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diff --git a/57786-0.txt b/57786-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f40521f --- /dev/null +++ b/57786-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2688 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57786 *** + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + https://archive.org/details/cu31924027049091 + + + + + +FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING + +by + +EDITH WHARTON + +Author of "The Reef," "Summer," "The Marne" and +"The House of Mirth" + + +[Illustration: PPpublisher's logo] + + + + + + +D. Appleton and Company +New York London +1919 + +Copyright, 1919, by +D. Appleton and Company + +Copyright, 1918, 1919, by +International Magazine Company + +Printed in the United States Of America + + + + +PREFACE + + +This book is essentially a desultory book, the result of intermittent +observation, and often, no doubt, of rash assumption. Having been +written in Paris, at odd moments, during the last two years of the war, +it could hardly be more than a series of disjointed notes; and the +excuse for its publication lies in the fact that the very conditions +which made more consecutive work impossible also gave unprecedented +opportunities for quick notation. + +The world since 1914 has been like a house on fire. All the lodgers are +on the stairs, in dishabille. Their doors are swinging wide, and one +gets glimpses of their furniture, revelations of their habits, and +whiffs of their cooking, that a life-time of ordinary intercourse would +not offer. Superficial differences vanish, and so (how much oftener) do +superficial resemblances; while deep unsuspected similarities and +disagreements, deep common attractions and repulsions, declare +themselves. It is of these fundamental substances that the new link +between France and America is made, and some reasons for the strength of +the link ought to be discoverable in the suddenly bared depths of the +French heart. + +There are two ways of judging a foreign people: at first sight, +impressionistically, in the manner of the passing traveller; or after +residence among them, "soberly, advisedly," and with all the vain +precautions enjoined in another grave contingency. + +Of the two ways, the first is, even in ordinary times, often the most +fruitful. The observer, if he has eyes and an imagination, will be +struck first by the superficial dissemblances, and they will give his +picture the sharp suggestiveness of a good caricature. If he settles +down among the objects of his study he will gradually become blunted to +these dissemblances, or, if he probes below the surface, he will find +them sprung from the same stem as many different-seeming characteristics +of his own people. A period of confusion must follow, in which he will +waver between contradictions, and his sharp outlines will become blurred +with what the painters call "repentances." + +From this twilight it is hardly possible for any foreigner's judgment to +emerge again into full illumination. Race-differences strike so deep +that when one has triumphantly pulled up a specimen for examination one +finds only the crown in one's hand, and the tough root still clenched in +some crevice of prehistory. And as to race-resemblances, they are so +often most misleading when they seem most instructive that any attempt +to catch the likeness of another people by painting ourselves is never +quite successful. Indeed, once the observer has gone beyond the happy +stage when surface-differences have all their edge, his only chance of +getting anywhere near the truth is to try to keep to the traveller's +way, and still see his subject in the light of contrasts. + +It is absurd for an Anglo-Saxon to say: "The Latin is this or that" +unless he makes the mental reservation, "or at least seems so to me"; +but if this mental reservation is always implied, if it serves always as +the background of the picture, the features portrayed may escape +caricature and yet bear some resemblance to the original. + +Lastly, the use of the labels "Anglo-Saxon" and "Latin," for purposes of +easy antithesis, must be defended and apologised for. + +Such use of the two terms is open to the easy derision of the scholar. +Yet they are too convenient as symbols to be abandoned, and are safe +enough if, for instance, they are used simply as a loose way of drawing +a line between the peoples who drink spirits and those who drink wine, +between those whose social polity dates from the Forum, and those who +still feel and legislate in terms of the primæval forest. + +This use of the terms is the more justifiable because one may safely +say that most things in a man's view of life depend on how many thousand +years ago his land was deforested. And when, as befell our forbears, men +whose blood is still full of murmurs of the Saxon Urwald and the forests +of Britain are plunged afresh into the wilderness of a new continent, it +is natural that in many respects they should be still farther removed +from those whose habits and opinions are threaded through and through +with Mediterranean culture and the civic discipline of Rome. + +One can imagine the first Frenchman born into the world looking about +him confidently, and saying: "Here I am; and now, how am I to make the +most of it?" + +The double sense of the fugacity of life, and of the many and durable +things that may be put into it, is manifest in every motion of the +French intelligence. Sooner than any other race the French have got rid +of bogies, have "cleared the mind of shams," and gone up to the Medusa +and the Sphinx with a cool eye and a penetrating question. + +It is an immense advantage to have the primæval forest as far behind one +as these clear-headed children of the Roman forum and the Greek +amphitheatre; and even if they have lost something of the sensation +"felt in the blood and felt along the heart" with which our obscurer +past enriches us, it is assuredly more useful for them to note the +deficiency than for us to criticise it. + +The French are the most human of the human race, the most completely +detached from the lingering spell of the ancient shadowy world in which +trees and animals talked to each other, and began the education of the +fumbling beast that was to deviate into Man. They have used their longer +experience and their keener senses for the joy and enlightenment of the +races still agrope for self-expression. The faults of France are the +faults inherent in an old and excessively self-contained civilisation; +her qualities are its qualities; and the most profitable way of trying +to interpret French ways and their meaning is to see how this long +inheritance may benefit a people which is still, intellectually and +artistically, in search of itself. + +HYÈRES, FEBRUARY, 1919. + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER PAGE + PREFACE v + + I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 3 + + II. REVERENCE 20 + +III. TASTE 39 + + IV. INTELLECTUAL HONESTY 57 + + V. CONTINUITY 76 + + VI. THE NEW FRENCHWOMAN 98 + +VII. IN CONCLUSION 122 + + + NOTE.--In the last two chapters of this book I have incorporated, + in a modified form, the principal passages of two articles + published by me respectively in _Scribner's Magazine_ and in the + _Ladies' Home Journal_, the former entitled "The French as seen by + an American" (now called "In Conclusion"), the other "The New + Frenchwoman." + + + + +FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING + + + + +I + +FIRST IMPRESSIONS + + +I + +Hasty generalisations are always tempting to travellers, and now and +then they strike out vivid truths that the observer loses sight of after +closer scrutiny. But nine times out of ten they hit wild. + +Some years before the war, a French journalist produced a "thoughtful +book" on the United States. Of course he laid great stress on our +universal hustle for the dollar. To do that is to follow the line of +least resistance in writing about America: you have only to copy what +all the other travellers have said. + +This particular author had the French gift of consecutive reasoning, and +had been trained in the school of Taine, which requires the historian to +illustrate each of his general conclusions by an impressive array of +specific instances. Therefore, when he had laid down the principle that +every American's ruling passion is money-making, he cast about for an +instance, and found a striking one. + +"So dominant," he suggested, "is this passion, that in cultivated and +intellectual Boston--the Athens of America--which possesses a beautiful +cemetery in its peaceful parklike suburbs, the millionaire money-makers, +unwilling to abandon the quarter in which their most active hours have +been spent, have created for themselves a burying-ground in the centre +of the business district, on which they can look down from their lofty +office windows till they are laid there to rest in the familiar noise +and bustle that they love." + +This literal example of the ruling passion strong in death seems to +establish once for all the good old truth that the American cares only +for money-making; and it was clever of the critic to find his instance +in Boston instead of Pittsburg or Chicago. But unfortunately the +cemetery for which the Boston millionaire is supposed to have abandoned +the green glades of Mount Auburn is the old pre-revolutionary grave-yard +of King's Chapel, in which no one has been buried since modern Boston +began to exist, and about which a new business district has grown up as +it has about similar carefully-guarded relics in all our expanding +cities, and in many European ones as well. + +It is probable that not a day passes in which the observant American new +to France does not reach conclusions as tempting, but as wide of the +mark. Even in peace times it was inevitable that such easy inferences +should be drawn; and now that every branch of civilian life in France is +more or less topsy-turvy, the temptation to generalise wrongly is one +that no intelligent observer can resist. + +It is indeed unfortunate that, at the very moment when it is most +needful for France and America to understand each other (on small +points, that is--we know they agree as to the big ones)--it is +unfortunate that at this moment France should be, in so many +superficial ways, unlike the normal peace-time France, and that those +who are seeing her for the first time in the hour of her trial and her +great glory are seeing her also in an hour of inevitable material +weakness and disorganisation. + +Even four years of victorious warfare would dislocate the machinery of +any great nation's life; and four years of desperate resistance to a foe +in possession of almost a tenth of the national territory, and that +tenth industrially the richest in the country, four such years represent +a strain so severe that one wonders to see the fields of France tilled, +the markets provided, and life in general going on as before. + +The fact that France is able to resist such a strain, and keep up such a +measure of normal activity, is one of the many reasons for admiring her; +but it must not make newcomers forget that even this brave appearance of +"business as usual" does not represent anything resembling the +peace-time France, with her magnificent faculties applied to the whole +varied business of living, instead of being centred on the job of +holding the long line from the Yser to Switzerland. + +In 1913 it would have been almost impossible to ask Americans to picture +our situation if Germany had invaded the United States, and had held a +tenth part of our most important territory for four years. In 1918 such +a suggestion seems thinkable enough, and one may even venture to point +out that an unmilitary nation like America, after four years under the +invader, might perhaps present a less prosperous appearance than France. +It is always a good thing to look at foreign affairs from the home +angle; and in such a case we certainly should not want the allied +peoples who might come to our aid to judge us by what they saw if +Germany held our Atlantic sea-board, with all its great cities, together +with, say, Pittsburg and Buffalo, and all our best manhood were in a +fighting line centred along the Ohio River. + +One of the cruellest things about a "people's war" is that it needs, +and takes, the best men from every trade, even those remotest from +fighting, because to do anything well brains are necessary, and a good +poet and a good plumber may conceivably make better fighters than +inferior representatives of arts less remote from war. Therefore, to +judge France fairly to-day, the newcomer must perpetually remind himself +that almost all that is best in France is in the trenches, and not in +the hotels, cafés and "movie-shows" he is likely to frequent. I have no +fear of what the American will think of the Frenchman after the two have +fraternized at the front. + + +II + +One hears a good deal in these days about "What America can teach +France;" though it is worth noting that the phrase recurs less often now +than it did a year ago. + +In any case, it would seem more useful to leave the French to discover +(as they are doing every day, with the frankest appreciation) what they +can learn from us, while we Americans apply ourselves to finding out +what they have to teach us. It is obvious that any two intelligent races +are bound to have a lot to learn from each other; and there could hardly +be a better opportunity for such an exchange of experience than now that +a great cause has drawn the hearts of our countries together while a +terrible emergency has broken down most of the surface barriers between +us. + +No doubt many American soldiers now in France felt this before they left +home. When a man who leaves his job and his family at the first call to +fight for an unknown people, because that people is defending the +principle of liberty in which all the great democratic nations believe, +he likes to think that the country he is fighting for comes up in every +respect to the ideal he has formed of it. And perhaps some of our men +were a little disappointed, and even discouraged, when they first came +in contact with the people whose sublime spirit they had been admiring +from a distance for three years. Some of them may even, in their first +moment of reaction, have said to themselves: "Well, after all, the +Germans we knew at home were easier people to get on with." + +The answer is not far to seek. For one thing, the critics in question +knew the Germans at home, _in our home_, where they had to talk our +language or not get on, where they had to be what we wanted them to +be--or get out. And, as we all know in America, no people on earth, when +they settle in a new country, are more eager than the Germans to adopt +its ways, and to be taken for native-born citizens. + +The Germans in Germany are very different; though, even there, they were +at great pains, before the war, not to let Americans find it out. The +French have never taken the trouble to disguise their Frenchness from +foreigners; but the Germans used to be very clever about dressing up +their statues of Bismarck as "Liberty Enlightening the World" when +democratic visitors were expected. An amusing instance of this kind of +camouflage, which was a regular function of their government, came +within my own experience in 1913. + +For the first time in many years I was in Germany that summer, and on +arriving in Berlin I was much struck by the wonderful look of municipal +order and prosperity which partly makes up for the horrors of its +architecture and sculpture. But what struck me still more was the +extraordinary politeness of all the people who are often rude in other +countries: post-office and railway officials, customs officers, +policemen, telephone-girls, and the other natural enemies of mankind. +And I was the more surprised because, in former days, I had so often +suffered from the senseless bullying of the old-fashioned German +employé, and because I had heard from Germans that state paternalism had +become greatly aggravated, and that, wherever one went, petty +regulations were enforced by inexorable officials. + +As it turned out, I found myself as free as air, and as obsequiously +treated as royalty, and I might have gone home thinking that the German +government was cruelly maligned by its subjects if I had not happened to +go one evening to the Opera. + +It was in summer, but there had been a cold rain-storm all day, and as +the Opera House was excessively chilly, and it was not a full-dress +occasion, but merely an out-of-season performance, with everybody +wearing ordinary street clothes, I decided to keep on the light silk +cloak I was wearing. But as I started for my seat I felt a tap on my +shoulder, and one of the polite officials requested me to take off my +cloak. + +"Thank you: but I prefer to keep it on." + +"You can't; it's forbidden. _Es ist verboten._" + +"Forbidden? Why, what do you mean?" + +"His Majesty the Emperor forbids any lady in the audience of the Royal +and Imperial Opera House to keep on her cloak." + +"But I've a cold, and the house is so chilly----" + +The polite official had grown suddenly stern and bullying. "Take off +your cloak," he ordered. + +"I won't," I said. + +We looked at each other hard for a minute--and I went in with my cloak +on. + +When I got back to the hotel, highly indignant, I met a German Princess, +a Serene Highness, one of the greatest ladies in Germany, a cousin of +his Imperial Majesty. + +I told her what had happened, and waited for an echo of my indignation. + +But none came. "Yes--I nearly always have an attack of neuralgia when I +go to the Opera," she said resignedly. + +"But do they make you take your cloak off?" + +"Of course. It's the Emperor's order." + +"Well--I kept mine on," I said. + +Her Serene Highness looked at me incredulously. Then she thought it +over and said: "Ah, well--you're an American, and American travellers +bring us so much money that the Emperor's orders are never to bully +them." + +What had puzzled me, by the way, when I looked about the crowded Opera +House, was that the Emperor should ever order the ladies of Berlin to +take their cloaks off at the Opera; but that is an affair between them +and their dressmaker. The interesting thing was that the German Princess +did not in the least resent being bullied herself, or having neuralgia +in consequence--but quite recognised that it was good business for her +country not to bully Americans. + +That little incident gave me a glimpse of what life in Germany must be +like if you are a German; and also of the essential difference between +the Germans and ourselves. + +The difference is this: The German does not care to be free as long as +he is well fed, well amused and making money. The Frenchman, like the +American, wants to be free first of all, and free anyhow--free even when +he might be better off, materially, if he lived under a benevolent +autocracy. The Frenchman and the American want to have a voice in +governing their country, and the German prefers to be governed by +professionals, as long as they make him comfortable and give him what he +wants. + +From the purely practical point of view this is not a bad plan, but it +breaks down as soon as a moral issue is involved. They say corporations +have no souls; neither have governments that are not answerable to a +free people for their actions. + + +III + +This anecdote may have seemed to take us a long way from France and +French ways; but it will help to show that, whereas the differences +between ourselves and the French are mostly on the surface, and our +feeling about the most important things is always the same, the +Germans, who seem less strange to many of us because we have been used +to them at home, differ from us totally in all of the important things. + +Unfortunately surface differences--as the word implies--are the ones +that strike the eye first. If beauty is only skin deep, so too are some +of the greatest obstacles between peoples who were made to understand +each other. French habits and manners have their roots in a civilisation +so profoundly unlike ours--so much older, richer, more elaborate and +firmly crystallised--that French customs necessarily differ from ours +more than do those of more primitive races; and we must dig down to the +deep faiths and principles from which every race draws its enduring life +to find how like in fundamental things are the two people whose +destinies have been so widely different. + +To help the American fresh from his own land to overcome these initial +difficulties, and to arrive at a quick comprehension of French +character, is one of the greatest services that Americans familiar with +France can render at this moment. The French cannot explain themselves +fully to foreigners, because they take for granted so many things that +are as unintelligible to us as, for instance, our eating corned-beef +hash for breakfast, or liking mustard with mutton, is to them. It takes +an outsider familiar with both races to explain away what may be called +the corned-beef-hash differences, and bring out the underlying +resemblances; and while actual contact in the trenches will in the long +run do this more surely than any amount of writing, it may nevertheless +be an advantage to the newcomer to arrive with a few first-aid hints in +his knapsack. + +The most interesting and profitable way of studying the characteristics +of a different race is to pick out, among them, those in which our own +national character is most lacking. It is sometimes agreeable, but +seldom useful, to do the reverse; that is, to single out the weak +points of the other race, and brag of our own advantages. This game, +moreover, besides being unprofitable, is also sometimes dangerous. +Before calling a certain trait a weakness, and our own opposite trait a +superiority, we must be sure, as critics say, that we "know the +context"; we must be sure that what appears a defect in the character of +another race will not prove to be a strength when better understood. + +Anyhow, it is safer as well as more interesting to choose the obviously +admirable characteristics first, and especially those which happen to be +more or less lacking in our own national make-up. + +This is what I propose to attempt in these articles; and I have singled +out, as typically "French" in the best sense of that many-sided term, +the qualities of _taste_, _reverence_, _continuity_, and _intellectual +honesty_. We are a new people, a pioneer people, a people destined by +fate to break up new continents and experiment in new social +conditions; and therefore it may be useful to see what part is played in +the life of a nation by some of the very qualities we have had the least +time to acquire. + + + + +II + +REVERENCE + + +I + +"Take care! Don't eat blackberries! Don't you know they'll give you the +fever?" + +Any American soldier who stops to fill his cap with the plump +blackberries loading the hedgerows of France is sure to receive this +warning from a passing peasant. + +Throughout the length and breadth of France, the most fruit-loving and +fruit-cultivating of countries, the same queer conviction prevails, and +year after year the great natural crop of blackberries, nowhere better +and more abundant, is abandoned to birds and insects because in some +remote and perhaps prehistoric past an ancient Gaul once decreed that +"blackberries give the fever." + +An hour away, across the Channel, fresh blackberries and blackberry-jam +form one of the staples of a great ally's diet; but the French have not +yet found out that millions of Englishmen have eaten blackberries for +generations without having "the fever." + +Even if they did find it out they would probably say: "The English are +different. Blackberries have always given _us_ the fever." Or the more +enlightened might ascribe it to the climate: "The air may be different +in England. Blackberries may not be unwholesome there, but here they are +poison." + +There is not the least foundation for the statement, and the few +enterprising French people who have boldly risked catching "the fever" +consume blackberries in France with as much enjoyment, and as little +harm, as their English neighbours. But one could no more buy a +blackberry in a French market than one could buy the fruit of the +nightshade; the one is considered hardly less deleterious than the +other. + +The prejudice is all the queerer because the thrifty, food-loving +French peasant has discovered the innocuousness of so many +dangerous-looking funguses that frighten the Anglo-Saxon by their close +resemblance to the poisonous members of the family. It takes a practised +eye to distinguish cèpes and morilles from the deadly toadstool; whereas +the blackberry resembles nothing in the world but its own luscious and +innocent self. Yet the blackberry has been condemned untried because of +some ancient taboo that the French peasant dares not disregard. + +Taboos of this sort are as frequent in France as the blackberries in the +hedges, and some of them interfere with the deepest instincts of the +race. + +Take, for instance, the question of dinner-giving. Dining is a solemn +rite to the French, because it offers the double opportunity of good +eating and good talk, the two forms of æsthetic enjoyment most generally +appreciated. Everything connected with dinner-giving has an almost +sacramental importance in France. The quality of the cooking comes +first; but, once this is assured, the hostess' chief concern is that the +quality of the talk shall match it. To attain this, the guests are as +carefully chosen as boxers for a championship, their number is strictly +limited, and care is taken not to invite two champions likely to talk +each other down. + +The French, being unable to live without good talk, are respectful of +all the small observances that facilitate it. Interruption is considered +the height of discourtesy; but so is any attempt, even on the part of +the best talkers, to hold the floor and prevent others from making +themselves heard. Share and share alike is the first rule of +conversational politeness, and if a talker is allowed to absorb the +general attention for more than a few minutes it is because his +conversation is known to be so good that the other guests have been +invited to listen to him. Even so, he must give them a chance now and +then, and it is they who must abstain from taking it, and must +repeatedly let him see that for once they are content to act as +audience. Moreover, even the privileged talker is not allowed to dwell +long on any one topic, however stimulating. The old lady who said to her +granddaughter: "My dear, you will soon learn that an hour is enough of +anything" would have had to reduce her time-limit to five minutes if she +had been formulating the rules of French conversation. + +In circles where interesting and entertaining men are habitually present +the women are not expected to talk much. They are not, of course, to sit +stupidly silent, responsiveness is their _rôle_, and they must know how +to guide the conversation by putting the right question or making the +right comment. But above all they are not to air their views in the +presence of men worth listening to. The French care passionately for +ideas, but they do not expect women to have them, and since they never +mistake erudition for intelligence (as we uneducated Anglo-Saxons +sometimes do) no woman can force her way into the talk by mere weight of +book-learning. She has no place there unless her ideas, and her way of +expressing them, put her on an equality with the men; and this seldom +happens. Women (if they only knew it!) are generally far more +intelligent listeners than talkers; and the rare quality of the +Frenchwoman's listening contributes not a little to the flashing play of +French talk. + +Here, then, is an almost religious ritual, planned with the sole purpose +of getting the best talk from the best talkers; but there are two +malicious little taboos that delight in upsetting all these +preparations. + +One of them seems incredibly childish. It is a rule of French society +that host and hostess shall sit exactly opposite each other. If the +number at table is uneven, then, instead of the guests being equally +spaced, they will be packed like sardines about one half the board, and +left on the other with echoing straits between them thrown. + +If the number is such that, normally seated, with men and women +alternating, a lady should find herself opposite the hostess, that +unthinkable sacrilege must also be avoided, and three women be placed +together on one side of the table, and three men on the other. This +means death to general conversation, for intelligent women will never +talk together when they can talk to men, or even listen to them; so that +the party, thus disarranged, resembles that depressing dish, a pudding +in which all the plums have run into one corner. + +The plums do not like it either. The scattered affinities grope for each +other and vainly seek to reconstitute a normal pudding. The attempt is +always a failure, and the French hostess knows it; yet many delightful +dinners are wrecked on the unrelenting taboo that obliges host and +hostess to sit exactly opposite each other. + +"Precedence" is another obstacle to the realisation of the perfect +dinner. Precedence in a republic--! It is acknowledged to be an absurd +anomaly except where official rank is concerned; and though its +defenders argue that it is a short-cut through many problems of vanity +and _amour-propre_ it might certainly be disregarded to the general +advantage whenever a few intelligent people have been brought together, +not to compare their titles but to forget them. + +But there it is. The French believe themselves to be the most democratic +people in the world--and they have some of the democratic instincts, +though not as many as they think. But an Academician must sit on his +hostess' right, unless there is a Duke or an Ambassador or a Bishop +present; and these rules, comic enough where peer meets prelate, become +more humorous (and also grow more strict) when applied to the +imperceptible differences between the lower degrees of the immense +professional and governmental hierarchy. + +But again--there it is. A hostess whose papa helped to blow up the +Tuileries or pull down the Vendôme column weighs the relative claims of +two Academicians (always a bad stumbling block) as carefully as a +duchess of the old régime, brought up to believe in the divine right of +Kings, scrutinises the genealogy of her guests before seating them. And +this strict observance of rules is not due to snobbishness; the French +are not a snobbish people. It is part of _les bienséances_, of the +always-have-beens; and there is a big bullying taboo in the way of +changing it. + +In England, where precedence has, at any rate, the support of a court, +where it is, so to speak, still a "going concern," and works +automatically, the hostess, if she is a woman of the world, casts it to +the winds on informal occasions; but in France there is no democratic +dinner-table over which it does not permanently hang its pall. + + +II + +It may seem curious to have chosen the instance of the blackberry as the +text of a homily on "Reverence." Why not have substituted as a title +"Prejudice"--or simply "Stupidity"? + +Well--"Prejudice" and "Reverence," oftener than one thinks, are +overlapping terms, and it seems fairer to choose the one of the two that +is not what the French call "péjorative." As for "Stupidity"--it must be +remembered that the French peasant thinks it incredibly stupid of us not +instantly to distinguish a mushroom from a toadstool, or any of the +intermediate forms of edible funguses from their death-dealing cousins! +Remember that we Americans deprive ourselves of many delicious dishes, +and occasionally hurry whole harmless families to the grave, through not +taking the trouble to examine and compare the small number of mushrooms +at our disposal; while the French avoid blackberries from a deep and +awesome conviction handed down from the night of history. + +There is the key to my apologue. The French fear of the blackberry is +not due to any lack of curiosity about its qualities, but to respect for +some ancient sanction which prevents those qualities from being +investigated. + +There is a reflex of negation, of rejection, at the very root of the +French character: an instinctive recoil from the new, the untasted, the +untested, like the retracting of an insect's feelers at contact with an +unfamiliar object; and no one can hope to understand the French without +bearing in mind that this unquestioning respect for rules of which the +meaning is forgotten acts as a perpetual necessary check to the +idol-breaking instinct of the freest minds in the world. + +It may sound like a poor paradox to say that the French are traditional +about small things because they are so free about big ones. But the +history of human societies seems to show that if they are to endure they +must unconsciously secrete the corrective of their own highest +qualities. + +"Reverence" may be the wasteful fear of an old taboo; but it is also +the sense of the preciousness of long accumulations of experience. The +quintessential is precious because whatever survives the close filtering +of time is likely to answer to some deep racial need, moral or æsthetic. +It is stupid to deprive one's self of blackberries for a reason one has +forgotten; but what should we say of a people who had torn down their +cathedrals when they ceased to feel the beauty of Gothic architecture, +as the French had ceased to feel it in the seventeenth century? + +The instinct to preserve that which has been slow and difficult in the +making, that into which the long associations of the past are woven, is +a more constant element of progress than the Huguenot's idol-breaking +hammer. + +Reverence and irreverence are both needed to help the world along, and +each is most needed where the other most naturally abounds. + +In this respect France and America are in the same case. America, +because of her origin, tends to irreverence, impatience, to all sorts of +rash and contemptuous short-cuts; France, for the same reason, to +routine, precedent, tradition, the beaten path. Therefore it ought to +help each nation to apply to herself the corrective of the other's +example; and America can profit more by seeking to find out why France +is reverent, and what she reveres, than by trying to inoculate her with +a flippant disregard of her own past. + +The first thing to do is to try to find out why a people, so free and +active of thought as the French, are so subject to traditions that have +lost their meaning. + +The fundamental cause is probably geographical. We Americans have +hitherto been geographically self-contained, and until this war did away +with distances we were free to try any social and political experiments +we pleased, without, at any rate, weakening ourselves in relation to our +neighbours. To keep _them_ off we did not even have to have an army! + +France, on the contrary, has had to fight for her existence ever since +she has had any. Of her, more than of any other great modern nation, it +may be said that from the start she has had, as Goethe puts it, to +"reconquer each day the liberty won the day before." + +Again and again, in the past, she has seen her territory invaded, her +monuments destroyed, her institutions shattered; the ground on which the +future of the world is now being fought for is literally the same as +that Catalaunian plain (the "Camp de Châlons") on which Attila tried to +strangle France over fourteen hundred years ago. "In the year 450 all +Gaul was filled with terror; for the dreaded Attila, with a host of +strange figures, Huns, Tartars, Teutons, head of an empire of true +barbarians, drew near her borders. Barbarism ... now threatened the +world. It had levied a shameful tribute on Constantinople; it now +threatened the farthest West. If Gaul fell, Spain would fall, and +Italy, and Rome; and Attila would reign supreme, with an empire of +desolation, over the whole world."[A] + +"The whole world" is a bigger place nowadays, and "farthest West" is at +the Golden Gate and not at the Pillars of Hercules; but otherwise might +we not be reading a leader in yesterday's paper? + +Try to picture life under such continual menace of death, and see how in +an industrious, intelligent and beauty-loving race it must inevitably +produce two strong passions: + +Pious love of every yard of the soil and every stone of the houses. + +Intense dread lest any internal innovations should weaken the social +structure and open a door to the enemy. + +There is nothing like a Revolution for making people conservative; that +is one of the reasons why, for instance, our Constitution, the child of +Revolution, is the most conservative in history. But, in other +respects, why should we Americans be conservative? To begin with, there +is not much as yet for us to "conserve" except a few root-principles of +conduct, social and political; and see how they spring up and dominate +every other interest in each national crisis! + +In France it is different. The French have nearly two thousand years of +history and art and industry and social and political life to +"conserve"; that is another of the reasons why their intense +intellectual curiosity, their perpetual desire for the new thing, is +counteracted by a clinging to rules and precedents that have often +become meaningless. + + +III + +Reverence is the life-belt of those whose home is on a raft, and +Americans have not pored over the map of France for the last four years +without discovering that she may fairly be called a raft. But +geographical necessity is far from being the only justification of +reverence. It is not chiefly because the new methods of warfare lay +America open to the same menace as continental Europe that it is good +for us to consider the meaning of this ancient principle of civilised +societies. + +We are growing up at last; and it is only in maturity that a man glances +back along the past, and sees the use of the constraints that irritated +his impatient youth. So with races and nations; and America has reached +the very moment in her development when she may best understand what has +kept older races and riper civilisations sound. + +Reverence is one of these preserving elements, and it is worth while to +study it in its action in French life. If geographical necessity is the +fundamental cause, another, almost as deep-seated, is to be found in the +instinct of every people to value and preserve what they have themselves +created and made beautiful. + +In Selden's "Table-talk" there is told the story of a certain carver of +idols. Being a pious man he had always worshipped his own idols till he +was suddenly called upon to make one in great haste, and, no other wood +being available, had to cut down the plum-tree in his own garden and +make the image out of that. + +He could not worship the plum-tree idol, because he knew too much about +the plum-tree. That, at least, is Selden's version; but how little +insight it shows into human processes! Of course, after a time, the +carver came to worship the plum-tree idol, and to worship it just +because he had grown the tree and carved the image, and it was therefore +doubly of his making. That is the very key to the secret of reverence; +the tenderness we feel for our own effort extending to respect for all +fine human effort. + +America is already showing this instinct in her eagerness to beautify +her towns, and to preserve her few pre-Revolutionary buildings--that +small fragment of her mighty European heritage. + +But there are whole stretches of this heritage that have been too long +allowed to run to waste: our language, our literature, and many other +things pertaining to the great undefinable domain of Taste. + +A man who owns a vast field does not care for that field half as much +when it is a waste as after he has sweated over its furrows and seen the +seeds spring. And when he has turned a bit of it into a useless bright +flower-garden he cares for that useless bit best of all. + +The deeper civilisation of a country may to a great extent be measured +by the care she gives to her flower-garden--the corner of her life where +the supposedly "useless" arts and graces flourish. In the cultivating of +that garden France has surpassed all modern nations; and one of the +greatest of America's present opportunities is to find out why. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[A] Kitchin: "History of France," vol. I. + + + + +III + +TASTE + + +I + +French taste? Why, of course--everybody knows all about that! It's the +way the women put on their hats, and the upholsterers drape their +curtains. + +Certainly--why not? + +The artistic integrity of the French has led them to feel from the +beginning that there is no difference in kind between the curve of a +woman's hat-brim and the curve of a Rodin marble, or between the droop +of an upholsterer's curtain and that of the branches along a great +avenue laid out by Le Nôtre. + +It was the Puritan races--every one of them non-creative in the plastic +arts--who decided that "Art" (that is, plastic art) was something apart +from life, as dangerous to it as Plato thought Poets in a Republic, and +to be tolerated only when it was so lofty, unapproachable and remote +from any appeal to average humanity that it bored people to death, and +they locked it up in Museums to get rid of it. + +But this article is headed "Taste," and taste, whatever it may be, is +not, after all, the same thing as art. No; it is not art--but it is the +atmosphere in which art lives, and outside of which it cannot live. It +is the regulating principle of all art, of the art of dress and of +manners, and of living in general, as well as of sculpture or music. It +is because the French have always been so innately sure of this, that, +without burdening themselves with formulas, they have instinctively +applied to living the same rules that they applied to artistic creation. + + +II + +I remember being told when I was a young girl: "If you want to interest +the person you are talking to, pitch your voice so that only that one +person will hear you." + +That small axiom, apart from its obvious application, contains nearly +all there is to say about Taste. + +That a thing should be in scale--should be proportioned to its +purpose--is one of the first requirements of beauty, in whatever order. +No shouting where an undertone will do; and no gigantic Statue of +Liberty in butter for a World's Fair, when the little Wingless Victory, +tying on her sandal on the Acropolis, holds the whole horizon in the +curve of her slim arm. + +The essence of taste is suitability. Divest the word of its prim and +priggish implications, and see how it expresses the mysterious demand of +eye and mind for symmetry, harmony and order. + +Suitability--fitness--is, and always has been, the very foundation of +French standards. Fitness is only a contraction of fittingness; and if +any of our American soldiers in France should pause to look up at the +narrow niches in the portal of a French cathedral, or at the group of +holy figures in the triangle or half-circle above, they are likely to be +struck first of all by the way in which the attitude of each figure or +group is adapted to the space it fills. + +If the figure is cramped and uncomfortable--if the saint or angel seems +to be in a straitjacket or a padded cell--then the sculptor has failed, +and taste is offended. It is essential that there should be perfect +harmony between the natural attitude of the figure and the space it +lives in--that a square saint should not be put in a round hole. Range +through plastic art, from Chaldæa to France, and you will see how this +principle of adaptation has always ruled composition. + + +III + +It is the sense of its universal applicability that makes taste so +living an influence in France. French people "have taste" as naturally +as they breathe: it is not regarded as an accomplishment, like playing +the flute. + +The universal existence of taste, and of the standard it creates--it +insists on--explains many of the things that strike Americans on first +arriving in France. + +It is the reason, for instance, why the French have beautiful stone +quays along the great rivers on which their cities are built, and why +noble monuments of architecture, and gardens and terraces, have been +built along these quays. The French have always felt and reverenced the +beauty of their rivers, and known the value, artistic and hygienic, of a +beautiful and well-kept river-front in the heart of a crowded city. + +When industrialism began its work of disfigurement in the great cities +of the world, long reaches of the Thames were seized upon by the +factory-builder, and London has only by a recent effort saved a short +stretch of her river front; even so, from the Embankment, whether at +Westminster or Chelsea, one looks across at ugliness, untidiness and +squalor. + +When industrialism came to the wise old Latin cities--Paris, Lyons, +Bordeaux, Florence--their river banks were already firmly and +beautifully built up, and the factory chimneys had to find a footing in +the outskirts. Any American with eyes to see, who compares the +architectural use to which Paris has put the Seine with the wasteful +degradation of the unrivalled twin river-fronts of New York, may draw +his own conclusions as to the sheer material advantage of taste in the +creation of a great city. + +Perhaps the most curious instance of taste-blindness in dealing with +such an opportunity is to be found in Boston, where Beacon Street calmly +turned its wealthy back to the bay, and fringed with clothes-lines the +shores that might have made of Boston one of the most beautifully +situated cities in the world. In this case, industry did not encroach or +slums degrade. The Boston aristocracy appropriated the shore of the bay +for its own residential uses, but apparently failed to notice that the +bay was there. + +Taste, also--the recognition of a standard--explains the existence of +such really national institutions as the French Academy, and the French +national theatre, the Théâtre Français. The history of the former, in +particular, throws a light on much that is most distinctively French in +the French character. + +It would be difficult for any one walking along the Quai Malaquais, and +not totally blind to architectural beauty, not to be charmed by the +harmony of proportion and beauty of composition of a certain building +with curved wings and a small central dome that looks across the Seine +at the gardens of the Louvre and the spires of Saint Germain +l'Auxerrois. + +That building, all elegance, measure and balance, from its graceful +cupola to the stately stone vases surmounting the lateral +colonnades--that building is the old "Collège des Quatre Nations," the +Institute of France, and the home of the French Academy. + +In 1635, at a time when France was still struggling with the heavy +inheritance of feudalism, a bad man and great statesman, the mighty +Cardinal Richelieu, paused in his long fight with the rebellious vassals +of the crown to create a standard of French speech: "To establish the +rules of the language, and make French not only elegant, but capable of +dealing with the arts and sciences." + +Think of the significance of such an act at such a moment! France was a +welter of political and religious dissension; everything in the +monarchy, and the monarchy itself, was in a state of instability. +Austria and Spain menaced it from without, the great vassals tore it +asunder from within. During the Great Assizes of Auvergne some of the +most powerful of these nobles were tried, punished and stripped of their +monstrous privileges; and the record of their misdeeds reads like a +tale of Sicilian brigandage and Corsican vendetta. + +Gradually the iron hand of Richelieu drew order--a grim pitiless +order--out of this uninhabitable chaos. But it was in the very thick of +the conflict that he seemed to feel the need of creating, then and +there, some fixed principle of civilised life, some kind of ark in which +thought and taste and "civility" could take shelter. It was as if, in +the general upheaval, he wished to give stability to the things which +humanise and unite society. And he chose "taste"--taste in speech, in +culture, in manners,--as the fusing principle of his new Academy. + +The traditional point of view of its founder has been faithfully +observed for nearly three hundred years by the so-called "Forty +Immortals," the Academicians who throne under the famous cupola. The +Academy has never shrunk into a mere retreat for lettered pedantry: as +M. Saillens says in his admirable little book, "Facts about France": +"The great object of Richelieu was national unity," and "The Forty do +not believe that they can keep the language under discipline by merely +publishing a Dictionary now and then (the first edition came out in +1694). They believe that a standard must be set, and that it is for them +to set it. Therefore the Academy does not simply call to its ranks +famous or careful writers, but soldiers as well, bishops, scientists, +men of the world, men of social rank, so as to maintain from generation +to generation a national conservatory of good manners and good speech." + +For this reason, though Frenchmen have always laughed at their Academy, +they have always respected it, and aspired to the distinction of +membership. Even the rebellious spirits who satirise it in their youth +usually become, in maturity, almost too eager for its recognition; and, +though the fact of being an Academician gives social importance, it +would be absurd to pretend that such men as Pasteur, Henri Poincaré, +Marshal Joffre, sought the distinction for that reason, or that France +would have thought it worthy of their seeking if the institution had not +preserved its original significance. + +That significance was simply the safeguarding of what the French call +_les choses de l'esprit_; which cannot quite be translated "things of +the spirit," and yet means more nearly that than anything else. And +Richelieu and the original members of the Academy had recognised from +the first day that language was the chosen vessel in which the finer +life of a nation must be preserved. + +It is not uncommon nowadays, especially in America, to sneer at any +deliberate attempts to stabilise language. To test such criticisms it is +useful to reduce them to their last consequence--which is almost always +absurdity. It is not difficult to discover what becomes of a language +left to itself, without accepted standards or restrictions; instances +may be found among any savage tribes without fixed standards of speech. +Their language speedily ceases to be one, and deteriorates into a +muddle of unstable dialects. Or, if an instance nearer home is needed, +the lover of English need only note what that rich language has shrunk +to on the lips, and in the literature, of the heterogeneous hundred +millions of American citizens who, without uniformity of tradition or +recognised guidance, are being suffered to work their many wills upon +it. + +But at this point it may be objected that, after all, England herself +has never had an Academy, nor could ever conceivably have had one, and +that whatever the English of America has become, the English of England +is still the language of her great tradition, with perfectly defined +standards of taste and propriety. + +England is England, as France is France: the one feels the need of +defining what the other finds it simpler to take for granted. England +has never had a written Constitution; yet her constitutional government +has long been the model of free nations. England's standards are all +implicit. She does not feel the French need of formulating and +tabulating. Her Academy is not built with hands, but it is just as +powerful, and just as visible to those who have eyes to see; and the +name of the English Academy is Usage. + + +IV + +I said just now: "If any of our American soldiers look up at the niches +in the portal of a French cathedral they are likely to be struck first +of all by" such and such things. + +In our new Army all the arts and professions are represented, and if the +soldier in question happens to be a sculptor, an architect, or an art +critic, he will certainly note what I have pointed out; but if he is not +a trained observer, the chances are that he will not even look up. + +The difference is that in France almost every one has the seeing eye, +just as almost every one has the hearing ear. It is not a platitude, +though it may be a truism, to say that the French are a race of +artists: it is the key that unlocks every door of their complex +psychology, and consequently the key that must be oftenest in the +explorer's hand. + +The gift of the seeing eye is, obviously, a first requisite where taste +is to prevail. And the question is, how is the seeing eye to be +obtained? What is the operation for taste-blindness? Or is there any; +and are not some races--the artistically non-creative--born as +irremediably blind as Kentucky cave-fishes? + +The answer might be _yes_, in the case of the wholly non-creative races. +But the men of English blood are creative artists too: theirs is the +incomparable gift of poetic expression. And any race gifted with one +form of artistic originality is always acutely appreciative of other +cognate forms of expression. There has never been a race more capable +than the English of appreciating the great plastic creators, Greece, +Italy and France. This gift of the critical sense in those arts wherein +the race does not excel in original expression seems an inevitable +by-product of its own special endowment. In such races taste-blindness +is purely accidental, and the operation that cures it is the long slow +old-fashioned one of education. There is no other. + +The artist races are naturally less dependent on education: to a certain +degree their instinct takes the place of acquired discrimination. But +they set a greater store on it than any other races because they +appreciate more than the others all that, even to themselves, education +reveals and develops. + +It is just because the French are naturally endowed with taste that they +attach such importance to cultivation, and that French standards of +education are so infinitely higher and more severe than those existing +in Anglo-Saxon countries. We are too much inclined to think that we have +disposed of the matter when we say that, in our conception of life, +education should be formative and not instructive. The point is, the +French might return, what are we to be formed for? And, in any case, +they would not recognise the antithesis, since they believe that, to +form, one must instruct: instruct the eye, the ear, the brain, every one +of those marvellous organs of sense so often left dormant by our +Anglo-Saxon training. + +It used to be thought that if savages appeared unimpressed by the +wonders of occidental art or industry it was because their natural +_hauteur_ would not let them betray surprise to the intruder. That +romantic illusion has been dispelled by modern investigation, and the +traveller now knows that the savage is unimpressed because _he does not +see_ the new things presented to him. It takes the most complex +assemblage of associations, visual and mental, to enable us to discover +what a picture represents: the savage placed before such familiar +examples of the graphic art as "The Infant Samuel" or "His Master's +Voice" would not _see_ the infant or the fox-terrier, much less guess +what they were supposed to be doing. + +As long as America believes in short-cuts to knowledge, in any +possibility of buying taste in tabloids, she will never come into her +real inheritance of English culture. A gentleman travelling in the +Middle West met a charming girl who was a "college graduate." He asked +her what line of study she had selected, and she replied that she had +learnt music one year, and languages the next, and that last year she +had "learnt art." + +It is the pernicious habit of regarding the arts as something that can +be bottled, pickled and absorbed in twelve months (thanks to "courses," +summaries and abridgments) that prevents the development of a real +artistic sensibility in our eager and richly endowed race. Patience, +deliberateness, reverence: these are the fundamental elements of taste. +The French have always cultivated them, and it is as much to them as to +the eagle-flights of genius that France owes her long artistic +supremacy. + +From the Middle Ages to the Revolution all the French trade-guilds had +their travelling members, the "Compagnons du Tour de France." Not for +greed of gold, but simply from the ambition to excel in their own craft, +these "companions," their trade once learned, took their staves in hand, +and wandered on foot over France, going from one to another of the +cities where the best teachers of their special trades were to be found, +and serving an apprenticeship in each till they learned enough to +surpass their masters. The "tour de France" was France's old way of +acquiring "Efficiency"; and even now she does not believe it can be +found in newspaper nostrums. + + + + +IV + +INTELLECTUAL HONESTY + + +I + +Most people, in their infancy, have made bogeys out of sofa-pillows and +overcoats, and the imaginative child always comes to believe in the +reality of the bogey he has manufactured, and toward twilight grows +actually afraid of it. + +When I was a little girl the name of Horace Greeley was potent in +American politics, and some irreverent tradesman had manufactured a pink +cardboard fan (on the "palmetto" model) which represented the +countenance of the venerable demagogue, and was surrounded with a white +silk fringe in imitation of his hoary hair and "chin-beard." A Horace +Greeley fan had long been knocking about our country-house, and was a +familiar object to me and to my little cousins, when one day it +occurred to us to make a bogey with my father's overcoat, put Mr. +Greeley's head on top, and seat him on the verandah near the front door. + +When we were tired of playing we started to go in; but there on the +threshold in the dusk sat Mr. Greeley, suddenly transformed into an +animate and unknown creature, and dumb terror rooted us to the spot. Not +one of us had the courage to demolish that supernatural and malevolent +old man, or to dash past him into the house--and oh, the relief it was +when a big brother came along and reduced him into his constituent +parts! + +Such inhibitions take the imagination far back to the childhood of the +human race, when terrors and taboos lurked in every bush; and wherever +the fear of the thing it has created survives in the mind of any +society, that society is still in its childhood. Intellectual honesty, +the courage to look at things as they are, is the first test of mental +maturity. Till a society ceases to be afraid of the truth in the domain +of ideas it is in leading-strings, morally and mentally. + +The singular superiority of the French has always lain in their +intellectual courage. Other races and nations have been equally +distinguished for moral courage, but too often it has been placed at the +service of ideas they were afraid to analyse. The French always want to +find out first just what the conceptions they are fighting for are +worth. They will not be downed by their own bogeys, much less by anybody +else's. The young Oedipus of Ingres, calmly questioning the Sphinx, is +the very symbol of the French intelligence; and it is because of her +dauntless curiosity that France is of all countries the most _grown up_. + +To persons unfamiliar with the real French character, this dauntless +curiosity is supposed to apply itself chiefly to spying out and +discussing acts and emotions which the Anglo-Saxon veils from publicity. +The French view of what are euphemistically called "the facts of life" +(as the Greeks called the Furies the "Amiable Ones") is often spoken of +as though it were inconsistent with those necessary elements of any +ordered society that we call purity and morality. Because the French +talk and write freely about subjects and situations that Anglo-Saxons, +for the last hundred years (not before), have agreed not to mention, it +is assumed that the French gloat over such subjects and situations. As a +matter of fact, they simply take them for granted, as part of the great +parti-coloured business of life, and no more gloat over them (in the +morbid introspective sense) than they do over their morning coffee. + +To be sure, they do "gloat" over their coffee in a sense unknown to +consumers of liquid chicory and health-beverages: they "gloat," in fact, +over everything that tastes good, looks beautiful, or appeals to any one +of their acute and highly-trained five senses. But they do this with no +sense of greediness or shame or immodesty, and consequently without +morbidness or waste of time. They take the normal pleasures, physical +and æsthetic, "in their stride," so to speak, as wholesome, nourishing, +and necessary for the background of a laborious life of business or +study, and not as subjects for nasty prying or morbid self-examination. + +It is necessary for any one who would judge France fairly to get this +fundamental difference fixed in his mind before forming an opinion of +the illustrated "funny papers," of the fiction, the theatres, the whole +trend of French humour, irony and sentiment. Well-meaning people waste +much time in seeking to prove that Gallic and Anglo-Saxon minds take the +same view of such matters, and that the _Vie Parisienne_, the "little +theatres" and the light fiction of France do not represent the average +French temperament, but are a vile attempt (by foreign agents) to cater +to foreign pornography. + +The French have always been a gay and free and Rabelaisian people. They +attach a great deal of importance to love-making, but they consider it +more simply and less solemnly than we. They are cool, resourceful and +merry, crack jokes about the relations between the sexes, and are used +to the frank discussion of what some one tactfully called "the +operations of Nature." They are puzzled by our queer fear of our own +bodies, and accustomed to relate openly and unapologetically the +anecdotes that Anglo-Saxons snicker over privately and with apologies. +They define pornography as a taste for the nasty, and not as an interest +in the natural. But nothing would be more mistaken than to take this as +proving that family feeling is less deep and tender in France than +elsewhere, or the conception of the social virtues different. It means +merely that the French are not frightened by the names of things; that +they dislike what we call coarseness much less than what they call +pruriency; and that they have too great a faith in the fundamental +life-forces, and too much tenderness for the young mother suckling her +baby, for Daphnis and Chloe in the orchard at dawn, and Philemon and +Baucis on their threshold at sunset, not to wonder at our being ashamed +of any of the processes of nature. + +It is convenient to put the relations between the sexes first on the +list of subjects about which the French and Anglo-Saxon races think and +behave differently, because it is the difference which strikes the +superficial observer first, and which has been most used in the attempt +to prove the superior purity of Anglo-Saxon morals. But French +outspokenness would not be interesting if it applied only to +sex-questions, for savages are outspoken about those, too. The French +attitude in that respect is interesting only as typical of the general +intellectual fearlessness of France. She is not afraid of anything that +concerns mankind, neither of pleasure and mirth nor of exultations and +agonies. + +The French are intrinsically a tough race: they are careless of pain, +unafraid of risks, contemptuous of precautions. They have no idea that +life can be evaded, and if it could be they would not try to evade it. +They regard it as a gift so magnificent that they are ready to take the +bad weather with the fine rather than miss a day of the golden year. + +It is this innate intellectual honesty, the specific distinction of the +race, which has made it the torch-bearer of the world. Bishop Butler's +celebrated: "Things are as they are and will be as they will be" might +have been the motto of the French intellect. It is an axiom that makes +dull minds droop, but exalts the brain imaginative enough to be amazed +before the marvel of things as they are. + + +II + +Mr. Howells, I feel sure, will forgive me if I quote here a comment I +once heard him make on theatrical taste in America. We had been talking +of that strange exigency of the American public which compels the +dramatist (if he wishes to be played) to wind up his play, whatever its +point of departure, with the "happy-ever-after" of the fairy-tales; and +I had remarked that this did not imply a preference for comedy, but +that, on the contrary, our audiences want to be harrowed (and even +slightly shocked) from eight till ten-thirty, and then consoled and +reassured before eleven. + +"Yes," said Mr. Howells; "what the American public wants is _a tragedy +with a happy ending_." + +What Mr. Howells said of the American theatre is true of the whole +American attitude toward life. + +"A tragedy with a happy ending" is exactly what the child wants before +he goes to sleep: the reassurance that "all's well with the world" as he +lies in his cosy nursery. It is a good thing that the child should +receive this reassurance; but as long as he needs it he remains a child, +and the world he lives in is a nursery-world. Things are not always and +everywhere well with the world, and each man has to find it out as he +grows up. It is the finding out that makes him grow, and until he has +faced the fact and digested the lesson he is not grown up--he is still +in the nursery. + +The same thing is true of countries and peoples. The "sheltered life," +whether of the individual or of the nation, must either have a violent +and tragic awakening--or never wake up at all. The keen French +intelligence perceived this centuries ago, and has always preferred to +be awake and alive, at whatever cost. The cost has been heavy, but the +results have been worth it, for France leads the world intellectually +just because she is the most grown up of the nations. + +In each of the great nations there is a small minority which is at about +the same level of intellectual culture; but it is not between these +minorities (though even here the level is perhaps higher in France) that +comparisons may profitably be made. A cross-section of average life must +be taken, and compared with the same average in a country like ours, to +understand why France leads in the world of ideas. + +The theatre has an importance in France which was matched only in the +most glorious days of Greece. The dramatic sense of the French, their +faculty of perceiving and enjoying the vivid contrasts and ironies of +daily life, and their ability to express emotion where Anglo-Saxons can +only choke with it, this innate dramatic gift, which is a part of their +general artistic endowment, leads them to attach an importance to the +theatre incomprehensible to our blunter races. + +Americans new to France, and seeing it first in war-time, will be +continually led to overlook the differences and see the resemblances +between the two countries. They will notice, for instance, that the same +kind of people who pack the music-halls and "movie-shows" at home also +pack them in France. But if they will take a seat at the one of the +French national theatres (the _Théâtre Français_ or the _Odéon_) they +will see people of the same level of education as those of the +cinema-halls enjoying with keen discrimination a tragedy by Racine or a +drama of Victor Hugo's. In America the "movie" and music-hall audiences +require no higher form of nourishment. In France they do, and the +Thursday matinées in theatres which give the classic drama are as packed +as the house where "The Mysteries of New York" are unrolled, while on +the occasion of the free performances given on national holidays in +these theatres a line composed of working-people, poor students and all +kinds of modest wage-earners forms at the door hours before the +performance begins. + +The people who assist at these great tragic performances have a strong +enough sense of reality to understand the part that grief and calamity +play in life and in art: they feel instinctively that no real art can be +based on a humbugging attitude toward life, and it is their intellectual +honesty which makes them exact and enjoy its fearless representation. + +It is also their higher average of education, of "culture" it would be +truer to say, if the word, with us, had not come to stand for the +pretence rather than the reality. Education in its elementary sense is +much more general in America than in France. There are more people who +can read in the United States; but what do they read? The whole point, +as far as any real standard goes, is there. If the ability to read +carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if +he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he +gets in hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then +culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted +up by culture. + + +III + +The very significance--the note of ridicule and slight contempt--which +attaches to the word "culture" in America, would be quite unintelligible +to the French of any class. It is inconceivable to them that any one +should consider it superfluous, and even slightly comic, to know a great +deal, to know the best in every line, to know, in fact, as much as +possible. + +There are ignorant and vulgar-minded people in France, as in other +countries; but instead of dragging the popular standard of culture down +to their own level, and ridiculing knowledge as the affectation of a +self-conscious clique, they are obliged to esteem it, to pretend to have +it, and to try and talk its language--which is not a bad way of +beginning to acquire it. + +The odd Anglo-Saxon view that a love of beauty and an interest in ideas +imply effeminacy is quite unintelligible to the French; as +unintelligible as, for instance, the other notion that athletics make +men manly. + +The French would say that athletics make men muscular, that education +makes them efficient, and that what makes them manly is their general +view of life, or, in other words, the completeness of their intellectual +honesty. And the conduct of Frenchmen during the last four and a half +years looks as though there were something to be said in favour of this +opinion. + +The French are persuaded that the enjoyment of beauty and the exercise +of the critical intelligence are two of the things best worth living +for; and the notion that art and knowledge could ever, in a civilised +state, be regarded as negligible, or subordinated to merely material +interests, would never occur to them. It does not follow that everything +they create is beautiful, or that their ideas are always valuable or +interesting; what matters is the esteem in which _the whole race_ holds +ideas and their noble expression. + +Theoretically, America holds art and ideas in esteem also; but she does +not, as a people, seek or desire them. This indifference is partly due +to awe: America has not lived long at her ease with beauty, like the old +European races whose art reaches back through an unbroken inheritance of +thousands of years of luxury and culture. + +It would have been unreasonable to expect a new country, plunged in the +struggle with material necessities, to create an art of her own, or to +have acquired familiarity enough with the great arts of the past to feel +the need of them as promoters of enjoyment, or to understand their value +as refining and civilising influences. But America is now ripe to take +her share in the long inheritance of the races she descends from; and it +is a pity that just at this time the inclination of the immense majority +of Americans is setting away from all real education and real culture. + +Intellectual honesty was never so little in respect in the United +States as in the years before the war. Every sham and substitute for +education and literature and art had steadily crowded out the real +thing. "Get-rich-quick" is a much less dangerous device than +"get-educated-quick," but the popularity of the first has led to the +attempt to realise the second. It is possible to get rich quickly in a +country full of money-earning chances; but there is no short-cut to +education. + +Perhaps it has been an advantage to the French to have had none of our +chances of sudden enrichment. Perhaps the need of accumulating money +slowly leads people to be content with less, and consequently gives them +more leisure to care for other things. There could be no greater +error--as all Americans know--than to think that America's ability to +make money quickly has made her heedless of other values; but it has set +the pace for the pursuit of those other values, a pursuit that leads to +their being trampled underfoot in the general rush for them. + +The French, at any rate, living more slowly, have learned the advantage +of living more deeply. In science, in art, in technical and industrial +training, they know the need of taking time, and the wastefulness of +superficiality. French university education is a long and stern process, +but it produces minds capable of more sustained effort and a larger +range of thought than our quick doses of learning. And this +strengthening discipline of the mind has preserved the passion for +intellectual honesty. No race is so little addicted to fads, for fads +are generally untested propositions. The French tendency is to test +every new theory, religious, artistic or scientific, in the light of +wide knowledge and experience, and to adopt it only if it stands this +scrutiny. It is for this reason that France has so few religions, so few +philosophies, and so few quick cures for mental or physical woes. And it +is for this reason also that there are so few advertisements in French +newspapers. + +Nine-tenths of English and American advertising is based on the hope +that some one has found a way of doing something, or curing some +disease, or overcoming some infirmity, more quickly than by the accepted +methods. The French are too incredulous of short-cuts and nostrums to +turn to such promises with much hope. Their unshakeable intellectual +honesty and their sound intellectual training lead them to distrust any +way but the strait and narrow one when a difficulty is to be mastered +or an art acquired. They are above all democratic in their steady +conviction that there is no "royal road" to the worth-while things, and +that every yard of the Way to Wisdom has to be travelled on foot, and +not spun over in a joy-ride. + + + + +V + +CONTINUITY + + +I + +Have you ever watched the attempt of any one who does not know how to +draw to put down on paper the roughest kind of representation of a house +or a horse or a human being? + +The difficulty and perplexity (to any one not born with the drawing +instinct) caused by the effort of reproducing an object one can walk +around are extraordinary and unexpected. The thing is there, facing the +draughtsman, the familiar everyday thing--and a few strokes on paper +ought to give at least a recognisable suggestion of it. + +But what kind of strokes? And what curves or angles ought they to +follow? Try and see for yourself, if you have never been taught to +draw, and if no instinct tells you how. Evidently there is some trick +about it which must be learned. + +It takes a great deal of training and observation to learn the trick and +represent recognisably the simplest three-dimensional thing, much less +an animal or a human being in movement. And it takes a tradition too: it +presupposes the existence of some one capable of handing on the trick, +which has already been handed on to him. + +Thirty thousand years ago--or perhaps more--there were men in France so +advanced in observation and training of eye and hand that they could +represent fishes swimming in a river, stags grazing or fighting, bison +charging with lowered heads or lying down and licking their own +shoulders--could even represent women dancing in a round, and long lines +of reindeer in perspective, with horns gradually diminishing in size. + +It is only twenty years ago that the first cavern decorated with +prehistoric paintings was discovered at Altamira, in north-western +Spain. Its discoverer was regarded with suspicion and contempt by the +archæologists of the period: they let him see that they thought him an +impostor and he died without having been able to convince the learned +world that he had not had a hand in decorating the roof of the cave of +Altamira with its wonderful troops of inter-glacial animals. But ten or +twelve years later the discovery of similar painted caves in all +directions north and south of the Pyrenees at last vindicated Señor +Sautola's sincerity, and set the students of civilisation hastily +revising their chronologies; and since then proofs of the consummate +skill of these men of the dawn have been found on the walls of caves and +grottoes all over central and southern France, throughout the very +region where our American soldiers have been camping, and where our +convalescents are now basking in the warm Mediterranean sun. + +The study of prehistoric art is just beginning, but already it has been +found that drawing, painting and even sculpture of a highly developed +kind were practised in France long before Babylon rose in its glory, or +the foundations of the undermost Troy were laid. In fact, all that is +known of the earliest historic civilisations is recent in date compared +with the wonderful fore-shortened drawings and clay statues of the +French Stone Age. + +The traces of a very ancient culture discovered in the United States and +in Central America prove the far-off existence of an artistic and civic +development unknown to the races found by the first European explorers. +But the origin and date of these vanished societies are as yet unguessed +at, and even were it otherwise they would not count in our artistic and +social inheritance, since the English and Dutch colonists found only a +wilderness peopled by savages, who had kept no link of memory with those +vanished societies. There had been a complete break of continuity. + + +II + +In France it was otherwise. + +Any one who really wants to understand France must bear in mind that +French culture is the most homogeneous and uninterrupted culture the +world has known. It is true that waves of invasion, just guessed at on +the verge of the historic period, must have swept away the astounding +race who adorned the caves of central and south-western France with +drawings matching those of the Japanese in suppleness and audacity; for +after that far-off flowering time the prehistorian comes on a period of +retrogression when sculptor and draughtsman fumbled clumsily with their +implements. The golden age of prehistory was over. Waves of cold, +invasions of savage hordes, all the violent convulsions of a world in +the making, swept over the earliest France and almost swept her away: +almost, but not quite. Soon, Phoenicia and Greece were to reach her from +the south, soon after that Rome was to stamp her once for all with the +stamp of Roman citizenship; and in the intervals between these events +the old, almost vanished culture doubtless lingered in the caves and +river-beds, handed on something of its great tradition, kept alive, in +the hidden nooks which cold and savages spared, little hearths of +artistic vitality. + +It would appear that all the while people went on obscurely modelling +clay, carving horn and scratching drawings on the walls of just such +river-cliff houses as the peasants of Burgundy live in to this day, thus +nursing the faint embers of tradition that were to leap into beauty at +the touch of Greece and Rome. And even if it seems fanciful to believe +that the actual descendants of the cave-painters survived there can be +little doubt that their art, or its memory, was transmitted. If even +this link with the past seems too slight to be worth counting, the +straight descent of French civilisation from the ancient Mediterranean +culture which penetrated her by the Rhone and Spain and the Alps would +explain the ripeness and the continuity of her social life. By her +geographic position she seemed destined to centralise and cherish the +scattered fires of these old societies. + +What is true of plastic art must of course be true of the general +culture it implies. The people of France went on living in France, +surviving cataclysms, perpetuating traditions, handing down and down and +down certain ways of ploughing and sowing and vine-dressing and dyeing +and tanning and working and hoarding, in the same valleys and on the +same river-banks as their immemorially remote predecessors. + +Could anything be in greater contrast to the sudden uprooting of our +American ancestors and their violent cutting off from all their past, +when they set out to create a new state in a new hemisphere, in a new +climate, and out of new materials? + +How little the old peasant-tradition of rural England lingered among the +uprooted colonists, who had to change so abruptly all their +agricultural and domestic habits, is shown in the prompt disappearance +from our impoverished American vocabulary of nearly all the old English +words relating to fields and woods. What has become, in America, of the +copse, the spinney, the hedgerow, the dale, the vale, the weald? We have +reduced all timber to "woods," and, even that plural appearing +excessive, one hears Americans who ought to know better speak of "_a_ +woods," as though the familiar word has lost part of its meaning to +them. + +This instance from our own past--to which might be added so many more +illustrating the deplorable loss of shades of difference in our blunted +speech--will help to show the contrast between a race that has had a +long continuance and a race that has had a recent beginning. + +The English and Dutch settlers of North America no doubt carried many +things with them, such vital but imponderable things as prejudices, +principles, laws and beliefs. But even these were strangely transformed +when at length the colonists emerged again from the backwoods and the +bloody Indian warfare. The stern experience of the pioneer, the +necessity of rapid adaptation and of constantly improvised expedients, +formed a far different preparation from that dogged resistance to +invasion, that clinging to the same valley and the same river-cliff, +that have made the French, literally as well as figuratively, the most +conservative of western races. They also had passionate convictions and +fierce wants, like other peoples trying to organise themselves; but the +idea of leaving France in order to safeguard their convictions and +satisfy their wants would never have occurred to the French Huguenots if +the religious wars of the sixteenth century and the Revocation of the +Edict of Nantes had not made France literally uninhabitable. The English +Puritans left England only to gain greater liberty for the independent +development of their peculiar political and religious ideas; they were +not driven out with fire and sword as the Huguenots were driven from +France. + +Why, then, one wonders, did the French people cling to France with such +tenacity--since none are more passionate in their convictions and +prejudices where anything short of emigration is concerned? They clung +to France because they loved it, and for such sentimental fidelity some +old underlying economic reason usually exists. The map of France, and +the climate of France, show what the reason was. France, as her +historians have long delighted to point out, is a country singularly +privileged in her formation, and in the latitude she occupies. She is +magnificently fed with great rivers, which flow where it is useful for +commerce and agriculture that they should flow. The lines of her +mountain-ranges formed natural ramparts in the past, and in the south +and south-west, serve as great wind-screens and sun-reflectors, creating +almost tropic corners under a temperate latitude. Her indented coast +opens into many capacious and sheltered harbours, and the course of the +Gulf Stream bends in to soften the rainy climate of her great western +peninsula, making Brittany almost as warm as the sunnier south. + +Above all, the rich soil of France, so precious for wheat and +corn-growing, is the best soil in the world for the vine; and a people +can possess few more civilising assets than the ability to produce good +wine at home. It is the best safeguard against alcoholism, the best +incentive to temperance in the manly and grown-up sense of the word, +which means voluntary sobriety and not legally enforced abstinence. + +All these gifts France had and the French intelligently cherished. +Between the Swiss snows and the icy winter fogs of Germany on the one +side, and the mists and rain and perpetual dampness of England on the +other, her cool mild sky shot with veiled sunlight overhung a land of +temperate beauty and temperate wealth. Farther north, man might grow +austere or gross, farther south idle and improvident: France offered the +happy mean which the poets are forever celebrating, and the French were +early aware that the poets were right. + + +III + +Satisfaction with a happy mean implies the power to choose, the courage +to renounce. + +The French had chosen: they chose France. They had to renounce; and they +renounced Adventure. + +Staying in France was not likely to make any man inordinately rich in +his life-time; forsaking France to acquire sudden wealth was +unthinkable. The Frenchman did not desire inordinate wealth for himself, +but he wanted, and was bound to have, material security for his +children. Therefore the price to be paid for staying at home, and +keeping one's children with one (an absolute necessity to the +passionately tender French parent), was perpetual, sleepless, relentless +thrift. The money necessary to security had to be accumulated slowly +and painfully, so the Frenchman learned to be industrious, and to train +his children to industry; and that money had to be kept fast hold of, +since any profitable investment meant Risk. + +Risk and Adventure were the two dreaded enemies that might, at a stroke, +deprive one of the bliss of living in France, or of the modicum of +well-being necessary to live there in comfort, as the unluxurious French +understand it. Against Risk and Adventure, therefore, it is the French +parent's duty to warn and protect his children. Brought up in this +atmosphere of timidity and distrust of the unknown, generation after +generation of young Frenchmen became saturated with the same fears; and +those among them who tried to break through the strong network of +tradition, and venture their inheritance or their lives in quest of new +things, were restrained by the fierce conservatism of the women and the +insinuating tyranny of French family life. + +It is useless to deny that, to Anglo-Saxon eyes, the niggardliness of +the French is their most incomprehensible trait. The reluctance to give, +the general lack of spontaneous and impulsive generosity, even in times +of such tragic appeal as the war has created, have too often astonished +and pained those who most admire the French character to be passed over +in any frank attempt to understand it. + +During the most cataclysmic moments of the war, when it seemed that a +few days or weeks might bring the world crashing down in ruins, and +sweep away all that made life tolerable and material ease a thing worth +considering--even then (though one could of course cite individual cases +of the noblest generosity), the sense of the imprudence of uncalculated +generosity still prevailed, and in France money never poured forth for +the relief of suffering as it did in England. + +The same clinging to tradition and fear of risk which make prudence +almost a vice in the French are not applied only to money-saving. The +French too often economise manners as they do francs. The discovery is +disillusionising until one goes back to its cause, and learns to +understand that, in a society based on caution, and built about an old +and ineradicable bureaucracy, obsequiousness on the one side is sure to +breed discourtesy on the other. + +No one knows more than the French about good manners: manners are +codified in France, and there is the possibility of an insult in the +least deviation from established procedure, such as using the wrong turn +in signing a note, as, for example, putting "Agréez, Monsieur" where +"Veuillez agréer, Monsieur" is in order, or substituting "sentiments +distingués" for "haute considération." Unfortunately, in the process, +the forms of courtesy have turned into the sharp-edged metallic counters +of a game, instead of being a spontaneous emission of human kindliness. + +The French are kind in the sense of not being cruel, but they are not +kindly, in the sense of diffused benevolence which the word implies to +Anglo-Saxons. They are passionate and yet calculating, and simple +uncalculated kindliness--the vague effusion of good-will toward unknown +fellow-beings--does not enter into a plan of life which is as settled, +ruled off and barricaded as their carefully-measured and bounded acres. +It savours too much of Adventure, and might lead one into the outer +darknesses of Risk. + +If one makes such a criticism to a French friend, in any candid +discussion of race-differences, the answer is always: "Of course you +Anglo-Saxons are more generous, because you are so much richer." + +But this explanation, though doubtless sincere, is not exact. We are +more generous not because we are richer, but because we are so much less +afraid of being poor; and if we are less afraid of being poor it is due +to the fact that our ancestors found it much easier to make money, not +only because they were more willing to take risks, but because more +opportunities came in their way. + +Once these arguments are balanced, it becomes easier to allow for French +caution, and to overlook it in favour of those other qualities which +their way of life has enabled the French to develop. + + +IV + +First among these qualities is the power of sustained effort, and the +sense of its need in any worth-while achievement. + +The French, it has already been pointed out, have no faith in +short-cuts, nostrums or dodges of any sort to get around a difficulty. +This makes them appear backward in the practical administration of their +affairs; but they make no claim to teach the world practical efficiency. +What they have to teach is something infinitely higher, more valuable, +more civilising: that in the world of ideas, as in the world of art, +steady and disinterested effort alone can accomplish great things. + +It may seem, from what has been said in an earlier part of this +chapter, as though the French were of all people the most interested, +since questions of money so constantly preoccupy them. But their +thoughts are not occupied with money-making in itself, as an end worth +living for, but only with the idea of having money enough to be sure of +not losing their situation in life, for themselves or their children; +since, little as they care to rise in the world, they have an +unspeakable terror of falling, based partly, no doubt, on the pitiful +fate, in France, of those who _do_ fall. This point assured, they want +only enough leisure and freedom from material anxiety to enjoy what life +and the arts of life offer. This absence of financial ambition should +never be lost sight of: it is not only the best clue to the French +character, but the most useful lesson our own people can learn from +contact with France. + +The requirements of the average Frenchman in any class are surprisingly +few, and the ambition to "better" himself socially plays a very small +part in his plans. What he wants is leisure to enjoy the fleeting good +things of life, from which no one knows better how to extract a +temperate delight, and full liberty of mind to discuss general ideas +while pursuing whatever trade or art he is engaged in. It may seem an +exaggeration to ascribe such aspirations to the average man of any race; +but compared with other peoples the distinguishing mark of the Frenchman +of all classes is the determination to defend his own leisure, the taste +for the free play of ideas, and the power to express and exchange views +on questions of general interest. + +Great shrewdness and maturity of judgment result from this tendency to +formulate ideas: it is unusual to hear a French peasant or working man +express an opinion on life that is not sagacious. Human nature is a +subject of absorbing interest to the French, and they have, to use their +own phrase, "made the tour of it," and amply allowed for it in all +their appreciations of life. The artless astonishment of the northern +races in the face of the oldest of human phenomena is quite +incomprehensible to them. + +This serenity and maturity of view is the result of an immensely old +inheritance of culture; and the first lesson it teaches is that Rome was +not built in a day. + +Only children think that one can make a garden with flowers broken from +the plant; only inexperience imagines that novelty is always synonymous +with improvement. To go on behaving as if one believed these things, and +to foster their belief in others, is to encourage the intellectual +laziness which rapid material prosperity is too apt to develop. It is to +imprison one's self in a perpetual immaturity. The French express, +perhaps unconsciously, their sense of the weight of their own long moral +experience by their universal comment on the American fellows-in-arms +whose fine qualities they so fully recognise. "_Ce sont des +enfants_--they are mere children!" is what they always say of the young +Americans: say it tenderly, almost anxiously, like people passionately +attached to youth and to the young, but also with a little surprise at +the narrow surface of perception which most of these young minds offer +to the varied spectacle of the universe. + +A new race, working out its own destiny in new conditions, cannot hope +for the moral and intellectual maturity of a race seated at the +cross-roads of the old civilisations. But America has, in part at least, +a claim on the great general inheritance of Western culture. She +inherits France through England, and Rome and the Mediterranean culture, +through France. These are indirect and remote sources of enrichment; but +she has directly, in her possession and in her keeping, the magnificent, +the matchless inheritance of English speech and English letters. + +Had she had a more mature sense of the value of tradition and the +strength of continuity she would have kept a more reverent hold upon +this treasure, and the culture won from it would have been an +hundredfold greater. She would have preserved the language instead of +debasing and impoverishing it; she would have learned the historic +meaning of its words instead of wasting her time inventing short-cuts in +spelling them; she would jealously have upheld the standards of its +literature instead of lowering them to meet an increased "circulation." + +In all this, France has a lesson to teach and a warning to give. It was +our English forbears who taught us to flout tradition and break away +from their own great inheritance; France may teach us that, side by side +with the qualities of enterprise and innovation that English blood has +put in us, we should cultivate the sense of continuity, that "sense of +the past" which enriches the present and binds us up with the world's +great stabilising traditions of art and poetry and knowledge. + + + + +VI + +THE NEW FRENCHWOMAN + + +There is no new Frenchwoman; but the real Frenchwoman is new to America, +and it may be of interest to American women to learn something of what +she is really like. + +In saying that the real Frenchwoman is new to America I do not intend to +draw the old familiar contrast between the so-called "real Frenchwoman" +and the Frenchwoman of fiction and the stage. Americans have been told a +good many thousand times in the last four years that the real +Frenchwoman is totally different from the person depicted under that +name by French novelists and dramatists; but in truth every literature, +in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for +whom, and about whom, it is written--and none more so than French +literature, the freest and frankest of all. + +The statement that the real Frenchwoman is new to America simply means +that America has never before taken the trouble to look at her and try +to understand her. She has always been there, waiting to be understood, +and a little tired, perhaps, of being either caricatured or idealised. +It would be easy enough to palm her off as a "new" Frenchwoman because +the war has caused her to live a new life and do unfamiliar jobs; but +one need only look at the illustrated papers to see what she looks like +as a tram-conductor, a taxi-driver or a munition-maker. It is certain, +even now, that all these new experiences are going to modify her +character, and to enlarge her view of life; but that is not the point +with which these papers are concerned. The first thing for the American +woman to do is to learn to know _the Frenchwoman_ as she has always +been; to try to find out what she is, and why she is what she is. After +that it will be easy to see why the war has developed in her certain +qualities rather than others, and what its after-effects on her are +likely to be. + +First of all, she is, in nearly all respects, as different as possible +from the average American woman. That proposition is fairly evident, +though not always easy to explain. Is it because she dresses better, or +knows more about cooking, or is more "coquettish," or more "feminine," +or more excitable, or more emotional, or more immoral? All these reasons +have been often suggested, but none of them seems to furnish a complete +answer. Millions of American women are, to the best of their ability +(which is not small), coquettish, feminine, emotional, and all the rest +of it; a good many dress as well as Frenchwomen; some even know a little +about cooking--and the real reason is quite different, and not nearly as +flattering to our national vanity. It is simply that, like the men of +her race, the Frenchwoman is _grown up_. + +Compared with the women of France the average American woman is still +in the kindergarten. The world she lives in is exactly like the most +improved and advanced and scientifically equipped Montessori-method +baby-school. At first sight it may seem preposterous to compare the +American woman's independent and resonant activities--her "boards" and +clubs and sororities, her public investigation of everything under the +heavens from "the social evil" to baking-powder, and from "physical +culture" to the newest esoteric religion--to compare such free and busy +and seemingly influential lives with the artless exercises of an infant +class. But what is the fundamental principle of the Montessori system? +It is the development of the child's individuality, unrestricted by the +traditional nursery discipline: a Montessori school is a baby world +where, shut up together in the most improved hygienic surroundings, a +number of infants noisily develop their individuality. + +The reason why American women are not really "grown up" in comparison +with the women of the most highly civilised countries--such as +France--is that all their semblance of freedom, activity and authority +bears not much more likeness to real living than the exercises of the +Montessori infant. Real living, in any but the most elementary sense of +the word, is a deep and complex and slowly-developed thing, the outcome +of an old and rich social experience. It cannot be "got up" like +gymnastics, or a proficiency in foreign languages; it has its roots in +the fundamental things, and above all in close and constant and +interesting and important relations between men and women. + +It is because American women are each other's only audience, and to a +great extent each other's only companions, that they seem, compared to +women who play an intellectual and social part in the lives of men, like +children in a baby-school. They are "developing their individuality," +but developing it in the void, without the checks, the stimulus, and the +discipline that comes of contact with the stronger masculine +individuality. And it is not only because the man is the stronger and +the closer to reality that his influence is necessary to develop woman +to real womanhood; it is because the two sexes complete each other +mentally as well as physiologically that no modern civilisation has been +really rich or deep, or stimulating to other civilisations, which has +not been based on the recognised interaction of influences between men +and women. + +There are several ways in which the Frenchwoman's relations with men may +be called more important than those of her American sister. In the first +place, in the commercial class, the Frenchwoman is always her husband's +business partner. The lives of the French bourgeois couple are based on +the primary necessity of getting enough money to live on, and of giving +their children educational and material advantages. In small businesses +the woman is always her husband's book-keeper or clerk, or both; above +all, she is his business adviser. France, as you know, is held up to +all other countries as a model of thrift, of wise and prudent saving and +spending. No other country in the world has such immense financial +vitality, such powers of recuperation from national calamity. After the +Franco-Prussian war of 1870, when France, beaten to earth, her armies +lost, half her territory occupied, and with all Europe holding aloof, +and not a single ally to defend her interests--when France was called on +by her conquerors to pay an indemnity of five thousand million francs in +order to free her territory of the enemy, she raised the sum, and paid +it off, _eighteen months sooner than the date agreed upon_: to the rage +and disappointment of Germany, and the amazement and admiration of the +rest of the world. + +Every economist knows that if France was able to make that incredible +effort it was because, all over the country, millions of Frenchwomen, +labourers' wives, farmers' wives, small shopkeepers' wives, wives of big +manufacturers and commission-merchants and bankers, were to all intents +and purposes their husbands' business-partners, and had had a direct +interest in saving and investing the millions and millions piled up to +pay France's ransom in her day of need. At every stage in French +history, in war, in politics, in literature, in art and in religion, +women have played a splendid and a decisive part; but none more splendid +or more decisive than the obscure part played by the millions of wives +and mothers whose thrift and prudence silently built up her salvation in +1872. + +When it is said that the Frenchwoman of the middle class is her +husband's business partner the statement must not be taken in too +literal a sense. The French wife has less legal independence than the +American or English wife, and is subject to a good many legal +disqualifications from which women have freed themselves in other +countries. That is the technical situation; but what is the practical +fact? That the Frenchwoman has gone straight through these theoretical +restrictions to the heart of reality, and become her husband's +associate, because, for her children's sake if not for her own, her +heart is in his job, and because he has long since learned that the best +business partner a man can have is one who has the same interests at +stake as himself. + +It is not only because she saves him a salesman's salary, or a +book-keeper' salary, or both, that the French tradesman associates his +wife with his business; it is because he has the sense to see that no +hired assistant will have so keen a perception of his interests, that +none will receive his customers so pleasantly, and that none will so +patiently and willingly work over hours when it is necessary to do so. +There is no drudgery in this kind of partnership, because it is +voluntary, and because each partner is stimulated by exactly the same +aspirations. And it is this practical, personal and daily participation +in her husband's job that makes the Frenchwoman more grown up than +others. She has a more interesting and more living life, and therefore +she develops more quickly. + +It may be objected that money-making is not the most interesting thing +in life, and that the "higher ideals" seem to have little place in this +conception of feminine efficiency. The answer to such a criticism is to +be found by considering once more the difference between the French and +the American views as to the main object of money-making--a point to +which any study of the two races inevitably leads one back. + +Americans are too prone to consider money-making as interesting in +itself: they regard the fact that a man has made money as something +intrinsically meritorious. But money-making is interesting only in +proportion as its object is interesting. If a man piles up millions in +order to pile them up, having already all he needs to live humanly and +decently, his occupation is neither interesting in itself, nor conducive +to any sort of real social development in the money-maker or in those +about him. No life is more sterile than one into which nothing enters +to balance such an output of energy. To see how different is the French +view of the object of money-making one must put one's self in the place +of the average French household. For the immense majority of the French +it is a far more modest ambition, and consists simply in the effort to +earn one's living and put by enough for sickness, old age, and a good +start in life for the children. + +This conception of "business" may seem a tame one to Americans; but its +advantages are worth considering. In the first place, it has the immense +superiority of leaving time for living, time for men and women both. The +average French business man at the end of his life may not have made as +much money as the American; but meanwhile he has had, every day, +something the American has not had: Time. Time, in the middle of the +day, to sit down to an excellent luncheon, to eat it quietly with his +family, and to read his paper afterward; time to go off on Sundays and +holidays on long pleasant country rambles; time, almost any day, to feel +fresh and free enough for an evening at the theatre, after a dinner as +good and leisurely as his luncheon. And there is one thing certain: the +great mass of men and women grow up and reach real maturity only through +their contact with the material realities of living, with business, with +industry, with all the great bread-winning activities; but the growth +and the maturing take place _in the intervals between these activities_: +and in lives where there are no such intervals there will be no real +growth. + +That is why the "slow" French business methods so irritating to the +American business man produce, in the long run, results which he is +often the first to marvel at and admire. Every intelligent American who +has seen something of France and French life has had a first moment of +bewilderment on trying to explain the seeming contradiction between the +slow, fumbling, timid French business methods and the rounded +completeness of French civilisation. How is it that a country which +seems to have almost everything to learn in the way of "up-to-date" +business has almost everything to teach, not only in the way of art and +literature, and all the graces of life, but also in the way of municipal +order, state administration, agriculture, forestry, engineering, and the +whole harmonious running of the vast national machine? The answer is the +last the American business man is likely to think of until he has had +time to study France somewhat closely: it is that France is what she is +because every Frenchman and every Frenchwoman takes time to live, and +has an extraordinarily clear and sound sense of what constitutes _real +living_. + +We are too ready to estimate business successes by their individual +results: a point of view revealed in our national awe of large fortunes. +That is an immature and even childish way of estimating success. In +terms of civilisation it is the total and ultimate result of a nation's +business effort that matters, not the fact of Mr. Smith's being able to +build a marble villa in place of his wooden cottage. If the collective +life which results from our individual money-making is not richer, more +interesting and more stimulating than that of countries where the +individual effort is less intense, then it looks as if there were +something wrong about our method. + +This parenthesis may seem to have wandered rather far from the +Frenchwoman who heads the chapter; but in reality she is at its very +heart. For if Frenchmen care too much about other things to care as much +as we do about making money, the chief reason is largely because their +relations with women are more interesting. The Frenchwoman rules French +life, and she rules it under a triple crown, as a business woman, as a +mother, and above all as an artist. To explain the sense in which the +last word is used it is necessary to go back to the contention that the +greatness of France lies in her sense of the beauty and importance of +living. As life is an art in France, so woman is an artist. She does not +teach man, but she inspires him. As the Frenchwoman of the bread-winning +class influences her husband, and inspires in him a respect for her +judgment and her wishes, so the Frenchwoman of the rich and educated +class is admired and held in regard for other qualities. But in this +class of society her influence naturally extends much farther. The more +civilised a society is, the wider is the range of each woman's influence +over men, and of each man's influence over women. Intelligent and +cultivated people of either sex will never limit themselves to communing +with their own households. Men and women equally, when they have the +range of interests that real cultivation gives, need the stimulus of +different points of view, the refreshment of new ideas as well as of new +faces. The long hypocrisy which Puritan England handed on to America +concerning the danger of frank and free social relations between men and +women has done more than anything else to retard real civilisation in +America. + +Real civilisation means an education that extends to the whole of life, +in contradistinction to that of school or college: it means an education +that forms speech, forms manners, forms taste, forms ideals, and above +all forms judgment. This is the kind of civilisation of which France has +always been the foremost model: it is because she possesses its secret +that she has led the world so long not only in art and taste and +elegance, but in ideas and in ideals. For it must never be forgotten +that if the fashion of our note-paper and the cut of our dresses come +from France, so do the conceptions of liberty and justice on which our +republican institutions are based. No nation can have grown-up ideas +till it has a ruling caste of grown-up men and women; and it is possible +to have a ruling caste of grown-up men and women only in a civilisation +where the power of each sex is balanced by that of the other. + +It may seem strange to draw precisely this comparison between France, +the country of all the old sex-conventions, and America, which is +supposedly the country of the greatest sex-freedom; and the American +reader may ask: "But where is there so much freedom of intercourse +between men and women as in America?" The misconception arises from the +confusion between two words, and two states of being that are +fundamentally different. In America there is complete freedom of +intercourse between boys and girls, but not between men and women; and +there is a general notion that, in essentials, a girl and a woman are +the same thing. It is true, in essentials, that a boy and a man are very +much the same thing; but a girl and a woman--a married woman--are +totally different beings. Marriage, union with a man, completes and +transforms a woman's character, her point of view, her sense of the +relative importance of things, far more thoroughly than a boy's nature +is changed by the same experience. A girl is only a sketch; a married +woman is the finished picture. And it is only the married woman who +counts as a social factor. + +Now it is precisely at the moment when her experience is rounded by +marriage, motherhood, and the responsibilities, cares and interests of +her own household, that the average American woman is, so to speak, +"withdrawn from circulation." It is true that this does not apply to the +small minority of wealthy and fashionable women who lead an artificial +cosmopolitan life, and therefore represent no particular national +tendency. It is not to them that the country looks for the development +of its social civilisation, but to the average woman who is sufficiently +free from bread-winning cares to act as an incentive to other women and +as an influence upon men. In America this woman, in the immense majority +of cases, has roamed through life in absolute freedom of communion with +young men until the day when the rounding-out of her own experience by +marriage puts her in a position to become a social influence; and from +that day she is cut off from men's society in all but the most formal +and intermittent ways. On her wedding-day she ceases, in any open, frank +and recognised manner, to be an influence in the lives of the men of the +community to which she belongs. + +In France, the case is just the contrary. France, hitherto, has kept +young girls under restrictions at which Americans have often smiled, and +which have certainly, in some respects, been a bar to their growth. The +doing away of these restrictions will be one of the few benefits of the +war: the French young girl, even in the most exclusive and most +tradition-loving society, will never again be the prisoner she has been +in the past. But this is relatively unimportant, for the French have +always recognised that, as a social factor, a woman does not count till +she is married; and in the well-to-do classes girls marry extremely +young, and the married woman has always had extraordinary social +freedom. The famous French "Salon," the best school of talk and of +ideas that the modern world has known, was based on the belief that the +most stimulating conversation in the world is that between intelligent +men and women who see each other often enough to be on terms of frank +and easy friendship. The great wave of intellectual and social +liberation that preceded the French revolution and prepared the way, not +for its horrors but for its benefits, originated in the drawing-rooms of +French wives and mothers, who received every day the most thoughtful and +the most brilliant men of the time, who shared their talk, and often +directed it. Think what an asset to the mental life of any country such +a group of women forms! And in France they were not then, and they are +not now, limited to the small class of the wealthy and fashionable. In +France, as soon as a woman has a personality, social circumstances +permit her to make it felt. What does it matter if she had spent her +girlhood in seclusion, provided she is free to emerge from it at the +moment when she is fitted to become a real factor in social life? + +It may, of course, be asked at this point, how the French freedom of +intercourse between married men and women affects domestic life, and the +happiness of a woman's husband and children. It is hard to say what kind +of census could be devised to ascertain the relative percentage of happy +marriages in the countries where different social systems prevail. Until +such a census can be taken, it is, at any rate, rash to assert that the +French system is less favourable to domestic happiness than the +Anglo-Saxon. At any rate, it acts as a greater incentive to the husband, +since it rests with him to keep his wife's admiration and affection by +making himself so agreeable to her, and by taking so much trouble to +appear at an advantage in the presence of her men friends, that no rival +shall supplant him. It would not occur to any Frenchman of the +cultivated class to object to his wife's friendship with other men, and +the mere fact that he has the influence of other men to compete with is +likely to conduce to considerate treatment of his wife, and courteous +relations in the household. + +It must also be remembered that a man who comes home to a wife who has +been talking with intelligent men will probably find her companionship +more stimulating than if she has spent all her time with other women. No +matter how intelligent women are individually, they tend, collectively, +to narrow down their interests, and take a feminine, or even a female, +rather than a broadly human view of things. The woman whose mind is +attuned to men's minds has a much larger view of the world, and attaches +much less importance to trifles, because men, being usually brought by +circumstances into closer contact with reality, insensibly communicate +their breadth of view to women. A "man's woman" is never fussy and +seldom spiteful, because she breathes too free an air, and is having too +good a time. + +If, then, being "grown up" consists in having a larger and more liberal +experience of life, in being less concerned with trifles, and less +afraid of strong feelings, passions and risks, then the French woman is +distinctly more grown up than her American sister; and she is so because +she plays a much larger and more interesting part in men's lives. + +It may, of course, also be asked whether the fact of playing this +part--which implies all the dangers implied by taking the open seas +instead of staying in port--whether such a fact is conducive to the +eventual welfare of woman and of society. Well--the answer to-day is: +_France!_ Look at her as she has stood before the world for the last +four years and a half, uncomplaining, undiscouraged, undaunted, holding +up the banner of liberty: liberty of speech, liberty of thought, liberty +of conscience, all the liberties that we of the western world have been +taught to revere as the only things worth living for--look at her, as +the world has beheld her since August, 1914, fearless, tearless, +indestructible, in face of the most ruthless and formidable enemy the +world has ever known, determined to fight on to the end for the +principles she has always lived for. Such she is to-day; such are the +millions of men who have spent their best years in her trenches, and the +millions of brave, uncomplaining, self-denying mothers and wives and +sisters who sent them forth smiling, who waited for them patiently and +courageously, or who are mourning them silently and unflinchingly, and +not one of whom, at the end of the most awful struggle in history, is +ever heard to say that the cost has been too great or the trial too +bitter to be borne. + +No one who has seen Frenchwomen since the war can doubt that their great +influence on French life, French thought, French imagination and French +sensibility, is one of the strongest elements in the attitude that +France holds before the world to-day. + + + + +VII + +IN CONCLUSION + + +I + +One of the best ways of finding out why a race is what it is, is to pick +out the words that preponderate in its speech and its literature, and +then try to define the special meaning it gives them. + +The French people are one of the most ascetic and the most laborious in +Europe; yet the four words that preponderate in French speech and +literature are: Glory, love, voluptuousness, and pleasure. Before the +Puritan reflex causes the reader to fling aside the page polluted by +this statement, it will be worth his while to translate these four words +into _la gloire_, _l'amour_, _la volupté_, _le plaisir_, and then (if he +knows French and the French well enough) consider what they mean in the +language of Corneille and Pascal. For it must be understood that they +have no equivalents in the English consciousness, and that, if it were +sought to explain the fundamental difference between the exiles of the +_Mayflower_ and the conquerors of Valmy and Jéna, it would probably best +be illustrated by the totally different significance of "love and glory" +and "amour et gloire." + +To begin with "la gloire": we must resign ourselves to the fact that we +do not _really know_ what the French mean when they say it--what, for +instance, Montesquieu had in mind when he wrote of Sparta: "The only +object of the Lacedæmonians was liberty, the only advantage it gave them +was glory." At best, if we are intelligent and sympathetic enough to +have entered a little way into the French psychology, we know that they +mean something infinitely larger, deeper and subtler than we mean by +"glory." The proof is that the Anglo-Saxon is taught _not_ to do great +deeds for "glory," while the French, unsurpassed in great deeds, have +always avowedly done them for "la gloire." + +It is obvious that the sense of duty has a large part in the French +conception of glory: perhaps one might risk defining it as duty with a +_panache_. But that only brings one to another untranslatable word. To +put a _panache_--a plume, an ornament--on a prosaic deed is an act so +eminently French that one seeks in vain for its English equivalent; it +would verge on the grotesque to define "la gloire" as duty wearing an +aigrette! The whole conception of "la gloire" is linked with the +profoundly French conviction that the lily _should_ be gilded; that, +however lofty and beautiful a man's act or his purpose, it gains by +being performed with what the French (in a word which for them has no +implication of effeminacy) call "elegance." Indeed, the higher, the more +beautiful, the gesture or the act, the more it seems to them to call for +adornment, the more it gains by being given relief. And thus, by the +very appositeness of the word _relief_, one is led to perceive that "la +gloire" as an incentive to high action is essentially the conception of +a people in whom the plastic sense has always prevailed. The idea of +"dying in beauty" certainly originated with the Latin race, though a +Scandinavian playwright was left, incongruously enough, to find a phrase +for it. + +The case is the same with "love" and "amour"; but here the difference is +more visible, and the meaning of "amour" easier to arrive at. Again, as +with "gloire," the content is greater than that of our "love." "Amour," +to the French, means the undivided total of the complex sensations and +emotions that a man and a woman may inspire in each other; whereas +"love," since the days of the Elizabethans, has never, to Anglo-Saxons, +been more than two halves of a word--one half all purity and poetry, the +other all pruriency and prose. And gradually the latter half has been +discarded, as too unworthy of association with the loftier meanings of +the word, and "love" remains--at least in the press and in the +household--a relation as innocuous, and as undisturbing to social +conventions and business routine, as the tamest ties of consanguinity. + +Is it not possible that the determination to keep these two halves apart +has diminished the one and degraded the other, to the loss of human +nature in the round? The Anglo-Saxon answer is, of course, that love is +not license; but what meaning is left to "love" in a society where it is +supposed to determine marriage, and yet to ignore the transiency of +sexual attraction? At best, it seems to designate a boy-and-girl fancy +not much more mature than a taste for dolls or marbles. In the light of +that definition, has not license kept the better part? + +It may be argued that human nature is everywhere fundamentally the same, +and that, though one race lies about its deepest impulses, while another +speaks the truth about them, the result in conduct is not very +different. Is either of these affirmations exact? If human nature, at +bottom, is everywhere the same, such deep layers of different habits, +prejudices, and beliefs have been formed above its foundation that it is +rather misleading to test resemblances by what one digs up at the roots. +Secondary motives of conduct are widely divergent in different +countries, and they are the motives that control civilised societies +except when some catastrophe throws them back to the state of naked man. + +To understand the difference between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon idea +of love one must first of all understand the difference between the +Latin and Anglo-Saxon conceptions of marriage. In a society where +marriage is supposed to be determined solely by reciprocal inclination, +and to bind the contracting parties not only to a social but to a +physical lifelong loyalty, love, which never has accepted, and never +will accept, such bonds, immediately becomes a pariah and a sinner. This +is the Anglo-Saxon point of view. How many critics of the French +conception of love have taken the trouble to consider first their idea +of marriage? + +Marriage, in France, is regarded as founded for the family and not for +the husband and wife. It is designed not to make two people individually +happy for a longer or shorter time, but to secure their permanent +well-being as associates in the foundation of a home and the procreation +of a family. Such an arrangement must needs be based on what is most +permanent in human states of feeling, and least dependent on the +accidents of beauty, youth, and novelty. Community of tradition, of +education, and, above all, of the parental feeling, are judged to be the +sentiments most likely to form a lasting tie between the average man and +woman; and the French marriage is built on parenthood, not on passion. + +An illustration of the radical contradiction between such a view of +marriage and that of the English races is found in the following +extract from a notice of a play lately produced (with success) in +London: + +"After two months of marriage a young girl discovers that her husband +married her because he wanted a son. _That is enough. She will have no +more to do with him._ So he goes off to fulfil a mining engagement in +Peru, and she hides herself in the country...." + +It would be impossible to exaggerate the bewilderment and disgust with +which any wife or husband in France, whether young or middle-aged, would +read the cryptic sentences I have italicised. "What," they would ask, +"did the girl suppose he had married her for? And what did she _want_ to +be married for? And what is marriage for, if not for that?" + +The French bride is no longer taken from a convent at sixteen to be +flung into the arms of an unknown bridegroom. As emancipation has +progressed, the young girl has been allowed a voice in choosing her +husband; but what is the result? That in ninety-nine cases out of a +hundred her choice is governed by the same considerations. The notion +of marriage as a kind of superior business association, based on +community of class, of political and religious opinion, and on a fair +exchange of advantages (where one, for instance, brings money and the +other position), is so ingrained in the French social organisation that +the modern girl accepts it intelligently, just as her puppet grandmother +bowed to it passively. + +From this important act of life the notion of love is tacitly excluded; +not because love is thought unimportant, but on account of its very +importance, and of the fact that it is not conceivably to be fitted into +any stable association between man and woman. It is because the French +have refused to cut love in two that they have not attempted to +subordinate it to the organisation of the family. They have left it out +because there was no room for it, and also because it moves to a +different rhythm, and keeps different seasons. It is because they refuse +to regard it either as merely an exchange of ethereal vows or as a +sensual gratification; because, on the contrary, they believe, with +Coleridge, that + + + "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame," + + +that they frankly recognise its right to its own place in life. + +What, then, is the place they give to the disturbing element? They treat +it--the answer might be--as the poetry of life. For the French, simply +because they are the most realistic people in the world, are also the +most romantic. They have judged that the family and the state cannot be +built up on poetry, but they have not felt that for that reason poetry +was to be banished from their republic. They have decided that love is +too grave a matter for boys and girls, and not grave enough to form the +basis of marriage; but in the relations between grown people, apart from +their permanent ties (and in the deepest consciousness of the French, +marriage still remains indissoluble), they allow it, frankly and amply, +the part it furtively and shabbily, but no less ubiquitously, plays in +Puritan societies. + +It is not intended here to weigh the relative advantages of this view of +life and the other; what has been sought is to state fairly the reasons +why marriage, being taken more seriously and less vaguely by the French, +there remains an allotted place for love in their more precisely ordered +social economy. Nevertheless, it is fairly obvious that, except in a +world where the claims of the body social are very perfectly balanced +against those of the body individual, to give such a place to passion is +to risk being submerged by it. A society which puts love beyond the law, +and then pays it such heavy toll, subjects itself to the most terrible +of Camorras. + + +II + +The French are one of the most ascetic races in the world; and that is +perhaps the reason why the meaning they give to the word "volupté" is +free from the vulgarity of our "voluptuousness." The latter suggests to +most people a cross-legged sultan in a fat seraglio; "volupté" means the +intangible charm that imagination extracts from things tangible. +"Volupté" means the "Ode to the Nightingale" and the "Ode to a Grecian +Urn;" it means Romeo and Juliet as well as Antony and Cleopatra. But if +we have the thing, one may ask, what does the word matter? Every +language is always losing word-values, even where the sense of the word +survives. + +The answer is that the French sense of "volupté" is found only +exceptionally in the Anglo-Saxon imagination, whereas it is part of the +imaginative make-up of the whole French race. One turns to Shakespeare +or Keats to find it formulated in our speech; in France it underlies the +whole view of life. And this brings one, of course, to the inevitable +conclusion that the French are a race of creative artists, and that +artistic creativeness requires first a free play of the mind on all the +facts of life, and secondly the sensuous sensibility that sees beyond +tangible beauty to the aura surrounding it. + +The French possess the quality and have always claimed the privilege. +And from their freedom of view combined with their sensuous sensibility +they have extracted the sensation they call "le plaisir," which is +something so much more definite and more evocative than what we mean +when we speak of pleasure. "Le plaisir" stands for the frankly +permitted, the freely taken, delight of the senses, the direct enjoyment +of the fruit of the tree called golden. No suggestions of furtive vice +degrade or coarsen it, because it has, like love, its open place in +speech and practice. It has found its expression in English also, but +only on the lips of genius: for instance, in the "bursting of joy's +grape" in the "Ode to Melancholy" (it is always in Keats that one seeks +such utterances); whereas to the French it is part of the general +fearless and joyful contact with life. And that is why it has kept its +finer meaning, instead of being debased by incomprehension. + + +III + +The French are passionate and pleasure-loving; but they are above all +ascetic and laborious. And it is only out of a union of these supposedly +contradictory qualities that so fine a thing as the French temperament +could have come. + +The industry of the French is universally celebrated; but many--even +among their own race--might ask what justifies the statement that they +are ascetic. The fact is, the word, which in reality indicates merely a +natural indifference to material well-being, has come, in modern speech, +to have a narrower and a penitential meaning. It is supposed to imply a +moral judgment, whereas it refers only to the attitude taken toward the +creature comforts. A man, or a nation, may wear homespun and live on +locusts, and yet be immoderately addicted to the lusts of the eye and +of the flesh. Asceticism means the serene ability to get on without +_comfort_, and comfort is an Anglo-Saxon invention which the Latins have +never really understood or felt the want of. What they need (and there +is no relation between the needs) is splendour on occasion, and beauty +and fulness of experience always. They do not care for the raw material +of sensation: food must be exquisitely cooked, emotion eloquently +expressed, desire emotionally heightened, every experience must be +transmuted into terms of beauty before it touches their imagination. + +This fastidiousness, this tendency always to select and eliminate, and +refine their sensations, is united to that stoic indifference to dirt, +discomfort, bad air, damp, cold, and whatever Anglo-Saxons describe as +"inconvenience" in the general organisation of life, from the bathroom +to the banking system, which gives the French leisure of spirit for +enjoyment, and strength of heart for war. It enables, and has always +enabled, a people addicted to pleasure and unused to the discipline of +sport, to turn at a moment's notice into the greatest fighters that +history has known. All the French need to effect this transformation is +a "great argument;" once the spring of imagination touched, the body +obeys it with a dash and an endurance that no discipline, whether +Spartan or Prussian, ever succeeded in outdoing. + +This fearless and joyful people, so ardently individual and so frankly +realistic, have another safeguard against excess in their almost Chinese +reverence for the ritual of manners. It is fortunate that they have +preserved, through every political revolution, this sense of the +importance of ceremony, for they are without the compensating respect +for the rights of others which eases intercourse in Anglo-Saxon +countries. Any view of the French that considers them as possessing the +instinct of liberty is misleading; what they have always understood is +equality--a different matter--and even that, as one of the most acute +among their recent political writers has said, "on condition that each +man commands." Their past history, and above all the geographical +situation which has conditioned it, must be kept in view to understand +the French indifference to the rights of others, and the corrective for +that indifference which their exquisite sense of sociability provides. + +For over a thousand years France has had to maintain herself in the +teeth of an aggressive Europe, and to do so she has required a strong +central government and a sense of social discipline. Her great kings +were forever strengthening her by their resistance to the scattered +feudal opposition. Richelieu and Louis XIV finally broke this +opposition, and left France united against Europe, but deprived of the +sense of individual freedom, and needing to feel the pressure of an +"administration" on her neck. Imagination, intellectual energy, and +every form of artistic activity, found their outlet in social +intercourse, and France created polite society--one more work of art in +the long list of her creations. + +The French conception of society is hierarchical and administrative, as +her government (under whatever name) has so long been. Every social +situation has its appropriate gestures and its almost fixed vocabulary, +and nothing, for example, is more puzzling to the French than the fact +that the English, a race whose civilisation they regard as in some +respects superior to their own, have only two or three ways of beginning +and ending their letters. + +This ritual view of politeness makes it difficult of application in +undetermined cases, and therefore it often gets left out in emergencies. +The complaint of Anglo-Saxons that, in travelling in France, they see +little of the much-vaunted French courtesy, is not unjustified. The +French are not courteous from any vague sense of good-will toward +mankind; they regard politeness as a coin with which certain things are +obtainable, and being notably thrifty they are cautious about spending +it on strangers. But the disillusion of the traveller often arises in +part from his own ignorance of the most elementary French forms: of the +"Bon jour, Madame," on entering and leaving a shop, of the fact that a +visitor should always, on taking leave, be conducted to the outer door, +and a gentleman (of the old school) bidden not to remain uncovered when +he stops to speak to a lady in the street; of the "Merci" that should +follow every service, however slight, the "Après vous" which makes way, +with ceremonious insistence, for the person who happens to be entering a +door with one. In these respects, Anglo-Saxons, by their lack of "form" +(and their lack of perception), are perpetually giving unintentional +offence. But small social fashions are oddly different in different +countries and vary absurdly in succeeding generations. The French +gentleman does not uncover in a lift or in a museum, because he +considers these places as public as the street; he does not, after the +manner of the newest-of-all American, jump up like a Jack-in-the-box +(and remain standing at attention) every time the woman he is calling on +rises from her seat, because he considers such gymnastics fatal to +social ease; but he is shocked by the way in which Americans loll and +sprawl when they are seated, and equally bewildered by their excess of +ceremony on some occasions, and their startling familiarity on others. + +Such misunderstandings are inevitable between people of different speech +and traditions. If French and Americans are both (as their newspapers +assure us) "democratic," it gives a notion of how much the term covers! +At any rate, in the older race there is a tradition of trained and +cultivated politeness that flowers, at its best, into a simplicity +democratic in the finest sense. Compared to it, our politeness is apt to +be rather stagy, as our ease is at times a little boorish. + + +IV + +It will be remembered that Paolo and Francesca are met by Dante just +beyond the fatal gateway, in what might be called the temperate zone of +the infernal regions. In the society of dangerously agreeable +fellow-sinners they "go forever on the accursed air," telling their +beautiful tale to sympathising visitors from above; and as, unlike the +majority of mortal lovers, they seem not to dread an eternity together, +and as they feel no exaggerated remorse for their sin, their punishment +is the mildest in the poet's list of expiations. There is all the width +of hell between the "Divine Comedy" and the "Scarlet Letter"! + +Far different is the lot of the dishonest man of business and of the +traitor to the state. For these two offenders against the political and +social order the ultimate horrors of the pit are reserved. The +difference between their fate and that of the lovers is like that +between the lot of an aviator in an eternally invulnerable aeroplane +and of a stoker in the burning hold of an eternally torpedoed ship. On +this distinction between the two classes of offences--the antilegal and +the antisocial--the whole fabric of Latin morality is based. + +The moralists and theologians of the Middle Ages, agitated as no other +age has been by the problem of death and the life after death, worked +out the great scheme of moral retribution on which the "Divine Comedy" +is based. This system of punishment is the result of a purely Latin and +social conception of order. In it individualism has no place. It is +based on the interests of the family, and of that larger family formed +by the commune or the state; and it distinguishes, implicitly if not +outspokenly, between the wrong that has far-reaching social consequences +and that which injures only one or two persons, or perhaps only the +moral sense of the offender. + +The French have continued to accept this classification of offences. +They continue to think the sin against the public conscience far graver +than that against any private person. If in France there is a +distinction between private and business morality it is exactly the +reverse of that prevailing in America, and the French conscience rejects +with abhorrence the business complaisances which the rigidly virtuous +American too often regards as not immoral because not indictable. +"Business" tends everywhere to subdue its victims to what they work in, +and it is not meant to suggest that every French financier is +irreproachable, or that France has not had more than her share of +glaring financial scandals, but that among the real French, +uncontaminated by cosmopolitan influences, and especially in the class +of small shopkeepers and in the upper bourgeoisie, business probity is +higher, and above all _more sensitive_, than in America. It is not only, +or always, through indolence that France has remained backward in +certain forms of efficiency. + +It would be misleading to conclude that this sensitiveness is based on +a respect for the rights of others. The French, it must be repeated, are +as a race indifferent to the rights of others. In the people and the +lower middle class (and how much higher up!) the traditional attitude +is: "Why should I do my neighbour a good turn when he may be getting the +better of me in some way I haven't found out?" The French are not +generous, and they are not trustful. They do not willingly credit their +neighbours with sentiments as disinterested as their own. But deep in +their very bones is something that was called "the point of honour" when +there was an aristocracy to lay exclusive claim to it, but that has, in +reality, always permeated the whole fabric of the race. It is just as +untranslatable as the "panache" into which it has flowered on so many +immortal battle-fields; and it regulates the conscience of one of the +most avaricious and least compassionate of peoples in their business +relations, as it regulated the conduct in the field of the knights of +chivalry and of the _parvenu_ heroes of Napoleon. + +It all comes back, perhaps, to the extraordinarily true French sense of +values. As a people, the French have moral taste, and an ear for the +"still small voice"; they know what is worth while, and they despise +most of the benefits that accrue from a clever disregard of their own +standards. It has been the fashion among certain of their own critics to +inveigh against French "taste" and French "measure," and to celebrate +the supposed lack of these qualities in the Anglo-Saxon races as giving +a freer play to genius and a larger scope to all kinds of audacious +enterprise. It is evident that if a new continent is to be made +habitable, or a new prosody to be created, the business "point of +honour" in the one case, and the French Academy in the other, may +seriously hamper the task; but in the minor transactions of commerce and +culture perhaps such restrictive influences are worth more to +civilisation than a mediocre license. + + +V + +Many years ago, during a voyage in the Mediterranean, the yacht on which +I was cruising was driven by bad weather to take shelter in a small +harbour on the Mainote coast. The country, at the time, was not +considered particularly safe, and before landing we consulted the +guide-book to see what reception we were likely to meet with. + +This is the answer we found: "The inhabitants are brave, hospitable, and +generous, but fierce, treacherous, vindictive, and given to acts of +piracy, robbery, and wreckage." + +Perhaps the foregoing attempt to define some attributes of the French +character may seem as incoherent as this summary. At any rate, the +endeavour to strike a balance between seemingly contradictory traits +disposes one to indulgence toward the anonymous student of the Mainotes. + +No civilised race has gone as unerringly as the French toward the +natural sources of enjoyment; none has been so unashamed of instinct. +Yet none has been more enslaved by social conventions, small complicated +observances based on long-past conditions of life. No race has shown +more collective magnanimity on great occasions, more pettiness and +hardness in small dealings between individuals. Of no great people would +it be truer to say that, like the Mainote tribesmen, they are generous +and brave, yet fierce and vindictive. No people are more capable of +improvising greatness, yet more afraid of the least initiative in +ordinary matters. No people are more sceptical and more religious, more +realistic and more romantic, more irritable and nervous, yet more +capable of a long patience and a dauntless calm. + +Such are the deductions which the foreign observer has made. It would +probably take kinship of blood to resolve them into a harmonious +interpretation of the French character. + +All that the looker-on may venture is to say: Some of the +characteristics I have noted seem unamiable, others dangerously +disintegrating, others provokingly unprogressive. But when you have +summed up the whole you will be forced to conclude that as long as +enriching life is more than preserving it, as long as culture is +superior to business efficiency, as long as poetry and imagination and +reverence are higher and more precious elements of civilisation than +telephones or plumbing, as long as truth is more bracing than hypocrisy, +and wit more wholesome than dulness, so long will France remain greater +than any nation that has not her ideals. + +Once again it must be repeated that the best answer to every criticism +of French weakness or French shortcomings is the conclusive one: _Look +at the results!_ Read her history, study her art, follow up the current +of her ideas; then look about you, and you will see that the whole world +is full of her spilt glory. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57786 *** |