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[Illustration: MI LORD ANGLAIS AT MABILLE.

_He is smiling, he is splendid, he is full of graceful enjoyment; on
the table are a few of the beverages he admires; but above all he adores
the ease of the French ladies in the dance._]




THE

COCKAYNES IN PARIS

OR

"GONE ABROAD."

BY

BLANCHARD JERROLD.

[Illustration]

WITH SKETCHES BY

GUSTAVE DORÉ,

AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ENGLISH ABROAD FROM A FRENCH POINT OF
VIEW.




LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 & 75, PICCADILLY.

[_All Rights Reserved._]




PREFACE.


The story of the Cockaynes was written some years ago,--in the days when
Paris was at her best and brightest; and the English quarter was
crowded; and the Emperor was at St. Cloud; and France appeared destined
to become the wealthiest and strongest country in the world.

Where the Cockaynes carried their guide-books and opera-glasses, and
fell into raptures at every footstep, there are dismal ruins now. The
Vendôme Column is a stump, wreathed with a gigantic _immortelle_, and
capped with the tri-color. The Hall of the Marshals is a black hole.
Those noble rooms in which the first magistrate of the city of
Boulevards gave welcome to crowds of English guests, are destroyed. In
the name of Liberty some of the most precious art-work of modern days
has been fired. The Communists' defiling fingers have passed over the
canvas of Ingrès. Auber and Dumas have gone from the scene in the
saddest hour of their country's history. The Anglo-French alliance--that
surest rock of enduring peace--has been rent asunder, through the
timorous hesitation of English ministers, and the hardly disguised
Bourbon sympathies of English society. We are not welcome now in Paris,
as we were when I followed in the wake of the prying Cockaynes. My old
concierge is very cold in his greeting, and carries my valise to my
rooms sulkily. Jerome, my particular waiter at the Grand Café, no longer
deigns to discuss the news of the day with me. Good Monsieur Giraudet,
who could suggest the happiest little _menus_, when I went to his
admirable restaurant, and who kept the _Rappel_ for me, now bows
silently and sends an underling to see what the Englishman requires.

It is a sad, and a woful change; and one of ominous import for our
children. Most woful to those of my countrymen who, like the reader's
humble servant, have passed a happy half-score of years in the
delightful society and the incomparable capital of the French people.

BLANCHARD JERROLD.

RUE DE ROME, PARIS,
_July_, 1871.


[Illustration]




CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I. MRS. ROWE'S 13

II. HE'S HERE AGAIN! 30

III. MRS. ROWE'S COMPANY 39

IV. THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS 45

V. THE COCKAYNE FAMILY 62

VI. A "GRANDE OCCASION" 91

VII. OUR FOOLISH COUNTRYWOMEN 104

VIII. "OH, YES!" AND "ALL RIGHT!" 111

IX. MISS CARRIE COCKAYNE TO MISS SHARP 122

X. "THE PEOPLE OF THE HOUSE" 129

XI. MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLERS 140

XII. MRS. DAKER 154

XIII. AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER 174

XIV. THE CASTAWAY 192

XV. THE FIRST TO BE MARRIED 210

XVI. GATHERING A FEW THREADS 231


[Illustration: MAMMA ANGLAISE. (_A French design._)]




ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
MY LORD ANGLAIS AT MABILLE Frontispiece

CROSSING THE CHANNEL--A SMOOTH PASSAGE 13

CROSSING THE CHANNEL--RATHER SQUALLY 14

ROBINSON CRUSOE AND FRIDAY 16

PAPA AND THE DEAR BOYS 18

THE DOWAGER AND TALL FOOTMAN 20

ON THE BOULEVARDS 42

A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES" 46

BEAUTY AND THE B---- 68

PALAIS DU LOUVRE.--THE ROAD TO THE BOIS 72

MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG 77

THE INFLEXIBLE "MEESSES ANGLAISES" 105

ENGLISH VISITORS TO THE CLOSERIE DE LILAS--SHOCKING!! 109

SMITH BRINGS HIS ALPENSTOCK 114

JONES ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE 118

FRENCH RECOLLECTION OF MEESS TAKING HER BATH 125

THE BRAVE MEESS AMONG THE BILLOWS HOLDING ON
BY THE TAIL OF HER NEWFOUNDLAND 125

VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH STOCK.--COMPATRIOTS
MEETING IN THE FRENCH EXHIBITION 126

A PIC-NIC AT ENGHIEN 147

EXCURSIONISTS AND EMIGRANTS 152

BOIS DE BOULOGNE 164

[Illustration: CROSSING THE CHANNEL--A SMOOTH PASSAGE]




THE

COCKAYNES IN PARIS.




CHAPTER I.

MRS. ROWE'S.


The story I have to tell is disjointed. I throw it out as I picked it
up. My duties, the nature of which is neither here nor there, have
borne me to various parts of Europe. I am a man, not with an
establishment--but with two portmanteaus. I have two hats in Paris and
two in London always. I have seen everything in both cities, and like
Paris, on the whole, best. There are many reasons, it seems to me, why
an Englishman who has the tastes of a duke and the means of a half-pay
major, should prefer the banks of the Seine to those of the Thames--even
with the new Embankment. Everybody affects a distinct and deep
knowledge of Paris in these times; and most people do know how to get
the dearest dinner Bignon can supply for their money; and to secure the
apartments which are let by the people of the West whom nature has
provided with an infinitesimal quantity of conscience. But there are now
crowds of English men and women who know their Paris well; men who never
dine in the restaurant of the stranger, and women who are equal to a
controversy with a French cook. These sons and daughters of Albion who
have transplanted themselves to French soil, can show good and true
reasons why they prefer the French to the English life. The wearying
comparative estimates of household expenses in Westbournia, and
household expenses in the Faubourg St. Honoré! One of the disadvantages
of living in Paris is the constant contact with the odious atmosphere of
comparisons.

"Pray, sir--you have been in London lately--what did you pay for veal
cutlet?"

[Illustration: CROSSING THE CHANNEL--RATHER SQUALLY.]

The new arrivals are the keenest torments. "In London, where I have kept
house for over twenty years, and have had to endure every conceivable
development of servants' extortion, no cook ever demanded a supply of
white aprons yet." You explain for the hundredth time that it is the
custom in Paris. There are people who believe Kensington is the domestic
model of the civilized world, and travel only to prove at every stage
how far the rest of the universe is behind that favoured spot. He who
desires to see how narrow his countrymen and countrywomen can be abroad,
and how completely the mass of British travellers lay themselves open to
the charge of insularity, and an overweening estimate of themselves and
their native customs, should spend a few weeks in a Paris
boarding-house, somewhere in the Faubourg St. Honoré--if he would have
the full aroma of British conceit. The most surprising feature of the
English quarter of the French capital is the eccentricity of the English
visitors, as it strikes their own countrymen. I cannot find it in me to
blame Gallican caricaturists. The statuettes which enliven the bronze
shops; the gaunt figures which are in the chocolate establishments; the
prints in the windows under the Rivoli colonnade; the monsters with
fangs, red hair, and Glengarry caps, of Cham, and Doré, and Bertall, and
the female sticks with ringlets who pass in the terra-cotta show of the
Palais Royal for our countrywomen, have long ago ceased to warm my
indignation. All I can say now is, that the artists and modellers have
not travelled. They have studied the strange British apparitions which
disfigure the Boulevard des Italiens in the autumn, their knowledge of
our race is limited to the unfortunate selection of specimens who strut
about their streets, and--according to their light--they are not guilty
of outrageous exaggeration. I venture to assert that an Englishman will
meet more unpleasant samples of his countrymen and countrywomen in an
August day's walk in Paris, than he will come across during a month in
London. To begin with, we English treat Paris as though it were a back
garden, in which a person may lounge in his old clothes, or indulge his
fancy for the ugly and slovenly. Why, on broiling days, men and women
should sally forth from their hotel with a travelling-bag and an
opera-glass slung about their shoulders, passes my comprehension.
Conceive the condition of mind of that man who imagines that he is an
impressive presence when he is patrolling the Rue de la Paix with an
alpenstock in his hand!