CHAPTER XLV

ENGLAND(31)

I have lived a good deal of late with the ballet-girls of the Teatro Del Sol, at Valencia. People assure me that many of them are very chaste; the reason being that their profession is too fatiguing. Vigano makes them rehearse his ballet, the _Jewess of Toledo_, every day, from ten in the morning to four, and from midnight to three in the morning. Besides this, they have to dance every evening in both ballets.

This reminds me that Rousseau prescribes a great deal of walking for Émile. This evening I was strolling at midnight with these little ballet girls out along the seashore, and I was thinking especially how unknown to us, in our sad lands of mist, is this superhuman delight in the freshness of a sea breeze under this Valencian sky, under the eyes of these resplendent stars that seem close above us. This alone repays the journey of four hundred leagues; this it is that banishes thought, for feeling is too strong. I thought that the chastity of my little ballet girls gives the explanation of the course adopted by English pride, in order, little by little, to bring back the morals of the harem into the midst of a civilised nation. One sees how it is that some of these young English girls, otherwise so beautiful and with so touching an expression, leave something to be desired as regards ideas. In spite of liberty, which has only just been banished from their island, and the admirable originality of their national character, they lack interesting ideas and originality. Often there is nothing

[Pg 174] remarkable in them but the extravagance of their refinements. It's simple enough--in England the modesty of the women is the pride of their husbands. But, however submissive a slave may be, her society becomes sooner or later a burden. Hence, for the men, the necessity of getting drunk solemnly every evening,[1] instead of as in Italy, passing the evening with their mistresses. In England, rich people, bored with their homes and under the pretext of necessary exercise, walk four or five leagues a day, as if man were created and put into the world to trot up and down it. They use up their nervous fluid by means of their legs, not their hearts; after which, they may well talk of female refinement and look down on Spain and Italy.

No life, on the other hand, could be less busy than that of young Italians; to them all action is importunate, if it take away their sensibility. From time to time they take a walk of half a league for health's sake, as an unpleasant medicine. As for the women, a Roman woman in a whole year does not walk as far as a young Miss in a week.

It seems to me that the pride of an English husband exalts very adroitly the vanity of his wretched wife. He persuades her, first of all, that one must not be vulgar, and the mothers, who are getting their daughters ready to find husbands, are quick enough to seize upon this idea. Hence fashion is far more absurd and despotic in reasonable England than in the midst of light-hearted France: in Bond Street was invented the idea of the "carefully careless." In England fashion is a duty, at Paris it is a pleasure. In London fashion raises a wall of bronze between New Bond Street and Fenchurch Street far different from that between the Chaussée d'Antin and the rue Saint-Martin at Paris. Husbands are quite

[Pg 175] willing to allow their wives this aristocratic nonsense, to make up for the enormous amount of unhappiness, which they impose on them. I recognise a perfect picture of women's society in England, such as the taciturn pride of its men produces, in the once celebrated novels of Miss Burney. Since it is vulgar to ask for a glass of water, when one is thirsty, Miss Burney's heroines do not fail to let themselves die of thirst. While flying from vulgarity, they fall into the most abominable affectation.

Compare the prudence of a young Englishman of twenty-two with the profound mistrust of a young Italian of the same age. The Italian must be mistrustful to be safe, but this mistrust he puts aside, or at least forgets, as soon as he becomes intimate, while it is apparently just in his most tender relationships that you see the young Englishman redouble his prudence and aloofness. I once heard this:--

"In the last seven months I haven't spoken to her of the trip to Brighton." This was a question of a necessary economy of twenty-four pounds, and a lover of twenty-two years speaking of a mistress, a married woman, whom he adored. In the transports of his passion prudence had not left him: far less had he let himself go enough to say to his mistress: "I shan't go to Brighton, because I should feel the pinch."

Note that the fate of Gianone de Pellico, and of a hundred others, forces the Italian to be mistrustful, while the young English _beau_ is only forced to be prudent by the excessive and morbid sensibility of his vanity. A Frenchman, charming enough with his inspirations of the minute, tells everything to her he loves. It is habit. Without it he would lack ease, and he knows that without ease there is no grace.

It is with difficulty and with tears in my eyes that I have plucked up courage to write all this; but, since I would not, I'm sure, flatter a king, why should I say of a country anything but what seems to me the

[Pg 176] truth? Of course it may be all very absurd, for the simple reason that this country gave birth to the most lovable woman that I have known.

It would be another form of cringing before a monarch. I will content myself with adding that in the midst of all this variety of manners, among so many Englishwomen, who are the spiritual victims of Englishmen's pride, a perfect form of originality does exist, and that a family, brought up aloof from these distressing restrictions (invented to reproduce the morals of the harem) may be responsible for charming characters. And how insufficient, in spite of its etymology,--and how common--is this word "charming" to render what I would express. The gentle Imogen, the tender Ophelia might find plenty of living models in England; but these models are far from enjoying the high veneration that is unanimously accorded to the true accomplished Englishwoman, whose destiny is to show complete obedience to every convention and to afford a husband full enjoyment of the most morbid aristocratic pride and a happiness that makes him die of boredom.[2]

In the great suites of fifteen or twenty rooms, so fresh and so dark, in which Italian women pass their lives softly propped on low divans, they hear people speak of love and of music for six hours in the day. At night, at the theatre, hidden in their boxes for four hours, they hear people speak of music and love.

Then, besides the climate, the whole way of living is in Spain or Italy as favourable to music and love, as it is the contrary in England.

I neither blame nor approve; I observe.

[1] This custom begins to give way a little in very good society, which is becoming French, as everywhere; but I'm speaking of the vast generality.

[2] See Richardson: the manners of the Harlowe family, translated into modern manners, are frequent in England. Their servants are worth more than they.

[Pg 177]