Four Years in France

"This is a very important step, sir; no doubt you have given it due consideration." I gave a succinct account of my studies and motives. "May I ask, have you consulted your family and friends?" – "My parents are not living: I am their only surviving child. For my friends, I know beforehand what they would say." – "Are you aware of all the civil consequences? The penal laws are repealed; but you will lose your état civil." I bowed my head. "As you are in orders of the church of England, your conversion will excite more than ordinary surprise, and (I say it only to warn you,) ill-will against you." – "I trust not; people are sufficiently indifferent about such matters." – "Perhaps you will lose some ecclesiastical benefice?" – "I have proceeded no further than deacon's orders, and therefore have no preferment." – "But your expectations?" – "I must live without them."

After a little more probing of this sort, and a short pause, – "There is a business which is very distressing to those who are not used to it, as it is very consoling to those who are; I mean confession: we all go to confession; I, who am bishop, – the pope himself. You know, I presume, that you must begin by that?" – "I come to beg of your lordship to appoint me a priest." After a little consideration, "Would you wish your priest to be an old man or a young one?" – "My lord, you know your subjects better than I do: I leave the choice to you: his age is to me a matter of indifference." – "Many people think otherwise: however, if you will be pleased to call here to-morrow at this hour, I will introduce him to you." I took my leave without a genuflexion, but with a strong sentiment of respect and kindness for this worthy, amiable, old man.

The next day I found, in Castle Street, the Reverend Mr. Hodgson, one of the priests of the chapel in St. George's Fields. Of him, as I do not know but that he is still living, I shall only say, that I had every reason to be pleased and satisfied with his conduct and his counsels, and that I think of him with gratitude. I passed with him a part of every morning of the following week, except Sunday and Thursday, at his house near the chapel; and in this chapel of St. George, on the 26th of May, the feast of St. Augustin, apostle of England, was admitted into the one fold, under the protection, as I humbly hope, of the one Shepherd.

Before Mr. Hodgson took me to the altar, where I was to read, for this purpose, the creed of Pope Pius V, he inquired how baptism was administered in the Church of England. I told him, by aspersion. He said, "We have reason to believe that baptism is given with you sometimes very carelessly, and it is a rule to baptise conditionally every convert under fifty years of age." – "How do you administer it?" – "By affusion; and the rule is, that there be so much water ut gutta guttam sequatur." – "That was very probably not the case in my baptism." – "There are other ceremonies, not of the essence of the sacrament, which I shall omit." He added, "Do not suppose that I question the validity of your baptism, if it were duly performed. Had you been a Quaker – " Even the grave circumstances in which I found myself did not repress a slight movement of offended pride, at its being supposed possible that I could have been a Quaker. "Had you been a Quaker, I should have been sure that you were not baptized, and should not even have received your confession." – "But you do not allow the orders of the Anglican church?" – "True: but even lay persons are not only permitted, but enjoined to administer baptism, as an act of Christian charity, in case of necessity." Another distraction, as the French call it. Not having been used to belong to a tolerated and despised sect, I had felt my bile rise at the word Quaker; and now memory recalled the interesting scene in the "Gerusalemme Liberata," the helmet, the fountain, Tancred baptizing the dying Clorinda. I kneeled down, however, and the priest poured water on my head, repeating at the same time, "Si non es baptizatus, Henrice, ego te baptizo in nomine," &c. I then made my profession of catholic faith, and was thus reconciled to the church. The next morning I received the blessed Eucharist from the hands of the same priest.

It was Whitsunday: Bishop Douglass was to give confirmation in the chapel of Virginia Street. It was plain, for a reason above-stated, that I had not been confirmed. After breakfast, I walked with Mr. Hodgson over London Bridge, towards Ratcliffe Highway. It is usual for the person confirmed, to be addressed by the bishop, either by his name of baptism, or any other at his choice: I took the name of John, in honour of John, surnamed Chrysostom, to whom, as having removed the great obstacle in limine, I owed the beginning of my conversion. May the good work be aided by his prayers!

I have made my apology to the protestants of England, especially to those with whom I was engaged, whose reform was conducted by the civil power, who are the national church. But, that a church is national is inconclusive in argument: a nation may be in possession of truth, but truth is not national; and civil power enters for nothing into a question of religious truth. But justice is civil truth, the genuine attribute, the appropriate ornament, the best defence of civil power. Let the civil power cease to deprive of their civil rights those who adhere to that religion which the same civil power protected, encouraged, and maintained, from the time of Ethelbert of Kent, down to the reign of the boy king, Edward the Sixth.

The religion of the people of Scotland is the established religion of Scotland: a great principle is here recognised: truth is out of the question; for more than one religion cannot be true. Let the principle be applied to Ireland: the people of that country still adhere to the ancient faith; let it be established there for them: to make them good subjects it is only necessary to treat them as such. Men quarrel not about religion; there is nothing about which they are more indifferent, when the state does not quarrel with them about it; and every statesman, every reader of history, knows that, for the uses of the state, the catholic religion is at least as good as any other.

Extravagant as this project of establishing the catholic religion in Ireland will seem to those who "like to hear reason when they are determined, because then reason can do no harm;" – ridiculous, and even insolent as it will appear to the maintainers of protestant ascendency, – it is not my project, nor will I take on myself the undivided responsibility of it. It is the proposition of a much wiser man.

When I lived at Lincoln, after the death of my mother, the celebrated William Paley was sub-dean of the cathedral: I was in the habit of daily and familiar intercourse with him. One day, before one of those dinners which are given to the residentiary in a course as regular as that of the dinners of the cabinet-ministers, the company was standing in a circle round the fire; I stood next to Paley. He, almost pushing me out of the circle by a certain turn of his shoulder, to signify that what he was about to say would not be said out of complaisance to me as a catholic, while, at the same time he looked over his other shoulder to assure himself that I was listening, – Paley, I say, began to assert the justice, the expediency, and the utility of establishing by law in Ireland the catholic worship, defending the measure by the arguments, and almost in the words set down by me; ending, by declaring himself persuaded that the catholic clergy of Ireland would be well contented when they were well paid, and the catholic population would, in that supposed case, be as good subjects as they are every where else under the same circumstances.

The greater part of Poland is subject to a schismatic; Silesia to a Lutheran; the Low Countries, formerly Austrian, to a Calvinist: the sovereigns of those several countries have not yet taken away the ecclesiastical revenues from the catholic clergy, nor their civil rights from the catholic people.

Having made out a case, as I express myself above, I mention several topics on which, for brevity's sake, I forbear to enlarge. I beg to be understood as having a due sense of the importance of these objects, of each in its kind, and as entertaining in regard to them the opinion held by the catholic church. I say this the rather, because many protestants, after talking with me on religion, have found me, as they said, so reasonable, that they would not believe that I was really and truly a papist. The unreasonableness of the catholic faith exists only in the imagination of the protestants, who, in general, know nothing about it. One of them asked me why the prayers were translated into Latin: I answered, that the pope had ordered them to be subtracted in this manner from the curiosity of the good people of – , naming the town nearest the country residence of my interrogator. Another, a little perplexed on the subject of unity, asked, "What is the catholic church?" as an answer, I asked, "What is the church of England?" An Anglican clergyman put the question, "What is the mass?" I told him it was what he had engaged to oppose. He was a worthy, quiet man, and did not want to oppose any thing.

In short, it is only from political causes that opposition, alienation, or dispute about this matter arise. Foreigners are astonished that a nation, so wise, so just, so tolerant as the English, should disqualify one-third of its people from serving the state, and perpetuate animosities which are laid at rest in every other country in Europe. The Baron – was the only man in France who saw through the whole matter at once: "You have your interests of the Reformation, as we have ours of the revolution."

It is a matter in which I have no interest but that of truth. I have given not as a polemic, but as a humble narrator, an account of my motives and reasons for adopting as truth that which has been believed as such by the bulk and great majority of the Christian world in all nations and in all ages, from the foundation of Christianity. I have done this in the hope of removing prepossessions, and to persuade the reader that he may accompany me abroad without any apprehension that I shall enter into controversy. Some extraordinary events are related in my narrative, which a regard for truth has alone induced me to set down, at the risk of being considered as enthusiastic or superstitious. Against such an interpretation, formed on a view of part only of this work, I am not afraid to appeal to the judgment of those who will take the pains to read and consider the whole.

Ad Clari Montem.Clermont, en Auvergne. Clermont-Ferrand, Puy de Dôme.21st March, 1826.

CHAP. I

The English are assuredly a most enterprising and restless people: they form establishments at the Antipodes, and plant colonies on the banks of the Loire, in an enemy's country, after a war of twenty years: their merchant-vessels cover the seas, and their opulent and unoccupied gentry inundate the continent of Europe: their hardy mariners search out the north-west passage, and the idle and curious among them strive, with no less difficulty, to discover lakes, mountains, and cascades, unvisited by former adventurers,

– qua nulla priorumorbita. – —

English reading-rooms are set up at Tours and in other great towns; English seminaries of education are founded in France, Switzerland, and Italy; and English horse-races are exhibited at Naples. Fox-hunters and fox-hounds penetrate to covers where even the foxes never saw them before; where, coming from their holes, they gaze quietly upon them; where there is no sport, because no pursuit; no pursuit, because no flight; no flight, because no fear; no fear, because no experience of former enmity.

The French calculated, with some degree of satisfaction, that, during the occupation of their frontier by the army of observation, the English spent as much money at Paris as was contributed by themselves to the support of that army. At Florence, towards the end of the year 1822, I was informed by good authority, that there were twelve thousand foreigners in the city, of whom seven thousand were English.

By a migration, very much resembling the flight of birds of passage, they usually leave their country in the spring, and after a few weeks at Paris, set off to pass the summer in Switzerland, arrive in Italy in the autumn, cross the Apennines before the winter; the beginning of which season they spend at Florence: they go to Rome for the Carnival, to Naples for a month or five weeks of Lent, return to Rome for the holy week, and then, much edified and instructed, they find their way home, during the ensuing summer, through France or Germany. I asked Lady A. at Rome, when she went to Naples: "I don't know; – when the others go: " so much is this route recognised as a matter of course.

The route is in truth admirably well traced, and eighteen months might thus be passed to great advantage by a well-prepared and impartial traveller. Rarely however are these English sufficiently acquainted with the languages of the countries through which they pass, to be able to sustain a conversation: they carry with them their insular prejudices, their pride of wealth, their unpliant manners, their attachment to their own customs, amusements, and cookery: though treated with indulgence and even civil attentions by the governments of the continent, they are suffered, rather than received by the inhabitants. For their choice of the objects of curiosity they visit, and the opinion to be formed upon them, they are at the mercy of guides and ciceroni: for society, they are guided by instinct, and reduced by necessity, to herd together. An Italian lady at Florence opened her salon for the reception of a mixed company of Florentines and English: the English occupied, first one corner, and then a whole side, of the salon, their numbers increasing, but the chasm between them and the natives still remaining. The lady, fatigued with doing the honours of her house to two separate companies on the same evenings, and disgusted with these appearances of distrust and resiliency, invented some decent pretext for receiving no more.

Observing this propensity in the English to associate with each other, foreigners seem persuaded that Yorick alone did not quit England to seek Englishmen. I was asked if I had been at Tours, because there were so many of my countrymen there. "My countrymen," said I, "choose well; Touraine is said to be the garden of France." My interlocutor recurred to the idea with which he had first proposed the question. "Il y a là tant de vos compatriotes." – "Il y en a encore plus en Angleterre:"3 and Sterne's argument prevailed.

Many persons of small incomes; many who wish to retrench their expenses, but are ashamed of doing so at home; some for the purpose of having wine and fruit at a cheaper rate; and some for the sake of a better climate, – pass several years abroad, fixed at the place of their first choice, or travelling but little, and at great intervals of time. The economical residents abroad seldom proceed further from home than to the towns near the southern shore of the channel, and to those on the banks of the Loire. Some parents take their children abroad to enable them to acquire the use of those living languages, which, though very generally taught, are very rarely learned in England. Excluded from the greater part of the continent of Europe during twenty years of revolution and of war, English travellers had been obliged to waste their activity in voyages to the western isles of Scotland, or in picturesque tours to the Giant's Causeway, or the Lake of Killarney: some cooled their ardour amid the snows of Scandinavia, and others roused their classical enthusiasm by the view of Salamis and Thermopylæ: some measured the Pyramids of Egypt, others performed pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The peace of Amiens opened to them, though but for a few short months, the road to Paris, and the gallery of the Louvre, enriched with the spoils of nations.

It is not forgotten how, on the rupture of that peace, they were arrested, throughout the whole extent of the French republic and its dependencies, and detained as prisoners of war, in reprisal of the seizure of French ships and citizens throughout the maritime empire of England: succeeding English travellers, twelve years later, remembered it well: the crowds, again attracted to Paris on the restoration of the king, fled in all directions on the landing of Napoleon from Elba. "Pourquoi me fuient-ils?" said he: "je ne me répète pas."4

Perhaps the outlawry fulminated against him by the congress of Vienna would have been as good a reason for doing again what he had done before, as the sweeping the seas without declaration of war was alleged to be on the former occasion: perhaps he regretted the failure of a second opportunity of retorting on England, in this way, the hatred and insult with which he had ever been treated by its government. At any rate, the distrust of the English travellers was founded on experience, and the reproach conveyed in this manifestation of it was answered by an ingenious, spirited, and in some sort conciliatory pleasantry.

After the battle of Waterloo, the travellers, some of whom had retired no further than to the Low Countries, followed in the train of the victorious, and invading armies: all were impatient to return to Paris; in truth their impatience was not without good cause. All the monuments of the fine arts were now to be dispersed: the fruits of victory deposited at Paris were soon to be restored to their former owners.

It was evidently the interest of England, that this superb collection should remain within three days journey of London; but the principle "suum cuique" forbad it. Yet the republic of Genoa had the same right to its ancient constitution as to the far-famed emerald dish, which I saw in the Hotel de Ville at Genoa, with a piece broken out of it. The union of the littoral to the dominion of Sardinia is an advantage to both parties: but then what becomes of the principle which dictated the restitution of the emerald dish?

Notwithstanding the necessity thus imposed on our travellers of wandering all over Europe in search of objects once assembled near their own doors, – the nations of the continent are not too much inclined to believe in the bonhommie of English politicians; nor indeed can it be certainly known how far their good will was an ingredient in this, so called, act of justice.

Since the second restoration of the King of France, peace, and the visits of the English to the countries to which ingress is no longer prohibited, have continued without interruption: residence abroad has assumed an appearance of stability and design. An outcry has been raised in England against these emigrations, and it has been proposed to tax absentees; a measure which, in its application to those who take a journey for a few months, would be at once vexatious and ridiculous, and in its operation on those who retire abroad on account of contracted income, would be severe and unproductive; and which could, in neither case, be effected without a partial income-tax. The number of travellers and residents abroad, though great, has been much exaggerated: wherever exact inquiry has been made, it has turned out to be less than was reported. I could not hear of more than six or eight English families resident by the year in each of the three great towns of Italy, Florence, Rome, and Naples.

The French, persuaded that society can no where else be so well enjoyed as in France, feel little inclination to travel. The Italians, satisfied that all that is best worth beholding both in art and nature is to be found on their side of the Alps, seldom take the trouble of passing that barrier. I speak of the same class of persons, in both nations, as that in which the English traveller is to be found, – the rich and idle; for the poorer French and Italians are more adventurous, and more frequently leave their own country to gain their living abroad, than those of the lower condition of life in our sea-girt isle. I have therefore frequently been called upon to explain the phenomenon of the British spirit of excursion. My friends at Avignon could hardly believe that curiosity, the desire of instruction, the purpose of employing usefully a portion of time which would otherwise be employed in the ordinary routine of life, were motives sufficient for incurring the expense, trouble, and risk of long journeys: the expense, they allowed, might be a consideration of no importance to a people so rich as the English; besides, they travelled cheaper in France than in England; yet it would cost still less to stay at home: the defiance of fatigue and danger were very gravely accounted for by the supposition of something peculiar to the English character, a certain restlessness and locomotive propensity, which dislodged them from the centre of repose, and impelled them to wander in wide and extravagant orbits. The astonishment of the Avignonais was excessive, when a lady, who intended to pass some years in the south of France, coming to visit my family, and changing her purpose, returned to Paris within a fortnight. "Les Anglois font tout ce qu'ils veulent: un voyage de trois cents lieues pour une visite de quinze jours."5 Like the rustic in the fable, they waited to see the end of this current of travellers; and I could hardly obtain credit when I assured them that, though some extraordinary degree of expansion was to be expected after twenty years compression, yet when the present generation should cease, the succeeding one would still supply the stream.

May this stream still hold on in an equal and uninterrupted course; may no wars arrest it; no jealousies divert it; no disgusts dry up its source! The division of mankind into nations is the great calamity of the human race. War, with all its horrors, and all its crimes, (for crimes there must be; since no war can be just on both sides, and may on both sides be unjust,) war, with all its inflictions, is the first great evil arising from this separation of those who ought, as creatures and sons of the same Creator and Father, to be "a band of brothers." From war results that other great evil, seen in the administration of the internal concerns of each country; the government being of necessity entrusted, for the defence of the people, with the power of the sword, the people are governed by the sword of power. Hostile prejudices, the strife of interests ill understood, false judgments, and the jargon of languages mutually unintelligible, fears, suspicions, and precautions perpetuate the evil of disunion when the work of havoc and desolation is suspended. Short and feverish are the periods of suspension: they are put out to inestimable profit when the means are employed of making the several peoples of the earth better known to each other, of softening asperities, removing misunderstandings, and conciliating mutual good-will.

Such ought to be, over and above the peculiar advantage and pleasure of each individual traveller, the object of foreign travel. To the furtherance of this object it is hoped that this account of a long residence in France and Italy may in some slight degree contribute: it is written without prepossession, in good-will towards the people I have visited, in the conviction that human nature, though not virtuous, is in all countries capable of, and inclined to virtue. For variety of usages, which makes men appear more alien from each other than they really are, – either it regards things indifferent, or there exists a good reason for it, which observation enables us to discover. To me in truth this difference in European customs appears so slight, that, were it not for the language, I could easily forget that I was abroad. "Omne solum forti patria: " but it requires still more fortitude to have no patria at all, as is the case of an English catholic: for political rights are included in the idea of patria.

Having lived between three and four months in Paris, and between three and four years in the south of France with my family, I have made observations, which I hope may be useful to those who have the same plan of foreign residence or travel, and not less interesting, both to them, and to those who are content with their English home, than the remarks of a more hasty tourist. The care of a household and of the education of children brings the head of a family to the knowledge of many circumstances and combinations which escape the notice of the single traveller; and intercourse with the society of a place during a sojourn gives some insight into the character, some perception of the manners and opinions of a people.