THE “LITTLE FRENCH BOURGEOISES.”

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 11051, 1 September 1896, Page 2

THE “LITTLE FRENCH BOURGEOISES.”

(St James’s Budget.)

Rash English and American women are generally anxious, when they come to Paris, to enter French families as boarders instead of contenting themselves with the safer asylum of hotel or boarding-house. The plan does not work too successfully even in England, where the women are considerably less grasping, less sordid in their domestic ethics, and less exorbitant in their claims upon their boarder's purse. But if, on the one hand, the French bourgeoisie, little and great, is infinitely less immoral than French romancers would lead us to suppose, on the other it is more

INCREDIBLY SELFISH AND MEAN. In the abstract thrift is an admirable virtue ; but, carried to such lengths as the Frenchwoman carries it, the virtue degenerates into a very squalid and repulsive vice. Women of the Anglo-Saxon races, nurtured in some kind pf reasonable domestic comfort, accustomed to a plentiful, if sober, fare, prepare for themselves some very startling experiences whenever they make this reckless plunge into what they call French home life. They should be warned, and content themselves with the promiscuous domesticity of the honestly commercial roof. Here a business reputation has to be maintained ; competition with others compels honest dealing and regular prices ; all is above board, and you have the right to make your conditions and state your grievances. If your are plundered, you are PLUNDERED IN THE DIRECT WAT OP TRADE, and you can resort to such devices as you may elect to protect yourself or transfer yourself to the rival establishment on the

opposite side of the way. _ You hurt no private feelings in letting it be seen that you fear a tendency to get. the better’ _ of you, since the tug of war between alien interests is all in the natural way of business. Not so in your dealings with family who takes the stranger “ in ” in the reverse of the Biblical fashion. The servant! is despatched twice a week to the market,gand buys the cheapest and worst of everything in the smallest possible quantities. Sorrel and watercress, varied by wet uneatable potatoes vilely cooked, or the most unappetising of cauliflowers boiled in water, will constitute your vegetable diet forj months—only one of these delicacies, lien entendu, at the time.

PUTRID CAMEMBERT, picked up'somewhere at half-price, will come to table twice a day without change or respite until the last ill-smelling morsel has been consumed,- and the same dish of stewed prunes, instead of going to the kitchen after the first dinner, will make four separate appearances on the same plate, each time in its half-consumed state more disgusting than the last. As for the bourgeois soup, it is not a thing to be described by the uninitiated, and it is certainly not meant for the delicate palate. It tastes like hot water in which quantities of cabbages have been boiled. More frequently than not the sole dish of meat will consist of the meat that has been used in the making of this soup. The Spanish puchero , made of chicken, sausages, smoked bacon, chick pease, carrots, onions, turnips and beef, is an excellent dish, substantial and tasty. But the bourgeois pot-au-feu, as eaten by

THE FLEECED STRANGER in a private French family, is insipid stuff for pigs. A lump of stringy meat decorated with a carrot is not exactly a dish to boast of. Nothing follows but the camembert and the prunes or some decayed figs, the refuse of Potin’s cases. In Rosny’s powerful book, “ Imperieuse Bonte,” he shows up this adamantine hardness of the little French bourgeois. They detest to give; in fact, I imagine giving to be an impossibility with them. They hate to spend; They hate to cook enough, and their fear of waste brings on parsimony to the verge of disease. They screw and save each sou, and cheat, when they can, remorselessly.