French and Irish Lifestyles in 1901
I retired lately to Ireland to write this little book, and was struck, after long residence in France, by the violent contrast between French and Irish character in these respects.
From: 1901 C.E. To: 1901 C.E.
Location: France; Ireland
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.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 three, from French Life in Town and Country by Hannah Lynch, 1901.
I retired lately to Ireland to write this little book, and was struck, after long residence in France, by the violent contrast between French and Irish character in these respects. I was used to the simple, courteous, willing, active trades-people of Paris, who give themselves no airs, dress dowdily, live modestly. I found the same class in Ireland, even in a small village, dressed daily as Solomon in all his glory never was, with tailor-made gowns worth ten and twelve guineas, and with haughty manners that would bewilder a princess of the blood; the one cutting the other, Heaven only knows on what assumption of superiority, and all hastening from their counters in smart turnouts, duly to subscribe their loyal names to the list of the Queen's visitors.
I felt like Rip Van Winkle—as if I had waked in my native land and found everyone gone mad with pride and pretension. When I ventured into a shop to make an insignificant purchase, a gorgeous dandy with a lisp condescended to attend to me, or a lady looking like a duchess, and most desirous that you should take her for such, dropped from the height of her grandeur to my humble person, and was good enough in her superior way to look after me.
Everybody was seemingly so above trade or business or bread-winning of any kind that I was glad enough to pack up my papers and things and come back to a race more simple and less pretentious, where the people work with good-will, and sell you a yard of tape or a hat without insufferable condescension, and where tradesmen and their wives do not think it necessary to confer on crowned heads the honour of their call.
In pursuit of my investigations on this subject I was taken to the house of a very small trades-person, who lived over her shop. The owner wore a twelve-guinea silk-lined gown trimmed with Irish point. I could well imagine what sort of residence hers would be in France.
For Ireland it was a sort of Aladdin surprise. Majesty indeed might have sat in that sitting-room. It was furnished with faultless taste: beautiful old Sevres, proof engravings exquisitely framed, buhl cabinets; everything—curtains, chairs, sixteenth-century benches and couches, quaint ornaments, the spoils of frequent auctions of gentlemen's houses—was chosen with the best of judgment by an ignorant peasant woman, whose bringing up, surroundings, and life had been of the most sordid kind. I was shown the bedroom, and found it a no less pleasing and surprising vision, a nest of modern luxury and beauty, such a bedroom as in Paris you would see only along the handsome and expensive avenues.
Another time I obtained a glimpse of the home of a bankrupt widow of a "little burgess" who had had to vacate a house with grounds to take up her residence in a more modest dwelling. Such a woman in France would be content to live and die a very plain and simple person, and, having had to compound with her creditors, would have considered herself bound to lay out her new existence upon lines of the most rigid economy, above all, as there was a large family of sons and daughters not yet of an age, nor having the requisite education, to provide for themselves.
The house I visited was one of a row, a poor, mean quarter, where no sane person would look for any appearance of affluence. Over the fan-light the house rejoiced in an imposing Celtic name in three words in raised white letters, not the cheapest form of house nomenclature. A gardener was engaged trimming the infinitesimal garden front; the youngest girl, of twelve, was mounting her bicycle to career off with a companion; in the hall were three other bicycles belonging to different members of the family.
The furniture of the drawing-room was new and expensive, and a young lady was playing up-to-date waltzes on the piano, without a trace of concern or anxiety; no sign anywhere of economy, of sacrifice, of worry. Yet I knew I was entering a house where there was practically nothing to live upon, and where the proceeds of a sale that should have gone to the woman's creditors had been squandered on unnecessary things.
One may criticise the meannesses to which thrift drives the frugal French, but I never felt more near to falling in love with what is to me an uncongenial vice than I did on leaving my native land after this visit, to have commercial dealings once more with people not above their business, instead of trading with the spurious descendants of kings, whose sole anxiety is to make you feel their social superiority and extraordinary condescension, to find these excellent French "little people" all that Lever told us the Irish were but have ceased to be—cordial, delightful, intelligent, and simple.
For that is the great, the abiding charm of the French middle class—the absence of vulgar pretension. Every man to his trade, and an artist at that—such is the wise French motto. I begin to suspect the late Felix Faure, the tanner of France, must have had some Irish blood in his veins, for he was well worthy to play the sovereign to that mock prince of the blood, the Irish tradesman.
Lynch, Hannah. French Life in Town and Country. Putnam, 1901.
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