by Saint-Marc Girardin
Excerpts In Bucharest, this movement of life and health is even more visible than in the countryside; building is going on everywhere; everywhere old houses are being replaced by new ones. The same holds true for Jassy, and I was not surprised; capitals are always one or two years in advance as far as the spirit and feelings of the country are concerned. When there is a feeling of security and hope in the country, it is in the capital that it can be first sensed. In Bucharest and in Jassy one may better know the future of the country; it is known there, better than in other parts of the country, that the Turks will not come back after all. Hence the hope and confidence, hence the eagerness to build. Indeed, man does not build with stone alone: most of all he builds with the idea that he will be able to enjoy the house he has built. Peoples without a future dig holes in the ground. Is there a little hope looming? The hut comes out of the ground. Are hopes rising? They'll build in stone and brick. This is the current situation in the Principalities. (…)But the most distinguishing character of Bucharest and Jassy, what makes these cities different from the European cities they are trying to imitate, what strikes the foreigner at first sight, is the singular inequality of dwellings. Imagine some of our poorest cabins, and in their midst elegant palaces, without any intermediate habitation that may serve as transition between palaces and cabins; now a village, then a capital city: this is Bucharest and Jassy. The shoddiest hovels lean against the most beautiful houses; you walk out of a building that may remind you of the best hotels in Paris or Vienna and stumble upon a dingy wood cabin, then walk along badly-planked streets, sinking into dust or mud up to your ankles.When I say mud and dust up to the ankles, I assume you do walk. In Bucharest and in Jassy, however, people do not walk, they go in carriages; walking is a luxury; carriages, on the contrary, are necessary. This is not a joke; the carriage is the only means of extricating oneself from the terrible mass of winter sludge and spring dust; moreover, the carriage is the emblem of a proper person. To walk is to them like walking barefoot is to us; only ordinary people go on foot; but who would like to be an ordinary person in a country where there is no third state, no bourgeoisie? In our country, there are ordinary people, as the noun includes a lot of degrees; but when a society is only comprised of two degrees, the first and the last, nobody wants to be an ordinary person. During my stay in Jassy and Bucharest, I saw no-one on foot, and I mean no-one. Your revenue is no more than three or four thousand francs? It doesn't matter, you've got a carriage, often two. I saw people returning in carriages to homes our working class would scornfully reject. "Is this their home?" "Yes." "And is this their carriage?" "Yes." I was barely getting over this contrast of luxury and poverty in my mind when, to double my astonishment, I was told that what I had just seen was their city carriage, and that they had a country carriage too; or that I had seen their winter carriage and that they had a summer one too; for here one has two or three carriages, just as we have two or three pairs of boots. (1849)
by Saint-Marc Girardin
by Saint-Marc Girardin