Book: Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.

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Again, a dandy of fifty is presented to us, whose affection for his ward
has waited, of course, till she is wedded to another, to ripen into
love. He still continues her protector against the advances of others;
for jealousy is a good point of character in every one but the husband,
and there it is only ridiculous. The husband in this case is another
admirable specimen of the results of wedlock for life--he is a
chattering, shallow pretender--a political economist, prodigiously dull
and infinitely conceited--an exaggerated type of the Hume-Bowring
statesman--and, as is naturally to be expected, our sympathies are
awakened for the wretched wife, and we rejoice to see that her beauty
and talents, her fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated by a dashing
young fellow, who outwits our original friend the dandy of fifty and the
philosophical depute; the whole leaving a pleasing impression on the
reader's mind from the conviction that the heroine is no longer
neglected.

From the similarity of these stories--and they are only taken at random
from a great number--it will be seen that the spirit of almost all of
them is the same. But when we go lower in the scale, and leave the class
of philosophic novels, we find their tales of life and manners still
more absurd in their total untrueness than the others were hateful in
their design. There is a novel just now appearing in one of the most
widely-circulated of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely overdone, that
if it had been meant for a caricature of the worst parts of our own
hulk-and-gallows authors, it would have been very much admired; but
meant to be serious, powerful, harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is
a most curious exhibition of a nation's taste and a writer's audacity.
The _Mysteries of Paris_, by Eugene Sue, has been dragging its slow
length along for a long time, and gives no sign of getting nearer its
denouement than when it began. A sovereign prince is the hero--his own
daughter, whom he has disowned, the heroine; and the tale commences by
his fighting a man on the street, and taking a fancy to his unknown
child, who is the inhabitant of one of the lowest dens in the St Giles'
of Paris! The other _dramatis personae_ are convicts, receivers of stolen
goods, murderers, intriguers of all ranks--the aforesaid prince,
sometimes in the disguise of a workman, sometimes of a pickpocket,
acting the part of a providence among them, rewarding the good and
punishing the guilty. The English personages are the Countess Sarah
McGregor--the lawful wife of the prince--her brother Tom, and Sir Walter
Murph, Esquire. These are all jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and
flurried--first in flash kens, where the language is slang; then in
country farms, and then in halls and palaces--and so intermixed and
confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of
the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds.
How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and
we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his
poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step.
Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of
France, and in the _Mysteres de Paris_ the most confirmed glutton of
such delicacies may sup full of them. In the midst of such depraved and
revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of satisfaction, though not of the
loftiest kind, to turn to the coarse fun and ludicrous descriptions of
Paul de Kock. And, after all, our friend Paul has not many more sins
than coarseness and buffoonery to answer for. As to his attempting, of
set purpose, to corrupt people's morals, it never entered into his head.
He does not know what morals are; they never form any part of his idea
of manners or character. If a good man comes in his way, he looks at him
with a strange kind of unacquaintance that almost rises into respect;
but he is certainly more affectionate, and on far better terms, with men
about town--amative hairdressers, flirting grisettes, and the whole
genus, male and female, of the epiciers. It would no doubt be an
improvement if the facetious Paul could believe in the existence of an
honest woman; but such women as come in his way he describes to the
life. A ball in a dancing-master's private room up six pairs of stairs,
a pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner at a restaurateur's, or a
family consultation on a proposal of marriage, are far more in Paul's
way than tales of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity. One is only
sorry, in the midst of so much gaiety and good-humour, to stumble on
some scene or sentiment that gives on the inclination to throw the book
in the fire, or start, like Caesar, on the top of the diligence to pull
the author's ears. But the next page sets all right again; and you go on
laughing at the disasters of my neighbour Raymond, or admiring the
graces or Chesterfieldian politeness of M. Bellequeue. French nature
seems essentially different from all the other natures hitherto known;
and yet, though so new, there never rises any doubt that it is _a_
nature, a reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and not a sham. The
personages presented to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely, in the strict
sense of the word, be called human beings; but they are French beings of
real flesh and blood, speaking and thinking French in the most decided
possible manner, and at intervals possessed of feelings which make us
inclined to include them in the great genus _homo_, though with so many
inseparable accidents, that it is impossible for a moment to shut one's
eyes to the species to which they belong. But such as they are in their
shops, and back-parlours, and ball-rooms, and _fetes champetres_, there
they are in Paul de Kock--nothing extenuated, little set down in
malice--vain, empty, frivolous, good-tempered, gallant, lively, and
absurd. Let us go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the
anniversary of the marriage of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the day of St
Eustache.

"At a little distance from the ball, towards the middle of the wood, a
numerous party is seated on the grass, or rather on the sand; napkins
are spread on the ground, and covered with plates and cold meat and
fruits. The bottles are placed in the cool shade, the glasses are filled
and emptied rapidly; good appetites and open air make every thing appear
excellent. They make plates out of paper, and toss pieces of pate and
sausage to each other. They eat, they drink, they sing, they laugh and
play tricks. It seems a struggle who shall be funniest. It is well known
that all things are allowable in the country; and the cits now assembled
in the wood of Romainville seem fully persuaded of the fact. A jolly old
governor of about fifty tries to carve a turkey, and can't succeed. A
little woman, very red, very fat, and very round, hastens to seize a
limb of the bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly old governor at the
other--the leg separates at last, and the lady goes sprawling on the
grass, while the gentleman topples over in the opposite direction with
the remainder of the animal in his hand. The shouts of laughter
redouble, and M. Moutonnet--such is the name of the jolly old
governor--resumes his place, declaring that he will never try to carve
any thing again. 'I knew you would never be able to manage it,' said a
large woman bluntly, in a tone that agreed exactly with her starched and
crabbed features. She was sitting opposite the stout gentleman, and had
seen with indignation the alacrity with which the little lady had flown
to M. Moutonnet's assistance.

"'In the twenty years we have been married,' she continued, 'have you
ever carved any thing at home, sir?'

"'No, my dear, that's very true;' replied the stout gentleman in a
submissive voice, and trying to smile his better half into good-humour.

"'You don't know how to help a dish of spinach, and yet you attempt a
dish like that!'

"'My dear--in the country, you know----'

"'In the country, sir, as in the town, people shouldn't try things they
can't perform.'

"'You know, Madame Moutonnet, that generally I never attempt any
thing--but to day'----

"'To day you should have done as you do on other days,' retorted the
lady.

"'Ah, but, my love, you forget that this is Saint Eustache----'

"'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!' is repeated in chorus by the whole
company, and the glasses are filled and jingled as before.

"'To the health of Eustache; Eustache for ever!'

"'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,' replied M. Moutonnet graciously
smiling--'and yours, my angel.'

"It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses himself. She tried to assume
an amiable look, and condescends to approach her glass to that of M.
Eustache Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet is a rich laceman of the Rue
St Martin; a man highly respected in trade; no bill of his was ever
protested, nor any engagement failed in. For the thirty years he has
kept shop he has been steadily at work from eight in the morning till
eight at night. His department is to take care of the day-book and
ledger; Madame Moutonnet manages the correspondence and makes the
bargains. The business of the shop and the accounts are confided to an
old clerk and Mademoiselle Eugenie Moutonnet, with whom we shall
presently become better acquainted.

"M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps already have perceived, is not
commander-in-chief at hone. His wife directs, rules, and governs all
things. When she is in good-humour--a somewhat extraordinary
occurrence--she allows her husband to go and take his little cup of
coffee, provided he goes for that purpose to the coffee-house at the
corner of the Rue Mauconseil--for it is famous for its liberal allowance
of sugar, and M. Moutonnet always brings home three lumps of it to his
wife. On Sundays they dine a little earlier, to have time for a
promenade to the Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions into the
country are very rare, and only on extraordinary occasions, such as the
fete-day of M. and Madame Moutonnet. That regular life does not hinder
the stout lace-merchant from being the happiest of men--so true is it
that what is one man's poison is another man's meat. M. Moutonnet was
born with simple tastes--she required to be led and managed like a
child. Don't shrug your shoulders at this avowal, ye spirited gentlemen,
so proud of your rights, so puffed up with your merits. You! who think
yourselves always masters of your actions, you yield to your passions
every day! they lead you, and sometimes lead you very ill. Well, M.
Moutonnet has no fear of that--he has no passions--he knows nothing but
his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very
happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself
be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is
a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never
was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded
she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to
every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her
husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame
Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A
daughter is the sole issue of the marriage of M. Eustache Moutonnet and
Mademoiselle Barbe Desormeaux. She is now eighteen years old, and at
eighteen the young ladies in Paris are generally pretty far advanced.
But Eugenie has been educated severely--and although possessed of a good
deal of spirit, is timid, docile, submissive, and never ventures on a
single observation in presence of her parents. She has cleverness,
grace, and sensibility, but she is ignorant of the advantages she has
received from nature--her sentiments are as yet concentrated at the
bottom of her heart. She is not coquettish--or rather she scarcely
ventures to give way to the inclination so natural to women, which leads
them to please and to be pretty. But Eugenie has no need of those little
arts, so indispensable to others, or to have recourse to her mirror
every hour. She is well made, and she is beautiful; her eyes are soft
and expressive, her voice is tender and agreeable, her brow is shadowed
by dark locks of hair, her mouth furnished with fine white teeth. In
short, she has that nameless something about her, which charms at first
sight, which is not always possessed by greater beauties and more
regular features. We now know all the Moutonnet family; and since we
have gone so far, let us make acquaintance with the rest of the party
who have come to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the Saint
Eustache.

"The little woman who rushed so vigorously to the assistance of M.
Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman of the name of Bernard, who
is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M. Bernard plays the amiable and the
fool at the same time. He laughs and quizzes, makes jokes, and even
puns; he is the wit of the party. His wife has been rather good-looking,
and wishes to be so still. She squeezes in her waist till she can hardly
breathe, and takes an hour to fit her shoes on--for she is determined to
have a small foot. Her face is a little too red; but her eyes are very
lively, and she is constantly trying to give them as mischievous an
expression as she can. Madame Bernard has a great girl of fifteen, whom
she dresses as if she were five, and treats occasionally to a new doll,
by way of keeping her a child. By the side of Madame Bernard is seated a
young man of eighteen, who is almost as timid as Eugenie, and blushes
when he is spoken to, though he has stood behind a counter for six
months. He is the son of a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife has
undertaken to patronize him, and introduce him to good society.

"A person of about forty years of age, with one of those silly
countenances which there is no mistaking at the first glance, is seated
beside Eugenie. M. Dupont--such is his name--is a rich grocer of the Rue
aux Ours. He wears powder and a queue, because he fancies they are
becoming, and his hairdresser has told him that they are very
aristocratic. His coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured waistcoat,
give him still more the appearance of a simpleton, and agree admirably
with the astonished expression of his gooseberry eyes. He dangles two
watch-chains, that hang down his nankeen trowsers, with great
satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration at the wisdom of his own
remarks. He thinks himself captivating and full of wit. He has the
presumption of ignorance, propped up by money. Finally, he is a
bachelor, which gives him great consideration in all the families where
there are marriageable daughters. M. and Madame Gerard, perfumers in the
Rue St Martin, are also of the party. The perfumer enacts the gallant
gay Lothario, and in his own district has the reputation of a prodigious
rake, though he is ugly, and ill-made, and squints. But he fancies he
overcomes all these drawbacks by covering himself with odours and
perfumes--accordingly, you smell him half an hour before he comes in
sight. His wife is young and pretty. She married him at fifteen, and has
a boy of nine, who looks more like her brother than her son. The little
Gerard hollos and jumps about, breaks the glasses and bottles, and makes
as much noise as all the rest of the company put together. 'He's a
little lion,' exclaims M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I was. You never
could hear yourselves speak wherever I was, at his age. People were
delighted with me. My son is my perfect image.'

"M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every
opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs
every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old
clerk of the laceman--M. Bidois--who waits for Madame Moutonnet's
permission before he opens his mouth, and fills his glass every time she
is not looking--is placed at the side of Mademoiselle Cecile Gerard;
who, though she swears every minute that she never will marry, and that
she hates the men, is very ill pleased to have old M. Bidois for her
neighbour, and hints pretty audibly that Madame Bernard monopolizes all
the young beaux. A young man of about twenty, tall, well-made, with
handsome features, whose intelligent expression announces that he is
intended for higher things than perpetually to be measuring yards of
calico, is seated at the right hand of Eugenie. That young man, whose
name is Adolphe, is assistant in a fashionable warehouse where Madame
Moutonnet deals; and as he always gives good measure, she has asked him
to the fete of St Eustache. And now we are acquainted with all the party
who are celebrating the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet."

We are not going to follow Paul de Kock in the adventures of all the
party so carefully described to us. Our object in translating the
foregoing passage, was to enable our readers to see the manner of people
who indulge in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville, desiring them to
compare M. Moutonnet and _his_ friends, with any laceman and _his_
friends he may choose to fix upon in London. A laceman as well to do in
the world as M. Moutonnet, a grocer as rich as M. Dupont, and even a
perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at
Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom--and as to admitting
such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the
unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon
think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three
friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for
not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic
manner imaginable. In France, or at least in Paul de Kock, there seems
no straining after appearances. The laceman continues a laceman when he
is miles away from the little back shop; and even the laceman's lady has
no desire to be mistaken for the wife of a squire. Madame Moutonnet
seems totally unconscious of the existence of any lady whatever,
superior to herself in rank or station. The Red Book is to her a sealed
volume. Her envies, hatreds, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions, are
all limited to her own circle. The wife of a rich laceman, on the other
hand, in England, most religiously despises the wives of almost all
other tradesmen; she scarcely knows in what street the shop is situated,
but from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead, looks down with supreme
disdain on the toiling creatures who stand all day behind a counter. The
husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the
shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or
seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a
gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies
torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely
flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks
are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich
perfumers, are represented assuming a character that does not belong to
them, and aping people whom they falsely suppose to be their betters;
whereas the genuine Paul paints the Parisian tradesmen without any
affectation at all. Ours are made laughable by the common farcical
attributes of all pretensions, great or small; while real
unsophisticated shopkeeping (French) nature is the staple of Paul's
character-sketches, and they are more valuable, and in the end more
interesting, accordingly. Who cares for the exaggerated efforts of a
Manchester warehouseman to be polished and gentlemanly? It is only
acting after all, and gives us no insight into his real character, or
the character of his class, any more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo
enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester
warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may
be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single
exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to
distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the
world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of
citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether
our people are phlegmatic, or stupid, or sensible--all three of which
epithets are generally applicable to the same individual--or that they
have no opportunities of showing their peculiarities from the domestic
habits of the animal--it is certain that, however better they may be
qualified for the business of life than their neighbours, they are far
less fitted for the pages of a book. And the proof of it is this, that
wherever any of our novelists has introduced a tradesman, he has either
been an invention altogether, or a caricature. Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie
never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he
does in _Rob Roy_. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the
universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the
prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which
he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of
Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude
town--consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge
of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit
subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable
Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in
the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long
ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon
him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of
the harem--threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as
he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes
scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from
odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and
brigands--but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops,
and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set
of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because
non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take
his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No
decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the
appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their
rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course
of the _chaine Anglaise_ beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at
the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the
above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his
daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of
going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have
left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C.
But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser--for the mere
gleaner of beards is not intended by the name--into his own amusements.
In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee,
and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the
offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his
graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a
very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is
whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner,
with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and
his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend
goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and
water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night
of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the
order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and
being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has
a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to
be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a
tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his
hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats
himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and
thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong
ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions.
Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with
dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his
next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their
sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music
now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a
strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the
coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the
landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is
over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is
now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a
distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box
to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so
full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that
he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher,
who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic
performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces
a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song,
where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers,
are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of
admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last,
time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr
Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts
he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great
comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in
the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in
the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into
mischief from an overdose of _eau sucree_, though sometimes he certainly
becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of _vin ordinaire_; and
nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink
which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French
population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative,
and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small
beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We
constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of
excitement after two rounds of a bottle--jostling the peasants, and
talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what
a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or
two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious
disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other
from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling
women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant
mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and
swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster--but not a single blow!
The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish
into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful _melee_, the
violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a
marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these
methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we
confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on
the claret-cork)--all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to
work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a
manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel
kind.

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