Punch (16.1849)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

75

TWO OR THREE THEATRES AT PARIS.

'IF-one may read the history of a people's morals in
J its jokes, what a queer set of reflections the philo-
sophers of the twentieth century may make re-
garding the characters of our two countries in
perusing the waggeries published on one side and
the other! When the future inquirer shall take
up your volumes, or a bundle of French plays, and
contrast the performances of your booth with that
of the_ Parisian theatre, he won't fail to remark
how different they are, and what different objects
we admire or satirise. As for your morality, Sir, it
does not become me to compliment you on it before
your venerable face; but permit me to say, that there never were before
published in this world so many volumes that contained so much cause
lor laughing, and so little for blushing; so many jokes, and so little harm.
Why, Sir, say even that that modesty, which astonishes me more and more
<every time I regard you, is calcidated, and not a virtue naturally inherent
in you, that very fact would argue for the high sense of the public
.morality among us. We will _laugh in the conipany of our wives and
children ■ we will tolerate no indecorum ; we like that our matrons and
girls should be pure.

Excuse my blushes, Sir; but permit me to say that I have been
making a round of the little French theatres, and have come away
-amazed at the cynicism of people. Sir, there are certain laws of
morality (as believed by us at least) for which these people no more
-care than so many Otaheitans. They have been joking against marriage
<sver since writing began—a pretty man woidd you be, Mr. Pvnch, if
you were a Frenchman; and a pretty moral character would be the
present spotless wife of your affections, the chaste and immaculate
Judy !

After going_ to these theatres, seeing the houses all full, and hearing
■the laughter ringing through every one of them, one is puzzled to know
what the people respect at all, or what principle they do believe in.
They laugh at religion, they laugh at chastity, they laugh at royalty,
they laugh at the. Republic most pitilessly of all: when France, in the

Siece called the Foire aux Idees} says she is dying under nine hundred
octors, to each of whom she is paying a daily fee of five-and-twenty
■francs, there was a cheer of derision through the house ; the Communists
and their schemes were hooted with a still more hearty indignation;
there is a general smash and bankruptcy of faith ; and, what struck me
perhaps most as an instance of the amazing progress of the national
atheism, is to find that the theatre audiences have even got to laugh at
■military glory. They have a song in one of the little plays, which
announces that France and Co. have closed that branch of their
business ; that they wish to stay at home and be quiet, and so forth :
and, strange to say, even the cry against perfidious England has died
out; and the only word of abuse I read against our nation, was in a
volume of a novel by poor old Paul de Kock, who saluted the Lion with
:a little kick of his harmless old heels.

Is the end of time coming, Mr. Punch, or the end of Frenchmen ? and
•don't they believe, or love, or hate anything any more ? Sir, these funny
pieces at the plays frightened me more than the most blood-thirsty melo-
drama ever did, and inspired your humble servant with a melancholy
which is not to be elicited from the most profound tragedies. There is
something awful, infernal almost, I was going to say, in the gaiety with
which the personages of these satiric dramas were dancing and shrieking
-abeut among^ the tumbled ruins of ever so many ages and traditions. I
'hope we shall never have the air of God Save the King set to ribald words
amongst us—the mysteries of our religion, or any man's religion, made
"the subject of laughter, or of a worse sort of excitement. In the famous
piece of La Propriety' dest le Vol, we had the honour to see Adam and
Eve dance a polka, and sing a song quite appropriate to the costume in
which they figured. Everybody laughed and enjoyed it—neither Eve
nor the audience ever thought about being ashamed of themselves, and,
for my part, I looked with a vague anxiety up at the theatre roof, to see
that it was not falling in, and shall not be surprised to hear that Paris
goes the way of certain other cities some day. They will go on, this
pretty little painted population of Lorettes and Bayaderes, singing and
-dancing, laughing and feasting, fiddling and flirting, to the end, depend
•upon it. But enough of this theme : it is growing too serious—let us
drop the curtain.^ Sir, at the end of the lively and ingenious piece called
the Foire aux Idees, there descends a curtain, on which what is supposed
•to he a huge newspaper is painted, and which is a marvel of cynicism.

I have been to see a piece of a piece called the Mysteres de Londre--,
and most awful mysteries they are indeed. We little know what is
going on around and below us, and that London may be enveloped in a
vast murderous conspiracy, and that there may be a volcano under our
■very kitchens, which may blow us all to perdition any day. You perhaps
are not aware, Sir, that there lived in London, some three or four years
ago a young Grandee of Spain and Count of the Empire, the Marquis
of Bio Santo by name, who was received in the greatest society our
-oountey can boast of, and walked the streets of the metropolis with

large outlay, but not the smallest return.

The Irish are very ungrateful. Like the Bourbons, they will learn
nothing and they will forget nothing. They take all you give them, but
as for any return, you might as well expect to have your sovereign
back when once you nave parted with it to Joseph Ady. They are the
most ungrateful people that ever went a-begging. Give them what
you will, they always recur to past grievances, and ask for more. The
Irish disposition seems really to be constituted for taking everything,
but for-gicing nothing!

orders on his coat and white light pantaloons and a cocked hat. This
Mnrquis was an Irishman by birth, and not a mere idle votary of
pleasure, as you would suppose from his elegant personal appearance.
Under the mask of fashion and levity he hid a mighty design; which
was, to free his country from the intolerable tyranny of England. And
a3 England's distress is Ireland's opportunity, the Marquis had imagined
a vast conspiracy, which should plunge the former into the most
exquisite confusion and misery, in the midst of which his beloved Erin
might get her own. For this end his Lordslup had organised a
prodigious band of all the rogues, thieves, and discontented persons in
the metropolis, who were sworn into a mysterious affihation, the mem-
bers of which were called the " Gentlemen of the Night." Nor were
these gentlefolks of the lower sort merely—your Swell Mob, your Saint
Giles's Men, and vulgar cracksmen. Many of the principal merchants,
jewellers, lawyers, physicians, were sworn of the Society. The merchants
forged bank notes, and uttered the same ; thus poisoning the stream of
commerce in our great commercial city : the jewellers sold sham
diamonds to the Aristocracy, and led them on to ruin: the physicians
called in to visit their patients poisoned such as were enemies of the good
cause, by their artful prescriptions : the lawyers prevented the former
from being hanged: and the whole realm being plunged into anarchy
and dismay by these manoeuvres, it was evident that Ireland would
greatly profit. This astonishing Marquis, who was supreme chief of
the Society, thus had his spies and retainers everywhere. The police
was corrupted, the magistrature tampered with—Themis was bribed on
her very bench: and even the Beefeaters of the Queen (one shudders
as one thinks of this), were contaminated, and in the service of the
Association.

Numbers of lovely women of course were in love with the Marquis,
or otherwise subjugated by him, and the most, beautiful and innocent of
all was disguised as a Countess, and sent to Court on a Drawing-room
day, with a mission to steal the diamonds off the neck of Lady Brompton,
the special favourite of His Grace Prince Dimitri Tolstoy, the
Bussian Ambassador.

Sir, His Grace the Russian Ambassador had only lent these diamonds
to Lady B., that her Ladyship might sport them at the Drawing-room.
The jewels were really the property of the Prince's Imperial Master.
What, then, must have been His Excellency's rage when the brilliants
were stolen? The theft was committed in the most artful manner
Ladv Brompton came to Court, her train held up by her jockei-.
Suzanna (the Marquis's emissary) came to Court with her train
similarly borne by her page. The latter was an experienced pickpocket—
the pages were changed, the jewels were taken off Lady Brompton's
neck in the antechamber of the palace—and His Grace Prince
Tolstoy was in such a rage that he menaced war on the part of his
Government unless the stones were returned !

Beyond this point I confess, Sir, I did not go, for exhausted nature
would bear no more of the Mysteries of London, and I came away to
my hotel. But I wish you could have seen the Court of St. .lames,
the Beefeaters, the Life-Guards, the Heralds-of-Arms in their tabards
of the sixteenth century, and have heard the ushers on the stairs
shouting the names of the nobility as they walked into the presence of
the Sovereign! 1 caught those of the Countess of Derby, the Lady
Campbell, the Lord Somebody, and the Honourable Miss Trevor,
after whom the Archbishop of Canterbury came. 0, such an
Archbishop ! He had a velvet trencher cap profusely ornamented with
black fringe, and a dress something like our real and venerated prelates,
with the exception of the wig, which was far more curly and elegant;
and he walked by, making the sign of the Cross with his two fore-
ringers, and blessing the people.

I hear that the author ot this great work, M. Paul Feval,, known
for some time to the Uterature of his country as Sir Francis Trollope,
passed a whole week in London to make himself thoroughly acquainted
with our manners; and here, no doubt, he saw Countesses whose
trains were carried by jockeys ; Lords going to Court in full-bottomed
wigs ! and police magistrates in pobcemen's coats and oilskin hats, with
white kerseymere breeches and silk stockings to distinguish them from
the rank and file. How well the gentlemen of Bow Street would look
in it! I recommend it to the notice of Mr. Punch.

These, Sir, are all the plays which 1 have as yet been able to see in
this town, and I have the honour of reporting upon them accordingly.
Whatever they may do with other pieces, I don't think that our
dramatists will be disposed to steal these..