A Frenchman considers the English "mob"

In May 1788, barely more than a year before the Revolution, a reader of the Journal Encyclopédique sharpened his quill to pen a letter on the English word "Mob".

Our learned correspondent contests the view that "Mob" can be translated into French by "canaille". "Canaille" had already been naturalised into the English language: according to Johnson's Dictionary:

CANAILLE (French): The lowest people, the dregs. the lees, the offscouring of the people, a French term of reproach.

"Mob", on the other hand, is defined by the number of people and their disorderliness rather than their social status:

MOB (contracted from MOBILE Latin), the crowd, a tumultuous rout.

The writer cites examples from Dryden and Addison where the word is used simply to mean a crowd (une foule).  There is also an English word "populace" which is defined by Johnson as "the common people", "the multitude".  "Mob", however, has no synonym in French.

But what if "la canaille" forms the crowd?  The word "Mob"itself still does not denote a particular social composition, though it does suggest unthinking movement, the milling of the crowd around an object. English wits used "Mobility" (as opposed to "nobility") as a pun.  Perhaps, since the populace is mobile, "mob" and "populace" might be considered synonyms, but all social statuses are still included.   Burke, in a recent speech in the House of Commons, called the Ministerial Party a mob - he surely did not mean "la canaille insensée".

A final example of use of the term comes from Voltaire during his sojourn in London.  When his French costume excited the hostile attentions of passersby, he climbed up on the bench of a nearby stall and won over the crowd with a pretty speech, harangued them in English as "GENTLEMEN OF THE MOB".  [This anecdote is repeated later by Wagnière (Mémoires i, p.23), though sadly with different words attributed to Voltaire.]  I am not convinced  - maybe Voltaire just displayed sufficient panache to be forgiven his imperfect command of English idiom.

Reference

Letter dated 3rd April 1788, Journal Encyclopédique Vol 4, part 1, p. 135
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BCiA7MqfaZMC&pg=PA135#v=onepage&q&f=false

Frogs and baboons - the view from England

To Friendship, Constancy and Virtue Foes
 In English, Fops and Knaves; in French, they're Beaus
 In short, they are an ill contriv'd Lampoon
 And to conclude, A French-Man's a BABOON

The Baboon A-la Mode, a satyr against the French, London, 1704, p. 22


When mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's food,
It ennobled our brains and enriched our blood.
Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good
Oh! the Roast Beef of old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

But since we have learnt from all-vapouring France
To eat their ragouts as well as to dance,
We're fed up with nothing but vain complaisance
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

Henry Fielding, The Roast Beef of Old England  1731


Black-bread, and Soup-meagre, and Frogs fricaſſee'd,
Are Fare, that may ſerve for a Frenchman indeed ;
But they never ſhall ſhake our well-founded Belief,
That no Fare in the World's like OLD ENGLAND'S Roaſt Beef

A Word to the Wise, or Old England forever; a new song for Christmas 1792 

After all that plague, back to some trivia.........

It is interesting to learn that, despite the tempting alliteration, the French did not become “frogs” in English satire until the very end of the 18^th century.  In John Arbuthnot’s famous History of John Bull (1712) it is the Dutch  who are personified as  “Nic Frog” whereas the French, represented by their Bourbon King,  are “Lewis the Baboon”.  The Baboon stereotype was well-established early in the century; foppish, arrogant and affected, the Frenchman  "aped" good manners. The barb was directed as much again slavish English admirers of French culture as against the French themselves.

Then, as now, food played a defining  role in national stereotypes - and the French were already well-know as frog eaters.  In the 1730s and 1740s frogs, and sometimes snails, came to exemplify a effete and overrefined - to say nothing of plain horrible -  French cuisine, as against the manly and reliable "roast beef of Old England". Frog-eating  also indicated poverty.  The pretentious aristocracy and the starving peasantry had thinness in common; the only fat people in France were the fearsome fishwives of the north coast, who were employed to carry visitors ashore, or greedy and lustful monks. 

The defining image, of course, was Hogarth's famous "Gates of Calais" painted in the wake of his trip of 1748.  In this slightly later engraving, one of two "invasion prints" produced by Hogarth at the outbreak of the Seven Years War, a monk and a soldier prepare to invade England with torture equipment whilst cooking up a last meal of frogs.  The dry bones of a small joint of beef in the inn window suggests the French are eager to invade in order to sample the "roast beef of Old England".

According to David Bindman, the idea that the French were themselves frogs appears only in later Revolutionary era satires, usually based on Aesop's fable of "the Frogs who wanted a King".  

Among the French themselves the nickname "Grenouille" was applied to Parisians of the Marais.


References

David Bindman, "How the French became frogs: English caricature and a national stereotype." Originally published in Apollo magazine in 2003. 

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/How+the+French+became+frogs%3A+English+caricature+and+a+national...-a0106652581

Fitzwilliam Museum Vive la différence! The English and French stereotype in satirical prints 1720-1815 (Exhibition Tue 20 March 2007 to Sun 5 August 2007)

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/viveladifference/works/gallery1.html

 John Richard Moores, Representations of France and the French in English Satirical Prints, c. 1740-1832  PhD thesis, University of York (2011)
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2347/1/johnrichardmooresphdvol1FINAL.pdf


Here is a nice write-up of "The history of John Bull": 
http://grubstreetlodger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/review-history-of-john-bull-by-john.html

The splendidly xenophobic Hogarth's experiences in France would have made a good post. But Andrew Graham-Dixon has beaten me to it!  Here is his article onThe Gates of Calais (originally published in the Sunday Telegraph in 2000) :
https://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/archive/itp-3-calais-gate-or-o-the-roast-beef-of-old-england-by-william-hogarth.html

Calais Gate, or O! The Roast Beef of Old England, by William Hogarth

"Archived French frog stories" from AllAboutFrogs
http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/frenchfrogs.htm

"Origins of "frog" as term for French person?" Discussion on FreeRepublic
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/717479/posts

And it's Frogs for dinner!

Well, eating frogs legs always seemed a pretty naff idea to me! The sophistications of French cuisine were certainly beyond 18th-century Americans.  Apparently a French admiral was misguidedly served up whole fresh green frogs by a well-meaning Bostonian.... 

The story is told by Samuel Breck, who was a young boy when the first French troop transport ships arrived in Boston in May 1781.  The colonists, Breck tells us,  were not used to the idea of Frenchmen as allies and had swallowed whole the account of French diet served up by English propaganda.  Everyone, he reports, believed implicitly "every vulgar story told by John Bull about Frenchmen living on salad and frogs".   Most of the town, who had never seen a Frenchman, rushed to the docks.  They were astonished to behold not the "gaunt, half-starved, soup-maigre crews" of English propaganda but "plump, portly officers and strong, vigorous sailors".  

Nonetheless misunderstanding was not dispelled.

Later in the year, Newburyport merchant and privateer Nathaniel Tracy, who had recently acquired a splendid mansion in Cambridge confiscated from the Loyalist John Vassall (now "Longfellow House"), decided to play host to the French admiral, the comte de Grasse and provide him with a taste of home:

18th-century table setting, Carnegie Museum of Art

Everything was furnished that could be had in the country to ornament and give variety to the entertainment. My father was one of the guests, and told me often after that two large tureens of soup were placed at the ends of the table. The admiral sat on the right of Tracy, and Monsieur de l'Etombe on the left. L'Etombe was consul of France, resident at Boston. Tracy filled a plate with soup, which went to the admiral, and the next was handed to the consul. As soon as L'Etombe put his spoon into his plate he fished up a large frog, just as green and perfect as if he had hopped from the pond into the tureen. Not knowing at first what it was, he seized it by one of its hind legs, and, holding it up in view of the whole company, discovered that it was a full-grown frog. As soon as he had thoroughly inspected it, and made himself sure of the matter, he exclaimed, "Ah! mon Dieu! un grenouille!" then, turning to the gentleman next to him, gave him the frog. He received it, and passed it round the table. Thus the poor crapaud made the tour from hand to hand until it reached the admiral. The company, convulsed with laughter, examined the soup-plates as the servants brought them, and in each was to be found a frog. 

The uproar was universal. Meantime Tracy kept his ladle going, wondering what his outlandish guests meant by such extravagant merriment. "What's the matter?" asked he, and, raising his head, surveyed the frogs dangling by a leg in all directions. "Why don't they eat them?" he exclaimed. "If they knew the confounded trouble I had to catch them in order to treat them to a dish of their own country, they would find that with me, at least, it was no joking matter." Thus was poor Tracy deceived by vulgar prejudice and common report. He meant to regale his distinguished guests with refined hospitality, and had caused all the swamps of Cambridge to be searched in order to furnish them with a generous supply of what he believed to be in France a standing national dish.


References

Samuel Breck, Recollections, with passages from his notebooks (1771--1862), p.24-6.
http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/lhbtn:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28lhbtn10144%29%29:

J.L. Bell, "Nathaniel Tracy serves frogs for dinner" Boston 1775 (blog)
http://boston1775.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/nathaniel-tracy-serves-frogs-for.html

 Traceys of Enniscorthy and Newburyport
http://www.traceyclann.com/files/Traceys%20of%20Enniscorthy%20and%20Newburyport.htm