The British In France
Visitors and Residents since the Revolution
Leaving war years aside, there are more British now in France than ever before. And they tend to be markedly different in several ways to their predecessors. Many live in rural departments, regions that in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries were virtually unknown to all but the most adventurous travellers. Usually they are more than willing to mix with their French neighbours. To the British of the past, France - and Paris especially - was exotic, offering freedom from the weight of moral and social propriety at home. As a breed, however, they kept their distance; in fact, an eminent Victorian historian declared that it was only when he was abroad that an Englishman could be seen as ‘nakedly and undisguisedly English’.
If, to the French, the British often exhibited a displeasing self-satisfaction, they were, or were reputed to be, wealthy. Certainly that was true of the proverbial and eccentric milords of the earlier nineteenth century, in Paris for the gambling and sex, a category most vividly exemplified in the Seymour-Conways, marquesses of Hertford. It was less true of the many visitors, who for reasons of health, flocked to Pau and to the spas of the Pyrenees and the Auvergne. And it was not true at all of the financial refugees notoriously to be found in Boulogne and elsewhere along the Channel coast who were in flight from creditors in Britain. As it happened, the lower cost of living in France also encouraged migration on the part of many people who were reasonably well-off.
This book studies the economic and political background. It deals too with the influence, social and demographic, of the different forms of transport that evolved, from sail and steam ships to railways, automobiles and aircraft. Textbooks and archival records are important, as are periodicals such as Blackwood’s Magazine Above all, however, the book is based on contemporary travel books, memoirs, letters and journals. There is Mary Berry, confidant of Horace Walpole, in Paris during the Peace of Amiens, seeking old friends who may have escaped the guillotine. There is Richard Burton describing his childhood among the British community at Tours, John Stuart Mill who is buried at Avignon, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Prosper Mérimée, amusing and perceptive, views the British on the Côte d’Azur and the incongruous architecture they favoured. Twentieth-century accounts are often shadowed by war. Letters in the Imperial War Museum describe the reaction of British soldiers billeted on French families in Picardy, and there are stories of life under Vichy and the Occupation.
Two collateral groups of people warrant particular attention. One is the Americans, often living in close touch with the British, and in a position to comment acutely on how they contrasted with the French. The other is the Anglo-French business families, their fortunes frequently derived from wine or textile manufacture. The Sisleys are one example. Another is the Waddingtons, a family that provided a French prime minister who was educated at Rugby and gained a rowing blue at Cambridge.
Peter Thorold, The British in France: Visitors and Residents since the Revolution (Continuum Books, 10 October 2008)
Leaving war years aside, there are more British now in France than ever before. And they tend to be markedly different in several ways to their predecessors. Many live in rural departments, regions that in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries were virtually unknown to all but the most adventurous travellers. Usually they are more than willing to mix with their French neighbours. To the British of the past, France - and Paris especially - was exotic, offering freedom from the weight of moral and social propriety at home. As a breed, however, they kept their distance; in fact, an eminent Victorian historian declared that it was only when he was abroad that an Englishman could be seen as ‘nakedly and undisguisedly English’.
If, to the French, the British often exhibited a displeasing self-satisfaction, they were, or were reputed to be, wealthy. Certainly that was true of the proverbial and eccentric milords of the earlier nineteenth century, in Paris for the gambling and sex, a category most vividly exemplified in the Seymour-Conways, marquesses of Hertford. It was less true of the many visitors, who for reasons of health, flocked to Pau and to the spas of the Pyrenees and the Auvergne. And it was not true at all of the financial refugees notoriously to be found in Boulogne and elsewhere along the Channel coast who were in flight from creditors in Britain. As it happened, the lower cost of living in France also encouraged migration on the part of many people who were reasonably well-off.
This book studies the economic and political background. It deals too with the influence, social and demographic, of the different forms of transport that evolved, from sail and steam ships to railways, automobiles and aircraft. Textbooks and archival records are important, as are periodicals such as Blackwood’s Magazine Above all, however, the book is based on contemporary travel books, memoirs, letters and journals. There is Mary Berry, confidant of Horace Walpole, in Paris during the Peace of Amiens, seeking old friends who may have escaped the guillotine. There is Richard Burton describing his childhood among the British community at Tours, John Stuart Mill who is buried at Avignon, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Prosper Mérimée, amusing and perceptive, views the British on the Côte d’Azur and the incongruous architecture they favoured. Twentieth-century accounts are often shadowed by war. Letters in the Imperial War Museum describe the reaction of British soldiers billeted on French families in Picardy, and there are stories of life under Vichy and the Occupation.
Two collateral groups of people warrant particular attention. One is the Americans, often living in close touch with the British, and in a position to comment acutely on how they contrasted with the French. The other is the Anglo-French business families, their fortunes frequently derived from wine or textile manufacture. The Sisleys are one example. Another is the Waddingtons, a family that provided a French prime minister who was educated at Rugby and gained a rowing blue at Cambridge.
Peter Thorold, The British in France: Visitors and Residents since the Revolution (Continuum Books, 10 October 2008)
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