled down
and built
larger, and the spirit of centralization has had full play. Hence the
French
capital is superb, but soon grows monotonous. See one street and
boulevard, and
you have seen it all. It has the unity and consecutiveness of a thing
deliberately planned and built to order, from beginning to end. Its
stone is
all from one quarry, and its designs are all the work of one architect.
London
has infinite variety, and quaintness, and picturesqueness, and is of
all
possible shades of dinginess and weather-stains. It shows its age,
shows the
work of innumerable generations, and is more an aggregation, a
conglomeration,
than is Paris. Paris shows the citizen, and is modern and democratic in
its
uniformity. On the whole, I liked London best, because I am so much of
a
countryman, I suppose, and affect so little the metropolitan spirit. In
London
there are a few grand things to be seen, and the pulse of the great
city itself
is like the throb of the ocean; but in Paris, owing either to my jaded
senses
or to some other cause, I saw nothing that was grand, but enough that
was
beautiful and pleasing. The more pretentious and elaborate specimens of
architecture, like the Palace of the Tuileries or the Palais Royal, are
truly
superb, but they as truly do not touch that deeper chord whose
awakening we
call the emotion of the sublime.
But the fitness and good
taste everywhere displayed in the French capital may well offset any
considerations of this kind, and cannot fail to be refreshing to a
traveler of
any other land, — in the dress and manners of the people, in
the shops and
bazaars and show-windows, in the markets, the equipages, the furniture,
the
hotels. It is entirely a new sensation to an American to look into a
Parisian
theatre, and see the acting and hear the music. The chances are that,
for the
first time, he sees the interior of a theatre that does not have a
hard,
businesslike, matter-of-fact air. The auditors look comfortable and
cozy, and
quite at home, and do not, shoulder to shoulder and in solid lines,
make a dead
set at the play and the music. The theatre has warm hangings, warm
colors, cozy
boxes and stalls, and is in no sense the public, away-from-home place
we are so
familiar with in this country. Again, one might know it was Paris by
the
character of the prints and pictures in the shop windows; they are so
clever as
art that one becomes reprehensibly indifferent to their license.
Whatever sins
the French may be guilty of, they never sin against art and good taste
(except
when in the frenzy of revolution), and, if Propriety is sometimes
obliged to
cry out "For shame!" in the French capital, she must do so with
ill-concealed admiration, like a fond mother chiding with word and
gesture while
she approves with tone and look. It is a foolish charge, often made,
that the
French make vice attractive: they make it provocative of laughter; the
spark of
wit is always evolved, and what is a better antidote to this kind of
poison
than mirth?
They carry their wit even
into their cuisine.
Every dish set before you at the table is a picture,
and tickles your eye before it does your palate. When I ordered fried
eggs,
they were brought on a snow-white napkin, which was artistically folded
upon a
piece of ornamented tissue-paper that covered a china plate; if I asked
for
cold ham, it came in flakes, arrayed like great rose-leaves, with a
green sprig
or two of parsley dropped upon it, and surrounded by a border of
calfs'-foot
jelly, like a setting of crystals. The bread revealed new qualities in
the
wheat, it was so sweet and nutty; and the fried potatoes, with which
your
beefsteak comes snowed under, are the very flower of the culinary art,
and I
believe impossible in any other country.
Even the ruins are in
excellent taste, and are by far the best-behaved ruins I ever saw for
so recent
ones. I came near passing some of the most noted, during my first walk,
without
observing them. The main walls were all standing, and the fronts were
as
imposing as ever. No litter or rubbish, no charred timbers or blackened
walls;
only vacant windows and wrecked interiors, which do not very much mar
the
general outside effect.
My first genuine surprise
was the morning after my arrival, which, according to my reckoning, was
Sunday;
and when I heard the usual week-day sounds, and, sallying forth, saw
the usual
weekday occupations going on, — painters painting, glaziers
glazing, masons on
their scaffolds, and heavy drays and market-wagons going through the
streets,
and many shops and bazaars open, — I must have presented to a
scrutinizing
beholder the air and manner of a man in a dream, so absorbed was I in
running
over the events of the week to find where the mistake had occurred,
where I had
failed to turn a leaf, or else had turned over two leaves for one. But
each day
had a distinct record, and every count resulted the same. It must be
Sunday.
Then it all dawned upon me that this was Paris, and that the Parisians
did not
have the reputation of being very strict Sabbatarians.
The French give a touch of
art to whatever they do. Even the drivers of drays and carts and trucks
about
the streets are not content with a plain, matter-of-fact whip, as an
English or
American laborer would be, but it must be a finely modeled stalk, with
a long, tapering
lash tipped with the best silk snapper. Always the inevitable snapper.
I doubt
if there is a whip in Paris without a snapper. Here is where the fine
art, the
rhetoric of driving, comes in. This converts a vulgar, prosy "gad"
into a delicate instrument, to be wielded with pride and skill, and
never
literally to be applied to the backs of the animals, but to be launched
to
right and left into the air with a professional flourish, and a sharp,
ringing
report. Crack! crack! crack! all day long go these ten thousand whips,
like the
boys' Fourth of July fusillade. It was invariably the first sound I
heard when
I opened my eyes in the morning, and generally the last one at night.
Occasionally some belated drayman would come hurrying along just as I
was going
to sleep, or some early bird before I was fully awake in the morning,
and let
off in rapid succession, in front of my hotel, a volley from the tip of
his
lash that would make the street echo again, and that might well have
been the
envy of any ring-master that ever trod the tanbark. Now and then,
during my
ramblings, I would suddenly hear some master-whip, perhaps that of an
old
omnibus-driver, that would crack like a rifle, and, as it passed along,
all the
lesser whips, all the amateur snappers, would strike up with a jealous
and
envious emulation, making every foot-passenger wink, and one (myself)
at least
almost to shade his eyes from the imaginary missiles.
I record this fact because
it "points a moral and adorns a 'tail.'" The French always give this
extra
touch. Everything has its silk snapper. Are not the literary whips of
Paris
famous for their rhetorical tips and the sting there is in them? What
French
writer ever goaded his adversary with the belly of his lash, like the
Germans
and the English, when he could blister him with its silken end, and the
percussion of wit be heard at every stroke?
In the shops, and windows,
and public halls, this passion takes the form of mirrors, —
mirrors, mirrors
everywhere, on the walls, in the panels, in the cases, on the pillars,
extending, multiplying, opening up vistas this way and that, and
converting the
smallest shop, with a solitary girl and a solitary customer, into an
immense
enchanted bazaar, across whose endless counters customers lean and
pretty girls
display goods. The French are always before the looking-glass, even
when they
eat and drink. I never went into a restaurant without seeing four or
five
facsimiles of myself approaching from as many different directions,
giving the
order to the waiter and sitting down at the table. Hence I always had
plenty of
company at dinner, though we were none of us very social, and I was the
only
one who entered or passed out at the door. The show windows are the
greatest
cheat. What an expanse, how crowded, and how brilliant! You see, for
instance,
an immense array of jewelry, and pause to have a look. You begin at the
end
nearest you, and, after gazing a moment, take a step to run your eye
along the
dazzling display, when, presto! the trays of watches and diamonds
vanish in a
twinkling, and you find yourself looking into the door, or your
delighted eyes
suddenly bring up against a brick wall, disenchanted so quickly that
you almost
stagger.
I went into a popular music
and dancing hall one night, and found myself in a perfect enchantment
of
mirrors. Not an inch of wall was anywhere visible. I was suddenly
caught up
into the seventh heaven of looking-glasses, from which I came down with
a shock
the moment I emerged into the street again. I observed that this mirror
contagion
had broken out in spots in London, and, in the narrow and crowded
condition of
the shops there, even this illusory enlargement would be a relief. It
might not
improve the air, or add to the available storage capacity of the
establishment,
but it would certainly give a wider range to the eye.
The American no sooner sets
foot on the soil of France than he perceives he has entered a nation of
drinkers as he has left a nation of eaters. Men do not live by bread
here, but
by wine. Drink, drink, drink everywhere, — along all the
boulevards, and
streets, and quays, and byways; in the restaurants and under awnings,
and
seated on the open sidewalk; social and convivial wine-bibbing,
— not hastily
and in large quantities, but leisurely and reposingly, and with much
conversation and enjoyment.
Drink, drink, drink, and,
with equal frequency and nearly as much openness, the reverse or
diuretic side
of the fact. (How our self-consciousness would writhe! We should all
turn to
stone!) Indeed, the ceaseless deglutition of mankind in this part of
the world
is equaled only by the answering and enormous activity of the human
male
kidneys. This latter was too astonishing and too public a fact to go
unmentioned. At Dieppe, by the reeking tubs standing about, I suspected
some local
distemper; but when I got to Paris, and saw how fully and openly the
wants of
the male citizen in this respect were recognized by the sanitary and
municipal
regulations, and that the urinals were thicker than the lamp-posts, I
concluded
it must be a national trait; and at once abandoned the theory that had
begun to
take possession of my mind, namely, that diabetes was no doubt the
cause of the
decadence of France. Yet I suspect it is no more a peculiarity of
French
manners than of European manners generally, and in its light I relished
immensely the history of a well-known statue which stands in a public
square in
one of the German cities. The statue commemorates the unblushing
audacity of a
peasant going to market with a goose under each arm, who ignored even
the
presence of the king, and it is at certain times dressed up and made
the centre
of holiday festivities. It is a public fountain, and its living streams
of
water make it one of the most appropriate and suggestive monuments in
Europe. I
would only suggest that they canonize the Little Man, and that the
Parisians
recognize a tutelar deity in the goddess Urea, who should have an
appropriate
monument somewhere in the Place de la Concorde!
One of the loveliest
features of Paris is the Seine. I was never tired of walking along its
course.
Its granite embankments; its numberless superb bridges, throwing their
graceful
spans across it; its clear, limpid water; its paved bed; the women
washing; the
lively little boats; and the many noble buildings that look down upon
it, —
make it the most charming citizen-river I ever beheld. Rivers generally
get
badly soiled when they come to the city, like some other rural
travelers; but
the Seine is as pure as a meadow brook wherever I saw it, though I dare
say it
does not escape without some contamination. I believe it receives the
sewerage
discharges farther down, and is no doubt turbid and pitchy enough
there, like
its brother, the Thames, which comes into London with the sky and the
clouds in
its bosom, and leaves it reeking with filth and slime.
After I had tired of the
city, I took a day to visit St. Cloud, and refresh myself by a glimpse
of the
imperial park there, and a little of Nature's privacy, if such could be
had,
which proved to be the case, for a more agreeable day I have rarely
passed. The
park, toward which I at once made my way, is an immense natural forest,
sweeping up over gentle hills from the banks of the Seine, and brought
into
order and perspective by a system of carriage-ways and avenues, which
radiate
from numerous centres like the boulevards of Paris. At these centres
were
fountains and statues, with sunlight falling upon them; and, looking
along the
cool, dusky avenues, as they opened, this way and that, upon these
marble
tableaux, the effect was very striking, and was not at all marred to my
eye by
the neglect into which the place had evidently fallen. The woods were
just
mellowing into October; the large, shining horse-chestnuts dropped at
my feet
as I walked along; the jay screamed over the trees; and occasionally a
red
squirrel — larger and softer-looking than ours, not so sleek,
nor so noisy and
vivacious — skipped among the branches. Soldiers passed, here
and there, to and
from some encampment on the farther side of the park; and, hidden from
view
somewhere in the forest-glades, a band of buglers filled the woods with
wild
musical strains.
English royal parks and
pleasure grounds are quite different. There the prevailing character is
pastoral, — immense stretches of lawn, dotted with the royal
oak, and alive
with deer. But the Frenchman loves forests evidently, and nearly all
his
pleasure grounds about Paris are immense woods. The Bois de Boulogne,
the
forests of Vincennes, of St. Germain, of Bondy, and I don't know how
many
others, are near at hand, and are much prized. What the animus of this
love may
be is not so clear. It cannot be a love of solitude, for the French are
characteristically a social and gregarious people. It cannot be the
English
poetical or Wordsworthian feeling for Nature, because French literature
does
not show this sense or this kind of perception. I am inclined to think
the
forest is congenial to their love of form and their sharp perceptions,
but more
especially to that kind of fear and wildness which they at times
exhibit; for
civilization has not quenched the primitive ardor and fierceness of the
Frenchman yet, and it is to be hoped it never will. He is still more
than half
a wild man, and, if turned loose in the woods, I think would develop,
in tooth
and nail, and in all the savage, brute instincts, more rapidly than the
men of
any other race, except possibly the Slavic. Have not his descendants in
this
country — the Canadian French — turned and lived
with the Indians, and taken to
wild, savage customs with more relish and genius than have any other
people?
How hairy and vehement and pantomimic he is! How his eyes glance from
under his
heavy brows! His type among the animals is the wolf, and one readily
recalls
how largely the wolf figures in the traditions and legends and folklore
of
Continental Europe, and how closely his remains are associated with
those of
man in the bone-caves of the geologists. He has not stalked through
their
forests and fascinated their imaginations so long for nothing. The
she-wolf
suckled other founders beside those of Rome. Especially when I read of
the
adventures of Russian and Polish exiles in Siberia — men of
aristocratic
lineage wandering amid snow and arctic cold, sleeping on rocks or in
hollow
trees, and holding their own, empty-handed, against hunger and frost
and their
fiercer brute embodiments do I recognize a hardihood and a ferity whose
wet-nurse, ages back, may well have been this gray slut of the woods.
It
is this fierce,
untamable core that gives the
point and the splendid audacity to French literature and art,
— its vehemence
and impatience of restraint. It is the salt of their speech, the nitre
of their
wit. When morbid, it gives that rabid and epileptic tendency which
sometimes
shows itself in Victor Hugo. In this great writer, however, it more
frequently
takes the form of an aboriginal fierceness and hunger that glares and
bristles,
and is insatiable and omnivorous.
And how many times has
Paris, that boudoir of beauty and fashion, proved to be a wolf's lair,
swarming
with jaws athirst for human throats! — the lust for blood and
the greed for
plunder, sleeping, biding their time, never extinguished.
I do not contemn it. To the
natural historian it is good. It is a return to first principles again
after so
much art, and culture, and lying, and chauvinisme,
and shows these old
civilizations in no danger of, becoming effete yet. It is like the hell
of fire
beneath our feet, which the geologists tell us is the life of the
globe. Were
it not for it, who would not at times despair of the French character?
As long
as this fiery core remains, I shall believe France capable of
recovering from
any disaster to her arms. The "mortal ripening" of the nation is
stayed.
The English and Germans, on
the other hand, are saved by great breadth and heartiness, and a
constitutional
tendency to coarseness of fibre which art and civilization abate very
little.
What is to save us in this country, I wonder, who have not the French
regency
and fire, nor the Teutonic heartiness and vis
inertiae, and who are
already in danger of refining or attenuating into a high-heeled,
short-jawed,
genteel race, with more brains than stomach, and more address than
character?