When you straddle continents and an ocean, you end up asking yourself where you belong. In my case, I wonder if I’m French or American. The best answer would be that I am both. I have two cultures and two languages. I’ve also finely honed my powers of observation because, when in a foreign country, it’s up to the foreigner to adapt.
Many years ago, fifty to be exact, I was invited to a formal dinner in Paris by the friend of a friend of a friend. There were many pieces of cutlery on the table and far too many hermetically arranged around my plate. This was a dinner where we were assigned seats by our hostess and I was flanked by a gentleman on each side. While my neighbor was telling me about his stables and the purebreds he raised, I only half listened, keeping an eye on the main dish circulating around the table, chicken swimming in pineapple sauce.
I watched the other guests (there were about 20 of us) grab hold of two
utensils, a silver serving spoon and fork, and expertly, with one hand, serve
themselves a piece of chicken and then cover it with a layer of sauce. It
looked tricky. One utensil I could handle, but how could I hold them both in
one hand and get the food to my plate?
The truth is, I couldn’t. My chicken got away and there it lay on the white tablecloth in a puddle of sauce.
My neighbor, a true chevalier, immediately came to my rescue. Expertly, he took the utensils from me, whisked the chicken from the table to my plate, added a dash of pineapple sauce, served himself, and then passed on the dish. Much like a magician, he discretely poured some water on his napkin and flicking it over the stain, barely touching it at all (this was truly an act of legerdemain), he made it disappear!
How nice of him! Comme c’était gentil!
But was I nice? Was I gentille? I felt like a country bumpkin among the golden youth of the French aristocracy.
The answer to the question? No, I was not nice. How do I know? Before this dinner, the hostess had invited me to tea and we exchanged “bristols,” calling cards, just like in an Edith Wharton novel. After this dinner, I was never invited again, neither to tea nor for a meal. I had committed a faux-pas, my lack of savoir-vivre excluded me from that society…forever.
“Nice” is a funny word, as is the French equivalent “gentil.”
My Merriam Webster tells me “nice” has its origin in the French word “niais,” and the French word has its root in the Latin nescius, meaning ignorant. When first used in English in the 14th century, “nice” was a word you’d most likely apply to a prostitute. It meant “wanton, bawdy, lustful;” it could also mean “undisciplined, unruly,” words far removed from its current usage.
But what exactly does “nice” mean? Today it is associated with appropriate or pleasing behavior; applied to things, it signifies they are agreeable to us. Yet it’s also a word that hints at mediocrity.
“How was your evening?”
“Oh, it was nice,” said with a shrug of the shoulders.
The meaning of “gentil” has also evolved. Centuries ago, it referred to those of noble birth—and we find this root in the word gentleman. Not so long ago, in the last century, when applied to a young girl, it meant pretty, cute, but not outright beautiful.
Today it has taken on the same meanings as “nice,” right down to the taint of mediocrity. Every time I hear a French person use the word “gentil,” I wonder if it’s a compliment or a veiled way of saying “it’s not the best, but it will do.” When someone thanks me for an act of kindness with the words “c’est gentil,” I only feel half-thanked.
On April 6th of this month, the MAGA candidate for the presidency was speaking at a fund-raising dinner in Palm Beach. That evening, he was surrounded by millionaires and his host, John Paulson, is a bona fide billionaire. In a speech to guests, the candidate lamented that the United States does not welcome enough immigrants from “nice countries,” and gave as examples Denmark and Switzerland.
In the past 200 years, immigration from those two countries has represented but a fraction of the Europeans who left their native land to settle in the United States. The number of Swiss Americans is estimated at about one million; the number of Danish Americans, about 300 thousand more. If you asked the Swiss or Danes to immigrate to the US, I’m not sure they would come.
In comparison, 19 to 20 million Americans consider themselves Polish Americans, and Chicago is known as the biggest Polish city after Warsaw. In the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, during the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike, Polish miners, many having just arrived on American soil, were brought in to work in the mines. They wanted work. They did not know they’d be considered scabs in one of the longest strikes in UMW history.
Troops sent in against striking miners in 1902
It took time for the taint of being strike-breakers to wear off, and prejudice against Polish Americans continued in the coal region for decades. You can be sure they were not considered “nice.”
A Polish immigrant with her child, Ellis Island 1913
In the 1920’s, when the movie industry was taking off and filmmakers were on the lookout for new talent, California was advertised as “Italy without the Italians.” Italy was not a “nice” place either.
An advertisement for a very successful Italian restaurant where my family dined when I was a child.
Going further back to the 1840’s and 1850’s, when the Irish arrived in droves on “coffin ships,” where often half the passengers died in transit, “true” Americans saw them as dirty and dangerous. The men were rapists; the women, spreaders of disease. Yet today, 32 million Americans proudly declare themselves of Irish ancestry.
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How political cartoonist Thomas Nash depicted the Irish in 1871
In the 19th and 20th centuries they were “Micks, Dagos, Polacks,” and “true” Americans looked down on them. In the 21st, the descendants of former immigrants look down on “Wetbacks, Mojados, Beaners.”
And just as words change—nice has travelled from ignorant to lustful to pleasing—so do immigrants. They adapt, they become citizens, they love their new land, and finally, they couldn’t care less if their neighbor finds them nice or not.
