They Eat Horses, Don't They?

by Piu Marie Eatwell

  38 Almost a third of French children aged between 10 and 15 years smoke. See Fédération Française de Cardiologie, Les jeunes et leur coeur, 13 mars 2012.

  PART 4

  1 the only known global tourist toilet survey. See The Titanic Awards, Doug Lansky, Perigee, 2010.

  2 Our fathers crapped there… Pierre-Jean Grosley, Ephémérides troyennes, 1758– 1769, cited in Roger-Henri Guerrand, Les Lieux : Histoire des Commodités, Éditions La Découverte, 2009, p. 17.

  3 Today, there are some 400 Sanisettes in Paris. Mairie de Paris website.

  4 descent into hell. Martin Monestier, Histoire et bizarreries des excréments… des origines à nos jours, Le Cherche midi, 1997, 2012, p. 158.

  5 French and US surveys conducted in the 1990s. Studies conducted in California in 1993 and in France in 1994–1996, cited by Martin Monestier, op. cit., pp. 24–5, p. 61. The studies also found that (somewhat intriguingly) the majority of Americans remained seated when wiping their bottoms (58 per cent) versus the majority of French, who stood up (61 per cent).

  6 2008 survey for the SCA group. Hygiene Matters: the SCA Hygiene Report 2008.

  7 In the words of one Japanese analyst. Seiichi Kitayama, study comparing French and Japanese toilets, cited by Monestier, op.cit., p. 159.

  8 Tobias Smollett. See Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, 1766.

  9 Henri IV to his mistress. Cited in Michel Musolino, 150 Idées Reçues sur la France, First Éditions 2012, p. 133.

  10 But our pride… succumbed to the unwashed barbarians. New Scientist, 6 November 1975, p. 348.

  11 British per capita soap consumption. See Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behaviour and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present, Cambridge University Press 2008, p. 197.

  12 Frances Trollope. Vigarello, Georges, Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitiudes in France since the Middle Ages. Translated Jean Birell, CUP 1988, p. 180.

  13 girls in convents. Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness, op. cit., pp. 174–5.

  14 As early as 1940… Bradford. See John Hassan, History of Water in England and Wales, Manchester University Press 1998, pp. 54 & 55.

  15 Only 10 per cent of homes in the 1950s. See Jean Watin-Augouard, Dop: le plaisir de passer un savon, Historia 31 mars 2004, Mensuel No. 688, p. 84.

  16 English wife of the Vicomte de Baritault. Cited in Katherine Ashenburg, Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing, Profile Books 2008, p. 192.

  17 The French don’t bathe… not as clean as the Germans. See 112 Gripes about the French, US Military leaflet, 1945, Gripe Nos. 45 and 70.

  18 complaints about French plumbing. 112 Gripes about the French, op. cit., Gripe Nos. 42 and 44.

  19 The Sun campaign. See Stephen Clarke, 1,000 Years of Annoying the French, Random House eBooks p. 483.

  20 liquid soaps and shower gels. Yves Stavridès, Les Français se lavent, L’Express, 9 février 1995.

  21 BVA/Tork survey, 2012. Les habitudes d’hygiène des Français, BVA/Tork September 2012, reported in The Daily Mail on 17 October 2012.

  22 United Minds/Tena/SCA survey, 2010. Reported by France 24 on 28 June 2011.

  23 SCA 2008 survey. Hygiene Matters: the SCA Hygiene Report 2008, p. 29.

  24 dictations... I wash my hands. See Ashenburg, op. cit., p. 196.

  25 Alain Corbin. Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant : Odour and the French Social Imagination, trans. Miriam L. Kochan, Roy Porter and Christopher Prendergast (Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1986), p. 173.

  26 Bidets were probably invented in Italy. See Katherine Ashenburg, Clean: an unsanitised history of washing, Profile Books 2009, p. 151.

  27 the earliest reference to one. See Julia Csergo and Roger-Henri Guerrand, Le Confident de dames. Le bidet du XVIIIe au XXe siècle: histoire d’une intimité. Éditions La Découverte, 1997, 2009, p. 36.

  28 One of Madame de Pompadour’s many bidets. See Ashenburg, op. cit., p. 151.

  29 The word bidet. See Le Grand Robert de la langue française.

  30 George Brassaï. See Brassaï, George. Le Paris secret des années 30, Paris, Gallimard, 1976. (Translated as The Secret Paris of the 30s by Richard Miller, Thames & Hudson, 2001), chapter entitled ‘Ladies of the Evening’.

  31 discreetly skirt around the word bidet.See Csergo and Guerrand, op. cit., pp. 22–3.

  32 eau de bidet or bidet water. See Le Grand Robert de la langue française.

  33 Bidet data. Csergo and Guerrand, op. cit., pp. 187–8. Also God save le bidet, Libération, 16 août 1995.

  PART 5

  1 As one of the hundreds of guides to French etiquette. See A. Goujon, Manuel de l’homme de bon ton (1825), cited by Frédéric Rouvillois in Histoire de la politesse: de 1789 à nos jours, Éditions Flammarion, septembre 2008.

  2 those who wear yellow gloves, and those who do not. Alphonse Karr, Revue Anecdotique, 1858, Vol. VII, p. 551, cited in Rouvillois, op. cit.

  3 Sylvia Plath. Plath, Unabridged Journals, August 26, 1956, p. 260.

  4 Temple Fielding. Fielding’s Travel Guide to Europe: 1953–54, p. 321.

  5 John Steinbeck. Steinbeck, One American in Paris, in Holiday in France, by Ludwig Bemelmans (Cambridge : Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 148.

  6 IPSOS poll 2012. See ‘Rude surprise: French fed up with own incivility’, The Guardian, 27 July 2012.

  7 The German philosopher Martin von Kempe. Opus Polyhistoricum de Osculis (Frankfurt, 1680). Cited by Keith Thomas in Karen Harvey, ed., The Kiss in History, Manchester University Press 2005, p.187.

  8 Anglo-Saxon men have never gone in for this kissing performance. D.M.C. Rose, Lieutenant-Colonel, letter in The Spectator, 10 May 2003.

  9 In general, Parisians will limit themselves to two kisses. See Frédéric Rouvillois, Histoire de la politesse de 1789 à nos jours, Edition Flammarion 2008, p.428.

  10 average Gaul cringing with disgust. See for example Hélène Crié-Wiesner, La bise, un ritual ‘so chic’ qui déroute les Américains, Rue89, 24 juillet 2012.

  11 sucking each other’s saliva and dirt. Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe, cited in Karen Harvey, op. cit., p. 187.

  12 the French do not smoke as much as the world’s biggest puffers, the Greeks. See OECD key tables on health, Tobacco consumption: Percentage of population who are daily smokers, 21 December 2011 (figures are from 2008 as this is the last year when comparable country statistics were available).

  13 24 per cent of 15–19 year-old-French teenagers smoke. See Inpes (Institut national de prévention et d’éducation pour la santé), Premiers résultats du baromètre santé 2010 : Evolutions récentes du tabagisme en France, 28 janvier 2010, p. 3.

  14 Today, 38 per cent of French women aged between 20 and 25 smoke. See Inpes, op. cit., p. 4.

  15 a slightly worrying 24 per cent of pregnant women. Inpes press release, Première hausse du tabagisme chez les femmes depuis la Loi Evin selon le Baromètre santé 2010.

  16 €47 billion or 3 per cent of GDP. See CNCT (Comité National Contre le Tabagisme), Le tabac coûte cher à la société.

  17 state-owned cigarette monopoly SEITA. See Eric Godeau, Comment le tabac est-il devenu une drogue? Vingtième Siècle no. 102, avril–juin 2009.

  18 a study by the market-research group Ipsos. See Ipsos, Tabac et cinéma, 1 juin 2012.

  19 a ‘Paris Exception’ on the dining front. See P. Singer and J. Mason, The ethics of what we eat, New York, Rodale, 2006.

  20 Out of the eight favourites dishes of France. See Les plats préférés des Français, Study by TNS Sofres for Vie Pratique Gourmand, 21 october 2011, p. 5.

  21 Less than 2 per cent of French people are vegetarian. Figures from the European Vegetarian Union.

  22 The second-biggest leisure pursuit in France. According to the French Hunters’ Federation (Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs).

  23 the majority of hunters in France. Information from the French Hunters’ Federation. According to the Federation, 40 per cent of hunters are manua
l labourers (ouvriers).

  24 a cushy deal for French farmers. See Des chasseurs accusés de ne pas tuer assez de lapins, Le Figaro 14 septembre 2012.

  25 the French are the biggest pet owners in Europe. Figures from study by the animal insurers Santé Vet, May 2011.

  PART 6

  1 William Wordsworth. See Wordsworth’s poem, ‘French Revolution as it Appears to Enthusiasts’, 1804.

  2 Hobsbawm quotation. See Hobsbawm, E. J., Echoes of the Marseillaise: Two Centuries Look Back on the French Revolution, London: Verso 1990.

  3 Zola was accused. Le Gaulois, July 1886. Cited in Alain Rustenholz, Les grandes luttes de la France Ouvrière, Éditions Les Beaux Jours 2008, p. 102.

  4 Léon Trotsky. See Léon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours (1938).

  5 Georges Sorel. Georges Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence (1908).

  6 Alain. Alain, Propos, 1934, Droit des fonctionnaires.

  7 Etymology of the word grève. See Le Grand Robert de la langue française.

  8 women textile workers at Cerizay. See Alain Rustenholz, op. cit., pp. 70–1.

  9 Percentage of French workers who belong to a union. See Ministère des Affaires, étrangères, site franco-allemand, Les syndicats en France.

  10 public sector strikes. See Stéphane Sirot, La grève en France: une histoire sociale (XIXe–XXe siècle), Éditions Odile Jacob, septembre 2002, p. 34.

  11 French retirement age. See OECD Pensions at a Glance 2011, France.

  12 taxis in Paris… in London. See Richard Darbéra, Rapport Attali: les craintes des taxis étaient-elles fondées ? Transport, No. 448, mars–avril 2008, pp. 86–91.

  13 Birth remains in France one of the principal conditions of access to power. See François Denord et al., Le Champ du Pouvoir en France, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 2011/5 – No. 190 pp. 24–57, p. 50.

  14 bosses of the CAC 40 companies. See Hervé Joly, Grand patrons, grandes écoles : la fin de l’endogamie? Laboratoire de recherches historiques Rhône-Alpes, 13 mars 2008. Bosses who had inherited their position were not counted.

  15 40 per cent of the French government… Le Siècle. See François Denord, op. cit., p. 52.

  16 Balzac/particule. See Honoré de Balzac edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers 2003, p. 46.

  17 Fabrice Luchini. As recorded by Christophe Barbier, 8 May 2010, for the French newspaper l’Express.

  18 league table of holiday-happy states in the EU. See Clotilde de Gastines, Congés payés: le classement européen, Metis 16 juillet 2009; also Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt, No-Vacation U.S.A. – a comparison of leave and holiday in OECD countries, Centre for Economic and Policy Research, 2007.

  19 average number of hours worked by the French. See OECD Better Life Index, Work-Life Balance – France.

  20 leisure and personal care. See OECD Better Life Index, op. cit.

  21 French productivity miracle. For a clear and succinct demystification of the so-called ‘French productivity phenomenon’, see Olivier Passet, Productivité: le faux record de la France, Canal Xerfi, November 2012.

  22 Taylor letter. See Goodyear: Arnaud Montebourg répond au lettre du PDG de Titan, Le Monde, 19 February 2013.

  23 Métro, boulot, dodo. See Philip Gooden and Peter Lewis, Idiomantics: the Weird World of Popular Phrases, Bloomsbury 2012, pp. 104–5.

  24 Ney quotation. Quoted in Raymond Horricks, Marshal Ney: the Romance and the Real, Midas Books 1982, p. 271.

  25 World War I military deaths. The French figure of 1,397,800 is from a study published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1931. The British figure of 886,939 is from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Annual Report, 2009–10.

  26 mass-produced feelings. Cited in Harvey Levenstein, We’ll Always have Paris: American tourists in France since 1930, University of Chicago Press 2004, p. 133.

  27 a craven act of desertion. See for example Pierre-Olivier Lombarteix, Pourquoi les Français n’aiment pas les Anglais… et réciproquement, éditions du temps 2008, p. 95.

  28 70–80 per cent of European (including British) public opinion. See Robert Gibson, Best of Enemies: Anglo-Saxon Relations since the Norman Conquest, second edition, Impress Books 2004, Chapter 8.

  PART 7

  1 On the need and ways to annihilate dialects and universalize the use of French. Sur la necessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française, Abbé Grégoire, 1794. Cited by Dennis Ager, Identity, Insecurity, and Image: France and Language, Multilingual Matters Ltd 1999, p. 24.

  2 Federalism and superstition speak Breton, etc. Cited by Ager, op. cit., p. 25.

  3 Revolutionary legislation. See Ager, op. cit., p. 28.

  4 Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and eggburgers. René Etiemble, Parlez-vous franglais? Paris: Gallimard 1964, p. 238.

  5 90 per cent of French people in a 2012 survey. Survey of 1,015 people by OpinionWay for the French festival XYZ, October 2012. Cited in Le Parisien, 30 October 2012, p. 13.

  6 Agadoo/The Birdie Song. Voted fourth and first most annoying songs of all time respectively in a poll conducted by the internet site Dotmusic in 2000.

  7 The Birdie Song. The French version of ‘The Birdie Song’, ‘La Danse des canards’, is ranked as the number 2 best-selling French pop single of all time (Infodisc).

  8 a nightmarish… world… Johnny Hallyday doesn’t exist. The film was Jean-Philippe, directed by Laurent Tuel.

  9 drank too many cigarettes. Cited in Sylvie Simmons, Serge Gainsbourg: a fistful of Gitanes, Da Capo Press 2002, p. xii.

  10 the French chanson is still a big hitter. Survey Opinion Way/Sacem 2011/2012.

  11 a Monty Python sketch. French Subtitled Film from the BBC series Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Season 2, Episode 10, 1 December 1970.

  12 Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 movie Weekend. See Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard/Athos Films, 29 December 1967.

  13 Three Colours Blue. Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Krzysztof Kieślowski/Eurimages/France 3 Cinéma/Canal +, 1993.

  14 top-grossing films in France. Figures from J.P.’s Box Office.

  15 the French hit film Camping. See Camping, Fabien Ontoniente/France 2 Cinéma/France 3 Cinéma/Pathé, 2006.

  16 Intouchables. See Intouchables, Olivier Nakache/Eric Toledano/Gaumont (France), 23 September 2011.

  PART 8

  1 police prefect to spy on them. See W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the French Working Class, 1789–1914, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1996, p. 7.

  2 the visiting American journalist Edward King observed. See Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society, New Haven: Yale University Press 1988, p. 65.

  3 the wing of madness pass over me. See Charles Baudelaire: Intimate Journals, translated by Christopher Isherwood with an Introduction by W. H. Auden, London: Panther Books 1969, p.10.

  4 everyone came there to keep warm. Cited in Colin Jones, Cambridge Illustrated History: France, CUP 1994, p. 277.

  5 He was my worst client. Colin Jones, op. cit., p. 277.

  6 The Café de Flore serves as a drugstore. Janet Flanner (Genêt), Paris Journal 1944–55, Harcourt Publishers 1988, p. 92.

  7 the chanson Rive Gauche. From the album Au Ras des pâquerettes, Virgin 1999.

  8 at €9,790 per square metre. Marché immobilier à Paris: les prix par arrondissements. Droits-finances, October 2012.

  9 a favourite haunt of the actress Catherine Deneuve. See the documentary film Catherine Deneuve Rive Gauche, Loïc Prigent/Paris Première, September 2012.

  10 British journalist John Lichfield. In The Independent, 19 December 1998.

  11 should smell of itself. See Olivier Thiery, La fabrication de l’atmosphère de la ville et du Métro, ethnographiques.org, No. 6 – novembre 2004.

  12 Zazie note. See Romans II, Œuvres complètes de Raymond Queneau, La Pléiade / Gallimard 2006.

  13 New York versus Paris. See Layla Demay & Laure Watrin, Une v
ie de Pintade à Paris, 2009.

  14 three Olympic swimming pools. Data from French environmental marketing agency Planetoscope/consoGlobe.

  15 Parisians hospitalized. Planetoscope data, op. cit.

  16 A French dog-owner. See Nathalie Blanc, Les animaux et la ville, Éditions Odile Jacob octobre 2000, p. 60.

  17 a pigeon for every 25 inhabitants. Data from the Mairie of Paris.

  18 more than 9 kilos of rat droppings. Planetoscope data, op. cit.

  19 5,000 new squealers. See Les rats se plaisent à Paris, Le Nouvel Observateur, 12 janvier 2011.

  20 aseptic, clinical character of the city space. See Nathalie Blanc, op. cit.

  PART 9

  1 fifteen days’ paid holiday a year. See Jean-Claude Richez and Léon Strauss, Un temps nouveau pour les ouvriers: les conges payés (1930–1960), in Alain Corbin ed., L’Avènement des Loisirs 1850–1960, Aubier (Paris) 1995, pp. 376–412.

  2 make a Frenchman love his native soil. See Richez and Strauss, op. cit., p. 393.

  3 The French philosopher Simone Weil. See Richez and Strauss, op. cit.

  4 a whirl of hedonistic idealism. See Stéphane Lecler, Tourisme pour tous!, Alternatives Economiques No. 271, juillet 2008.

  5 Les jolies colonies de vacances. Pierre Perret, Vogue 1966.

  6 Figures for type and location of French holidays. See French government strategic document, Les vacances des français: favoriser le départ du plus grand nombre, juillet 2011 no. 234.

  7 fractional pattern. As reported in French government strategic document, op. cit.

  8 1.3 million French children spent some time in a ‘colo’ in 2011. See report Le gouvernement promet un bon déroulement des colonies de vacances cet été, WEKA 29 mars 2012.

  9 Asphyxiation of horse on Breton beach. See for example Le Figaro, La mort d’un cheval relance le débat sur les algues vertes, 5 August 2009.

  10 European Environment Agency’s annual report on bathing water quality for 2011. See European Environment Agency, European bathing water quality in 2011, EEA Report No. 3/2012.

  11 whipped a posse of nubile female sun-worshippers. Le Petit Journal Illustré, 11 September 1927. Cited by Christophe Granger in Batailles de plage. Nudité et pudeur dans l’entre-deux-guerres. Rives méditerranéennes 30/2008.