The American in Paris

Front matter

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Preface

London, August 10th, 1836. ***** you have no sooner a guinea in London than you have none. In addition to the ways and means I pointed out in my last, gather together the letters I wrote you from Paris, and offer them to the booksellers. There are enough, if you have preserved them, for a volume. Those from London reserve until time has made the necessary additions for volume the second. I had partly the intention, in writing these letters, to dress them up one day into some kind of shape for the Public. I am not certain they are fit to be seen in their present dishabille — but leave that to the purchaser. A pretty woman slip-shod is a pretty woman still, and she is not so much improved as you think by her court dress. Tell the Public I do not mean them for great things: I am no critic, no politician, no political economist; but only, as Shakspeare would say, "a snapper up of inconsiderate trifles." — Under this title I have the honor to be, with the most perfect consideration, the Public's very obedient, humble servant.

Letter I

Havre — Description of the town— The map seller — Manners of the people — Law of inheritance — State of agriculture — Town and country poverty— Foreign trade — The custom house, a school for perjury — System of passports — The French diligence — Rouen — The cathedral— Joan of Arc 13—30

Letter II

Paris— Street cries — St. Roch — The Boulevards — Parisian lodgings —Manner of living — The grand opera — Taglioni — The public gardens — The Guinguettes — Dancing, the characteristic amusement of the French — Sunday dances — Dancing defended, from classical authority 30—49

Letter III

The Boulevards — Boulevard Madelaine — Boulevard des Capucines — Boulevard Italien — Monsieur Careme— Splendid cafes — The baths — Boulevard Montmartre — The shoe-blaek — The chiffonnier — The gratteur — The commissionnaire— Boulevard du Temple — Scene at the Ambigft Comique— Sir Sydney Smith — Monsieur de Paris —

X CONTENTS.

The Cafe Turc— The fountains— Recollections of the Bastille— The Halle aux Bles— The Bicetre— Boulevard du Mont Parnasse

50—76

Letter IV

The Palais Royal— French courtesy — Rue Vivienne— Pleasures of walking in the streets — Cafes in the Palais Royal — Mille Colonnes — Very's — French dinners — Past history of the Palais Royal — Galerie d'Orleans — Gambling — The unhappy Colton— Hells of the Palais Royal — Prince Puckler Muskau — Lord Brougham — The king and queen - - - - - -.- 76—98

Letter V

The Tuileries — The gardens— The statues — The Cabinets de lecture — The king's band — Regulations of the gardens — Yankee modesty — the English parks — Proper estimate of riches — Policy of cultivating a taste for innocent pleasures — Advantages of gardens — Should be made ornamental -Cause of the French Revolution — Mr. Burke's notion of the English parks — Climate of France

98—110

Letter VI

The Three Glorious Days — The plump little widow — Marriage of fifteen young girls — Shrines of the martyrs — Louis Philippe — Dukes of Orleans and Nemours — The National Guards — Fieschi — The Infernal Machine — Marshal Mortier and twelve persons killed —Dismissal of the troops — The queen and her daughters — Disturbed state of France — The Chamber of Deputies — Elements of support to the present dynasty — Private character of the king — The daily journals — The Chamber of Peers — Bonaparte

110—125

CONTENTS. XI

Letter VII

The Garden of Plants — The omnibus — The Museum of Natural History — American birds — The naturalist — Study of entomology— The Botanic Garden — Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy — The menagerie — The giraffe — Notions of America — The cedar of Lebanon- Effects of French cookery — French gastronomy — Goose liver pie — Mode of procuring the repletion of the liver - - 125 — =139

Letter VIII

Burial of the victims — St. Cloud — The chateau — The cicerone — The Chevalier-d'Industrie— Grave of Mrs. Jordan — The Bois de Boulogne — Amusements on fete days— Place Louis XV. — The king at the Tuileries — The American address — His majesty's reply — The Princess Amelia — The queen and her daughters — The Dukes of Orleans and Nemours — Madame Adelaide — Splendor of ancient courts — Manner of governing the French — William the Fourth — Exhibition of the students at the University - - 139 — 154

Letter IX

Tour of Paris— The Seine — The Garden of Plants — The animals- Island of St. Louis — The Halle aux Vins — The police — Palais de Justice— The Morgue — Number of suicides — M. Perrin— The Hotel de Ville — Place de Greve — The Pont Neuf— Quai des Augustins— ■ The Institute — Isabeau de Baviere — The Bains Vigiers — The Pont des Arts — The washerwomen's fete — Swimming-schools for both sexes — The Chamber of Deputies — Place de la Revolution — Obelisk of Luxor — Hospital of the Invalids — Ecole Militaire — The Champ de Mars— Talleyrand - 155—182

Xll CONTENTS.

Letter X

Faubourg St. Germain— Quartier Latin — The book-stalls — Phrenologists — Dupuytren's room — Medical students— Lodgings— Bill at the Sorbonne — French cookery — A gentleman's boarding-house — The locomotive cook — Fruit — The pension — The landlady — Pleasure in being duped — Smile of a French landlady — The boarding-house — Amiable ladies — The Luxembourg gardens — The grisettes — Their naivete and simplicity — Americans sent to Paris — Parisian morals — Advantages in visiting old countries — American society in Paris 182—206

Letter XI

The Observatory — The astronomers — Val de Grace — Anne of Austria — Hospice des Enfans Trouves — Rows of cradles — Sisters of Charity— Vincent de Paul— Maisons d'Accouchement— Place St. Jacques — The Catacombs — Skull of Ninon de l'Enclos — the poet Gilbert — Julian's Bath — Hotel de Cluny — Ancient furniture — Francis the First's bed— Charlotte Corday— Danton — Marat — Robespierre — Rue des Postes — Convents of former times — Faubourg St. Marceau

207—219

THE AMERICAN IN PARIS.

Letter I

Havre— Description of the town— The map seller — Manners of the people — Law of inheritance — State of agriculture — Town and country poverty — Foreign trade — The custom house, a school for perjury — System of passports — The French diligence — Rouen — The cathedral — Joan of Arc.

Havre, June 29th, 1835.

We arrived here late on Saturday, so that Sunday and a festival on Monday compel us to await the custom house till Tuesday evening.

Do not detain your husband ; I expect him for the latest in October. You don't know how much absence from home and loneliness in a foreign country try the consistency of one's courage. — And tell him to listen to my advice in preparing his voyage. His first step is to obtain, by a few lines to the secretary of war, a passport describing his features, dimensions, titles, (nose straight, eyes hazel, &c.,) and if he can add " Major," or " Colonel," or some cheap American dignity, he will have a great many bows in this country he otherwise cannot aspire to. I was foolish enough to come over nothing but simple " John." If he brings the wife along, tell him to include her in the same document — (a little black

VOL. I.— 2

14 CUSTOM HOUSE.

girl, four feet and something, having a sharp tongue, pretty enough mouth and teeth, and eyes too good for her nose.) I don't ask pardon ; a nose is only an important feature on a passport ; faces can be pretty in spite of their noses. You don't kiss the book, so he may put down any age your ladyship pleases.

It is important to choose a good ship. The " Sylvie de Grace " left eight days after and arrived two days before us. The berth having least motion is nearest the middle of the vessel. Your fare to Havre is one hundred and forty dollars, with a guinea for services.

If any lady of your village has a disobedient husband, or a son who has beaten his mother, bid her send him to sea. — But for particulars on this head I refer you to my letter of yesterday, in which I have given you all that Sebastian Cabot and other eminent navigators had left out. " Travelers by sea" are certainly fit subjects for church prayers. I love the clergyman who put us in with the ladies in the litany. Your consolation is that the evil endures but thirty days, often less, and it purifies the blood for the better enjoyments of land. Children, especially sucking babies, are rarely sick, and women bear the sea better than men. Some of your sex having been born from this element accounts for the partiality.

Let us then skip, over the sea. On touching land your passport is sent on immediately to Paris to tell them you have come, and is restored to you there in exchange for a ticket you must ask at the police office at Havre. In the mean time your two shirts and a half are paraded under military escort to the custom house, and, unless some saint is in the way, are forthwith examined If you arrive the day before the Millenium you have to stay for your portmanteau until it is over. This exami-

HAVJIE. 15

nation might be made on board, but multiplying duties multiplies perquisites ; portage, entrance at the customs, and portage again to your lodgings, enable them to levy a contribution of five or six francs on each of your packages. All effects, except your wardrobe, are subject to duties and delays, and sealed letters to a fine. The passengers, too, are sometimes a little examined ; so beware of suspicious appearances.

Jane 30th.

I have half a mind to describe this town to you. It has twenty thousand inhabitants ; is at the mouth of the Seine, and twenty-four hours from Paris. The houses are high, mostly of black slate, and patched often till nothing is seen but the patches, and mushrooms and other vegetables grow through the cracks. Villages in America have an air of youth and freshness harmonizing with their dimensions. Small things should never look old. This town presents you with the ungracious image of a wrinkled and gray-headed baby. The streets, except one, have no sidewalks ; they are paved with rough stone, and are without gutters and common sewers ; the march of intellect not having arrived at these luxuries. The exception is the " Rue de Paris ;" it has " trottoirs," a theatre, a public square, a market house, a library with six thousand volumes, and a church very richly furnished : the organ presented by Cardinal Richelieu. I have been to this church this morning to pay the Virgin Mary the pound of candles I owed for my preservation at sea. The prettiest improvement I have seen (and it is no miracle for a town of so much commercial importance) is a dock, cut in from the bay along the channel of an old creek, which contains three or four hundred ships, a goodly number of which wear the American

16 THE SUBUKBS.

flag ; it runs through the thick of the town and brings the vessels into a pleasant sociability with the houses. When the tide is high these vessels ride in their own element ; when low, you see a whole fleet, wallowing in the mud ; and passengers, to get to sea, have to wait the complaisance both of wind and tide, often a whole week. A little to the north you will see a compensation for all this ugliness, in a hill, running boldly up to the water's edge, whose south side, several hundred feet high, is smothered with houses. They seem to be scrambling up the acclivity to look at the town ; and the entire summit is covered with beautiful villas, and gardens rich with trees and shrubbery, and hedges, which at this season are a most luxurious ornament. Many American families, having grown rich here by commerce, are perched magnificently upon this hill. The view from the top is charming ! The old town, in its motley livery of houses, ships, and fortifications, spreads itself out at your feet ; on the west there is an open view of the channel, and all the pretty images of a commercial port, such as vessels in the near and distant prospect, coming into harbor and going out upon their voyages ; and on the south, and beyond the bay into which the Seine flows, is a fine romantic country, of field and woodland, which runs gradually up, undulating like the sea, till it meets the blue sky. It is charming, too, in the night ; for as soon as Mercury has hung out his lamps above, these Havrians light up theirs in the town, and set up a little opposition to the heavens ; and there you are between two firmaments ; which of a fine evening is a fantastic and gorgeous spectacle. This is the Havre. It is the first thing I ever described, and I am out of breath.

And now the customs and manners. I have had dealings with hackney coachmen, porters, peddlers and pick-

MAP SELLERS. 17

pockets, and have found them eminently qualified in their several departments. In strolling last evening through the streets— going only to frank a letter at the post-office, I remarked a person crying maps by a wall side. He waiked up and down with arms folded, and had a grave and respectable face : " %/i trente sous settlement! — C'est incroyable ! — «# trente sous !" I wished to look after a place in Normandy, called Hellevilie ; the very place where Guiscard, and that other choicest of all ladies' heroes, Tancred, were born.— Only think of Tancred being born in the department of Coutance, and being nothing but a Frenchman ; and only think, too, of the possibility of taking a piece of gold out of a man's waistcoat pocket at mid-day, the owner being wide awake, and in full enjoyment of his senses. I had no sooner made my wants known to this polite auctioneer than, with a civilite toute Frangaise, he placed the map before my eyes— that is, between the eyes and the waistcoat pocket, and himself just behind the left shoulder, assisting me in the search — " Hell — Hell — Hell — Helleville /" He then resumed his walk and looked out for new customers; and 1 with a return of his bow and smile, and a grateful sense of his politeness, took leave, and pursued my way contentedly, " not missing what was stolen," to the post-office. Here 1 took out my letter, had it stamped, and put my hand complacently in my pocket — I went home very much disgusted with the French nation. To be robbed at the Havre brings no excuse for one's wit or understanding ; ill Paris it is what one expects from the civilization of the capital.

The porters, coachmen, draymen, boatmen, and such like, about the Havre, are wrangling and noisy to excess. They burst into an idle fury every few minutes ; reminding one of our militia musketry ; there is a preliminary,

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18 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

and then a general explosion, and then a few scattering cartridges, and all ends in smoke. They seldom resort to duelling, and boxing is considered vulgar ; and as for oaths, they make no sort of figure in French. In the article of swearing we are ahead of all other nations. In their common intercourse, however, these people are much more respectful than we are to their betters and to one another. Mr. Boots, for no other reason than bringing your shoes in well polished, insists on your " pardon for having deranged you," and the beggar takes leave of his fellow beggar witrl%is " respects to madam. 5 ' But these respects I have heard do not bear the test of any twopenny interest. There is no civility that stands against sixpence. This common world is more social, and in appearance more joyous than with us. It huddles together in public places, with wonderful conversation and merriment till a late hour of the night. What a quantity of green old age ! grandmothers of sixty with their hair en papillotte, are playing hide and go-seek with twenty-five. After all, what signifies the degree of poverty or age, if one is happy ? Another thing remarkable, is the respect paid to property. Benches on the public squares are handed down to posterity with no other marks than the natural wear and tear of sitting on them ; vegetables grow by the wayside untrodden, and gardens and fields offer their fruit without hedge or fence, or any visible protection. I have talked these matters with a Frenchman, who says, that it is the last generation only that lives at this rate, and that the present one dies off at a very reasonable age. The truth I believe is that we, in our country, keep old persons inside the house ; we wrap them up and lay them on the shelf, and ennui and neglect, no doubt, abridge a little their duration. As for the security of property he ascribes it

MARKET PEOPLE. 19

entirely to a certain shepherdly swain, very common here, who wears red breeches, and is coiffed in a cocked hat, with one of the cocks exactly over his nose, called a Garde Champetre, w T ho watches day and night over the safety of the fields. A curiosity of the place is the peasant women whom yon will see mixed fantastically with the citizens in the market, and flocking in and out in great numbers at the town gate. Labor and the sun have worn all the feminine charms out of their faces, and they have mounted up over these ugly faces starched and white caps two stories high, in which they encounter all sorts of weather; they are seated on little asses, a large basket at each side, in which they carry vegetables to market, and carry back manure for the crops of the next year.

The antiquities. I visited this morning a trumpery old palace of Charles V. ; also a round tower built, they say, by that great tower builder, Julius Cassar; and returning through a solitary alley I stumbled accidentally upon a monument of more precious memory, the birth-place of the author of Paul and Virginia. It is a scrubby old hut with a bit of marble in front containing his name and day of nativity. Genius seems to have but mean notions of the dignity of birth ; Pindar was born among the vapors of Bceotia, and St. Pierre in this filthy alley of the Havre.

The politics. The children here are apportioned equally and cannot be disinherited. All the father can dispose of by will is a half, third, or fourth of the estate, according as he has one, two, or more heirs. This kind of succession cuts up the land into small patches, and thus brings poverty on both town and country; all the families being without capital to improve their agricultural resources. They have but little to spare to the

20 CAUSES OF POVERTY.

town, and can, therefore, buy but little of its stores and manufactures; and from inability to supply the raw materials and provisions cheap, buy this little at an enhanced price. In this way the two parties mutually beggar each other. Besides, under this system of minute divisions, the farming population increases enormously, poverty increasing in the same ratio. Two-thirds of the French are already farmers ; and in England, where farming is in so much greater perfection, the ratio is one-third. This law, too, in rendering the children independent of the father, destroys his authority and check upon their conduct ; it weakens the motives to exertion, which arise from fear of want or prospects of future good, and is consequently unfavorable to intellect and morals. The English system makes one son only a fool, the French besots the whole family. A redundant population is the great curse of all these old countries, and under this system of subdivision a nation, unless the blessings of war or the plague intervene, becomes as multitudinous as the Chinese, eating dogs and cats, and potatoes, and hunting with cows and pigs; a plough as in Ireland, becoming a joint stock possession, and a horse belonging to a whole neighborhood. The French, in spite of the Moscows and Waterloos, have added between five and six millions to their population of 1789. Agriculture, to be sure, was improved by the Revolution — by the divisions amongst the peasantry of the national domains, and confiscated property of the nobles—by the abolition of tithes and game laws, and by bringing the waste land into cultivation; but this condition is or must soon be on the reverse. In America the abundance of idle and cheap land prevents this calamity for the present. I have traveled a few miles in the country, and have squeezed what sense I could

AGRICULTURE. 21

out of the peasants. I find that in all branches of husbandry, a laborer here performs a fourth less work daily than in America ; and in ploughing and reaping, nearly a third. The French implements, too, are clumsy and bungling; oxen are yoked by the horns; harrows have wooden teeth, and the plough, mostly of wood, scratches up the earth instead of turning a furrow.

Another great evil in French politics is the centralization of everything in the metropolis. In our country each borough or township is an independent community, and manages its concerns with scarce a sense of any foreign superintendence. An individual recommends himself to favor first in his village, then in his county, next in his state, and finally in the United States; and none glimmer in the last sphere who have not shone in the first. Here this condition is reversed — there is a converging of all the rays into one general focus. Paris is the centre, and there is none but delegated authority anywhere else. So the French provinces are out at the heels and elbows, and Paris wears its elegant and fashionable wardrobe. Your Pottsville has a hundred miles of railroad, whilst the Havre transports the whole trade of the capital by a two wheeled operation she calls the " roiilage," and her boats upon the channel carrying on the intercourse between the two greatest cities of the world, are about equal to yours, in which you cross over into Jersey to eat creams with mother Heyle.

A third reason of village and country poverty is the neglect of machinery by which production may be increased with a diminution of labor. Not a railroad has yet shown its nose in this place, though it is the outlet to the foreign trade of one-third of the French territory, including the capital with its almost a million

22 NEGLECT OF MACHINERY.

of inhabitants. They are cleaning their great dock to-day with a hundred or two of men armed with spades, whilst a machine is doing the same work upon the Delaware with three or four negroes. The economists of the French school reason thus: if this clumsy apparatus is superseded, our workmen will be out of employ; besides, it is known that the increase of consumers always keeps pace with the increase of production, and you end where you began. — But you increase also your strength. Yes, and the difficulties of government. You give life to a greater number of human beings, and little obligations have they for the gift if they are to run the risk of being corrupted in this world and punished in the next; and the means of corruption are greater in a crowded than a sparse population; greater amongst an idle and luxurious than a simple and laborious people. The American public was more happy and virtuous with its three millions than with its ten millions and its railroads. If this is all true, then the country which has least fertility of soil and least skill in the arts of agriculture is the most favored by Providence ; and the best system of economy is that which teaches us to procure the least possible produce with the greatest possible labor. The best employment, too, for the laborers, would be to plant cucumbers in summer, and extract the sunbeams out of them to keep themselves warm in winter. I like the system which teaches us to increase the sum of human comforts. I think it is better to live in an improved country with clean streets and neat dwellings, than to have the same means of living with a destitution of such conveniences. I like even to starve with decent accommodations.

A fourth great cause of poverty is the restriction which these nations have imposed upon their mutual

CAUSES OF POVERTY. 23

intercourse, and the produce of each other's industry. There is a total disagreement between natural reason and the custom of all countries on this subject. Nature, by giving us a diversity of soils, climates and products, has pointed out the right objects of industry, and laid all nations under obligations of dependence and intimacy upon each other, and there is a general struggle amongst all to counteract this benevolent design. France, for example, has a natural fitness for wines, and the land producing this wine is unsuited to any other culture, yet she has so managed as to keep her wine trade stationary for the last fifty years. England buys her wine, of inferior quality, from Portugal and Spain, and carries on a greater trade with the Chinese, her antipodes, than with France, her next door neighbor. All proclaim the benefits of foreign trade, and all legislate directly, to get rid of their foreign customers. In what more direct way could France prevent the sale of her wines to Russia, Sweden and England, than by refusing their coal, iron, woolen manufactures, and other products for which they have a natural advantage, in return ? But the great struggle of all is to become independent ; and yet the very word implies the extinction of all foreign commerce. The greatest of all national blessings is assuredly that very dependence we are so eager to avoid. We cannot become dependent upon a foreign nation without laying it, at the same time, under a similar dependence. — But in case of a war ? This is the very way to make a war impossible. Men do not war against their own interests. We are dependent upon Lyons for her silks, and her petitions are now pouring in daily against the impending war with America; and many think they will go nigh to prevent it. Would not this war be more remote if the dependence were

24 THE CUSTOM HOUSE.

increased ? If I wished to prevent all future wars with France and England, I would begin by building a railroad from Paris to London, and removing their commercial restrictions. Each country would then improve to the uttermost that industry to which it is most fitted. Intimacies, too, would be improved, prejudices effaced, and they would become, at length, so dependent upon each other, that even should a mad or silly government involve them in a war, their mutual interests would force them to discontinue it.

Of all methods of gathering taxes that of the custom house seems to me the worst. What an expensive apparatus of buildings ; what a fleet of vessels ; what an army of spies ! what courts of admiralty ; and what an array of new crimes upon the statute book ! A custom house is a school for perjury and other vices, and where the first lessons are made easy for beginners. There is nothing one robs with so little compunction as one's country. It is at worst only robbing thirty millions of people. A sin loses its criminality by diffusion, and may be so expanded as to be no sin at all. All the functions of a custom house are in their nature odious and vexatious. The first injunction is to refuse the traveler, wearied of the sea, the common rites of hospitality on setting his foot upon the land ; to ransack even honest women by impudent police officers, and subject Honorable men to a scrutiny practised elsewhere only upon thieves. I piqued a Frenchman on board our ship on the venality, which I had heard of, of the French ports. He replied that he had been in the American trade for ten years, and accompanied each of his cargoes to our ports for the express purpose of not paying the duties. Why nothing is more easy. "There is an officer who examines; we know each other; he knocks off the top

PASSPORTS. 25

of the boxes, rummages the calico with great fuss and ceremony, and the silks and jewelry sleep quiet at the bottom. — Whoever, he says, pays more than ten per cent, of his duties in any country, is unacquainted with his business."

There is another item in European policy, the requirement of passports — the cost, the delays and vexatious ceremony attending it— that has incurred abundant reprehension, especially from American travelers; and there certainly is no other use in such a regulation than that a set of the most despicable creatures that creep upon the earth may get a living by it. But when one is used for a long time to see things done in a certain way, one does not conceive the possibility of their being done in any other way. When I informed an intelligent Frenchman of forty years, that even a stranger did not carry a passport about with him in America/ and that we dispensed with all this array of police officers and spies, and other such impediments to traveling and the intercourse of nations, he inferred that there could be no personal security. That alone, he said, would determine him from residing in the United States. When I cited against him the example of England, he remained incredulous : and required the confirmation of a better authority.