Weekly Mail

FRENCH WOMEN. By WlLllAM HENRY BISHOP (the ^mercas! Noveist). I wrote last wtwk some fecr thoughts about Spanish women. The Duke of Fernan Nanez, once Ambassador to Paris, gives a ball at Madrid, and the elite of 1'aris fashion flocks to attend it, juit as a group of New Yorkers might flock to an entertainment in Phila- delphia while the Spanish women come or lend to Paris for their toilettes, desiring to have them the most ingenious and perfect possible. The upp.-w ciaas is that which is most alike the world over, and that among the different branches of which there is the most connection. In France it is still very splendid. Although the contrast between what is done under the Republio and what took place under the Empire is great, Court forms and fine cere- monial remain a tradition. Gorgeous lackeys serve you, and chamberlains with chains of office about their necks usher you in. The uniforms of stocky, square-built generals, the plumed shakos and metal helmets that bow low on making their entering reverence, the plentiful orders and ribands of civilians, give a colour that an American drawing-room can hardly ever expect to have. The dresses of the women are often very daring. Here comes one, of high rank, upon the arm of a gallant Cabinet Minister, i who has lately diatinguishe i himself in a duel. She is in a gown all of ruby velvet, very simple, very low, held on only by little straps over the shoulders. A trim waist unusually small, very white teeth, full scarlet lips. 1 ong black gloves set off the whiteness of her neck and arms; a diamond necklace sparkles upon the white neck, and a thin black lace ruff, in the ancient mode, rises behind it. A ball or the opera-boxes, with such women all about, is near akin to a dream peopled with Oriental honris. If travelled Americans see comparatively little of the dakes, princes, bewildering marquesses, and charming countesses that make up this beau monde, they, at least, sea more of it than any othef. They are apt to see the best or none at all. The reproach is often heard that the Americans come to Paris, ensconce themselves in a colony of their own, take no part in French sooial life, and give themselves no opportunity to learn the real genius of the people. I am more than inclined to think, aftei some observation, that the fault is not wholly on their side. It would be truer to say that many of these people people of culture, with the merit of being in search of improve- ment—would be very glad of the opportuni- ties they are supposed to neglect, and had decidedly meant, before setting out from home, to embrace them. But little is known of them or their country, and that little is generally presented by the journals in an unfavourable light, and they are kept at arms' length. Evan in the upper oaste the principal ruth is made for those who have very rich daughters to marry, and the advance is often so glaringly and, in appearance, so solely for this purpose that it is far from complimen- tary. It would be a real boon, in the interest of general culture and better comprehension of each other by the two ITreat Republics, if some easier way were open by which Ameri- cans not millionaires with daughters to to impoverished titles, but people *»f moderate fortune and enl'ghtened aspirations -couldenter into pleasantsocialrelationswitb a corresponding class which must undoubtedly exist in I/ance. As to the point of departure, in the general absence of family connections and the great divergence of types and ideals, as to the method by which it could be done- Ah, there I leave it; I don't pretend to invent a method. Just what there is in the French middle class is a great deal more of a mystery than what there is in that above it; less is known of it than any other. What but acci- dent is to precipitate one intimately intc that milieu abounding with prejudices, narrowed with limitations, some- what lacking in imagination—as nuddk olasses everywhere are -and yet possessing tfaj germs of all that is most favourable, and con stitoting in itself the essence, the bone and sinew of the French nature? What is probable is that a considerable part of this II middle class, even those in such comfortable circumstanoes as would put them on a far different plane in the United States, live hardfy more than a ttemi peasant existence. They make their parlour an austere, sacred apartment, only to be entered on certain state occasions, while they pass their existence almost squalidly in stuffy back rooms. They feel no need of friction with other minds, and they retire to rest not long after sundown, except that the husband and father for hie part is more likely to go and spend his evening at the cafo.. In &oing about Paris in the evening with a com pan ion it has repeatedly happened to u., to pass whole blocks of most respectaMc-looku).: apartment houses, with only a single light or hvo to be seen in them, high or low. e used to wager, in jest, that whert* the light was seen, some American family was lodged, and that they had something to read, or sven, daring supposition that they had friends in to spend the evening with them. There are undoubtedly thousands of families in Paris which, for all its movement, live in a complete darkness not to be exceeded in any part of the provinces; and thus it is fair to say there arë thousands of families in th* provinces who live just as people do in Paris. There are two vflry strongly contrasted opinions of French women. There is the opinion of French women which is given out by their own novelists. These writers ar* pretty well understood, however, to disport themselves in a realm of pure fancy. They. deal with the dissolute married women, because the doings of the honest women are not exciting enough. It is a kind of convention in French novels that tho women should be bad, just as it waa a convention that there should be an irascible, gouty guardian in the old English comedies or a benevolent'uncle in those of Goldini. This, naturally, produces an unfor- tunate impression abroad, for which the writers alone are responsible. Even in Bourget and Dandet, the two strongest of the moderns, who profess to devote themselves to the truth with especial zeal, there is no evidence of a change in this practice. One has just been considering whether a Ionian can love two men, and tha other whether a man can love two women at the same time. The philosophising about this problem has a very rare and profound air, but d la bonus hem eis it not a comparatively easy one ? Why not give us the psychology of Solomon, who found he could love seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines ? On the other hand, there it th-J opinion, not infrequently heard among those who pride themselves on having gone below the surface. Oh, the Frenchmen, the men !— but the women, they are saints!" This way of thinking is shared even by somo of the French. I re-call the novel of a well-known woman writer in which the very charming heroine is so out of conceit with all bar own countrymen that she chose to marry an American t for his onlikeneas to them. Now this can hardly be so. There never was and never will be such a difference between the men and the women in any civilised country. We mast either admit more perfection on the one side or rather less of it on the other. The convent system of education still pre- vails in France, for all young women belonging to the superior classes. The Convent of the Sacred Heart—the mother house of the widely extended order of that name—was near us when we lived in Paris. It occupies a whole long block of ground on the Boulevard das Invalides, opposite the famous gilded dome. Very high walls shut in a large garden with clipped alleys, and the school building is an old chateau, corresponding to that of the Prince de Leon, the Marquess de Chambrun and others which remain in the neighbour- hood. I recollect looking down the olipped alleys to where some of the children were playing at the further end, in a pretty uniform, with ribands for good con- duct aoroas their breasts, while a white- capped sister, confident in their complete seclusion there in the heart of Paris, ran about with them as gaily as one of them- selves and I thought it a very pleasant sight. It is very smooth, calm, and pretty to look at the convent-education, and except that it exalts Its arts dafli-enwiit-the arts of making life agreeable-so much at the expanse of thoroughness of mental train- ing, as if a clear head and L.rge store of intelligence had not the oapacity of making life more agreeable than anything else, I should still think it preferable to any other. Hence issue those types of gentle sweetness and distinction formed for the time being at least to a sort of angelic medieval type hence come forth those great names, that set the standard and fashion for female conduct below. Add to this semi-cloistered education that many French women are married after a tegime that leaves them little choice but to accept the lot that befalls them. And, further- more that women, being considered the illogioal sex, may more comfortably occupy an illogical position than men. But all this is not enough to establish the estimate given. There seems tome to be a certain amount oi cynicism in their accepting in the main with passable grace disorders of conduct a condi- tion of things which, according to the theory, should be so repugnant to them. There is no evidence of any generally disturbed con dition of mind,any violent explosion of protest on the part of French women On the con- trary, they go on marrying the alleged objec- tionable men and raising up sons who are in their turn of much the same sort. Likel women elsewhere they must with time extend a large measure of sympatby to the leading ideas and practices of their men. J think it will be found that, in the main,French women, like French men, shrewdly estimate that whatever is, in France, is right. We should have to apply the same reasoning at home, should we not ? Take, for instance, so many of the women in our own Southern States, who love their sons, no doubt; yet, absurd public tentiment, have never been averse to bringing them up touchy, quarrel- some, ready tosaorifice their lives in the first petty dispute with a neighbour. Now that we touch upon sons and sacri- fices, there is one respeot in which the French woman fully shares the interests of the Frenchman-hie greatest interest at present his devoton to military strength and the defence of his frontier. No murmur is heard from her on this subject either, and yet every young Frenchman—by the newest law there is no escape—must pass threa years of hi- life inthe Army. Three years arc contributed from his profession, his useful labour, his prospects, for the mere purpose of guarding his frontier, while we find it often very onerous to vote and can by no means spare the fefa days in a year that might suffice to rescue our communities from corrupt politicians and give them good government. Truly thepatrie means some- thing definite abroad, and the woman must have her full share in this definite mean- ing. To aid in setting right the misrepresenta- tions of the fanciful French novelists, one does not easily see where the liberal opportu- nities for misbehaviour come in. Madame Adam has lately written something about the American girls abroad, in which she finds them much freer before marriage and tamer afterwards than French women would like to be. Certainly the young Freuch-woman is apt to be rat-hnr constrained before marriuge, but I fancy many American women would b< very discontented indeed it they wert. allowed no greater measure of freedom than the has after marrirge. An American girl who hloi been a studeut in mnsio explains to me how puzzled she wAS at first at the obstinate insistanca of one of her French companions, who. as it chanoed, was neither young nor beautiful, on not going home after any of the classes unless accompanied by her maid, I honestly thought," asserted my infor- mant.bllt I fear the was something of laughing exaggerator and mocker—" that she- had some habit of falling on the street and dreaded to be carried into a drug-store or run over by a cab." j At a French social entertainment thf< women constantly tend to gather into groups, or, more accurately still, a central bevy of beauty by themselves, while the masculine part of the company, unable to do more, cluster thickly about the doorwtlTJ or stroll in the corridors without. There are not chairs enough for all, nor do I speak only of those occasions where ther« is a grand crush, and it is expected that the women will usually be seated. A man will occasionally go over and stand for a few minutes before a feminine acquaintance, who gazes up at him fixedly from her divan but everybody knows that no rational conversation is possible in this constrained position. He will occasion- ally also drop down into an empty chair, but not for long. I have also seen the chair reclaimed under these oi reams dances by a lady who had left it some time before, and at once gallantly surrendered, as if she were in her full right. I speak with due diffidence on this most delicate subject, but it often seemed as it there was almost as great a drawing apart of the sexes as in those religious bodies where the separa- tion is a prescribed form. There was little or none of that thorough fusicn of groups, that easy mingling together for rational discourse, or mild tlirtation if you will, which, at any rate, results in the soften- ing of manners, allows the man to know the woman better, and is one of the great-at charms of Amerioan social gatherings. One evening I watched involuntarily the con- spicuous interest exeited by an incautious j couple who had remained somewhat too long seated in animated talk. A knot of men, in the correctest evening costume, gathered near them, and gave themselves to much more than furtive enjoyment of the spectacle. Look at them," they seemed to say. On, that is an affair, indeed." As a sort of new Ccelebs in Paris, in search, not of a wife, but what might properly oe known of the novel manners of art amusing people, I mentioned this point to a friend whom I met. at a joily dinner of men, ohez ftotta, Boulevard Poissoniere. "( Ib, that is only part of the froideur, the stiff formality of that home," he replied, for he had acquainted himself with tho place where 1 had been last, and it spreads ovft- the guests. In smaller circles, in reunions of fiffy or 100, you will find plenty of life plenty of freedom, none of that sort of thing. Would you like to see what a genuine trench family is like ? Then do me the honour to come and see us next Thursday at nine o'clock. We are to have'a few friends, quite without ceremony." On the appointed evening I found my way to a handsome little apartment, au quatrieme, on one of the quieter, but best esteemed, boulevards. The company were people of excellent education and standing, many of them more or less identified with books. Not to make a long story of it, there was the same inevitable gravitating apart, a separation as of oil and water, and this in spite of the pre- vious disclaimer of my host. Had he really understood the point I had made ? I rather doubt it. We played Consequences; yon know the game — M'sieu So and So met Madame or Mademoiselle So-and-so; he said; she said; the Conttequence was, Ac. There was a good deal of freedom in some of these consequences. Then there was Bouts Rimts-we call it "rhyming crambo"—and some excellent rhymes and bright little poems were made. An adjournment was taken to the supper room, the men here briefly giving their arms. On the return the ladies hastily ro- newed ther phalanx or hollow square, making its centre the hostess, who brought forth some new pattern of embroidery she was making. I mention this only as an indication. L .hall not go into detail about what freedom there may be in the other opportunities of the sexes to see each other. ith plenty of cosmopolitanism in the blood, it is still difficult to get over inclining to the belief that the manners and customs of one's own country are always the best. Madame Henri Greville, for instance—one of the rare French women who has seen the United States very well-vriil make you many remarks that invite reflection about what she has seen there. She will tell you that the Amerioan ••omen have too many acquaintances and too few friends. I wonder if it is so: are the doors of many too widely open, and their lives too wholly distracting a whirl? Or shall I try to defend this on the ground of a large Amerioan spirit of hospitality ? Madams Oreville's drawing-room is one of the* most comfortable among those of the literary women. It is in an extremely busy part of Pans — the L'ue Blanche, There is an orginality in this choice of residence which probably extends into other things. She talks with animation, tells many amusing stories, and, ob, rare accomplishment! listens well. It was my fortune to go sometimes to the day at-home of another literary hostess, which would hardly fall under the same description. Too much tried, perhaps by the vTorries of her literary labour-which was of the best—she was distrait, pre-occupied with all. The lights were not lit at the time when people chiefly came in-the last part of the usual short, mnggy winter day in Paris — and I am not sure there was always a fire. People sat about obscurely in the dtnky interior, now and then some heads painfully relieved in black against the glare of a window. I remember that there was one who used to irtear a short, close veil, and never raised it, even under these circum- i stances. When you went away you had the impression ofhafiog been talking to a circle of only partly materialised spirits. Celebrated people used to happen in there, but it. strikes me it was hardly a place adapted to the exchange either of intellectual or the best gay and mundane ideas. Literary work has become not a little tne mode among the fashionable women of Paris of late years, and there are frequent books and articles by ancient titled dames. I fancy it not a mere mode, but they are glad enough of tha money that comes from this source. All 3orts of minor calamities have descended upon Franoesince the war of '70. Phylloxera has ruined tbu vintage, and American com- petition the market for cattle and farm products that might have re-placed the vines. The country estates of many of these ¡' grand dames have become unproductive, and they have turned to find a certain re- source in writing. I have occasionally been filled f with admiration at some most excellent pieces of work done by some person of this kind who ill but little veoognised, nor is likely ever to I be much more, in the great competition aud hard conditions of the literary trade generally. They look with some envy at those who are regularly in the guild and pos- -i«ss, as they think, the kind of acquaintances who can forward tuam, and the secret a( reclame, or being made a noise about. Some of the most agreeable French corner i have aceuare those at Niee. The cosmopo litan society of the Ririera is a liberalising element, calculated to arouse an enlightened curiosity about the rest of the world, which i" notably lacking in-France. Our fie..t. sunong others, eomes there and i-nal-es an im, posing appearance, and, perhaps, for the first time to many, tbe United States beconus a tangible and respectable reality. Madame Adam, who writes about Ameri- cans, is herself one of those in Paris who enterlain in the more natural and easy sort of way. She is aided in her hospitality by abundant means, and as a hostess there are none of the terrors about her if which might be feared from the formidable political articles in her Hevue. She has a bright, charming, new hotel at the corner of the Boulevard Malesherbes, and a little strea* named after herself, in the time of Oambetta —the Hue Juliette Laimber. in,the country øb. is'pleasar.ter yet. J shall always remem- ber a unique fete I saw at ber country-place, The Abbaye," at Oif, an hour or so out of town by rail. She gives a garden party with some new original featui e there every summer. It was a costumed fête; the dress of peatant or well-to-do farmer was prescribed. We were all in costume from the statiou onward, in the special train. A collection of large breaks and country wains, decked with green boughs, received the company. Madime Adam was in the gate, dressed like a country bourgeois of a hundred years ago. Her white cap and fiohu gave her a sort of Marie Antoinette effect. It was all like the theatre. The company followed the hMrgeoisc, tbe patronnc, who, with lifted arms, went on in the van inviting to immediate refreshment. Allans boire allon* boireJ" was the motto. There was a mat-de-cocagne, and there was dancing, in the evening the rains of an old abbey in the grounds were illuminated, and there was a ghost, and a specially- composed ode by Francois CopptSe, sung by a young tenor with a sympathetic voice—the Prince Karageorgewitcb-the same, if I am not mistaken, whore portrait Ifaris Bash- kirtzeff painted. On all sides were heard names well known in many fields. There were Pierre Loti, as a pecheur d'islande; Jean Aicard, the Provengal poet, the life of the fete; there were Mademoiselle Jeanne Hugo and the Marquise de Mores. In tbe course of the afternoon, a prodi- giously Oriental King and Queen of the Annamites arrived upon the scene. They paid their respects to the hostess with pro- found prostrations, after the manner of thpir sort. She, not to be outdone, knelt down and with the gaiety of sixteen, gave them bow for bow. ihat day the destinies of nations were ailov. ed to slumber; the making of the abstruse political articles for the Revue would never have been credited.