Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 - Patrick Fraser Tytler (good books to read in english txt) 📗

restoration of truth, and honour, and principle, in France, we must turn to the lower orders, it will not, I trust, be thought too trifling to observe, that any thing like real excellence in music, another favourite national propensity, is, as far as we could observe, to be found in the peasantry alone. The music of the capital, the modern compositions performed at the opera, the prevailing songs of the day, are all noisy, unmeaning, unharmonious (I speak, of course, merely from personal feeling, and with deference to those better able to form an opinion upon the subject;) but it is impossible to hear the unharmonious crash which proceeds from the orchestra of the opera, without immediately recollecting the celebrated pun of Rosseau: "Pour l'Academie de musique, certainement il fait le plus du bruit du monde." On the other hand, it is amongst the peasantry alone that you now find the ancient music of France. Those airs which are so deeply associated with all the glory and gallantry of the old monarchy; those songs of olden times, which were chanted by the wandering Troubadours, as they returned from foreign wars to their native vallies, and whose simple melody recalls the days of chivalry in which they arose: these, and all others of the same æra, which once composed in truth the national music of this great people, are no longer to be found amongst the higher classes of the community. But they still exist among the peasantry. The vine-dresser, as he begins, with the rising sun, his labours in the vineyards; or the poor muleteer, as he drives his cattle to the water, will chant, as he goes along, those ancient airs, which, in all their native simplicity, he has heard from his fathers; and which, in other days, have echoed through the halls of feudal pride, or have been sung in the bowers of listening beauty. Of the prevalence of this refined taste in poetry among the lower orders of the peasantry, the following fragment of an old ballad, still very commonly sung to the ancient Troubadour air by the peasantry of Provence, may be given as a familiar instance:

LE TROUBADOUR.

Un gentil Troubadour
Qui chant et fait la guerre,
Revennit chez son Pere
Revant a son amour.
Gages de sa valeur
Suspendus en echarpe,
Son epée et sa harpe
Croisaient sur son cœur.

Il rencontre en chemin
Pelerine jolie
Qui voyage et qui prie
Un rosaire a la main,
Colerette aux longs plies
Gouvre sa fine taille,
Et grande chapeau de paille
Cache son front divin.

"Ah! gentil Troubadour,
Si tu reviens fidele,
Chant un couplet pour celle
Qui benit ton retour."
"Pardonnez mon refus,
Pelerine jolie,
Sans avoir vu m'amie,
Je ne chanterai plus."

"Ne la revois tu pas—
Oh Troubadour fidele,
Regarde la—C'est elle,
Ouvre lui donc tes bras.
Priant pour notre amour
J'allois en pelerine
A la vierge divine
Demander son secours."

I believe no apology need be made for subjoining here, another very favourite song in the French army: One of our party heard it sung by a body of French soldiers, who were on their return to their homes, from the campaign of Moscow.

LA CENTINELLE.

L'Astre de nuit dans son paisible eclat
Lanca ses feux sur les tentes de la France,
Non loin de camp un jeune et beau soldat
Ainsi chantoit appuyè sur sa lance.

"Allez, volez, zephyrs joyeux,
Portez mes vœux vers ma patrie,
Dites que je veille dans ces lieux,
Que je veille dans ces lieux,
C'est pour la gloire et pour m'amie.

L'Astre de jour r'animera le combat,
Demain il faut signaler ma valence;
Dans la victoire on trouve le trepas,
Mais si je meura an coté de ma lance,—

Volez encore, zephyrs joyeux,
Portez mes regrets vers ma patrie,
Dites que je meurs dans ces lieux,
Que je meurs dans ces lieux,
C'est pour la gloire et pour m'amie."

It is certainly productive of no common feelings, when, in travelling into the interior of the country, you find these beautiful songs, so much despised in the metropolis! of the nation, still lingering in their native vallies, and shedding their retiring sweetness over those scenes to which they owed their birth.

How much is it to be desired that some man of genius, some lover of the real glory of his country, would collect, with religious hand, these scattered flowers, which are so fast sinking into decay, and again raise into general estimation the beautiful and forgotten music of his native land.

In a discussion upon French manners, and the present condition of French society, it is impossible but that one great and leading observation must almost immediately present itself, and the truth of which, on whatever side, or to whatever class of society you may turn, becomes only the more apparent as you take the longer time to consider it; this is, that the French carry on every thing in public. That every thing, whether it is connected with business or with pleasure, whether it concerns the more serious affair of political government, or the pursuit of science, or the cultivation of art, or whether it is allied only to a taste for society, to the gratification of individual enjoyment, to the passing occupations of the day, or the pleasures of the evening—all, in short, either of serious, or of lighter nature, is open and public. It is carried on abroad, where every eye may see, and every ear may listen. Every one who has visited France since the revolution must make this remark. The first thing that strikes a stranger is, that a Frenchman has no home: He lives in the middle of the public; he breakfasts at a caffé; his wife and family generally do the same. During the day, he perhaps debates in the Corps Legislatif, or sleeps over the essays in the Academie des Sciences, or takes snuff under the Apollo, or talks of the fashions of the Nouvelle Cour, at the side of the Venus de Medicis, or varies the scene by feeding the bears in the Jardin des Plantes. He then dines abroad at a restaurateur's. His wife either is there with him, or perhaps she prefers a different house, and frequents it alone. His sons and daughters are left to manage matters as they best can. The sons, therefore, frequent their favourite caffés, whilst the daughters remain confined under the care of their bonnes or duennas. In the evening he strolls about the Palais, joins some friend or another, with whom he takes his caffé, and sips his liqueurs in the Salon de Paix or Milles Colonnes; he then adjourns to the opera, where, for two hours, he will twist himself into all the appropriate contortions of admiration, and vent his joy, in the strangest curses of delight, the moment that Bigottini makes her appearance upon the stage; and, having thus played those many parts which compose his motley day, he will return at night to his own lodging, perfectly happy with the manner he has employed it, and ready, next morning, to recommence, with recruited alacrity, the same round of heterogeneous enjoyment. Such is, in fact, an epitome of the life of all Frenchmen, who are not either bourgeoise, employed constantly in their shops during the day, or engaged in the civil or military avocations—of those who are in the same situation in France, as our gentlemen of independent fortune in England. Another peculiarity is, that the Frenchmen of the present day are not only always abroad, in the midst of the public, but that they invariably flock from the interior of the kingdom into Paris, and there engage in those public exhibitions, and bustle about in that endless routine of business or pleasure, which is passing in the capital. The French nobility, and the men of property who still remain in the kingdom, invariably spend their lives in Paris. Their whole joy consists la exhibiting themselves in public in the capital. Their magnificent chateaus, their parks, their woods and fields, and their ancient gardens, decorated by the taste, and often cultivated by the hands of their fathers, are allowed to fall into unpitied ruin. If they retire for a few weeks to their country seat, it is only to collect the rents from their neglected peasantry, to curse themselves for being condemned to the triste sejour of their paternal estate; and, after having thus replenished their coffers, to dive again from their native woods, with renewed strength, into all the publicity and dissipation of the capital. This was not always the state of things in France. Previous to, and during the reign of Henry IV. the manners, the society, and the mode of life of the nobility and gentlemen of the kingdom, were undoubtedly different The country was not then deserted for the town; the industry of the peasantry was exerted under the immediate eye of the proprietor; and his happiness formed, we may believe, no inferior object in the mind of his master; If we look at the domestic memoirs which describe the condition of France in these ancient days, we shall find that even from the early age of Francis I. till the commencement of the political administration of Richelieu, the situation of this country presented a very different picture; and that the lives of the country gentlemen were passed in a very opposite manner from that unnatural state of the kingdom to which we have above alluded. Even the condition of the interior of the kingdom, as it is now seen, points to this happier state of things. Their chateaus, which are now deserted,—their silent chambers, with tarnished gilding and decaying tapestry, remind us of the days when the old nobleman was proud to spend his income on the decoration and improvement of his property; the library, on whose walls we see the family pictures, in those hunting and shooting dresses which tell of the healthier exercises of a country retirement; whilst on the shelves, there sleeps undisturbed the forgotten literature of the Augustan age of France—all this evidently shows, that there was once, at least, to be found in the interior of the kingdom, another and a different state of things. In the essays of Montaigne, the private life of a French gentleman is admirably depicted. His days appear to have been divided between his family, his library, and his estate. A French nobleman lived then happy in the seat of his ancestors. His family grew up around him; and he probably visited the town as rarely as the present nobility do the country,—the education of his children,—the care of his peasantry,—the rural labours of planting and gardening,—the sports of the country,—the grandes chasses which he held in his park, surrounded by troops of servants who had been born on his estate, and who evinced their affection by initiating the young heir into all the mysteries of the chase, the enjoyment of the society of his friends and neighbours; all these varied occupations filled up the happy measure of his useful and enviable existence. The life of the country proprietor in these older days of France, assimilated, in short, in a great degree to the present manner of life amongst the same classes which is still observable in England.

It is impossible to conceive any thing more striking than the difference between this picture of a French chateau in these older days, and the condition in which you find them at the present moment. We once visited the chateau of one of the principal noblemen in Provence; and he himself had the politeness to accompany us. The situation of the castle was perfectly beautiful; but on coming nearer, every thing showed that it was completely neglected. The different rooms, which were once superb, were now bare and unfurnished. The walks through the park, the seats and temples in the woods, and the superb gardens, were speedily going to decay. The surface of his ponds, in the