But, altogether, Madame A--’s salon does not look very habitable; and we pass on into the bed-room, which has little enough of daylight coming through the high narrow windows, but is bright and home-like from the brilliant blaze and flicker of the wood-fire on the hearth. In the far corner is the bed: a grand four-post, with looped-up draperies of some warm colour, which I dare say would prove to be faded if one were to see them close, in full country daylight; but which look like a pictorial background to the rest of the room. On each side of the fire is a great arm-chair; in front is a really comfortable sofa: not elegant, nor hard, nor gilded like the sofas in the drawing-room, but broad, low, clean, fit to serve, as I dare say it has done before now, for a bed on occasion. Parallel to this, but further from the fire, is a table with Madame’s work-box; her two pots of flowers, looking as fresh as if the plants were growing in a country garden; the miniatures of her children, set up on little wooden easels; and her books of devotion.
But Madame reads more than books of devotion. She is up in the best modern literature of more than one country. To-day, we were exceedingly struck with her great powers of narration. She seizes the points of a story and reproduces them in the most effective simple language. She is certainly aided in this by her noble, expressive face, still bearing traces of remarkable beauty in the severe and classical style. Her gesticulation, too, is unlike what we commonly call French; there is no rapid action of the graceful hands and arms, but a gentle and slow movement from time to time, as if they sympathised with the varying expression of her face. She sat by her fire-side, dressed in black, her constant colour; which she wears as appropriate to her age rather than to her condition, for she is not a widow. Every now and then, she addressed a few tender words to an invalid of the family; showing that with all her lively interest in the histories she was telling us, her eye and ear were watchful for the slightest signs of discomfort in another. . . .
Our conversation drifted along to the old French custom of receiving in bed. It was so highly correct, that the newly-made wife of the Duc de St. Simon went to bed, after the early dinner of those days, in order to receive her wedding-visits. The Duchesse de Maine, of the same date, used to have a bed in the ball-room at Sceaux, and to lie (or half-sit) there, watching the dancers. I asked if there was not some difference in dress between the day- and the night-occupation of the bed. But Madame A-- seemed to think there was very little. The custom was put an end to by the Revolution; but one or two great ladies preserved the habit until their death. Madame A-- had often seen Madame de Villette receiving in bed; she always wore white gloves, which Madame A-- imagined was the only difference between the toilette of day and night. Madame de Villette was the adopted daughter of Voltaire, and, as such, all the daring innovators upon the ancient modes of thought and behaviour came to see her, and pay her their respects. She was also the widow of the Marquis de Villette, and as such she received the homage of the ladies and gentlemen of the ancien régime.
Altogether her weekly receptions must have been very amusing, from Madame A--’s account. The old Marquise lay in bed; around her sat the company; and, as the climax of the visit, she would desire her femme de chambre to hand round the heart of Voltaire, which he had bequeathed to her, and which she preserved in a little golden case. Then she would begin and tell anecdotes about the great man; great to her, and with some justice. For he had been travelling in the South of France, and had stopped to pass the night in a friend’s house, where he was very much struck by the deep sadness on the face of a girl of seventeen, one of his friend’s daughters; and, on inquiring the cause, he found out that, in order to increase the portions of the others, this young woman was to be sent into a convent - a destination which she extremely disliked. Voltaire saved her from it by adopting her, and promising to give her a dot sufficient to insure her a respectable marriage. She had lived with him for some time at Ferney before she became Marquise de Villette. (You will remember the connexion existing between her husband’s family and Madame de Maintenon, as well as with Bolingbroke’s second wife.)
Madame de Villette must have been an exceedingly inconséquente person, to judge from Madame A--’s very amusing description of her conversation. Her sentences generally began with an assertion which was disproved by what followed. Such as, “It was wonderful with what ease Voltaire uttered witty impromptus. He would shut himself up in his library all the morning, and in the evening he would gracefully lead the conversation to the point he desired, and then bring out the verse or the epigram he had composed for the occasion, in the most unpremeditated and easy manner!” Or, “He was the most modest of men. When a stranger arrived at Ferney, his first care was to take him round the village, and to show him all the improvements he had made, the good he had done, the church he had built. And he was never easy until he had given the new-comer the opportunity of hearing his most recent compositions.” Then she would show an old grandfather’s high-backed, leather, arm-chair, in which she said he wrote his Henriade, forgetting that he was at that time quite a young man.
Madame A-- said that Madame de Villette’s receptions were worth attending, because they conveyed an idea of the ways of society before the Revolution. There was one old French marquis, a contemporary of Madame de Villette’s, who regularly came with his chapeau-bras under his arm, to pay her his respects, and to talk over the good old times when both were young. Voltaire had called her “Belle et Bonne,” and by these epithets her friend the Marquis saluted her to her dying day.
“Belle et bonne Marquise,” (and she had long ceased to be “belle;” even the other adjective was a matter of doubt,) “do you know why I preserve this old hat with so much care, - with reverence, I may say?” said this friend to her one day. “Years ago it had the privilege of saving your lovely cheek from being cut by the glass of your carriage-window, when by some mal-adroitness you were on the point of being overturned, ma belle et bonne Marquise.”
February. - We are staying with a French family of the middle class; and I cannot help noticing the ways of daily life here, so different from those of England. We are a party of seven; and we live on the fourth floor, which is extensive enough to comprise the two sitting-rooms, the bedrooms, the kitchen, and the chamber for the two maids. I do not dislike this plan of living in a flat, especially as it is managed in Paris. I have seen the same mode adopted in Edinburgh and Rome, besides other continental towns; but, as in these towns there is no concierge, I have never liked it so much as in Paris. Here it seems to me to save one servant’s work, at the least: and, besides this, there is the moral advantage of uniting mistresses and maids in a more complete family bond. I remember a very charming young married lady, who had been brought by her husband from the country to share his home in Ashley Buildings, Victoria Street, saying that she had two of her former Sunday scholars as servants, but that, if they had had to live in the depths of a London kitchen, she should not have tried bringing them out of their primitive country homes; as it was, she could have them under her own eye without any appearance of watching them; and, besides this, she could hear of their joys and sorrows and, by taking an interest in their interests, induce them to care for hers. French people appear to me to live in this pleasant kind of familiarity with their servants - a familiarity which does not breed contempt, in spite of proverbs.
The concierge here receives letters and parcels for the different families in the house, which he generally brings up himself, or sends by one of his family. Sometimes they are kept in the compartments appropriated to each family in the conciergerie; and any one of the inhabitants who may return to the house looks in, and seldom fails to have the complaisance to bring up letters, cards, or parcels for any family living below his étage. The concierge is paid by the landlord for these services, in which is included the carrying up or down of a moderate quantity of luggage. A certain portion of every load of wood or coal belongs to the concierge, as payment for carrying it up to the respective apartments for which it is destined. If he cleans the
shoes and knives for any family, they pay him separately. He also expects an étrenne from each of the locataires on New Year’s day; say a napoleon from each family, and half that sum from any bachelors lodging in the house. Very often he knows how to wait at table, and his services are available for a consideration to any one living in the house. But he must always provide a deputy in case of absence from his post. As the concierges are, however, generally married, this does not press very hard upon him.
In the house where we are staying, the custom is for every one going out at night to lock up their apartment, desiring the servants to go to bed at the usual time; to hide the key in some well-known and customary place (under the door-mat for instance), and to take a bed-candle down to the conciergerie. When we return from our party, or whatever it may be, we ring the bell, and the concierge, - perhaps asleep in bed in his little cabinet, - “pulls the string, and the latch flies up,” as in the days of Little Red Ridinghood; we come in, shut the great porte-cochère, open the ever-unfastened door of the conciergerie, light our own particular bed-candles at the dim little lamp, pick out any letters, &c., belonging to us, which may have come in by the late post, and go quietly up stairs. This sounds unsafe to our English ears, as it would seem that any one might come in; but I believe there is a small window of inspection in all conciergeries which may be used in cases of suspicion. The French at any rate esteem it more safe than our self-contained houses; and French servants in a modest household, where no personal attendants are kept, would be very indignant if they had to sit up for their mistresses’ gaieties. For, as a rule, French servants are up earlier than English ones.
In this house is a salle-à-manger with a fire-place, and a parquetted floor without a carpet. The shape is an oblong, with the two corners near the door of entrance cut off to form cupboards. The walls are wainscoted with deal, that is afterwards painted oak. The window-curtains and portières are made of handsome dark Algerine stripe. As far as I can see, carpets are not considered a necessary article of furniture in France, but portières are. And, certainly, the rich folds of the latter, and the polished floors, off which every crumb or drop of grease is cleansed immediately, take my fancy very much. A door on one side of the windows opens into Madame’s room; on the opposite side, another leads into the drawing-room.
If we were French we should have a cup of café-au-lait and piece of bread brought into our bedrooms every morning; but, in deference to us as strangers, a tray (without a napkin) with sugar, a copper pan containing the boiling milk just taken off the kitchen fire, and the white covered jug of bright strong coffee, is put on the dining-room table. Also, in deference to our English luxury, there is a plate of butter; our French friends never take butter, and not always bread, at this early breakfast. But where is the bread? I look round, and at last see a basket, about a yard high, standing on the ground near the fireplace; it is of dimensions just sufficient to hold a roll of bread a yard long and more, and about as thick as a man’s wrist. It looks like a veritable staff of life. None of our French friends think of completing their toilette for this early breakfast, which indeed, as I have said, they would have taken in their bedrooms, if we had not been here. Nor, indeed, is it any family gathering. I sometimes see the old black skirts of our hostess quickly vanishing into her bedroom at the sound of my approach; and perhaps I find Nanette, the youngest daughter, in a coloured petticoat and white camisole, her thick black hair put neatly away under a cap which is on the full-dress side of a nightcap. She reddens a little as she wishes me Bon jour, as she knows that hers is not the finished morning-toilette of an English young lady. But, two hours hence, who so neat as Nanette in her clean print-gown of some delicate pattern, her black hair all brushed, and plaited, and waved, and crêpé? For now she has done her household work; perhaps she has helped Julie to make her own bed; she has certainly dusted her room, with all its knick-knacks and ornaments.
Madame, too, has been out to market; half across Paris, it may be, in her old black gown, to some shop she knows of, where she fancies such and such an article can be had better or cheaper. She has gone by the omnibus, taking advantage of the correspondance, by which, on payment of thirty centimes, and declaring her wish for a correspondance ticket to the conducteur of that which passes her door, she is conveyed in it to the general omnibus office, close to the Place des Victoires, where she may have to wait for a few minutes for an omnibus going in the direction for which her correspondance ticket is taken. If she has to return by any of the midway stations at which omnibuses stop, she has to purchase a ticket with a number upon it at the bureau, and await her turn, at busy times of the day - say at five o’clock, at the Place Palais-Royal. Her number may be eighty-seven, while the next Grenelle omnibus is filling with twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, and so on, as the conducteur calls the numbers. But in the morning they are not so crowded; and Madame is always at home, and dressed with delicate neatness, by eleven o’clock, the time of our “second déjeûner,” or what we should call lunch in England. This breakfast consists generally of cold meat, a rechauffé of some entrée or dressed vegetables of the day before, an omelette, bread, wine, and a pot of confitures. For us our kind hostess has tea; but I can see that this is not their ordinary custom. It is curious to see how little butter is eaten in a French family; they, however, make up for this by the much greater use of it in cookery; for vegetables form, a dish by themselves, always requiring either gravy, butter, or oil, in their preparation. After lunch is over, we all sit down to work; perhaps Nanette practises a little, and perhaps some of us go out for a walk, but always with some object, either of pleasure or business. A Frenchwoman never takes a walk in the English constitutional sense. There are books about in the salon, but not so many as in England. They have nothing equivalent to “Mudie” in Paris, and the books of their circulating libraries are of so very mixed a character, that no careful mother likes to have them lying about on the table, Indeed, “novels and romances” are under much the same ban as they were under in England seventy or eighty years ago. There is the last Revue des Deux Mondes, and a pamphlet or two besides, lying by Madame’s work-basket, and there are the standard French authors in the bookcase in the cupboard. Yet, somehow, my friends always know what is going on in the literary world of Paris. The newspapers here are so doctored that they are deprived of much of the interest which usually attaches to political news; but I generally see La Presse lying about.
Once a week, Madame “receives.” Then the covers are taken off the furniture in the salon; a fresh nosegay is put in the vase; Madame and Mademoiselle and Nanette put off their final dressing for the day till after the second breakfast, and then appear in the gowns they wear on jours de fêtes. Monsieur keeps out of the way, but nevertheless is much disappointed if, when we all meet together at dinner, we have not accumulated a little stock of news and gossip to amuse him with. Madame’s day of reception is well known to all her friends and acquaintances, who make a point of calling on her two or three times a season. But sometimes no one comes at all on the Thursdays, and it is rather flat to sit from two to five or thereabouts in our company dresses, with our company faces, all for no use. Then again, on other Thursdays, the room is quite full, and I sit and admire Madame’s tact. A new arrival comes up to her, and, without appearing to displace any one, the last comer invariably finds an empty chair by the lady of the house. The hostess also accompanies every departing guest to the room-door, and they part with pretty speeches of affection and good-will, sincere enough, I do not doubt, but expressive of just those feelings which the English usually keep in the background.
On Thursdays we have generally much the same sort of dinner that in England we associate with the idea of washing-days; for both Julie and Gabrielle have been busy admitting or letting out visitors; or at any rate Madame anticipated this probability when she ordered dinner.
The dinner-hour is six o’clock; real, sharp six. And here I may warn my English friends of the necessity of punctuality to the hou
r specified in a French dinner invitation. In England, a quarter of an hour beyond the time is considered as nothing, and half an hour’s grace is generally acceded. But it is not so in France; and it is considered very ill-bred to be behind the time. And this remark applies not merely to the middle-class life I have been describing, but to the highest circles. Indeed, the French have an idea that punctuality is a virtue unknown among the English; and numerous were the stories of annoyance from English unpunctuality which the French officers brought home from the Crimea. But, to return to our day at Madame --’s. We do not dress for dinner, as we should do in England; that ceremony, as they consider it - refreshment, as we should call it - is reserved for the days when we go into society, and then it takes place after dinner.
We have soup-always good. On Fridays we have fish; not from any religious feeling, but because that is the day when the best fish is brought into Paris, and it is not very fresh even then. Then we have a made-dish, or two or three times a week the bouilli from which the stock for the soup is made-a tender, substantial, little hunch of boiled beef of no known joint. Then come the vegetables, cooked with thick rich gravy, which raises them to the rank they hold in a French dinner, instead of being merely an accessory to the meat, as they are in England. The rôti and the salad follow. The mixing of the salad is too important an operation to be trusted to a servant. As we are here, Madame does not like to leave her visitors; but I see Gabrielle peep from behind the portiéres, and make a sign to Mademoiselle about five minutes before dinner; and Mademoiselle goes into the salle-à-manger, and Madame rather loses the thread of her discourse, and looks wistfully after her daughter; for, if Monsieur is particular about anything, it is about his salads. Strictly speaking, Madame tells me, the vegetables ought to be gathered while the soup is on the table, washed and cleansed while we are eating the bouilli, and sliced and dressed with the proper accompaniments while the rôti is being brought in. Madame’s mother always mixed it at the table, she says, and I have no doubt Madame follows the hereditary precedent herself, when she has no foreign visitors staying with her. After this, a chocolate custard, or a sweet omelette, a purée of apples, perhaps; and then dessert is put on the table - a bit of gruyére cheese under a glass, and the “Quatre Mendiants,” i.e., nuts, almonds, raisins, figs, called after the four begging Orders of friars, because these fruits are so cheap that any beggar can have them.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 433