Travels Through France and Italy (eBook)

LETTER VI

PARIS, October 12, 1763.

DEAR SIR,--Of our journey from Boulogne I have little to say. The  weather was favourable, and the roads were in tolerable order. We  found good accommodation at Montreuil and Amiens; but in every  other place where we stopped, we met with abundance of dirt, and  the most flagrant imposition. I shall not pretend to describe the  cities of Abbeville and Amiens, which we saw only en passant; nor  take up your time with an account of the stables and palace of  Chantilly, belonging to the prince of Conde, which we visited the  last day of our journey; nor shall I detain you with a detail of  the Trefors de St. Denis, which, together with the tombs in the  abbey church, afforded us some amusement while our dinner was  getting ready. All these particulars are mentioned in twenty  different books of tours, travels, and directions, which you have  often perused. I shall only observe, that the abbey church is the  lightest piece of Gothic architecture I have seen, and the air  within seems perfectly free from that damp and moisture, so  perceivable in all our old cathedrals. This must be owing to the  nature of its situation. There are some fine marble statues that  adorn the tombs of certain individuals here interred; but they  are mostly in the French taste, which is quite contrary to the  simplicity of the antients. Their attitudes are affected,  unnatural, and desultory; and their draperies fantastic; or, as  one of our English artists expressed himself, they are all of a  flutter. As for the treasures, which are shewn on certain days to  the populace gratis, they are contained in a number of presses,  or armoires, and, if the stones are genuine, they must be  inestimable: but this I cannot believe. Indeed I have been told,  that what they shew as diamonds are no more than composition:  nevertheless, exclusive of these, there are some rough stones of  great value, and many curiosities worth seeing. The monk that  shewed them was the very image of our friend Hamilton, both in  his looks and manner.

I have one thing very extraordinary to observe of the French  auberges, which seems to be a remarkable deviation from the  general character of the nation. The landlords, hostesses, and  servants of the inns upon the road, have not the least dash of  complaisance in their behaviour to strangers. Instead of coming  to the door, to receive you as in England, they take no manner of  notice of you; but leave you to find or enquire your way into the  kitchen, and there you must ask several times for a chamber,  before they seem willing to conduct you up stairs. In general,  you are served with the appearance of the most mortifying  indifference, at the very time they are laying schemes for  fleecing you of your money. It is a very odd contrast between  France and England; in the former all the people are complaisant  but the publicans; in the latter there is hardly any complaisance  but among the publicans. When I said all the people in France, I  ought also to except those vermin who examine the baggage of  travellers in different parts of the kingdom. Although our  portmanteaus were sealed with lead, and we were provided  with a passe-avant from the douane, our coach was searched  at the gate of Paris by which we entered; and the women were  obliged to get out, and stand in the open street, till this  operation was performed.

I had desired a friend to provide lodgings for me at Paris, in  the Fauxbourg St. Germain; and accordingly we found ourselves  accommodated at the Hotel de Montmorency, with a first floor,  which costs me ten livres a day. I should have put up with it had  it been less polite; but as I have only a few days to stay in  this place, and some visits to receive, I am not sorry that my  friend has exceeded his commission. I have been guilty of another  piece of extravagance in hiring a carosse de remise, for which I  pay twelve livres a day. Besides the article of visiting, I could  not leave Paris, without carrying my wife and the girls to see  the most remarkable places in and about this capital, such as the  Luxemburg, the Palais-Royal, the Thuilleries, the Louvre, the  Invalids, the Gobelins, &c. together with Versailles, Trianon,  Marli, Meudon, and Choissi; and therefore, I thought the  difference in point of expence would not be great, between a  carosse de remise and a hackney coach. The first are extremely  elegant, if not too much ornamented, the last are very shabby and  disagreeable. Nothing gives me such chagrin, as the necessity I  am under to hire a valet de place, as my own servant does not  speak the language. You cannot conceive with what eagerness and  dexterity those rascally valets exert themselves in pillaging  strangers. There is always one ready in waiting on your arrival,  who begins by assisting your own servant to unload your baggage,  and interests himself in your affairs with such artful  officiousness, that you will find it difficult to shake him off,  even though you are determined beforehand against hiring any such  domestic. He produces recommendations from his former masters,  and the people of the house vouch for his honesty.

The truth is, those fellows are very handy, useful, and obliging;  and so far honest, that they will not steal in the usual way. You  may safely trust one of them to bring you a hundred loui'dores  from your banker; but they fleece you without mercy in every  other article of expence. They lay all your tradesmen under  contribution; your taylor, barber, mantua-maker, milliner,  perfumer, shoe-maker, mercer, jeweller, hatter, traiteur, and  wine-merchant: even the bourgeois who owns your coach pays him  twenty sols per day. His wages amount to twice as much, so that I  imagine the fellow that serves me, makes above ten shillings a  day, besides his victuals, which, by the bye, he has no right to  demand. Living at Paris, to the best of my recollection, is very  near twice as dear as it was fifteen years ago; and, indeed, this  is the case in London; a circumstance that must be undoubtedly  owing to an increase of taxes; for I don't find that in the  articles of eating and drinking, the French people are more  luxurious than they were heretofore. I am told the entrees, or  duties, payed upon provision imported into Paris, are very heavy.  All manner of butcher's meat and poultry are extremely good in  this place. The beef is excellent. The wine, which is generally  drank, is a very thin kind of Burgundy. I can by no means relish  their cookery; but one breakfasts deliciously upon their petit  pains and their pales of butter, which last is exquisite.

The common people, and even the bourgeois of Paris live, at this  season, chiefly on bread and grapes, which is undoubtedly very  wholsome fare. If the same simplicity of diet prevailed in  England, we should certainly undersell the French at all foreign  markets for they are very slothful with all their vivacity and  the great number of their holidays not only encourages this lazy  disposition, but actually robs them of one half of what their  labour would otherwise produce; so that, if our common people  were not so expensive in their living, that is, in their eating  and drinking, labour might be afforded cheaper in England than in  France. There are three young lusty hussies, nieces or daughters  of a blacksmith, that lives just opposite to my windows, who do  nothing from morning till night. They eat grapes and bread from  seven till nine, from nine till twelve they dress their hair, and  are all the afternoon gaping at the window to view passengers. I  don't perceive that they give themselves the trouble either to  make their beds, or clean their apartment. The same spirit of  idleness and dissipation I have observed in every part of France,  and among every class of people.

Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was  last in Paris. The Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the bridges, and the  river Seine, by no means answer the ideas I had formed of them  from my former observation. When the memory is not very correct,  the imagination always betrays her into such extravagances. When  I first revisited my own country, after an absence of fifteen  years, I found every thing diminished in the same manner, and I  could scarce believe my own eyes.

Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses  are all gloomy. In spite of all the ornaments that have been  lavished on Versailles, it is a dismal habitation. The apartments  are dark, ill-furnished, dirty, and unprincely. Take the castle,  chapel, and garden all together, they make a most fantastic  composition of magnificence and littleness, taste, and foppery.  After all, it is in England only, where we must look for cheerful  apartments, gay furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a  strange incongruity in the French genius. With all their  volatility, prattle, and fondness for bons mots, they delight in  a species of drawling, melancholy, church music. Their most  favourite dramatic pieces are almost without incident; and...