English Pharisees French Crocodiles, and Other Anglo-French Typical Characters

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLISH PHARISEES AND FRENCH CROCODILES

The French and the English have this very characteristic feature in common: they can stand any amount of incense; you may burn all the perfumes of Arabia under their noses, without incommoding them in the slightest degree.

With this difference, however, in the extremes.

The French boaster is noisy and talkative. With his mustache twirled defiantly upward, his hat on one side, he will shout at you, at the top of his voice that,[1 - If my memory serves me, it was one of our wittiest vaudevillists who once laid a wager that he would get an encore, at one of our popular theaters on the Boulevard, for the following patriotic quatrain:"La lâcheté ne vaut pas la vaillance,Mille revers ne font pas un succès;La France, amis, sera toujours la France,Les Français seront toujours les Français."He won the bet.The London badauds are at present nightly applauding, at the Empire Theater, a patriotic song which begins by the following words:"What though the powers the world doth holdWere all against us met,We have the might they felt of old,And England's England yet."Is it not strange that music-hall jingoism and chauvinisme should not only be expressed in the same manner, but by the very same words?] "La France, Monsieur, sera toujours la Fr-r-rance, les Français seront toujours les Fr-r-rançais." As you listen to him, you are almost tempted to believe, with Thackeray, "that the poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to be."

But allow me to say that the British specimen is far more provoking. He is so sure that all his geese are swans; so thoroughly persuaded of his superiority over the rest of the human race; it is, in his eyes, such an incontested and incontestable fact, that he does not think it worth his while to raise his voice in asserting it, and that is what makes him so awfully irritating, "don't you know?" He has not a doubt that the whole world was made for him; not only this one, but the next. In the meantime – for he is in no hurry to put on the angel plumage that awaits him – he congratulates himself on his position here below. Everything is done to add to his comfort and happiness: the Italians give him concerts, the French dig the Suez Canal for him, the Germans sweep out his offices and do his errands in the City of London for $200 a year, the Greeks grow the principal ingredient in his plum pudding. The Americans supply his aristocracy with rich heiresses, so that they may get their coats of arms out of pawn. His face beams with gratitude and complacency, as he quietly rubs his hands together, and calmly thanks Heaven that he is not as other men are. And it is true enough; he is not.

"Dear brother reader," says Thackeray, "answer as a man of honor. Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't, you gallant British snob, you know you don't… Oh, my country! if I were a Frenchman, how I would hate you!"

⁂

There is one great difference between our two boasters: the Englishman will seek, on all occasions, to appear a trifle better than he really is – he never runs himself down; if he has a defect or two, he will let you find them out; but the Frenchman, on the contrary, is a braggart of vice. To hear him joke about matrimony, for instance, you would take him for a libertine. To listen to some of the plays that he will applaud, to see the caricatures that amuse him, you might come to the conclusion that, in his eyes, marriage was not a sacred tie. But do not form your conclusions too hastily. Those jokes, that delight him, are often in very doubtful taste, I admit; but they are jokes and nothing more, and if you were to take the plays and caricatures for real pictures of French life, you would be making as great a mistake as you could well make.

Now, a Frenchman, who had given an appointment to his wife, would be apt to take on a little look of mystery as he hurried away from a friend in the street, with the words: "Excuse my haste, I must leave you; I have an appointment." And if you heard the response, "Ah! you rascal, I'll tell your wife," accompanied by a knowing shake of the head, you might rashly take the pair for a couple of reprobates. But once more you would be wrong. Such harmless trivialities – for trivialities they must be called – are indulged in by men who are the honor and joy of their homes.

Let me tell you this: Whenever you hear a Frenchman speak ill of himself, do not believe him, he is merely boasting. Be sure that nothing is more true. I shall never say anything more true so long as I live.

We French hide our virtues and do not like to be reproached with them. On this subject I might tell an anecdote which, if venerable, is none the less amusing.

The Athenæum, a paper written by the élite of the literary, scientific, and artistic worlds, was at a loss to know, not long since, why almost all the heroes of French novels were engineers. The reason is that French engineers are all ex-pupils of the Polytechnic School. I mean the engineers of mines, roads, and bridges. These young men, having passed their youth in study, in order to prepare for the most difficult examination we have, naturally have the reputation of being steady. The anecdote is this: Edmond About one day wrote: "Virtuous as a Polytechnician." The sentence displeased the young mathematicians, and they promptly took the author of it to task.

I forget the exact words of their reply, but it ran, as nearly as I can recollect:

"Dear Sir: Please to speak of what you know something about. We are no more virtuous than you."

And I can vouch for the truth of this little anecdote: I was one of those who signed the letter.

Call a Frenchman a "good father" or "good citizen," he will smile and probably answer back, "You humbug!" Yet he is a good father and a good citizen, and he used to be a good garde-national, notwithstanding his objection to be told so. He proved it during the siege of Paris, although his wife had never been able to look at him in his uniform without laughing.

Now, if the Englishman, who ornaments his buttonhole with a piece of blue ribbon, does not put on two pieces more to proclaim urbi et orbi that he is a good father and a good citizen, it is because the idea never occurred to him – for nobody doubts that, like his neighbor, he, too, is a good father and a good citizen.

Ah! I say once more, if we only knew how to hide our faults as we can hide our virtues, what a respectable figure we could cut by the side of our neighbors!

The English hypocrite is the hypocrite of virtue and religion. English novelists have exposed him, but have not succeeded in extinguishing him; the Chadbands, the Stigginses, the Podsnaps, the Pecksniffs, all the saintly British Tartuffes, are as flourishing as ever.

Molière could, in his times, put on the stage such a man as Tartuffe; at the present day the type is extinct; the religious hypocrite would not go down in France; the character is exploded.

Pecksniff, one of the most powerful creations of Dickens, a photograph from the life, had named his two daughters, Mercy and Charity. In France, this worthy father and the Misses Mercy and Charity would find every door shut in their faces. This kind of vocation would lead straight to the workhouse.

It is not that we have no hypocrites, however. We keep the article, but it is of a different pattern.

The French hypocrite is the hypocrite of sentiment – the crocodile.

It is natural enough that it should be so.

The hypocrite does but force the characteristic note of his race. The English are religious (I mean church-going), the French sentimental; therefore, the English hypocrite is the hypocrite of religion, and the French hypocrite is the hypocrite of sentiment.

The former will enter into conversation with you by expressing a hope that you do not concern yourself too much with the things of this world. Chadband presents himself at the house of a friend with the salutation: "Peace be upon this house." Then, seeing the table garnished with good things, he cries: "My friends, why must we eat? To live. And why must we live? To do good. It is then right that we should eat. Therefore, let us partake of the good things which are set before us." Thereupon he gorges himself, that he may be able the better to support life, and do the more good. No French novelist would dare portray such a personage in his books.

The French hypocrite proceeds differently. He makes professions of friendship for you, embraces you, enters into your woes with touching displays of feeling; when occasion seems to require, he can shed a few tears, his lachrymal gland is inexhaustible. As he takes his departure, he "hopes things will soon look brighter," and offers you a cigar.

It is at the funeral of a good bequeathing uncle that he is especially edifying. He follows, with staggering steps, the remains of the beloved defunct; he is literally supported to the grave by the two friends on whose arms he leans. Tears trickle down his cheeks, he is pale and exhausted. His handkerchief has a wide black border, but smells of musk. He tells you, with sobs, that his uncle was a father to him, and begs you to excuse him, if he finds it impossible to master his grief.

On arriving home, he writes to his upholsterer to order new furniture.

The two kinds of hypocrisy, one as loathsome as the other, are clearly manifested even in the criminals of the two countries.

The English prisoner at the bar is not submitted to examination, and thus the public is spared his professions of faith; but the letters he writes to his friends, and to which the newspapers generally give publicity, show him in his true light. "He believes in God; he knows that Heaven will not fail to confound the infernal machinations of the wretches who accuse him."

The French criminal makes professions of sentiment in the dock.

I extract the following lines from the trial of the vile assassins of Mme. Ballerich:

"Q. You loitered about the house and asked Mme. Ballerich for a fictitious person, in order to take stock of the premises, did you not?

"A. I do not deny that I meant to commit a theft, but a crime was far from my thoughts. A crime is going too far; I would not dishonor my family; I swear it by my mother.

"Q. You struck the fatal blow that killed the victim. When you left she was still alive?

"A. I did not look to see whether Mme. Ballerich was dead. It is bad enough to be mixed up at all in affairs of that kind! It made me feel sick to see the blood. I suffered internally; I was struck with remorse and repentance and I thought of my mother. (Here the prisoner burst into tears.)"

The English assassin, on mounting the scaffold, generally gives his friends rendezvous in the better land, and implores his Maker's pardon. The French murderer implores the pardon of his mother.

At this solemn moment both of them probably cease to be hypocrites.

CHAPTER IX.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOCIAL FAILURES

The French social failure is generally a radical. If he had cared to do as plenty of others do (and seeing you prosperous, he accompanies this with an expressive glance), if he had cared to intrigue and curry favor, he too could have cut a figure in the world. But unhappily for himself, he does not know how to disguise his opinions; he is, according to the formula, poor but honest.

It is his pride that leads him to avoid the lucky ones of the earth; he has no desire to be taken for a schemer. If he has lost all else, honor still is left, and this, his only remaining treasure, he intends to preserve intact.

He despises money, and if he does not return that little loan he borrowed of you, it is because he presumes that your contempt for filthy lucre is equal to his own.

Yet the sight of gold melts him, and there flits across his face a smile of satisfaction, mingled, however, with a tinge of sadness at the thought of being caught capitulating with the enemy. But to convince himself that he has lost none of his independence of character, he goes straightway and says evil of you, so that no man shall say of him that he was corrupted by the loan of a paltry coin.

You will generally find that he has been bankrupt once or twice; but as that has not made a rich man of him, you conclude that, if he has not a great love of money, neither has he a great talent for business.

He lays his poverty at everyone's door but his own. Society does not understand him. He shall go to his grave without having had a chance of revealing himself to the world. Meanwhile he opens a general agency. Not having been successful with his own affairs, he hopes to have better luck with other people's.

As a rule, you find that he has married a servant or a laundress, "to pay a debt he owed to Society," as he puts it. But Society, who is but a thankless jade, turns her back upon him and his wife. Never mind, he has done his duty. Upon this point he finds nothing to reproach himself with. Some men marry for money; thank Heaven, he is not one of that sort.

Let anything you undertake prove a success, and you will hear him say that he had thought of doing it long ago; it was only his idea stolen from him. But there's the rub; what is the use of ideas, when one has no capital?