{"id":144257,"date":"2025-05-30T13:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T13:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/144257\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T13:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T13:57:09","slug":"vive-la-difference-an-alternative-tale-of-two-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/144257\/","title":{"rendered":"Vive la difference: an alternative tale of two cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Gillray\u2019s Politeness,1779 [Lewis Walpole Library]<\/strong><\/p>\n

IN Paris, journalist Louis-Sebastien Mercier wrote: \u201cThey imagine a Frenchman could not cross the street in London without being insulted, that every Englishman is fierce and devours raw flesh. In London, they think that all Frenchmen are thin, flat-stomached, carry a large purse, a long sword and that they live on nothing but frogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was one of the many observations the writer made while enjoying a spring excursion in London in 1780: and now, the manuscript he produced from the trip is being published for the first time in English.<\/p>\n

Islington-based publisher Pallas Athene has produced Neighbours and Rivals, an Eighteenth Century Journey Between Paris and London, put together by history professors Laurent Turcot and Jonathan Conlin.<\/p>\n

It reveals Mercier was part of a new journalism growing in the build-up to the French Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cA new form of urban literary discourse emerged, which broke with the rigid and by then somewhat hackneyed conventions of travelogue,\u201d say the authors. \u201cMercier became one of the most important representatives of this shift away from antiquarian and topographical approaches, which treated the city as a collection of monuments, to more reflexive, journalistic and emotive representations of the city as a collection of experiences, habits and personalities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercier was born in Paris in 1740, the son of a sword cutter.<\/p>\n

He would boast of a literary childhood, and as a teenager, he soaked up Parisian culture.<\/p>\n

His first break came with his novel, Memoirs of the Year 2440 \u2013 a precursor to the utopian sci-fi, which also saw him turn the pre-Revolution ancien r\u00e9gime into a figure of satire.<\/p>\n

He wrote plays and edited the Journales des Dames, which he packed with observations of city life.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Mercier, the city was much more than a convenient framework in which to recount witty anecdotes to satisfy cravings for novelties,\u201d they add.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis project was to capture the essence by laying bare its inner workings and liaisons which kept its countless parts in incessant movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the spring of 1780 he embarked to London. His stay lasted months.<\/p>\n

In the opening, Mercier says: \u201cThe two capitals are so close and so different, yet bear so strong a resemblance to each other that my study of Paris would be incomplete were I not to consider some aspects of the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercier says Paris\u2019s river has well-built quays, which means \u201cThe Seine is a beautiful woman who disports herself leisurely. The Thames is a hardworking mother with a great many children\u2026 her happy position close to the Channel makes her mistress of the seas. Her position secures her freedom by means of a strong navy, while her maritime trade means she feels a closer connection to all countries than she does to Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercier\u2019s eye reveals wonderful clich\u00e9s:<\/p>\n

He claims: \u201cThe English national character seems less scatterbrained than the French. This composure has become so prevalent, after so many civil wars, that the precious hard-won right to meddle in the affairs of state as well as the need to guard that right vigilantly has been imprinted on their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

He finds a city which welcomes immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people are partly made up of sailors, or of people whose ancestors hailed from distant maritime countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

He compares food \u2013 citing how the French seem to live on soup \u201cover-stewed\u2026 hard to digest\u2026 spicy sauces, seasoned fricassees\u2026\u201d compared to London: \u201croast meat is consumed everywhere. Potatoes are boiled and generally speaking sauces are scarcely to be found\u201d.<\/p>\n

He considers how capital punishment is approached, how relief for the poor is managed, and banking systems.<\/p>\n

Mercier compares everything from balls to how horses are treated: \u201cThe English take their humane feelings for horses to extremes, he adds. \u201cWhoever unjustly or brutally mistreats his horse in public is liable to be seized and mistreated himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercier\u2019s work reveals a London recognisable today \u2013 his journalist\u2019s eye captured the city and offers a stylised vision of what a metropolis could be.<\/p>\n

They say he used a small notebook called a carnet to scribble down his impressions and then polished the work up when he returned to Paris.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state of the manuscript reproduced here certainly suggests it was the product of careful thought, rather than a series of notes made on the spot,\u201d they state.<\/p>\n

But the manuscript lay unpublished until 1982 \u2013 while this edition by Pallas Athene is the first time his worlds have been translated and published in English.<\/p>\n

It was never published in his lifetime \u2013 \u201ceven at a time of Anglomania in France, Mercier may have judged this text to be too Anglophile,\u201d they consider.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr else his enthusiasm for the larger project simply overlooks its progenitor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The larger project was a two-volume \u201ctableau\u201d that considered looking at London as a way of considering his home city with fresh eyes.<\/p>\n

Mercier\u2019s works reflects a growing sense of a relationship between the two cities, which became \u201cmore striking and numerous\u201d to contemporaries in the latter stages of the 18th century, the authors state.<\/p>\n

Writers no longer sized up both cities and accentuated the differences for the reader\u2019s mirth and curiosity: instead, writers began to emphasise similarities and areas that showed mutual emulation, and ways both cities could improve.<\/p>\n

They cite books by John Andrews and John Moores in English and Pidansat de Mairobert and Jean-Jacques Rutlidge as authors who tried to illuminate each other\u2019s capitals for mass readership.<\/p>\n

Mercier wanted to find the best elements to highlight how capital living could be improved.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis version of London is, in fact, a projection of his philosophical imagination \u2013 not simply a rounded portrait of the British capital but also a reflection of what Mercier hoped Paris could become,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n

The Grand Tour took hold in the same century, sending British aristos through Paris and then beyond: but by the time Mercier made the journey in the other direction, to and fro journeys were more commonplace: \u201cduring the course of the century such exchanges ceased to be an aristocratic appendage,\u201d the book says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndividuals of middling rank, among them merchants, officers, artists and even some skilled labourers also took the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey read travelogues and guides, adding their own marginalia as they travelled or in some cases writing their own manuscripts travel diaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercier offered a wide-eyed approach, curious about all he came across \u2013 and his book today sheds light on a key period of London life.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Neighbours and Royals: An Eighteenth-Century Journey Between London and Paris. By Louis Sebastien Mercier, Pallas Athene, \u00a324.99<\/strong>
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