John Bull owes his success in this world—and perhaps in the next also—to his indifference towards woman, an indifference that he is fortunate enough to owe to his peculiar organisation and the uniform temperature of his blood, and which not only enables him to keep a cool head before the charms of the fair sex, but also to maintain them in a complete state of submission.

The submission of woman to man is the basis of every solid social system.

In John’s eyes, woman is almost a necessary evil; a wife a partner of the firm; love-making a little corvÉe more or less disagreeable. The Englishman is unquestionably well fitted for making colonies, but badly formed for making love: he has no abandon about him, cannot forget himself, and passes his life in standing sentinel at the door of his dignity. It requires more skill to make love than to lead armies, said Ninon de Lenclos, who was an authority.

Go to the theatre and you will hear the young lover declare himself to his lady-love in about the same tone as we should use at table in asking our neighbour, “May I trouble you for the mustard?”

This “I love you” may be sincere, and is, I doubt not; but it certainly can never have the power of our “Je t’aime.” The English language, in avoiding the second person singular, avoids familiarity. Here a man says you alike to his mistress and his bootmaker. Who among us does not still feel a thrill of emotion and pleasure as he thinks of the moment when, for the first time, he grew bold enough to change vous into toi? Where is the woman whose pulses did not quicken with love at the sound of those words, Si tu savais comme je t’aime, breathed low in her ear by her accepted lover. It is true that in our high society a man uses vous in speaking to his wife, but if he loves her, vous is only for the gallery: there are times when toi is indispensable.

After all, perhaps you sits better on an Englishman, with his respect for his wife: a respect of which she must be a little inclined to complain occasionally.

Only go and see John Bull’s house, and once more, let me repeat that by John Bull I always mean the middle-class Englishman, with an income of from two to five hundred a year. You will find it all very comfortable: drawing-room, dining-room, library, breakfast-room. But the bedroom!

Ah! the bedroom! You see at a glance that you are not in the temple of love, but in a refuge for sleep and repose.

Of all the rooms in an English house, the bedroom is the least attractive looking, the one that has had the least care and money spent upon it: it always looks to me like a servant’s room. No little cosy arm-chairs; no pretty furniture; no ornament. Few or no curtains.[1] You look in vain for a boudoir, that green-room of the little elf-god. No: six straight-backed fragile-looking cane chairs; an iron or brass bedstead; a dressing-table in front of the window; a chest of drawers; a washstand, and a sponge-bath.

Nothing more. What! my dear Mrs. Bull, not even a screen! Is John no longer a man in your eyes?

Better still. Would you believe that in very good houses, I have seen, and very plainly too ... yes, positively, I have seen it on the floor under the washstand?... I have often noticed by the side of the English bed, a little piece of furniture, resembling a music-box in shape, which I think does not add much poetical charm to the couch of Mr. and Mrs. John Bull.

Such is the temple in which the Englishman sacrifices to Venus.

You have probably heard it said, dear reader, that a stranger never penetrates into the bedroom in England. That is true, and may easily be understood. However, should you call on an Englishman and be persuaded to prolong your visit a little, after some time he will be sure to ask you if you would not like to go upstairs and wash your hands. It is the formula.

When I say that the bedroom is quite devoid of ornaments, I exaggerate a little: the walls are adorned with illuminated texts from the Bible, hung by means of ribbons. They are texts chosen for their suitableness. “Thou God seest me,” ... etc. The best was one that I saw thus posted up at the head of an English bed: “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation; for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

One more word upon the English bedroom.

In making a bed in England, every covering is not taken off separately, as it is in France, to be replaced carefully one after the other, without the slightest crumple. Here the whole is taken off, or rather turned back, over the foot of the bed, the feather bed is shaken, and the clothes returned to their place as they came.

Cold as an Englishwoman, has said Alfred de Musset. And as the illustrious poet was an authority on women, we still say in France: froide comme une Anglaise. Don’t believe a word of it; it is a calumny. You form your judgment from stiff collarettes that look as if they had never been crumpled. In my mind, one of the Englishman’s greatest faults is his not appreciating at their proper worth such sweet charming women, all the more attractive for their little air of propriety and prudishness.

The finest Stradivarius would give forth but sorry sounds in the hands of an ignoramus. How can you expect women to look very lively when they have to pass the first fifteen years of their married life enceintes or en couches, suckling all the little John Bulls destined one day to introduce cold beef and pickles in the four corners of the Globe?

When a Frenchwoman gets married, her good time begins; when an Englishwoman gets married, her good time is over. Within a year her case is settled: comme mars en carÊme. Thanks to the liberty that is allowed to young couples, there may be a little mistake in arithmetic made occasionally. As I do not wish to seem to calumniate for the pleasure of calumniating, I must hasten to add that it is a very rare thing to hear of an Englishman breaking faith where his attentions have been too successful.

French men and English women generally live very happily together in matrimony, often quite like lovers.

On the contrary, English men and French women seem to lead dull and wretched lives. Of course, I am speaking of those that I know; I do not wish to generalise, it would be absurd; and yet it seems to me one might say that there were never two beings who appeared to be less suited for each other; as well try to marry the day and the night.

Far be it from me to think of contesting the virtue of Englishwomen. Women are born virtuous all the world over: this is one of the firm convictions that I delight in holding. Is it simplicity or innocence on my part? I do not think so.

Only, I would remark that the virtue of an Englishwoman runs less risk in a country where young men are by temperament less enterprising, by education more reserved, and by natural awkwardness more shy with women than in Continental countries.

I do not say this in order to be critical, quite the contrary; and as, in making these observations, my intention is not either to please the French or to court the English, but simply to write conscientiously what I think and what I see, I will hasten to add, that I greatly prefer the young Englishman of twenty, shy, awkward, and childish as he may appear to our school heroes, with his cricket and his football, to the young Frenchman of the same age, who runs down women, and looks at them with a bold and patronising air, as he twirls his moustache.

The young English girl knows more of life than the young French girl; she may be as pure, but she is less innocent, less intact, and consequently knows better how to take care of herself. A young married woman will sometimes have a young sister not out of her teens, to stay with her, during her confinement. Such a thing would never be done in France. I do not say who is right; I merely draw attention to the facts.

Unless a married woman courts danger, she runs no risk, surrounded as she is by her children. All these things are so many safeguards for the Englishwoman of the middle classes. I say middle classes; for, if one may believe the reports of divorce cases published in the newspapers, it is evident that the English upper classes cannot cast the stone at their Continental neighbours.

As for the lower orders, I have resolved to speak of them as little as possible in this volume. The subject is as repulsive as it is stale.

Our worthy friend John Bull would doubtless like to have his virtue discoursed upon at length. He prides himself upon it not a little; he likes it talked about.

Yet one would be almost tempted to believe that he leaves all his superfluous stock of that commodity in the cloak-rooms at Dover and Folkestone, before embarking on board the boats of the South-Eastern Railway Company. Good heavens! But what an emancipated look he has in Paris! What a metamorphosis! How the corners of his mouth go up! How he throws his insular reserve overboard! Why, this can never be John! Somebody must have substituted an inferior article; he does not look half so good. And when he returns home to his island, what endless tales he has to tell about the immorality of Paris and Brussels! Shocking! Dreadful!

Funny constitution! When he has had his little round of a fortnight on the Continent, he seems to resume his quiet, godly habits for the rest of the year. How he must have improved each shining hour!

The virtue of an Englishman is bounded on the south by the English Channel; on the west by the Atlantic Ocean; on the east by the North Sea.

“Why do you employ so many Germans in your offices?” I asked one day of a great City man.

——“Because they speak several languages,” he replied.

——“But could you not find Englishmen who have lived abroad, that would do as well?”

——“I could find plenty, no doubt; but I should have no confidence in their steadiness. You must not lose sight of an Englishman.”

——“You don’t mean it!” I cried. “Is that the opinion you have of your countrymen?”

——“I don’t believe in the virtue of an Englishman on the Continent,” he replied seriously.

——“What! You would not trust a....”

——“I would trust nobody.”

——“Not even a bishop?”

——“Not even a bishop.”

“Things are dreadfully dear in France; one spends no end of money in Paris,” said another Briton to me one day.

——“Do you think so?” I replied. “When I am in Paris, and am staying at an hotel, I spend but about twenty-five francs a day, and I live like a prince.”

——“Frightfully dear! I tell you.”

——“And you talk of going again next month?”

——“Yes, but I shall have my wife with me.”

——“What! you will take your wife! You will spend double as much then....”

——“Not at all, I....”

My islander checked himself; he felt he had gone a little too far, and a deep blush spread over his countenance.

“Oh! I beg your pardon,” I cried; “of course you are quite right.... I was not thinking.”

Was I not a simpleton?