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 the
dialogue of their comedies consists of moral, insipid
apophthegms, intirely destitute of wit or repartee. I know what
I hazard by this opinion among the implicit admirers of Lully,
Racine, and Moliere.
I don't talk of the busts, the statues, and pictures which abound
at Versailles, and other places in and about Paris, particularly
the great collection of capital pieces in the Palais-royal,
belonging to the duke of Orleans. I have neither capacity, nor
inclination, to give a critique on these chef d'oeuvres, which
indeed would take up a whole volume. I have seen this great
magazine of painting three times, with astonishment; but I should
have been better pleased, if there had not been half the number:
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