One Would Imagine They Did
Not Feel The Burning Reflexion From The White Sand, Which In
Summer Is Almost Intolerable.
In the character of the French, considered as a people, there are
undoubtedly many circumstances truly ridiculous.
You know the
fashionable people, who go a hunting, are equipped with their
jack boots, bag wigs, swords and pistols: but I saw the other day
a scene still more grotesque. On the road to Choissi, a fiacre,
or hackney-coach, stopped, and out came five or six men, armed
with musquets, who took post, each behind a separate tree. I
asked our servant who they were imagining they might be archers,
or footpads of justice, in pursuit of some malefactor. But guess
my surprise, when the fellow told me, they were gentlemen a la
chasse. They were in fact come out from Paris, in this equipage,
to take the diversion of hare-hunting; that is, of shooting from
behind a tree at the hares that chanced to pass. Indeed, if they
had nothing more in view, but to destroy the game, this was a
very effectual method; for the hares are in such plenty in this
neighbourhood, that I have seen a dozen together, in the same
field. I think this way of hunting, in a coach or chariot, might
be properly adopted at London, in favour of those aldermen of the
city, who are too unwieldy to follow the hounds a horseback.
The French, however, with all their absurdities, preserve a
certain ascendancy over us, which is very disgraceful to our
nation; and this appears in nothing more than in the article of
dress. We are contented to be thought their apes in fashion; but,
in fact, we are slaves to their taylors, mantua-makers, barbers,
and other tradesmen. One would be apt to imagine that our own
tradesmen had joined them in a combination against us. When the
natives of France come to London, they appear in all public
places, with cloaths made according to the fashion of their own
country, and this fashion is generally admired by the English.
Why, therefore, don't we follow it implicitly? No, we pique
ourselves upon a most ridiculous deviation from the very modes we
admire, and please ourselves with thinking this deviation is a
mark of our spirit and liberty. But, we have not spirit enough to
persist in this deviation, when we visit their country:
otherwise, perhaps, they would come to admire and follow our
example: for, certainly, in point of true taste, the fashions of
both countries are equally absurd. At present, the skirts of the
English descend from the fifth rib to the calf of the leg, and
give the coat the form of a Jewish gaberdine; and our hats seem
to be modelled after that which Pistol wears upon the stage. In
France, the haunch buttons and pocketholes are within half a foot
of the coat's extremity: their hats look as if they had been
pared round the brims, and the crown is covered with a kind of
cordage, which, in my opinion, produces a very beggarly effect.
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