FRENCH MEN AND FRENCH MANNERS.* Mn. VANDA31 proceeds with his
task of holding up France as a country which is not successful in producing happy children, good soldiers, or painstaking citizens. His book is a collection of lively journalistic sketches, which, taken by themselves, would go far to prove this—so far as Paris is con- cerned—and Paris does intellectually govern France in a way in which London used not, intellectually, to govern England. Yet even in Paris there is much besides what is patent to the journalistic eye, and we could in London match most of his allegations against Paris ; some of the evils he describes are not peculiarly French.
Taken with the grain of salt with which Mr. Vandam com- plains that reviewers (we omit his adjective) will serve up his facts, any one interested in the two countries will find the volume lively reading, both as an appreciation of France and as something of a warning for England. We are so much used to running ourselves down and our neighbours up in a vague but not humble spirit, that it may be rather useful to consider ourselves definitely superior when we can. One present lately at a large private meeting of clergy told us that he was much struck with the way in which the younger
• French Men and French Manners, with an Introduction to Paris and its Inhabitants. By Albert D. Vandam, author of "An Englishman in Paris." Lto. London: Chapman and Hall. 1895.
men, in their modern dislike of bigotry against Rome, had to be reminded by elders, once supposed to be "Papists," that Englishmen had a few principles to hold on to, and that there were, after all, radical differences between themselves and those with whom they desired to seek reunion. So in times of peace it may be proper to rekindle our quondam hatred of the " Frenchies " as models for anything, and our English repugnance to the Pope, lest we forget it, as those brought up in times of peace will overlook the reasons of days of war. Mr. Vandam devotes his Introduction to the proving of this point. Paris governs France, but Paris is not really Parisian, —" the Parisians are the figurehead of the privateer manned by provincials." Paris—the Paris which governs—is a state of being, rather than a place containing persons. The influence of Paris, says Mr. Vandam, would lead one to infer t hat-
" The Parisian is, physically, a superiorly-endowed creature ; intellectually, a master-mind; morally, a man with an iron will either for good or evil, or for both. The fact is that, with few exceptions, he is the very reverse. If he be a Parisian of either the second or third generation—and there are probably not 350,000 all told, of them in Paris—both his physique and constitu- tion will be below the average physique and constitution of his provincial countrymen ; and if we bear in mind that in stature and stamina Frenchmen are generally inferior to other nations, we need not enlarge on that point."
He prefers, therefore, against decadent Paris and against degenerate France many charges, without, however, indicating what to some may seem to be their real causes. Indeed, in one instance he adverts rather sneeringly to an attempt to remedy an evil which in England has been felt to a very much less degree than in France,—the separation of the religious life of womanhood and the intellectual life of manhood from each others' provinces. This is partly eccle- siastical, but in the provinces it is also social and educa- tional; so M. Jules Ferry thought that France needed wider-minded women, and endeavoured to form them as England has grown her teachers. Little as we like a secular education for any one, a certain touch of the movement from which capable Englishwomen are constantly taking inspira- tion must have its effect on any nation. The narrowness of Frenchwomen is one cause of national decay. There is more of the influence of English ideas than is allowed for in Mr. Vandam's account of a French girl's life, and in the better social sets we do not think that cousins are, as he says, at all excluded from the home-circle of a girl. At the same time, it is, as yet, perfectly impossible for any young woman to enjoy the liberty in Paris which she does in England, though it is recognised that a well-born English girl, visiting a sister who has married a Frenchman, may do much which her brother-in-law's sister could not. It is impossible to blame either Frenchmen or Frenchwomen altogether for the present state of things, but it is a little beside the mark to sneer at an attempt to secure the education of women as not tending to increase the rate of marriages ;—whether these women marry or not, they level up the rest of their sex. Moreover, another blot on the social system of France is closely con- nected with the need for the general education of French- women. It is the fact that at this moment, whilst England, perhaps only too readily now, has mastered the idea that a gentleman may do anything for an honest livelihood, France provides no useful careers for well-bred boys "of parts," as people used to say. She never could colonise very well, and the present state of the political life, in the Army, the Press, and the law, is not inviting; whilst the barrier against a trades- man is greater than it was forty years ago in England, and the prejudice against a provincial life of useful occupations has never been so great in England in any class as it is still in France. We may, as English, congratulate ourselves on the facts, that the religious life of our nation is in the hands, after all, of free as well as of good men brought up in an all-round English education; that our Press is free and not corrupted by every form of advertisement, private and official; that casuistry is not the result of a compromise between a system theoretically tenacious against natural reason and one elastically accommo- dating, as tested by practical conduct ; and that we have the infinite grades of English society interlaced throughout the country and its Colonies. But of these blessings there are signs that the value is not always recognised.
Take a matter on which insular opinion is not yet formed, or is in a transition stage. It is possible that we may yet solve the Army problem—so far as our numbers permit it to be solved—by a peculiarly English movement as yet in its infancy, the establishment of cadet corps in our large towns, which may feed our volunteer system. Those who have tried to employ soldiers when discharged, even English soldiers, may think it well for our country's safety that we should get more men drilled, but do not always admire the soldier as he appears released from discipline, and left in a situation of trust. He has been smart in the Army, and might be smart again ; but, in the meanwhile, it is sometimes difficult to awake his mind to the consciousness that out of the Army he is not altogether off duty, and may not indulge in the relaxation which he has been accustomed to associate with being off duty. In France, where all are equally liable to serve, the problem of refitting older men into the civil system, whence they have been eradicated, is not so difficult as with us. But the school system and barrack system have drawbacks from which we are free. The chapters in Mr. Vandam's volume which deal with the life of the conscript are very brightly written, and may be read as showing how conscription is by no means an unmixed blessing to the country.
But if the conscription is not yet with us, and if the French school system never will be ours, with one point noted by Mr. Vandam we are by no means at present unconcerned in our larger towns. The concierge is already amongst us ! The present writer has been one of a Board which has to receive complaints about porters, and has been a private individual to whom the manufacture of porters out of old soldiers, bricklayers' assistants, and other miscellaneous human beings, was once a matter of most painful interest. The following and many more subjects of practical reflection exist, as yet, in- edited. Porters as a rule have no manners at all when they enter upon their career. Tenants, not only in artisan and trade flats, but in more expensive ones, frequently do not know how to organise life on the flat system, and, moreover, meet the porter's " no-manners " with the tenant's "no-conscience." From the landlord's point of view it is most difficult to supply with the porter's uniform a soul and body which will be abso- lutely civil, yet not too pliable, and never so obliging to the " tipping " tenant as to neglect the tenant unwise enough to suppose tips are not expected. Careful observation of many tenants of several blocks of flats leads us to the firm opinion that in six months a suitable man may learn to be a good porter. Bat, meanwhile, in England even his tyranny can never reach "a point which would make the freeborn Briton stand aghast." Nevertheless, remarks on porters will have a painful interest for those who deal with them as either landlord or tenant, and the public of this kind is fast increasing. There is also another subject of universal interest in Mr. Vandam's book, from which we only quote what has been described as a " cook-story : "—
" A friend of mine, the wife of an eminent professor of singing. —there is no need to withhold her name, it is Madame Giovanni Striglia—engaged a servant from the country, and two days after her arrival found her violently ringing the bell in the dining- room. 'What are you ringing for ? ' was the natural question.— ' I am ringing for Madame ; I want to speak to her,' was the answer. When Madame wants me, she rings the bell."
Probably not one word too much is said by Mr. Vandam as to the servant difficulty in Paris, and the two points he notes as uncomfortable will be endorsed by "flat-folk,"—the dis- agreeableness of the concentration of servants' gossip as freely and loudly exchanged in a little back square, and as necessarily overheard by the other inmates of the house. On some of the other questions raised, we do not care to enter here, and their discussion would seem to be a drawback in a book which otherwise might well interest all members of a country family who liked light journalistic gossip.
Candidly, we neither care for many of the subjects of the book, nor for the general treatment of them. But Mr. Vandam is a good journalist, and sketches the things he cares to observe in a way with which no fault could be found if he would but call his work, "Some French Men and some French Manners." There is nothing of praise or blame to be said about these occasional papers now reprinted in volume-form which has not been often said about An Eng-
lish7nan in Paris ; those who liked, and those who disliked, that work will be of the same opinion still. Moreover, both from what he says, and what he does not say, we come to the insular but comfortable conclusion that there are evils in Eng- land, but worse in France, and that there are many good things
in France, but, generally speaking, better things in England. French chivalry does not permit freedom of movement to self- respecting women. French manners are, on ordinary occasions, most detestable and rude in speech and effect. French clean- liness, French cookery, and the like subjects of literary and journalistic fiction, may easily now be matched in England ; and if ever we are told that Anglican Christianity cannot hold a people, we think that, fault for fault, it has a firmer foot- hold in England than Gallican Catholicism has in France. In writing these words, it may be that we have hit on the reason why Paris degenerates and England possibly still progresses.
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