The Cockaynes in Paris Part 7

Lucy was privileged to read the following:--

_Miss Carrie c.o.c.kayne to Miss Emily Sharp._

"Rue Millevoye, Paris.

"MY DEAREST EMMY,--I should certainly not venture to offer any remarks on taste to you, my love, under ordinary circ.u.mstances. But I am provoked. I have pa.s.sed a severe round of _soirees_ of every description. Jaded with the fantastic activities of a fancy-dress genteel riot, I have been compelled to respond to the intimation of the Vicomtesse de Bois de Rose, that "_on sautera_". I have jumped with the rest. I have half killed myself with _sirops, pet.i.t-fours_, those microscopic caricatures of detestable British preparation--sandwiches (p.r.o.nounced _sonveetch_), _bouillon_, and chocolate, in the small hours; ices in tropical heats; _foie-gras_ and champagne about two hours after healthy bedtime, and tea like that which provoked old Lady Gargoyle to kick over the tea-table in her boudoir--in her eightieth year, too. The Gargoyles (I shall have much to tell you about them when we meet) were always an energetic race; and I feel the blood tingling in me while my eye wanders over the impertinences of the French chroniqueurs, when they are pleased to be merry at the expense of _la vieille Angleterre_. I hold I am right; am I not?--that when even a chroniqueur--that smallest of literary minnows--undertakes to criticize a foreign nation, at least the equal of his own, he should start with some knowledge of its language, history, manners, and customs. But what do we find? The profoundest ignorance of the rudiments of English. The special correspondent sent to London by the _Figaro_ to be amusing on our darker side, cannot spell the word theatre; but he is trenchant when dealing with what he saw at the Adelphi _Theater_. How completely he must have understood the dialogue, he who describes Webster as a _comique de premier ordre!_ In the same paper the dramatic critic, after explaining that at the rehearsals of _L'Abime_, the actors, who continually are complaining that they are ordered off on the wrong side, are quieted with the information that matters dramatic are managed in this way in bizzare England--prints in a line apart, and by way of most humorous comment, these words, 'English spoken here.' Conceive, my dear, an English humorous writer interlarding his picture of a French incident with the occasional interjection of _Parlez-vous Francais?_ Yet the comic writers of Paris imagine that they show wit when they pepper their comments with disjointed, irrelevant, and misspelt e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns in our vernacular. We have a friend here (we have made dozens) who has a cat she calls To-be--the G.o.dfather being 'To-be or not to be! 'All right'

appears daily as a witticism; 'Oh, yes!' serves for the thousandth time as a touch of humour. The reason is obvious. French critics are wholly ignorant of our language. Very few of them have crossed the Channel, even to obtain a Leicester Square idea of our dear England. But they are not diffident on this account. They have never seen samples of the Britisher--except on the Boulevards, or whistling in the cafes--where our countrymen, I beg leave to say, do not s.h.i.+ne; and these to them are representations of our English society. Suppose we took our estimate of French manners and culture from the small shopkeepers of the Quartier St. Antoine! My protest is against those who judge us by our vulgar and coa.r.s.e types. The Manchester bully who lounges into the Cafe Anglais with his hat on the back of his head; the woman who wears a hat and a long blue veil, and shuffles in in the wake of the _malhonnete_ to whom she is married; again, the boor who can speak only such French as 'moa besoin' and 'j'avais faim,' represent English men and women just as fairly as the rude, hoggish, French egg-and-poultry speculators represent the great seigneurs of France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SMITH BRINGS HIS ALPENSTOCK.]

"I say I have, by this time, more than a tolerable experience, not only of French _salons_, but also of those over which foreign residents in Paris preside. I have watched the American successes in Paris of this season, which is now closing its gilded gates, dismissing the slaves of pleasure to the bitter waters of the German springs and gaming-tables. I have seen our people put aside for Madame de Lhuile de Petrole and the great M. Caligula Shoddy. The beauties of the season have been 'calculating' and 'going round' in the best _salons_, and they have themselves given some of the most successful entertainments we have had.

Dixie's land has been fairyland. Strange and gorgeous Princesses from the East have entered mighty appearances. One has captivated the Prince, said to be the handsomest man in Paris. Russian and Polish great ladies have done the honours--according to the newspapers--with their 'habitual charm.' The Misses Bickers have had their beauties sung by a chorus of chroniqueurs. Here the shoulders of ladies at a party are as open to criticism as the ankles of a stage dancer. The beauties of our blonde Misses have made whole bundles of goose-quills tremble. Paris society is made up not even chiefly of Parisians; the rich of all nations flock to us, and are content to pay a few hundred pounds per month for a floor of gla.s.s and gilding. The Emperor has made a show capital as a speculation. All Europe contributes to the grandeur of the fas.h.i.+onable world of Paris. And suddenly what do we hear?

"That we, whose blood is good enough for England; who _can_ speak a few foreign languages in addition to our own; who know our neighbours by having lived among them; who have travelled enough to learn that good breeding is not confined to England or to France, are accused of having destroyed the high tone of the Opera audiences in this city. We are good enough, as to manners, for Her Majesty's Theatre, but not for the Italiens. Tell Mrs. Sandhurst of this: she will be _so_ mad!

"A few nights before La Patti left us, to degrade herself by warbling her wood-notes in the ignorant ears of the Opera public whom Mr. Gye is about to a.s.semble, and on whom the leaders.h.i.+p of Costa is thrown away, an unfortunate incident happened at the Italiens. Patti had been announced, and Mdlle. Harris appeared instead. Whereupon there was an uproar that could not be stilled. La Patti wept; la Harris wept also.

Finally, the spoilt child appeared, like Niobe, all tears. Who created the uproar? The French chroniqueur answers: a cosmopolitan audience--an audience from the Grand Hotel. He is good enough not to pick us out, but we are included with the rest. The foreign residents have degraded the Opera. The audience which greets Patti is a rabble compared with that which listened to Sontag. 'The exquisite urbanity which is proverbially French,' and which was apparent at the Italiens fifteen or twenty years ago, has disappeared since Paris has become the world's railway terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the observation, proceeds to be very clever. Scratch the Russian, and you know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the one barbarous material! The ladies of these are charming, seductive, irresistible, but they want _ton_, and lack the delicacy of the _monde_.

We foreigners are too proud of our beauty and our dollars, have an unquenchable thirst for pleasure, and we are socially daring. M. Villars is funny in the fas.h.i.+on of his cla.s.s. He says that we English-speaking cla.s.s of foreigners bear aloft a banner with the strange device 'All right.' M. Villars proceeds to remark, 'We take from foreigners what we should leave to them, their feet upon chairs, and their hats upon their heads, as at the Italiens the other night.' He finds that a cosmopolitan invasion has made French society less delicate, less gallant, less polite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JONES ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]

"We are to blame! Belgravia is not refined enough for the Avenue de l'Imperatrice. Clapham, I infer, would not be tolerated at Batignolles.

I repeat, I have gone through some arduous times here, in the midst of the foreign invasion of polite society. I have scratched neither Russ, nor German, nor Servian, nor Wallachian. But I must be permitted to observe, that I have found their manners quite equal to any that were native. Shall I go further, Emmy, and speak all my mind? There is a race of the new-rich--of the recently honoured, here, who are French from their shoe-rosettes to their chignons. They come direct from the Bourse, and from the Pereire fortune-manufactory of the Place Vendome. They bring noise and extravagance, but not manners. I have seen many of my countrymen in Parisian drawing-rooms, in the midst of Frenchmen, Russians, Princes of various lands; and, do you know, I have not seen anything _much_ better in the way of bearing, manners, and mental culture and natural refinement than the English gentleman. I feel quite positive that it is not he who has lowered the manners or morals of Napoleon the Third's subjects. I am bold enough to think that a probationary tour through some of our London drawing-rooms would do good to the saucy young seigneurs I see leaning on the balcony of the Jockey Club when we are driving past.

"I will remind M. Villars that his proverb has been parodied, and that it has been said, 'Scratch a Frenchman, and you find a dancing-master.'

But I know this proverb to be foolish; and I am candid and liberal enough to say so.

"I hope you are not too lonely, and don't keep too much to your room.

Now I know by experience what life in a boarding-house means. How must you feel, dearest Emmy, alone! Je t'embra.s.se. How gets on the German?

"We have such a specimen of the gandin here--the Vicomte de Gars. I think John Catt had better make haste over.

"Yours affectionately,

"CARRIE."

CHAPTER IX.

_Miss Carrie c.o.c.kayne to Miss Sharp._

"Rue Millevoye.

"My dearest Emmy,--No answer from you? How unkind! But still I continue to give you my ideas of the moment from this. What do we want? A writer in one of the frivolous sheets which are called newspapers on this side of the Channel, has been giving himself great airs; looking out of his window, with two or three touches of his pen he dismisses the poor women who pa.s.s under his balcony, and closes the cas.e.m.e.nt with the conviction that woman's rights and wrongs are put away for another generation.

Foolish women! They are plentiful enough, and they muster in fair numbers at the Wauxhall meetings which have been going on here, to the infinite amus.e.m.e.nt of the superior creatures who drink absinthe, smoke cigars, and gamble, hours after we silly things have gone to bed. I am not writing to deny woman's weakness, nor her vanity, nor the ridiculous exhibition she makes of herself when she takes to "orating"--as the Yankees say--and lecturing, and dressing herself up in her brother's clothes. Do you think, my dear Emmy, there are many women foolish enough to applaud Dr. Mary Walker because she dresses like an overgrown school-girl, and shows her trousers? What is she like in society?

Neither man nor woman. But how many have imitated her? How many women in England, France, and America have taken to the platform? One would think that all womankind was in a state of revolution, and about to make a general descent upon the tailors and tobacconists, turning over the lords of the creation to the milliners and the baby-linen warehouses.

This is just the way men argue, and push themselves out of a difficulty. This French philosophical pretender, who has been observing us from his window (I can't imagine where he lives), describes one or two social monstrosities--with false complexions, hair, figure,--and morals; brazen in manner, defiant in walk--female intellectual all-in-alls. His model drives, hunts, orates, pa.s.ses resolutions, dissects--in short does everything except attend to baby. This she leaves to the husband. He takes the pap-bowl, and she shoulders the gun.

He looks out the linen while she sharpens her razors. The foolish public laugh all along the boulevards, and say what a charming creature a woman will be when she drives a locomotive, commands a frigate, and storms a citadel!

"Every time a meeting is convened at the Wauxhall to consider how the amount of female starvation or misery may be reduced, the philosopher throws his window open again, and grins while he caricatures, or rather distorts and exaggerates to positive untruth. M. Gill gets fresh food.

The _chroniqueurs_ invent a series of absurdities, which didn't happen yesterday, as they allege. I am out of patience when I see all this mischievous misrepresentation, because I see that it is doing harm to a very just and proper cause. We are arguing for more work for our poor sisters who have neither father, husband, brother, nor fortune to depend upon; and these French comic scribblers describe us as uns.e.xed brawlers, who want top-boots. I want no manly rights for women. I am content with the old position, that her head should just reach the height of a man's heart; but I do see where she is not well used--where she is left to genteel dependence, and a life in the darkest corner of the drawing-room, upon the chair with the unsafe leg, over the plate that is cracked, in the bedroom where the visitor died of scarlet fever.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRENCH RECOLLECTION OF MEESS TAKING HER BATH.

_The faithful Bouledogue gazes with admiration at the performance of his Mistress._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BRAVE MEESS AMONG THE BILLOWS HOLDING ON BY THE TAIL OF HER NEWFOUNDLAND.]

"She is not uns.e.xed wearing her poor heart out against these bars; but she would be a free, bright, instructed creature, helping her rich sister, or a trusty counsellor when the children are ill. She would be uns.e.xed issuing railway tickets or managing a light business; but she is truly womanly while she is helpless and a burden to others.

"Foolish women! Yes, very stupid very often, but hardly in hoping that the defenceless among us may be permitted to become, by fair womanly exertion, independent. I am directed to observe how amusing the _Figaro_ has been recently at our expense, hoping to obtain the suffrages of the really thoughtless of our s.e.x thereby. We are our own worst enemies and well do you men know it. The frivolous are an immense host, and these have reason to laugh at serious women who want to get a little justice and teaching for their dependent sisters--not manly avocations, nor masculine amus.e.m.e.nts. I go to the Wauxhall, my dear Emmy, not to help my s.e.x to uns.e.x itself, but, I must repeat, to aid my poor sisters who want to work, that, if left without the support of male kindred, they may lead honourable, independent lives; to this end they must have certain rights, and these, and no more, I advocate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH STOCK.

_The Parent Flower and two lovely Buds._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMPATRIOTS MEETING IN THE FRENCH EXHIBITION.

_Bar-maids in the English Department recognising a fellow-countryman._]

"You see, the old story is told over again. We beg a little independence; and we are answered with ancient jests. You are quite as unjust, and not so amusing or clever in your injustice in England. They have not imitated the medical students in St. James's Hall at this Wauxhall. We have seen no such monstrous spectacle as a host of young men hooting and yelling at one poor, weak, foolish little woman in black pantalettes. Truly, you must be as tired of the comic view of the question as you are ashamed of your medical students. I know what the highly-educated English ladies think on the subject. They detest the orating, bl.u.s.tering, strangely-costumed advocates of woman's rights; but don't fall into the common error of believing that they are not earnest about many of the points we have been discussing here, in the midst of this mocking race. Depend upon it, we are not foolish enough--fond as you men are of crying 'foolish women!'--to uns.e.x ourselves.

"The woman who wants to get into Parliament is, to my thinking, a monster; and I would sentence her to stocking-mending for life. The creature who appears before men in black pantalettes, and other imitations of his dress, should be rigorously held clear of decent houses, until she had learned how to dress herself modestly and becomingly. The Missy who talked about eating her way to the bar, I would doom to the perpetual duty of cooking chops for hungry lawyers'

clerks.

"But you will have had enough of this.

"Not a word? and you promised so many. Somebody has whispered a name to me. It is Charles. Is that true? I will never forgive you.

"Ever yours, "CARRIE."

Emmy never answered, poor girl!

CHAPTER X.

"THE PEOPLE OF THE HOUSE."

Lucy Rowe would have been fast friends with Carrie c.o.c.kayne during their stay in her aunt's house, had Mrs. c.o.c.kayne, on the one hand, permitted her daughter to become intimate with anything so low as "the people of the house," and had Mrs. Rowe, on the other, suffered her niece to "forget her place." But they did approach each other, by an irresistible affinity, and by the easy companions.h.i.+p of common tastes. While Sophonisba engaged ardently in all the doings of the house, and was a patient retailer of its scandals; and while Mrs. c.o.c.kayne was busy with her evening whist, and morning "looks at the shops"--quiet and retiring Theodosia managed to become seriously enamoured of the Vicomte de Gars, who visited Mrs. Rowe's establishment, as the unexceptionable friend of the Reverend Horace Mohun.

The young Vicomte was a Protestant; of ancient family and limited means.

Where the living scions of the n.o.ble stock held their land, and went forth over their acres from under the ancestral portcullis, was more than even Mrs. Rowe had been able, with all her penetrating power in scandal, to ascertain. But the young n.o.bleman was Mr. Mohun's friend--and that was enough. There had been reverses in the family.

Losses fall upon the n.o.blest lines; and supposing the Count de Gars in the wine trade--to speak broadly, in the Gironde--this was to his honour. The great man struggling with the storms of fate, is a glad picture always to n.o.ble minds. Some day he would issue from his cellars, and don his knightly plume once more, and summon the vulgar intruders to begone from the Chateau.