Of all the edifices finished in Paris since my last visit, there is not one which altogether pleases me better than the little “Chapelle Expiatoire” erected in memory of Louis the Sixteenth, and his beautiful but ill-starred queen.
This monument was planned and in part executed by Louis the Eighteenth, and finished by Charles the Tenth. It stands upon the spot where many butchered victims of the tyrant mob were thrown in 1793. The story of the royal bodies having been destroyed by quicklime is said to have been fabricated and circulated for the purpose of preventing any search after them, which might, it was thought, have produced a dangerous reaction of feeling among the whim-governed populace.
These bodies, and several others, which were placed in coffins, and inscribed with the names of the murdered occupants, lay buried together for many years after the revolution in a large chantier, or wood-yard, at no great distance from the place of execution.
That this spot had been excavated for the purpose of receiving these sad relics, is a fact well known, and it was never lost sight of from the terrible period at which the ground was so employed; but the unseemly vault continued undisturbed till after the restoration, when the bodies of the royal victims were sought and found. Their bones were then conveyed to the long-hallowed shrine of St. Denis; but the spot where the mangled remains were first thrown was consecrated, and is now become the site of this beautiful little Chapelle Expiatoire.
The enclosure in which this building stands is of considerable extent, reaching from the Rue de l’Arcade to the Rue d’Anjou. This space is lined with closely-planted rows of cypress-trees on every side, which are protected by a massive railing, neatly painted. The building itself and all its accompaniments are in excellent taste; simple, graceful, and solemn.
The interior is a small Greek cross, each extremity of which is finished by a semicircle surmounted by a semi-dome. The space beneath the central dome is occupied by chairs and benches covered with crimson velvet, for the use of the faithful — in every sense — who come to attend the mass which is daily performed there.
As long as the daughter of the murdered monarch continued to reside in Paris, no morning ever passed without her coming to offer up her prayers at this expiatory shrine.
One of the four curved extremities is occupied by the altar; that opposite to it, by the entrance; and those on either side, by two well-composed and impressive groups in white marble — that to the right of the altar representing Marie Antoinette bending beside a cross supported by an angel, — and that to the left, the felon-murdered monarch whose wretched and most unmerited destiny she shared. On the pedestal of the king’s statue is inscribed his will; on that of the queen, her farewell letter to the Princess Elizabeth.
Nothing can exceed the chaste delicacy of the few ornaments admitted into the chapel. They consist only, I think, of golden candlesticks, placed in niches in the white marble walls. The effect of the whole is beautiful and impressive.
I often go there; yet I can hardly understand what the charm can be in the little building itself, or in the quiet mass performed there without music, which can so attract me. It is at no great distance from our apartments in the Rue de Provence, and a walk thither just occupies the time before breakfast. I once went there on a Sunday morning with some of my family; but then it was full — indeed so crowded, that it was impossible to see across the building, or feel the beauty of its elegant simplicity. The pale figures of the royal dead, the foully murdered, were no longer the principal objects; and though I have no doubt that all present were right loyal spirits, with whose feelings I am well enough disposed to sympathise, yet I could not read each saddened brow, and attach a romance to it, as I never fail to do during my week-day visits.
There are two ladies, for example, whom I constantly see there, ever in the same place, and ever in the same attitude. The elder of these I feel perfectly sure must have passed her youth near Marie Antoinette, for it is at the foot of her statue that she kneels — or I might almost say that she prostrates herself, for she throws her arms forward on a cushion that is placed before her, and suffers her aged head to fall upon them, in a manner that speaks more sorrow than I can describe. The young girl who always accompanies and kneels beside her may, I think, be her granddaughter. They have each of them “Gentlewoman born” written on every feature, in characters not to be mistaken. The old lady is very pale, and the young one looks as if she were not passing a youth of gaiety and enjoyment.
There is a grey-headed old man, too, who is equally constant in his attendance at this melancholy chapel. He might sit as a model for a portrait of le bon vieux temps; but he has a stern though sad expression of countenance, which seems to be exactly a masculine modification of what is passing at the heart and in the memory of the old lady at the opposite side of the chapel. These are figures which send the thoughts back for fifty years; and seen in the act of assisting at a mass for the souls of Louis Seize and his queen, produce a powerful effect on the imagination.
I have ventured to describe this melancholy spot, and what I have seen there, the more particularly because, easy as it is of access, you might go to Paris a dozen times without seeing it, as in fact hundreds of English travellers do. One reason for this is, that it is not opened to the public gaze as a show, but can only be entered during the hour of prayer, which is inconveniently early in the day.
As this sad and sacred edifice cannot justly be considered as a public building, the elevation of the tri-coloured flag upon it every fête-day might, I think, have been spared.
Another, and a very different novelty, is the new flower-market, that is now kept under the walls and columns of the majestic church of La Madeleine. This beautiful collection of flowers appears to me to produce from its situation a very singular effect: the relative attributes of art and nature are reversed; — for here, art seems sublime, vast, and enduring; while nature is small, fragile, and perishing.
It has sometimes happened to me, after looking at a work of art which raised my admiration to enthusiasm, that I have next sought some marvellous combination of mountain and valley, rock and river, forest and cataract, and felt as I gazed on them something like shame at remembering how nearly I had suffered the work of man to produce an equal ecstasy. But here, when I raised my eyes from the little flimsy crowd of many-coloured blossoms to the simple, solemn pomp of that long arcade, with its spotless purity of tint and its enduring majesty of graceful strength, I felt half inclined to scorn myself and those around me for being so very much occupied by the roses, pinks, and mignonette spread out before it.
Laying aside, however, all philosophical reflections on its locality, this new flower-market is a delightful acquisition to the Parisian petite maîtresse. It was a long expedition to visit the marché aux fleurs on the distant quay near Notre Dame; and though its beauty and its fragrance might well repay an hour or two stolen from the pillow, the sweet decorations it offered to the boudoir must have been oftener selected by the maître d’hôtel or the femme de chambre than by the fair lady herself. But now, three times in the week we may have the pleasure of seeing numbers of graceful females in that piquant species of dishabille, which, uniting an equal portion of careful coquetry and saucy indifference, gives to the morning attire of a pretty, elegant, Frenchwoman, an air so indescribably attractive.
Followed by a neat soubrette, such figures may now be often seen in the flower-market of the Madeleine before the brightness of the morning has faded either from their eyes, or the blossoms they so love to gaze upon. The most ordinary linen gown, made in the form of a wrapper — the hair en papillote — the plain straw-bonnet drawn forward over the eyes, and the vast shawl enveloping the whole figure, might suffice to make many an élégante pace up and down the fragrant alley incognita, did not the observant eye remark that a veil of rich lace secured the simple bonnet under the chin — that the shawl was of cashmere — and that the little hand, when ungloved to enjoy the touch of a myrtle or an orange blossom, was as white as either.<
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LETTER XXVI.
Delicacy in France and in England. — Causes of the difference between them.
There is nothing perhaps which marks the national variety of manners between the French and the English more distinctly than the different estimate they form of what is delicate or indelicate, modest or immodest, decent or indecent: nor does it appear to me that all the intimacy of intercourse which for the last twenty years has subsisted between the two nations has greatly lessened this difference.
Nevertheless, I believe that it is more superficial than many suppose it to be; and that it arises rather from contingent circumstances, than from any original and native difference in the capability of refinement in the two nations.
Among the most obvious of these varieties of manner, is the astounding freedom with which many things are alluded to here in good society, the slightest reference to which is in our country banished from even the most homely class. It seems that the opinion of Martine is by no means peculiar to herself, and that it is pretty generally thought that
“Quand on se fait entendre, on parle toujours bien.”
In other ways, too, it is impossible not to allow that there exists in France a very perceptible want of refinement as compared to England. No Englishman, I believe, has ever returned from a visit to Paris without adding his testimony to this fact; and notwithstanding the Gallomania so prevalent amongst us, all acknowledge that, however striking may be the elegance and grace of the higher classes, there is still a national want of that uniform delicacy so highly valued by all ranks, above the very lowest, with us. Sights are seen and inconveniences endured with philosophy, which would go nigh to rob us of our wits in July, and lead us to hang ourselves in November.
To a fact so well known, and so little agreeable in the detail of its examination, it would be worse than useless to draw your attention, were it not that there is something curious in tracing the manner in which different circumstances, seemingly unconnected, do in reality hang together and form a whole.
The time certainly has been, when it was the fashion in England, as it is now in France, to call things, as some one coarsely expresses it, by their right names; very grave proof of which might be found even in sermons — and from thence downwards through treatises, essays, poems, romances, and plays.
Were we indeed to form our ideas of the tone of conversation in England a century ago from the familiar colloquy found in the comedies then written and acted, we must acknowledge that we were at that time at a greater distance from the refinement we now boast, than our French neighbours are at present.
I do not here refer to licentiousness of morals, or the coarse avowal of it; but to a species of indelicacy which might perhaps have been quite compatible with virtue, as the absence of it is unhappily no security against vice.
The remedy of this has proceeded, if I mistake not, from causes much more connected with the luxurious wealth of England, than with the severity of her virtue. You will say, perhaps, that I have started off to an immense distance from the point whence I set out; but I think not — for both in France and England I find abundant reason to believe that I am right in tracing this remarkable difference between the two countries, less to natural disposition or character, than to the accidental facilities for improvement possessed by the one people, and not by the other.
It would be very easy to ascertain, by reference to the various literary records I have named, that the improvement in English delicacy has been gradual, and in very just proportion to the increase of her wealth, and the fastidious keeping out of sight of everything that can in any way annoy the senses.
When we cease to hear, see, and smell things which are disagreeable, it is natural that we should cease to speak of them; and it is, I believe, quite certain that the English take more pains than any other people in the world that the senses — those conductors of sensation from the body to the soul — shall convey to the spirit as little disagreeable intelligence of what befalls the case in which it dwells, as possible. The whole continent of Europe, with the exception of some portion of Holland perhaps, (which shows a brotherly affinity to us in many things,) might be cited for its inferiority to England in this respect. I remember being much amused last year, when landing at Calais, at the answer made by an old traveller to a novice who was making his first voyage.
“What a dreadful smell!” said the uninitiated stranger, enveloping his nose in his pocket-handkerchief.
“It is the smell of the continent, sir,” replied the man of experience. And so it was.
There are parts of this subject which it is quite impossible to dwell upon, and which unhappily require no pen to point them out to notice. These, if it were possible, I would willingly leave more in the dark than I find them. But there are other circumstances, all arising from the comparative poverty of the people, which tend to produce, with a most obvious dependency of thing on thing, that deficiency of refinement of which I am speaking.
Let any one examine the interior construction of a Paris dwelling of the middle class, and compare it to a house prepared for occupants of the same rank in London. It so happens that everything appertaining to decoration is to be had à bon marché at Paris, and we therefore find every article of the ornamental kind almost in profusion. Mirrors, silk hangings, or-molu in all forms; china vases, alabaster lamps, and timepieces, in which the onward step that never returns is marked with a grace and prettiness that conceals the solemnity of its pace, — all these are in abundance; and the tenth part of what would be considered necessary to dress up a common lodging in Paris, would set the London fine lady in this respect upon an enviable elevation above her neighbours.
But having admired their number and elegant arrangement, pass on and enter the ordinary bed-rooms — nay, enter the kitchens too, or you will not be able to judge how great the difference is between the two residences.
In London, up to the second floor, and often to the third, water is forced, which furnishes an almost unlimited supply of that luxurious article, to be obtained with no greater trouble to the servants than would be required to draw it from a tea-urn. In one kitchen of every house, generally in two, and often in three, the same accommodation is found; and when, in opposition to this, it is remembered that very nearly every family in Paris receives this precious gift of nature doled out by two buckets at a time, laboriously brought to them by porters, clambering in sabots, often up the same stairs which lead to their drawing-rooms, it can hardly be supposed that the use of it is as liberal and unrestrained as with us.
Against this may be placed fairly enough the cheapness and facility of the access to the public baths. But though personal ablutions may thus be very satisfactorily performed by those who do not rigorously require that every personal comfort should be found at home, yet still the want of water, or any restraint upon the freedom with which it is used, is a vital impediment to that perfection of neatness, in every part of the establishment, which we consider as so necessary to our comfort.
Much as I admire the Church of the Madeleine, I conceive that the city of Paris would have been infinitely more benefited, had the sums expended upon it been used for the purpose of constructing pipes for the conveyance of water to private dwellings, than by all the splendour received from the beauty of this imposing structure.
But great and manifold as are the evils entailed by the scarcity of water in the bed-rooms and kitchens of Paris, there is another deficiency greater still, and infinitely worse in its effects. The want of drains and sewers is the great defect of all the cities in France; and a tremendous defect it is. That people who from their first breath of life have been obliged to accustom their senses and submit without a struggle to the sufferings this evil entails upon them, — that people so circumstanced should have less refinement in their thoughts and words than ourselves, I hold to be natural and inevitable. Thus, you see, I have come round like a preacher to his text, and have explained, as I think, very satisfactorily, what I mean by saying that the in
delicacy which so often offends us in France does not arise from any natural coarseness of mind, but is the unavoidable result of circumstances, which may, and doubtless will change, as the wealth of the country and its familiarity with the manners of England increases.
This withdrawing from the perception of the senses everything that can annoy them, — this lulling of the spirit by the absence of whatever might awaken it to a sensation of pain, — is probably the last point to which the ingenuity of man can reach in its efforts to embellish existence.
The search after pleasure and amusement certainly betokens less refinement than this sedulous care to avoid annoyance; and it may be, that as we have gone farthest of all modern nations in this tender care of ourselves, so may we be the first to fall from our delicate elevation into that receptacle of things past and gone which has engulfed old Greece and Rome. Is it thus that the Reform Bill, and all the other horrible Bills in its train, are to be interpreted?
As to that other species of refinement which belongs altogether to the intellect, and which, if less obvious to a passing glance, is more deep and permanent in its dye than anything which relates to manners only, it is less easy either to think or to speak with confidence. France and England both have so long a list of mighty names that may be quoted on either side to prove their claim to rank high as literary contributors to refinement, that the struggle as to which ranks highest can only be fairly settled by both parties agreeing that each country has a fair right to prefer what they have produced themselves. But, alas! at the present moment, neither can have great cause to boast. What is good, is overpowered and stifled by what is bad. The uncontrolled press of both countries has thrown so much abominable trash upon literature during the last few years, that at present it might be difficult to say whether general reading would be most dangerous to the young and the pure in England or in France.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 525