Rev. W. Hughes (2)
Géricault Life
1766 Brion de la Tour map (detail) courtesy of David Rumsey Maps.
Observations of the Rev. W. Hughes (part II)
One English critic completed his review of the the Rev. W. Hughes’ book describing his 1802 visit to France by noting: “…It is altogether a pert uninstructive performance: the style of it is very familiar and very vulgar.”
As I noted in the August issue, Hughes’ pungent vulgarity and clumsy style may offend the sensibilities of some readers. I believe strongly, however, that Hughes’ observations are worth reading. Hughes writes about matters closely connected to Gericault’s life. Hughes has a keen eye for the ordinary – common people, animals, and agriculture, and is quite “uninstructive” on matters of art and architecture.
In part I, we presented Hughes’ useful observations on Dieppe, transportation, and Norman horses. Topics Hughes covers in part II include: life in Rouen; Lisieux (west of Rouen towards Caen); the necessity of religious freedom; inequality and housing in Paris; and the etiquette of French tobacco consumption.
A Tour Through Several Departments of France
“…Rouen is finely situated in the bosom of the hills, with the Seine rolling its serpentine course at its base, and an immense extent of level country, waving with corn, stretching far to the South as far as the eye can reach. The approach to this capital is striking: the road is spacious; in the middle a raised and well-preserved pavement forms an excellent winter-path for carriages of every description; while, on either side, a lofty row of noble plane-trees; there overhanging a gravel-road and shading the passengers from the intensity of the summer-sun, forms an access admirably adapted to that season of the year. Behind them are dotted the pavilions of the citizens, who come here to breathe the evening air, to gather the fruits of their own gardens, and relax the cares and anxieties of business; – the back-ground is formed of extensive sheep-walks, beautifully verdant, and reaching to the summit of the mountains; – the boulevards which encircle the whole city are planted with similar rows of luxuriant elms, and form the most superb promenade which is, perhaps, anywhere to be seen. On the banks of the Seine commodious quays invite the resort of commerce, and not a few vessels of considerable burthen frequent them. Across the river there is constructed a very singular floating bridge (or rather series of bridges), but it is clumsy, inconvenient, and expensive. It consists of several barges of great burthen, which are first arched over, and paved with large stones of granite, and then towed into a right line, and moored side by side, with massy chains, to retain them in their places. From this construction it necessarily follows, that the transit from the one to the other shore of the river must be extremely fatiguing to the cattle that drag the heavy laden cumbrous charetes across it. The quick and continual ascent and descent on the different sides of the barges pushes them about this way and that, and, if we may judge of the expression of the eye, miserably incommodes them; nor, is the creaking which ensues by any means acceptable to the unpracticed strangers; but, the obstruction presented to the trade and navigation of the river, is its grand inconvenience. Is a vessel bound up the river, or to sea, one at least of these barges must be displaced to give it room: this is, apparently, the work of many hours, and is consequently performed but at stated intervals; for which opportunities all must wait, be their necessities what they may.
It is needless to say, that, during this operation, all connection with the opposite country is suspended; in consequence of which, when about to continue our route to the Southward, we were compelled to set off at three in the morning, or defer our journey till eleven, by which time the boats would be closed again. There was formerly a bridge of stone across the Seine at this place which was swept away by the floating ice, repaired and destroyed again, which circumstances occasioned the adoption of the present piece of cumbersome machinery, but unquestionably injudiciously: it is said, that the expense annually incurred for the necessary repair of these barges, would be fully adequate to defray at least one third of the expense of replacing the erection which has been carried away – a tax this, which would not be submitted to in England, especially as it might so easily be evaded. The pieces of the ancient bridge which remain are firm; the span, which would stretch across what once contained two arches, is by no means so large as the iron bridge at Staines – the spirit of enterprise would require six months only to form similar casts, and fix them in their proper positions; a draw-bridge attached to either extremity, with an interruption of ten minutes only, as vessels arrive, would leave the navigation free. In the winter there would be ample space through which the ice might escape; it would be an excellent speculation (could an adventurer obtain permission to fetch his materials from England) to erect one here similar to the projected bridge across the Thames; a trifling toll at the drawbridge upon all vessels and carriages at they pass, would soon defray the expense. An iron-bridge in France, where the metal is smelted with charcoal, would cost an immense sum!
Within the city there are many noble buildings which are worth inspection. The church of Notre-Dame, rising magnificently above the rest demands our first notice. Its exterior is as beautiful as Gothic ornament can make it – nor does the interior fall much short of it. But the church of St. Owen is sublime, and awe-inspiring; it seems almost impossible to enter it but with reverence; none but a Parisian or a Rouenite can do it. Of these, many were seen audaciously stalking along the aisles with their hideous three-cornered military hats, and their ridiculous national cockades upon their heads insulting the devotions of their fellow-citizens assembled to praise and adore their all-bounteous Benefactor. A few tolerable pictures, which have been preserved by the pious care of individuals, are suspended on the walls, but in general they are mere sign-post performances. Monuments in sculpture there are none; they are rarely found in the French churches; only once have I met with any thing of the kind which merited a moment’s notice.
The municipality, adjoining a ci-devant convent, is a splendid modern edifice, and gives one a high idea of the mortification and self-denial in which those holy fathers wore their lives away. It consists of two ranges of large well-proportioned apartments superbly fitted up, opening into as many spacious corridores floored with alternate squares of marble and free-stone, and connected together by a staircase of admirable masonry; nothing can be more luxuriously conceived, or better executed. Monkery must have been a rare trade.
On the eastern extremity of the town, a large space of ground is laid out and planted round with elms and plane-trees: one side of this spot is occupied by the casserne or barracks, which present you without with an elegant elevation, and within with accommodations for a considerable body of the military who are constantly stationed here, to the great accommodation and relief of the city; and, at a small distance from it, stands a large and spacious hospital, with an elegant modern church annexed to it. All the rest of the city is filth and abomination; the streets are narrow, crooked, and inconvenient, and the houses which form them are of a complexion which is difficult to describe – the date of their erection seems to be almost antediluvian, and while churches and convents of superlative elegance and beauty have been destroyed with vandal wantonness, whatever was cumbersome, awkward, ugly, has been preserved with a sort of pious care. The principal avenue, right-lined as a crab stick, may vie with Golden-Lane in elegance, neatness, and salubrity; but there are points, particularly the former ones, in which Golden-Lane must be allowed to possess a decided superiority – the others are mere lanes apparently constructed with a view to the generation of pestilence, at least nothing could be better contrived to answer that purpose, and were it not for the unquestionable salubrity of the air, this could not fail of producing that effect most successfully: across the widest of them a man of moderate size may almost stretch his legs. For many a century the beams of sun-shine have vainly struggled to penetrate into them and as there are no receptacles behind the house for the Frenchman’s proper element, every species of abomination is handed forward into the fluid pestilence which gently flows down the middle of it! The the day is sweet as Araby when compared with the works of darkness – the evening no sooner closes, than the showers of Edinburgh begin to fall in torrents from every window, and dashing occasionally upon the almost red-hot pavement, the steams which rise from it are most fragrantly aromatic!
In London, the faculty has found at length that the fumes rising from millions of sea-coal fires are extremely salubrious, that they soften the cold, anticipate the plague, and I know not what – perhaps the Rouenites have found also that these strong alkaline smells are salubrious too. At Lisbon and Madrid this has long since been happily discovered: for my own part, I must think it fortunate that nature has been so benignant to this second city in the republic. Rouen is styled the Pot de Chambre of France, (i.e.) it rains in great abundance there; and heaven knows, the more they have of it the better.
To crown the whole, Rouen is a large manufacturing city; and manufactories are always remarkable for their cleanliness. The dye-houses occupy one whole street, stretching from the ramparts into the center of the place; a canal flowing through the midst of it, with an ample stream of water, receives all their suds and waste materials; while just without the wall, whole rows of laundresses unite in thumping the filth out of the catalogue in which Falstaff was soused, ‘hissing hot’ into the Thames – of course this stream is of many a beauteous hue, and wafts many a balmy breeze into the city to improve the salubrity of those that are already generated there.
The Tree of Liberty, which was planted in the Champ de Mars, immediately in front of the barracks, and constantly defended by two or more regiments stationed there, appears to be in a very sickly state, and seems to confirm what our fore-fathers thought, (viz.) that liberty, and a standing army, can never flourish together. – In many places, (for every village has its tree of liberty in the grand place), the pruning and shrowding which it has undergone, have given it a very puny aspect – frequently it is found quite dead at top – no where can it be said to flourish; perhaps it may be thought that the type and anti-type perfectly correspond. It may be thought rather unfortunate, that the tree most commonly selected for this purpose, was the Lombardy-popular, a soft-substanced, short-lived plant, which runs up in a few years, in a few years decays; is liable to continual injury, and worth nothing when in its greatest luxuriance. Once only have I have seen the firmly-founded, slow-moving, solid oak, resorted to as the emblem of liberty, and they did well. Their freedom was the meteor of a day, not the effect of slow and gradual improvement.
Rouen is also furnished with a large botanical garden, but it contains few plants that are rare, and the exotics which are worthy of notice are in general in the same state with the tree of liberty; most of them are managed injudiciously, some are decaying for want of care, others die with nursing.
The markets are large and well supplied: of these, some are of a singular complexion, others are detestable. To a foreigner, who has been accustomed to religious abstraction on the sabbath-day, few things can outrage his feelings more than the keeping these markets on the Sunday as commonly as on any other day. The multitudes which assemble at Notre-Dame on the Lord’s day, must make their way thither across pots and panniers with no small hazard to their shins, and have their ideas convulsed and distorted by the Voyez monsieur, Voyez madame of a hundred different paysannes and barrow-women who come there to expose their fruits and flowers to sale. The morning on which I entered it, there was a mountebank posted immediately before the grand entrance, harranguing the throng which surrounded him, while the trumpet, the tambourine, and the fiddle, summoned the devout and undevout to become the spectators and the dupes of his legerdemain, and not infrequently, did his eloquence get the better of their sense of duty. His congregation was to the full as large as that of the eloquent preacher within.
Betwixt the casserne and the botanical garden, there is likewise another Sunday market for old rags, old iron, and trumpery of the most worthless kinds: – it is a curious exhibition; in the sum total of which scarce an article is offered to sale, which in England would be disturbed by the passenger, however needy, were it lying on a dung-hill.
On the Boulevards, on the other side of the city, there is also on every Sunday morning a market for horses. It is revolting as you hasten to the earthly Temples of the Eternal, with your heart attuned to devotion, and all the powers of your soul exerted in the abstraction of your ideas from earthly cares – It is revolting in this pious frame of mind to be encountered by a herd of jockeys, cracking their abominable whips, and forcing their jaded, dispirited harridans, by dint of ginger and whipcord, into mettle and activity which nature never gave them – I detest the police which cannot correct enormities like these – it is folly in its paroxysm of superlative absurdity to talk of encountering the impositions of priest-craft by such licentiousness as this. Goods, of which quaking guilt and credulity had been gulled, the nation did well to appropriate to its necessities; but it by no means follows that religion is a forgery because a priest is a knave; and admitting that Christianity were a cunningly devised fable which credulity alone can possible suppose – there are few, there are none, who love their country, who love their fellow-men, who would not prefer submitting to the fable, to the evils which have resulted from throwing it aside.
The Frenchmen, as long as the Ancien Regime endured, were men of gentleness and urbanity – from the moment they fell into the hands of the modern sage philosophers they became dæmons – slaves of popery: many an amiable virtue endeared them to surrounding nations, and prompted the sigh as often as their degradation became the subject of reflection – the slaves of the philosophers, not a solitary qualification remained, to soften the shade of the enormities they hourly perpetrated – from objects of pity, they became the objects of universal hatred and detestation. Humanity is indeed returning – order and decency begin to raise their persecuted heads again; in the provinces they will flourish with recruited vigour. At Rouen it will be long ere the happy change takes place; the present generation must first wear away; but, considering the effects of religious principles upon the mind, the police, which relaxes for a moment its watchfulness, which abates its energy in discountenancing, repressing, and correcting whatever tends to enfeeble its influence over the multitude is wanting to the public. Nor need the magistrate hold his wand of office in a trembling hand. – He who will exert himself with spirit and resolution in the support of order, is sure of the support and countenance of every good citizen. Men of respectability, one and all, unite in deploring the evils that have resulted from snapping the bands woven by their fathers for them; they received their priests with transport, and accompanied them to the long deserted and abandoned altar with tears of joy trickling from their eyes. – The dregs of the community alone wish to perpetuate the reign of anarchy and licentiousness.
Having spent about a month at Rouen, we began to prepare for our journey to the southward; and as soon as we had arranged our passports with the municipality, and harnessed our stallions as before, at three in the morning set forward. The first object which attracts our observation after quitting the city, are the ruins of a superb ecclesiastical erection on our left, which, previous to the revolution, was tenanted by monks, but of what order I have forgotten, I believe Benedictines; being confiscated it became national property, and was brought to the hammer. The greater part of it has been pulled down, probably for the materials: the few remaining pillars and arches peeping through the trees like Palmyra in the desert, serve but to shew what was once its splendour – how mutable and unstable is human greatness! The country like that through which we had passed, is in general flat and covered with corn; here and there are scattered the chateaus of the ci-devant noblesse, which have little remarkable in them; nothing appears striking till we arrive at the commencement of the second stage, which brings us to one of the romantic turns of the river’s winding here in enchanting beauty at the base of the hill we are about to ascend.
The traveller will do well to feast his sight with this beauteous picture; it is the last of the kind he will gaze upon for many a weary day, and if he is expert at his pencil, he will seldom meet a landscape which merits better to be copied; and here we meet the earnest and the sample of the miserable roads which await the morrow. Somewhere about the third stage as we descend the side of a barren mountain, we come suddenly in view of a magnificent abbey, which is situated on an eminence in the bottom of a romantic vale, and commands a rich luxuriant prospect. It was impossible to understand the provincial jargon of the postilions, of course we could learn only that it had been sold by the nation, and is now occupied no more by lazy ecclesiastics, but by industrious mechanics who, under the direction of a company of English manufacturers there, weave velvets similar to those of Spitalfields. We learn also that there were several other establishments of the sort in the province or department.
From hence to Liseux, corn-fields edged with fruit or other trees as before, accompany us all the way, the land is rich, and the crops are luxuriant. – I must not forget here to mention an anecdote which strongly marks the difference between a French and English postilion. About six miles from Liseux, by the road side, you remark a little bower or cabin formed partly of turfs partly of bushes interwoven and thatched with straw. This is the abode from morn to eve of an ancient hoary-headed blind beggar, who takes here his station, and lives upon the bounty of the fleeting passenger. As soon as the sound of the wheels announces to him the approach of a carriage, he comes forward with one end of a little cord in his hand, the other extremity of it is fastened to his habitation, and guides him back to it when he wishes to return. The postilion never fails to draw you up as close as is consistent with his safety, and being arrived abreast of him, immediately pulls in. His figure is venerable, and commands respect – he presents you his cap, and tells you his piteous tale. Forty-five years has he tenanted that little dwelling, and subsisted upon the alms of the benevolent; and to the credit of the Frenchman, an old man seldom solicits his charity in vain! Having received what you are pleased to bestow, he begins a short prayer to the Virgin for your prosperity and happiness, during which la Fleur pulls off his hat. As soon as the oraison is finished, he joins in the Amen – restores his chapeau to its place; and dashes on as before.
At Liseux, the country begins to assume an aspect hitherto rare in France. The fields are enclosed; the farms are well-wooded, and the pasture prevails over the arable; but the town itself is the very counterpart of Rouen. Like it, it is ill-disposed, ill-built, and stinks most abominably. There are here many considerable fabrequants of cotton as they are called, and the people bear on their front that character of vice and filth which seems to be universally stamped upon all great assemblages of manufacturers. – Is it that the occasional introduction of depraved wanderers among them inevitably corrupts the whole mass, or is it that daily receiving more wages than are adequate to a simple decent maintenance – abundance leads to luxury, and luxury to vice? In this case, which I believe to be the real root of the evil, may it not be questioned how far great manufactories ought to be encouraged by any legislature? And if they are to be encouraged may we not insist upon it that the legislature, which does not encourage also every means of correcting the contamination of the public morals which it virtually countenances, prefers but a feeble claim to the affections of the public? – Here the question arises: what are the antidotes by which the poison is to be corrected?
We answer, complete religious liberty. Legislators have enacted pains and penalties for this and the other irregularity and vice; and what has been the effect? Nothing. – Absolutely nothing. Well then – if the secular Aaron cannot preserve the morals of the people from contamination, let them try what religion will do: for in vain do they attempt to make good citizens without. – Let them give equal countenance to as many as are disposed to enter the abodes of squallid wretchedness to attack vice, even in its seat of empire – to warn the thoughtless, to confirm the wavering, to reclaim the wanderer, to edify the virtuous; in a word, to plant the seeds of moral purity in the heart, and cherish them by the sanctions of the New Testament. – I say equal countenance, for every man, has an equal right to form his creed for himself, and consequently an equal right to the protection of the law. – If my principles make me a good citizen, the secular arm has nothing to do with me but to animate and encourage me in the prosecution of them. As long as I am taught by them to demean myself peacefully and orderly, and to set an example of social virtue to the surrounding community. I have unquestionably a right to speculate upon abstract points as I please, and to get to heaven in my own way; and if my speculations, no matter how absurd, are attended with the effect of snatching the vicious from their crimes, and reducing disorder to temperance and sobriety, I merit the applause, not the persecution of the government, beneath which live. – I will not say, that the established priest of the country cannot check the progress of vice as well as another, but I will say that others are far more likely to do it: no man bears constraint without writhing – from the moment you tell me that I must believe as the cherished servant of the state prescribes, and reckon upon its protection and favour, but, as I obey him, from that moment I listen to his instructions with suspicion; I consider him as an hireling, and his doctrines as ultimately contrived, not for my edification, but for the consolidation of your empire over me – of course the impression made upon my mind is faint and transient – the most impassioned persuasion melts me not – the most terrific denunciations affright me not: in short, I must be won by one who comes forward as my beloved Master did – whose principles are disinterested – whose sole object is my edification and eternal happiness…”
(Paris)
“…The streets are dark, narrow, tortuous, ill-paved, and filthy; here men, women, children, horses, asses, coaches, cabriolets, carts, wheel-barrows, are all mingled together in one confused hurly-burly, mutually splashing, and incommoding each other; for, be it recollected, that Paris is just as well furnished with common-sewers as Rouen – every abomination which can be endured no longer is cast into the street — here waste-water of every description – the scouring of manufactories – the blood of slaughter-houses – the contents of the …. in short, everything imagination can conceive offensive and detestable is united in one balmy tide, which slowly creeps reeking along the midway of every street towards the Seine, thence to be brought back again for the beverage of the thousands who jostle one another upon its banks. This floating pestilence furnishing a surer footing to the horses than the shelving pavement on either side of it, it is most commonly chosen for them, especially for those drawing in the cabriolets, which moving generally at the rate of 10 miles per hour, most liberally sprinkle this holy water among the scudding multitude…
It has been said, that “evil communications corrupt good manners.” Heaven knows! that a Parisian’s house is quite congruous with the streets, on the edge of which is erected (whether he ever had a taste for cleanliness or not is questionable). Its wretchedness is extreme; in short, Paris is one vast assemblage of grand erections, and of twice ten thousand miserable apartments piled up to the clouds, tenanted with poverty, which crowds around the favorites of fortune to pick up the crumbs of the table, and vegetate upon servility. The one is princely; the other the product of heart-broken necessity, and aspires no farther than to shelter necessity from the inclemencies of the seasons. The latter are frequently seven stories high, generally six, portioned out by as many families, who are alone connected by one common stone staircase, the property of the whole; and, of course, as all are equally interested in its cleanliness and propreté, it may be supposed that its aspect is delectable. Short petticoats will be very convenient for the ladies who ascend it in search of their milliners and mantua-makers – Thieves’ vinegar a very proper accompaniment; and, let them beware of swerving from the strait line of their march to right or left, and of breaking their shins against the pots de chambre, which are infallibly on the one side or the other. The floors are composed of brick-work, which being previously sprinkled with a little water, the dust and filth are swept away once a day, perhaps into the general reservatory, the chimney, there to wait the grand annual purgation of fire at the commencement of winter – of the front I shall say little.*
My description of Dieppe may here be very properly transcribed. It is commonly washed with an odious solution, perhaps of ochre – the crevices, cornices, and gimracks are crammed with dust and cobwebs – on the glass the accumulated and undisturbed filth of ages not only defeats transparency, but almost invites vegetation.
Among the rising gradations of the Bourgeois, there are some few, indeed, the floors of whose apartments are parqueted – that is, floored with old planks framed together something after the pattern of the parterre; but, never since they were laid, have they been rendered damp and unwholesome by ablution. The scrubbing-brush is a luxury which has not yet found its way to France; and the sweet music of mops and buckets, charming Saturday-night concert to many a patient Benedict as he sits rocking the cradle, has not here been heard – not that it is not wanted.
The French are much addicted to smoking; their tobacco is extremely pungent, and ill-flavoured; the salivation it produces is therefore profuse; of this le citoyen disencombers himself, sans ceremonie, in all companies, and in all places; and, not only this, other secretions descending from a higher source are as freely distributed. Look where you will, your offended eyes find no refuge – the floors are disfigured, from side to side, with the “marks of the beasts” who have gone before you. Instead of washing away this abominable obscenity, the planks are waxed and dry-rubbed, till wax and filth accumulating coat upon coat, the spade becomes almost as necessary as the apparatus of the chair-woman; nor is this detestable custom confined to the lords of creation – those who have been formed of nature’s finest mold are as much addicted to it as the males, and bestow their fœtid favours as plentifully – I say fœtid, for it is impossible to brave the full blast of a pair of French lungs; one and all they stink most abominably, and every respiration puffs out such gales of garlic and indigestion as pestilence lurking below alone could produce! – This is, perhaps, one reason why there are so doatingly fond of scents and bouquets in their bosoms.
At Rouen, scarcely a male or female were seen without one, and they have need of them. In fact, with all their affectation of politeness, in which the modest creatures arrogate to themselves the precedence, the manners of the French are as gross as Hottentots: they have no conception of, they have no relish for, what are usually styled the common decencies of life.
The eminent clergy while in England, were remarked for the slovenly squalidness of their attire, and the immense quantities of snuff with which they regaled themselves; and their handkerchiefs were winded from afar; it seemed to be the effect of their unhappy state; exiled from their native country; dependent upon the charity of strangers; despoiled of the comforts of friendship; desolate and undone – for dejection and neglect commonly tread on each other’s heels! – But see them now returned to their families; taken under the protection of the government; reinstated in their parishes; dependent no longer upon the charity of strangers; they are as squalid as ever – the “flag of abomination’” is filthy as ever, and they are admirable samples of their flock – male and female they are continually displaying this disgusting piece of obscenity before you!
My very soul revolts as often as I see them fumbling in their pockets, and I am compelled, as if by instinct, to repair to mine, that I may grasp unseen my indignant nose, and prevent the consequences my boiling stomach prepares!
It might be expected that elegantes at least are to be exempted from this sweeping censure: no – women, young, and beautiful as angels, are thus seen every moment practicing what would outrage the stomach of a Calmuc. The flag of abomination is not indeed displayed with equal effrontery. Suspended at the wrist of her bareheaded attendant, (for no gentleman would wear his hat, even in a thunder storm) hangs what is emphatically called a ridicule, and as often as her nostrils are overcharged, or the throat is tickled by the swallowed tabac, she draws open the orifice of her portable dunghill, discharges the peccant humors into it, tightens the bobbins again, and returns it to her companion.
There are humiliating view of human nature observable in every country…the only probable mode of goading mankind into the reformation of deformities which lower the national respectability, is to hold them up in all their native hatefullness to ridicule and detestation…”
* François Caruel, Théodore Géricault’s eldest maternal uncle, lived and died in poverty five floors above the streets of Paris in a small apartment not far from the Hôtel de Longueville in 1805.