NATIONAL CREDULITY. N ATIONS are not unlike individuals in thinking the
worst of their unknown neighbours, and in either case it is not without a little shook of unpleasant surprise that the neighbour learns under what grievous suspicion be has been lying. The people of France are very near neighbours of ours ; so near, that as frequent visitors we have come to know them and their country fairly well, and it is difficult for us to realise how little that stay-at-home population has learnt of ourselves. No doubt, English readers will laugh at the account that the great French dramatic critic, M. Francisque Sarcey, has recently given to his countrymen of his impressions in the East End of London, but it is not unlikely that there may be just a little resentment mixed with their laughter. Here is a man, they will think, who really should be better informed, and yet he imagined that a great section of the capital of England was inhabited by savages. Well, let us at once acknowledge—and there is some consolation in the acknowledgment—that our neighbours are, at any rate, willing to learn better, and are generously frank and simple in the confession of their errors. An amusing instance of their simplicity was afforded the other day by the Figaro. It was not unnatural that the least respon- sible members of the French colony in Egypt should combine with those of the natives who were discontented with the English control, in inventing and disseminating all kinds of scandalous stories of misconduct and abuse of power by English officers. Such stories chimed in well with the French ill-humour, and the Figaro lent them all the aid of its influence and circulation. In an unlucky moment, in order to curse the children of England in Egypt more effectively, it sent forth a prophet, in the shape of its most trustworthy correspondent. The correspondent, who came to ban, remained to bless. He arrived in Egypt bitterly prejudiced against England, and eager to discover and reveal her offences ; he remained for some time prosecuting his in- quiry ; he departed convinced that the country which he was prepared to denounce as a cruel and selfish oppressor was nothing more or less than the most disinterested benefactor that had ever meddled in Egyptian affairs. All honour to the Figaro that it published Balaam's blessing, and to the French public that they acquiesced in its import. Still, it would have been better had they not been in such a hurry to think evil in the first place, or, at least, had they taken a little more pains to verify their first opinions. Surely M. &limey, for instance, might without any very laborious re- searches have acquired a more accurate knowledge of London than he seems to have possessed. We do not expect him to know London like his own pocket, as his countrymen would say ; but, seeing that he not unworthily represents the most cultivated and instructed society in Paris, it is rather a shock to learn that he puts his faith in fables, and fables, too, that are not flattering to our national pride.
From every other point of view, M. Sarcey's description of his East-End exploration is delightful. The great charm of all tales told by French travellers is a certain element of naivete. It is that element which has endeared to the British public a compatriot of M. Sarcey, who, under the name of "Max O'Rell," has published some singularly ingenuous accounts of our habits and customs. It is not easy to recog- nise ourselves in "Max O'Rell's " portraits, but it is im- possible not to recognise the good-will and simplicity of their author ; and it is for this reason, probably, that they have enjoyed no little popularity. M. Sarcey's tale of adven- ture is equally ingenuous ; he makes no effort to conceal his ignorance and credulity, or the naïve astonishment with which he witnesses the disappearance of one illusion after another. He and his companions knew all about Whitschapel and the East-End of London. "It was at Whitechapel that Jack the Ripper murdered his victims. There are hidden the most infamous lairs of robbery, the most dismal dens of misery and vice." When his companions first proposed a visit to the East-End, "as a very exciting curiosity," be says :—" I was unwilling, I confess ; I do not care to see ignoble sights or to breathe sickening smells. But they took me at my weak point. Are there any theatres P ' Theatres There are twopenny theatres with a public in rags which swarms, laughs, sings, and fights.'—' That's another case,' said I. This belongs to theatrical criticism.'" So the intrepid party of explorers, under the guardianship of a giant policeman, started upon their daring venture in theatrical criticism. The theatre, in the shape of an East-End music-hall, was a terrible disillusionment. In the first place, it was, so far from being a "twopenny theatre," that it charged a guinea- and-a-half for a box. Recovering from the blow, they took " eighteenpenny seats, right up in the gods," only to dis- cover that the audience were all dressed in their Sunday clothes, and that the whole affair "was just like the theatre of Belleville or Montmartre." A respectable, well-dressed, and orderly crowd was not at all what they had come to see, and they decided to continue their explorations in the street. "The weather outside was most pleasant. A gentle breeze blew down the street, which was wide and airy, the shops were open (it was a Saturday evening), and along the pavements a lively, noisy, laughing crowd moved, reminding us of the Grande Rue de Belleville on a fete-day. Was this Whitechapel P " Evidently it was, and there was nothing for it but to ask their guide to take them away straight to the scenes of murder, the infamous lairs, and the dismal dens which were the object of their excursion. To one of these lairs their guide leads them. "We stared. It was a street like any other one, very neat and clean. On both sides honest English houses, with a look of calm and virtue." Then to a casuals' refuge; it seemed a comfortable home, inhabited by poverty-stricken but entirely respectable people, who actually washed themselves when they entered. In the High Street of Whitechapel, the flush of life was prodigious. An immense crowd, remarkable for comely, well-dressed women and bright-looking children, filled its wide pavements. Every one seemed boisterously happy and contented, gas flared everywhere, and gaiety reigned supreme. M. Sarcey felt as if he were visiting Belleville on the Fourteenth of July. "We all laughed at one another for our gullibility. All those stories about Whitechapel are a vast hoax." One cannot help entertaining the suspicion that M. Sarcey was twice hoaxed, for an East-End theatre whieh charged a guinea-and-a-half for a box, and eighteenpence for a seat in the gallery, is rather a curiosity. Also, there is no doubt but that, if his guardian policeman had so willed, he might have been conducted into certain purlieus and by-ways which would have lent considerable weight to his preconceived ideas. However, that is not the question. The fact remains that M. Sarcey expected to discover in the East End of London a race of savages living in dismal dens and lairs. It is evident that he wished to make allowances and not to judge them by too high a standard, still he was convinced that our poorer districts are immeasurably below those of Belleville and Montmartre. And why P Simply because that is the popular tradition which obtains in Paris.
When we remember what came out of Belleville at the time of the Commune, we are not greatly flattered by M. Sarcey's comparison. However, he intended to make an amends honor- able, so we will not cavil about the terms. He is only another instance of French credulity. Of all nations, France is the most credulous, and it is difficult to reject altogether the natural explanation of their attitude. A great English writer once said that in Paris one might meet with four or five men who knew everything, and a large population that knew nothing at all. What a Frenchman does not know, he is always ready to condemn. Voltaire genially declared that Habbakuk was a coquin and capaille de tout, simply because he happened to be unacquainted with the prophet ; and, in the same spirit, his countrymen believe that we are scoundrels, and capable of any iniquity, because our ways are dark to them. We wonder how long it was before Frenchmen were quite disabused of the idea—if, indeed, they have yet relinquished it—that Englishmen 'sold their wives in Smithfield in order to buy beefsteaks for their bull-dogs. There is something so genial and pleasant about a Frenchman's conviction of our inferiority, that it is almost impossible to resent their own assumptions of superiority. Albion is a perfidious country; its sons are beef- fed and unrefined; its daughters are flat, both as to their figures and their feet, and their chief adornments consist in corkscrew curls and teeth which project like rakes ; London is a dismal city, inhabited by a perpetual fog and savages who murder each other in the street. What does it matter? We laugh, and we can afford to laugh, for, after all, our withers are unwrung, and it is the ludicrous side of the description which strikes us the most strongly. Fancy a well-known English man of letters paying a visit to Paris and writing to the Times afterwards in the same strain as M. Sarcey ! "It is incredible how we English people have been hoaxed. There are Frenchmen who hardly ever eat frogs. I have been to the theatre, and never blushed once ; to a restaurant, and was not blown up with dynamite. All through Belleville and Mont- martre have I passed peacefully, with never a barricade to block the way, or a Ravachol to molest me." His well- informed countrymen would raise a howl of indignation against his ignorance and his insular arrogance.
Previous page
