English Pharisees French Crocodiles, and Other Anglo-French Typical Characters

CHAPTER VII.
FRENCH IMPULSIVENESS AND BRITISH SANGFROID ILLUSTRATED BY TWO REMINISCENCES

Two incidents that took place lately, in Paris and London respectively, may serve to illustrate French impulsiveness and English sangfroid.

The other evening the opera "Les Huguenots" was played at the Grand Opera. The singer who took the part of Marcel was out of sorts, and sang flat. An old gentleman, seated in an orchestra stall, was observed to be restless and uncomfortable during the performance. At the end of the last act, Marcel passes before the church, just at the moment when the Duke of Nevers and his partisans come out of it.

"Qui vive?" cries the Duke.

"Huguenot," answers Marcel, and he falls, shot dead by the followers of the Duke.

This part of the opera had no sooner been acted, than the old gentleman, who now looked radiant, rose from his seat, put on his hat, and, shaking his fist at the dead hero, to the great amusement of the public, cried at the top of his voice:

"You donkey, it serves you right, you have been singing out of tune the whole evening."

And indignantly he left the theater.

⁂

In a beautifully appointed English house, afternoon tea, served in costly china, had just been brought to the drawing-room, when the mistress of the house inadvertently overturned the tea-table. Without the slightest show of vexation, without oh! or ah! Lady R – calmly touched the bell, and, on the appearance of the domestic, merely said:

"Take this away, and bring more tea."

"My dear," whispered Lady P – to a friend, "she won't match that china for $500."

⁂

Another illustration of the latter:

A fearful railway accident has taken place. The first car, with its human contents, is reduced to atoms.

An Englishman, who was in one of the first-class cars at the rear, examines the débris.

"Oh!" he says to an official, pointing to a piece of flesh wrapped up in a piece of tweed cloth. "Pick that up, that's the piece of my butler that has got the keys of my trunks."

CHAPTER VIII.
ENGLISH PHARISEES AND FRENCH CROCODILES

The French and the English have this very characteristic feature in common: they can stand any amount of incense; you may burn all the perfumes of Arabia under their noses, without incommoding them in the slightest degree.

With this difference, however, in the extremes.

The French boaster is noisy and talkative. With his mustache twirled defiantly upward, his hat on one side, he will shout at you, at the top of his voice that,¹ "La France, Monsieur, sera toujours la Fr-r-rance, les Français seront toujours les Fr-r-rançais." As you listen to him, you are almost tempted to believe, with Thackeray, "that the poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to be."

But allow me to say that the British specimen is far more provoking. He is so sure that all his geese are swans; so thoroughly persuaded of his superiority over the rest of the human race; it is, in his eyes, such an incontested and incontestable fact, that he does not think it worth his while to raise his voice in asserting it, and that is what makes him so awfully irritating, "don't you know?" He has not a doubt that the whole world was made for him; not only this one, but the next. In the meantime – for he is in no hurry to put on the angel plumage that awaits him – he congratulates himself on his position here below. Everything is done to add to his comfort and happiness: the Italians give him concerts, the French dig the Suez Canal for him, the Germans sweep out his offices and do his errands in the City of London for $200 a year, the Greeks grow the principal ingredient in his plum pudding. The Americans supply his aristocracy with rich heiresses, so that they may get their coats of arms out of pawn. His face beams with gratitude and complacency, as he quietly rubs his hands together, and calmly thanks Heaven that he is not as other men are. And it is true enough; he is not.

"Dear brother reader," says Thackeray, "answer as a man of honor. Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't, you gallant British snob, you know you don't… Oh, my country! if I were a Frenchman, how I would hate you!"

⁂

There is one great difference between our two boasters: the Englishman will seek, on all occasions, to appear a trifle better than he really is – he never runs himself down; if he has a defect or two, he will let you find them out; but the Frenchman, on the contrary, is a braggart of vice. To hear him joke about matrimony, for instance, you would take him for a libertine. To listen to some of the plays that he will applaud, to see the caricatures that amuse him, you might come to the conclusion that, in his eyes, marriage was not a sacred tie. But do not form your conclusions too hastily. Those jokes, that delight him, are often in very doubtful taste, I admit; but they are jokes and nothing more, and if you were to take the plays and caricatures for real pictures of French life, you would be making as great a mistake as you could well make.

Now, a Frenchman, who had given an appointment to his wife, would be apt to take on a little look of mystery as he hurried away from a friend in the street, with the words: "Excuse my haste, I must leave you; I have an appointment." And if you heard the response, "Ah! you rascal, I'll tell your wife," accompanied by a knowing shake of the head, you might rashly take the pair for a couple of reprobates. But once more you would be wrong. Such harmless trivialities – for trivialities they must be called – are indulged in by men who are the honor and joy of their homes.

Let me tell you this: Whenever you hear a Frenchman speak ill of himself, do not believe him, he is merely boasting. Be sure that nothing is more true. I shall never say anything more true so long as I live.

We French hide our virtues and do not like to be reproached with them. On this subject I might tell an anecdote which, if venerable, is none the less amusing.

The Athenæum, a paper written by the élite of the literary, scientific, and artistic worlds, was at a loss to know, not long since, why almost all the heroes of French novels were engineers. The reason is that French engineers are all ex-pupils of the Polytechnic School. I mean the engineers of mines, roads, and bridges. These young men, having passed their youth in study, in order to prepare for the most difficult examination we have, naturally have the reputation of being steady. The anecdote is this: Edmond About one day wrote: "Virtuous as a Polytechnician." The sentence displeased the young mathematicians, and they promptly took the author of it to task.

I forget the exact words of their reply, but it ran, as nearly as I can recollect:

"Dear Sir: Please to speak of what you know something about. We are no more virtuous than you."

And I can vouch for the truth of this little anecdote: I was one of those who signed the letter.

Call a Frenchman a "good father" or "good citizen," he will smile and probably answer back, "You humbug!" Yet he is a good father and a good citizen, and he used to be a good garde-national, notwithstanding his objection to be told so. He proved it during the siege of Paris, although his wife had never been able to look at him in his uniform without laughing.

Now, if the Englishman, who ornaments his buttonhole with a piece of blue ribbon, does not put on two pieces more to proclaim urbi et orbi that he is a good father and a good citizen, it is because the idea never occurred to him – for nobody doubts that, like his neighbor, he, too, is a good father and a good citizen.

Ah! I say once more, if we only knew how to hide our faults as we can hide our virtues, what a respectable figure we could cut by the side of our neighbors!

The English hypocrite is the hypocrite of virtue and religion. English novelists have exposed him, but have not succeeded in extinguishing him; the Chadbands, the Stigginses, the Podsnaps, the Pecksniffs, all the saintly British Tartuffes, are as flourishing as ever.

Molière could, in his times, put on the stage such a man as Tartuffe; at the present day the type is extinct; the religious hypocrite would not go down in France; the character is exploded.

Pecksniff, one of the most powerful creations of Dickens, a photograph from the life, had named his two daughters, Mercy and Charity. In France, this worthy father and the Misses Mercy and Charity would find every door shut in their faces. This kind of vocation would lead straight to the workhouse.

It is not that we have no hypocrites, however. We keep the article, but it is of a different pattern.

The French hypocrite is the hypocrite of sentiment – the crocodile.

It is natural enough that it should be so.

The hypocrite does but force the characteristic note of his race. The English are religious (I mean church-going), the French sentimental; therefore, the English hypocrite is the hypocrite of religion, and the French hypocrite is the hypocrite of sentiment.

The former will enter into conversation with you by expressing a hope that you do not concern yourself too much with the things of this world. Chadband presents himself at the house of a friend with the salutation: "Peace be upon this house." Then, seeing the table garnished with good things, he cries: "My friends, why must we eat? To live. And why must we live? To do good. It is then right that we should eat. Therefore, let us partake of the good things which are set before us." Thereupon he gorges himself, that he may be able the better to support life, and do the more good. No French novelist would dare portray such a personage in his books.

The French hypocrite proceeds differently. He makes professions of friendship for you, embraces you, enters into your woes with touching displays of feeling; when occasion seems to require, he can shed a few tears, his lachrymal gland is inexhaustible. As he takes his departure, he "hopes things will soon look brighter," and offers you a cigar.

It is at the funeral of a good bequeathing uncle that he is especially edifying. He follows, with staggering steps, the remains of the beloved defunct; he is literally supported to the grave by the two friends on whose arms he leans. Tears trickle down his cheeks, he is pale and exhausted. His handkerchief has a wide black border, but smells of musk. He tells you, with sobs, that his uncle was a father to him, and begs you to excuse him, if he finds it impossible to master his grief.

On arriving home, he writes to his upholsterer to order new furniture.

The two kinds of hypocrisy, one as loathsome as the other, are clearly manifested even in the criminals of the two countries.

The English prisoner at the bar is not submitted to examination, and thus the public is spared his professions of faith; but the letters he writes to his friends, and to which the newspapers generally give publicity, show him in his true light. "He believes in God; he knows that Heaven will not fail to confound the infernal machinations of the wretches who accuse him."

The French criminal makes professions of sentiment in the dock.

I extract the following lines from the trial of the vile assassins of Mme. Ballerich:

"Q. You loitered about the house and asked Mme. Ballerich for a fictitious person, in order to take stock of the premises, did you not?

"A. I do not deny that I meant to commit a theft, but a crime was far from my thoughts. A crime is going too far; I would not dishonor my family; I swear it by my mother.

"Q. You struck the fatal blow that killed the victim. When you left she was still alive?

"A. I did not look to see whether Mme. Ballerich was dead. It is bad enough to be mixed up at all in affairs of that kind! It made me feel sick to see the blood. I suffered internally; I was struck with remorse and repentance and I thought of my mother. (Here the prisoner burst into tears.)"

The English assassin, on mounting the scaffold, generally gives his friends rendezvous in the better land, and implores his Maker's pardon. The French murderer implores the pardon of his mother.

At this solemn moment both of them probably cease to be hypocrites.

CHAPTER IX.
FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOCIAL FAILURES

The French social failure is generally a radical. If he had cared to do as plenty of others do (and seeing you prosperous, he accompanies this with an expressive glance), if he had cared to intrigue and curry favor, he too could have cut a figure in the world. But unhappily for himself, he does not know how to disguise his opinions; he is, according to the formula, poor but honest.

It is his pride that leads him to avoid the lucky ones of the earth; he has no desire to be taken for a schemer. If he has lost all else, honor still is left, and this, his only remaining treasure, he intends to preserve intact.

He despises money, and if he does not return that little loan he borrowed of you, it is because he presumes that your contempt for filthy lucre is equal to his own.

Yet the sight of gold melts him, and there flits across his face a smile of satisfaction, mingled, however, with a tinge of sadness at the thought of being caught capitulating with the enemy. But to convince himself that he has lost none of his independence of character, he goes straightway and says evil of you, so that no man shall say of him that he was corrupted by the loan of a paltry coin.

You will generally find that he has been bankrupt once or twice; but as that has not made a rich man of him, you conclude that, if he has not a great love of money, neither has he a great talent for business.

He lays his poverty at everyone's door but his own. Society does not understand him. He shall go to his grave without having had a chance of revealing himself to the world. Meanwhile he opens a general agency. Not having been successful with his own affairs, he hopes to have better luck with other people's.

As a rule, you find that he has married a servant or a laundress, "to pay a debt he owed to Society," as he puts it. But Society, who is but a thankless jade, turns her back upon him and his wife. Never mind, he has done his duty. Upon this point he finds nothing to reproach himself with. Some men marry for money; thank Heaven, he is not one of that sort.

Let anything you undertake prove a success, and you will hear him say that he had thought of doing it long ago; it was only his idea stolen from him. But there's the rub; what is the use of ideas, when one has no capital?

And, instead of setting to work to get a capital, he writes anonymous letters.

He occasionally talks of committing suicide, of throwing himself into the sea; but this idea of his has been stolen so many times over that he gives it up in disgust.

When he does die, it will be of spite.

You will survive the loss of him without difficulty.

His presence is a hair in your soup, a crumb in your bed.

The French social failure is not uncommonly a philosopher, and even keeps a spark of facetiousness through all his misfortunes.

About ten years ago, I was talking one day with a Frenchman, who had been established in England some time. Established! I am getting facetious, too, you see.

I was erroneously maintaining to him that imprisonment was still inflicted in England for debt.

"You are mistaken, I can assure you," said he.

"I do not think so," I replied.

"Imprisonment for debt was abolished two years ago."

"Are you quite sure?" said I, seeing him so positive.

"Parbleu! I ought to know better than you," he said. "I was the last to come out."

The English social failure is much more humble than his like in France, for the simple reason that, in France, poverty is no crime, while in England, as in America, it is. Apart from this the two types do not differ much.

In the commercial world, the English social failure is an agent of some sort; generally wine or coal. In the exercise of his calling, he requires no capital, nor even a cellar. He not unfrequently entitles himself General Agent: this, when the wreck is at hand. Such are the straws he clutches at; if they should break, he sinks, and is heard of no more, unless his wife comes to the rescue, by setting up a lodging house or a boarding school for young ladies. There, once more in smooth water, he wields the blacking brush, makes acquaintance with the knife board, or gets in the provisions. In allowing himself to be kept by his wife, he feels he loses some dignity, but if she should adopt any airs of superiority over him, he can always bring her to a sense of duty by beating her.

In the republics of art and letters, you generally find him playing the part of critic, consoling himself for his failures by abusing the artists who sell their pictures, or the authors who sell their books. For these he knows no pity. He can all the more easily abuse his dear brethren of the quill or brush that he has not to sign his invectives; his prose is anonymous. Once a week, in the columns of some penny paper, he can, with perfect impunity, relieve his heart of the venom it contains.

The mud he scatters has one good quality – it does not stain; one fillip … and it is gone.

Here is a sample of this kind of production. I extract it from a paper as pretentious as it is little read:

"The fortunate writer woke up one morning to find himself famous, and his book on a tide of popularity which carried it, in one year, through some fifty editions. A grand stroke of this kind insures the ambition to repeat it… His new book bears throughout manifest evidences of having been scrambled through, and put together anyhow, in order to recapture the notice and the money of the public."

Now Carlyle, who was very sensitive to adverse criticism, used to call these revengeful failures in literature "dirty puppies," and it was kind of him to so far notice them.

But if I were the author in question, an answer somewhat in the following style would rise to my pen:

"My Dear Sir: I admire your independence and your contempt for the money and the favors of the public. But one question I would ask of you: Why do you send your invectives to the wrong address? If I am famous, as you are pleased to say, without believing it any more than myself, do not lay the blame upon me, my dear sir; lay it rather upon that 'fool of a public' who is silly enough to prefer my scribblings to your chefs-d'œuvre. Not for the world would I say anything that might be disagreeable to you, but I would fain remind you that, ever since the days of Horace, the authors of books that sell have never been appreciated by the authors of the books that do not."

The bitterness of Mr. Tommy Hawk's criticisms forms a curious contrast with the fairness and good-nature of the serious English critic.

The latter possesses a large stock of good sense, good taste, learning, and independence. He can blend counsel and encouragement, and he has a conscience; that is to say, as much aversion to disparaging as to flattering. The same author whom he praised yesterday because his work was worthy of praise, he blames to-day because his work is deserving of blame; he is no respecter of persons.

Criticism should be taken with thanks and deference, if fair and kind; with deference and no thanks, if fair but unkind; with silence and contempt, if insulting and unfair.

So says D'Alembert.

⁂

May I now permit myself to indulge in a little personality?

Mr. George Augustus Sala, the wittiest and best-humored of English journalists, in one of his interesting Echoes of the Week, not long ago accused a book of my own, after paying it one or two compliments, of being as full of blunders as an egg is full of meat.

Now, could Mr. George Augustus Sala, with his knowledge of London dairy produce, pay my book a more witty and graceful compliment?

CHAPTER X.
HIGH-LIFE ANGLO-FRENCH GIBBERISH AS USED IN FRANCE AND IN ENGLAND

Languages have this in common with many mortals; when they borrow they do not return. This is perhaps a happy thing, for when borrowed words do get returned, good Heavens! what a state they come home in!

We thought we were doing a fine thing in taking the words ticket, jockey, budget, tunnel, fashion from the English. They are, however, but French words mutilated, and there is not much to be proud of in reacquiring them. The English had borrowed of us étiqueter, jacquet (petit Jacques), bougette (the king's privy purse), façon. Better they had kept them. Up to the nineteenth century, it was by reason of war and conquest that both conquerors and conquered saw their vocabularies invaded by foreign words; but is it not strange that in the nineteenth century, the century of civilization, so-called, peace between England and France should bring about such a disastrous result?

Formerly we used to déjeuner.

Nous avons changé tout cela; nowadays nous lunchons. Nous lunchons! What a barbarous mouthful, is it not?

The word déjeuner signifying "to cease fasting," or, as the English say, "to breakfast," it is wrongly used in speaking of a second repast. Déjeuner is, therefore, irrational; but is this any excuse for making ourselves grotesque?

But, my dear compatriots, we are avenged. I read in the London Standard:

"Prince Albert Victor was yesterday admitted to the freedom of the City of London… The royal party and a large company of invited guests were afterward entertained at a déjeuner in the Guildhall, the Lord Mayor presiding."

Now that the French lunch, the English will déjeuner more than ever, of course.

⁂

Parisian good society no longer takes tea, it "five o'clocks"; and the bourgeois is beginning to put at the foot of his cards of invitation:

"On five o'clockera à neuf heures."

⁂

When the English wish to have a song or a piece of music repeated by an artist, they shout: Encore! And, the following day, the papers, in their accounts of the performance, announce that Mademoiselle So-and-So was encored.

While I am upon this subject, allow me to give you a little sample of modern English; it will prove to you that Alexander Dumas was right, when he pronounced English to be only French badly pronounced, and I would add, badly spelt:

"The concert was brilliant, and the ensemble excellent. Miss N – was encored, but Mr. D – , who made his début, only obtained a succès d'estime."

Go to Trafalgar Square. Place yourself at the foot of that long Roman candle, on the summit of which the statue of Nelson may be perceived … on a clear day. Turn toward the Palace of Westminster, and you will see on your left the Grand Hôtel and the Avenue Theatre, on your right the Hôtel Métropole. In your rear you will find the National Gallery. As all these buildings are within a hundred yards of Charing Cross station, the terminus at which you alight on coming from France, your first impression will be that it will not take you long to learn to speak English. Ah! dear compatriots, be not deceived; you little guess the terrible perfidiousness of that language. Those provoking Britons seem to have taken a wicked pleasure in inventing a collection of unheard-of sounds, a pronunciation that will fill your hearts with despair, and that puts them quite out of the reach of imitation.

Thou mayest dress like an Englishman, dear compatriot, eat roast beef like an Englishman, but, never, never wilt thou speak English like an Englishman. Thou wilt always massacre his language; let this console thee for hearing him massacre thine.

In the Spectator of the 8th of September, 1711, Addison wrote:

"I have often wished, that as in our Constitution there are several persons whose business it is to watch over our laws, our liberties, and commerce, certain men might be set apart as superintendents of our language, to hinder any words of a foreign coin from passing among us; and, in particular, to prohibit any French phrases from becoming current in this kingdom, when those of our stamp are altogether as valuable. The present war has so adulterated our tongue with strange words, that it would be impossible for one of our grandfathers to know what his posterity have been doing, were he to read their exploits in a modern newspaper."

Oh, Addison, stop thy ears, and veil thy face!

M. Hippolyte Cocheris, the learned French philologist, quotes, in one of his writings, a piece of prose from an aristocratic pen, which appeared in No. 116 of the New Monthly. It runs as follows:

"I was chez moi, inhaling the odeur musquée of my scented boudoir, when the Prince of Z – entered. He found me in my demi-toilette, blasée sur tout, and pensively engaged in solitary conjugation of the verb s'ennuyer, and though he had never been one of my habitués, or by any means des nôtres, I was not inclined at this moment of délassement to glide with him into the crocchio restretto of familiar chat."

To edify his readers, and make them appreciate this little masterpiece of hybrid style at its due value, M. Cocheris proceeds to translate the piece into French, carefully replacing all the words in italics by English ones, thus:

J'étais at home, aspirant la musky smell de mon private room, lorsque le Prince de Z – entra. Il me trouva en simple dress, fatigued with everything, tristement occupé à conjuguer le verbe to be weary, et quoique je ne l'eusse jamais compté au nombre de mes intimates, et qu'il ne fût, en aucune façon of our set, j'étais assez disposée à entrer avec lui dans le crocchio restretto d'une causerie familière.

M. H. Cocheris maintains that a French author would never dare to have recourse to such a literary proceeding. Nonsense! Read our novels, read our newspapers. At every page, you find mention made of fashionables in knickerbockers, who, dressed in ulsters, repair to the turf in a dogcart with a groom and a bulldog. They bring up at a bar and eat a slice of pudding or a sandwich, washed down with a bowl of punch or a cocktail. These gentlemen have the spleen, in spite of the comfortable life they lead. In the evening, they go and applaud the humor of a clown, and call snobs those who prefer the Comédie Française.

If this picture of the state of things be really a true one, the French Academy, which was founded to look after the mother tongue of Molière, had better lower its blinds and burn tapers.