Chapter III.

[18] The difference of interest as regards people of rank may be seen by a comparison of French and English newspapers. In an English paper, even on the Liberal side, you constantly meet with little paragraphs informing you that one titled person has gone to stay with another titled person; that some old titled lady is in poor health, or some young one going to be married; or that some gentleman of title has gone out in his yacht, or entertained friends to shoot grouse,--the reason being that English people like to hear about persons of title, however insignificant the news may be in itself. If paragraphs of the same kind were inserted in any serious French newspaper the subscribers would wonder how they got there, and what possible interest for the public there could be in the movements of mediocrities, who had nothing but titles to distinguish them.

[19] Since this Essay was written I have come upon a passage quoted from Henry Knyghton by Augustin Thierry in his "History of the Norman Conquest:"--

"It is not to be wondered at if the difference of nationality (between the Norman and Saxon races) produces a difference of conditions, or that there should result from it an excessive distrust of natural love; and that the separateness of blood should produce a broken confidence in mutual trust and affection."

Now, the question suggests itself, whether the reason why Englishman shuns Englishman to-day may not be traceable, ultimately, to the state of feeling described by Knyghton as a result of the Norman Conquest. We must remember that the avoidance of English by English is quite peculiar to us; no other race exhibits the same peculiarity. It is therefore probably due to some very exceptional fact in English history. The Norman Conquest was exactly the exceptional fact we are in search of. The results of it may be traceable as follows:--

1. Norman and Saxon shun each other.

2. Norman has become aristocrat.

3. Would-be aristocrat (present representative of Norman) shuns possible plebeian (present representative of Saxon).

[20] It so happens that I am writing this Essay in a rough wooden hut of my own, which is in reality a most comfortable little building, though "stuffy luxury" is rigorously excluded.

[21] At present it is most inadequately represented by a few unimportant gifts. The donors have desired to break the rule of exclusion, and have succeeded so far, but that is all.

[22] These, of course, are only examples of vulgar patriotic ignorance. A few Frenchmen who have really _seen_ what is best in English landscape are delighted with it; but the common impression about England is that it is an ugly country covered with _usines_, and on which the sun never shines.

[23] The French word _univers_ has three or four distinct senses. It may mean all that exists, or it may mean the solar system, or it may mean the earth's surface, in whole or in part. Voltaire said that Columbus, by simply looking at a map of our _univers_, had guessed that there must be another, that is, the western hemisphere. "Paris est la plus belle ville de l'univers" means simply that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world.

[24] A French critic recently observed that his countrymen knew little of the tragedy of "Macbeth" except the familiar line "To be or not to be, that is the question!"

[25] I never make a statement of this kind without remembering instances, even when it does not seem worth while to mention them particularly. It is not of much use to quote what one has heard in conversation, but here are two instances in print. Reclus, the French geographer, in "La Terre à Vol d'Oiseau," gives a woodcut of the Houses of Parliament and calls it "L'Abbaye de Westminster." The same error has even occurred in a French art periodical.

[26] Rodolphe, in "L'Honneur et l'Argent."

[27] In the library at Towneley Hall in Lancashire.

[28] In Prosper Mérimée's "Correspondence" he gives the following as the authentic text of the letter in which Lady Florence Paget announced her elopement with the last Marquis of Hastings to her father:--

"Dear Pa, as I knew you would never consent to my marriage with Lord Hastings, I was wedded to him to-day. I remain yours, etc."

[29] For those who take an interest in such matters I may say that the last representative of the Plumptons died in France unmarried in 1749, and Plumpton Hall was barbarously pulled down by its purchaser, an ancestor of the present Earls of Harewood. The history of the family is very interesting, and the more so to me that it twice intermarried with my own. Dorothy Plumpton was a niece of the first Sir Stephen Hamerton.

[30] Sir Walter Scott had sympathy enough with the courtesy of old time to note its minutiæ very closely:--

"After inspecting the cavalry, Sir Everard again conducted his nephew to the library, where he produced a letter, _carefully folded, surrounded by a little stripe of flox-silk, according to ancient form_, and sealed with _an accurate impression_ of the Waverley coat-of-arms. It was addressed, _with great formality_, 'To Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine, Esq., of Bradwardine, at his principal mansion of Tully-Veolan, in Perthshire, North Britain. These--by the hands of Captain Edward Waverley, nephew of Sir Everard Waverley, of Waverley-Honour, Bart.'"--_Waverley_, chap. vi.

I had not this passage in mind when writing the text of this Essay, but the reader will notice how closely it confirms what I have said about deliberation and care to secure a fair impression of the seal.

[31] A very odd but very real objection to the employment of these missives is that the receiver does not always know how to open them, and may burn them unread. I remember sending a short letter in this shape from France to an English lady. She destroyed my letter without opening it; and I got for answer that "if it was a French custom to send blank post-cards she did not know what could be the signification of it." Such was the result of a well-meant attempt to avoid the non-courteous post-card!

[32] Besides which, in the case of a French friend, you are sure to have notice of such events by printed _lettres de faire part_.

[33] I need hardly say that there has been immense improvement in this respect, and that such descriptions have no application to the Lancashire of to-day; indeed, they were never true, in that extreme degree, of Lancashire generally, but only of certain small localities which were at one time like spots of local disease on a generally vigorous body.

[34] Littré derives _corvée_ from the Low-Latin _corrogata_, from the Latin _cum_ and _rogare_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Human Intercourse, by Philip Gilbert Hamerton