Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century; Vol. 1 (of 2): Including the Charities, Depravities, Dresses, and Amusements etc.Malcolm, James Peller
History
Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century; Vol. 1 (of 2): Including the Charities, Depravities, Dresses, and Amusements etc.
Malcolm, James Peller
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 18th century
"I met with the same civility and complaisance amongst all the
shop-keepers, whether great or little. The tradesman sent his son or
his daughter to me, who often served me as guide, after having first
acted as an interpreter: for some years past, the French language has
been taught as universally as the English, in all the boarding-schools
of London; so that French will soon be by choice the language of the
people of England, as it was by constraint and necessity under the
Norman Kings. This is a demonstration, that the antipathy of that
Nation for every thing belonging to the French is not universal and
without exception.
"The French are apt to imagine, that it is on account of their country
they are pushed and shoved in the most frequented streets, and often
driven into the kennel; but they are mistaken. The English walk very
fast: their thoughts being entirely engrossed by business, they are
very punctual to their appointments, and those who happen to be in
their way are sure to be sufferers by it: constantly darting forward,
they jostle them with a force proportioned to their bulk and the
velocity of their motion. I have seen foreigners, not used to this
exercise, let themselves be tossed and whirled about a long time, in
the midst of a crowd of passengers, who had nothing else in view but to
get forward. Having soon adopted the English custom, I made the best
of my way through crowded streets, exerting my utmost efforts to shun
persons who were equally careful to avoid me.
"We should be equally in an error, if we were to imagine that the
English fashions, diametrically opposite to those of France, are
contrived in the manner they are, in order to avoid all resemblance
to those of our Nation: on the contrary, if the former are any way
influenced by the latter, it is by the desire of imitating them. A mode
begins to be out of date at Paris, just when it has been introduced at
London by some English Nobleman. The Court and the first-rate Nobility
immediately take it up: it is next introduced about St. James's by
those that ape the manners of the Court; and by the time it has reached
the City, a contrary mode already prevails at Paris, where the English,
bringing with them the obsolete mode, appear like the people of another
world. The little hats, for example, at present so fashionable in
France, begin to be wore by the Nobility, who borrowed the model from
Paris: by degrees the English will come at the diminutive size; but the
great hats will then be resumed at Paris. This holds good in general,
with regard both to men and women's apparel."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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