The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-12-25

attention as he travels through our
country, everybody will help him, and
if he appears in Paris armed with letters
of Introduction, he will be made well
come at social gatherings; parties may
be given in his honor perhaps; but, go
where he may throughout the country,
he will not have chance of penetrating
into the inner family circle. The home
life of the bulk of the people will remain
a closed letter for him.
On the other hand, modern literature
is of little or no use in the case either,
for most of our novelists do not describe
every day life They describe the excep-
ton. A picture of middle class life
that is to say, the existence by the largest
part of the community-is too peaceful,
uneventful, humdrum if you will, to at
tract the novel writer or to please the
novel reader. Our manners debar him
from drawing scenes from the birth and
growth of the love that ends in matri-
mony-romance only begins after the
marriage ceremony is overland the
French novelist turns too often to the
portrayal OF Illicit love.
Because he does so is no reason for in
ferring that this kind of love is more
common in France than elsewhere. A
Balzac may charm with pictures of COM
monplace people and their doing; but to
the ordinary novel writing pen a moving
tale of passion is necessity. So, rare
examples of unholy passion are seized
upon as groundwork for much French
fiction, and the foreigner reads and ex-
claims:
This is picture of French lifer"
But it is not.
The foreigner runs away with the idea
that he knows us; but he does not, and
his criticisms on us, OF which he is so
lavish, are worthless.
The best critics France has had have
been Frenchmen. 1t is to them that we
must turn for true portraits of the
French
But to return to our foreign critics.
| was not greatly surprised, on coming
to America, to hear that home life hard
ly existed in France. l had heard that
before. And the overpowering reason
advanced to prove this statement was
that time honored Anglo-Saxon "Chest-
NUT" The French language has no
equivalent for the English word home.
How glib is the criticism of the ignor-
ant!
To feel the whole meaning of those
sweet words, chez sol, chez nous, one
must know the language they form part
of. HThey call up in French hearts all
the tender feelings evoked by the word
home in the Anglo-Saxon breast.
How many English or American peo-
pie have an inkling of their value?
Do they care to know that some hun
dred years back the French used to say
en- chez from the Latin in casa, at home),
and that the word chez was a noun?
That later on they took to adding pro-
noun, saying, for example, en- chez nous;
and that the people, installing the word
chez for proposition, because it was al
ways followed by noun or a pronoun,
suppressed the en-, SO that now the French
language has lost noun for home, but
has kept word, chez, which to this very
day has all its significance? What an
idea of snugness, happiness, is conveyed
by the little sentence, restons chez nous,
on the lips of a young couple, though
their chez nous may but represent the
most modest of abodes! What delight
full title chez nous would be for little
volume containing sketches of the life of
happy married couple!
Home life unknown in France! Why,
the mistake is one of the most glaring
ever made. There is no more home low
ing, home abiding creature on earth than
the Frenchman.
The very narrowness of the French is
the result of their contentment with
home; for they are narrow, it must be adj
mitted, provincial to the highest degree
Yes, the French are essentially home
loving. And their morality, so often i'm
pugned by ignorant critics, who find it
easier to repeat idle nonsense than to
study for themselves, will bear favorable
comparison with that of any nation, in
Guiding the look-how-good-I-am Great
Britain. Of this l am convinced from
the depths of my soul.
But we are happy, and care not jot
what impression we make. You will
never hear a Frenchman ask foreigner:
"Eow, what do you think of us?"
We never trouble to show our best
side to the foreigner. This is what mis-
leads completely SO many outsiders. In
France, the vice that there is, is on the
surface for every one to see. 1t is all
open to every locker on; there is very
little hidden. What there is, that you
see. No slightest effort is made to hide
defects. In comes the Englishman or
the American, and forgetting the care
fully hidden vice which exists, and with
a vengeance, in his own great towns,
cries out upon the immortality of Paris,
l will go so far as to say that, in France,
there is not even SO much vice as there
appears to be.
Let me explain myself.
Far from attempting to hide our faults,
we, as matter of fact, often make show
of those we have not. The Frenchman
is the braggart of vice. If you say to an
Englishman: 81 know you are virtuous
man," he will think you only give him
his due. If you were to pay the same
compliment to a Frenchman he would
resent it. Like the Anglomaniacs repre-
sented in that charming American COM
edy by Mr.. Bronson Howard, "The Hen
rietta," leach fellow" in France, wants
every other fellow to believe that he is q
devil of fellow-but he isn't"
Reduced to literature for means of
knowing something of the real French