Part 1

THE AMERICAN

IN

PARIS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1838.

LONDON: PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY, OLD BAILEY.

CONTENTS.

LETTER XII.

Mass at St. Roch for Admiral de Rigny.--The Abbé Lacordaire at Notre Dame.--State of the French Church.--St. Genevieve.--St. Etienne du Mont.--The American child at Prayers.--St. Medard.--Its Miracles.--Chapelle de St. Nicholas.--The Madelaine.--Notre Dame.--St. Denis.--St. Sulpice.--The Church Service.--Celibacy of the Clergy.--American Churches.--Manner of keeping Sunday p. 1-30

LETTER XIII.

Père la Chaise.--Funeral of Bellini.--Grave-Merchants.--Description of the Cemetery.--Graves of the Rich and the Poor.--The Fête des Morts.--Tomb of Abelard and Heloise.--Remarkable personages buried there.--The Aristocracy of the Grave.--Monument of Foy.--Inscription.--Grave yards in Cities and Towns.--French regulations for the inhumation of the dead p. 31-71

LETTER XIV.

The Louvre.--Patronage of the Fine Arts.--The Luxembourg.--The Palais des Beaux Arts.--The Sêvres Porcelain.--The Gobelins.--Manners of the common People in Paris.--A fair Cicerone.--Her remarks on Painting.--The French, Flemish, and Italian Schools.--English Patronage of Art.--The New National Gallery.--Sir Christopher Wren.--A tender Adieu p. 72-98

LETTER XV.

The Schools.--State of Literature.--Minister of Public Instruction.--Education in France.--Prussian System.--Parochial Schools.--Normal Schools.--Institutions of Paris.--Public Libraries.--Machinery of French Justice.--The Judges.--Eloquence of the Bar.--Medicine.--Corporations of Learning.--Their Evils.--The French Institute.--Pretended New System of Instruction.--Professors of Paris p. 99-138

LETTER XVI.

Ladies’ Boarding Schools.--Names of Professors in the Prospectus.--System of Education.--American Schools.--Preference for Science.--High Intellectual Acquirements not approved.--Learned Women.--American Girls.--Comparison of French and American Society.--The care to preserve Female Beauty.--Expression of the Mouth.--Dress of American Women.--Notions of the Maternal Character.--Studies in Ladies’ Schools.--Literary Associations.--Société Geographique.--French Lady Authors.--Living Writers.--Chateaubriand--Beranger--Lamartine--Victor Hugo--Casimir de la Vigne--Alfred de Vigny--Guizot--Thiers--Thièrry Ségur--Lacretelle--Sismondi p. 139-163

LETTER XVII.

The Theatres.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Théatre Royal.--Italien.--Grisi.--Académie Royal de Musique.--Taglioni.--Miss Fanny Elsler.--The Variètés.--The Odéon.--Mademoiselle George.--Hamlet.--Republican Spirit of the Age.--Character of the French Stage.--Machinery of the Drama.--The Claqueurs.--Supply of New Pieces.--The Vaudevillists.--M. Scribe.--The Diorama.--Concerts.--Music p. 164-187

LETTER XVIII.

Parisian habits.--The Chaussée d’Antin.--Season of Bonbons.--Jour de l’An.--Commencement of the Season.--The Carnival.--Reception at the Tuileries.--Lady Granville.--The Royal Family.--Court Ceremonies.--Ball at the Hotel de Ville.--French Beauty.--A Bal de Charité.--Lord Canterbury.--Bulwer.--Sir Sydney Smith.--The Court Balls.--Splendid Scene.--The Princess Amelia.--Comparison between Country and City Life p. 188-210

LETTER XIX.

Execution of Fieschi.--The French House of Commons.--French Eloquence.--Thiers.--Guizot.--Berryer.--Abuse of America.--The Chamber of Peers.--Interior of the Madelaine.--Bribery.--False Oaths.--The Middle Classes.--America and England.--Opinions of America.--English Travellers in America.--Mrs. Trollope.--Captain Basil Hall.--Miss Fanny Kemble.--Test of good breeding in America.--American feelings towards England.--Their mutual Interests p. 211-234

LETTER XX.

The Dancing Fever.--The Grand Masquerade.--Fooleries of the Carnival.--Mardi Gras.--Splendid Equipages.--Masquerades.--An Adventure.--Educated Women.--The Menus-Plaisirs.--A Fancy Ball.--Porte St. Martin.--The Masked Balls.--Descente de la Courtille.--End of the Carnival.--Birth-Day of Washington p. 235-252

LETTER XXI.

Evening Parties at the Duchess d’Abrantes.--Mode of Admission.--The Weather.--Suicides.--Madame le Norman the Sibyl.--Parisian Réunions.--Manners of Frenchwomen.--American Soirées.--Furniture.--Hints on Etiquette.--Manners in Parisian High Life.--Conversation.--Dress.--Qualifications for an Exquisite.--Smoking.--Rules for Dinner p. 253-283

LETTER XXII.

The Lap-Dog.--The Dame Blanche.--The Beauty in a Gallery.--The Lingère.--Madame Frederic.--Fête de Longchamps.--Parisian Fashions.--Holy Concerts.--Pretty Women.--Empire of Fashion.--Reign of Beauty.--The Fashionable Lady p. 284-303

LETTER XXIII.

Return of Spring.--A New Venus.--The Artesian Well.--Montmartre.--Donjon of Vincennes.--St. Ouen.--St. Germain.--The Pretender.--Machine de Marli.--Versailles.--The Water-works.--The Swiss Garden.--Trianon.--Races at Chantilly.--Stables of the Great Condé--Lodgings in a French Village.--A Domestic Occurrence.--The Boots.--The Alarm.--The Bugs.--Extract from Pepys.--Delights of Chantilly.--Unlucky Days.--Solitude in a Crowd.--The Cure.--The King’s Birth-day.--The Concert.--The Fire-works.--The Illuminations.--The Buffoons.--Punch.--The Eating Department.--The Mat de Cocagne p. 304-340

THE AMERICAN IN PARIS.

LETTER XII.

Mass at St. Roch for Admiral de Rigny.--The Abbé Lacordaire at Notre Dame.--State of the French Church.--St. Genevieve.--St. Etienne du Mont.--The American child at Prayers.--St. Medard.--Its Miracles.--Chapelle de St. Nicholas.--The Madelaine.--Notre Dame.--St. Denis.--St. Sulpice.--The Church Service.--Celibacy of the Clergy.--American Churches.--Manner of keeping Sunday.

Paris, November 14th, 1835.

I attended yesterday a mass said at St. Roch’s for the soul of the Admiral de Rigny, who was famous, you know, for much fighting at sea and land, especially at Navarino, and for much talking in the Chamber of Peers about the American Indemnity. He was never chary about dying, he said, but he thought it unlucky to be snatched away just when he was wanted to chastise “Old Hickory” for his impudent Message. By-the-bye, all the world is talking of war here by the hour, with great fluency and ignorance. Newspapers and conversation are full of abuse. They send out privateers by five hundreds, and take our ships as kites catch chickens. Worst of all, they don’t leave an American alive, and they kill us all off without losing a man.--The Admiral’s hearse was rich with the spoils of vanquished enemies, and was escorted by ten thousand French heroes to _Pére la Chaise_, with thrilling music from all the military bands, and with a pomp and circumstance suitable to the dignity of so great a personage.

I went this morning with every body to Notre Dame, to hear the celebrated Abbé Lacordaire preach. He was too eloquent! Oratory in this country, at least in the pulpit, has her trumpet always at full blast, and announces the smallest little news with the emphasis of a miracle. Her method is to run up to the top of the voice and then pour out her whole spirit, as your Methodists on Guinea Hill, until human nature is exhausted, and then to take a drink and begin again. I will set you a French sermon, if you please, to the gamut, and you may play it on the piano.

You must know, that the Parisian young men having gained great credit at the last Revolution, (and they were not oppressed with modesty before that event,) now give the tone to society. The device of the nation is “Young France.” It is young France that measures merit and deals out reputation; so it is not strange that they should set up this Abbé for a Bossuet or a Bourdaloue; any more than that an eye unpractised in painting should set up a tawdry piece of daubing above the chaste and excellent compositions of genius. It is true, there is not a class of young men in any country more earnest in the pursuit of letters, than these French; but youth is not the age of good taste, and is not the age that ought to govern public sentiment in any department of life.

In old France, the church being rich and honourable, was filled by persons well educated and refined by good society. For a long time, there has been no permanent public esteem to encourage talent among the clergy, or restrain them from vices degrading to their order. Religion, which had nearly perished in the Revolution, had but a feeble health under the Empire; and Louis XVIII. and Charles so favoured the priesthood, especially the Jesuits, and at the same time so mis-governed the nation, that they had again brought it to its last gasp at the accession of Louis Philippe. There was a time when even admission to the Duchess de Berri’s balls required one to go to the communion and take the sacrament. The present king has fallen in with the popular sentiment, and is gradually changing this sentiment to the side of the clergy, showing in this, as in most things else, the ability of a good statesman. He sends his own family to church, and it begins to be fashionable to be seen there. Not indeed from any reverence for religion.

Things venerable in this country have had their day, and, as far as religion is concerned, the bump of veneration is worn out of the human skull. But the world rushes to Notre Dame in the morning, and to the Opera in the evening, and to both, for the same purpose; for the crowd, for the music and dramatic effect, for the emotion, for the fashion. I had a student with me this morning; a young gentleman, who has just made his debut in the world of beards, and judging from his conversation, it would take a fifty-parson power at least to get him to heaven; but he was enthusiastic in admiration of the sermon. Let the Abbé Lacordaire preach when he will, Notre Dame is mobbed with worshippers.

I believe I shall take advantage of my unusual seriousness, as it is Sunday, to tell you all I know about such divine things as French churches. Almost every saint in the Almanack has acquired the honours of at least one. There are forty-five of Roman, one of Greek, and two of Independent French Catholics; and the churches for Protestant service, are three French, and two English, besides a synagogue; and there are several places of worship in private houses and palaces.

All the Catholic churches are decorated with the most costly furniture; with saints, virgins, and angels in statuary and painting by the best masters. Why, the gold and silver expended in this old church of Notre Dame upon Virgin Marys alone, would make a railroad to the Havre.

One of the most beautiful of these churches and my next neighbour too, is _St. Genevieve_, now called the _Pantheon_, once the “abode of Gods whose shrines no longer burn.” It is now the national sepulchre for great men. It is two hundred and fifty feet high, and overtops majestically all Paris. It was designed to rival the Great St. Paul’s of London.

On one of the cupolas of the dome, which is surrounded by a colonnade of Corinthian pillars, is painted the apotheosis of St. Geneviéve. Her saintship is in the costume of a shepherdess, breathing all peace, all happiness, all immortality. Nothing of earth is in her composition. Beside her, is Louis XVIII. and little winged angels. They are very busy--the angels--in scattering flowers about the saint. Above her, is Louis XVI. and his queen, as elegant as she was upon the threshold of Versailles, and Louis XVII. all surrounded by celestial glory. Before her, are the persons the most illustrious of each race; Clovis, who looks very savage; St. Clotilde, very pretty; Charlemagne, very heroic; and St. Louis and Queen Margarite who look very pious. They are now effacing these figures for something more suitable to the occasion.

The floor of this temple, incrusted with various-coloured marble, is very remarkable, and very beautiful. It is exclusively occupied by Voltaire and Rousseau, at opposite extremities.[1] Why did they not lay them at the side of each other, that we might all learn how vain are the jealousies, the petty competitions and animosities of men so soon to come to this appointed and unavoidable term of all human contentions. These are the only two who are buried above ground.

It was once the custom of these old countries to multiply a man by burying him piecemeal, his heart at Rouen and his legs in Kent, because the world was then on short allowance of heroes; but modern times have reversed this practice; and Bonaparte has laid up together a whole batch of them in the basement of this church, for eternity, as you lay up potatoes in your cellar for winter. Here are the names graven overhead in a catalogue, on the marble, of men famous for giving counsel to the Emperor (who never took any) in the senate, and of men who gained a great deal of celebrity by having their brains knocked out on the fields of Austerlitz and Marengo.

When Marat was deified by the Convention, he was interred here in 1793, and in 1794 he was disinterred and undeified, and then thrown into his native element, the common sewer, in the Rue Montmartre--to purify him.

I have often sat an hour in a beautiful little temple adjoining this, called _St. Etienne du Mont_. Its architecture is original and pretty, and it is rich in statuary and paintings. The pulpit is a splendid piece of workmanship, supported by a figure of Samson kneeling upon a dead lion; allegorical figures are hovering over, and an archangel, with two trumpets, is assembling the faithful. The painted glass, too, is brilliant with colours glowing as the rainbow. In a morning walk, I have often found an excuse for returning this way. A few persons, mostly women, are seen kneeling through the church, upon the marble, before the altar, silently--you hear but the little whispering prayers fluttering towards Heaven--the tranquillity of early morning is so favourable to devotion. It feels like giving to Heaven the first offerings of one’s heart. I have often sat here on the fine summer evenings, too, when the twilight shed its gray and glimmering rays through the windows upon the statues of the venerable saints and martyrs, and listened to the voices as they swelled in the sacred anthem, and then fell, with the departing day, into silence. It seemed to me the very romance of religion. One feels more the influence of such feelings when wandering alone in a foreign country.

In visiting a boarding-school of this quarter, a few days ago, I entered a room where the children were praying before retiring to bed; I observed one with his hands clasped, and pouring out his little soul with the fervency of a saint--an American child, of eight years, from New York--I took him in my arms at the end of his prayer, saying: “_Vous aimez donc bien, le bon Dieu?_”--“_Ah! oui_,” he replied, with a most eloquent expression, “_on aime bien le bon Dieu quand on est loin de ses parens._”--It is so natural to lay hold of heaven, when cut off from one’s home and earthly affections. If I had the amiable society of your “Two Hills,” and the other comforts and consolations of the village, I should not be hovering so piously about this little church of St. Etienne du Mont.

The great Pascal, in spite of the Jesuits’ noses, is buried here; and an old tower, in the neighbourhood, recals the memory of the renowned Abbey of St. Genevieve. I have visited, several times, the library of this institution, and paid my respects to its one hundred and fifty thousand volumes, and thirty thousand manuscripts. This, like all the other places of Paris, where they keep books, is filled constantly with readers, and, like every other institution of the kind, is open gratuitously to the public.

I spoke of _Val de Grace_ in my last letter. A little to the east of it, and of not less historical importance, is the church of _St. Medard_; to which I stretched, also, one of my solitary walks, and took a seat among the worshippers. Faint hymns, chanted at a distance, as the still evening comes on, have lured many a wandering sinner from the wickedness of the world. This is the church so famous for its miracles, called the “convulsions,” which once filled the whole city with alarm; and were not discontinued, until the archbishop had placed a strong military guard around the tomb of father Paris. You know the placard put up by some wag on this occasion:

“De par le roi, defense à Dieu, De faire miracle en ce lieu.”

The young girls used to have fits at this tomb, which gave them comical twitchings of the nerves. Some would bark all night long at the door of their chambers, and others leap about like frogs all day. Sister Rose supped the air with a spoon, as your babies do pap, and lived on it forty days; another swallowed a New Testament, bound in calf. Some had themselves hung, others crucified, and one, called Sister Rachel, when nailed to a cross, said she was quite happy--“_qu’elle faisait dodo_.” In their holy meetings, they beat, trampled, punctured, crucified, and burnt one another, without the least sentiment of pain. All this was done at St. Medard, under Louis XV., and attested by ten thousand witnesses.

Large packages of the earth were exported to work miracles, in the provinces and foreign countries. One of these miracles is told in a song of the Duchesse de Maine.

“Un decrotteur à la royale, Du talon gauche estropié, Obtint par grace speciale, D’etre boiteux de l’autre pied.”

Some of these fanatics were found, forty years afterwards, in the dungeons of the Bastile, at its destruction in 1789.

There is one point in religion, in which there are no heretics out of Scotland--the music. The choir of voices, which assisted the organs in this church, seemed to be almost divine. One feminine voice, singing occasionally alone, had all the powers of enchantment; swelling sometimes into a strain of almost religious frenzy, and then melting softly away till there was nothing between it and silence; and just in front of me, and in full view, sat a handsome woman, wrapped entirely in her devotional enjoyments, who seemed placed there expressly to give effect to the music; her shoulders, arms, and features, all moved in exact unison with its harmony. I wish you could have seen her beautiful countenance as she presented it to the firmament; her sainted smile which beamed out and waned away upon her lips; the devout expression of her eyes, how illuminated as the music rose, how languishing in its dying notes; how she expired, and then came to life again! I do not hope to see again on the earth a more vivid picture of religious rapture.

Devotion, I believe, exalts a woman’s beauty to its highest perfection; there is no picture so beautiful as the Madonna, and, if I were a woman, I would be religious, if for no other motive, just from vanity. No one doubts that the human countenance is modified by the feelings cherished in the heart, and she who cherishes the mild and benevolent Christian affections, cannot be otherwise than very pretty. If there are any ugly women in the world, it is because they have not been brought up religiously. I sat thinking all this over, till night came on, and I felt one or two of sister Rose’s twitchings.

I am going to tell you next of the _Chapelle de St. Nicholas_; which you will find intrenched under the _Palais de Justice_. This is the “_Sainte Chapelle_,” made famous by the Lutrin of Boileau. It is the most classical, as well as the most holy of the churches of Paris. It was built by St. Louis. It was here he stowed away the relics he brought from the Holy Land. The “real crown” was one of them, which he bought for eighty thousand dollars, and which, walking barefooted, and bareheaded, and preceded by all the prelates and dignitaries of the kingdom, in solemn procession, he deposited in this shrine. There were, besides, Moses’ rod and a great many other such miracles, which the Emperor of Constantinople manufactured, they say, expressly for his use. And, also, a great variety of presents from popes, cardinals, and other holy men, of less equivocal value. A light was burnt here, as in the Temple of Vesta, and a priest waked and watched over them at all hours of the night. They are now--what remains from the sacrilegious and pilfering fingers of the Revolution--in the sacristy of Notre Dame; and their place is supplied by old musty records of the Palais de Justice; lawyers’ declarations, and nasty crim. con. cases--even to the receipt of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers for making the poison she tried so effectually upon her father, husband, and brother. Boileau is buried in this chapel, made immortal by his verses.

For architectural effect, the Madelaine has an unquestionable superiority over all the churches of Paris. It has the advantage of a very favourable site; terminating with one flank, the view from the Boulevards, and fronting the Rue Royale, and Place Louis XV. It is mounted on a basement of eight feet, ascended on its entire perimeter by thirty steps. It is a parallelogram of three hundred and twenty-six, by one hundred and thirty feet, surrounded in double peristyle, by fifty-two Corinthian columns sixty feet high. On the south pediment, is represented in bas-relief, the Day of Judgment; the figures of sixteen feet. In the middle is Christ, and at his feet Madelaine, a suppliant. The rest of the group, is of angels, and allegorical vices and virtues; covering a triangular surface of one hundred and eighteen feet in length, and twenty-two in height.

The interior is a rich and variegated picture. The eye is dazzled at the glittering aspect of its gilding and fanciful decorations; its Ionic and Corinthian pillars. On each flank are three chapels to be adorned with painting, and at the extremity is the choir in the shape of a demi-cylinder, with Ionic pilasters which extend along the two aisles. It was begun in the year of our Independence; it was the “Temple of Glory” in the Revolution, and has got back to its religious destination. It has neither dome nor spire, nor any of the usual emblems of a Christian church, except the sculpture; so that in the event of another Revolution, it may be converted into an Exchange or Bank, or the temple of some Pagan divinity, or a Mosque, without much expense of alteration.

The good lady, Notre Dame, is the largest of the Parisian churches. The adjoining houses squat down in her presence and seem to worship her; and she is not only admirable for her beauty and richness, but for her sense. She has the history of eight centuries in her nave. She has the whole of the Old and New Testament in pictures on her walls, or in groups of statuary, in her chapels. When you sit down under the arched vaults, one hundred and twenty feet over your head, and amidst these massive columns, you see flitting about your imagination, such personages as Queen Fredegonda; or if you please, you can see the pretty Marchioness de Gourville confessing, instead of her sins, her tender loves for the Archbishop of Paris. You can live back into those times when Henry IV. was d----d, and Ravaillac, being anointed and prayed over, in bad Latin, went to heaven.

The light is let in upon her dread abodes by one hundred and thirteen windows, each bordered with a band of painted glass. There are three circular ones painted in the thirteenth century which are not matched, for the delicacy of the stone-work, and brilliancy of the colours, by any thing of modern art.

The choir is paved with precious marble, and enclosed by a railing of polished iron; in the centre of it, is an eagle in gilt brass seven feet high, and three and a half from wing to wing, which serves as a reading desk. Its wainscoting is sculptured with scriptural pieces, and a great many sins in the shape of toads and lizards are carved upon it. It terminates near the sanctuary with two archiepiscopal chairs of great beauty.

The other day, in climbing up through one of the towers, from which there is a splendid panoramic view of the city, two hundred and four feet in the air, I fell in with that famous old bell, Emanuel, whose clapper alone weighs nine hundred and seventy-six pounds. Clappers of this kind do not speak on ordinary occasions. This one announces in a very hoarse and solemn voice, only the approach of some great festival, or an extraordinary event. On July 27th, five years ago, it pealed at midnight, and all night long, the awful tocsin of revolt; and upon these two towers, the tricoloured flag floated triumphant on the 29th.

It was to this church that the world used to come in their gala dresses to thank Providence for all those victories which are carved on the great triumphal column; every time a bulletin came in from Italy and Germany announcing the event, and when a new prince ascended the throne. They came here to thank God for Louis XVIII. then for Charles, and then for Louis Philippe. Providence is always sure of its thanks in this church, whichever side is uppermost.