Households of France in 1901
"The first thing that strikes you as you enter a French beeswaxed flat in winter is the chill of it. Few but the very rich know the delights of generous…
From: 1901 C.E. To: 1901 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Home Life in France,” part two, from French Life in Town and Country by Hannah Lynch, 1901.
A study of the economies practised in aristocratic and prosperous bourgeois circles in France leads us to strange facts. Taine quotes an incident in his Garnets de Voyage that happened in the neighbourhood of Poitiers. A Parisian was hunting by invitation on a friend's lands, and, without knowing it, crossed the border-land of those of a certain viscountess. He was not shooting, but carried his gun under his arm; he had lost his way.
Up came a keeper and stopped him. The Parisian explained the circumstances, and insisted that he was not shooting. His host and he decided to visit the viscountess personally, and put the case before her in order to avoid unjust proceedings. They were received in a superb chamber hung with tapestries. The viscountess listened to them, and put her hand out: “Twenty francs each to pay," was all she said.
I think I can tell a better tale still, that of the interested hospitality of a well-known Flemish countess, whose shooting lands are among the best in France. The guests of this lady who liked a liberal supply of sugar in their morning coffee were obliged to provide themselves with it before coming, for every lump consumed in the castle was counted by the thrifty chatelaine; and the servants were bound, on penalty of dismissal, to give up to her all the tips they received. These were dropped into a cash-box, and at the proper time were returned to them under the form of wages. The good lady also makes a fine thing of her invitations to shoot upon her land, and may be said to merit a high place in the ranks of economists.
And yet there is much to be said in favour of French thrift, not only for the good it brings to the country, which is immense, but still more for the inappreciable advantages it affords the family, above all, the girls. Go to Ireland and observe with lamentation and indignation the havoc made of home-life, of family dignity, of the lives of unfortunate girls, by the miserable wastefulness of parents.
On all sides you will hear sad tales of girls, obliged to work hard for shocking rates of payment, who were brought up in foolish luxury, whose parents ''entertained" in that thriftless, splash, Irish fashion, drank champagne, drove horses, when the French of the same class would be leading the existence of humdrum small burgesses, depriving themselves of all that was not absolutely necessary for their position, and teaching their children the art of counting, of saving, and of laudable privation.
The Irish way is the jollier, I admit, but it is a cowardly, selfish way, for it is the children who always have to pay the piper, and, more often than not, the unhappy trades-folk who supply these gay and festive spendthrifts.
We laugh at the counted lumps of sugar in France, forgetting that sugar here is sixpence a pound, and becomes an item to be considered. I remember once feeling some sympathy with the French carefulness of sugar. An Irish girl, whom I did not know, somewhere in the twenties, and consequently supposed to conduct herself like a reasonable being, thrust accidentally upon me for hospitality for a single night,—which, owing to unforeseen circumstances, was prolonged to ten or twelve days,—did me the honour to consume a pound of sugar a day at my expense. In every cup of tea she melted nearly a dozen large French lumps of sugar, and she drank many cups in the day; also she ate sugar continually as other women munch sweets, and as she disliked cold red wine, she insisted on heating it with quantities of sugar until it was turned into a syrup. When my grocer sent in his monthly account, with sugar at sixpence a pound in enormous excess, I felt it would be a singular advantage for Ireland if a little judicious thrift were practised in Irish homes.
The young lady's father went bankrupt shortly afterwards, and I cannot say I was at all surprised. He was an ordinary burgess, who worked hard to maintain a large and extravagant family, and my guest once told me that her sister frequently ran up a bill at the florist's for boutonnieres to the sum of thirty shillings a month, which her father had to pay. French thrift, if it does so often touch hands with meanness, at least implies the exercise of a quality we all should admire, even when we cannot practise it, thanks to taste, training, or temperament—hardness to ourselves, the capacity for voluntary self-s
The first thing that strikes you as you enter a French beeswaxed flat in winter is the chill of it. Few but the very rich know the delights of generous fires, of well-carpeted houses, of warm, comfortable, and luxurious interiors. Silver appointments and splendid napery, which you will find nowadays in the commonest Irish homes, are here unknown, and people of the class who in England dress for dinner here wear the clothes they have lunched in, and are none the worse off for it.
They have, along with their thrift, much less pretension, and are simpler and more intelligent in their home-life than we of the British Isles. In one way they live better, because their food is better cooked and is more varied, and for dinner you are sure to have brighter conversation. In certain rich and snobbish circles, above all in the shooting season, you risk being bored to death, for here nothing is talked of but titles, game, and fortunes.
The wonder to me is how women, who themselves do not shoot, can sit placidly through a long afternoon and evening and listen to men who talk incessantly of their own bags or their neighbours' bags—of how the prince shot this snipe, the count shot that partridge, and how many pheasants the marquis bagged. I suppose it is to keep the men in good-humour that these amiable Frenchwomen—against whom I can bring no other charge than vacuity and snobbishness, two parasites of wealth—feign the intensest interest. They are paid in the coin they desire, and if they are bored nobody is a penny the wiser, and they probably do not mind it.
I have said the lack of material comfort and plenty in middle-class French homes is striking. I, of course, refer to people who are not rich, where the husband is a state functionary on a modest salary in Paris, to small professors, to the wives of military officials, the widows of colonels and broken-down aristocrats. I have had a glimpse of all these classes of homes, and in winter found them unseasonably chill and frugal.
Thirty years ago, I am assured, it was far worse, for then carpets were unknown, and fires less used than to-day. Such economies are practised here as in England would accompany only harsh poverty, but they must not be taken as the symbol of such. Your grocer and his wife, who eat behind the shop in a sanded and comfortless space walled off, and on Sunday afternoon go out, neatly arrayed in well-fitting but dowdy and serviceable garments, have tidy fortunes stowed away, while their flashy, splash-loving brethren of the British Isles, with their dog-carts, bicycles, and up-to-date attire turned out by fashionable tailors, dressmakers, and milliners, are pulling the devil by the tail and stupidly patronising their betters, who are contented with less display.
Lynch, Hannah. French Life in Town and Country. Putnam, 1901.
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