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FRENCH WAYS
AND THEIR MEANING
FRENCH WAYS
AND THEIR MEANING
BY
EDITH WHARTON
AUTHOR OF "THE REEF," "SUMMER," "THE MARNE" AND
"THE HOUSE OF MIRTH"
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
This book is essentially a desultory book, the result of intermittentobservation, and often, no doubt, of rash assumption. Having beenwritten in Paris, at odd moments, during the last two years of the war,it could hardly be more than a series of disjointed notes; and theexcuse for its publication lies in the fact that the very conditionswhich made more consecutive work impossible also gave unprecedentedopportunities for quick notation.
The world since 1914 has been like a house on fire. All the lodgers areon the stairs, in dishabille. Their doors are swinging wide, and onegets glimpses of their furniture, revelations of their habits, andwhiffs of their cooking, that a life-time of ordinary intercourse wouldnot offer. Superficial differences vanish, and so (how much oftener) dosuperficial resemblances; while deep [Pg vi]unsuspected similarities anddisagreements, deep common attractions and repulsions, declarethemselves. It is of these fundamental substances that the new linkbetween France and America is made, and some reasons for the strength ofthe link ought to be discoverable in the suddenly bared depths of theFrench heart.
There are two ways of judging a foreign people: at first sight,impressionistically, in the manner of the passing traveller; or afterresidence among them, "soberly, advisedly," and with all the vainprecautions enjoined in another grave contingency.
Of the two ways, the first is, even in ordinary times, often the mostfruitful. The observer, if he has eyes and an imagination, will bestruck first by the superficial dissemblances, and they will give hispicture the sharp suggest