French ideas of England.—Making love.—Precipitate retreat of a young Frenchman.—Different methods of arranging Marriages.—English Divorce.—English Restaurans.

It now and then happens, by a lucky chance, that one finds oneself full gallop in a conversation the most perfectly unreserved, without having had the slightest idea or intention, when it began, of either giving or receiving confidence.

This occurred to me a few days ago, while making a morning visit to a lady whom I had never seen but twice before, and then had not exchanged a dozen words with her. But, upon this occasion, we found ourselves very nearly tÊte-À-tÊte, and got, I know not how, into a most unrestrained discussion upon the peculiarities of our respective countries.

Madame B*** has never been in England, but she assured me that her curiosity to visit our country is quite as strong as the passion for investigation which drew Robinson Crusoe from his home to visit the...."

"Savages," said I, finishing the sentence for her.

"No! no! no!... To visit all that is most curious in the world."

This phrase, "most curious," seemed to me of doubtful meaning, and so I told her; asking whether it referred to the museums, or the natives.

She seemed doubtful for a moment whether she should be frank or otherwise; and then, with so pretty and playful a manner as must, I think, have disarmed the angry nationality of the most thin-skinned patriot alive, she answered—

"Well then—the natives."

"But we take such good care," I replied, "that you should not want specimens of the race to examine and make experiments upon, that it would hardly be worth your while to cross the Channel for the sake of seeing the natives. We import ourselves in such prodigious quantities, that I can hardly conceive you should have any curiosity left about us."

"On the contrary," she replied, "my curiosity is only the more piquÉe: I have seen so many delightful English persons here, that I die to see them at home, in the midst of all those singular customs, which they cannot bring with them, and which we only know by the imperfect accounts of travellers."

This sounded, I thought, very much as if she were talking of the good people of Mongo Creek, or Karakoo Bay; but being at least as curious to know what her notions were concerning the English in their remote homes, and in the midst of all their "singular customs," as she could be to become better acquainted with them, I did my best to make her tell me all she had heard about us.

"I will tell you," she said, "what I want to see beyond everything else: I want to see the mode of making love tout-À-fait À l'Anglaise. You know that you are all so polite as to put on our fashions here in every respect; but a cousin of mine, who was some years ago attached to our Embassy at London, has described the style of managing love affairs as so ... so romantic, that it perfectly enchanted me, and I would give the world to see how it was done (comment cela se fait)."

"Pray tell me how he described it," said I, "and I promise faithfully to tell you if the picture be correct."

"Oh, that is so kind!... Well then," she continued, colouring a little, from the idea, as I suppose, that she was going to say something terribly atrocious, "I will tell you exactly what happened to him. He had a letter of introduction to a gentleman of great estate—a member of the chamber of your parliament, who was living with his family at his chateau in one of the provinces, where my cousin forwarded the letter to him. A most polite reply was immediately returned, containing a pressing invitation to my cousin to come to the chateau without delay, and pass a month with them for the hunting season. Nothing could be more agreeable than this invitation, for it offered the best possible opportunity of studying the manners of the country. Every one can cross from Calais to Dover, and spend half their year's income in walking or driving through the long wide streets of London for six weeks; but there are very few, you know, who obtain an entrÉe to the chateaux of the noblesse. In short, my cousin was enchanted, and set off immediately. He arrived just in time to arrange his toilet before dinner; and when he entered the salon, he was perfectly dazzled by the exceeding beauty of the three daughters of his host, who were all dÉcolletÉes, and full-dressed, he says, exactly as if they were going to some very elegant bal parÉ. There was no other company, and he felt a little startled at being received in such a ceremonious style.

The young ladies all performed on the piano-forte and harp, and my cousin, who is very musical, was in raptures. Had not his admiration been too equally drawn to each, he assures me that before the end of that evening he must inevitably have been the conquest of one. The next morning, the whole family met again at breakfast: the young ladies were as charming as ever, but still he felt in doubt as to which he admired most. Whilst he was exerting himself to be as agreeable as he could, and talking to them all with the timid respect with which demoiselles are always addressed by Frenchmen, the father of the family startled and certainly almost alarmed my cousin by suddenly saying,—"We cannot hunt to-day, mon ami, for I have business which will keep me at home; but you shall ride into the woods with Elizabeth: she will show you my pheasants. Get ready, Elizabeth, to attend Monsieur...!"

Madame B*** stopped short, and looked at me as if expecting that I should make some observation.

"Well?" said I.

"Well!" she repeated, laughing; "then you really find nothing extraordinary in this proceeding—nothing out of the common way?"

"In what respect?" said I: "what is it that you suppose was out of the common way?"

"That question," said she, clasping her hands in an ecstasy at having made the discovery—"That question puts me more au fait than anything else you could say to me. It is the strongest possible proof that what happened to my cousin was in truth nothing more than what is of every-day occurrence in England."

"What did happen to him?"

"Have I not told you?... The father of the young ladies whom he so greatly admired, selected one of them and desired my cousin to attend her on an excursion into the woods. My dear madame ... national manners vary so strangely.... I beseech you not to suppose that I imagine that everything may not be exceedingly well arranged notwithstanding. My cousin is a very distinguished young man—excellent character—good name—and will have his father's estate ... only the manner is so different...."

"Did your cousin accompany the young lady?" said I.

"No, he did not—he returned to London immediately."

This was said so gravely—so more than gravely—with an air of so much more meaning than she thought it civil to express, that my gravity and politeness gave way together, and I laughed most heartily.

My amiable companion, however, did not take it amiss—she only laughed with me; and when we had recovered our gravity, she said, "So you find my cousin very ridiculous for throwing up the party?—un peu timide, peut-Être?"

"Oh no!" I replied—"only a little hasty."

"Hasty!... Mais que voulez-vous? You do not seem to comprehend his embarrassment."

"Perhaps not fully; but I assure you his embarrassment would have ceased altogether, had he trusted himself with the young lady and her attendant groom: I doubt not that she would have led the way through one of our beautiful pheasant preserves, which are exceedingly well worth seeing; but most certainly she would have been greatly astonished, and much embarrassed in her turn, had your cousin taken it into his head to make love to her."

"You are in earnest?" said she, looking in my face with an air of great interest.

"Indeed I am," I replied; "I am very seriously in earnest; and though I know not the persons of whom we have been speaking, I can venture to assure you positively, that it was only because no gentleman so well recommended as your cousin could be suspected of abusing the confidence reposed in him, that this English father permitted him to accompany the young lady in her morning ride."

"C'est donc un trait sublime!" she exclaimed: "what noble confidence—what confiding honour! It is enough to remind one of the paladins of old."

"I suspect you are quizzing our confiding simplicity," said I; "but, at any rate, do not suspect me of quizzing you—for I have told you nothing more than a very simple and certain fact."

"I doubt it not the least in the world," she replied; "but you are indeed, as I observed at first, superiorly romantic." She appeared to meditate for a moment, and then added, "Mais dites moi un peu ... is not this a little inconsistent with the stories we read in the 'novels of fashionable life' respecting the manner in which husbands are acquired for the young ladies of England?... You refuse yourselves, you know, the privilege of disposing of your daughters in marriage according to the mutual interests of the parties; and therefore, as young ladies must be married, it follows that some other means must be resorted to by the parents. All Frenchmen know this, and they may perhaps for that reason be sometimes too easily induced to imagine that it is intended to lead them into marriage by captivating their senses. This is so natural an inference, that you really must forgive it."

"I forgive it perfectly," I replied; "but as we have agreed not to mystify each other, it would not be fair to leave you in the belief that it is the custom, in order to 'acquire' husbands for the young ladies, that they should be sent on love-making expeditions into the woods with the premier venu. But what you have said enables me to understand a passage which I was reading the other day in a French story, and which puzzled me most exceedingly. It was on the subject of a young girl who had been forsaken by her lover; and some one, reproaching him for his conduct, uses, I think, these words: 'AprÈs l'avoir compromise autant qu'il est possible de compromettre une jeune miss—ce qui n'est pas une chose absolument facile dans la bienheureuse Albion....' This puzzled me more than I can express; because the fact is, that we consider the compromising the reputation of a young lady as so tremendous a thing, that excepting in novels, where neither national manners nor natural probabilities are permitted to check the necessary accumulation of misery on the head of a heroine, it NEVER occurs; and this, not because nothing can compromise her, but because nothing that can compromise her is ever permitted, or, I might almost say, ever attempted. Among the lower orders, indeed, stories of seduction are but too frequent; but our present examination of national manners refers only to the middle and higher classes of society."

Madame B*** listened to me with the most earnest attention; and after I had ceased speaking, she remained silent, as if meditating on what she had heard. At length she said, in a tone of much more seriousness than she had yet used,—"I am quite sure that every word you say is parfaitement exact—your manner persuades me that you are speaking neither with exaggeration nor in jest: cependant ... I cannot conceal from you my astonishment at your statement. The received opinion among us is, that private and concealed infidelities among married women are probably less frequent in England than in France—because it seems to be essentially dans vos moeurs de faire un grand scandale whenever such a circumstance occurs; and this, with the penalties annexed to it, undoubtedly acts as a prevention. But, on the other hand, it is universally considered as a fact, that you are as lenient to the indiscretions of unmarried ladies, as severe to those of the married ones. Tell me—is there not some truth in this idea?"

"Not the least in the world, I do assure you. On the contrary, I am persuaded that in no country is there any race of women from whom such undeviating purity and propriety of conduct is demanded as from the unmarried women of England. Slander cannot attach to them, because it is as well known as that a Jew is not qualified to sit in parliament, that a single woman suspected of indiscretion immediately dies a civil death—she sinks out of society, and is no more heard of; and it is therefore that I have ventured to say, that a compromised reputation among the unmarried ladies of England NEVER occurs."

"Nous nous sommes singuliÈrement trompÉs sur tout cela donc, nous autres," said Madame B***. "But the single ladies no longer young?" she continued;—"forgive me ... but is it really supposed that they pass their entire lives without any indiscretion at all?"

This question was asked in a tone of such utter incredulity as to the possibility of a reply in the affirmative, that I again lost my gravity, and laughed heartily; but, after a moment, I assured her very seriously that such was most undoubtedly the case.

The naÏve manner in which she exclaimed in reply, "Est-il possible!" might have made the fortune of a young actress. There was, however, no acting in the case; Madame B*** was most perfectly unaffected in her expression of surprise, and assured me that it would be shared by all Frenchwomen who should be so fortunate as to find occasion, like herself, to receive such information from indisputable authority. "Quant aux hommes," she added, laughing, "je doute fort si vous en trouverez de si croyans."

We pursued our conversation much farther; but were I to repeat the whole, you would only find it contained many repetitions of the same fact—namely, that a very strong persuasion exists in France, among those who are not personally well acquainted with English manners, that the mode in which marriages are arranged, rather by the young people themselves than by their relatives, produces an effect upon the conduct of our unmarried females which is not only as far as possible from the truth, but so preposterously so, as never to have entered into any English head to imagine.

So few opportunities for anything approaching to intimacy between French and English women arise, that it is not very easy for us to find out exactly what their real opinion is concerning us. Nothing in Madame B***'s manner could lead me to suspect that any feeling of reprobation or contempt mixed itself with her belief respecting the extraordinary license which she supposed was accorded to unmarried woman. Nothing could be more indulgent than her tone of commentary on our national peculiarities, as she called them. The only theme which elicited an expression of harshness from her was the manner in which divorces were obtained and paid for: "Se faire payer pour une aventure semblable! ... publier un scandale si ridicule, si offensant pour son amour-propre—si fortement contre les bonnes moeurs, pour en recevoir de l'argent, was," she said, "perfectly incomprehensible in a nation de si braves gens que les Anglais."

I did my best to defend our mode of proceeding in such cases upon the principles of justice and morality; but French prejudices on this point are too inveterate to be shaken by any eloquence of mine. We parted, however, the best friends in the world, and mutually grateful for the information we had received.

This conversation only furnished one, among several instances, in which I have been astonished to discover the many popular errors which are still current in France respecting England. Can we fairly doubt that, in many cases where we consider ourselves as perfectly well-informed, we may be quite as much in the dark respecting them? It is certain that the habit so general among us of flying over to Paris for a week or two every now and then, must have made a great number of individuals acquainted with the external aspect of France between Calais and Paris, and also with all the most conspicuous objects of the capital itself—its churches and its theatres, its little river and its great coffee-houses: but it is an extremely small proportion of these flying travellers who ever enter into any society beyond what they may encounter in public; and to all such, France can be very little better known than England is to those who content themselves with perusing the descriptions we give of ourselves in our novels and newspapers.

Of the small advance made towards obtaining information by such visits as these, I have had many opportunities of judging for myself, both among English and French, but never more satisfactorily than at a dinner-party at the house of an old widow lady, who certainly understands our language perfectly, and appears to me to read more English books, and to be more interested about their authors, than almost any one I ever met with. She has never crossed the Channel, however, and has rather an overweening degree of respect for such of her countrymen as have enjoyed the privilege of looking at us face to face on our own soil.

The day I dined with her, one of these travelled gentlemen was led up and presented to me as a person well acquainted with my country. His name was placed on the cover next to the one destined for me at table, and it was evidently intended that we should derive our principal amusement from the conversation of each other. As I never saw him before or since, as I never expect to see him again, and as I do not even remember his name, I think I am guilty of no breach of confidence by repeating to you a few of the ideas upon England which he had acquired on his travels.

His first remark after we were placed at table was,—"You do not, I think, use table-napkins in England;—do you not find them rather embarrassing?" The next was,—"I observed during my stay in England that it is not the custom to eat soup: I hope, however, that you do not find it disagreeable to your palate?"... "You have, I think, no national cuisine?" was the third observation; and upon this singularity in our manners he was eloquent. "Yet, after all," said he consolingly, "France is in fact the only country which has one: Spain is too oily—Italy too spicy. We have sent artists into Germany; but this cannot be said to constitute une cuisine nationale. Pour dire vrai, however, the rosbif of England is hardly more scientific than the sun-dried meat of the Tartars. A Frenchman would be starved in England did he not light upon one of the imported artists,—and, happily for travellers, this is no longer difficult."

"Did you dine much in private society?" said I.

"No, I did not: my time was too constantly occupied to permit my doing so."

"We have some very good hotels, however, in London."

"But no tables d'hÔte!" he replied with a shrug. "I did very well, nevertheless; for I never permitted myself to venture anywhere for the purpose of dining excepting to your celebrated Leicester-square. It is the most fashionable part of London, I believe; or, at least, the only fashionable restaurans are to be found there."

I ventured very gently to hint that there were other parts of London more À-la-mode, and many hotels which had the reputation of a better cuisine than any which could be found in Leicester-square; but the observation appeared to displease the traveller, and the belle harmonie which it was intended should subsist between us was evidently shaken thereby, for I heard him say in a half-whisper to the person who sat on the other side of him, and who had been attentively listening to our discourse,—"Pas exact...."