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

CHAPTER XIV.
THE FRENCH SNOB

It would be imprudent, not to say impudent, to attack the subject of English snobs. There are themes which seem marked "Dangerous ground." If the French want to know all about English snobs, they must turn to Thackeray, who has completely exhausted the subject.

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The snob is the man who is utterly destitute of nobility. I should like to explain the word etymologically thus: Snob from S. Nob. (Sine Nobilitate).

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The snob is the man who is ashamed of his origin, and wishes to occupy a better place in society than he is entitled to; who hires a couple of flunkeys by the evening, to make folks believe he keeps a grand establishment; or who lowers his blinds from the middle of July to the middle of September, to make it appear that he is out of town, en villégiature, at the seaside, or at his place in the country.

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The king of French snobs calls himself M. du Bois, M. du Val, M. du Mont – or better still, M. de la Roche-Pichenette. His father, an honest man, and useful member of society, amassed penny by penny a snug fortune; his name was Dumont, Duval, Dubois, of the bois of which useful men are made. The son squanders the money of his lamented papa, and calls himself Du Bois, of the bois of which parasites and idlers are made. If one of his estates happens to be called "la Roche-Pichenette," he dubs himself M. de la Roche-Pichenette, which looks grander still. He would be puzzled to show you the letters patent which authorize him in assuming this grotesque name; but he will tell you that, if he cannot do so, it is because those Republican scoundrels of '93 destroyed them. He is a clerical and stanch Royalist, as a matter of course; noblesse oblige. In this respect he outdoes the genuine nobleman, who needs make no noise to attract attention to a name which everyone knows, and which, in spite of what may be said on the subject, often recalls the memory of some glorious event in the past. Noise he must make, unfortunately for his cause. So a German jumps on the table to make believe that he is merry.

He talks of his ancestors, and rails at the Revolution which made a man of him. Ancestors he has, of course, as you and I have; they were, doubtless, worthy fellows, good patriots, who may have been present at Fontenoy, at Rocroy, or even at the siege of Jerusalem, for the very simple reason that the principle of spontaneous generation has never been applied to man. But if his ancestors lent a helping hand at the taking of Jerusalem, and also, perhaps, by the irony of fate, at the taking of the Bastille, he, for his part, has taken nothing particular except a sham title.

This kind of snob is not met with in England. The names of the lords, baronets, and knights are published every year; fraud is impossible. The few contraband barons that are to be found in England are barons of the Holy Empire.

CHAPTER XV.
A SUCCESS AS AN ANGLOPHOBIST. (THE LATE MARQUIS DE BOISSY.)

The Anglophobist of the purest water that France ever produced, was the late Marquis de Boissy, senator of the second Empire. This witty, eloquent, spirited old Gaul, was the soul of the august assembly, the only member of it who was not either stuffed or embalmed, and his memory alone will save it from oblivion. His philippics will long ring in the ears of the French.

Whether he was in the tribune treating the subject of home or foreign politics, or whether he was making a speech at the agricultural committee meeting of his borough, he had but one peroration, his cherished device, his hobby:

Delenda est Britannia.

He used to accuse England of smothering the human race with her breath, and would compare her to the octopus, that hideous and sticky mass whose tentacles have the property of creating a vacuum around them.

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"The world will never have any peace," said he, "until that brute has ceased sucking the blood of other nations, and been sunk at the bottom of the sea. Old as I am, I would go for a drummer, so that I might lend a helping hand in subduing the nation that has violated the most sacred laws of humanity."

All the scourges that visit the earth were put down by him to the credit of that traitress of a neighbor; earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, inundations, cholera, the plague; even down to his own colds in the head, all were attributed by him to the baneful influence of the breeze that had passed over England.

He did not hesitate to declare that the air of the Champs-Elysées in Paris was polluted by the presence of the English colony in its midst. Every time he passed through it, he fumigated himself as soon as he reached home.

Poor Marquis de Boissy, what would you have said, if you had lived long enough to receive invitations to five o'clocquer?

The old Anglophobist was sincere in his epic outbursts, and at the same time very amusing, for he was as full of wit as he was of Anglophobia.

He is dead, leaving no successor; France is at present without a declared Anglophobist.

CHAPTER XVI.
WOMAN WORSHIP

A worshiper of grace and beauty, the Frenchman has given to woman a place which she occupies in no other nation.

Since the days when Aspasia inspired Socrates and advised Pericles, in no other country has woman's sovereignty been so supreme as it has always been, and still is, in France.

The Frenchman is keenly alive to woman's influence, and woman is an ever-present, a fixed, idea with him. Whether he study her from the artistic, physiological, or psychological point of view, his interest in her is never exhausted.

It is a case of woman worship. Parodying Terence's lines, he says:

"I am a man, and all that concerns woman interests me."

Nothing is more absurd in the eyes of the English than this ever-present idea of woman in the mind of the Frenchman, and as our dear neighbors do not know us any better than if an ocean, instead of a silver streak, separated us and them, they indulge in a thousand and one commentaries upon the puerility of our character.

However, it is to our education, and to that alone, that this weak but charming side of our national character must be attributed.

If, from the tenderest age, we were used to liberty and the companionship of children of the other sex, we should grow up thinking very little about liberty and women, and we should succeed in acquiring that sangfroid which is the foundation-stone of the prosperity and the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon race.

When we were schoolboys, and a rumor spread through the class rooms that the sister of So-and-So was in the parlor, do you remember, my dear compatriots, what a commotion it created throughout the whole establishment? Do you remember how we climbed on tables and chairs, and how happy we were if we could but catch sight of the corner of a petticoat at the other end of the courtyard? No wonder, for, to us, a girl was quite an extraordinary being, something almost supernatural. The scream of the young ladies of Miss Tomkins' Seminary, on hearing that "a man is behind the door!" is nothing, compared to the magic cry, "Une fille!" in a French school.

Is not the object of man's worship always something unknown, extraordinary, ideal? Is it not always clothed in mystery? Have we ever bestowed unlimited admiration upon those whose society we frequent every day? Habit kills admiration,² as it kills all sentiments that live upon illusions. If, from our childhood, woman were the companion of our daily games and walks, should we not look upon her with different eyes?

To us Frenchmen, woman is a being whom we consider greatly superior to ourselves, because we have made an ideal of her.

To the Englishman, woman is a creature whom he looks down upon as a frail and frivolous being, greatly inferior to himself. With what an air of sovereign condescension the English schoolboy tells his young girl friends all about the game of football or cricket, in which he has taken part! His manner seems to say: "Is it not awfully kind of me to take the trouble to enter into these details with poor, puny creatures like you, who cannot appreciate them?"

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In France, whatever a woman does is right; even her errors almost turn to her advantage. If she breaks her marriage vows, it is not she who is covered with shame, it is her husband who is covered with ridicule; and people immediately look for defects in him, and excuses for her.

A society thus governed by women may lack firmness, but its salient points are sure to be good taste, delicacy, tact, wit, and amiability.

It is impossible not to mention here the ascendancy which women took over French literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and during the early part of the present one, through the influence of the salons littéraires. Does it not seem, in fact, as if the history of French literature might be summed up by naming the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and the salons of Mme. des Loges, Mlle. de Scudéry, Mme. de Sablé, Ninon de Lenclos, Mme. Scarron, the Duchesse du Maine, the Marquise de Lambert, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. d'Epinay, Mme. de Caylus, Mme. de Vintimille, Mme. Récamier, Mme. de Staël, and Mme. Girardin? Do we not know the courts of Louis XIV., Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Napoleon I. by the letters and memoirs of this splendid legion of women belonging to "la société polie" who have taught us the art of causer, that art of which we French have the monopoly?

This woman worship, from which chivalry sprang, is the source of another trait characteristic of the French nation, a trait which we have a right to be proud of. I speak of our respect for the weak. I engage that the lowest quarter of any French town would be roused into revolution at the sound of a man having ill-treated a woman or child. It is a sentiment innate in the Celt, and which would be found in the Englishman, if the Germanic element had not gained the ascendancy in England.³

Is there any prettier sight than that of our public gardens filled with well-dressed, bright-faced young mothers, whose husbands come, when business is over, to listen to the band at their side, and to take them to their homes, from which care is banished as far as possible, and where they are made sharers in each joy of their husbands?

Can we imagine a pleasure party of any kind without the presence of women? And when I say we, I mean all classes of society. When our workman sets out, on Sunday mornings, for the Jardin de la Muette or the Bois de Meudon, with provisions for the day, he takes his wife and children with him; and even his old mother, if he have one, must go too, or the party is not complete.

I confess that those world-famed English dinners which are not brightened by the presence of ladies have but little charm for me.

"Those English people enjoy themselves as we bore ourselves to death," once said Mme. Vigée-Lebrun.

When I say that women are rarely seen at the great public dinners, which are the distinguishing feature of English society, I exaggerate. They are sometimes admitted … to the galleries, from thence to contemplate the lords of creation consuming their prodigious repast.

Gallantry could surely go no further.

Looking from the gallant knights of the trencher to the pretty faces in the gallery, I have more than once exclaimed to myself: "Nobody can say that an Englishman's eyes are bigger than his stomach."

CHAPTER XVII.
FAITH AND REASON

The various religions in existence were founded by men of different nations to suit their own character.

The French, impressionable and fond of pompous pageants, adopted a mystical religion, which addresses itself to their senses; the English, cool and argumentative, preferred a religion which addresses itself to their reason. This is why churches in France savor of the theater, and churches in England savor of the lecture-room.

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Calvinism did not take root in France, and never will, because it is not amiable. Romanism will never flourish in England again, because it says: "Believe, without seeking to understand."

The Roman Catholic religion aims at gaining a hold over the heart, the Protestant religion aims at gaining a hold over the mind. The first attracts women by its poetry and mysticism and governs through them; the second attracts men by sometimes offering them food for their intellectual appetites.

Finally, the first is under the control of a foreign power, the second is national.

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We French people worship a tender, merciful, almost familiar, God, whom we are wont to call sweet Savior.

The English worship the God of the Jews, that God Who commanded His chosen people to exterminate their enemies, and spare neither man, woman, or child, and Whom they call awful God.

The manner in which we speak of the Divinity shocks the English; the manner in which the English worship Him leaves us cold and indifferent.

To the Frenchmen who say that religion is incompatible with liberty, I would simply reply: England and America are the freest nations in the world, and at the same time the most religious – I mean the most church-going.

To the English who say that there is no religion in France, I would reply: Our churches are not, like yours, full only from eleven to half-past twelve; they are thronged from six o'clock in the morning to one in the afternoon by a crowd whose fervor is second to that of no other church-goers, and this French piety is all the more admirable because, in our country, religion is not an indispensable garment, as it is in England.

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It would be as imprudent to judge the religion of the English from the French point of view, as it would be to judge the religion of the French from the English point of view. This being granted, something more is requisite, if we would judge fairly, and that is to start with the principle that all convictions that are dictated by conscience are worthy of respect.

But such is not the usual manner of setting about it. To call one's neighbors "idolaters," and hear one's self called "marchand de Bible" in return, is certainly much more lively.

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The English have given the name of Mariolatry to the homage paid to the Mother of Christ, and it is a deep-rooted belief in England that the French pay to Mary a worship equal to that which they pay to God.

Like ourselves, they too often judge by appearances.

The divine honors paid to the Virgin Mary have nothing to do with adoration; the prayers addressed to her are for intercession. It is a poetical homage rendered chiefly by women, who would fain have the holiest of women plead with a beloved son on their behalf. It is to her that the young girl turns who has just engaged her heart; it is to her that the young mother prays as she bends over the cradle of her child.

"Horrible!" cry the Protestants, "as if God were not just, as if He wanted to be told what He should do!"

But since you pray to Him yourselves, it is clear that you think it advisable to remind Him sometimes of your needs.

Then the Frenchman (excuse a comparison which, to my mind, appears to be strikingly true), the Frenchman, I say, who has the love and respect for his mother inborn in him, cannot help believing that God could not find it in His heart to refuse him anything, if Mary, His mother, would only undertake to intercede on his behalf.

The homage paid to the Virgin is nothing short of a worship to Purity, and the most ignorant Irish peasant girl has the conscience of her value when she feels she can kneel down before the white-robed statue. The influence of this worship on morality is enormous.

Take figures.

In Scotland, the proportion of illegitimate children is 16 per cent. In Protestant Ireland (County of Antrim, etc.) it is 7 per cent. In the poorest parts of Roman Catholic Ireland, the proportion is only ½ per cent.

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A religion is materialized that is practiced in temples adorned with statues and pictures, images of the dwellers in the realms of the blest. The uncultured mortal does not know what abstraction is. He believes in what he sees. When our peasant folk think of God, they picture Him to themselves as an august personage in a blue robe with flowing sleeves, who keeps the accounts of our good and bad actions and receives in private audience every morning certain saints, dressed in various colors (St. Peter invariably in bottle-green), who come to talk of their protégés, and recommend them to His mercy.

This materialism of the other world helps the ignorant to understand, and explains why the poor crowd our churches, in the provinces at all events. I say in the provinces especially, for it would be as wrong to judge France by Paris, as it would be to judge England by Regent Street and the Haymarket. This is a remark that I should like to repeat at every page.

"What is it that these English people worship?" is the question invariably asked by the French who visit English churches and chapels. The fact is, there is nothing to be seen there but whitewashed walls, benches, an organ, and an enormous Bible. Tell them that, in the eyes of the English, a crucifix is a profane object, that would be looked upon with as much horror as a statue of Vishnu, and they will have their doubts whether the name of Christian really ought to be applied to an English person.

In religion, everything is spiritualized in England and America. A crucifix recalls the fact that Christ became man.

The English will have neither crucifix, statue, nor picture in their churches, because they adhere to the Bible, and there they find, among the commandments of God, given on Mount Sinai:

"Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them."

The Roman Catholic Church has suppressed this commandment. It is not for me to criticise her; but as she has adopted a certain number of commandments, which she has even translated into verse in order to fix them more easily in the minds of the faithful, she would have perhaps done better to adopt them all. At any rate she has done wisely in interdicting discussion among her followers, and in telling them:

Ce que je dis tu croiras

Sans raisonner auparavant.

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The Protestant religion is more practical and better adapted to modern life than the Catholic one; but if the Protestant faith may help you to live, I believe the Catholic faith may better help you to die.

Whereas the materialization practiced by the Roman Church attracts the lower classes, the spiritualization of the Anglican Church tends to estrange them. The great unwashed of England would not understand the service of the Anglican Church. This is partly why cornets and drums are being resorted to, to draw them out of their slums.

Everyone takes his religion where he finds it.

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Does not the frequentation of French cemeteries show how attached we are to the body? Does not the solitude of English cemeteries show how little our neighbors share this feeling?

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The Catholic is no theologian. He does not discuss the sermons that are preached to him; he may criticise the language of the preacher, but dogma is not in his line. All that is spoken from the pulpit is gospel to him.

The Protestant is essentially a theologian. He sifts most carefully all that he hears in church. He is not of opinion that man was made for religion, but that religion was made for man. I have seen more than one storm in a teacup aroused, in little country towns, by a certain sermon that had appeared to the congregation to be unorthodox. The local newspapers would be full of letters containing the bitterest and most violent recriminations. The clergyman, attacked like a mere politician who had changed his colors, would defend himself by writing letter after letter to the paper. Bible in hand, he refuted the arguments of his adversaries, who were his own flock, be it understood.

No demi-gods in England; everyone has to pass through the Caudine Forks of criticism.

A young country curate, finding that his tradesmen's bills were taking larger proportions than his modest income could stand, resolved one day to thunder from the pulpit against the thirst for riches.

He prepared his thunderbolts.

Never did Horace or Bourdaloue utter such anathemas against the vices of the day.

"My dear brethren," he cried, "is it possible that you can thus place the love of filthy lucre above the love of virtue?"

And, after a few generalities, he came straight to the point; he accused the tradesmen of making too large profits, and of caring more for the things of this world than for the things of the next.

A few days later, it being the 5th of November, the curate was burnt in effigy.

His parishioners having rendered his life not worth living in the pretty little town of X – , the young reverend gentleman lost no time in packing up his traps and quitting the neighborhood, with the firm resolution never to preach any more sermons ad hominem.

The Anglican, or State Church of England is a Tory institution, that is to say, an eminently Conservative one. It is also a great school of discipline for the people. As an Englishman of much good sense said to me one day, the clergyman of a small town advantageously replaces half a dozen policemen.

The Anglican Church is the Church of English good society.

In my quality of Frenchman, I confess to having a partiality for this church, and of dreading the time when she will be separated from the state.

This is why.

If we have many sympathizers in England, they must not be looked for, as a rule, among the bigots of all the little conventicles, who vie with one another in presenting the most striking appearance of virtue and piety.

By these pretentious, narrow-minded folk, the French are more or less looked upon as children of the Evil One. The intelligent Englishmen of good society, who know and often admire us, generally belong to the Anglican Church, which takes care of their future "by special appointment," and allows them to relax a little from their natural austerity.

Nature has made the Englishman a Puritan. Churchman or not, stir him up, and it is the Puritan which rises to the surface. The day on which the Church of England is disestablished, England will be all Puritan.