The young girl is the heroine of English society. Free and accessible, she is more attractive as a woman, but perhaps less tempting as a future wife, than the timid and sweet young French girl.

She walks out alone, travels alone, and gives you a shake of the hand that is enough to put your shoulder-blade out of joint.

Her favourite occupations are walking and riding, and the game of lawn-tennis, which develops her form and her taste for flirtation. She carries her head erect, her shoulders square, and, as you look at the pump-handle swing of her arms, you feel that if occasion required, she would be able to defend herself and give the man, who treated her with disrespect, a sound box on the ears. Her frank and fearless bearing is her surest protection: it is the bearing of confidence and security.

The young married woman is much more fascinating in France than in England.

The Frenchwoman gains her liberty when she marries, the Englishwoman loses hers. The latter becomes a minor for the rest of her days, from the moment she has pronounced the fatal I will. The former is, on the contrary, emancipated by these magic words.

If the Frenchwoman has her own way in the household, she has very often richly earned it. It is, unfortunately, not rare to see parents offer to their child, as a companion of her joys and sorrows, a man of forty, bald and unwieldy, who, after having run through health, fortune, and all the romance he ever had about him, is willing to bestow the rest upon her in exchange for her dot, her youth, her beauty, and her virtues. It is a fact, though a sad one, that the husband a French mother most ardently desires for her daughter, is a staid, serious man, a man of experience, a notary, for instance. The notary is quoted very high in the French matrimonial market.

It is a man of sound, ripe qualities, Madame, that you want for your daughter. Ripe! sleepy, you mean, no doubt. And your charming daughter, who has perhaps woven her little romance, built her bright castles in Spain, as she danced with some handsome young cavalier of twenty-five, accepts your choice without a murmur. He is still brisk, he is well preserved, you say to yourself: a quiet, steady man, who will have only my daughter’s happiness at heart. But, Madame, does it never occur to you that the idea of the fair young head of a girl of eighteen, pillowed beside that bald or grey one, is nothing short of revolting? When will you cease preaching to your daughters the theory that a husband is a stupid animal, created and sent into the world to buy dresses and diamonds, and that it is seldom he is in a position to acquit himself properly in this respect at the age of twenty-five? A husband of forty who places diamonds in his wife’s ears, that may be very nice; but a husband of twenty-five who lodges lovely kisses in his wife’s neck, that is much nicer still. Give your daughters liberty to make their own choice, as is done in England, and you will soon see the kind of article they prefer. Give your charming girls to fine young men who love them; and, hand in hand, they will bravely fight the battle of life, bring up numerous families of robust children to brighten your declining years, and will grow old together, always young and handsome in each other’s eyes, as on the day of their betrothal. In England, a woman marries whom she likes. This system is not without its drawbacks. Thus the sister of a well-known titled lady has become a simple baker’s wife; and not long ago, I read in the papers that a baronet’s daughter, who had married one of her father’s grooms, sought to be separated from her husband, because he did not exactly treat her with the kindness he had always shown to his master’s horses.

Every rule has its exception, every medal its reverse side; but this does not prove the rule to be a bad one, or the medal to be made of base alloy. The liberty and confidence accorded, in England, to youth and even to childhood, are much better calculated to instil into them the sentiments of independence, self-respect, and responsibility, than the system of watchfulness and mistrust, in which French children, whether at home or in school, are brought up. When I spoke of youth and childhood, I might have added that even the very babies have their liberty; for, in England, they are not swathed and transformed into little mummy-like bundles; their heads are left uncovered, their limbs unconfined, they can stretch and kick to their heart’s content. Up to four or five years of age, they wear no long stockings, but their little calves are allowed to grow brown and hardy with exposure to the summer’s sun and winter’s wind; yet, I am not aware that the English are less straight about the legs or more bald about the head, than the French, whom I would remind that Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote, “The countries in which the children are swathed, are the ones which swarm with hunchbacks, and cripples of every description.”

Air, air, more air! is the constant cry of our children.

English girls rarely marry before they are twenty-two or-three years old; many make very good marriages, when they are close upon thirty.

In this country, marriages are not knocked up in a few days, nor in a few months. A young man of about twenty will engage himself to a girl of eighteen, and the lovers remain thus engaged for two, three, and four years.

For the young girl, it is a delightful time. During her engagement, she enjoys almost all the pleasures of matrimony, knows none of its cares; moreover she is free. It is no wonder she often does her best to make the pleasure last as long as possible. She had rather murmur sweet nothings with her lover, than shut herself up with him in a semi-detached, and murmur against the price of coals and butter. The day she marries, she is said to be settled, that is, established, extinguished.

I do not wish to imply that, in an English household, the wife does not find happiness awaiting her; nothing is further from my meaning. On the contrary, I should say that she could enter upon her new life with more confidence than her French sister, because the responsibility she assumes is smaller, and because she has invariably been taught how to keep house.

In France, the wife is the confidante, and, I say it to her honour, the mistress of her husband. In England, she is only the mistress of the household, the housekeeper.

In France, it is generally the wife of a tradesman who has charge of his books and his cash-box, and never were either intrusted to better guardianship than that of the goddess of order and economy that men call la FranÇaise. If she happens to lose her husband, she is capable of carrying on the business without him, and I could name a great number of important houses of business that are managed by widows—the famous Bon MarchÉ among others. The emancipation of woman, in France, is proclaimed by the frequency of the inscription Mdlle. So-and-so, and Mdme. Vve. So-and-so, over the shop doors. It is independence.

In England, a wife knows nothing of her husband’s affairs—not more than a clerk knows of the affairs of his employer, and it would often be hard for her to say whether he is on the road to riches or to ruin. At the death of her husband, an Englishwoman, who has not enough to live on, becomes a governess, a lady companion, a housekeeper, or a nurse. It is servitude.

An Englishman gives his wife so much a month for the expenses of the house, and a certain sum for her dress: her wages. It is without much astonishment she learns one fine morning that her husband is about to take her to a sumptuous new home, or that circumstances, over which she has no control, make it expedient that the removal of their goods, by the back door, shall take place next evening: she follows the furniture.

The Bohemian temperament of the Englishman contrasts strangely with his habits of industry and his reserve: it is a curious blending of the ant and the grasshopper.

The Frenchman has but one aim, as he works: to put by some money that shall bring him in a little income, and allow him to retire from toil.

The Englishman spends as he goes. The workman and the peasant, though they earned two pounds a day, would be satisfied with the provision made for them by the parish, should they outlive their working days. The English house shows that its inmates take little thought for the morrow: few cupboards, no wine cellars. I speak of London houses, with rents rising to £100 a-year. The Englishman orders in a dozen of wine at a time, and keeps it in his sideboard. In France, the ordinary provincial house is a veritable ant’s store. Even the modest cobbler has a dark dry corner, where he can put his hand upon a dusty bottle of old Bordeaux the day that he has one of his family to nurse, or an old friend to feast. The cellar is to the Frenchman what the linen-press is to the Frenchwoman, a sanctuary.

I am constantly hearing on all sides complaints of the stagnation of business. The farmers make loud lamentations: the earth refuses to yield them her increase, and they can no longer make a living on British soil.

Here is a great social problem that I should not care to undertake to solve. However, from the few observations that I have made, it seems to me that many English farmers have not to seek very far to find the cause of their want of success.

The farmer’s wife of other days was a worthy unpretentious woman, who looked to everything connected with the farm, rose at five in the morning, superintended the servants, did her own dairy work, and did not even disdain to feed the pigs. The farmer’s wife of the present day is often a lady who, under pretext of not being able to pay frequent visits to her friends, keeps open house and does the honours of the farm with a grace and liberality worthy of the princely hospitality of an English country-seat. She rises at nine, or has her breakfast taken to her bedside; she has horses and carriages, ponies for the children, wagonettes for pleasure parties, all the accoutrements of an English nobleman’s house. Her time is passed in picnics, drives, visits, and receptions. She aims at keeping pace with the squire’s wife, but has this difficulty to contend with, that whereas the squire takes up his rents whether farming be paying or not, the farmer must pay them, let the year be a good or a bad one.

The tradesmen’s wives outshine the women of the upper classes in the luxury of their toilette. They are caricatures loaded with chains, necklets, lockets, long earrings and feathers, as many as they can carry. These ladies must be impatiently awaiting the day when liberty or fashion will allow them to wear two hats at once, and rings in their noses. These walking feather-brooms form a curious contrast with the pretty little Princesse bonnets and simple attire of the English ladies of good society.

My conscience almost reproaches me for having found fault with the kind of existence led by many farmers’ wives, for I think I may safely affirm that to their hospitality I owe the most delightful hours of jucunda oblivia vitÆ that I have ever passed in my life. O conscience!

Just as extensive and varied as are the possessions of John Bull, Esquire, just so restricted is the domain of his wife.

When she has given her husband her heart and its few little dependencies, her assets are reduced to the incontestable qualities with which nature, as a generous mother, has gifted her. It is true that since the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act, she has a right to possess property; but if she sets the least store by her peace of mind and the tranquillity of the household, she quickly gives up to her husband the rights which he considers as already his own in his quality of husband. You see, he takes a wife for better, for worse, and if he is no fool, he manages that it shall be for better. It is very simple.

The Englishman is an astute diplomatist; he knows how to rob the enemy of the sinew of war, and consequently of all liberty of action. He knows, too, how to make his wife understand in order that she may take great care of him, that his will is only to be made in her favour, if she has served him well.

A well-known American lady said not long ago, that of all the ways of earning a living, marriage was the hardest, most thankless, and least lucrative for a woman. In justice, I should add, however, that for one reason or another this lady had never tried it.

I know of an Englishman who, about fifty years ago succeeded in winning the hand of a rich girl, and supplanting a lover to whom she had previously plighted her troth. After having passed his life in reproaching his wife for her infidelity ... to the man she had jilted for him, this domestic tyrant vouchsafed to depart this life last year, and a few years of widowhood and peace seemed in store for his wife. But alas! when the will of this love of a husband was examined, it turned out that though there was no mistake about the widowhood, the peace was not so clear. He left everything to his son, that is to say, his own fortune and that of his wife which he had taken possession of, and was not even polite enough to restore to her. At the same time he charged his son to pay that lady £100 per annum, as long as she remained a widow: liberal treatment, was it not?... for a faithful old servant. As for the supposition that it could enter into the head of the good woman to marry again, it was a joke in very doubtful taste on the part of the worthy defunct. She is at present in her seventy-third year. Her son is fast ruining himself on the Stock Exchange and the turf, so that her pittance of £100 a year is not so safe as it might be. But, whatever may happen, there is no danger that the poor lady, urged by despair, will go and drown herself; she would be too much afraid of rejoining her husband.

If you would study John Bull as a will maker, open the Illustrated London News, which gives testamentary news every Friday. The dearly beloved wife—this is the formula—will often be the object of your lively compassion.

If one may trust epitaphs, there are widows who seem, however, far from having cause of complaint against their poor defuncts.

I read on a handsome monument in Kensal Green Cemetery:

“Here lies John Davies,
The friend of the friendless,
The most tender of husbands.”

And lower down, on the same stone:

“Here lies Thomas Millard,
The friend of the friendless,
and the
Tender husband of the Widow of John Davies
above mentioned.” I religiously pay a visit to Kensal Green Cemetery every year. I am still young, and I live in hopes of seeing the complete list of the tender husbands of this exemplary widow.

A French widow remains the head of the family: her authority is unquestioned.

On the death of her husband, the English widow becomes a dowager: she abdicates the little power she ever possessed in favour of her eldest son. She has rarely been initiated into the affairs of her husband, therefore it seems quite natural to her that her son, a man, should take the reins of government into his own hands.

The head master of a French lycÉe will tell you that the sons of widows are generally the most docile and hard-working pupils; the head master of an English public school will tell you that widows’ sons are generally lazy and wilful. An English banker will also tell you that there are two classes of clients with whom he does not care to have dealings: widows and clergymen. “They know nothing about business,” said the manager of one of the large London banks to me one day.

“I fancy you calumniate the clergymen,” said I.

I know a French widow who, a year before sending her son to school, set herself to work to learn Latin and Greek, that she might help him in his studies.

Having thus gained a year’s start of her son, she went with him till he reached the highest class. Every French reader will recognise this French Cornelia, when I say that, on the occasion of her son’s carrying off the first prize at the Grand Concours de la Sorbonne, she would not let him receive a wreath of laurels at the hands of the Prince Imperial who was presiding over the distribution of prizes.

I know an English widow who, upon my remarking to her that mothers in England seemed to have scarcely any authority over their sons, replied that it was quite natural it should be so; each sex had its rÔle in this world; men were made to command, and women to obey. Look here, upon this picture, and on this.

It is needless to say that when we affectionately caress our mothers, we appear highly ridiculous in the eyes of Englishmen. But so long as we love our mothers, tenderly as we do; so long as we make them our guides, confidants and consolers, we shall have no need to be jealous of the English.

The mother’s influence, so great in France, so insignificant in England, explains the difference in the men of the two countries. In the Frenchman, you find, mixed with his manly qualities, qualities and defects which are essentially feminine: quickness of perception, amiability, the love of the graceful rather than of the beautiful, a taste for causerie,[6] or even a little gossip occasionally; in the Englishman, the qualities and defects are not tempered by the art or the desire of pleasing; they have free play; whence inundations, avalanches of virtue or vice.

The Englishman is the worshipper of practical common sense, and if I had to give him a title, I should call him His Solidity Master John Bull.

The Englishman is modelled on his father; the Frenchman is modelled rather on his mother.

If I had to name the most eminently English quality, without hesitation I would name—hospitality.

And as it is difficult, when making observations on a foreign country, not to be led into comparisons, I will add, at the risk of being taxed with want of patriotism by those good French jingos who believe the English to be semi-barbarians living in a kind of eternal darkness—I will add, I say, that English hospitality is much more thoughtful and generous than French hospitality. The Frenchwoman is a human ant; she is no lender: she only half opens her door. The Englishwoman is like the grasshopper: she flings wide the doors of her hospitality.

Go and pay a call in a French provincial house ... if you should faint, your hostess will offer you a glass of eau sucrÉe; if she invites you to a dance, she will offer you a cake and a cup of chocolate. To be allowed a seat at her table, you must be one of her own: her hospitality does not extend beyond the family circle. She calls regularly on her friends, who religiously return her visits; but they are dry, state calls; and arrived home, each one shuts herself in, and double locks her door.

No one, who has lived long in the French provinces, can wonder at the home life being a closed letter for foreigners. The absurdities, retailed about us in books which pretend to describe our manners, prove it abundantly.

English provincial life is much more intellectual and gay; people are more sociable, and intercourse is freer. The young people of the well-to-do classes belong to lawn-tennis and other athletic clubs, and are constantly meeting together for recreation in the environs of the town. These daily meetings are the occasion of frequent pleasure parties and picnics. People dine, take tea or supper, at each others’ houses. The inhabitants of a little English town always seemed to me like but one family. And the impromptu dances, the musical evenings, the pleasant meetings of all kinds! Not a week passes without some pretext arising for a sociable gathering. I know many a little town in which, all through the winter, the inhabitants meet together in the church schoolroom every Saturday. Some sing, others make music, good readers read extracts of some amusing book. The price of admission is one penny: the sum thus gathered pays for lighting and warming the room; if there is any surplus, it is given to the poor. These penny-readings are always well patronised.

This is a critical study which takes very much the form of a panegyric, will perhaps exclaim some of my compatriots, on reading these lines which have but one ambition, that of being faithful.

But I would remark to these compatriots, who, I must say, are not numerous, that there are two kinds of patriotism, blind patriotism and intelligent patriotism: that which will learn nothing from, nor praise anything in, others, and that which seeks edification and enlightenment, and knows how to recognise qualities of which no nation is wholly destitute.

It is to the latter patriotism that my remarks are addressed.