Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗

is a formal

meal served in courses, with red wine instead of coffee or tea. This

is all that one has to do in the eating line until dinner. Imagine

what a fine clear day that gives one. How much uninterrupted time!

How much better for the housekeeper in a small boarding-house! And

at a hotel where the long, heavy breakfast, from seven to eleven,

keeps the dining-room greasy and badly ventilated until the tables

must be cleared for a one or two o’clock dinner, it is to contrast

order with disorder, and neatness with its reverse.

 

The foreign breakfast at eleven is a delicious meal, as will be seen

by the following bills of fare: oeufs au beurre noir; _saut�

printanier_ (a sort of stew of meat and fresh vegetables); _viande

froide panach�e_; salade de saison; _compote de fruit et

p�tisserie_; fromage, fruit, caf�.

 

Another breakfast is: oeufs au plat; poulet � la Godard;

c’telettes de mouton grillees; reviere pommes de terre; _flans

d’apricot_; and so on, with every variety of stewed pigeon, trout

from the lake, delicious preparations of spinach, and always a

variety of the cheeses which are so fresh and so healthful, just

brought from the Alpine valleys. The highly flavored Alpine

strawberries are added to this meal. Then all eating is done for the

day until the six or seven o’clock dinner. This gives the visitor a

long and desirable day for excursions, which in the neighborhood of

Aix are especially charming, particularly the drive to Chambery, one

of the most quaintly interesting of towns, through the magnificent

break in the Alps at whose southern portal stands La Grande

Chartreuse. All this truly healthy disposition of time and of eating

is one reason why a person comes home from a foreign watering-place

in so much better trim, morally, mentally, and physically, than from

the unhealthy gorging of our American summer resorts.

 

At twelve or one begins the music at the Casino, usually a pretty

building in a garden. In this shady park the mammas with their

children sit and listen to the strains of the best bands in Europe.

Paris sends her artists from the Ch�telet, and the morning finds

itself gone and well into the afternoon before the outside pleasures

of the Casino are exhausted. Here, of course, trip up and down on

the light fantastic toe, and in the prettiest costumes of the day,

all the daughters of the earth, with their attendant cavaliers.

There are certain aspects of a foreign watering-place with which we

have nothing to do here, such as the gambling and the overdressing

of a certain class, but all is externally most respectable. At four

or earlier every one goes to drive in the voiture de place or the

voiture de remise, the latter being a handsome hired carriage of a

superior class. But the voiture de place, with a Savoyard driver,

is good enough. He knows the road; his sturdy horse is accustomed to

the hills; he takes one for three francs an hour—about half what is

charged at Saratoga or Sharon or Richfield; he expects a few cents

as pourboire, that is all. The vehicle is a humble sort of victoria,

very easy and safe, and the drive is generally through scenery of

the most magnificent description.

 

Ladies at a foreign watering-place have generally much to amuse them

at the shops. Antiquities of all sorts, especially old china

(particularly old Saxe), also old carved furniture from the well-known chateaux of Savoy, are found at Aix. The prices are so small

compared with what such curiosities would bring in New York that the

buyer is tempted to buy what she does not want, forgetting how much

it will cost to get it home. Old lace and bits of embroidery and

stuffs are brought to the door. There is nothing too rococo for the

peripatetic vender in these foreign watering-places.

 

The dinner is a very good one. Cooked by Italian or French cooks, it

may be something of this sort: potage de riz; _lavarets St.

Houlade_; filets de boeuf Beaumaire_ (a delicious sauce with basil

mixed in it, a slight taste of aniseed); bouchers � la reine;

chapon roti au cresson; asperge au branches; _glace au

chocolat_; caf�; or: potage au Cr�cy; turbot aux c�pres;

langue de boeuf; petits pois, lies au beurre; bombe vanille;

with fruits, cheese, and cakes, and always the wine of the country,

for which no extra charge is made. These delicious meals cost—the

breakfast four francs (wine included), the dinner ten francs. It

would be difficult in our country to find such cooking anywhere, and

for that price simply impossible.

 

Music in the Casino grounds follows the dinner. The pretty women, by

this time in the short, gay foulards and in the dressy hats in which

they will appear later at the Casino ball, are tripping up and down

in the gas-lighted grounds. The scene is often illuminated by

fireworks. At eight and a half the whole motley crew has entered the

Casino, and there the most amusing dancing—valse, galop, and polka

—is in vogue. The Pole is known by his violent dancing; “he strikes

and flutters like a cock, he capers in the air, he kicks his heels

up to the stars.” There is heartiness in the dancing of the Swedes

and Danes, there is mettle in their heels, but no people caper like

the Poles. The Russians and the Americans dance the best. They are

the elegant dancers of the world. French women dance beautifully:

 

“A fine, sweet earthquake, gently moved By the soft wind of their

dispersing silks.”

 

No lady appears at the Casino bareheaded; it is always with hat or

bonnet, and she lives in her bonnet more or less even at the balls.

 

If a concert or a play is going on in the little theatre, the same

people take their places in boxes or seats, until every face becomes

familiar, as one knows one’s shipmates. Sometimes pleasant

acquaintances are thus formed. A very free-and-easy system of

etiquette permits dancing between parties who have not been

introduced, and the same privilege extends to the asking of a party

of ladies to take an ice. All acquaintance ceases on leaving the

Casino, however, unless the lady chooses to bow to her cavalier.

 

Sometimes the steward of the Casino gets up a fancy-dress ball under

the patronage of some lady, and then the motley crew appear as

historical characters. It is a unique and gay spectacle. Here in the

land of the old masters some very fine representations of the best

pictures are hastily improvised, and almost without any apparent

effort the whole ball is gotten up with spirit and ingenuity. This,

too, among people who never met the day before yesterday. There is a

wide range of costume allowed for those who take part in these

revelries.

 

The parquet floor of a foreign Casino is the most perfect thing for

good dancing. They understand laying these floors there better than

we do, and the climate does not alter them, as with us. They are the

pleasantest and easiest of all floors to dance upon.

 

Not the least striking episode to an American eye is the sight of

many priests and men in ecclesiastical garments at these Casinos.

The number of priestly robes everywhere strikes the visitor to a

French watering-place most emphatically. The schoolmasters are young

priests, and walk about with their boys, and the old priests are

everywhere. A solemn procession crosses the gay scene occasionally.

Three or four acolytes bearing censers, a group of mourners, a tall

and stately nun in gray robes and veil walking magnificently, and

moving her lips in prayer; then a group of people; then a priest

with book in hand saying aloud the prayers for the dead; then the

black box, the coffin, carried on a bier by men, the motley crowd

uncovering as the majesty passes; and the boys follow, chanting,

 

“The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial

things; There is no armor against fate; Death lays his icy hand on

kings.”

 

Yes, and on the gay visitor at the Casino. These simple and

unostentatious funerals are very impressive. The priests always walk

bareheaded through the streets on these occasions, and on many

others. Indeed, the priestly head seems impatient of a hat.

 

The f�tes of the peasants are things to go and see, and the

unalterable differences of rank are deeply impressed on the American

mind. An old peasant woman has brought cheese and milk into Aix for

forty years, and now, in her sixties, she still brings them, and

walks eight miles a day. There is no hope that her daughter will

ever join in the gayeties of the Casino, as in America she might

certainly aspire to do. The daughter will be a peasant, as her

mother was, and far happier and more respectable for it, and

certainly more picturesque. How many of the peasant dresses have

given an idea to the modiste! And one sees in the fields of Savoy

the high hat with conical crown, with brim either wide or flat,

which has now become so fashionable; also the flat mushroom hat of

straw with the natural bunch of corn and red poppy, which has gone

from Fanchon up to the duchess. They both come from the fields.

 

Of course horse-races, formed after the plan of Longchamps, are

inseparable from the amusements of a French watering-place; and in

proportion to the number of guests to be amused; the horses come

down from the various stables. Pigeon-shooting goes on all the time.

 

It is said that the French have a greater hatred of ennui than any

other people in the world. They do not know what it means. They

amuse themselves all the time, and are never at a loss. The well-bred French women have as much energy and industry as any New

England woman, but they take their amusement more resolutely, never

losing music, gayety, and “distraction.” Perhaps what amuses them

might not amuse the more sober Saxon, but the delicate embroidery of

their lives, with all that comes thus cheaply to them, certainly

makes them a very delightful set. Their manners are most

fascinating, never selfish, never ponderous, never self-conscious,

but always most agreeable. The French woman is sui generis. She

may no longer be very young; she never was very handsome. Every

sensation that the human mind can experience she has experienced;

every caprice, whim, and fancy that human imagination can conceive

she has gratified. She is very intelligent; she was born with a

perfect taste in dress; and she is—all the novelists to the

contrary notwithstanding—a very good wife, an excellent mother, a

charming companion, a most useful and sensible helpmeet, with a

perfect idea of doing her half of the business of life, and of

getting out of her hours of leisure all the amusement she can. At a

French watering-place the French women of the better class are most

entirely at home and intensely agreeable.

 

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Manners and Social Usages

by Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

 

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