Part 3

I must tell you how one lodges in Paris. A hotel is a huge edifice, mostly in the form of a parallelogram, and built around a paved courtyard, which serves as a landing for carriages as well as for persons on foot, and leads up to the apartments by one or more staircases. In the centre of the front wall, is a wide door (a _porte cochère_) opening from the street, and just inside a lodge (a _concièrge_) and a porter, who watches night and day over the concerns of the establishment. This porter is an important individual, and holds about the same place in a Paris hotel, that Cerberus holds--(I leave you a place for the rhyme.) He is usually a great rogue, a spy of the government, and a shoemaker; he cobbles the holes he makes in your boots, while his wife darns those she makes in your stockings. He is always a bad enemy and a useful friend, and you purchase his good will by money and condescensions, as a first minister’s. He lets you rooms, he attends them, receives parcels, letters, messages, runs errands, answers your visits, and fines you a shilling if you stay out after twelve; and his relation with many lodgers enables him to give you these services, I am ashamed to tell you how cheap. By proper attentions also to his wife, there will come to your bed every morning, at the hour you appoint, a cup of coffee or tea, and the entertainment of the lady’s conversation while you sip it. Each story of a hotel is divided into apartments and rooms--that is, accommodations for whole families or individuals; distinction, and, of course, price, decreasing upwards; for example, he who lives a story lower down thinks himself above you, and you in return consider him overhead below you. A third story in the Rue Castiglione or Rivoli, is equal in rank to a second story anywhere else.

The porter’s lodge is a little niche, about eight feet square. It pays no rent, but receives a salary, usually of sixty dollars a year, from the proprietor. Our porter is a man of several talents. He tunes pianos for ten sous, and plays at the “Petit Lazare” of a night for two francs. Indeed, his whole family plays; his grandmother plays the “Mother of the Gracchi.” He takes care, too, of his wife’s father; but he dresses him up as a Pair de France, or a Doge, and makes a good deal out of him also. Besides, he has a dog which he expects soon to play the “_Chien de Montargis_,” he is studying; and a magpie, which plays already in the “_Pie Voleuse_.” It is by these several industries that he is enabled to clean my boots once a day, take care of my room, and do all the domestic services required by a bachelor, at six francs a month; and he has grown into good circumstances. But, alas! impartial fate knocks at the Porter’s Lodge, as at the gates of the Louvre. He had an only son, who, in playing Collin last winter--a shepherd’s part in a vaudeville--had to wear a pair of white muslin breeches in the middle of the inclement season, and he took cold, and died of a _fluxion de poitrine_! The mother wept in telling this story; and then some one coming in, she smiled.

One is usually a little shy of these hotels at first sight, especially if one comes from the Broad Mountain. You take hold of an unwieldy knocker, you lift it up cautiously, and open flies the door six inches; you then push yourself through, and look about with a kind of a suspicious and sheepish look, and you see no one. At length you discover an individual, who will not seem to take the least notice of you till you intrude rather far;--then he will accost you: _Que demandez-vous, Monsieur?_--I wish to see Mr. Smith? _Monsieur?--Monsieur, il ne demeure pas ici.--Que tu es bête!_ exclaims the wife, _c’est Monsieur_ Smit. _Oui, oui, oui--au quatrième, Monsieur, au dessus de l’entresol_; and with this information, of which you understand not a syllable, you proceed up stairs, and there you ring all the bells to the garret; but no one knows Mr. Smith. Why don’t you say _Mr. Smit_?

The houses here are by no means simple and uniform, as with us. The American houses are built, as ladies are dressed, all one way. First there is a pair of rival saloons, which give themselves the air of parlours: and then there is a dining room, and corresponding chambers above to the third or fourth story; and an entry runs through the middle or alongside a mile or two without stopping, at the farthest end of which is the kitchen; so that one always stands upon the marble of the front door in December, until Kitty has travelled this distance to let one in. How many dinners have I seen frozen in their own sauces, how many lovers chilled, by this refrigeratory process? Here, if you just look at the knocker, the door, as if by some invisible hand, flies open; and when you descend, if you say “Cordon,” just as Ali Baba said “Sesame,” the door opens, and delivers you to the street. The houses, too, have private rooms, and secret doors, and intricate passages; and one can never be said to be at home in one’s own house. I should like to see any one find the way to a lady’s boudoir. A thief designing to rob, has to study beforehand the topography of each house, without which, he can no more unravel it than the Apocalypse. There are closets, too, and doors, in many of the rooms, unseen by the naked eye. If a gentleman is likely to be intruded on by the bailiff, he sinks into the earth; and a lady, if surprised in her dishabille, or any such emergency, just disappears into the wall.

No private dwellings are known in Paris. A style, which gives entire families and individuals, at a price that would procure them very mean separate lodgings, the air of living in a great castle; and they escape by it all that emulation about houses, and door servants, and street display, which brings so much fuss and expense in our cities. I have seen houses a little straitened that were obliged to give Cæsar a coat to go to the door, another to bring in dinner, and another to curry the horses. To climb up to the second or third story is, to be sure, inconvenient; but once there, your climbing ends. Parlours, bedrooms, kitchen, and all the rest, are on the same level. In America, you have the dinner in the cellar, and the cook in the garret; and nothing but ups and downs the whole day. Moreover, climbing is a disposition of our nature. “In our proper motion we ascend.” See with what avidity we climb when we are boys; and we climb when we are old, because it reminds us of our boyhood. I have no doubt that the daily habit of climbing, too, has a good moral influence; it gives one dispositions to rise in the world. I ought to remark here, that persons in honest circumstances do not have kitchens in their own houses.

It is in favour of the French style not a little, that it improves the quality at least of one class of lodgers. Mean houses degrade men’s habits, and lower their opinions of living. As for me, I like this Paris way, but I don’t know why. I like to see myself under the same roof with my neighbours. One of them is a pretty woman, with the prettiest little foot imaginable; and only think of meeting this little foot, with which one has no personal acquaintance, three or four times a-day on the staircase! Indeed, the solitude of a private dwelling begins to seem quite distressing. To be always with people one knows! it paralyzes activity, breeds selfishness, and other disagreeable qualities. Solitary life has its vices, too, as well as any other.

On the other hand, a community of living expands one’s benevolent affections, begets hospitality, mutual forbearance, politeness, respect for public opinion, and keeps cross husbands from beating their wives, and _vice versa_. If Xantippe had lived in a French hotel, she would not have kept throwing things out of the window upon her husband’s head. The domestic virtues are, to be sure, well enough in their way; but they are dull, and unless kept in countenance by good company, they go too soon to bed. Indeed, that word “home,” so sacred in the mouths of Englishmen, often means little else than dozing in an arm-chair, listening to the squeaking of children, or dying of the vapours; at all events, the English are the people of the world most inclined to leave these sanctities of home. Here they are by hundreds, running in quest of happiness all about Europe.

But to return. My object, in setting out, was to shew you, as nearly as possible, my manner of living in the street of St. Anne. I have a _chambre de garçon au second_; this means, a bachelor’s room in the third story. As companions, I have General Kellerman, and a naked Mars over the chimney (not Mademoiselle), and a little Bonaparte about three inches long; and on a round table, with a marble cover, there is an old Rabelais and a Seneca’s Maxims, with manuscript notes on the margin, and a Bible open at Jeremiah. The floor is a kind of brick pavement, upon which a servant performs a series of rubbings, every morning, with a brush attached to his right foot, which gives it a slippery and mahogany surface. We have a livery stable also in the yard, and several persons lodge here for the benefit of the smell, it being good against consumption. Of the staircase I say nothing now, as I intend some day to write a treatise upon French Staircases. This one has not been washed ever, unless by some accident, such as Noah’s flood. Indeed, the less one says of French cleanliness in the way of houses the better. Our landlady appears no more delighted with a clean floor than an antiquary would be with a scoured shield; and there is none of the middling hotels of Paris that presumes to be better than this. I ought to remark here, that servants do not run about from one garret to another as they do in America. A French servant is transmitted to posterity. Our coachman says he has been in this family several hundred years.

When one cannot travel in the highway of life with a fashionable equipage, it is pleasant to steal along its secret path unnoticed. A great man is so jostled by the throng that either he cannot think at all, or, in gathering its silly admiration, so occupied with intrigues and mere personal vanities that the good qualities of his understanding are perverted, and he loses at length his taste for innocent enjoyments. But, travelling in this sober, unambitious way, one may gather flowers by the road side; one has leisure for the contemplation of useful and agreeable things; and is not obliged to follow absurd fashion, or keep up troublesome appearances; and one can get into low company when one pleases, without being suspected. Now I can wander “on my short-tailed nag” all over the country; I can get sometimes into a _coucou_ and ride out to St. Germains, or stroll unconcerned through the markets, and ask the price of fruits; of cassolettes, muscats, and jargonelles, and of grapes; and I can eat a bunch or two upon the pavement, just fresh from Fontainbleau; and do a great many innocent things which persons of distinction dare not do. This is the life of those who lodge at the _Hotel des Ambassadeurs_.

Here are two sheets filled, with what meagre events! and how much below the dignity of history! I console myself that trifles, like domestic anecdotes, are often the most characteristic. I will be your Boswell to the city of Paris. But Boswell had to retail the sense of an individual, and I the nonsense of the multitude, and my own. However, I wish these letters to be preserved from the flames, if you can, frivolous as they are; I have partly a design to manufacture some sort of a book out of them on my return home. I intend them as notes upon the field of battle--like Cæsar’s Commentaries, with the exception of the wit.

_July 7th._

I went with my Yankee companion last night to the Grand Opera; and, at the risk of being enormously long, I am going to add a postscript; for it is a wet day, and I have no better way to beguile the lazy twenty-four hours. They admit the spectators to a French theatre in files of two between high railings, and under the grim and bearded authority of the police, which prevents crowding and disorder; and whoever wishes to go in, not having a seat provided, “makes tail,” as they call it, by entering the file in the rear. A number of speculators also stand in the ranks at an early hour, and sell out their places at an advance to the more tardy, so that you have always this resort to obtain a good enough seat. In approaching the house, persons will offer you tickets, with great importunity, in the streets. With one of these, which, by cheapening a little, I got at double price, I procured admission to the pit.

_L’analyse de la Pièce; voilà le programme!_ These are two phrases--meaning only the analysis and bill of the play, at two sous--which you will hear croaked with the most obstreperous discord through the house, in the intervals of the performance, to bring out Monsieur Auber, and Scribe, and the Donnas. It is probably for the same reason the owls are permitted to sing in the night, to bring out the nightingales. The opera last night was “_Robert le Diable_,”--_voici l’analyse de la pièce_.

There was the representation of a grave-yard and a resurrection; and the ghosts, at least two hundred, flocked out of the ground in white frocks and silk stockings, and they squeaked and gibbered all over the stage. Then they asked one another out to dance, and performed the most fashionable ballets of their country, certainly in a manner very creditable to the other world. And while these waltzed and quadrilled, another set were entertaining themselves with elegant and fashionable amusements, some were turning summersets upon a new grave; others playing at whist upon a tombstone, and others again were jumping the rope over a winding-sheet; when suddenly, they all gave a screech and skulked into their graves; there was a flutter through the house, the music announcing some great event, and at length, amidst a burst of acclamations, Mademoiselle Taglioni stood upon the margin of the scene. She seemed to have alighted there from some other sphere.

I expected to be little pleased with this lady, I had heard such frequent praises of her accomplishments; but was disappointed. Her exceeding beauty surpasses the most excessive eulogy. Her dance is the whole rhetoric of pantomime; its movements, pauses, and attitudes, in their purest Attic simplicity, chastity, and urbanity. She has a power over the feelings which you will be unwilling to concede to her art. She will make your heart beat with joy; she will make you weep by the sole eloquence of her limbs. What inimitable grace! In all she attempts, you will love her, and best in that which she attempts last. If she stands still, you will wish her a statue that she may stand still always; or if she moves, you will wish her a wave of the sea that she may do nothing but--“move still, still so, and own no other function.” To me, she appeared last night to have filled up entirely the illusion of the play--to have shuffled off this gross and clumsy humanity, and to belong to some more airy and spiritual world.

But my companion, who is a professor, and a little ecclesiastical, and bred in that most undancing country, New England, was scandalized at the whole performance. He is of the old school, and has ancient notions of the stage, and does not approve this modern way of “holding the mirror up to nature.” He was displeased especially at the scantiness of the lady’s wardrobe. I was born farther south, and could better bear it.

The art of dressing, as I have read in the history of Holland and other places, has been carried often by the ladies to a blameable excess of quantity; so much so, that a great wit said in his day, a woman was “the least part of herself.” Taglioni’s sins, it is true, do not lie on this side of the category; she produced last evening nothing but herself--Mademoiselle Taglioni in the abstract. Ovid would not have complained of her. Her lower limbs wore a light silk, imitating nature with undistinguishable nicety; and her bosom a thin guaze, which just relieved the eye, as you have seen a fine fleecy cloud hang upon the dazzling sun. But there is no gentleman out of New England who would not have grieved to see her spoilt by villainous mantua-makers. She did not, moreover, exceed what the courtesy of nations has permitted, and what is necessary to the proper exhibition of her art.

They call this French opera, the “_Académie Royale de Musique_,” also, the “Français,” in contradistinction with the “Italien,” finally, the “Grand Opera;” this latter name because it has a greater quantity of thunder and lightning, of pasteboard seas, of paper snow-storms, and dragons that spit fire; also a gorgeousness of wardrobe and scenery not equalled upon any theatre in Europe. It is certain, its “_corps de ballet_” can outdance all the world put together.

Mercy! how deficient we are in our country in these elegant accomplishments. In many things we are still in our infancy,--in dancing we are not yet born. We have, it is true, our “_balancés_,” and “_chassés_,” and _back-to-backs_, and our women do throw a great deal of soul into their little feet--as on a “birth-night,” or an “Eighth of January,” or the like;--but the Grand Opera, the Opera Français, the Académie Royale de Musique! _ah, ma foi, c’est là une autre affaire!_--You have read, and so has everybody, of the “dancing Greeks;” of Thespis, so described by Herodotus, who used to dance on his head, his feet all the while dangling in the air; of the “Gaditanian girls,” so sung by Anacreon; of Hylas, who danced before Augustus; of the “dancing Dervishes,” who danced their religion like our Shakers; of the pantomimic dances, described by Raynal; and the Turkish Ulemas, by the “sweet Lady Mary Montague,” (quere “sweet?”) and finally, every one has heard of the “Age of Voltaire, the King of Prussia, and Vestris,”--well, all this is out-danced by Taglioni and the Grand Opera.

This opera has seats for two thousand spectators, besides an immense saloon (two hundred feet by fifty) where a great number of fashionables, to relieve their ears from the noise of the singing, promenade themselves magnificently during the whole evening, under the light of brilliant lustres; and where the walls, wainscotted with mirrors, multiply their numbers and charms to infinity.--May I not as well continue dancing through the rest of this page?

Dancing, you know, is a characteristic amusement of the French; and you may suppose they have accommodations to gratify their taste to its fullest extent. There are elegant rotundas for dancing in nearly all the public gardens, as at “Tivoli,” “Waxhal d’Eté,” and the “Chaumière de Mont Parnasse.” Besides, there are “Guinguettes” at every Barrière; and in the “Village Fêtes,” which endure the whole summer, dancing is the chief amusement; and public ball-rooms are distributed through every quarter of Paris, suited to every one’s rank and fortune. The best society of Paris go to the balls of Ranelagh, Auteuil, and St. Cloud. The theatres, too, are converted into ball-rooms, especially for the masquerades, from the beginning to the end of the Carnival.

I hired a cabriolet and driver the other night, and went with a lady from New Orleans to see the most famous of the “Guinguettes.” Here all the little world seemed to me completely and reasonably happy, behaving with all the decency, and dancing with almost the grace, of high life. We visited half a dozen, paying only ten sous at each for admission. I must not tell you it was Sunday night: it is so difficult to keep Sunday all alone, and without any one to help you. The clergy find a great deal of trouble to keep it themselves here, there is so little encouragement. On Sunday only, these places are seen to advantage. I am very far from approving of dancing on this day, if one can help it; but I have no doubt that in a city like Paris the dancers are more taken from the tavern and gin-shops than from the churches. I do not approve, either, of the absolute denunciation this elegant amusement incurs from many of our religious classes in America. If human virtues are put up at too high a price, no one will bid for them. Not a word is said against dancing in the Old or New Testament, and a great deal in favour. Miriam danced, you know how prettily; and David danced. To be sure, the manner of his dancing was not quite so commendable, according to the fashion of our climates. In the New Testament, to give enjoyment to the dance, the water was changed into wine. If you will accept classical authority I will give you pedantry _par dessus la tête_. The Greeks ascribed to dancing a celestial origin, and they admitted it even amongst the accomplishments and amusements of their divinities. The Graces are represented almost always in the attitude of dancing; and Apollo, the most amiable of the gods, and the god of wisdom, too, is called by Pindar the “dancer.” Indeed, I could shew you, if I pleased, that Jupiter himself sometimes took part in a cotillon, and on one occasion danced a gavot.

Mεστοισιν δ’ωρχειτο πατηρ ανδρωντε Θεωντε.

There, it is proved to you from an ancient Greek poet. I could shew you, too, that Epaminondas, amongst his rare qualities, is praised by Cornelius Nepos for his skill in dancing; and that Themistocles, in an evening party at Athens, passed for a clown, for refusing to take a share in a dance. But it is so foppish to quote Greek, and to be talking to women about the ancients. Don’t you say that dancing is not a natural inclination, or I will set all the savages on you of the Rocky Mountains, and I don’t know how many of the dumb animals--especially the bears, who, even on the South-Sea Islands, where they could not have any relations with the _Académie Royale de Musique_, yet always express their extreme joy (Captain Cook says) by this agreeable agitation of limbs. And if you won’t believe all this, I will take you to see a Negro holiday on the Mississippi. Now, this is enough about dancing; it is very late, and I must dance off to bed.

It is necessary to be as much in love with dancing as I am to preach so pedantically about it as I have in this postscript. Its enormous length, when you have seen Mademoiselle Taglioni, needs no apology. When you do see her, take care her legs don’t get into your head; they kept capering in mine all last night.

LETTER III.