Manners and Social Usages Part 30

While it is proper on the Continent to address an unmarried woman as mademoiselle, without the surname, in England it would be considered very vulgar. "Miss" must be followed by the surname. The wives of archbishops, bishops, and deans are simply Mrs. A--, Mrs. B--, etc., while the archbishop and bishop are always addressed as "Your Grace"

and as "My lord," their wives deriving no precedency and no t.i.tle from their husbands' ecclesiastical rank. It is the same with military personages.

Peeresses invariably address their husbands by their t.i.tle; thus the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland calls her husband "Sutherland," etc. Baronets'

wives call their husbands "Sir John" or "Sir George," etc.

The order of precedency in England is strictly adhered to, and English matrons declare that it is the greatest convenience, as it saves them all the trouble of choosing who shall go in first, etc.

For this reason, among others, the "Book of the Peerage" has been called the Englishman's Bible, it is so often consulted.

But the question of how to treat English people has many another phase than that of mere t.i.tle, as we look at it from an American point of view.

When we visit England we take rank with the highest, and can well afford to address the queen as "Ma'am." In fact, we are expected to do so. A well-bred, well-educated, well-introduced American has the highest position in the social scale. He may not go in to dinner with a d.u.c.h.ess, but he is generally very well placed. As for a well- bred, handsome woman, there is no end to the privileges of her position in England, if she observes two or three rules. She should not effuse too much, nor be too generous of t.i.tles, nor should she fail of the necessary courtesy due always from guest to hostess. She should have herself presented at court by her Minister or by some distinguished friend, if She wishes to enter fashionable society.

Then she has the privilege of attending any subsequent Drawing-room, and is eligible to invitations to the court bails and royal concerts, etc.

American women have succeeded wonderfully of late years in all foreign society from their beauty, their wit, and their originality.

From the somewhat perilous admiration of the Prince of Wales and other Royal Highnesses for American beauties, there has grown up, however, a rather presumptuous boldness in some women, which has rather speedily brought them into trouble, and therefore it may be advisable that even a witty and very pretty woman should hold herself in check in England.

English people are very kind in illness, grief, or in anything which is inevitable, but they are speedily chilled by any step towards a too sudden intimacy. They resent anything like "pushing" more than any other people in the world. In no country has intellect, reading, cultivation, and knowledge such "success" as in England. If a lady, especially, can talk well, she is invited everywhere. If she can do anything to amuse the company--as to sing well, tell fortunes by the hand, recite, or play in charades or private theatricals--she is almost sure of the highest social recognition. She is expected to dress well, and Americans are sure to do this. The excess of dressing too much is to be discouraged. It is far better to be too plain than too fine in England, as, indeed, it is everywhere; an overdressed woman is undeniably vulgar in any country.

If we could learn to treat English people as they treat us in the matter of _introductions_, it would be a great advance. The English regard a letter of introduction as a sacred inst.i.tution and an obligation which cannot be disregarded. If a lady takes a letter to Sir John Bowring, and he has illness in his family and cannot ask her to dinner, he comes to call on her, he sends her tickets for every sort of flower show, the museums, the Botanical Garden, and all the fine things; he sends her his carriage--he evidently has her on his mind. Sir Frederick Leighton, the most courted, the busiest man in London, is really so kind, so attentive, so a.s.siduous in his response to letters of introduction that one hesitates to present a letter for fear of intruding on his industrious and valuable life.

Of course there are disagreeable English people, and there is an animal known as the English sn.o.b, than which there is no Tasmanian devil more disagreeable. Travellers everywhere have met this variety, and one would think that formerly it must have been more common than it is now. There are also English families who have a Continental, one might say a cosmopolitan, reputation for disagreeability, as we have some American families, well known to history, who have an almost patrician and hereditary claim to the worst manners in the universe. Well-born bears are known all over the world, but they are in the minority. It is almost a sure sign of base and ign.o.ble blood to be badly mannered. And if the American visitor treats his English host half as well as the host treats him, he may feel a.s.sured that the _entente cordiale_ will soon be perfect.

One need not treat the average Englishman either with a too effusive cordiality or with that half-contemptuous fear of being snubbed which is of all things the most disagreeable. A sort of "chip on the shoulder" spread-eagleism formerly made a cla.s.s of Americans unpopular; now Americans are in favor in England, and are treated most cordially.

CHAPTER LIX. A FOREIGN TABLE D'HOTE, AND CASINO LIFE ABROAD.

Life at a French watering-place differs so essentially from that at our own Saratoga, Sharon, Richfield, Newport, and Long Branch, that a few items of observation may be indulged in to show us what an immense improvement we could introduce into our study of amus.e.m.e.nt by following the foreign fashions of simplicity in eating and drinking.

The Continental people never eat that heavy early meal which we call breakfast. They take in their rooms at eight o'clock a cup of coffee and a roll, what they call _caf? complet_, or they may prefer tea and oatmeal, the whole thing very simple. Then at Aix-les Rains or Vichy the people under treatment go to the bath, taking a rest afterwards. All this occupies an hour. They then rise and dress for the eleven o'clock _d?jeuner ? la fourchette_, which is a formal meal served in courses, with red wine instead of coffee or tea. This is all that one has to do in the eating line until dinner. Imagine what a fine clear day that gives one. How much uninterrupted time!

How much better for the housekeeper in a small boarding-house! And at a hotel where the long, heavy breakfast, from seven to eleven, keeps the dining-room greasy and badly ventilated until the tables must be cleared for a one or two o'clock dinner, it is to contrast order with disorder, and neatness with its reverse.

The foreign breakfast at eleven is a delicious meal, as will be seen by the following bills of fare: _oeufs au beurre noir_; _saut?

printanier_ (a sort of stew of meat and fresh vegetables); _viande froide panach?e_; _salade de saison_; _compote de fruit et p?tisserie_; _fromage_, _fruit_, _caf?_.

Another breakfast is: _oeufs au plat_; _poulet ? la G.o.dard_; _c'telettes de mouton grillees_; _reviere pommes de terre_; _flans d'apricot_; and so on, with every variety of stewed pigeon, trout from the lake, delicious preparations of spinach, and always a variety of the cheeses which are so fresh and so healthful, just brought from the Alpine valleys. The highly flavored Alpine strawberries are added to this meal. Then all eating is done for the day until the six or seven o'clock dinner. This gives the visitor a long and desirable day for excursions, which in the neighborhood of Aix are especially charming, particularly the drive to Chambery, one of the most quaintly interesting of towns, through the magnificent break in the Alps at whose southern portal stands La Grande Chartreuse. All this truly healthy disposition of time and of eating is one reason why a person comes home from a foreign watering-place in so much better trim, morally, mentally, and physically, than from the unhealthy gorging of our American summer resorts.

At twelve or one begins the music at the Casino, usually a pretty building in a garden. In this shady park the mammas with their children sit and listen to the strains of the best bands in Europe.

Paris sends her artists from the Ch?telet, and the morning finds itself gone and well into the afternoon before the outside pleasures of the Casino are exhausted. Here, of course, trip up and down on the light fantastic toe, and in the prettiest costumes of the day, all the daughters of the earth, with their attendant cavaliers.

There are certain aspects of a foreign watering-place with which we have nothing to do here, such as the gambling and the overdressing of a certain cla.s.s, but all is externally most respectable. At four or earlier every one goes to drive in the _voiture de place_ or the _voiture de remise_, the latter being a handsome hired carriage of a superior cla.s.s. But the _voiture de place_, with a Savoyard driver, is good enough. He knows the road; his st.u.r.dy horse is accustomed to the hills; he takes one for three francs an hour--about half what is charged at Saratoga or Sharon or Richfield; he expects a few cents as pourboire, that is all. The vehicle is a humble sort of victoria, very easy and safe, and the drive is generally through scenery of the most magnificent description.

Ladies at a foreign watering-place have generally much to amuse them at the shops. Antiquities of all sorts, especially old china (particularly old Saxe), also old carved furniture from the well- known chateaux of Savoy, are found at Aix. The prices are so small compared with what such curiosities would bring in New York that the buyer is tempted to buy what she does not want, forgetting how much it will cost to get it home. Old lace and bits of embroidery and stuffs are brought to the door. There is nothing too rococo for the peripatetic vender in these foreign watering-places.

The dinner is a very good one. Cooked by Italian or French cooks, it may be something of this sort: _potage de riz_; _lavarets St.

Houlade_; filets de boeuf Beaumaire_ (a delicious sauce with basil mixed in it, a slight taste of aniseed); _bouchers ? la reine_; _chapon roti au cresson_; _asperge au branches_; _glace au chocolat_; _caf?_; or: _potage au Cr?cy_; _turbot aux c?pres_; _langue de boeuf_; _pet.i.ts pois, lies au beurre_; _bombe vanille_; with fruits, cheese, and cakes, and always the wine of the country, for which no extra charge is made. These delicious meals cost--the breakfast four francs (wine included), the dinner ten francs. It would be difficult in our country to find such cooking anywhere, and for that price simply impossible.

Music in the Casino grounds follows the dinner. The pretty women, by this time in the short, gay foulards and in the dressy hats in which they will appear later at the Casino ball, are tripping up and down in the gas-lighted grounds. The scene is often illuminated by fireworks. At eight and a half the whole motley crew has entered the Casino, and there the most amusing dancing--valse, galop, and polka --is in vogue. The Pole is known by his violent dancing; "he strikes and flutters like a c.o.c.k, he capers in the air, he kicks his heels up to the stars." There is heartiness in the dancing of the Swedes and Danes, there is mettle in their heels, but no people caper like the Poles. The Russians and the Americans dance the best. They are the elegant dancers of the world. French women dance beautifully:

"A fine, sweet earthquake, gently moved By the soft wind of their dispersing silks."

No lady appears at the Casino bareheaded; it is always with hat or bonnet, and she lives in her bonnet more or less even at the b.a.l.l.s.

If a concert or a play is going on in the little theatre, the same people take their places in boxes or seats, until every face becomes familiar, as one knows one's shipmates. Sometimes pleasant acquaintances are thus formed. A very free-and-easy system of etiquette permits dancing between parties who have not been introduced, and the same privilege extends to the asking of a party of ladies to take an ice. All acquaintance ceases on leaving the Casino, however, unless the lady chooses to bow to her cavalier.

Sometimes the steward of the Casino gets up a fancy-dress ball under the patronage of some lady, and then the motley crew appear as historical characters. It is a unique and gay spectacle. Here in the land of the old masters some very fine representations of the best pictures are hastily improvised, and almost without any apparent effort the whole ball is gotten up with spirit and ingenuity. This, too, among people who never met the day before yesterday. There is a wide range of costume allowed for those who take part in these revelries.

The parquet floor of a foreign Casino is the most perfect thing for good dancing. They understand laying these floors there better than we do, and the climate does not alter them, as with us. They are the pleasantest and easiest of all floors to dance upon.

Not the least striking episode to an American eye is the sight of many priests and men in ecclesiastical garments at these Casinos.

The number of priestly robes everywhere strikes the visitor to a French watering-place most emphatically. The schoolmasters are young priests, and walk about with their boys, and the old priests are everywhere. A solemn procession crosses the gay scene occasionally.

Three or four acolytes bearing censers, a group of mourners, a tall and stately nun in gray robes and veil walking magnificently, and moving her lips in prayer; then a group of people; then a priest with book in hand saying aloud the prayers for the dead; then the black box, the coffin, carried on a bier by men, the motley crowd uncovering as the majesty pa.s.ses; and the boys follow, chanting,

"The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings."

Yes, and on the gay visitor at the Casino. These simple and unostentatious funerals are very impressive. The priests always walk bareheaded through the streets on these occasions, and on many others. Indeed, the priestly head seems impatient of a hat.

The f?tes of the peasants are things to go and see, and the unalterable differences of rank are deeply impressed on the American mind. An old peasant woman has brought cheese and milk into Aix for forty years, and now, in her sixties, she still brings them, and walks eight miles a day. There is no hope that her daughter will ever join in the gayeties of the Casino, as in America she might certainly aspire to do. The daughter will be a peasant, as her mother was, and far happier and more respectable for it, and certainly more picturesque. How many of the peasant dresses have given an idea to the modiste! And one sees in the fields of Savoy the high hat with conical crown, with brim either wide or flat, which has now become so fashionable; also the flat mushroom hat of straw with the natural bunch of corn and red poppy, which has gone from Fanchon up to the d.u.c.h.ess. They both come from the fields.

Of course horse-races, formed after the plan of Longchamps, are inseparable from the amus.e.m.e.nts of a French watering-place; and in proportion to the number of guests to be amused; the horses come down from the various stables. Pigeon-shooting goes on all the time.

It is said that the French have a greater hatred of ennui than any other people in the world. They do not know what it means. They amuse themselves all the time, and are never at a loss. The well- bred French women have as much energy and industry as any New England woman, but they take their amus.e.m.e.nt more resolutely, never losing music, gayety, and "distraction." Perhaps what amuses them might not amuse the more sober Saxon, but the delicate embroidery of their lives, with all that comes thus cheaply to them, certainly makes them a very delightful set. Their manners are most fascinating, never selfish, never ponderous, never self-conscious, but always most agreeable. The French woman is _sui generis_. She may no longer be very young; she never was very handsome. Every sensation that the human mind can experience she has experienced; every caprice, whim, and fancy that human imagination can conceive she has gratified. She is very intelligent; she was born with a perfect taste in dress; and she is--all the novelists to the contrary notwithstanding--a very good wife, an excellent mother, a charming companion, a most useful and sensible helpmeet, with a perfect idea of doing her half of the business of life, and of getting out of her hours of leisure all the amus.e.m.e.nt she can. At a French watering-place the French women of the better cla.s.s are most entirely at home and intensely agreeable.