Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1879-09-06
THREE PHASES OF SOCIETY
NO. l.-FRANCE.


We define society to consist in
those arrangements by which men
and women are brought together in
the intervals between the necessary
avocations of life; when they meet,
that is to say, for purposes of relax
alton and recreation, the purpose
being that of pleasure rather than
business. Not that business is alto
gether excluded from such meet
ings; Lord Granville, the most
accomplished diplomat in England,
has expressed the idea that diplO-
macy would be impossible but fol
the dinner parties at which ques-
tons of international import are
handled with an infOrmality and
freedom which would be impossible
at the more solemn meetings eX-
pressIy set apart for those purposes.
Moreover, there is one very mo-
mentOuS matter of business which
is almost exclusively transacted in
the assemblages over which society
presides, that of getting young
people iudiciously married. Under
whatever DISCUSSES of graceful badi-
mage and brilliant repartec and
careless gaiety it may be transacted,
this is a business in which society
is necessarily engaged with a
practical eaTnestness which affords
a striking contrast with the appa-
rent lightness and Vivacity of the
process. And perhaps this is the
most important work which society
undertakes to perform, but there
are other functions exercised by it
of potent influence upon the moral
and intellectual development of the
human race. Woman's wit there
comes in collision with the harder
fibre of the masculine understand
ing, and both are the better for the
collision, while the stern code of
rectitude laid down by man is soft
ened and rendered plant by the
gentler and more tender influence
of wOman's heaven-born charity.
In estimating, therefore, the relative
value of social methods, we shall
test them by their comparative
availability for all these purposes.
French society is the phase of life
selected for the present paper. In
describing this the writer has to
admit that he has no personal
acquaintance with the subject. He
has never lived in French society,
and has to rely upon the delinea-
tions of it to be made out from
French literature and the observa-
tions of English and American
writers who have had the oppOrtu-
mites not possessed by himself.
Fortunately, however, the social
life of France presents better facili-
ties for being 50 studied than that
of any other nation, for no literature
abounds so much in those memoirs
and letters which give an insight
into its manners and usageS. Its
prolific fiction, in the forms both of
drama and novel is almost exclus-
lively occupied with the fleeing
phases of modern life. and if ever
society was portrayed in literature,
it is certainly that of France.
Now if the fiction of French lit
erature is compared with that of
England, Germany or America its
most salient feature will be found to
be the absence Of that which is the
most abundant material for rO-
nance in the other three; namely,
the love passages Of young men and
women, with the hopes and fears,
obstacles and disappointments,
fondling and jealousy which keep
up the interest until all is brought
right by the happy marriage In the
last chapter. In the French novel |
or comedy of society the marriage
of the principal characters is gen
orally supposed 10 have taken place