Four Years in France Part 10

Nothing can be more easy than the entrance into society in a provincial town in France: you have only to send billets of invitation, taking care first to make a general visit to all whom you invite; which visit is returned by those who mean to accept that or any future invitation. In the second winter of my residence, we took an evening for weekly reception, beginning by an invitation to a ball. Dancing was, for this time, prevented by the arrival of the news of the death of King George III. On occasion of another ball, I observed that those who, from whatever reason, had been prevented from a.s.sisting at the ball, took particular care to present themselves at the following weekly soiree, when, as on other soirees, no refreshments were given, as we thought it right to conform to the usage of the place. Indeed this mode of visiting has its advantages: the visited is thus the obliged party; insomuch that those, who themselves do not receive, make no scruple of repeating their visits. Those who do thus receive, expect of course to be visited in their turn.

It is perhaps in consequence of this mode of receiving, that the custom is established, that the newly-arrived shall make the first _call_.

However agreeable it might be to a stranger to be invited to cards and conversation only, the inhabitants of a town cannot know that it would be agreeable, till they are, by implication, told so. One exception to the rule confirms my opinion of its origin. The Duc--, who, in my first winter, gave a ball every week, called on me to invite my family. The rule was, nevertheless, so far observed, that the d.u.c.h.esse did not call till after we had accepted the invitation. The practice, from whatever it may arise, is very embarra.s.sing to the mauvaise honte of an Englishman: this may easily be surmounted, when it is perceived that the first visit is always considered as a polite attention.

But the only serious _social_ embarra.s.sment I experienced, arose from my imperfect use of the language: I had learned French when a boy; when I left England I had long read it, almost as easily as English; arrived in France, I found I had two studies to perform, two difficulties to encounter; to make myself understood, and to understand: the first I could do indifferently well; but I pa.s.sed a twelvemonth in France before I could understand what was said by the men, and two years before I could understand what was said by the ladies. I found that not to understand was more disadvantageous than not to be understood; since those who endured my bad French with patience were, very naturally, displeased on discovering that they had been throwing away their words on one who could not fully comprehend their meaning. I seriously advise every Englishman who purposes to establish his family for some years in France, if he is not competent to follow a conversation in the language of that country, to go thither first himself alone, and establish himself for a few months in French society: he will thus make more progress in a month, than afterwards, with his family, in a year: for the frequent use of an old language indisposes the organs of speech to the acquisition of a new one. The ears too require their lesson.

I will also repeat the counsel given to me by a friend, a _detenu_, whose son, at the age of seventeen, spoke English like a foreigner; it was, constantly to talk English in the family. Notwithstanding my exact compliance with this advice, my youngest child, from having learned three languages before entering her tenth year, speaks English less perfectly than the others: she left England when but three years old, and, a year after, said, somewhat boastingly, "J'ai oublie mon Anglois."

In truth, seven or eight years absence has produced in all the family some little forgetfulness of our native tongue; nay, I fear that my reader may find some Gallicisms in the writing of one, who did not quit his native land till far advanced in the fiftieth year of his age.

No parent will be content that his children should forget their native language: whether it may be necessary, in order to avoid this inconvenience, to enjoin the use of it within the family, will depend on circ.u.mstances, on the age of the children, on the length of the intended stay or residence abroad. The means will, so far forth, hinder and delay the attainment of the language of the country, without which both improvement and amus.e.m.e.nt are utterly hopeless, as social intercourse is impossible. The French are not the less impatient of bad French, on account of the imperturbable politeness with which they hear it.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] The national character pierces through.

[39] National property to be sold.

[40] That would be a little too bad since he is here present.

[41] What does it signify? he will not dare to appeal, and he is rich.

[42] The revolution is a mine that must be worked.

[43] Thou art not a royalist? Thou hast not conspired against the state?

[44] See the men who cut through every thing.

[45] Thou hast wept for the death of the king.

[46] Thou hast conspired against the state.

[47] She is deaf?--write, clerk, that she has conspired in a secret way against the state.

[48] But that will be for another time.

[49] The fish is served quite naturally.

CHAP. XI.

I found a very good drawing-master at Avignon, an eleve of David, one who had studied in Italy, an intelligent man; his conversation pleased and instructed me. I had much difficulty to meet with a master of the French language: no one here wanted to learn French; they were contented with such as they talked: there was no demand for inst.i.tutors in this branch of education. At last I found a professor of the royal college, an ingenious man, but utterly unpractised in the art of teaching French, which he might suppose "came by nature;" and being besides unacquainted with English, he was unable to explain to his scholars of my family, any rules of grammar, whether general or particular. That I may dismiss him with honour in this my mention of him, I will recite an epigram of his composition at the beginning of the Revolution:

O liberte cherie! en vain je te poursuis: Par tout je vois ton arbre, et nulle part tes fruits.[50]

Of dancing-masters and music-masters I need not speak; their art is at the end of their fingers or of their toes. I had some trouble in managing the temper of the professor of the first of these arts, who was a Gascon; and the natural pride of the professor of music, who was a n.o.ble: but, by the help of some tact united with good-will, I obtained my end, which was, that they should depart contented. The climate did not permit dancing lessons to be taken, except in the winter.

I do not advise any one, habituated to the climate of England, and in good health, to come abroad for the sake of climate. Charles II. was certainly right when he said, one may in England be out of doors more days in the year, and more hours in the day, than in any other country.

I quoted this saying to a friend, who replied, "Mais c'est toujours en souffrant;"[51] and, being accustomed to heat, he reckoned all suffering from that cause as nothing: he had been in England, and recollected how his nose was bitten, and his fingers benumbed by the frost. A friend at Avignon called on me in the middle of the day, having crept along the shady side of the streets. It is there the custom in summer to keep the windows shut during the heat of the day. I complained to my visitant of this practice, as depriving one of air when gasping for it. "Mais que voulez-vous? l'air est en feu."[52] I put the thermometer out at a north window, and it rose two degrees. During the greatest heat of the hot summer of 1820, I observed the thermometer pretty regularly at midnight, and found it to stand at 80 Fahrenheit.

One may rise early, and enjoy the coolness of the morning: true; but for this end it is necessary to go to bed early, and be deprived of the coolness of the evening. I knew, however, one man who had the good-sense and resolution to dispose of his day during summer in the following manner: he went to bed at midnight, rose at four in the morning, took his exercise, transacted his affairs, eat his dejeune a la fourchette, as may be supposed, with a good appet.i.te, and went to bed again at mid-day: at four p. m. he rose again, made his toilette, eat his dinner, and went into society, till the end of the second of the two days which he thus contrived to form out of twenty-four hours. I have been told that such is the practice of the English in the East Indies.

The plague of bugs may be avoided by care and cleanliness: the defence against gnats is a gause net surrounding the bed; but wo be to those who find one or more gnats enclosed within the net itself, as happens not unfrequently from the carelessness of the femme de chambre: the hum of the insect, and the dread of his attack, deprive you of sleep: there is no remedy but to wait till he settles upon the face; and then, while he is busy with his first bite, with an expectant and prepared hand to crush him. Flies are also very troublesome in these envied regions of the south; but flies are not like those Ca.s.siuses, the gnats;--"they sleep o'nights."

The _bise_ or north wind, coming from the frozen Alps, following the course of the Rhone, and spreading wide to right and left, is very delightful and refres.h.i.+ng during the summer at Avignon: but, in the winter, it penetrates even to the marrow of the bones, and sometimes, for several days together, blows with such violence, that people are afraid to walk the streets, lest they should be knocked on the head by falling tiles or chimneys. This _bise_ is supposed to render the climate healthy: the Avignonais have a proverb:--"Avenio ventosa; si ventosa, fastidiosa; si non ventosa, venenosa." How far it is "venenosa," I have but too much reason to know.

The Rhone is sometimes frozen over at Avignon: I have seen people walk across it on the ice. The cold during part of the winter is sometimes greater than that of Paris; and I have seen the cold of the _hyver moyen_[53] of Paris marked, on a French thermometer, as two degrees of Reaumur lower, that is stronger, than the cold of the _hyver moyen_ of London. All the world knows that in summer it is much hotter at Paris than at London: the vine bears witness to it; but both heat and cold are tempered to England by pa.s.sing over the sea.

To sum up all that I have to say at present on the subject of climate, I believe lat. 45, half way between the pole and the equator, to be, all other circ.u.mstances being equal, the best of the climes that are "mortalibus aegris Munere concessae Divom." Habit reconciles both to cold and heat. One consideration may not be unimportant to families that wish to economize: cold is costly. Returning into France from Italy, I find the difference between the rent of a house in Naples and that of a house in a country town, to be filled up by the expense of firing; and, at the beginning of my first winter, am almost ruined in manteaus, great coats, pelisses, blankets, and other flannels.

A country town in France is better supplied with society than a country town in England, inasmuch as the French country gentry do not disdain to live in a country town. All of them have an hotel, an apartment, or at least a _pied a terre_, as they called it, in the largest country town in their neighbourhood, and resort thither during the winter. From the time of the wheat harvest, which in the south is towards the end of June, till the time for planting is ended, they not only live, but are very busy in the country. The practice of letting land for the half of the produce compels them to be on the spot to take charge of their own share: but, in bad weather, and during the long evenings, they seek shelter in the town. Here the members of the ancient n.o.blesse, now without fortune, without privilege, still viewed by the many with sentiments of political dislike,--maintain their superiority over men, their equals in moral honesty, more wealthy and better instructed than themselves. And how do they maintain it? By manners. It is admirable to see with what grace and ease, without arrogating any thing to themselves or derogating from others, without art or design,--they a.s.sert their dignity, and contrive that it be recognised by those with whom they have to do. Some of those who have not the advantage, if such it may be called, of n.o.ble birth, endeavour to imitate, while others affect to despise, these manners, which throw such a charm over society; but it is impossible to despise, and very difficult to imitate them: they seem to result from an early, an almost perpetual consciousness of self-importance, corrected by a constant intercourse with others ent.i.tled to equal respect and deference. The manners of military men, more frank, and open, and manly than those of the n.o.blesse, want the polish attained by the latter: for military men, while they derive confidence from the glory of their profession, are chiefly conversant with those whom they command or obey. "The depot of good manners is to be found with the n.o.bles of ancient families," said one of them to me.

Before the revolution there were in France twenty-seven thousand families of the n.o.blesse. By the charte the n.o.bles of imperial creation preserve their t.i.tles, the ancient n.o.bles resume theirs. Of t.i.tles, however, very little use is made in conversation; the little particle _de_ answers all demands of n.o.ble self-love; and even a Duc or d.u.c.h.esse is contented to be addressed, in familiar parlance, as Monsieur de ---- or Madame de ----. This little particle _de_ multiplies itself with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity, like the English addition Esq.; and the act by which it is a.s.sumed is no more contested in France, than that which, with us, niches a man of merit between knight and gentleman. Three or four _de_ were brought into the world at Avignon, during my stay there.

What shows the practice of unauthorised a.s.sumption of the _de_ to be by no means so novel as its censurers pretended, is, that I found the _de_ sometimes to precede names which signified trades: of these there are many in all countries; whereas the _de_ ought only to indicate the _terre_, or estate, like the d'Igby of my maternal ancestors, and can with propriety be used for no other purpose.

But the ambition of nominal distinction was not always thus cheaply to be gratified, if I may believe the feeling lament of an old n.o.ble, that is a n.o.ble of old family, "Such an one fancies, some fine morning, that he is a count or marquis: he calls himself so: the world laughs."--"But the t.i.tle pa.s.ses current?" A shrug of the shoulders gave me to understand that the subject was too distressing to be further pursued. O chivalry, thou act fallen on grievous,--on money-loving times!

The t.i.tle of Baronet is insignificant, having its origin too in a paltry sum of money paid to a needy king. The list (for it is not an order,) contains names that do honour to it: yet I heard in my youth a young man of one of the first families in Ireland, afterwards Marquess of ----, talk peevishly of "a parcel of d----d baronets." In endeavouring to be superior to their equals, or equal to their superiors, they undertake a task which must make them unacceptable to both parties. The ancient n.o.blesse of France has neither feudal rights nor political power; but it has its origin in what may be called the heroic ages of Europe: the peerage of France must look up to the n.o.bles with respect; and the people, that it may honour them, asks only to rank them among its friends.

It is a pity that the n.o.bles should be generally reproached with want of instruction: many of them plead in excuse that they are _enfans de la revolution_, born at a time when their education was of necessity neglected. I mentioned this excuse to an avocat. "Bah! they well know that their fathers were as ignorant as themselves." The avocat's argument was not conclusive; the n.o.bles of the present day might, but for the unsettled time of their youth, have partaken of the gradual improvement in knowledge which pervades all cla.s.ses; and the remark, "je suis meilleur gentilhomme que mon pere, parceque j'ai une generation de plus,"[54] might have applied to other advantages than that of counting one generation more. The French n.o.bles have now no longer that which, according to Juvenal, makes ignorance tolerable: let us hope they will avail themselves of their diminished wealth to acquire that learning, which, according to the proverb, though I do not believe it, is better than house and land.

The practice of letting farms to a _metayer_, who retains a share of the produce, and pays his rent with the remainder, is resorted to and continued from necessity. The farmer has not capital enough to stock a farm. If the proprietor, after having made the necessary advances for the occupation of the land, were to let the whole for a money rent, the farmer would soon be in arrears, and would end by running away.

_Metairie_ I suppose to be derived from the Italian _meta_, which signifies _half_. The landlord's share is however not always in this proportion: on fertile soils, and on account of rich products, he receives more than where more labour is required to reap an equal or less benefit. I believe the half to be the minimum.

After having pa.s.sed through nearly the whole length of Europe, with a taste prepared by a youth pa.s.sed, as Gibbon says, "in port and prejudice;" and in the same college too, I venture to a.s.sert, that wine is good in proportion as the country in which it is produced is near the all-enlivening sun. The wine of Champagne, which cannot remain for a minute and a half in the gla.s.s without growing flat; that of Burgundy, which is hardly ever found but in an acid state; that of Bordeaux, "claret for boys;"--not any one of these wines is to be compared (not for strength only, but for flavour also,) to the wines of the Rhone and of Provence. Such is my opinion: experto credat who will.

It may amuse my reader to learn that he may perhaps have been drinking French wine, when he little suspected that it lay concealed in "humble port." A trade, which in its first stage is not contraband, whatever it may be in its second, is carried on between the French sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean and Portugal: wines are s.h.i.+pped off to Oporto, which, by the help of brandy and other manipulation, become good port wine for the London market.

I was told by a negociant, an intelligent man, not a wine-merchant, that it was the wish of the wine-growers of France, that wine imported into England should pay a duty _ad valorem_, on the price, not on the quant.i.ty. He did not expect that the English government should be content to receive a less amount of duty on the same quant.i.ty of wine, the mean quality supposed the same: but he a.s.serted that wines of inferior quality, which could not be imported in the face of the duty per gallon, would then find their way; that the consumption of wine would be much increased; and the English government, as well as the French wine-dealer and proprietor of vineyards, would both be benefited.

As fiscal regulations have spoiled our malt liquor, it would be but fair to allow to those who are now ruining their health with rum and water, the pleasure of drinking sometimes a bottle of small French wine. What?

A bottle of Burgundy at a farmer's ordinary? Gentlemen travellers drinking claret? So much are men the slaves of habit, that the supposition appears extravagant; and, after a twelvemonth, the thing itself would be no more astonis.h.i.+ng than it is now in France.

The French, who have seen the atmosphere of smoke in which London is enveloped, and the sea-coal pouring its volumes of smoke up the chimney, have disseminated throughout France a certain horror of coal fires. There are, near Lyons, mines of coal of a quality superior to any I have yet seen, like the Wednesbury, but better. I had some difficulty in making the blacksmith comprehend what ought to be the form of such machines as grate, poker, fender. "Things by their name I call;" though to my blacksmith I was obliged to use every sort of periphrasis. _My_ poker was made with a hook at the end of it; the fender had a handle to it; the bars of the grate were too small and too near each other. The hook of the poker was soon straightened in the fire: of the fender handle I was contented to declare, "il n'y a pas de mal a cela:"[55] as the bars of my grate, though near, were not thick; they did not intercept more heat than usual.

Taking the precaution to have a wood fire in my second salon, I ventured to invite my friends to see my fire de charbon de terre. They were much surprised and pleased. "Il n'y a pas de mauvaise odeur: ce feu se fait respecter: quelle chaleur!"[56] The combined advantages of greater heat and less cost, (for the coal fire was maintained at about half the expense of a wood fire,) procured imitators. The general commanding the department had a grate set up: the smith made it after his own faulty model, declaring, no doubt, that it was _a l'Anglaise_: the general was, however, well satisfied, telling me that the coal fire warmed the three rooms of his apartment as well as a wood fire in each and every one of them. The woods have been especially ravaged during an aera of insecure possession; and fire-wood, always an expensive article, is generally, throughout France, become dearer than formerly, except in the neighbourhood of great forests.

I will endeavour to enable any one to judge how far it may be worth his while to come to reside in France from motives of economy. With his motives for being economical I have nothing to do: any one may be economical at home who pleases; but it does not please some people to be economical at home: others wish to have more for the same money. The French are sometimes puzzled to make out why the English come abroad; perhaps the English are sometimes equally puzzled themselves: but, with reference to economy, sometimes the English seem to them to be travelling for the sake of spending money; sometimes to be staying in France for the purpose of saving it: the riches as well as the high prices of England are exaggerated; the latter to a degree that would make the riches to be merely nominal: then, the difference between French and English prices is supposed to be so great, that the saving, by living in France, must be enormous. Many English have, at first, no clearer notions than the French on these subjects.

The price of almost every article, the produce of agricultural or manufacturing industry, has been increased one-third, some say two-fifths, in France since the beginning of the Revolution: the taxes have been trebled. We know that, within the last thirty years, prices and taxes have been augmented in England at about the same rates; so that, on both sides of the water, the proportion has been preserved: but the English knew very little of France during the war; whereas the French knew England by their emigrants, who reported truly the high prices then prevalent: thus some unsettled or erroneous opinions on domestic economy may be accounted for. I left England while paper currency was still in _force_, and before prices were lowered as since they have been: my estimate must be corrected accordingly.

The result of between three and four years experience is, that about one-sixth is saved by living, not in Paris, but in a provincial town in France, or that a franc will go as far as a s.h.i.+lling. Set against this saving the expenses of the journey, and the saving will not be great to those who do not retrench in their mode of life, but live in France in the same style as at home. The exchange on bills drawn on England may be favourable; but some little money sticks in every hand through which money pa.s.ses, which balances this advantage.

House-rent is higher in France than in England; fuel much dearer: some manufactured articles, as woollen cloth for coats, and linen or cotton for s.h.i.+rts, are equally dear: colonial produce, as sugar and coffee, is of a variable price, but not much cheaper: tea is cheaper, as the Americans supply it, or England with a remission of the duty. But there are no a.s.sessed taxes, no poor-rates: provisions I found to be cheaper by about one-third than I had left them in England; and my younger children, instead of small beer, with half a gla.s.s of wine each after dinner, now drank wine, with discretion indeed, but at discretion. The more numerous my family, the greater was the advantage to me of this diminution of the daily expense of food.