The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-08-31 00:00:00

SUNDAY IN PARIS.

The following is an extract frnm the letter of the Special
Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, writing from Paris
. . I must hasten, albeit the task is not an en-
couraging one, to disabuse the minds of my country-
men, whose experience of Paris is only short and super-
ficial, of the notion that Sabbath observance is, from
an English point of view, increasing in Paris' be-
cause less manual labour is done in Paris on the Sab-
bath, and a great many more shops and warehouses
are closed on Sunday than was formerly the
case. These phenomena have nothing, save in the
rarest and most isolated cases, to do with any
change in the religious sentiments of the people.
I am given to understand that Protestant mis-
sionary work is going on in sundry districts of
Paris, but the rftults of these well-meant attempts at
evangelisation can only be as a drop of water in the
vast ocean of the Parisian Sunday. My coiffeur has
in his shaving .saloon a neat little placard with the
information that his establi.hment will be "fernid lea
dimanehes et fetes apres une heure de l'apeas-ruidi."
But his polite assistant, when I went to get shaved
this morning, was busy over his own ambrosial lucks
with a pair of curling-tongs, and his young and
buxom consort had her hair in papers. I don't think
these symptoms looked like church or chapel, or
Sunday school, or a mothers' meeting. They looked
like the maddening wine-cup—or coffee-cup—and
the mazy dance later in the afternoon. There are
plenty of jewellers', and linendrapers', and tailors'
shops—shops which it appears to me are quite need-
lessly kept open—which do not close their doors on
Sunday here; but on the other hand, especially in the
neighbourhood of the Rue de la Pais, the Rue Scribe,
the Chaussde d' Antin, and the Avenue de l'Opgra,
there are large numbers of commercial establish-
ments which are as hermetically sealed as the
banks and the public offices. But I should
be a blockhead were I to assume, and a
hypocrite were I to maintain, that an in-
crease in religious fervour—as we understand it—is at
the bottom of this partial abstinence from Sunday
labour. The smaller money-changer's shops are all
wide open; so are the toy shops, and the confectioners
and pastrycooks ; because foreigners want to change
money, and French people are in the habit of buying
playthings and sugarplums for their children on Sun-
day; but in the majority of instances it is not on that
day that the public require to purchase velvets and
satins, Aubusson carpets, carved oak furniture,
embossed paper hangings, Madapolam calicoes, or
the new Cestus of Aglae " corsets. For lack
of custom many of the great mcigasins shut up, and
those which continue open do so more from habit than
from the expectation of selling anything. Do you for
one moment think that the male and female employes
in these closed establishments utilise their enfranchise-
ment by going to church, or sitting at home and read-
ing good books, or looking grimly at each other till
they begin to yawn and nod, and at last fall asleep
from sheer ennui? They will the rather pour on to the
boulevards, to fill the cabs and the cafés, to chatter and
gesticulate, to eat, drink and be merry, to dance and
drink, and go to play at night. I was not consulted
when the city was built and the manners of the people
were formed. Whether this is harmless or desirous it
would be dangercus dogmatically to assert. I only
describe that which I see; and this is Sunday in Paris
as I have seen and known it, man and boy, any time
these forty years, come the twenty-ninth day of
August next.
I have not the slightest expectation of seeing such a
Sunday prevalent in London or in any English town.
I have not the slightest wish to see such a Sunday
prevailing. Our observance of the Sabbath may be
susceptible of modification in a tolerant and liberal
sense; but there are two good reasons why the
"Continental Sunday," as typically presented in
Paris, is a thing to be deprecated in England. In
the first place the decent classes among us are quiet
people with comfortable homes, from which they
rarely stir on the Sabbath; whereas the Parisians, as a
race, have no homes at all that can be called comfort-
able, and are an excessively noisy, restless, and incon-
sequential race, who can only find happiness out of
doors. In the second and much more important
place, we drink the very strongest liquors that can be
brewed or distilled; the classes among us who are not
decent are in the habit of getting mad drunk, and of
fighting, after the manner of wild beasts, when they
have a chance; our places of licensed victualling are
merely places where the largest number of sots can
get tipsy in the shortest space of time ; and
Sunday in London, with all the public-houses, all the
theatres, all the music halls, thrown unrestrictedly
open from morning till night, would exhibit the most
horrible saturnalia that eye ever beheld, that the ear
ever heard, the heart ever sickened at. We are so
very strong and stalwart and earnest, and "English,"
in a word, that we need in our diversions a few
salutary checks and kicking straps which the feebler
and less courageous peoples of the Continent do
not require. The better observance of Sunday
may not succeed in London in making the mass of the
people more religious; but it keeps them dull and
tolerably well behaved, and tolerable good behaviour
is all that can he expected in a city of four millions of
souls. That is about the whole of my philosophy on
the matter; and I have seen a good many curious
Sundays in a good many curious countries.