485

A FISH OUT OF WATER.

MOST sincerely do we pity the adventurous Gaul who makes up his mind to a pleasure trip to our own little island, for his stay among us must be a pregnant source of misery to him. Everything is so utterly different to home; the people are so busy that they have no time for the most ordinary politeness; and, worst of all, the barbarians do not talk French, the civilised language par excellence, and with which your Frenchman expects to reach the confines of the globe. We know not whether it is that the French have no aptitude for learning languages, or whether their natural vanity forbids them such condescension, but the fact remains the same; you hardly ever find a linguist in France, that is to say possessed of the languages passing current on the Continent. We remember an amiable croupier at Baden, who, though he had resided in the town for twenty years, could not speak three words of German. would not take the trouble to learn, that was the plain truth. People must talk his language; it was an act of kindness on his part to give them opportunity for practising.

He

And, supposing the intelligent foreigner, desirous of purchasing some small article, rushes like a moth at a candle at the mendacious tablet of glass on which is painted "Ici on parle Français," how wofully is he undeceived! In his joy at being able to discourse once again in his beloved tongue, he pulls up the sluices of his eloquence and outpours a torrent of words, utterly perplexing to Sarah Jane, who, on the strength of three quarters at a Clapham school, has been appointed interpretergeneral to the establishment. The confusion soon grows worse confounded, and they gradually fall back on a language of signs, which more and more convinces the intelligent one that the English are des barbares. So he goes back moodily to Leicester-square, packs up his carpet-bag, and returns to his favourite estaminet, where he does his best to convert all his chums into Anglophobists, suffering the while from the frightful indigestion produced by hard beefsteaks and porter, which foreigners persist in devouring as the national dish, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause.

**

These remarks have been drawn from us by the perusal of a small volume by Jules Lecomte, in which he gives a ludicrous, though hardly exaggerated, account of the minor miseries he endured during a stay in England; and this portion of his volume we purpose to analyse, because it furnishes a fair notion of that side of the English character which strikes the foreigner most. But to show the impartiality of the man, we may first be permitted to quote an excerpt from the earlier portion of his

volume:

We continually ridicule the English and Germans for their pronunciation of French, or mistaking one word for another. Vaudevilles have been written about this, and the comic operas are sure to have some eccentric from across the Channel or the Rhine, constantly exclaiming, "Godam!" or "Der Teufel!"

*Voyages ça et là: Italie-Allemagne-Angleterre. Par Jules Lecomte. Paris: Librairie Nouvelle.

But are we so much more brilliant when we try to speak English or German? It is not presumable, and the caricatures we draw may be returned to us with even sharper sallies.

Landing from the Folkestone boat gave our author the first opportunity of comparing English and French; while the former quietly enjoyed their breakfast-for there was three hours' interval ere the train would start the latter were crushing bonnets and hats in their eagerness to be the first to have their trunks passed. The moral he draws from the different conduct of the English and French travellers is, that they both arrived in London precisely at the same moment-that is to say, "the calmness and moderation which the Englishman displays in all matters contributes to the strength and grandeur of the country, and allows him to build solidly and for the future, while our feverish ardour and impatient frivolity cause us to build on sand."

One of the first things M. Lecomte was recommended in London, so he says, was to doff his red ribbon, for such things are laughed at in England. This he ascribes to the old story of the fox and the grapes, and there is certainly a slight degree of truth in the following remarks:

While, throughout all Europe, merit and distinction are honoured by those external signs which recommend individuals to public consideration (I speak of the principle without taking into account exceptions), English poets, authors, artists, and savans obtain nothing from government, which, indeed, prohibits them from accepting foreign decorations; whilst among us a man admired for his labours, services, or discoveries, is decorated by his own government, and by friendly governments. Here any man who is not of noble birth very rarely obtains these aristocratic distinctions, save in the army or diplomacy. This inferior position must necessarily wound the self-esteem of men worthy to be thus visibly honoured, and who deny the value of what is not accessible to them.

Granted that these remarks are correct, it is a mistake to quote the Legion of Honour as an example. That is as common as the Crimean medal among us, and many holders of it decline to wear it on the same principle that a hero of the Redan does not like to place himself on an equality with a commissariat clerk. Besides, Englishmen are susceptible to a peculiar feeling, and officers who have medals and decorations by dozens will not wear them except on state occasions, through fear of being thought guilty of self-laudation. It was the same feeling which induced Humboldt to throw all his orders carelessly into a drawer; they could not increase his personal value, and he would not attract attention by wearing them. There is one thing, however, to be said in favour of orders: they are a marvellously cheap way of rewarding services, and are employed to a large extent by small German princes, with whom money is a consideration.

Poor M. Lecomte, we had hoped better things of you, but you, too, raise the old stupid cry about the weather in England. He visited our shores in the sunny month of June, and for twelve days it never left off raining; and when he visited Regent-street (which he calls the Rue de la Paix of London, and most unjustly so, for it is thrice as long and twice as handsome as that street, although the Duke of York's column may not be quite equal to that on the Place Vendôme), his already depressed spirits sank to zero at the sight of the lapidary's shop in the

Quadrant, where a monsieur in a black coat and white tie was carving the mortuary inscription of a general officer. So, as he could not go out, he decided on taking a tour round his apartments in Wimpole-street, for which he paid, by the way, two pounds a week, with extras for washing, boot-cleaning, fire, candles, lucifer-matches, and toothpick. How the ancient landlady, who, of course, had seen better days, must have picked the bones of the "furrin gent." But now for the journey, and, mind you, we reproduce it solely to describe the effect our London lodging-houses have on our brethren from across the water.

In the first place, he falls foul of the carpet, not as a carpet per se, but because covered with so many floorcloths, &c., to hide the envious rents that time had made. Then the paper did not suit him, for one of precisely the same pattern had annoyed his eyes for months in a shop on the Boulevard. Well, that, at any rate, is no fault of ours. A sympathising friend had made him a present of some sporting engravings, and these reclined gracefully on arm-chairs, for the landlady could not think of allowing any nails to be driven into her walls. As he laments, "for a Rubens or a Lawrence a nail must not be driven into a paper worth two shillings the piece." His attention was then attracted to a table covered with an immense blue-fringed cloth, which he reverently raised. Call that a table?-nonsense! it is an entresol. "If," he adds sagaciously, "this table become fossilised, it will bear to future ages a colossal idea of the furnishing race of our epoch: it is a very Pelion of a table." The sofa, situated along one side of the room, meets with no greater favour, for on lying down upon it our author was led to the irresistible conviction that the coals were kept under it. But the object that disturbed his mind most was a huge fortress of mahogany occupying one side of the room; the prospect from the top must have been magnificent. He had not the courage to ask what it was, but assumed it was intended to make up a spare bed for a visitor. From our knowledge of lodging-house furniture we may state that it must have been one of those antiquated sideboards which can only be found in such establishments.

Any person desirous of roasting an ox M. Lecomte bids welcome, for his fireplace was so enormous that he found it impossible to keep up a "little" fire, as desirable in the month of June. On the chimney-piece was a long, low glass, in which he could just manage to see his eyebrows, and that would be a mortal offence to a Frenchman, while on either side hung two bell-ropes, thick enough to hold a three-decker, and surmounted by a cockade large as the crown of a hat. "Such was the formidable furniture, in the midst of which a man looks like a Lilliputian." Of his bedroom our author gives no details, except that the bed was as narrow as a berth on board a steamer, and the mattress apparently stuffed with sea-biscuits, to render the similitude more perfect. Come, M. Lecomte, you have fairly taken your two pounds' worth out in abuse. But, not satisfied with this, our author falls foul of our language:

Everything in this country is bor: there is the horse-box, a clothes-box, a Christmas-box, box in the garden, a box at the Opera, a salt-box, box to a lock, box to a carriage, a pepper-box, a shooting-box, a box on the ear, a snuff-box, not forgetting boxer.

Allowed, M. Lecomte; but does it not strike you as equally absurd in your own language that you have only one word to express your feelings

VOL. XLVI.

2 K

towards a young lady and a leg of mutton? Here is another grand discovery: what is etiquette in England?

It is not etiquette to blow your nose, to spit, to sneeze. Is it etiquette to have a cold? It is not etiquette to speak loud even in parliament, to walk in the middle of the street, to run in order to escape a passing carriage. You ought sooner to be écrasé. It is not etiquette to seal a letter with a wafer, or to write without an envelope. It is not etiquette to have the slightest pattern on your waistcoat or your neckerchief in going to the Opera, to take soup twice, to bow to a lady first, to ride in an omnibus, to go to a party before ten or eleven, to a ball before midnight, or to drink beer at table without immediately returning the glass to the footman. It is not etiquette not to shave every day, to have an appetite, to ask a person of higher rank to "liquor," to be surprised because ladies leave the table with the dessert, to wear black in the morning or colours in the evening; speaking to a lady without adding her Christian name, addressing anybody without being introduced, under any pretext, rapping modestly at a door, having a spot of mud on your boots even in the worst weather, carrying halfpence in your pocket, wearing close-shaved hair, a white hat, a pockethandkerchief for a neckcloth, a decoration or two, braces, a large beard or even a small one,—all this is not at all etiquette.

We sadly fear that M. Lecomte has been meandering through the flowery pages of Ayoyos, or some other of those teachers of gentility who published their lucubrations from a penny upwards. But, after all, it is of no great consequence; we only quote the passage to show how a really intelligent man can allow himself to be fooled by his prejudices. One thing, we allow, is correct: it is not usual in any society above costermongers to wear a foulard round the neck, nor is it advisable, on being introduced to a lord, to ask him what he will take to drink. Just imagine the intelligent foreigner asked to dinner, and addressing the younger members of the family as Mees Sally, Mees Polly! Now we begin to see why those titles are so fashionable in French novels, when describing the manners and customs of the English. But here is a passage containing much sound sense, which we quote as an apology for the last absurdity:

What, above all, outrages English etiquette is, not to be rich, or not to appear so, or not to act as if you were so. Ruin yourself, make debts or dupes, no one concerns himself about that! but, above all, spend money. A stranger arrives: if it is learned that he is lodging in that Place de Leicester, where speculation has founded a small colony of hotels for the behoof of saving people, he is lost for a certain world. Never will a carriage or even a lord's card lose its way there. Only occupy, if you please, a bedroom, where you are not at home to anybody, but it must imperiously be in one of the squares adjoining the parks. I believe that the difference of impressions carried away from this country by the opulent man and the man of moderate means results from this respect the Englishman pays to wealth. Aristocratic traditions on one hand, the lively instincts of commerce and trade on the other-traditions and instincts which divide the nation-must necessarily inspire this contempt for poverty, and arouse sympathy solely for people assumed to be respectable, less through their merits and virtues than their opulence, or rather prodigality. Respectability is simply the transla tion of material advantages, and not the index of moral qualities.

In proof of this, our author mentions that Lucien Bonaparte came to England to live economically, but was compelled to ruin himself lest he might injure the memory of the Emperor. The Czar Nicholas, again, vexed at seeing his subjects embarrass themselves by residing in England,

resolved to deal a hard blow at the prejudice which demands that a man must be extravagant would he be honoured. He visited the curiosities of London in a hired cab; the surprise was great, but the lesson was not understood. All that the emperor gained by it was to be somewhat cavalierly received at some of the places he visited.

Equally just are the animadversions M. Lecomte makes on the mania among our lower classes of aping their betters by wearing their secondhand clothing. Nothing strikes the Englishman with greater surprise in Paris than the sumptuary laws that appear to be tacitly maintained there. You never saw a servant, for instance, wearing a bonnet in France; and even among the middling classes of the bourgeoisie the practice is not common-while here?—oh, ye gods!—we might certainly borrow some useful hints from across the water in this respect.

Of course, as it is a Frenchman who is writing, our English ladies demand considerable attention, and he enters into certain learned discussions about Balzac's ideal, la femme de trente ans, on either side the Channel, naturally in favour of his countrywomen. But that is no reason why he should write so rudely as follows about our jeunes filles, although he concedes to them the palm of beauty:

A young English girl occupies the room of five men in black coats, owing to the circumference of her crinoline. But how pretty they often are, and always so happy! Fair and blonde, they seem to regard everything through a rosy medium. Shakspeare and Byron have admirably depicted them with their Creole nonchalance, their brilliant, enamelled smile, their voices more musical even than their organisation, and their snowy shoulders, where the eye fears to see wings developed to bear them to seraphic spheres; but, by Falstaff, Byron and Shakspeare never mentioned their appetites! One day, at the Exhibition, I formed one of a group beneath the green oak-trees in the transept. We had just come from Turkey and India, superb countries, in which irresistible marvels had dazzled our sight. Nothing, it appears, provokes the appetite like admiration. A young miss declared that she required something to support her. We were near one of those gigantic counters, the owners of which made a large fortune by "supporting" the blonde ladies. I offered to accompany the pining insulaire, for English liberty perfectly authorises such behaviour, prohibited by our manners with respect to persons still free, and which we only deem proper when a lady no longer belongs to herself. We reached the counter. "What on earth," I said to myself, can this dainty bird find to nibble here ?" as I noticed the massive cakes, the plum-puddings, and all the ingots of lead cut in slices and built up in pyramids, the very sight of which produced an incipient attack of indigestion. Well, the bird nibbled six shillings' worth! I am still asking myself where she put it all. By her advice, and not to humiliate her, I tried to bite into a block brick, bristling with currants, a whole wall of which had disappeared before her assaults. At the third mouthful, I felt so full, that I asked mercy of myself, and not knowing what to do with the block, I adroitly conjured it into my pocket. As for the young, fair, and rosy miss, I took her back to her parents thus supported, and in a condition, I assure you, to wait for dinner.

Still, England is not all bad, M. Lecomte graciously concedes; and he expresses his surprise at seeing pine-apples for sale in the street at a shilling apiece. But he only mentions this, apparently, as an excuse to lug in the old story about the pine-apple Rachel hired from Chevet for one of her dinners, and the awful alarm she was in lest it should be cut. By the way, that must have been a very large dinner party; we have found