British Writers and Paris, 1830–1875 by Elisabeth Jay (review)

Little attention has been paid to the role Paris played “as part of the creative environment of many mid-nineteenth-century writers”: Elisabeth Jay’s somewhat episodic but extensively researched and enlightening book, British Writers and Paris, 1830–1875, redresses this neglect, shedding useful light on mid-nineteenth-century Franco-British cultural interactions, which have received less attention than turn-of-the century ones (1). The key note here is ambivalence; British writers define themselves and their nation by comparison with Paris, and are at once attracted to and repulsed by the French capital city.

Jay’s monograph opens with a section dealing with “Finding One’s Bearings” in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, historically, topographically, socially, and culturally. She covers eyewitness accounts of French regime changes, offering illuminating insights into the primacy of textual over visual representations in shaping the British response. She identifies the 1870 Paris Commune as the crucial event which confirms the British sense of the so-called otherness of France and subsequent alignment with Germany, which ultimately allowed this power to become hegemonic in Europe. She explores the reaction of British liberals and socialists to the Commune: they found it both inspiring and alarming, which is reflected, she argues, in texts such as William Morris’s poem “The Pilgrims of Hope” (1885), and Arnold Bennett’s An Old Wives’ Tale (1908), both of which evade and downplay the radical significance of the Commune.

Chapter 4 explores how British visitors arrived at, experienced, and lived in Paris. Jay makes a convincing connection between British reflections on the changing appearance of the city and conceptualizations about the difference between British laissez-faire politics and the more dirigiste approach of the French state, reflected in (for instance) Haussmannization. Her discussion here reveals John Ruskin’s surprisingly ambivalent response to the destruction of medieval Paris. Jay also sheds light on British middle-class concerns about the range of social classes accommodated in the Parisian appartement block, although for the British flâneur the Parisian balcony view was clearly a compensation. A chapter on “Sensational Paris” deals with the sensory experience of Paris, exploring the ways in which Victorian optical cultures of the panorama and the diorama shaped perceptions of the city. Perhaps the most interesting section is Jay’s coverage of the British obsession with the dark heritage of Paris. Some British visitors remained unaware of their own double standards in condemning revolutionary violence while viewing its memorials with ghoulish delight.

Jay’s next two chapters explore the British visitors’ experience of socializing in the city, rightly indicating how much more accessible Parisian society was for the flâneur than the flâneuse. Still, she suggests, even male visitors found their ability to interact with Frenchmen limited by the paucity of clubs, and the nature of French bourgeois family life may have made it difficult for British families to arrive at real intimacy. Jay’s final chapter in this section deals with the Parisian salons, which—because they put less value on rank and more on intellect, and did not aim to offer lavish entertainment—were a useful entrée for British writers into French cultural life. Nevertheless, she suggests, they were in decline during the period.

The second section of Jay’s book makes a particularly significant contribution to the history of Franco-British cultural relations by focusing on Anglophone journalism in Paris. She highlights the difference between the London and Parisian press worlds, including the greater prestige enjoyed by the Parisian journalist. Freedom from the stamp tax and lax copyright laws allowed Anglophone journalism to flourish. However, the relatively small numbers in the expatriate community and the predominance of the establishment paper—Galignani’s Messenger—made the publication of a British paper in Paris a risky business. Jay’s particular achievement here is in uncovering the French careers of many lesser-known British journalists, emphasizing their reliance on additional employments such as translation of...