Part 8
We used to see rejected in the old Academy, such names as Helvetius, Molière, Arnault and Pascal, and the two Rousseaus; and such as Sismondi and Beranger, in the present. Beranger, the poet, the most original and philosophical, one of the most richly endowed with poetic genius of the present age, “who, under the modest title of ‘Songs,’ makes odes worthy the lyre of Pindar, and the lute of Anacreon,” was refused the vacant place of this year, in the _Académie des Belles Lettres_, and it was given to Mr. Somebody, who writes vaudevilles. Broussais, who has left an impress upon his age, by his genius, was rejected in the “_Académie des Sciences_” for a Monsieur Double--and who knows M. Double? And Lisfranc, to whom surgery owes more than to any living Frenchman, was excluded for a Monsieur Breschet--and who is M. Breschet? I might as well ask, who, in the “_Académie de Medecine_,” are Messrs. Bouriat, Chardel, Chereau, Clarion and Cornac.[3]
The students pass their nine years here upon Latin, as in America, and by nearly the same processes; that is, the children are drilled as with us upon the studies of mature age, and improve their memories without much troubling the other faculties. A boy for instance, at ten and twelve years, is made to strain after the beauties of Cicero and Horace, which are conceivable only by a well-cultivated manhood; and in the elementary schools, babies are taught, exactly as in Philadelphia, all the incomprehensible nonsense of the grammars. Any child here can tell you why a verb is “active, passive, and neuter,” and how the action must pass from the agent to the object, to make it “transitive;” and they study reading and punctuation on the “Beauties of the Classics,” as we do:--“_vital spark_,” (a comma,) “_Heavenly flame_,” (a semicolon;)--and the little things are taught to “Hic and Hac,” at a public examination to please Mrs. Quickly just as with us. Paris is, also, full of instructors, calling themselves Professors, who have introduced all the different ways of turning dunces into wits, in six lessons, which are practised so successfully in Philadelphia; and they have tapestried every street with their “new systems,” under the very nose of the Minister of Public Instruction. In the chamber adjoining mine is a young Englishman, just arrived, without a knowledge of French, to a course of medical study; he has taken a master, a venerable and noisy old man, who humbly conceives that the whole English nation is stupid, because this youth cannot pronounce _vertu_. He made, this morning, fifty persevering efforts, each louder than the last, and still it was _verthu_. The old gentleman sat afterwards in my room awhile, quite meditative, and at length said, in a very feeling manner:--“I believe the English nation is fool!”--I know another teacher, an Englishman, who retaliates upon the French the violence done his countrymen. He begins by dislocating a Frenchman’s jaws. His “system” is to commence with the difficulties, and all the rest, he says, is “down hill.” So he has a little book of phrases, “made hard for beginners,” as follows:--“_I snuff Scotch snuff, my wife snuffs Scotch snuff_.”--“_A lump of red leather, and a red leather lump_,” &c. The scholar, having overcome these preparatory difficulties, takes up Sterne’s sentimental journey. It is, he says, as one who learns to run, having put on leaden shoes: when relieved from the weight he can almost fly.--I verily believe that the greatest fools, all over the world, are those who communicate knowledge; as the greatest knaves are usually those who teach men to be honest.--_Je ne sais si je m’explique._
In the Parisian schools there is at present no corporal punishment. The student used to be flogged in these same Halls till there were no more birches.--Solomon may say what he pleases, I will not have my children whipped. The only natural authority for whipping, is in the parent, and it cannot be safely delegated to another. The discipline here is every where good.
The professors of Paris are men of the world, and mix in its pleasures. They have nothing in their air of awkward timidity, or haughty arrogance, or ridiculous pedantry--the faults often of those who live apart from fashionable society. They are as well bred as if there were no scholars at all. And they do not set them up here as examples to other men, or make them die, as with us, martyrs to virtue, at the rate of five hundred dollars a-year, and find themselves.--I know several of these professors, and one intimately; he attends to both the moral and intellectual improvement of his pupils, and is most assiduous in his duties. Moreover, he has three rooms in different parts of this “Latin Quarter,” in one of which he has a very pretty little mistress, highly cultivated in music and letters; in another he resides with his books, and has frequent conversations with venerable men about the best systems of education; the third he keeps for occasional adventures. He is much esteemed, and would not be less were I to publish his name.
My opinion is, that America has little to learn from Europe on the subject of schools; she wants but a wise and diligent application of the knowledge she already possesses, and which future experience may suggest; she runs at least as much risk of being led astray by European errors, as enlightened by European wisdom. The better scholarship of Europe, is not attributable to the better organisation of her schools.
I am aware there are opinions and doctrines in this letter which are not orthodox, but you did not ask me to write after other men’s opinions, but my own. On education the sentiments of men are yet unfortunately unsettled, and the field is open for speculation. With great respect, I remain your very humble servant.
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.
Paris, December 25th, 1835.
I am going in my usual way to write you what has most engaged my attention during the last week. I have been breaking into ladies’ boarding schools, and turning and twisting about the school-mistresses, and making them explain their plans of education; which they have done very obligingly, leading me through their dormitories, refectories, and school-rooms. The French women are so kind in showing you any thing. In the street, I often chose to lose myself a mile or two rather than impose upon their good nature. The organization of their schools has nothing different from the French boarding schools of Philadelphia. Their elementary branches are the same. Their foreign languages are German, English, and Italian; and these, with drawing, dancing, and needlework, make up the programme of studies. Most of the schools are in airy situations, with large gardens, having baths, and gymnastic exercises attached. Rewards and punishments are as usual; bulletins of conduct are sent to the parents, and public examinations are made to astonish the grandmothers and bring the schools into notoriety.
All the professors are printed up ostentatiously in the prospectus. One is “_Danseur de l’ Académie Royal de l’Opera_;” another is “_Professeur du chant au Conservatoire_;” a “_Chevalier de la legion d’honneur_” teaches you your “pot-hooks;” and an “_Instituteur du duc de Bordeaux_,”--“_de la Reine de Portugal_,” _&c._ your parts of speech. In the best schools the annual charge for boarding and education, including the foreign languages, is about two hundred dollars. Dancing and drawing are each three, and the piano six dollars per month.
A French woman is emphatically a social being, and prepares herself for this destination. A philosophical apparatus is no part of the furniture of her school-room; nor does she rashly study Latin, nor any of the “inflammatory branches.” But she makes herself well acquainted with all that is of daily use; her geography, history of France, mythology and the fashionable literature, and tries to be very expert in the “use and administration” of this learning; she talks of books and their authors, especially the drama, of the fine arts, of social etiquette, of dress and fashions, and all such common topics, better than other women. She studies the graces of language, and all the rhetoric of society, as an orator, that of public life. She learns to speak, not with the tongue only, but with the action, gesture, voice, and expression, which may give life and magic to her conversation.
You will hear her talk of the “_jeu du visage_,” and she thinks a woman, who has no variety of face, had better have no face at all. I take the liberty of thinking so too; extending only the rule to the whole woman, body and soul. What is she, after all, without variety? any thing is better; a fish without seasoning is better. I had almost said that a woman much oftener palls the appetite of her husband by uniform goodness, than by her caprices and levities. I have found it pleasant, after having a chill, even to have a fever by way of variety. And why should not the eloquence of common life be quite as important as that of the bar, or senate, or pulpit? since it is of daily use, and the other only occasional, and since much more important interests are affected by it.
A French woman does not limit her views of education to her maiden years, nor to her domestic and nursery duties, not being destined to be imprisoned by her husband, or devoured by her own children; nor to her marriage settlement; for this is the business of her mother; her aim is to prepare the qualifications of womanhood; and her ambition is not to win the unbearded admiration of boys, for her intercourse is to be with men, competent, from taste and understanding to judge of her acquirements, as well as to add something to the polish of her mind, by their manners and conversation. But the taste of gentlemen here, even of the learned, seeks not so much science in a lady as a certain knack in conversation, which may give a good grace to all that she says.
In our American schools science has taken precedence every where of letters; it has not only the principal seats at the universities, but in our best female academies is thought to be the most exalted and necessary kind of knowledge. It is so interesting to see a young miss expert at her sines and tangents; and presiding over a cabinet of minerals.
Why, a New England lady analyzes the atmosphere and gossips hydraulics at her tea-table. I have been puzzled there upon theories of geology, or meteorology, at a wedding. “Sir, this is a trap formation,--the angle seventeen minutes and three seconds.”--I do not mean to depreciate this kind of learning, but I would not make it the principal object of a gentleman’s, much less, a lady’s education. Calculations of science have little to do with the affections; they exercise only the mechanism of the understanding; and leave the imaginative power--the power which adorns and illustrates by images--unemployed; and the mind, under a mathematical training, becomes too systematic for the irregularity of human affairs.
The partiality for science prevails in gentlemen’s education, also in Europe. The chief professorships of the colleges are scientific, and in the Institute, the Academy of Sciences, like Aaron’s rod, has swallowed up all the rest. But in the female schools such inquiries are postponed, at least, to the ornamental and agreeable. A French lady is of the romantic school, and thinks the classic too severe for feminine charms. Therefore, all studies which do not supply the materials of daily conversation, and have no immediate connection with some purpose of her social existence are rejected from the general plan of female instruction.
Acquirements highly intellectual in a lady, are not much approved by the French tutors and others with whom I have conversed. They think them dangerous to her domestic qualities. A Parisian lady living continually in society, having such accomplishments, would become too much the property of the other sex. Besides, such an education, they say, made Madame de Stael a libertine, Madame Centlivre, and two or three more, licentious, and Madame Montague a sloven and something else, and so they run on. One might ask them in return what it made of Mesdames Barbauld, Hamilton, Porter, Edgeworth, Hemans, and that good old blue-stocking saint, Hannah More. It is true that learning is more attractive, and will always be more courted and flattered than even beauty; and in this sense it is dangerous. The Greeks gave Minerva a shield, and turned Venus loose without one; it was apparently for this reason. Learning in France always studies books and the world together; the “Blue Stocking” is not known here, nor is there any equivalent term in the language. The “_Precieuses Ridicules_” is of a different character. So at least the learned woman has not to dread this opprobrious designation, which so terrifies ladies in some other countries. I know one, not of the Tuileries, but the Collieries, who, under the awful apprehension of Blue Stockingism, almost repents of her learning; hides her Virgil, and disowns her Horace altogether. There are places where ladies think proper to apologise for their virtues, and ask pardon for being in the right.
A French lady is not afraid to show her possessions. She shows her learning, and knows how to show it without affectation. She displays it as she does her pretty foot and ankle; she does not pull up her clothes expressly for the purpose. As for me, I love a learned woman, even in her blue stockings; and without them I love her to idolatry;--I mean a reasonable idolatry, which leads to a higher reverence for the Creator from an admiration of his best works. One of the grand purposes of a Frenchwoman, is to seem natural; and, indeed, if a lady is natural, even her singularities add to her perfections, whilst affectation makes even her sense and beauty insipid and ridiculous.
I talked with one of these mistresses about you American girls. She says you come too soon into the world, and take too many liberties when in it. This, she thinks, interferes with education, and awakens inclinations and passions which had better sleep until the girls have grown up. She says that tender plants should be kept a long while in the nursery; that to play well in the concert, one must play well at home, and that the whole of youth is even too little for acquirement. “These young ladies, you see, are not unhappy from the restraints they undergo; and they are not less accomplished I assure you. By coming sooner into society, they would acquire a bad tone, a bad manner, a bad air, which a mature age and judgment might be unable to correct. In a word, sir, a young lady below eighteen sees enough of the world over her mother’s shoulders.” So talked this impertinent little woman.
A Frenchwoman has no attentions from society while a girl, and consequently, no wit till she is married; exactly the period at which American ladies generally lose theirs. A smile and a few timid glances under the wing of her beautiful mamma, is all the little thing dares venture. But the American girl has the reins of her conduct a good deal in her own hands, and therefore grows prudent; she has her reason and judgment sooner developed. She has all the serpentine wisdom and columbine innocence so recommended in the Scriptures in her looks and actions. I feel, my dear sisters, all the admiration and respect which is due to you, but with my utmost efforts I cannot help falling a little in love with this innocent indiscretion of the French.
It would have puzzled the evil spirit more to tempt Eve after the fall than before it; yet I like her in the first state better. Their not coming into the world before the full time, I like also well enough. My tastes are not girlish. The eye indeed reposes with delight upon the green corn, but the ripened ear is better. I know, indeed, all the sweetness which a fine day pours out upon Chesnut-street; but ---- I like better your mothers. They who give tone to society should have maturity of mind; they should have refinement of taste, which is a quality of experience and age. As long as college beaux and boarding school misses take the lead, it must be an insipid society in whatever community it may exist.
Middle age in this country never loses its sovereignty, nor does old age lose its respect; and this respect, with the enjoyments which accompany it, keeps the world young. It turns the clouds into drapery, and gilds them with its sunshine; which presents as fine a prospect as the clear and starry heavens. Even time seems to fall in with the general observance. I know French women who retain to forty-five and often beyond that age the most agreeable attractions of their sex.--Is it not villanous in your Quakerships of Philadelphia to lay us, before we have lived half our time out, upon the shelf? Some of our native tribes, more merciful, eat the old folks out of the way.--Don’t be mad; you will one day be as old as your mothers.
An important item here in a lady’s studies (and it should be a leading branch of education every where) is her beauty. Sentiment and health being the two chief ingredients and efficient causes of this quality, have each its proper degree of cultivation. Every body knows that the expression of the eye, the voice, and the whole physiognomy, is modified by the thoughts or passions habitually entertained in the mind. Every one sees their effects upon the face of the philosopher and the idiot; upon that of the generous man and the niggard; but how few have considered that not only is this outward and visible expression nothing but the reflection of the mind; but that the very features are in a material degree modelled by its sensations.
Give, for example, any woman a habit of self-complacency, and she will have a little pursed up mouth; or give her a prying and busy disposition, and you will give her a straight onward nose. What gives the miser a mouth mean and contracted, or the open-hearted man his large mouth, but the habitual series of thoughts with which we are conversant? Determination stiffens the upper lip, and this is the lip of a resolute man. Peevish women and churls have thin lips; and good humour, or a generous feeling, or a habit of persuasion, rounds them into beauty. I have read that it was common amongst the rakes about Charles the Second to have “sleepy, half-shut, sly and meretricious eyes,” and that this kind of eye became fashionable at court. So every feature has its class of sensations by which it is modified; and this is not forgotten in the education of the Parisian young ladies. They take care that, while young and tender, they may cherish honest and amiable feelings, if for no other reason than that they may have an amiable expression of countenance--that they may have Greek noses, pouting lips, and the other constituents of beauty.
Our climate is noted for three eminent qualities, extreme heat and cold, and extreme suddenness of change. If a lady has bad teeth, or a bad complexion, she blames it conveniently upon the climate; if her beauty, like a tender flower, fades before noon, it is the climate; if she has a bad temper or even a snub nose, still it is the climate. But our climate is active and intellectual, especially in winter, and in all seasons more pure and transparent than these inky skies of Europe. It sustains the infancy of beauty, and why not its maturity? it spares the bud, and why not the opened blossom or the ripened fruit? Our negroes are perfect in teeth, and why not the whites?--The chief preservative of beauty in any country is health, and there is no place in which this great interest is so little attended to as in America.
To be sensible of this, you must visit Europe. You must see the deep-bosomed maids of England upon the _Place Vendôme_, and the _Rue Castiglione_. There you will see no pinched and mean-looking shoulders overlooking the plumpness and round sufficiency of a luxuriant tournure. As for the French women, a constant attention to the quantity and quality of their food is an article of their faith; and bathing and exercise are as regular as their meals. When children, they play abroad in their gardens; they have their gymnastic exercises in their schools, and their dancing and other social amusements keep up a healthful temperament throughout life. Besides, a young lady here does not put her waist in the inquisition. Fashion, usually insane, and an enemy to health, has grown sensible in this; she regards a very small waist as a defect, and points to the _Venus de Medicis_, who stands out boldly in the Tuileries, in vindication and testimony of the human shapes; and now among ladies of good breeding a waist which cannot dispense with tight lacing is thought not worth the mantua-maker’s bill--not worth the squeezing.
When I left America, the more a woman looked like an hour-glass, like two funnels or two extinguishers converging, the more pretty she was considered; and the waist in esteem by the cockney curiosity of the town, was one you would pinch between thumb and finger; giving her a withered complexion, bloated legs, consumptive lungs and ricketty children.--If this is not reformed, alas the republic!--A Frenchwoman’s beauty, such as it is, lasts her her lifetime, by the care she takes of it. Her limbs are vigorous, her bosom well developed, her colour healthy, and she has a greater moral courage, and is a hundred times better fitted to dashing enterprises, than the women of our cities.
The motherly virtues of our women, so eulogised by foreigners, are not entitled to unqualified praise. There is indeed no country in which maternal care is so assiduous; but also there is none in which examples of injudicious tenderness are so frequent. If a mother has eight or nine children (the American number) and wears out her life with the cares of nursing them, dies, and leaves them to a step-mother, she is not entitled to any praise but at the expense of her judgment and common sense; and this is one of our daily occurrences in America.--If a mother should squander away upon the infancy of her child, all that health and care which are so necessary to its youth and adolescence, or if by anticipating its wants she destroys its sense of gratitude, and her own authority, and impairs its constitution and temper by indiscreet indulgences--instead of being the most tender, she is the most cruel of all mothers--this happens commonly in all countries, and in none so much as in America.--If a mother should toil thirty years, and kill herself with cares, to procure for her son the glorious privilege of doing nothing, perhaps the means of being a rake and prodigal; she is a stupid mother, and such mothers----