A FRENCH VIEW OF ENGLISHWOMEN.*
WHAT Mr. Max O'Rell—a pseudonymous compound, by the way, that recalls the strange names in L'Homme qui Bit—con- ceives to be the proper mode of dealing with the subject of his new volume may be gathered from the Preface, which is a fair example of his manner :—" Vous aimez passionnement," he says, speaking to wives and mothers, " a frissonner au contact d'une sponge ruisselante, mais votre porte est fermee, et je n'ai rien vn. Ce n'est pas votre photographie en deshabille que je pnblie, c'est la litanie de vos qualites que je Amite Ouvrez done bravement, &c." First of all, let us see what are the limits this censor of Englishwomen has set to himself. He is careful to inform us that he has nothing to do with the "basses classes "—by which he means apparently the twenty or twenty-five millions who do not partake in the enjoy- ment of an income of some five or six hundred a year—" snjet," adds our bourgeois arbiter morum, " aussi repoussant que rebattn ;" but on the other hand, he is equally removed from concern for the aristocracy, whom, on the authority of Lady John Manners (whose acquaintances' ways do, indeed, seem to need mending), he characterises as a crowd of gluttonous cut- throats. Between these extremes he finds his goddesses in the shop- girls of Regent Street and Bond Street, while his chief hunting- grounds are the interiors of villadom maintained at an expenditure of some four to six hundred a year. Thus circumstanced, he has watched the processes of flirting, and what he calls sweet- hearting," and gathered together a mass of trivialities which even Eugene de Mireconrt would have disdained to sweep up. There is absolutely nothing new or distinctive in such of the facts as happen to be true, or in their presentment. The veriest common- places, they are such as might be picked-up in Paris or Vienna just as easily as in London. A few of the experiences thus gained are all we can find space for. On one occasion the author, lucky enough to be invited to a conversazione, " donnee par une des grandes societes savantes de Londres," amused himself for a quarter of an hour by watching the antics of a young lady "fort decolletee "—he evidently believes very low dresses to be still the fashion—who did all she could to disturb the equanimity of her male companion by a variety of shame- less manoeuvres. The supposed victim of these artifices moved quietly away—a natural proceeding, one would have imagined, anywhere. Not so Mr. O'Rell. " lin jeune Francais," he exclaims triumphantly, " aurait bientot mis fin it pareille comedie par quelque liberte." And perhaps the Alphonses of Paul de Kock-dom would have done so ; but the average French gentleman is, we hope, somewhat less likely to act the part of a blackguard than his compatriot insinu- ates. A first-class passenger, taking his cigar from his mouth on entering a station, is accused by the guard of smoking in a non-smoking carriage. The charge is denied, and the incident is cited to show what a set of hypocrites Englishmen are. Nearly a whole chapter is given up to a description of a woman's bedroom, into which, in that sphere of society which is happy enough to include our author, he is introduced, every time he pays a visit a little longer than usual, to "wash his hands." There his attention is mainly concentrated upon a detail in the furniture, which used to be, perhaps still is, a common model of toy, cake, or sweetmeat for French children. An English friend—a pretty intimate one, we should suppose, from the nature of the disclosure—has the incredible meanness to relate to him how he seduced a girl to force her parents to consent to her marrying him. He tries bard to catch husband and wife in the act of kissing ; but "these devils of insulars," as he prettily and wittily calls us, are too much for him, and he regrets that he cannot tell his "chore curieuse lectrice" anything about it. Mr. O'Rell could not confine himself to the limits originally imposed of watching young women and investigating ladies' bed- rooms. His observations extend, after a desultory fashion, over the whole of English society, and some very curious dis- coveries he makes. We can only cite the trouvaille to which he is helped by Lord Derby—which Lord Derby he does not say— namely, that when an Englishman seeks an appointment, the first care of the committee in whose hands the appointment is • .Loo Fi1ln do John Bull. Par 1'Auteur de "John Bull et son Ile." Paris : Palm= Levy. 1884.
vested, is to find out what sort of a woman his wife is. He has a good deal to say, too, about our social phrases, which ap- parently displease him as much as the supposed impassibility that replaces the vibrating passionateness of the brave young Frenchman who stares under ladies' bonnets and finds no one plucky enough to knock him down. In fact, he has hardly a good word for anybody or anything English ; and in his eyes John Bull is either a muff or a hypocrite, a bully or a coward, while his daughter is a forward minx, and his wife a household drudge and domestic tyrant. It is, however, only fair to admit that he does hit, in one instance, upon a real blot. He shows the superiority of the French phrase " serrer la main " to our "shake hands," which, no doubt, is a ridiculous one; and his deliverance on the matter resumes almost the whole value and interest of the book.
The book, indeed, is trivial stuff from beginning to end, and too often infected with that peculiar noisomeness of innuendo which the author's countrymen usually in some measure redeem by a wit and vivacity of which no trace is to be found in hie pages. The subjoined extract, a clumsy imitation of Gustave Droz, gives a fair notion of the style and spirit of this production :-
" Tout est hors de prix en France' me disait un jour an
autre inanlaire [a previous one—' an prince de In finance'—bad just been confessing that none of his countrymen, pas tame nn eveque,' could be trusted abroad, so prone were they to vicious courses —these impassible English].—` Alois non, repris-je. Quand je vais a. Paris et qua je descends a 1'h6tel, je depense vingt-cinq franca par jour [the fortunate fellow] et je vie comme un prince.'—' Hors de prfx, vous die-je.'—' Et vous parlez d'y retourner le mois prochain.'—' C'est vrai, repondit-il, male j'emmenerai ma femme.'—` Comment roils depenserez deux fois plus alors.'—' Mais non, je '—Mon iusulaire s'arreM; it comprit avait events la meche, et it se prit rougir juequ'aux oreilles. .eth ! pardon, lui dis-e, en effet vous
avez raison je n'y etais pas.'—' Etaie.je asse7 nigaud !' "
The truth is that the French literature of this type has no respect whatever for women,—very little, indeed, for humanity.
It treats them as slaves, toys, appanages of men, things to be possessed and enjoyed, not to be cherished and honoured. Mr.
O'Rell complains that English women are " trop respectees," and is quite angry that they should be allowed to seek the higher education of Girton or Nnneham. The deference paid by most Englishmen to women is sneered away as a prudery born of frigidity or hypocrisy. No Frenchman can be persuaded that there can be any beauty in love. Hence the nauseous des- criptions of women one meets with in much of modern French fiction, to which branch of literature the present volume, perhaps, ought to be assigned,—coarse portraitures, (1 la Rubens, of the mere animal aspects of big-haunched, big-bosomed creatures, lacking every trace of the spiritual qualities of womanhood.
Finally, the sneering tone of Les Filles de John Boll is, from another point of view, simply typical of the herd of litterateurs of the Mirecourt and Laugel sort, who pander to the ignorance and prejudice of the obscurer portions of the French public by ridiculous diatribes against England.
Even in the higher ranks of literature one has known instances, especially of late, of this kind of perverseness. Parisian journal- ism has hardly yet recovered from its recent childish outburst of wrath over English greed, perfidy, hypocrisy, what not,—in reality over the success of a policy on the whole firm and non- meddlesome, and the justest and most generous in matters of commerce the world has ever known. No Englishman of any repute, we venture to say, could be found to put his name—or pseudonym—to a "Jacques Bonhomme's Girls" similar in tone and substance to the volume before us. He would, indeed, have no public ; for although we have a good opinion enough of our- selves, and are too often masterful is word and act, we do not hate and we do not despise, at all events, after the petty fashion of our neighbours ; our fault, in fact, is that we are too indifferent to the rest of the world, and hold on our way too independently of it.
We owe some apology to our readers for noticing a book of this character at all. Distinctive traits, good and bad, of English life may be picked up by the score in any twenty-four hours devoted to the task ; but Mr. O'Rell has given nothing but the meaner traits of an extremely shabby set of acquaint- ances, which only accidentally differ from what are commonly observable all the world over. But the book has passed through a score of editions in France—eight, it is said, before the book
appeared hdre—and is vigorously puffed in this country, where a translation has already appeared. Hence it seemed opportune to give some idea of its nature and contents.
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