The Eve of the French Revolution

E >> Edward J. Lowell >> The Eve of the French Revolution

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

The costume of gentlemen in this reign was as graceful in shape as any
that has been worn in modern Europe. The coat and waistcoat were rather
long and followed the lines of the person; the tight breeches met the
long stockings just below the knee, showing the figure to advantage. The
dress of ladies, on the other hand, was stiff, grotesque, and ungainly;
waists were worn very long, and hoops were large and stiff. But the most
noticeable thing was the huge structure which, almost throughout the
reign, was built upon ladies' heads. As it varied between one and three
feet in height, and was very elaborate in design, it could not often be
taken down. No little skill was required to construct it, and poor girls
could sometimes earn a living by letting out their heads by the hour to
undergo the practice of clumsy barbers' apprentices. At one time red
hair came into fashion and was simulated by the use of red powder. The
colors for clothes varied with the invention of the milliners, and the
habit of giving grotesque names to new colors had already arisen in
Paris. About 1782, "fleas' back and belly," "goose dung," and "Paris
mud" were the last new thing. Caps "a la Boston," and "a la
Philadelphie," had gone out. Instead of the fashion-plates with which
Paris has since supplied the world, but which under Louis XVI. were only
just coming into use, dolls were dressed in the latest style by the
milliners and sent to London, Berlin, and Vienna.[Footnote: Franklin,
_Les soins de toilette_. Mercier, viii. 295, ii. l97, l98, 213]

The dress of the common people was more brilliant and varied than it is
in our time, but probably less neat. Cleanliness of person has never
been a leading virtue among the French poor. Although there were
elaborate bathing establishments in the river, a large proportion of the
people hardly knew what it was to take a bath.[Footnote: But Young
says, "In point of cleanliness I think the merit of the two nations is
divided; the French are cleaner in their persons, and the English in
their houses." Young, i. 291. The whole comparison there given of French
and English customs is most interesting.] The sentimental milkmaids of
Greuze are no more like the tanned and wrinkled women that sold milk in
the streets of Paris, than the court-shepherdesses of Watteau and
Boucher were like the rude peasants that watched their sheep on the Jura
mountains. But the Parisian cockney was fond of dress, and would rather
starve his stomach than his back. The milliners' shops, where the pretty
seamstresses sat sewing all day in sight of the street, reminding the
Parisians of seraglios, were never empty of those who had money to
spend. For leaner purses, the women who sat under umbrellas in front of
the Colonnade of the Louvre had bargains of cast-off clothing; and there
were booths along the quays on Sunday, and a fair in the Place de la
Greve on Monday.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 269, ix. 294, v. 281, ii.
267.]

It is sometimes said of our own times that the rich have become richer
and the poor poorer than in former days. I believe that this is entirely
untrue, and that in the second half of the nineteenth century a smaller
proportion of the inhabitants of civilized countries suffers from hunger
and cold than ever before. Whatever be the figures by which fortunes are
counted, there is no doubt that the visible difference between the rich
and the poor was greater in the reign of Louis XVI. than in our own
time.[Footnote: Mercier mentions fortunes varying from 100,000 to
900,000 livres income, and speaks of the former as common, i. 172.
Meanwhile clerks got from 800 to 1500 livres and even less. Those with
1200 wore velvet coats, ii. 118.] In spite of the fashion of simplicity
which was one of the affectations of those days, the courtier still on
occasion glittered in brocade. His liveried servants waited about his
door. His lackeys climbed behind his coach, and awoke the dimly lighted
streets with the glare of their torches, as the heavy vehicle bore him
homeward from the supper and the card-table. The luxuries of great
houses were relatively more expensive. A dish of early peas might cost
six hundred francs. Six different officials (a word less dignified would
hardly suit the importance of the subject), had charge of the
preparation of his lordship's food and drink, and bullied the numerous
train of serving-men, kitchen-boys, and scullions. There was the
_maitre d'hotel_, or housekeeper, who attended to purchases and to
storing the food; the chief cook, for soups, _hors d'oeuvre_,
_entrees_, and _entremets_; the pastry-cook, with general
charge of the oven; the roaster, who fattened the poultry and larded the
meat before he put the turnspit dog into the wheel; an Italian
confectioner for sweet dishes; and a butler to look after the wine.
Bread was usually brought from the bakers, even to great houses, and was
charged for by keeping tally with notches on a stick. Baking was an
important trade in Paris, and in times of scarcity the bakers were given
the first chance to buy wood. For delicacies, there was the great shop
at the Hotel d'Aligre in the Rue Saint Honore, a "famous temple of
gluttony," where truffles from Perigord, potted partridges from Nerac,
and carp from Strasbourg were piled beside dates, figs, and pots of
orange jelly; and where the foreigner from beyond the Rhine, or the
Alps, could find his own sauerkraut or macaroni.[Footnote: Mercier, x.
208, xi. 229, 346, xii. 243.]

At the tables of the rich it was usual to entertain many guests; not in
the modern way, by asking people for a particular day and hour, but by
general invitation. The host opened his house two or three times a week
for dinner or supper, and anybody who had once been invited was always
at liberty to drop in. Thus arose a class of respectably dressed people
who were in the habit of dining daily at the cost of their acquaintance.
After dinner it was the fashion to slip away; the hostess called out a
polite phrase across the table to the retreating guest, who replied with
a single word.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 176, ii. 225. _La Robe dine, La
finance soupe._ Mercier says that a man who was a whole year without
calling at a house where he had once been admitted had to be presented
over again, and make some excuse, as that he had traveled, etc. This the
hostess pretended to believe.] It was of course but a small part of the
inhabitants of Paris that ate at rich men's tables. The fare of the
middle classes was far less elaborate; but it generally included meat
once or twice a day. The markets were dirty, and fish was dear and bad.
The duties which were levied at the entrance of the town raised the
price of food, and of the wine which Frenchmen find equally essential.
Provisions were usually bought in very small quantities, less than a
pound of sugar at a time. Enough for one meal only was brought home, in
a piece of printed paper, or an old letter. Unsuccessful books thus
found their use at the grocer's. Before dinner the supply for dinner was
bought; before supper, that for supper. After the meal nothing was left.
The poorer citizens carried their dinners to be baked at the cook-shops,
and saved something in the price of wood. The lower classes had their
meat chopped fine and packed in sausages, as is still done in Germany,
an economical measure by which many shortcomings are covered up and no
scrap is lost.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 219, xii. 128.]

The use of coffee had become universal. It was sold about the streets
for two sous a cup, including the milk and a tiny bit of sugar. While
the rich drank punch and ate ices, the poor slaked their thirst with
liquorice water, drawn from a shining cylinder carried on a man's back.
The cups were fastened to this itinerant fountain by long chains, and
were liable to be dashed from thirsty lips in a crowd by any one passing
between the drinker and the water-seller.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 270,
_n_., iv. 154, xii. 296, v. 310. See plates in Fournel, 509, 516.]

For the very poor there was second-hand food, the rejected scraps of the
rich. In Paris they were nasty enough; but at Versailles, where the king
and the princes lived, even people that were well to do did not scorn to
buy dishes that had been carried untouched from a royal table. Near the
poultry market in Paris, a great pot was always hanging on the fire,
with capons boiling in it; you bought a boiled fowl with its broth, a
savory mess. In general the variety of food was increasing. Within forty
years the number of sorts of fruit and vegetables in use had almost
doubled.[Footnote: Ibid., v. 85, 249. Genlis, _Dictionnaire des
Etiquettes_, ii. 40, _n_., citing Buffon. Scraps of food are
still sold in the Central Market of Paris.]

The population was divided into many distinct classes, but there was a
good deal of intercourse from class to class, nor was it extremely
difficult for the able and ambitious to rise in the world. The
financiers had become rich and important, but were regarded with
jealousy. In an aristocratic state the nobles think it all wrong that
any one else should have as much money as themselves. This is not
strange; but it is more remarkable that the common people are generally
of the same opinion, and that, while the profusion of the great noble is
looked on as no more than the liberality which belongs to his station,
the extravagance of the mere man of money is condemned and derided. This
tendency was increased in France by the fact that many of the greatest
fortunes were made by the farmers of the revenue, who were hated as
publicans even more than they were envied as rich men. Yet one
financier, Necker, although of foreign birth, was perhaps the most
popular man in France during this reign, and it was not the least of
Louis's follies or misfortunes that he could not bring himself to share
the admiration of his people for his Director General of the Treasury.

The mercantile class in Paris did not hold a high position. The merchant
was too much of a shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper was too much of a
huckster. The smallest sale involved a long course of bargaining. This
was perhaps partly due to the fact, admirable in itself, that the wife
was generally united with her husband in the management of the shop. The
customary law of Paris was favorable to the rights of property of
married women; and the latter were associated with their husbands in
commerce and consulted in all affairs. This habit is still observed in
France. It tends to draw husband and wife together, by uniting their
occupations and their interests. Unfortunately it tends also to the
neglect of children, especially in infancy, when their claims are
exacting. Thus the Frenchwoman of the middle class is in some respects
more of a wife and less of a mother than the corresponding Anglo-Saxon.
The babies, even of people of very moderate means, were generally sent
out from Paris into the country to be nursed. Later in the lives of
children, girls were kept continually with their mothers, watched and
guarded with a care of which we have little conception. Boys were much
more separated from their parents, and left to schoolmasters. Neither
boys nor girls were trusted or allowed to gain experience for themselves
nearly as much as we consider desirable.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 53, v.
231, ix. 173, vi. 325.]

Marriages were generally left to the discretion of parents, except in
the lowest classes; and parents were too often governed by pecuniary,
rather than by personal considerations in choosing the wives and
husbands of their sons and daughters. Such a system of marriage would
seem unbearable, did we not know that it is borne and approved by the
greater part of mankind. It is possible that the chief objection to it
is to be found less in the want of attachment between married people,
which might be supposed to be its natural result, than in the diminution
of the sense of loyalty. In England and America it is felt to be
disgraceful to break a contract which both parties have freely made,
with their eyes open; and this feeling greatly reenforces the other
motives to fidelity. Yet while the rich and idle class in France, if the
stories of French writers may be trusted, has always been honeycombed
with marital unfaithfulness, there are probably no people in the world
more united than the husbands and wives of the French lower and middle
classes. Working side by side all the week with tireless industry,
sharing a frugal but not a sordid life, they seek their innocent
pleasures together on Sundays and holidays. The whole neighborhood of
Paris is enlivened with their not unseemly gayety, as freely shared as
the toil by which it was earned. The rowdyism of the sports in which men
are not accompanied by women, the concentrated vulgarity of the summer
boarding-house, where women live apart from the men of their families,
are almost equally unknown in France. In the latter part of the
eighteenth century many of the comfortable burghers of Paris owned
little villas in the suburbs, whither the family retired on Sundays,
sometimes taking the shop-boy as an especial favor. The common people
also were to be found in great numbers in the suburban villages, such as
Passy, Auteuil, or in the Bois de Boulogne, dancing on the green;
although in the reign of Louis XVI. they are said to have been less gay
than before.[Footnote: Mercier, in. 143, iv. 162, xii. 101.]

Artists, artisans, and journeymen, in their various degrees, formed
classes of great importance, for Paris was famous for many sorts of
manufactures, and especially for those which required good taste. But
it was noticed that on account of the abridgment of the power of the
trade-guilds, and the consequent rise of competition, French goods
were losing in excellence, while they gained in cheapness; so that it
was said that workmanship was becoming less thorough in Paris than in
London.

The police of Paris was already remarkable for its efficiency. The
inhabitants of the capital of France lived secure in their houses, or
rode freely into the country, while those of London were in danger of
being stopped by highwaymen on suburban roads, or robbed at night by
housebreakers in town. From riots, also, the Parisians had long been
singularly free, and for more than a century had seen none of
importance, while London was terrified, and much property destroyed in
1780 by the Gordon riots. In spite of the forebodings of some few
pessimists, people did not expect any great revolution, but rather
social and economic reforms. It was believed that the powers of
repression were too strong for the powers of insurrection. The crash
came, at last, not through the failure of the ordinary police, but from
demoralization at the centre of government and in the army. While Louis
still reigned in peace at Versailles, the administration of Paris went
on efficiently. Correspondence was maintained with the police of other
cities. Criminals and suspected persons, when arrested, could be
condemned by summary process. The Lieutenant General of Police had it in
his discretion to punish without publicity. The more scandalous crimes
were systematically hidden from the public; a process more favorable to
morality than to civil liberty. For the criminal classes in Paris
arbitrary imprisonment was the common fate, and disreputable men and
women Were brought in by bands.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 206. Monier,
396.]

The liability to arbitrary arrest affected the lives of but a small
proportion of the citizens after all. To most Parisians it was far more
important that the streets were safe by day and night; that fire-engines
were provided, and Capuchin monks trained to use them, while soldiers
hastened to the fire and would press all able-bodied men into the
service of passing buckets; that small civil cases were promptly and
justly disposed of.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 197, 210, ix. 220, xii. 162
(_Jurisdiction consulaire_).]

The increase of humane ideas which marked the age was beginning in the
course of this reign to affect the hospitals and poor-houses as well as
the prisons, and to diminish their horrors. At the Hotel Dieu, the
greatest hospital in Paris, six patients were sometimes wedged into one
filthy bed. Yet even, there, some improvement had taken place. And while
Howard considered that hospital a disgrace to Paris, he found many other
charitable foundations in the city which did it honor. Here as elsewhere
there was no uniformity.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 7, iii. 225. Howard,
_State of the Prisons_, 176, 177. Babeau, _La Ville_, 435.
Cognel, 88. A horrible description of the Hotel Dieu, written in 1788 by
Tenon, a member of Academy of Sciences, is given in A. Franklin,
_L'Hygiene_, 181.]

In the medical profession, the regular physicians held themselves far
above the surgeons, many of whom had been barbers' apprentices; but it
would appear that the science of surgery was better taught and was
really in a more advanced state than that of medicine. More than eight
hundred students attended the school of surgery. In medicine,
inoculation was slowly making its way, but was resorted to only by the
upper classes. Excessive bleeding and purgation were going out of
fashion, but the poor still employed quacks, or swallowed the coarse
drugs which the grocers sold cheaper than the regular apothecaries, or
relied on the universal remedy of the lower classes in Paris, a cordial
of black currants.[Footnote: It was called _Cassis_. Mercier, xii.
126, vii. 126.]

Near the Hotel Dieu was the asylum for foundlings, whither they were
brought not only from Paris, but from distant towns, and whence they
were sent out to be nursed in the country. They were brought to Paris
done up tightly in their swaddling clothes, little crying bundles,
packed three at a time into wadded boxes, carried on men's backs. The
habit of dressing children loosely, recommended by Rousseau, had not yet
reached the poor; as the habit of having babies nursed by their own
mothers, which he had also striven to introduce, had been speedily
abandoned by the rich. The mortality among the foundlings was great, for
two hundred of them were sometimes kept in one ward during their stay at
the asylum.[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 239, viii. 188. Cognel found the
asylum very clean. Cognel, 87.]

Although some falling off in the ardor of religious practices was
noticed as the Revolution drew near, the ceremonies of the church were
still visible in all their splendor. On the feast of Corpus Christi a
long procession passed through the streets, where doors and windows
were hung with carpets and tapestry. The worsted pictures, it is true,
were adapted rather to a decorative than to a pious purpose, and
over-scrupulous persons might be shocked at seeing Europa on her bull,
or Psyche admiring the sleeping Cupid, on the route of a religious
procession. Such anomalies, however, could well be disregarded. Around
the sacred Host were gathered the dignitaries of the state and the
city in their robes of office, marshaled by the priests, who for that
day seemed to command the town. In some cases, it is said, the great
lords contented themselves with sending their liveried servants to
represent them. Soldiers formed the escort. The crowd in the street
fell on its knees as the procession passed. Flowers, incense, music,
the faithful with their foreheads in the dust, all contributed to the
picturesqueness of the scene. A week later the ceremony was repeated
with almost equal pomp. On the Sunday following, there was another
procession in the northern suburbs. Naked boys, leading lambs,
represented Saint John the Baptist; Magdalens eight years old, walking
by their nurses' side, wept over their sins; the pupils of the school
of the Sacred Heart marched with downcast eyes. The Host was carried
under a dais of which the cords were held by respected citizens, and
was escorted by forty Swiss guards. A hundred and fifty censers swung
incense on the air. The diplomatic corps watched the procession from
the balcony of the Venetian ambassador, even the Protestants bowing or
kneeling with the rest. [Footnote: Mercier, iii. 78. Cognel, 101.]

From time to time, through the year, these great ceremonies were
renewed, either on a regularly returning day, or as occasion might
demand. On the 3d of July the Swiss of the rue aux Ours was publicly
carried in procession. There was a legend that a Swiss Protestant
soldier had once struck the statue of the Holy Virgin on the corner of
this street with his sword, and that blood had flowed from the wounded
image. Therefore, on the anniversary of the outrage, a wicker figure was
carried about the town, bobbing at all the sacred images at the street
corners, with a curious mixture of piety and fun. Originally it had been
dressed like a Swiss, but the people of Switzerland, who were numerous
and useful in Paris, remonstrated at a custom likely to bring them into
contempt; and the grotesque giant was thereupon arrayed in a wig and a
long coat, with a wooden dagger painted red in his hand. The grammarian
Du Marsais once got into trouble on the occasion of this procession. He
was walking in the street when one woman elbowed another in trying to
get near the statue. "If you want to pray," said the woman who had been
pushed, "go on your knees where you are; the Holy Virgin is everywhere."
Du Marsais was so indiscreet as to interfere. Being a grammarian, he was
probably of a disputatious turn of mind. "My good woman," said he, "you
have spoken heresy. Only God is everywhere; not the Virgin." The woman
turned on him and cried out: "See this old wretch, this Huguenot, this
Calvinist, who says that the Holy Virgin is not everywhere!" Thereupon
Du Marsais was attacked by the mob and forced to take refuge in a house,
whence he was rescued by the guard, which kept him shut up for his own
safety until after nightfall.[Footnote: Mercier, iv. 97. Fournel, 176.
This procession was abolished by order of the police, June 27, 1789.
Fournel, 177.]

For an occasional procession, we have one in October, 1785, when three
hundred and thirteen prisoners, redeemed from slavery among the
Algerines, were led for three days about the streets with great pomp by
brothers of the orders of the Redemption. Each captive was conducted by
two angels, to whom he was bound with red and blue ribbons, and the
angels carried scrolls emblazoned with the arms of the orders. There was
the usual display of banners and crosses, guards and policemen; there
were bands of music and palm-branches. The long march required frequent
refreshment, which was offered by the faithful, and it is said that many
of the captives and some of the professionally religious persons
indulged too freely. A drunken angel must have been a cheerful sight
indeed. The object of this procession was to raise money to redeem more
prisoners from slavery, for the Barbary pirates were still suffered by
the European powers to plunder the commerce of the Mediterranean and to
kidnap Christian sailors.[Footnote: Bachaumont, xxx. 24. Compare
Lesage, i. 347 (_Le diable boiteux_, ch. xix). For a procession of
persons delivered by charity from imprisonment for not paying their wet
nurses, see Mercier, xii. 85.]

Nor was it in great festivals alone that the religious spirit of the
people was manifested. On Sundays all shops were shut, and the common
people heard at least the morning mass, although they were getting
careless about vespers. Every spring for a fortnight about Easter, there
was a great revival of religious observance, and churches and
confessionals were crowded. But throughout the year, one humble kind of
procession might be met in the streets of Paris. A poor priest, in a
worn surplice, reverently carries the Host under an old dirty canopy. A
beadle plods along in front, with an acolyte to ring the bell, at the
sound of which the passers-by kneel in the streets and cabs and coaches
are stopped. Louis XV. once met the "Good God," as the eucharistic wafer
was piously called, and earned a short-lived popularity by going down on
his silken knees in the mud. All persons may follow the viaticum into
the chamber of the dying. The watch, if it meets the procession on its
return, will escort it back to its church.[Footnote: _Ordonnance de
la police du Chatelet concernant l'observation des dimanches et fetes,
du 18 Novembre, 1782_. Monin, 403.]

Let us follow it in the early morning, and, taking our stand under the
porch where the broken statues of the saints are still crowned with the
faded flowers of yesterday's festival, or wandering thence about the
streets of the city, let us watch the stream of life as it flows now
stronger, now more gently hour by hour.

It is seven o'clock. The market gardeners, with their empty baskets,
are jogging on their weary horses toward the suburbs. Already they
have supplied the markets. They meet only the early clerks, fresh
shaven and powdered, hastening to their offices. At nine, the town is
decidedly awake. The young barber-surgeons ("whiting" as the Parisians
call them), sprinkled from head to foot with hair powder, carry the
curling-iron in one hand, the wig in the other, on their way to the
houses of their customers. The waiters from the lemonade-shops are
bringing coffee and cakes to the occupants of furnished lodgings. On
the boulevards, young dandies, struck with Anglomania, contend
awkwardly with their saddle-horses.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30