The Project Gutenberg eBook, In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere
in Old France, by Sir John Alexander Hammerton
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Title: In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere in Old France
Author: Sir John Alexander Hammerton
Release Date: July 13, 2013 [eBook #43209]
Language: English
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IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON
AND ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE
[Illustration: THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP
"We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. In a stroke or two the canoes
were away out in the middle of the Scheldt."--R. L. S.]
All rights reserved
IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON AND ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE
by
J. A. HAMMERTON
Author of "Stevensoniana"
With 92 Illustrations
Bristol
J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street
London
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited
First published in 1907
CONTENTS
_Page_
THROUGH THE CEVENNES 1
ALONG THE ROUTE OF "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 71
"THE MOST PICTURESQUE TOWN IN EUROPE" 121
THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 137
THE WONDERLAND OF FRANCE 155
THE TOWN OF "TARTARIN" 173
"LA FÊTE DIEU" 195
"M'SIEU MEELIN OF DUNDAE" 207
ROUND ABOUT A FRENCH FAIR 219
THE PALACE OF THE ANGELS 237
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP _Frontispiece_
_Face Page_
LE MONASTIER 1
LE MONASTIER 4
CHÂTEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER 8
GOUDET 8
CHÂTEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET 13
SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES 13
THE INN AT GOUDET 16
OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE 20
THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET 20
VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC 24
LA BASTIDE 24
ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 29
THE MONASTERY 29
OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 33
MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD 36
RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT 36
ON THE LOZÈRE 40
ON THE LOZÈRE 45
VILLAGE OF COCURÈS 48
BRIDGE OVER THE TARN 48
WATERFALL ON THE LOZÈRE 53
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 53
"CLARISSE" 56
THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE 60
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 65
NEAR FLORAC 65
FLORAC 68
BOOM ON THE RUPEL 72
VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 72
THE ALLÉE VERTE AT LAEKEN 77
THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE 77
THE GRAND CERF, MAUBEUGE 80
THE CHURCH AT QUARTES 84
THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT 84
ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES 88
SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 88
THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES 93
THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE 93
THE INN AT MOY 97
THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY 97
VEUVE BAZIN 100
THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FÈRE 100
THE TOWN HALL NOYON 104
HÔTEL DU NORD, NOYON 104
NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST 109
NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT 112
COMPIÈGNE TOWN HALL 116
THE OISE AT PONTOISE 120
GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY 121
LE PUY: CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE
FROM PLACE DU BREUIL 125
LACEMAKERS AT LE PUY 128
MARKET DAY AT LE PUY, SHOWING TYPES OF
THE AUVERNGATS 129
LE PUY 132
THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY 136
HOUSE OF DU CHAYLA, AT PONT DE MONTVERT 137
TWO VIEWS IN THE VILLAGE OF LA CAVALERIE 141
LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL 144
ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE 145
THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC 148
MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR 152
ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC 152
ON THE TARN 157
A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN 160
IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN 161
THE CHÂTEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN 164
PEYRELAU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE JONTE 169
BEAUCAIRE: SHOWING CASTLE AND BRIDGE ACROSS
THE RHONE TO TARASCON 173
TARASCON: THE PUBLIC MARKET 176
THE TARASQUE 177
THE CASTLE OF TARASCON 177
TARASCON: THE MAIRIE 180
A WOMAN OF TARASCON 184
TARASCON: "THE BIT OF A SQUARE" 189
TARASCON: THE PROCESSION OF THE TARASQUE 193
PROCESSION OF LA FÊTE DIEU 196
A WOMAN OF SAINTE ENIMIE 205
THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC 208
THE MERCHANTS' TABLE 213
WOMEN OF THE CEVENNES 220
GENERAL VIEW OF MONT ST. MICHEL 244
MONT ST. MICHEL 253
Note
The travel-sketches that go to the making of this little book have
appeared, in part only, in certain literary magazines, here and in
America; but the greater part of the work is now printed for the first
time.
Perhaps the author should anticipate a criticism that might arise from
the sequence of the first two papers. Had he gone to work on a set
plan, he would naturally have undertaken his pilgrimage along the
route of _An Inland Voyage_ before visiting the scenes of _Travels
with a Donkey_, as the one book preceded the other in order of
publication, _An Inland Voyage_, which appeared originally in 1878,
being properly Stevenson's first book. _Travels with a Donkey_ was
published in 1879. But he has preferred to give precedence to "Through
the Cevennes," as it was the first of his Stevenson travel-sketches to
be written. Moreover, these little journeys were as much, indeed more
affairs of personal pleasure than of copy-hunting, and when the author
went forth on them he had no intention of making a book about his
experiences--at least, not one deriving its chief interest from
association with the memory of R. L. S. He has been counselled,
however, to bring together these chapters and their accompanying
photographs in this form, on the plea that the interest in Stevenson's
French travels is still so considerable that any straightforward
account of later journeys over the same ground cannot fail to have
some attraction for the admirers of that great master of English
prose.
The book is but a very little sheaf from the occasional writings of
its author on his wayfarings in old France, where in the last ten
years he has travelled many thousands of miles by road and rail
between Maubeuge and Marseilles, from Belfort to Bordeaux, and always
with undiminished interest among a people who are eminently lovable
and amid scenes of infinite variety and charm.
[Illustration: "In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant
Highland valley about fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent a month of
fine days."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: _The Public Well_
LE MONASTIER]
Through the Cevennes
I.
Someone has accounted for the charm of story-telling by the suggestion
that the natural man imagines himself the hero of the tale he is
reading, and squares this action or that with what he would suspect
himself of doing in similar circumstances. The romancer who can best
beguile his reader into this conceit of mind is likely to be the most
popular. It seems to me that with books of travel this mental
make-believe must also take place if the reader is to derive the full
measure of entertainment from the narrative. With myself, at all
events, it is so, and Hazlitt may be authority of sufficient weight to
justify the thought that my own experience is not likely to be
singular. To me the chief charm in reading a book of travel is this
fanciful assumption of the rôle of the traveller; and so far does it
condition my reading, that my readiest appetite is for a story of
wayfaring in some quarter of the world where I may hope, not
unreasonably, to look upon the scenes that have first engaged my
mind's eye. Thus the adventures of a Mr. Savage Landor in Thibet, or a
Sir Henry Stanley in innermost Africa, have less attraction for me
than the narrative of a journey such as Elihu Burritt undertook in his
famous walk from London to John o' Groats, or R. L. Stevenson's
_Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_. I will grant you that the
delicious literary style of Stevenson's book is its potent charm, but
I am persuaded that others than myself have had their pleasure in the
reading of it sensibly increased by the thought that some day they
might witness Nature's originals of the landscapes which the master
painter has depicted so deftly. It had long been a dream of mine to
track his path through that romantic region of old France; not in the
impudently emulative spirit of the throaty tenor who, hearing Mr.
Edward Lloyd sing a new song, hastens to the music-seller's, resolved
to practise it for his next "musical evening;" not, forsooth, to do
again badly what had once been done well; but to travel the ground in
the true pilgrim spirit of love for him who
"Here passed one day, nor came again--
A prince among the tribes of men."
Well did I know that many of the places with which I was familiar
romantically through Stevenson's witchery of words were drab and dull
enough in reality: enough for me that here in his pilgrim way that
"blithe and rare spirit" had rested for a little while.
II.
The mountainous district of France to which, somewhat loosely,
Stevenson applies the name Cevennes, lies along the western confines
of Provence, and overlaps on several departments, chief of which are
Ardèche, Lozère, Gard, and Herault. In many parts the villages and the
people have far less in common with France and the French than
Normandy and the Normans have with provincial England. Here in these
mountain fastnesses and sheltered valleys the course of life has
flowed along almost changeless for centuries, and here, too, we shall
find much that is best in the romantic history and natural grandeur of
France. Remote from Paris, and happily without the area of the "cheap
trip" organisers, it is likely to remain for ever "off the beaten
track."
In order to visit the Cevennes proper, the beautiful town of Mende
would be the best starting-place. But since my purpose was to strike
the trail of R. L. S., after some wanderings awheel northward of
Clermont Ferrand, I approached the district from Le Puy, a town which
so excellent a judge as Mr. Joseph Pennell has voted the most
picturesque in Europe. Besides, Stevenson himself had often wandered
through its quaint, unusual streets, while preparing for his memorable
journey with immortal Modestine. "I decided on a sleeping sack," he
says; "and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living
for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed, constructed,
and triumphantly brought home." At that time the wanderer's "home" was
in the mountain town of Le Monastier, some fifteen miles south-east of
Le Puy, and there in the autumn of 1877 he spent "about a month of
fine days," variously occupied in completing his _New Arabian Nights_
and _Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh_, and conducting, with no little
personal and general entertainment, the preliminaries of his projected
journey through the Cevennes.
[Illustration: _Where R. L. S. bought Modestine_
"Our first interview (with Father Adam) was in the Monastier market
place."--R. L. S.
"The bell of Monastier was just striking nine, as I descended the hill
through the common."--R. L. S.
LE MONASTIER]
III.
Together with a friend I had spent some rainy but memorable days at Le
Puy in the summer of 1903, waiting for fair weather to advance on this
little highland town, which lies secure away from railways and can
only be reached by road. A bright morning in June saw us gliding on
our wheels along the excellent _route nationale_ that carries us
thither on a long, easy gradient. The town seen at a distance is a
mere huddle of grey houses stuck on the side of a bleak, treeless
upland, and at close quarters it presents few allurements to the
traveller. But it is typical of the mountain villages of France, and
rich in the rugged, unspoilt character of its inhabitants. Stevenson
tells us that it is "notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness,
for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension."
As regards the last of these features, the claim to distinction may
readily be admitted, but for the rest they apply equally to scores of
similar villages of the Cevennes. Certainly it is not notable for the
variety or comfort of its hostelries, but I shall not regret our brief
sojourn at the Hôtel de Chabrier.
Mine host was a worthy who will always have a corner in my memory.
Like his establishment, his person was much the worse for wear. Lame
of a leg, his feet shod with the tattered fragments of slippers such
as the Scots describe with their untranslatable "bauchle," a pair of
unclean heels peeping out through his stockings, he was the living
advertisement of his frowsy inn, the ground floor of which, still
bearing the legend _Café_, had been turned into a stable for oxen and
lay open to the highway, a doubtful shelter for our bicycles. But
withal, turning a shut eye to the kitchen as we passed, the cooking
was excellent, and M. Chabrier assured us that he was renowned for
game patties, which he sent to "all parts of Europe." The frank
satisfaction with himself and his hotel he betrayed at every turn
would have rejoiced the heart of so shrewd a student of character as
R. L. S., and the chances are considerable that in that month of fine
days, six-and-twenty years before, Stevenson may have gossiped with my
friend of the greasy cap, for M. Chabrier was then, as now, making his
guests welcome and baking his inimitable patties.
Did he know Stevenson? "_Oui, oui, oui, M'sieu!_" Stevenson was a
writer of books who had spent some time there years ago. "_Oui, oui,
parfaitement, M'sieu Stevenzong._" What a memory the man had, and how
blithely he recalled the distant past!
"Then, of course, you must have known the noted village character
Father Adam, who sold his donkey to this Scottish traveller?"
"_Père Adam--oui, oui, oui--ah, non, non, je ne le connais pas_," thus
shuffling when I asked for some further details.
Mine host, who read the duty of an innkeeper to be the humouring of
his patrons, could clearly supply me with the most surprising details
of him whose footsteps I was tracing; but wishful not to lead him into
temptation, I tested his evidence early in our talk by asking how many
years had passed since he of whom we spoke had rested at Le Monastier,
and whether he had patronised the Hôtel de Chabrier. He sagely
scratched his head and racked his memory for a moment, with the result
that this Scotsman--oh, he was sure he was a Scotsman--had stayed in
that very hotel, and occupied bedroom number three, just four years
back!
Obviously he was mistaken--not to put too fine a point upon it--and
his cheerful avowal, in discussing another subject, that he was "a
partisan of no religion," did not increase my faith in him. There were
few Protestants in Le Monastier, he told me; but as I happened to know
from my good friend the pasteur at Le Puy that the postmaster here, at
least, stood by the reformed faith, and by that token might be
supposed a man of some reading, I hoped there to find some knowledge
of Stevenson, whose works and travels were familiar to the pasteur.
Alas, "_J' n' sais pas_" was the burden of the postmaster's song.
To wander about the evil-smelling by-ways of Le Monastier, and observe
the ancient crones busy at almost every door with their lace-making
pillows, the bent and grizzled wood-choppers at work in open spaces,
is to understand that, despite the lapse of more than a quarter of a
century, there must be still alive hundreds of the village folk among
whom Stevenson moved. But to find any who could recall him were the
most hopeless of tasks; to identify the _auberge_, in the
billiard-room of which "at the witching hour of dawn" he concluded the
purchase of the donkey and administered brandy to its disconsolate
seller, were equally impossible, and it was only left to the pilgrims
to visit the market-place where Father Adam and his donkey were first
encountered. So with the stink of the church, whose interior seemed to
enclose the common sewer of the town, still lingering in our nostrils,
we resumed our journey southward across the little river Gazeille, and
headed uphill in the direction of St. Martin de Frugères, noting as we
mounted on the other side of the valley the straggling lane down which
Modestine, loaded with that wonderful sleeping sack and the
paraphernalia of the most original of travellers, "tripped along upon
her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait" to the ford
across the river, giving as yet no hint of the troubles she had in
store for "the green donkey driver."
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER
A drawing of this castle by Stevenson has been published.]
[Illustration: GOUDET
"I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a
valley."--R. L. S.]
IV.
Along our road were several picturesque patches formed of rock and
pine, and notably the romantic ruins of Château Neuf, with the little
village clustered at their roots, which furnished subjects for
Stevenson's block and pencil. Among his efforts as a limner there has
also been published a sketch of his that gives with striking effect
the far-reaching panorama of the volcanic mountain masses ranging
westward from Le Monastier, a scene of wild and austere aspect. A
little beyond Château Neuf we were wheeling on the same road where he
urged with sinking heart the unwilling ass, and while still within
sight of his starting-place, showing now like a scar on the far
hillside, we passed by the filthy village of St. Victor, the
neighbourhood where the greenness of the donkey driver was diminished
by the advice of a peasant, who advocated thrashing and the use of the
magic word "Proot."
The road grew wilder as we advanced towards St. Martin de Frugères, to
which village the sentimental traveller came upon a Sabbath, and wrote
of the "home feeling" the scene at the church brought over him--a
sentiment difficult to appreciate as we wandered the filth-sodden
streets and inspected the ugly little church, whitewashed within and
stuffed with cheap symbols of a religion that is anathema to
descendants of the Covenanters. The silvery Loire far below in the
valley to our right, we sat at our ease astride our wiry steeds and
sped cheerfully down the winding road to Goudet, feeling that if our
mode of progress was less romantic than Stevenson's, it had
compensations, for there was nothing that tempted us to tarry on our
way.
"Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Château Beaufort
opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal,
lying in a deep pool between them." The scene was indeed one of
singular beauty, the fertile fields and shaggy woods being in pleasant
contrast to the barren country through which we had been moving. While
still a mile away from the place, we foregathered with two peasants
trudging uphill to St. Martin. I was glad to talk with them, as I
desired to know which of the inns was the oldest. There were three, I
was told, and the Café Rivet boasted the greatest age, the others
being of recent birth, and none were good, my informant added,
supposing that we intended to lodge for the night.
To the inn of M. Rivet we repaired, this being the only _auberge_ that
Goudet possessed at the time of Stevenson's visit. We found it one of
the usual small plastered buildings, destitute of any quaintness, but
cleaner than most, and sporting a large wooden tobacco pipe, crudely
fashioned, by way of a sign. The old people who kept it were good
Cevennol types, the woman wearing the curious headgear of the peasant
folk, that resembles the tiny burlesque hats worn by musical clowns,
and the man in every trait of dress and feature capable of passing for
a country Scot. The couple were engagingly ignorant, and had never
heard of Scotland, so it was no surprise to learn that they knew
nothing of the famous son of that country who had once "hurried over
his midday meal" in the dining-room where we were endeavouring to
instruct Madame Rivet in the occult art of brewing tea. The Rivets had
been four years in possession of the inn at the time of Stevenson's
visit, and I should judge that the place had changed in no essential
feature, though I missed the portrait of the host's nephew, Regis
Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the Two Americas," that
had entertained R. L. S. In return for our hints on tea-making, Madame
Rivet charged us somewhat in excess of the usual tariff, and showed
herself a veritable _grippe-sous_ before giving change, by carefully
reckoning the pieces of fly-blown sugar we had used, a little
circumstance the cynic may claim as indicating a knowledge of the
spirit if not the letter of Scotland.
V.
It was late in the afternoon when we continued our journey from
Goudet, intent on reaching that evening the lake of Bouchet, which
Stevenson had selected as the camping-place for the first night of his
travels. The highway to Ussel is one of the most beautiful on the
whole route, lying through a wide and deep glen, similar to many that
exist in the Scottish Highlands, but again unlike all the latter in
its numerous terraces, that bear eloquent witness to the industry of
the country-folk. Every glen in this region of France is remarkable
for this handiwork of the toilers, and the time was, before the advent
of the sporting nawbobs, when in some parts of the Scottish Highlands
similar rude stonework was common in the glens.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET]
[Illustration: SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES]
To those who have not seen this work of the poor hill-folk it is not
easy to convey a proper idea of its effect on the landscape. In these
bleak mountain regions the sheltered valleys and ravines are best
suited for growing the produce of the field, but as the soil is scant
and the ground too often takes the shape of a very attenuated V, it
is impossible to cultivate the slopes of the valley in their natural
condition; so, with infinite labour and the patience of their stolid
oxen, the Cevennols begin by building near the banks of the stream a
loose stone wall, and filling in the space between that and the upward
slope with a level bedding of earth. Thus step by step the hillside is
brought into cultivation, and the terraces will be found wherever it
is possible to rear a wall and carry up soil; indeed, they are to be
seen in many places where it would have been thought impossible to
prepare them, and out of reason to grow crops upon them. Often they
are not so large as an ordinary bedroom in area, and such a space one
may see under wheat. A hillside so terraced looks like a flight of
giant steps, and it is a unique spectacle to children of the plains to
descry, perhaps on the twentieth story, so to say, a team of oxen
ploughing one of these eerie fields.
Along this road, where on our right the terraces climbed upward to the
naked basalt, and on the other side of the valley, now flooded with a
pale yellow sunset that picked out vividly children at play tending a
scanty herd of cattle on the hillside, our donkey driver of old had
some of his bitterest experiences with that thrawn jade Modestine. We,
fortunate in our more docile mounts, made excellent progress to
Ussel, after walking a good two miles on foot. The road beyond that
town was lively with bullock wagons, heavily freighted with timber,
and carts, mostly drawn by oxen, filled with women returning from the
market at Costaros, a little town on the highway between Le Puy and
Pradelles; bullocks and people--the former to our embarrassment--being
greatly interested in the wheel-travellers of these seldom cycled
roads.
When we arrived at Costaros, a town that is drab and dismal beyond
words, the evening was wearing out under a leaden sky, promising the
stragglers from the market good use for their bulky umbrellas, and we
had still eight kilometres of rough country roads between us and the
lake. Stevenson, in his heart-breaking struggles with the wayward ass,
must have crossed the highway in the dark some little distance south
of Costaros to have arrived at the village of Bouchet St. Nicolas, two
miles beyond the lake; and as we urged forward in the rain, which now
fell pitilessly and turned the darkling mountains into phantom masses
smoking with mist, we could appreciate to the full the satisfaction
with which he abandoned his quest of the lake and spent his first
night snug at the inn of Bouchet. As we wheeled through the mud into
the large village of Cayres no straggler appeared in the streets, that
steamed like the back of a perspiring horse; but a carpenter at work
in a windy shed assured us that the chalet on the shore of the lake
had opened for the season, and in our dripping state we pressed
thither uphill, feeling that two miles more in the rain could not
worsen our condition. It was a weird and moving experience--the
ghostly woods on the hillside, the tuneless tinkle of bells on unseen
sheep, the hissing noise of our wheels on the moist earth--and our
delight was great when we heard the lapse of water on our left. For
nearly a mile the latter part of the road lay through a pine forest,
where the ground had scarcely suffered from the rain, but the way was
dark as in a tunnel, and glimpses of the lake between the trees showed
the water almost vivid as steel by contrast.
VI.
"I had been told," says R. L. S., "that the neighbourhood of the lake
was uninhabited except by trout." He travelled in the days before the
_Syndicat d'Initiative du Velay_, which I shall ever bless for its
chalet by the Lac du Bouchet, whose lighted windows two weary pilgrims
descried that night with joy unspeakable. Our arrival was the cause of
no small commotion to the good folk who kept this two-storied wooden
hostel. We were their first visitors of the season, and it was clear
they hailed us with delight, despite the lateness of our arrival.
Candles were soon alight in the dining-room upstairs, a fire of pine
logs crackling in the open hearth, the housemaid briskly laying the
table, the mistress bustling in the kitchen, doors banging cheerily in
the dark night as the master went and came between outhouses, fetching
food and firing for which our coming had suddenly raised the need. Our
bedrooms opened off the dining-room, and were well if plainly
furnished, the floors being sanded, and we had soon made shift to
change our sodden garments as well as the limited resources of
wheelmen's baggage would allow. Above all was the ceaseless noise of
the lake, that seemed to lend a keener edge to the chilly air.
[Illustration: THE INN AT GOUDET
_Where Stevenson was entertained by the old man and woman who still
conduct it_]
We could scarcely believe it was the middle of June in the sunny south
of France as we sat there shivering before the spluttering logs in a
room "suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise." But a deep sense
of comfort was supplied by the savoury smells that issued from the
lower regions of the house. Our blessings on the head of the landlady
and the whole French nation of cooks were sincere, as we regaled
ourselves with an excellent meal of perch, omelet, mutton chops,
raisins, almonds, cheese, lemonade and coffee. Imagine yourself
arriving after nine o'clock at night at a lonely inn anywhere in
the British Isles and faring thus! Moreover, the tenants of the
chalet--the two women especially--were the most welcome of gossips,
and the elder had a gift of dry humour that must have served her well
in so wet a season. For three weeks it had rained steadily, she said,
and she feared it was nothing short of the end of the world. When we
told her that we had come from Le Monastier by way of St. Martin and
Goudet, she was highly amused, and the younger, a rosy-faced wench,
laughed heartily at the thought of anybody visiting such places. The
lake of Bouchet--ah, that was another matter! Lakes were few in
France, and this one well worth seeing. There were many lakes in
Scotland! This was news to them, and they wondered why we had come so
far to see this of Bouchet,--as we did ourselves when next morning we
surveyed a tiny sheet of water almost circular, no more than two miles
in circumference and quite featureless. It is simply the crater of an
ancient volcano, and receives its water from some underground springs,
there being no obvious source of supply. The lake, at an altitude of
4,000 feet, is higher than the surrounding country.
VII.
When we awoke in the morning and made ready for our departure the room
was filled with the smoke of burning faggots, as though a censer had
been swung in it by some early-rising acolyte; and the fire was again
a welcome evidence of the landlady's thoughtfulness, for the outlook
was grey and the early morning air bit shrewdly as the tooth of
winter. Had the day promised better, we should have struck south from
the lake to Bouchet St. Nicolas, at whose inn Stevenson uncorked a
bottle of Beaujolais, inviting his host to join him in drinking it;
and the innkeeper would take little, saying, "I am an amateur of such
wine, do you see?--and I am capable of leaving you not enough." But
the way thither is no better than a bullock-track, and several miles
of similar road lie between Bouchet and the highway; so with a
lowering sky ominous of more rain, and the knowledge that for three
weeks the country had been soaking, we determined not to risk the
bullock-track, and retraced our path to Costaros, passing on the way
numerous ox wagons laden with timber.
The whole countryside was sweet with the morning incense of the faggot
fires burning on many a cottage hearth. We overtook several young
people driving cattle out to the pasture lands, and noting that
without exception they carried umbrellas, our hopes of a good day were
not high. But by the time we had reached the Gendarmerie, that stands
at the crest of the hill on the high road out of Costaros, and were
chatting with one of the officers whom we found idling at the door,
the wind was rising and heaped masses of sombre clouds were being
driven before it across the sky, though in their passage they
disclosed no cheering hints of the blue behind. The gendarme admitted
that the rising wind might be a good sign, but he was not very
hopeful, and seemed to be more interested in meeting two travellers
from a country he had never heard of than in discussing the weather.
There are parts of France, especially Normandy and Brittany, where, to
confess oneself a Scotsman is to be assured of a heartier welcome than
would be accorded to one who came from England; but Stevenson's boast
that "the happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotsman" counts for
little in these highlands of the south, where few of the village-folk
have ever heard of Scotland.
The road south of Costaros even on a bright summer day must appear
bleak and cheerless, and that morning our chief desire was to move
along it as quickly as we could. Yet, as we advanced, the scene was
not without elements of beauty, and the mists that veiled the distant
mountains gradually lifting, produced a transformation entirely
pleasing, while ere long there were great and welcome rifts in the
grey above, and patches of blue sky heartened us on our way. By the
time we had reached the hamlet of La Sauvetat the sun was peeping out
fitfully, and on our right it suddenly flooded with amber light a
meadow, yellow with marigolds, where cows were pasturing, attended by
a small girl who was playing at skipping-rope.
VIII.
We had again joined the track of R. L. S., where, now armed with a
goad, he drove his donkey. "The perverse little devil, since she would
not be taken with kindness, must even go with pricking." We had but to
sit in our saddles, and wheel rapidly down the long and exhilarating
descent to Pradelles, a very tumbledown village with a great shabby
square lying at an angle of almost forty-five degrees. The town
occupies a little corrie on the hillside, and the ground slopes
quickly on the west to the river Allier, beyond which the country
rises again in mighty undulations as far as the eye can reach. For all
its slanternness--perhaps, in some degree, because of that--Pradelles
is a place of interest, perched here at an altitude of 3,800 feet
above sea-level.
[Illustration: OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE
"Just at the bridge at Langogne a lassie of some seven or eight
addressed me in the sacramental phrase, '_D'où 'st-ce-que vous
venez?_'"--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET
"An amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the
Loire."--R. L. S.]
More than any other place we saw in our journey, this old mountain
town wears an unmistakable "foreign" appearance, and one walks its
streets with the feeling that one is moving cautiously along the
sloping roof of a house. Among its tumbledown buildings it still
possesses fragments of considerable historic value, such as its
ancient hospice, and a gateway from the top of which a village heroine
killed some Huguenot heroes by throwing a stone at them while they
were leading an assault against its walls. In the church of Nôtre Dame
this episode in the history of the town is commemorated by a mural
painting in vivid colours, the stone which the devout Catholic maiden
is hurling at the devoted heads of the besiegers being large enough to
warrant the assistance of a steam crane. The interior of the church is
very quaint and unusual, and I am sorry that Stevenson did not yield
to the urging of the landlady of the inn to visit Our Lady of
Pradelles, "who performed many miracles, although she was of wood,"
for his impressions of the church could not have failed to be
peculiarly piquant. The miraculous image of the virgin is a wooden
doll, dressed in lace and set on the high altar. Pilgrims come in
large numbers to its shrine every fifteenth of August; and one of the
spirited paintings on the wall depicts the rescue of the idol from a
burning of the church which, I should guess, took place about the time
of the Revolution. Evidently the rescuers of Our Lady were not
prepared to submit her to the crucial test a sister image at Le Puy
survived--"burning for thirty-six hours without being consumed." Many
and unfamiliar saints look down at us from the walls, and at the west
end there is a loft such as might be seen in some of the very old
Scottish churches, occupied at the time of our visit by a group of
women, members no doubt of some pious confraternity.
R. L. S. has some picturesque notes on "The Beast of Gévaudan," whose
trail he first struck at Pradelles; for we were now in the wild and
uncultivated country of Gévaudan, "but recently disforested from
terror of the wolves," whose grizzly exploits in the way of eating
women and children seem to have engaged the imagination of our
traveller. If the wolves have gone, they have left in their stead a
flourishing progeny of wolf-like curs, who infest the highways and
byways in extraordinary numbers, to the embarrassment of the wheelman.
IX.
From Pradelles to Langogne is a long and deep descent, and while
walking our machines down an unrideable path, a young woman on a
terrace near the road came forward to greet us, tripping unexpectedly
over the tether of a goat, and landing softly and naturally on the
ground, where after her moment's surprise she smilingly asked, "_Où
allez vous promener?_" more usually our bucolic greeting than "_D'où
'st-ce-que vous venez?_" the latter "sacramental phrase," on which
Stevenson remarks, being possibly suggested in his case by the odd
appearance of the traveller and his beast of burden.
The bridge across the Allier at Langogne, where Stevenson met the
"lassie of some seven or eight" who demanded whence he came, is now a
crazy ruin, and a serviceable modern structure spans the river some
little distance to the west of it. Near this place he camped for the
night. He furnishes no information about his stay at Langogne, where,
I should judge, he slept at one of the inns. The town must have
altered greatly since he rested there, as it is now on the railway
line to Villefort, and a considerable trade in coal seems to be
carried on. It is also a popular summer resort, though one is at a
loss to account for its attractions to holiday makers. Its church
dates from the tenth century, and contains in a little chapel on the
right, below the level of the nave, the image of Nôtre Dame de
Tout-Pouvoir, which our landlady at the Cheval Blanc assured us was
_très vénérée_, and the housemaid who conducted us thither took
advantage of the occasion to tell her beads before the statue, keeping
a roving eye on us as we wandered about the church.
X.
Stevenson's track now lay somewhat to the west of the course of the
Allier, as he made for the little village of Cheylard l'Evêque, on the
borders of the Forest of Mercoire, and in this stage of his journey he
was more than usually faithful to his ideal of travel: "For my part, I
travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The
great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life
more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and
find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints."
There was no need for his quitting the highway, since his further
objective lay due south through the pleasant valley of the Allier. But
his diversion among the by-ways was rich in adventure, and
furnished him with material for perhaps his best chapter, "A Camp in
the Dark." He had the good fortune to lose his way after nightfall,
and to be forced to camp in a wood of pines in happy ignorance of his
whereabouts. When next morning he did reach Cheylard he was fain to
confess that "it seemed little worthy of all this searching." With a
less keen appetite for losing ourselves in a maze of muddy
bullock-tracks, we pressed forward through the fresh green valley to
Luc, and here rejoined the path of our adventurer once more. We had
the road almost to ourselves, and among the few wayfarers I recall was
a travelling knife-grinder, whom we passed near Luc engaged in the
agreeable task of preparing his dinner, the first course of which,
_potage au pain_, was simmering in a sooty pot over a fire of twigs. A
nation of gourmets, verily, when the humblest among them can thus
maintain the national art in the hedges.
[Illustration: VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC
"Why anyone should desire to visit Luc is more than my much-inventing
spirit can suppose."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: LA BASTIDE
"At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river."
--R. L. S.]
"Why anyone should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than
my much inventing spirit can suppose." Thus our vagabond. But
journeying at a more genial season of the year, we found the
neighbourhood of Luc not devoid of beauty. The valley of the Allier is
here broken into wide and picturesque gorges, and in many ways the
scenery is reminiscent of Glen Coe, where Alan Breck and David Balfour
dodged the redcoats. But late in September it would bear a very
different aspect, and Stevenson tells us that "a more unsightly
prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy.
Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and
fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines.
The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the
ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my
feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady." There
is now a railway station at Luc, the line running near the road all
the way to La Bastide and as we continued southward that sunny June
day, it was only the shrill noise of the crickets and the unusual
quilt work of the diligently husbanded hillsides that told us we were
not looking on a Perthshire landscape. In a sweet corner of the valley
lies La Bastide, a drowsy little town despite its long connection with
the railway, which existed even at the time of Stevenson's visit.
Here, he tells us, "I was directed to leave the river, and follow a
road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern
Ardèche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange
destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows."
Thither we shall follow his steps, more closely than usual, as the
road is too steep to admit of our cycling. For some distance the route
lies through a great forest of pines, but when the crest of the hill
is gained a far-reaching prospect greets the eye. "The sun came out as
I left the shelter of a pine wood," writes R. L. S., "and I beheld
suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue
as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge,
heathery, craggy, the sun glittering in veins of rock, the underwood
clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first.
There was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and, indeed,
not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had
walked in twisted footpaths in and out among the beeches and up and
down upon the channelled slopes." Only when the snow comes down and
mantles these abundant hills would this description not apply. It is a
perfect picture of what we saw. Presently we noted with no small
satisfaction the white statue of the Virgin, which, standing by the
highway at a point where a side road strikes northward through the
pines, "directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows." He describes
the pine wood as "a young plantation," but in the intervening years
the trees have grown into a mighty forest, dark and mysterious, and
the statue of Our Lady was so overshadowed by branches rich with
cones, that it was impossible to get a satisfactory photograph of it.
"Here, then," he continues, "I struck leftward, and pursued my way,
driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots
and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence." On our equally secular
cycles we followed the same track, the roadway being dotted on each
side with bundles of faggots gathered by the silent monks, probably
for the use of the poor.
XI.
"I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than
the monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a
Protestant education," says Stevenson, as he recalls the feeling
produced within him by the clanging of a bell at the monastery while
he was not yet in sight of it. No bells clanged as we descended the
road which Father Apollinaris was still in the act of making when
Stevenson encountered him. We emerged at length from the shelter of
the trees into a wide hollow of land, from which on every side the
hills rose up, and where on our right were the outer walls of the
monastery, plain plastered buildings, with little barred windows on
the ground floor and a row without bars on the second story. On our
left was a large saw-mill, where steam saws were giving shrill
advertisement of their use. Several monks were among the workers at
the mill, and a brown-coated figure was walking along the road that
opened on our left beyond the timber sheds to some large white
buildings which, as we afterwards learned, comprised the farm
belonging to the monastery. The first impression was not exactly to
touch one's feeling for romance. Trappists in the timber trade
suggests a heading for a "snippet" periodical, and if the monks were
silent, here at least were noises that smote unpleasantly on the ear.
[Illustration: ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS
Made by Father Apollinaris "with his own two hands in the space of a
year."]
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY
"Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and my pack
were received into Our Lady of the Snows."--R. L. S.]
The buildings of Our Lady of the Snows are quite devoid of any
architectural beauty. They are set four-square in the hollow, and the
hills trend gently upward on every side richly clad with trees, for
the monks have reforested much of the surrounding land, which is the
property of the fraternity. The south side is occupied by a long,
two-storied building, which contains the main entrance--a plain,
whitewashed, barn-like structure--and buildings of a similar type
adjoin it east and west, while the north side of the quadrangle is
filled by the more pretentious masonry of the church, the
chapter-house, and other religious offices, though even here the
essential note of the architecture is austerity, the clock-tower being
devoid of decoration and purely utilitarian.
When endeavouring to photograph the buildings while the sun shone, an
old man with a very red face, a very white beard and a very dirty
white blouse came along, leaning feebly on his stick. He was delighted
on being asked to become part of the picture, and begged me to wait a
moment while he fixed on his left arm his _plaque_, whereon I read in
brazen letters, "Gardien de la Propriété." This aged and infirm
defender of the monastic estates was as proud of his _plaque_ as if it
had been a medal won in war. There must be few attacks upon the
property of the monastery, which he informed me extended as far as we
could see in this windswept hollow of the hills, if our friend of the
snowy beard and ruddy face stood for its defence! We were cheered to
learn from him that there would be no difficulty in visiting the
monastery, and if we wished we might be able to pass the night there.
This we desired most heartily for various reasons, but chiefly because
it was now close on six in the evening, and days are short in these
latitudes.
XII.
We were told to go round to the chief gateway, and there to summon the
Brother Porter by ringing the bell. This we did, with something of
that "quaking heart" to which Stevenson confesses in the same act, for
the clamour of a bell that one rings in a great silent building seems
fraught with news of an offence for which one stands to receive the
penalty. Nor do your spirits rise when a little shutter in the door is
opened, and a grizzly-whiskered face in a brown hood peers through
demanding your business. All was well, however. The Brother Porter
admitted us to the courtyard, and went to summon one of the novitiates
who, as Guest Father, would do us the honours of the monastery. He
was, as I should judge, a young man of five-and-twenty, who came to us
through a door on the right of the entrance that admitted to the
hospice. Wearing the white flannel habit of the monks, with a black
scapular hanging loose and bulky below the neck, he was of medium
stature, his shaven face pleasant and comely, and his dark eyes of
that unusual brilliance which Stevenson noted as "the only morbid
sign" he could detect in the appearance of the monks. Our host bowed
ceremoniously in shaking hands with us, and immediately escorted us
across the trim garden to the monastic buildings at the other side of
the quadrangle.
During their period of novitiate, which lasts for three years, the
monks have still the liberty to talk with strangers or with the lay
brethren, but when their final vows are taken they are supposed to be
inarticulate, except in performing the religious offices of each day.
The Guest Father would in two years more be qualified for the silent
life; meanwhile, he exercised his power of speech with so much grace
that one felt truly sorry so excellent a talker should contemplate
with cheerfulness the voluntary and useless atrophy of his divine
gift. Very reverently he led us into the church, which is a plain but
elegant building with a vaulted roof, the walls being whitewashed, and
the woodwork, of which there is not too much, chastely carved. A
number of good pictures are hung on the walls, and there is a series
of statues of the saints on brackets, executed with some taste, and
entirely free from the usual tawdry colouring of similar objects in
French Catholic churches. The altar also is in welcome contrast to the
common doll-show of the ordinary church, and although the oft-repeated
references to the simplicity of the whole with which our excellent
friend pointed out the various features of the place approached almost
to affectation, one must bear ready witness to the apparent sincerity
of these poor monks in their efforts towards a simpler circumstance of
worship than the Roman Catholic Church in general practises.
[Illustration: _Trappist Monks gathering roots for distilling_]
[Illustration: _A Peep into the Library_
OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS]
The chapter-house is in keeping with the church in point of restraint
in decoration, its beautifully panelled walls giving the apartment a
genial touch of warmth by contrast with the cold white of its groined
roof.
The library, which occupies a spacious room on the upper story of the
north wing, is stocked with some twenty thousand volumes, chiefly in
Latin and French, but including an excellent collection of works in
Greek, religion and history being naturally the chief subjects
represented. When we remember that many of the monks are men of no
intellectual gifts and of small learning, being drawn largely from the
peasant class and the military, we may doubt if the treasures of the
library are in great request. The librarian, at least, must be a man
of bookish tastes, since the collection is arranged in perfect order.
Our guide assured us that the monastery possesses a copy of _Travels
with a Donkey_, but he did not discover it for us.
The refectory is a large and bare chamber occupying the lower story of
the east wing. Long narrow tables of plain wood stand around the
room, and on these are laid the simple utensils of the meal. The monks
sit on a rude bench, and for the greater part of the year they take
but one meal in twenty-four hours; but during the summer months, when
one might suppose their needs to be less, they, by special indulgence,
go so far towards temporising with the flesh as to eat twice in one
day.
R. L. S. was moved to a little disquisition on the subject of
over-eating when he contemplated the dietetic restraint of the
Trappist brethren. "Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat
sparingly," he writes; "and though each is allowed a small carafe of
wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of
mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for
support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of
life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this
Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at
the freshness of face and the cheerfulness of manner of all whom I
beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that
I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with
the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure,
and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This, at
least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live
healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high
in colour, and the only morbid sign that I could observe--an unusual
brilliancy of the eye--was one that rather served to increase the
general impression of vivacity and strength."
On the topmost floor of the east wing we were shown the dormitory, a
long and, as I recall it, a somewhat low-roofed room, divided into
numerous little cubicles, each enclosed on three sides, and screened
from the passage by a curtain of red cloth. The couch consisted of a
single mattress laid on boards, with the scantiest supply of
bedclothes. Each of these little compartments bore in painted letters
the monastic name of its occupant, and here every night, after the
toils and vigils of the day, the brethren lay themselves down at eight
o'clock in their ordinary habit of dress, being in this respect less
fanatical than other fraternities of the same order, who sleep in
their coffins, and even in unduly ready graves. "By two in the
morning," says R. L. S., "the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on,
hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour
of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different
occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his
hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory all day
long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from
two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive
the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet, and occupied with
manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth several
thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of
their lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery
bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind
and healthful activity of body. We speak of hardships, but the true
hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our
own dull and foolish manner."
XIII.
On our way back to the hospice we learned with regret that Father
Apollinaris, "so good and so simple," had been dead five years, and
the right of the monastery to the title of Our Lady of the Snows was
clearly established by the information that in the winter months it is
buried for weeks on end, and our young friend of the shiny eyes
shivered as he spoke of the _neige énorme_, which he is doomed to see
every winter that he lives.
[Illustration: MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD
"From Bleymard I set out to scale a portion of the Lozère."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT
_On the Villefort-Mende road, at La Remise, near Le Bleymard_]
In the hospice the apartments for the use of visitors and
_retraitants_ are situated. To the right of the gateway on the
ground level are the kitchens and storerooms, and a door opening at
the foot of the stair admits one into a small and barely furnished
room, where supper had been prepared for us. A small table covered
with American cloth, with chairs set about it to accommodate perhaps
eight or ten guests, were the chief items of furniture. There were a
few prints of a religious character hung upon the walls, and to the
right of the fireplace stood a little bookcase, containing, however,
no works of interest. The meal served to us was well cooked and
savoury, and as an excellent omelet formed its _pièce de résistance_,
with soup, potato salad, walnuts, figs and cheese included, it needed
none of the profuse apologies for poverty of fare with which it was
set before us.
We were afterwards shown our bedroom on the floor above, a fairly
commodious room containing two iron bedsteads, with a more liberal
supply of bedclothes than we saw in the dormitory of the monks, a
small table and two chairs. A crucifix stood on the mantlepiece, and,
as in some hotels, a printed sheet of regulations was fixed on the
wall near the door. One may suppose it to have been a copy of that
which Stevenson noted, for it wound up with an admonition to occupy
one's spare time by examining one's conscience, confessing one's sins,
and making good resolutions. "To make good resolutions, indeed!"
comments R. L. S. "You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair
grow on your head." So far as we could judge, the south wing at the
time of our visit sheltered no other strangers than ourselves; nor did
it appear there were any weary, world-worn laymen living here in
retreat. At the time of Stevenson's sojourn among the monks there was
quite a little company in the hospice, an English boarder, a parish
priest, and an old soldier being some of the acquaintances he made in
the little room where we had supped. But there is a constant and
increasing number of visitors to the monastery, and immediately below
our bedroom there was a large and well-stocked apartment that gave
evidence of this. Here we found a varied supply of crucifixes and
rosaries to suit all purses, samples of the different liqueurs
distilled by the monks, and picture post cards in abundance. The
Brother Porter, a simple boorish fellow, in vain spread his bottles in
the sight of two who were not patrons of the stuff; but we reduced his
stock of post cards and his rosaries. He took the money like a post
office girl selling stamps.
XIV.
When we took our places in the little gallery that extends across the
west side of the chapel to hear the monks chanting the last service
of the day, _Compline_ and _Salve Regina_, we found that there was at
least another visitor, in the person of a stout and blue-chinned
_curé_. The white-robed monks were seated in their chairs in the
choir, books upon their knees; while the organist in an elevated
position on a level with the gallery played, unseen by us, "those
majestic old Gregorian chants that, wherever you may hear them (in
Meredith's fine phrase) seem to build up cathedral walls about you."
Paraffin lamps shed a dim, uncertain light, and the rich full voices
of the singers resounded weirdly through the white-walled chapel, the
door opening now and again as some of the lay brothers entered and,
crossing themselves, bowed wearily towards the altar, moving to their
places below the gallery. After the elevation of the Host, and when
the service was almost ended, the organist came down, and we noticed
that in making his way out of the chapel he hung back a little in
passing the choir screen, that he might not meet on his way to the
door any of the brethren who were now slowly leaving.
Of a similar service Stevenson writes: "There were none of those
circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in
the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the
romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall
the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights
alternately occluded and revealed the strong manly singing, the
silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and
then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that
the last office was over, and the hour of sleep had come; and when I
remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with
somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the
windy starry night." The effect of it all on the sentimental traveller
was summed up in these fervent words: "And I blessed God that I was
free to wander, free to hope, and free to love."
This, indeed, must be the impression all robust and unfettered minds
will receive from a visit to Our Lady of the Snows. It is true that in
their busy saw-mill which stands to the west of the monastery, and
where the timber from the hills is turned to commercial use by the
monks and their lay assistants, in their well-managed farm some
distance westward, in the surrounding fields, in their many
workshops--in these they have varied occupations, and of a manly
character, but the terrible uselessness of it all is ever present to
the mind of one coming from the stress and struggle of the zestful
world. Poor men! in their sullen way they may believe they have
chosen the better part; but, simple and devout as they may be, they
are the real cowards of life, the shirkers of the battle we are meant
to fight.
[Illustration: _Malavieille, a mountain sheiling_]
[Illustration: _Scene of "A Night among the Pines"_
"Buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine woods, between
four and five thousand feet towards the stars."--R. L. S.
ON THE LOZÈRE]
We slept the sleep of tired men in our room upstairs, and heard none
of those hourly bells Stevenson records. Our young friend, whose
monastic name I foolishly omitted to ask, called us before eight in
the morning, and after providing a capital breakfast, bade us a
ceremonious good-bye, watching us from the door until the pine woods
enclosed us.
XV.
We made a swift descent to La Bastide, and by way of Chasseradès,
where Stevenson slept in the common bedroom of the inn, reached Le
Bleymard late in the afternoon, passing through a country of bare
hills and poor villages clustered in gusty hollows or hanging like
swallows' nests on craggy slopes. The valley of the Lot, rich and
beautiful westward to Mende, possesses no elements of charm in the
neighbourhood of Bleymard, and we found that town so mean and
featureless, that we had no wish to pass the evening there. The inn we
wanted was, so a crippled girl told us, at La Remise, on the high
road, and we must have passed it. We remounted our cycles and
retraced our path across the river, a distance of perhaps three
furlongs, and lo! there stood the charred remains of the Hôtel du Lot,
where we had hoped to rest ourselves. We had passed the place without
noticing it, and the view of its gaunt and smoky walls, now that they
had acquired so personal an interest, chilled our hearts, for the need
to rest and refresh ourselves was pressing. It was after sundown, and
there lay between us and Pont de Montvert a mountain higher than Ben
Nevis.
Opposite the unlucky Hôtel du Lot stood a small _auberge_, kept by one
Teissier. Two men were drinking absinth at a table by the doorway. One
was a thick-set fellow, wearing eyeglasses, and clothed not unlike a
foreman mechanic in England. The other was the familiar dark French
type, thin of features, eyes bright as those of a consumptive, his
beard ample and of a jet black, against which his ripe red lips showed
noticeably. He was dressed like a clerk or _commerçant_. They made us
welcome at their table, and we fell at once to discussing the
situation, from which it was evident we could not hope to cross the
Lozère that night. Some tourists had experienced a bad time traversing
the mountain the previous Sunday, and as we could not hope to do more
than reach the Baraque de Secours by nightfall, it would be madness to
attempt the descent into the valley of the Tarn after dark, the road
lying in many places along the lip of a precipice. Besides, this
wayside inn was very well managed, said the absinth drinkers; they had
lived there since being burned out across the way, a statement that
cheered us not a little, as every other feature of the place was
extremely uninviting.
The landlady, who had shown no interest in us whatever, I found busy
at a large cooking-range in a tiny kitchen, which opened off the
common sitting-room, and served also for the living-room of the
servants and familiar loungers. She was a woman of austere
countenance, displaying like so many middle-aged Frenchwomen a
considerable moustache; but I noticed that her teeth were white. Yes,
she would be glad to supply dinner if we were to stay overnight. We
were, I confessed without enthusiasm; whereupon she specified glibly
the resources of her kitchen. We could have soup, trout, jugged hare,
chicken, fillet of beef, potatoes, pastries, cheese, and other things,
and by naming one dish and connecting it to the next with _et puis_,
an aldermanic banquet seemed about to be conjured up from the dirty
little room and its greasy stove. The common room of the inn had a
sanded floor, and was furnished with a plain deal table, round which
some country bumpkins were sitting on rush-bottomed chairs drinking
beer and spitting freely in the sand. A few cheap oleographs nailed
on the dingy walls were the only efforts at decoration. Two drab and
unattractive girls gossiping with the customers appeared to be the
staff of the hotel.
I returned to the Frenchmen outside, and found that my companion,
anxious not to enter the place until the last moment, was playing at a
game resembling bowls with some village urchins, though understanding
not one word of their speech. But he came up in a little while to
learn the results of my inquiries within, and soon we were all engaged
in a very entertaining discussion. It appeared that the Frenchmen were
concerned in the zinc mines near Bleymard, him of the oily clothes
being chief engineer, the other business manager. I suppose they would
be the two best conditioned residents in the district, and here they
were lodging at an hotel which, apart from cooking, was below the
standard of comfort to be found in a crimp's den in the region of
Ratcliffe Highway. The Frenchman is a wonderfully adaptable creature:
give him a table to drink at, a chair to sit upon, and a bed anywhere
under a roof, and he can contrive to be happy.
[Illustration: _The Baraque de Secours_]
[Illustration: "The Lozère lies nearly east and west; its highest
point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises
upwards of 5,600 feet above the sea."--R. L. S.
ON THE LOZÈRE]
M. l'Ingénieur, although he spoke no English, had seen something of
the world, and had even been to Klondyke. He could not understand why
anyone should have wandered to such a hole as this--for pleasure!
But he expected that next year's guide-books would describe Bleymard
as notable for the ruins of the Hôtel du Lot. A wag, obviously. If we
wanted to see places worth looking at, there was Nice and Nîmes, said
his friend M. Barbenoire. Together they extolled, with a rare gush of
adjectives, the beauty of these places, and promised to show us
picture postcards that would lure us into visiting them. Tourists did
come sometimes to climb the Lozère, from the top of which in clear
weather one might see the Alps. The engineer laughed merrily at this,
and said the story was as much legend as the exploits of the beast of
Gévaudan. He discussed in a very practical mind the question of
miners' wages, and thought that the Bleymard zinc workers were better
off with four francs a day than English miners with five or six
shillings.
Sooner than we had expected dinner was declared ready, and we went
inside with no great avidity; but to our surprise we found the meal
laid in a little room at the other end of the drinking den, tolerably
clean though dingy and tasteless in its appointments. There we were
joined by the wife of M. Barbenoire and two immense dogs of unfamiliar
breed. The maid who served us was engagingly free from the usual
formalities of the table, and between the courses would sit coyly on
the knee of the engineer, munching a piece of bread; but for the
rest, ours was no Barmecide feast. The aldermanic banquet appeared in
all essentials save the serving, and we fared so well that we began to
hope our bedroom would even be comfortable.
When, later in the evening, we took our courage in both hands and
penetrated to the upper story by way of a spiral iron staircase
through the kitchen roof and along a dark lobby of loose boards, we
were heartened not a little to find in our room two good beds, clean
and curtained. Sleep was thus assured, though the smell from the
stable through the wall was redolent of rats. It was "a wonderful
clear night of stars" when we looked out of our window before
retiring, and we went to bed determined upon an early start. The
bellowing of the oxen in the stable and the shouts of the _buveurs_
below did not come long between us and the drowsy god.
XVI.
Alas! at dawn next day we looked forth on a blank wall of mist backing
the ruins across the road. Not a hill was visible. We sought our beds
again, and by nine o'clock the outlook was only slightly improved, the
nearest hills, now resonant with sheep-bells, being in sight. The
engineer comforted us with the assurance that this was the common
weather in June, the best time of the year being from July to October,
but he thought the mists might clear before noon. Presently it began
to rain, and during the whole day there was not half an hour of clear
weather. At times the atmosphere would thin a little, only to show us
heavy clouds condensing on the higher hills. Thus prisoned in our
room, we contrived to be comfortable, and I believe that another day
would have left us wondering why we had dreaded staying at the inn, so
soon does the human mind adapt itself to circumstances. The
rain-sodden streets actually provided entertainment. We watched with
interest the coming and going of shepherds and their flocks, the
former armed with commodious umbrellas and their sheep shorn in a way
that left a lump of wool upon their backs making them comically like
little camels. Many bullock wagons loaded with shale passed by, and we
noticed that the slightest touch with the driver's wand served to
direct the team, whose heads were, to quote our hero, "fixed to the
yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice." Children
played out and in the stables and among the ruins, and an old man,
wearing the usual dress of the peasant, with pink socks showing above
his sabots, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and a stick under
his arm, wandered aimlessly to and fro in the rain most of the day.
The stage-coach from Villefort to Mende rested for a time at the inn,
causing a flicker of excitement, and in the evening again the mine
officials were there to bear us company.
The engineer proved himself a thorough-paced sceptic of the modern
French sort. His opinion of the country-folk was low--hypocrites,
fools, money-grubbers all! Holding up a five-franc piece, he averred
that for this they would sell mother, daughter, sister; and then
similarly elevating a bundle of paper-money, he exclaimed: "_Voilà, le
Grand Dieu._"
"This is a Catholic countryside?" I said.
"Yes," he replied, "but that makes no difference."
"There is one Protestant in Bleymard," put in Barbenoire,--"myself!"
"And he isn't up to much," added the cynic.
[Illustration: "A cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocurès
sitting among vineyards."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: _Bridge over the Tarn at "Pont de Montvert of bloody
memory," and view of the Hôtel des Cevennes where Stevenson stayed._]
XVII.
"We shall set out at five in the morning," I said to the landlady
before going upstairs, and the engineer signalled to us as we left the
room the outstretched fingers of his right hand twice; wherein he
proved something of a prophet, for it was nearer ten o'clock than
five before we determined to risk the mountain journey, the sky
being clear in parts and the rain clouds scudding before a high wind,
that promised a comparatively dry day.
On the bridge across the Lot at Bleymard we were hailed by a man in
labouring clothes, who smiled broadly and said, "Me speak Engleesh."
As we had not met a single Frenchman between Orleans and this spot who
pretended to have any knowledge of our native tongue, we tarried to
have speech with this cheery-faced fellow, whose white teeth shone
through a reedy black moustache. But his lingual claims did not bear
inspection. Beyond saying that he had visited London and Liverpool,
and knew what "shake hands" meant, and that English tobacco was better
worth smoking than the French trash--a hint which I accepted by
presenting my pouch--he could not go in our island speech; and so we
had to continue our chat in French that was bad on both sides, his
accent resembling a Yorkshireman's English, and mine--let us say an
Englishman's French. He was certain we should have no more rain, as
the wind was in the north, and if it kept dry to twelve o'clock we
could depend on a good day. The weather prophet is the same in all
lands, and we had not left him half an hour when we were sheltering
from a sudden downpour.
For some miles we had to plod upward on foot in a wild and rocky
gorge, with the merest trickle of water below. Yet every corner where
a few square feet of clover could be coaxed into life had been
cultivated by the dogged peasants, and patches were growing at heights
where one would have thought it difficult to climb without the ropes
of an Alpinist. Many of these mountain plots were miles away from any
dwelling, a fact that conveys some idea of the barren nature of the
country.
The tiny hamlet of Malavieille, about half-way up the mountain side,
is the highest point permanently inhabited. It is a mere handful of
dark-grey houses, covered on slates and walls with a vivid yellow
fungus. Here the upland fields were densely spread with violets,
narcissi and hyacinths, and a few dun cows were browsing contentedly
on this fragrant fare, while a boy who attended them stood on his head
kicking his heels merrily in the sunshine. He came up as we passed,
staring at us stolidly; and when we asked if the snakes, of which we
had just encountered two about three feet long, were dangerous, he
answered, "_Pas bien_," and more than that we could not get him to
say, though he walked beside us for a time eyeing curiously our
bicycles.
XVIII.
When we had come within sight of the Baraque de Secours, we had
reached a sort of table-land reaching east and west for some miles.
Eastward lay the pine woods where our vagabond spent one of his most
tranquil nights as described in his chapter, "A Night Among the
Pines." It was there that, awaking in the morning, he beheld the
daybreak along the mountain-tops of Vivarais--"a solemn glee possessed
my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day." And it was
there, too, that out of thankfulness for his night's rest he laid on
the turf as he went along pieces of money, "until I had left enough
for my night's lodging." Some of it may be there to this day, for
there is small human commerce at this altitude, a shepherd or two
being the only folk we saw until we arrived at the shelter which we
had seen for more than half an hour while we cycled arduously toward
it.
The baraque is a plain two-storied building, with a rough stone wall
and porch enclosing a muddy yard. It stands at a height of over five
thousand feet, being thus fully five hundred feet higher than Ben
Nevis. To the west the Lozère swells upward, a great treeless waste,
to its highest point, the Pic de Finiels, 5,600 feet above sea-level;
while a splendid mass of volcanic origin uprears its craggy head some
little distance to the south-east. "The view, back upon the northern
Gévaudan," says Stevenson, writing of what he saw as he passed near
this point, "extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house,
appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west,
all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning." And then
in a little, when he began the descent towards the valley of the Tarn,
he says: "A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other
steps that had preceded it--and, 'like stout Cortez when with eagle
eyes he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of
a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf
rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of
heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet." As he makes
no mention of the baraque, I venture to suppose that it had not then
been built, for one so eager of new experience would not have missed
the opportunity of resting on his way at this high-set hostel. A dead
sheep--one of several we had seen on the mountain--lay on the road by
the gate, and propping our bicycles near it, we picked our way through
the mud and knocked at the door.
[Illustration: _Waterfall on the Lozère, on Stevenson's route between
Finiels and Pont de Montvert_]
[Illustration: _In the valley of the Tarn: Scene of Stevenson's camp
under the chestnuts on the hillside_]
A gruff voice bade us enter. We stepped into a smoky room, with an
earthern floor, containing a rough wooden table and two rude
benches, and in a corner a small round table, a few chairs and a plain
wooden dresser. The mouth that had emitted a very gutteral "_Ongtray_"
belonged to a man of small stature but brigandish appearance, who was
seated at the smaller table eating industriously. We asked for
lemonade and biscuits, but the fellow stared at the words and spoke in
a patois that was Greek to me. But when I explained more sententiously
that we desired something to eat and drink, he disappeared up a wooden
stair, and we knew that a bottle of atrocious red wine, which we would
welcome as so much vinegar, would be forthcoming. Meanwhile, the man's
wife--a fair-haired little woman with cheeks like red apples, dressed
in the universal black of the French country-wife--came in, leading a
youngster by the hand. I repeated to her our wants, which she
immediately proceeded to meet by breaking four eggs into a pan, the
shells being dropped on the floor, and lo! an omelet was well on the
way by the time her husband in his sabots came clattering down the
stairs with the undesired wine, a few drops of which we used to colour
the clear cold water we took in our tumblers from a pipe that ran
ceaselessly into a basin set in the wall of the room that backed to
the rising land.
There is one respect in which the Cevennols have progressed since
Stevenson went among them. He writes: "In these Hedge-inns the
traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no
other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron
fork, the table is completely laid." Not so had we found it in any of
the inns we visited, all had risen to the dignity of knives and forks;
but here at this house in the wilds our table was laid precisely as
Stevenson describes, and the bread being hard, it was a temptation to
break it across the knee like a piece of wood. We had almost finished
our meal when, after some whisperings between the man and woman, the
fellow dived into his pockets and produced a great clasp knife, which
he opened and handed to us.
While we sat and carried on a somewhat faltering conversation--for
both man and woman spoke the dialect of Languedoc and were superbly
ignorant--two men entered of the same brigandish type as the landlord,
and, speaking better French, proffered their services as guides if we
desired to scale the Pic de Finiels. This we had no desire to do,
especially when they were frank enough to state that the view from the
top was of very little interest. But they urged us to see the
magnificent view over the entire range of the Cevennes from the more
westerly peak, the Signal des Laubies. This, however, would have
taken us some two hours, and we had a long way to travel that day. We
were curious to know whether the baraque was tenanted in winter, and
one of the guides told us that during the winter the whole of the
uplands around us lay deep in snow, the roads being quite impassable.
This shelter was only open from the beginning of June to the end of
September, when its keepers retired downhill again to Malavieille. R.
L. S. crossed the mountain on the second last day in September, so
that the snows would soon be lying on his track. When we resumed our
journey again we were once or twice beguiled into thinking that we saw
some of the snows of yester year lying among the grey and lichened
rocks, but a nearer approach turned the drifts into flocks of sheep,
which the sombre background rendered snowy white by contrast.
XIX.
We went forward into the country of the Camisards along a well-made
road which gangs of labourers were leisurely repairing. So good are
these mountain roads, and so diligently tended, that one is inclined
to think they are used chiefly for the transit of stones to keep them
in repair. That on which we travelled has been made since Modestine
and her driver footed it through this same valley. In less than a
mile from the baraque it begins to sweep swiftly downward. Stevenson
thus describes his descent: "A sort of track appeared and began to go
down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led
into a valley through falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped
field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed
the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the
continual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old unwearied
hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend
me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself
together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the
hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with
a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is
like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely
left the summit ere the valley closed round my path, and the sun beat
upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere."
[Illustration: "CLARISSE"
_The Waitress at the Hôtel des Cevennes, from a photograph supplied by
the Pasteur at Pont de Montvert_
"The features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate
design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride."
--R. L. S.]
If his descent was thus, how much more so ours on our whirling wheels?
We encountered numerous cattle-drovers, whose herds spread themselves
across the path and rendered our progress somewhat perilous, as
neither hedge nor stone stood between us and the abyss. There is
but little population in the valley, and that centred in two small
hamlets, though we observed a number of deserted cabins which
Stevenson also notes. The river, too, as it nears the larger Tarn was
all his magic pen had pictured; here it "foamed awhile in desperate
rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot
with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river
of so changeful and delicate a hue: crystal was not more clear, the
meadows were not by half so green."
Our road brought us at length to Pont de Montvert "of bloody memory,"
which lies in a green and rocky hollow among the hills. To Stevenson
"the place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an
indescribable air of the south." Why so, he was unable to say; as he
justly observes, it would be difficult to tell in what particulars it
differed from Monastier or Langogne or even Bleymard. One of the first
buildings that the traveller encounters is the little Protestant
temple perched on the rocky bank of the river, and perhaps it was
again the Protestant education of R. L. S. that led him to note a
higher degree of intelligence among the inhabitants than he had found
in the purely Catholic villages. For my part, with the best will to
mark the difference, I found little to choose between the Catholic and
Camisard townships, unless it were a more obvious effort after
cleanliness in some of the latter.
XX.
Pont de Montvert is memorable as the place where the Covenanters of
France struck the first blow against their Romish persecutors; here
they "slew their Archbishop Sharpe." The Protestant pastor, a
fresh-faced man about sixty, with a short white beard, and wearing no
outward symbol of office, but dressed in an ordinary jacket suit and
cloth cap, we found in his home in a building by the river-side near
the bridge. Directly across the rock-strewn course was the Hôtel des
Cevennes, where Stevenson sat at the "roaring table d'hôte," and was
pleased to find three of the women passably good-looking, that being
more than an average for any town in the Highlands of France. Our
pastor--his wife and golden-haired daughter also--was more interested
in discussing Stevenson's travels than the religious condition of his
district, a subject on which my companion, pastor from "the Celtic
fringe," was athirst for information.
To my various questions regarding the position of the Reformed Church
I received the barest answers; there was no glowing enthusiasm _chez
le pasteur_ for the Camisards who a stone's-throw from where we sat
stabbed with many superfluous thrusts the Archpriest Du Chayla, their
most brutal persecutor. But Stevenson and his donkey--ah, that was
another matter! He knew all about them to the year, the day, the hour
of their quaint and curious visit; he was himself only two years
established in his charge at the time. And Clarisse! We knew, of
course, what Stevenson had said of her? Would we care to see her
photograph? She was now married, and settled in another town with a
considerable family growing around her. One felt that after a quarter
of a century, and with a family thrown in, Stevenson would have
resolutely refused to look on the counterfeit presentment of Clarisse.
But, less scrupulous, we chose to see her portrait, and the pastor was
good enough to present me with a copy, as he possessed several which
he had procured three years before when ordering one for an Englishman
who had gone over the trail of R. L. S. The _carte_ shows the
table-maid of the hotel as still possessing some of the featural
charms so minutely and faithfully noted by our author.
"What shall I say of Clarisse?" he writes. "She waited the table with
a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey
eyes were steeped in amorous langour; her features, although fleshy,
were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her
nostrils spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and
interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and with
training it offered the promise of delicate sentiment.... Before I
left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She took it like
milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily
with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was some
confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add
that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays;
but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years."
When I look again at the photograph, I fear that even this hope for
her who was "left to country admirers and a country way of thought,"
has not been fulfilled.
[Illustration: THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE
"It was but a humble place, called La Vernède, with less than a dozen
houses and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. There, at the inn, I
ordered breakfast."--R. L. S.]
The pastor came with us to point out Du Chayla's house, which stands
on the river side westward of his own, the spire of the modern
Catholic church showing above the roof. Perhaps it was only natural
that he should look upon so familiar an object without any show of
emotion, though my fellow-traveller set it down to the cold Christless
teaching of the _Eglise libérale_, to which section of the French
Reformed Church Pont de Montvert is attached. In that three-storied
house, with its underground dungeons and stout-walled garden
trending down to the river, the Archpriest carried on "the Propagation
of the Faith" by such ungentle methods as plucking out the hairs of
the beard, enclosing the hands of his Protestant prisoners upon live
coal, "to convince them," as R. L. S. quaintly observes, "that they
were deceived in their opinions." On the 24th July, 1702, led by their
"prophet" Séguier, a band of some fifty Camisards attacked the house
of the Archpriest, to which they at length set fire, and thus forced
Du Chayla and his military guard to attempt escape. The Archpriest, in
lowering himself from an upper window by means of knotted sheets, fell
and broke his leg, and there in the garden, where a woman was to-day
hanging out shabby clothes to dry, the Covenanters had their vengeance
of stabs. "'This,' they said, 'is for my father broken on the wheel.
This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister
imprisoned in your cursed convents.' Each gave his blow and his
reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the
dawn." Save for a new roof, the building remains much as it was two
hundred years ago.
XXI.
The road, for close on two miles out of Pont de Montvert, goes uphill
past the Catholic church--the town being now about equally divided in
the matter of religion--and then it is a long and gentle descent to
Florac. In no respect has the road changed since Stevenson wrote of
it, nor is there any likelihood that it will be altered ere the crack
of doom. "A smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the
summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I
went in and out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into
promontories of afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of
Killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making
a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in
the sunshine far above."
The slopes of the valley have been terraced almost to the sky-line,
not for baby-fields of wheat, but to furnish ground for chestnut
trees, that clothe the hills with rich and sombre foliage, and give
forth "a faint, sweet perfume," which tinctures the air with balsamic
breath. R. L. S. goes into raptures over these chestnuts;--"I wish I
could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how they
strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage
like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the
pillars of a church; or, like the olive, from the most shattered bole
can put out smooth and useful shoots, and begin a new life upon the
ruins of the old.... And to look down upon a level filled with these
knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old, unconquerable chestnuts
clustered 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to
rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature." It was on a
terrace and under one of these trees that he camped for the night,
having to scramble up some sixty feet above the place he had selected
for himself, which was as high as that from the road, before he could
find another terrace with space enough for his donkey. He was awakened
in the morning by peasants coming to prune the trees, and after going
down to the river for his morning toilet--"To wash in one of God's
rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or
semi-pagan act of worship"--he went on his way "with a light and
peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced."
Some little way from where he had slept he foregathered with an old
man in a brown nightcap, "clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint,
excited smile," who said to him after a while, "_Connaissez-vous le
Seigneur?_" The old fellow was delighted when the donkey-driver
answered, "Yes, I know Him; He is the best of acquaintances," and
together they journeyed on, discussing the spiritual condition of the
country-folk. "Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way,
he and I came upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place,
called La Vernède, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant
chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt, and here at the inn I ordered my
breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stonebreaker
on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl."
We found this little hamlet even smaller than we expected, some
half-dozen houses and a tiny place of worship, the whole lying below
the level of the main road, so that one could have thrown a stone on
their roofs, well-tilled fields and meadows stretching down to the
river. A _cantonnier_ who was busy breaking stones by the roadway
helped us to identify the place, and was proud to confess himself a
Protestant, in common with the little handful of his fellow-villagers.
The country grows richer and more fruitful as we approach Florac,
passing on our way the old castle of Miral and a picturesque church
compounded of an ancient battlemented monastery and some modern
buildings with a tall tower.
[Illustration: IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN
"The road led me past the old Castle of Miral on a steep."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: NEAR FLORAC
"Past a battlemented monastery long since broken up and turned into a
church and parsonage."--R. L. S.]
The influence of a country on its people suggested to R. L. S. an
interesting comparison as he journeyed through "this landscape,
smiling although wild." "Those who took to the hills for conscience
sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts," he writes;
"for once that they received God's comfort, they would be twice
engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and supporting
visions.... With a light conscience, they pursued their life in these
rough times and circumstances. The soul of Séguier, let us not forget,
was like a garden. They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge
that has no parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they
might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the
person." A singularly inapposite comparison. It was not in pleasant
valleys such as these, or in cosy little towns like Pont de Montvert,
that the Camisards fought out their war with "His Most Christian
Majesty Louis, King of France and Brittany," but on the bare and rocky
plateaus westward of the Cevennes, and on such mountain-tops as the
Lozère. Stevenson had never seen the Causse Méjan or the Causse du
Larzac, to the southward of the region through which he travelled, or
he would have realised that their conditions were even less likely to
foster "bright and supporting visions" in the Camisards than those of
the mountain-hunted Scots, though much better from a strategic point
of view.
XXII.
Florac is a small town of white houses, cuddled between the eastern
front of the Causse Méjan and the western foothills of the Cevennes,
with the river Tarnon, joined by the Mimente to the south, running
northward on its outskirts. There are only two thousand inhabitants,
but the number and excellence of Florac's hotels are accounted for by
its being an important centre for tourists visiting the gorges of the
Tarn, which, totally unknown to the outer world at the time of
Stevenson's journey, are now admitted to possess the finest scenery in
Europe. Our French guide-book frankly stated that Florac is a place
"of few attractions," but R. L. S. makes the most of these in a
sentence or two, describing the town as possessing "an old castle, an
alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain
welling from the hill." The old castle is quite without interest, and
is indeed the local prison, while the alley of planes, called the
Esplanade, is a dusty open space, with many cafés lining it, and the
grey, featureless Protestant Temple at its southern end.
"It is notable, besides," he adds, "for handsome women, and as one of
two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards."
I do not recall having noticed an unusual number of handsome women,
though the wife of the Free Church minister was quite the prettiest
French woman we saw in the Cevennes, and the Established Church
pastor's wife perhaps the most cultured. R. L. S. found the townsfolk
anxious to talk of the part played by Florac in the days of the
Camisards, and was delighted to see Catholic and Protestant living
together in peace and amity. But it may be that the conspicuous
absence of all windows from the lower parts of the Protestant churches
is a memorial of times when the adherents of the reformed religion
were subjected to the prying eyes and perchance the more dangerous
attentions of the Catholics without. Most of the public officials were
named to us as Protestants, and the religious differences are as
strongly marked between the two sects of the latter as between them
and their townsmen of the Roman communion. The larger and
State-supported church is Rationalistic, corresponding to our
Unitarian, and the smaller a Free Church, with a symbol of the open
Bible above its doorway.
In what we might call the Free Manse, really an extension of the
church for the housing of the minister, a door communicating between
the place of worship and the domestic apartments, we found M. Illaire
and his wife at play with their children--homely folk, who gave us a
cordial welcome, the heartier for the fact that Mme. Illaire had
stayed for a year in that "quaint, grey-castled city, where the bells
clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and
beat"--Stevenson's own romantic birth-town. She could thus speak our
native tongue, and my companion, for once in a way, needed none of my
interpreting. M. Illaire, an essential Frenchman, swarthy of features,
slight of build, voluble and gesticulative, discoursed with shining
eyes of Protestantism, but was something of a pessimist, and seemed to
think that at best a cold, bloodless Dieism would rule the
intellectual France of the future. I gathered that, as in the old days
of enmity between the Established and Free kirks of Scotland, there
was no traffic between the two Protestant churches in Florac, for Mme.
Illaire confessed that she had never seen the inside of the Temple,
which we had thoroughly inspected earlier in the afternoon, receiving
the key from the pastor's wife, whose husband unfortunately was absent
on a visit to Montpellier.
[Illustration: FLORAC
"On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac. It is notable as one of the
two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the
Camisards."--R. L. S.]
XXIII.
The route of R. L. S. now lay along the valley of the Mimente, which
branches eastward a little south of Florac, and penetrates a country
very similar to that traversed between the Lozère and this point. It
was only a few miles from Florac that he spent his last night _à la
belle étoile_ in the valley of this little river, noting in one of his
finest sentences the coming of night: "A grey pearly evening shadow
filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and
melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness was rising
steadily like an exhalation." At Cassagnas he was in the very heart of
the Camisard country, where there is little to engage one but the
historic associations of the district. At St. Germain de Calberte, six
miles to the south-west, reached by a rough and difficult road more
suitable for the foot than the wheel, he slept at the inn, and the
next afternoon (Thursday, 3rd October) he accomplished the eight
remaining miles through the waterless valley of the Gardon to St. Jean
du Gard--"fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours."
There came the parting with the companion of his travels, Modestine
finding a ready purchaser at much below prime cost. "For twelve days
we had been fast companions," he writes on his last page: "we had
travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several
respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky
and many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I
was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for
her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat
out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an
ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race
and sex; her virtues were her own. Farewell! and if for ever----
Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold her in my
turn, I was tempted to follow his example; and being alone with the
stage driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate
to yield to my emotion."
We are to imagine R. L. S. thus tearfully occupied in the stage-coach
bearing him east to Alais, an important industrial town on the main
line northward through Le Puy, whither there is no call to follow him.
We have the romantic regions of the Causses and the Tarn gorges still
to explore. Our way, no longer a pilgrim's path, lies westward.
Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"
"Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone
upon alone. If you go in company, or even in pairs, it is
no longer a walking tour in anything but name. It is
something else, and more in the nature of a picnic. A
walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is
of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go
on, and follow this way or that as the freak takes you, and
because you must have your own pace, and neither tramp
alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time with a girl.
And then you must be open to all impressions, and let
yourself take colour from what you see. You should be as a
pipe for any wind to play upon."
I.
Thus wrote Stevenson in one of his essays, but I doubt if he ever put
into practice this engaging theory of his. He came nearest to being
alone when he undertook his famous tour through the Cevennes; yet a
donkey, and one of so much character as his Modestine, is company of a
sort. When he made the first of his little journeys with a literary
end in view, he had a companion after his own heart in the late Sir
Walter Simpson, to whom the first of his books, _An Inland Voyage_, is
dedicated. That was, however, an enterprise of some adventure, and it
was well that the author had a companion, for had he fared forth alone
in his frail canoe, as did his great exemplar John MacGregor, in the
_Rob Roy_, it is doubtful if _An Inland Voyage_--not to say all that
came after it--had ever been written. In a letter sent from Compiègne
during the voyage, he gives a very cheerless picture of the business:
"We have had deplorable weather, quite steady ever since the start;
not one day without heavy showers, and generally much wind and cold
wind forby.... Indeed, I do not know if I would have stuck to it as I
have done if it had not been for professional purposes." I suspect
that no less potent an influence than "professional purposes" in
raising his courage to the height of the occasion, was the
companionship of "My dear Cigarette," as he addresses Sir Walter,
whose canoe had been named _Cigarette_, that of Stevenson sporting the
classic title _Arethusa_. Fortunately for the reading world, the
voyage, despite its discomforts, had happy issue in one of the most
charming books that came from the pen of the essayist, and although
hints are not lacking of the shadows through which the canoeists
passed, the sunshine of a gay and bright spirit is radiant on every
page.
[Illustration: BOOM ON THE RUPEL
"Boom is not a nice place."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL
"The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to
the unfavouring air."--R. L. S.]
As it had been my pleasant fortune in the summer of 1903, together
with a friend, to follow the footsteps of Stevenson in his travels
among the Cevennes, and the pilgrimage having proved plentiful of
literary interest, it seemed to me that one might find in a journey by
road along the route of "An Inland Voyage" as much of interest, and
certainly some measure of personal pleasure. Moreover, with the
disciple's daring, often greater than the master's, I desired to test
the plan of going alone. But it was more by happy chance than any
planning of mine that I betook myself, with my bicycle, to Antwerp at
precisely the same season that, eight-and-twenty years before,
Stevenson and his companion set out upon their canoe voyage by river
and canal, from that ancient port to the town of Pontoise, near the
junction of the Seine and Oise, and within hail of Paris.
In the preface to the first edition of _An Inland Voyage_, its author
expresses the fear that he "might not only be the first to read these
pages, but the last as well," and that he "might have pioneered this
very smiling tract of country all in vain, and found not a soul to
follow in my steps." That others have been before me in my late
pilgrimage is more than probable, although I have found no trace of
them; but perhaps I have not searched with care, for I would fain
flatter myself that here, as in the Cevennes, I found a field of
interest where there had been no passing of many feet.
II.
Antwerp seems a town so antique that no change of modern handiwork can
alter in any vital way its grey old features. Yet in my own
acquaintance with it, on its outward quarters at least, it has taken
on surprisingly the veneer of modern Brussels, though by the
river-side it remains much as it was when, in the later days of
August, 1876, the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_, with their
adventurous occupants, were launched into the Scheldt to the no small
excitement of the loungers about the docks. There must have been some
excitement, too, in the breasts of the voyagers, but, like the true
Scots they were, we can well believe they gave no show of it.
Stevenson had never been in a canoe under sail before, and to tie his
sheet in so frail a craft in the middle of a wide and busy river
called for no contemptible degree of courage. But he tied his sheet.
"I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself," he writes.
"Of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always
tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern
as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to
find myself follow the same principle, and it inspired me with some
contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to
smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a
comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely
elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a common-place that we cannot
answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is not so
common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we usually find
ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought."
There is but little of interest up the river, which waters a level,
unpicturesque country to Rupelmonde, where the canoeists would bid
good-bye to the Scheldt and steer to the south-east up the Rupel, a
broad and smooth-flowing stream that joins the greater water at this
point. Against the current they would urge their tiny prows until they
arrived after a journey of a few miles at the town of Boom, whence the
canal extends to Brussels in an almost straight line:
As I made my way that grey autumn morning through the little villages
and along the tree-lined highway, the brown leaves flickering down in
the cold wind that stirred among the branches, it pleased me to fancy
how Stevenson, had his youth fallen in the days of the bicycle, would
have enjoyed the privilege of riding on the Belgian footpath, which to
us who live in a land where no cyclist dare mount his machine except
on the highway affords a delightful sensation of lawlessness. It is
well to observe, however, that but for this right of the footpath
there would be no cyclist in all Flanders or Northern France, since
highways and by-ways there are made of the most indiscriminate
cobbles, and in the remote country places a cart on the lonely road
moves with as great a clatter as one on the stony streets of
Edinburgh.
III.
I was no great way from Boom when I saw advancing a high and narrow
structure, drawn by a horse, that progressed to the weird and
irregular clangor of a heavy bell, reminding me curiously of
Stevenson's moving description of the leper bell in _The Black Arrow_.
When I came up with the horse and its burden, I found the latter to
consist of a large circular tank, set on four wheels, with a tall box
in front for the driver, above whose head a large bell was
suspended. The word "Petrol," painted on the tank, indicated its
contents. Here, surely, was something that made the days of the canoe
voyage seem remote indeed; the peddling vendor of petrol belongs
emphatically to the new century.
[Illustration: THE ALLEE VERTE AT LAEKEN
The head-quarters of the "Royal Sport Nautique" is hidden among the
trees on the left of the picture.]
[Illustration: THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE
It was at this point, "on the Sambre canalised," that the canoe voyage
began in earnest.]
"Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that
the majority of the habitants have a private opinion that they can
speak English, which is not justified by fact." I can heartily endorse
our canoeist's opinion of the town, but this linguistic pride of its
inhabitants is surely a vanity of the past. I found none--and I spoke
to several--who had any delusions as to their knowledge of English,
and, indeed, few of them had more than a smattering of French. A
pleasant fellow on a cycle, who had insisted on riding close to me
through the outlying districts of the town, which are entirely taken
up by extensive brickworks, where I noticed the labourers all went
bare-footed, I found capable of understanding a few words of broad
Scots, and when I said, "Boom, is't richt on?" or "Watter, richt on?"
he nodded brightly, and replied in Flemish, which was comically like
the Scots.
The Hôtel de la Navigation, where the paddlers put up for the night,
and of which Stevenson gives so bad an account, I found no trace of,
nor did I tarry any length of time in Boom, since its attractions
were so meagre. The "great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge
over the river," remain the outstanding features of the town, and
viewed from the south side of the river, it makes by no means an
unpleasing picture.
IV.
The canal was simply packed with barges and great ungainly scows in
the vicinity of the town, awaiting their turn to slip through the
locks into the freer water of the Rupel, and heigh! for Antwerp, or
even the coastwise towns of Holland. It was good to feel as one
proceeded along the tow-path that here, in this world of change, was a
stream of life flowing onward through the generations serene and
changeless. "Every now and then we met or overtook a long string of
boats with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either
side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or flowerpot in one of the
windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day's
dinner, and a handful of children." Every day since R. L. S. paddled
in this same stretch of water the canal has presented the same picture
of life, and thirty years hence, it is safe to prophesy, the wayfarer
will find no change, as these canals remain the great highways of
Belgium and France for the transport of goods that are in no haste;
and when we come to think of it, a great proportion of the commodities
of life may be carried from place to place in no gasping hurry for
prompt delivery.
Stevenson has many profitable reflections on the life of the
canal-folk, with which in the course of his journey he was to become
so familiar. "Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise," he
writes, "a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It
may spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the
tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through
the green corn-lands, the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or
the horse plods along at a foot-pace, as if there were no such thing
as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the
same spire on the horizon all day long.... There should be many
contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to
stay at home.... I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any
position under heaven that required attendance at an office. There are
few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty
in return for regular meals." But our philosopher, when he goes on to
enhance his comfortable picture of a bargee's life, is scarcely
correct in saying that "he can never be kept beating off a lee shore
a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron." For these
great clumsy craft know well the scent of the brine, and there are
times when the snug outlook on the towing-path, and the slow business
of passing through innumerable locks are changed for floundering in
heavy seas and a straining look-out for a safe harbour. Not all their
days are smooth and placid, and sometimes, we may imagine, the dainty
pots of geraniums, that look so gay against the windows as we pass,
must be removed to safer places, while the family washing, drying on
deck to-day, has to be stowed elsewhere, and the tow-haired children,
now playing around the dog-kennel on the top of the hatches, have to
be sent below when salt waves break over the squat prow of the vessel.
The journey along the canal bank was to me a very pleasant one, and I
had hopes of being more fortunate than the canoeists in reaching
Brussels with a dry skin. They had to paddle in an almost continual
drizzle, and even made shift to lunch in a ditch, with the rain
pattering on their waterproofs. But when I got as far as Villevorde,
where gangs of men were labouring on the extensive works in connection
with the railway and the new water supply, the rain began, and I was
wet to the skin long before I had reached the royal suburb of
Laeken, where, for evidence of Belgium's industrial progress, witness
the splendid improvement on the canal at this point, soon to become a
system of docks and water-ways resembling in extent a great railway
junction.
[Illustration: THE GRAND CERF MAUBEUGE
Where R. L. S. and his companion stayed for some days awaiting the
arrival of the canoes by rail from Brussels.]
V.
One of the most amusing episodes in "An Inland Voyage" was the
encounter of the canoeists with the young boatmen of the "Royal Sport
Nautique," who in their enthusiasm for rowing gave a warm welcome to
the strangers, and by assuming the latter to be mighty men of the
paddle, led them into the most unwarranted boasting about the sport.
"We are all employed in commerce during the day," said the Belgians,
"but in the evening, _voyez-vous, nous sommes sérieux_." An admirable
opening for a characteristic bit of Stevensonian philosophy: "For will
anyone dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling
among boats?"
Whether or not the newer generation of Brussels boatmen are as serious
as the youths of thirty years ago I cannot say. The next afternoon,
being Sunday, I came out again from Brussels to make enquiries
concerning the "Royal Sport Nautique," and found a commodious brick
building occupying the site of the boathouse wherein Stevenson had
been entertained, but no signs of nautical life about it. There was
the slip where the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_ were drawn up out of
the canal, and on the roadway opposite stood this new boathouse and
clubroom, with the dates 1865--94 indicating, as the only member whom
I found on the premises explained, that the club had been founded in
the former year, and the building erected in the latter. But he was a
churlish fellow, this coxcomb in his Sunday dress, and barely answered
my questions. If I too, had paddled my own canoe, perhaps it might
have been otherwise! The day was fine, and the canal was busy with
little excursion steamers that were well patronised by holiday-makers,
and were covered almost to the water-line with flaring advertisements
of Scotch whiskies and English soaps, only one out of a dozen
advertisements being of local origin: a circumstance that would, we
may be sure, have drawn from Stevenson some pages of gay philosophy.
VI.
Following the example of the original travellers, I took train from
Brussels to the French frontier town of Maubeuge, where in real
earnest their canoe voyage began. To the traveller who has wandered
the highways of France south and west of Paris, such a town as this
presents some uncommon features, and I cannot but think that R. L. S.
gives a wrong impression of it. "There was nothing to do, nothing to
see," he tells us, and his only joy seems to have been that he got
excellent meals at the "Grand Cerf," where he encountered the
dissatisfied driver of the hotel omnibus, who said to him: "Here I am.
I drive to the station. Well! Then I drive back again to the hotel.
And so on every day and all the week round. My God! is that life?" And
you remember Stevenson's comment: "Better a thousand times that he
should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep
under the trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day above a new
horizon." Here spoke the lover of romance; but the facts are quite
otherwise.
Maubeuge I found a bright little town, surrounded by mighty ramparts
with spacious gates and bridges over the fosse. It is picturesquely
situated on the river Sambre, on whose banks stand large warehouses
and manufactories, while the shops bear evidence of prosperity. Even
_l'art nouveau_ has reached out from Paris and affected the business
architecture of the town. There is a bustling market-place, a handsome
little square with a spirited monument to the sons of the
country-side who have fallen for France, a grey old church, and a
pleasure-ground with a band-stand and elaborate arrangements for
illumination on gala nights. Indeed, I can imagine life to be very
tolerable in Maubeuge, which is really the residential centre of an
immense industrial district resembling more closely than any other
part of France our own Black Country.
Stevenson makes no mention of having visited the church, which is
interesting in one respect at least. Beneath the stucco casts of the
stations of the cross some _curé_ of an evangelical turn of mind has
ventured on a series of little homilies unusual in my experience of
French churches. Thus, under the representation of Christ falling
while bearing His cross we read: "Who is it that causes Jesus to fall
a second time? You, unhappy person, who are for ever falling in your
faults, because you lack resolution. Ask, therefore, of God that you
may henceforth become more faithful unto Him."
[Illustration: THE CHURCH AT QUARTES
"A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering
windmill."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT
Where "the landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had
charged so little," when the canoeists arrived back by river from
Quartes after having been treated like pedlars at Pont.]
Only in the most insignificant way can Maubeuge have changed since Sir
Walter Simpson was nearly arrested for drawing the fortifications, "a
feat of which he was hopelessly incapable," so that I suspect
something of misplaced sentiment in Stevenson's impressions of the
place. For my part, I should find it difficult to mention a town of
the same size in England or Scotland to compare with Maubeuge as a
place to pass one's days in. That omnibus driver with the soul of a
Raleigh may have been in some measure a creature of the romancer's
fancy. At all events, it is likely enough that he has travelled far
since 1876, as I take him to have been a man of middle age then. The
hotel omnibus with its two horses still makes its journey to and from
the station, but the driver is a stout young fellow of florid face,
who, I am sure, is perfectly contented with his lot, and enjoys his
meals. "_C'est toujours la même ici_," said Veuve Bonnaire, the
landlady of the "Grand Cerf," when I chatted with her in the bureau
after luncheon. Yet not always the same, for where was M. Bonnaire?
And I fear that our canoeists, if they could visit the hostelry again
would scarce recognise in this lady of gross body their hostess of
thirty years ago. The building itself is quite unchanged, I was
assured, and I ate my food in the same room and in just such company
as the voyagers dined--military officers all absurdly alike in sharp
features, small moustache and tuft on chin, and ungallant baldness of
head; and three or four commercial travellers, each with a tendency to
"a full habit of body."
VII.
The whole establishment of the "Grand Cerf" accompanied the canoeists
to the water's edge when they were ready to take their leave. Madame
Bonnaire, however, has quite forgotten that exciting episode of her
middle life; but there, we have Stevenson's word for it, and the good
woman must accept the fame. The day was a dismal one, we are
told--wind and rain, and "a stretch of blighted country" to pass
through. I heartily wished for a speedy end to that same stretch. For
six or seven miles the road is lined with factories and dirty
cottages, while dirty electric cars rattle along, well-laden with
passengers, for here France is at work and grimy; here is the France
of which the tourist along the beaten tracks has no notion. A stout
gentleman with whom I conversed by the wayside was very proud of the
varied industries of the district. "Look you; we have glass works,
pottery works, iron foundries, engine works, copper, and many other
industries in the neighbourhood." Still, I was glad when, a mile or
two beyond Hautmont, I found myself outside this region of smoke and
growling factories and advancing into a pleasant pastoral country, the
river only a little way from the road. Stevenson's word picture of
the scene is photographic in its accuracy, but his art environs it
with that ethereal touch the old engravers could give to a landscape,
an art that has been lost to us by the vogue of cheap modern
"processes."
"After Hautmont," he writes, "the sun came forth again and the wind
went down; and a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and
through a delectable land. The river wound among low hills, so that
sometimes the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it stood right
ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On
either hand, meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and
water-flowers, upon the river. The hedges were of a great height,
woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were
often small, looked like a series of bowers along the stream. There
was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look
over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky;
but that was all. The heaven was bare of clouds.... The river doubled
among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of
the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink."
In this land of many waters every male creature seems to be a disciple
of Sir Isaak Walton. A prodigious number of anglers will be
encountered; I must have seen hundreds. Every day and all day they are
dotted along the canals and rivers as patient as posts, and apparently
as profitably employed. It was a continual wonder to me how they could
spare the time; and a pleasure also, for it is cheering to know that
so many fellow-creatures can afford to take life so leisurely, and
that the factory may whistle and the surburban train shriek laden to
the town without causing them to turn a hair. "They seem stupefied
with contentment," says R. L. S. in a fine passage, "and when we
induced them to exchange a few words with us about the weather, their
voices sounded quiet and far away."
VIII.
At the little hamlet of Quartes, "with its church and bickering
windmill"--the latter gone these many years--the canoeists went in
search of a lodging for the night, but had to trudge with their packs
to the neighbouring village of Pont sur Sambre for accommodation. They
would have fared better at Quartes to-day, as there is now a clean
little _auberge_ hard by the bridge, kept by a jovial fellow, who told
me that his son had taken up photography, with deplorable results. "He
takes my photograph, I assure you, M'sieu, and makes me look like a
corpse in the Morgue"--and the landlord would laugh and show two rows
of dusky teeth beneath his wiry moustache--"and when I say I'm not so
awful as that, he will say that now I see myself as I really am, for,
look you, the camera must tell the truth." He laughs again, and
rising, says: "But come with me here," throwing open the door of a
private room. "Now there's a portrait I had done in Brussels, and I'm
really a decent-looking chap in that. So I say to my son, whenever he
makes a new and worse picture of me: 'There's your papa to the life,
done by a real photographer.'"
[Illustration: ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES]
[Illustration: SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
"Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the
street."--R. L. S.]
I am sure they are a happy family at the inn at Quartes, and they
enjoy life, the score or two of barges and boats that pass their door
every day keeping them in touch with the outer world of towns. The
landlord informed me that he had several times been as far as Paris by
the rivers and canals, and that there are excursions all that
distance--nearly 200 miles by water--every summer.
IX.
Pont sur Sambre is a long thin village, a mile or so from Quartes, and
different from other villages only in the possession of a strange lone
tower that stands in the middle of the wide street. Stevenson makes
note of it, and says: "What it had been in past ages I know not;
probably a hold in time of war; but nowadays it bore an illegible
dial-plate in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron
letter-box." As I was preparing to take a photograph of this landmark,
a buxom woman came up and begged that I might photograph her. I
protested my inability to do so with any satisfaction, having no stand
for my camera. "But you have a camera; isn't that enough? And I am so
anxious for a photograph." What would you in such a case? Especially
as she said she could wait a month or more for me to send a print from
England. So the widow Cerisier poses in the foreground of my picture
of the strange tower at Pont--a tower which, she told me, has weird
underground passages leading away into regions of mystery.
It was at a little ale-house within sight of the tower that Stevenson
and his friend passed the night, the landlady treating them as
pedlars, and they enjoying the experience. Here, too, they fell in
with a real pedlar, Monsieur Hector Gaillard of Maubeuge, who
travelled in grand style with a tilt-cart drawn by a donkey, and was
accompanied by his wife and his young son. Pedlars' fortunes seem to
have improved since those days, as I found a travelling cheap-jack at
Pont, with a very commodious wagon, which must have required two
horses to move it about, cunningly contrived to open into a veritable
bazaar, around which housewives and children clustered like bees.
Another packman was showing his wares hard by on a lorry equally
commodious, where he displayed to advantage an immense assortment of
second-hand clothes and remnants of cloth, while his wife was inducing
the thrifty women of Pont to buy.
The Sambre at Pont looks very alluring, especially when the sun shines
and projects the green shadows of the waving willows across its
sluggish waters. Barges pass under the bridge at a snail's pace, and
away among the winding avenue of poplars and willows that marks the
river's zigzag course through the rich and restful meadow-land we see
the masts of other boats moving with consummate slowness. R. L. S.
illustrates the erratic course of the river by stating that while they
could walk from Quartes to Pont in about ten minutes, the distance by
river was six kilometres, or close on four miles. The folk at the
ale-house were amazed when their guests, after walking to Quartes next
morning, arrived by river an hour or so later as the owners of two
dainty canoes. "They began to perceive that they had entertained
angels unawares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably
lamenting she had charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and
called out the neighbours to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from
quite a crowd of wrapt observers. These gentlemen pedlars indeed! Now
you see their quality too late."
X.
The country between Pont and Landrecies wears many signs of quiet
prosperity; houses are numerous, orchards well-stocked, the
people--and never is the highway utterly deserted--smiling and
contented, to all appearance. The river at a point about six miles
from Landrecies skirts a part of the forest of Mormal, and our
sentimental traveller turns the occasion to profit thus:
[Illustration: THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES
As it was at the time of "An Inland Voyage."]
[Illustration: THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE
"We were skirting the Forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear,
but a place most gratifying to sight and smell."--R. L. S.]
"There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and
a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and
bustling by comparison. And surely of all smells in the world, the
smell of many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a
rude, pistolling sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like
snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall
ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic
quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness.
Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a
forest is infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day,
not in strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts of
trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to live
among different kinds of atmosphere. Usually the resin of the fir
predominates. But some woods are more coquettish in their habits; and
the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard upon us that
showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate than
sweetbriar."
Further on he says: "Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit
of a wood, and it was but for a little way that we skirted by its
boundaries." So it may have seemed to the canoeists, who saw only a
scrap of the great forest, that thrusts southward to the river at a
place called Hachette. But it was not without some misgiving that I
found myself suddenly plunged into the woodland, and discovered that I
had six miles of it to penetrate and roads to ride which a little boy
in a cart described eloquently by stretching his arm to its limit and
then sweeping it down to the cart, and up and down half a dozen times!
The forest has indeed, as R. L. S. observes, "a sinister name to the
ear," and I felt--if I must speak the truth--a little quickening of
the pulse when I had ridden about half an hour through its lonely
rough roads, with rabbits and other wild creatures of the undergrowth
making strange rustlings among the leaves by the wayside. The sun had
been going down as I came into the forest, but the air among the trees
was chilling and wintry after the warm high-road, not a slanting ray
of sunshine penetrating the dense growth of trees. The only
pedestrians whom I met were a party of rough sportsmen, who eyed me as
a curious bird when, in answer to their questions, I said I had come
from London. I had wandered from the direct road through the forest,
it appeared, and one of the men, having a map, was able to work out a
route for me; but it was another half-hour--which seemed like half a
day--before I caught a welcome glimpse of the clear evening sky among
the lower branches, and presently emerged on the main road into
Landrecies, at a place suggestively named Bout du Monde.
XI.
If there is another town so dead as Landrecies in all the department
of Le Nord, I have a great wish not to pass a night within its walls.
It is changed times there since the passage of R. L. S., although it
was _triste_ enough when "Arethusa" and "Cigarette" spent two days at
the roomy old Hôtel de la Tête d'Or. "Within the ramparts," he says,
"a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks and a church, figure,
with what countenance they may, as the town. There seems to be no
trade; and a shopkeeper, from whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel,
was so much affected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into
the bargain. The only public buildings that had any interest for us
were the hotel and the café. But we visited the church. There lies
Marshal Clarke; but as neither of us had heard of that military hero,
we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude."
Marshal Clarke, whose tomb looks as new as though it had been set up
yesterday, was one of Napoleon's generals, and, as his epitaph reminds
us, sometime minister of war. Had he hailed from Scotland instead of
Ireland he might have been more interesting to R. L. S.
If Landrecies was so dull thirty years ago, picture it to-day, with
its barracks almost empty, its ramparts demolished, and its less than
4,000 inhabitants in bed by nine o'clock! "It was just the place to
hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp
of men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. It
reminded you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring
system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with
cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns."
Alas! the barking of a melancholy dog and the clock of the Hôtel de
Ville ringing out the lazy hours were the only sounds I heard that
night, though just before dusk a wandering camelot selling in the
street a sheet of "all the latest Paris songs" made a welcome
diversion. I sampled his stock, and found it to consist of doggerel
rhymes about the Russo-Japanese War, mingled with some amorous
ditties, and a piece of a devotional kind! "_C'est une ville morte_,"
said a dumpy lady with a scorbutic face, who drank her after-dinner
coffee in the dining-room with me. "Think of Paris, and then--this!"
she sighed. I wondered what had brought her there, and doubtless she
thought I was some cycling fellow who had lost his way.
But if the military glory of Landrecies is departed, it makes a brave
effort to recall the past with an elegant column near the site of the
north gate, whereon are recorded the sieges which Landrecies
withstood, the last being in the Franco-German War. Also erected since
Stevenson's time is a striking monument to the great Joseph François
Dupleix, whose gallant effort to found an Indian empire for France was
frustrated by Clive, and who, born in Landrecies, spent his substance
for his fatherland, only to die in poverty and neglect.
[Illustration: THE INN AT MOY
"Sweet was our rest in the 'Golden Sheep' at Moy."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY
"Moy was a pleasant little village."--R. L. S.]
The landlord of the hotel assured me that he remembered the visit of
my heroes, even mentioning the hour of their arrival and departure.
He was a young man then; but to-day his hair is streaked with grey.
The _Juge de Paix_, who entertained the travellers, is still to the
fore: a bachelor then, he is a widower now.
I noticed an odd feature of the hotel: its meat safe was the roof of
the passage to the courtyard. Here, hanging from hooks fixed in the
roof, were joints of beef, legs of mutton, hares, rabbits, and so
forth--an abundant display; and when the cook was in need of an item,
she came out with a long pole and reached down the piece she wanted.
XII.
The canoeists left Landrecies on a rainy morning, the judge under an
umbrella seeing them off. My lot was pleasanter, for the morning was
fine and the landlord's son, a bright lad, with those babyish socks
which French boys wear, escorted me some way out of the town on his
bicycle, chatting merrily about the state of the roads, and evincing
great surprise when he heard that we would be fined for cycling on the
footpath in England.
My route lay along the highway to Guise for a time and close to the
canal, passing through a gentle undulating country with far views of
thickly-wooded fields and little hills. The hamlets by the way were
surrounded by hop fields, the great poles with their fantastic
coverings of the vine being the most noticeable feature of the
wayside, just as R. L. S. had observed them when the hop-growers of
to-day were _bien jeune_, as the old gentleman at the play in Paris
described Stevenson himself. Etreux, where the canal journey ended, I
found a thriving and agreeable little town, the rattle of the loom
being heard from many an open door, and the thud, thud of flails in
the farm-steadings on the outskirts. At Etreux the canoes were placed
on a light country cart one morning, and the travellers walked to
Vadencourt by way of Tupigny, a village where I was served with a
make-shift lunch at a little inn, the landlady doing the cooking and
laying the table with a baby held in her left arm! Vadencourt is full
of weavers, and here close by the old bridge over the river the
_Arethusa_ and _Cigarette_ were launched in the fast-flowing water of
the River Oise.
XIII.
The canoeists were now in the full swing of perhaps the most enjoyable
part of their journey. Let a canal be never so beautiful, it is still
a canal, and no adventure need be looked for there; but a river that
runs wild and free is a possible highway to the enchanted kingdom of
Romance. We have the avowal of R. L. S. that on this sedgy stream,
wriggling its devious ways by field and woodland, he had some of the
happiest moments of his life.
"We could have shouted aloud," he says in a glowing passage. "If this
lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's
contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with
us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring points against him
every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream. I have rarely had
better profit of my life. For I think we may look upon our little
private war with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will
sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the
best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much
gained upon the thieves. And above all, where, instead of simply
spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, when
it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and
above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the
wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the
more in our stomach, when he cries, 'Stand and deliver.' A swift
stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a
comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our
accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper
Oise."
Indeed, he came near to settling accounts with old Death more readily
than he could have cared; for not many miles from Vadencourt, in
attempting to shoot below the over-hanging trunk of a fallen tree, the
lively "Arethusa" was caught in its branches, while his canoe went
spinning down stream relieved of its paddler. He succeeded in
scrambling on to the tree-trunk, though he "seemed, by the weight, to
have all the water of the Oise in my trouser-pockets." But through
all, he still held to his paddle. "On my tomb, if ever I have one, I
mean to get these words inscribed: 'He clung to his paddle.'" Brave
heart, this is in truth but a humorous phrasing of the stately requiem
on the stone upon Vaea Top.
It was a dripping "Arethusa" that got into Origny Sainte-Benoîte that
night, and but for the ready and resourceful "Cigarette" the adventure
might have ended less happily. Although Origny is a dusty little
village, as dull as any in all Picardy, the canoeists rested there a
day, and had good profit of the people they met at the inn, as
Stevenson's pages witness. The landlord was a shouting, noisy fellow,
a red Republican. "'I'm a proletarian, you see.' Indeed, we saw it
very well. God forbid that I should find him handling a gun in Paris
streets! That will not be a good moment for the general public."
[Illustration: VEUVE BAZIN
Hastily and unnecessarily "tidying herself" while being photographed
at her door.]
[Illustration: THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FÈRE
"Little did the Bazins know how much they served us."--R. L. S.]
XIV.
An accident to my bicycle in the neighbourhood of Origny made it
necessary for me to go on to Moy by train, on a quaint little railway
worked chiefly by women, who act as station-mistresses, ticket-clerks,
restaurant-keepers, and guards of the level crossings. The carriages
were filled chiefly with anglers, and every little station had a gang
of them armed with a prodigious number of rods and lines, and each
carrying a pail with a brass lid. I gathered that the pails were empty
almost without exception, as sport had been extremely bad, though
numerous patient creatures with rod and line were still to be seen in
the drizzling rain along the river, which is here broken into many
backwaters, lying in flat land among scraggy pine woods and good green
meadows. One sturdy fellow who, like his companions, bore his
ill-fortune with a smiling face, averred that though he'd fished all
day and caught nothing, he had bagged fifteen _broche_ the previous
day between one o'clock and half-past two, and between three and five
he had caught an unbelievable number of trout. Anglers are the same in
all lands, I suspect.
"Moy (pronounced Moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a
château in a moat," as our author records. "The air was perfumed with
hemp from neighbouring fields. At the 'Golden Sheep' we found
excellent entertainment." I asked for the "Golden Sheep," and was
directed to an establishment that was named the Hôtel de la Poste. I
passed on and asked another villager, but he sent me back, as I found
on following his instructions, to the same hotel. The postman put me
right at length by explaining that the landlord had rechristened his
house three months before in honour of the new post office across the
way, a shoddy little building where I bought stamps from a middle-aged
woman next morning. The landlady of the hotel, who might pass in every
particular, save the myopia, for the "stout, plain, short-sighted,
motherly body, with something not far short of a genius for cookery,"
described by R. L. S., agreed with me that her husband had made a sad
mistake in dropping the old sign of the "Collier d'Or," "but he would
have his own way, and there you are!" If I could have got the
fellow--a fat, jolly mortal--to understand that to have the name of
his hotel in a book by R. L. S. was an honour worth living up to,
perhaps the old sign would have been fished out, regilded and placed
in its old position. But he had not been the _patron_ thirty years
ago, and he did not care a straw for anything so remote, though his
wife had a gleam of pleasure when I quoted to her Stevenson's note:
"Sweet was our rest in the 'Golden Sheep' at Moy."
It is a progressive place, although it seems to go to bed at eight
o'clock, for there is a good supply of electric light--furnished by
water power, of course--in the hotel and other establishments; but not
a solitary street lamp to pierce the blue-black of an autumn night. I
must tell you that I was the only guest at the inn, yet a splendid
dinner was prepared for me. Soup, fish with mayonaise, fillet of beef
with mushrooms, green haricots _au beurre_, cold chicken, and a
delicious salad of white herbs with a suspicion of garlic, a sweet
omelet, pears, grapes, cheese, bread and butter, and, if I had cared,
a whole bottle of red wine. An excellent _café noir_ followed, in the
_estaminet_, where my hostess apologised for lighting only one
electric lamp "_pour l'economie, vous savez_." My bedroom was
commodious and well-appointed, and I had a good French _petit
dejeuner_ next morning. The bill? Three shillings and ninepence, I
declare! _Pour l'economie!_ Madame, I sympathise, and some day I must
return to make a visit more profitable to you.
XV.
From Moy to La Fère is a very short journey even by the river, but the
canoeists had lingered till late afternoon before leaving the former
place, which "invited to repose," and it was dark when they got to La
Fère in their chronic state of dampness. "It was a fine night to be
within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows." They
had heard that the principal inn at the place was a particularly good
one, and cheery pictures of their comfortable state there arose in
their minds as they stowed their canoes and set forth into the town,
which lies chiefly eastward of the river, and is enclosed by two great
lines of fortification. But they reckoned without their hostess! The
lady of the inn mistook them for pedlars, and rushed them back into
the dismal night. "Out with you--out of the door!" she screeched.
"_Sortez! Sortez! Sortez par la porte!_" Stevenson's picture of the
incident is full of sly humour, but the feelings of the travellers
must indeed have been poignant. "We have been taken for pedlars
again," said the baronet, "Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in
reality!" says his companion of the pen. "Timon was a philanthropist
alongside of him." He prayed that he might never be uncivil to a
pedlar. But after all, it was for the best. That cosy inn would not
have afforded the essayist such interesting matter for reflection as
he found at "la Croix de Malte," a little working-class _auberge_ at
the other end of the town, where the Porte Notre-Dame gives exit to
the straggling suburbs.
[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, NOYON]
[Illustration: HÔTEL DU NORD, NOYON
_Where the travellers stayed_
"The Hotel du Nord lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast of
the church."--R. L. S.]
XVI.
There is no passage in the whole of _An Inland Voyage_ so moving, so
simple in its intense humanity, as that wherein its author sets down
in his own inimitable way his impressions of the humble folk who kept
this inn. Scarcely hoping that I might be so fortunate as to find
either of the Bazins alive, I asked at one of the numerous cafés
opposite the great barracks, whence crashed forth the indescribable
noise of a brass band practising for the first time together, if there
was an inn in the town kept by one Bazin. To my delight I was told
there was, and you may be sure I made haste to be there. I found the
place precisely as Stevenson pictures it, noting by the way a tiny new
Protestant chapel with the legend "Culte Evangélique" over its door, a
cheering sight to Protestant eyes in so Catholic a country as the
north of France.
"Bazin, Restaurateur Loge à pied,"--there was the altered sign on the
cream-coloured walls of the house. In the common room of the little
inn, which was full of noisy reservists that memorable night when the
canoeists sought shelter there, I found two or three rough but
honest-looking fellows drinking, while a grey-haired woman, pleasant
and homely of appearance, sat at lunch with a young woman and a youth,
the latter wearing glasses and being in that curious condition of
downy beard which we never see in England. I stood on the sandy floor
by the little semi-circular bar, with its shining ranks of glasses,
waiting the attention of a young woman who was serving the customers
with something from an inner room, when the old lady, looking up at me
through her spectacles, asked what I wanted. "To speak with the
_patron_," I replied. "Well?" she said. "Have I the pleasure of
addressing Madame Bazin?" I asked, and on her answering with a slight
show of uneasiness, I proceeded to explain that I had come to see the
inn out of interest in a celebrated English author, who had once
stayed there and had written so charmingly about Madame and Monsieur
Bazin. In an instant the old lady and the younger folk were agitated
with pleasure, and, to my surprise, they knew all about the long-ago
visit of R. L. S. and his friend. "Perhaps he was your papa," Madame
suggested as the likeliest reason for my having come so far on a
matter so sentimental. And the good soul's eyes brimmed with tears
when she told me that her husband had been dead these three years.
Stevenson had sent them a copy of his book, and they had got the
passage touching the voyagers' stay at the inn translated by a young
friend at college, so that worthy old Bazin had not been suffered to
pass away without knowing how he and his good wife had ministered to
the heart of one of the best beloved writers of his generation. You
will remember Stevenson's beautiful reference to these worthy people.
But let me quote it, for it may be read many times with increase of
profit:
"Bazin was a tall man, running to fat; soft spoken, with a delicate,
gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself,
having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type
of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling, disputatious fellow at
Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative
painter in his youth. He had delighted in the museums in his youth,
'One sees there little miracles of work,' he said; 'that is what makes
a good workman; it kindles a spark.' We asked him how he managed in La
Fère. 'I am married,' he said, 'I have my pretty children. But,
frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night I pledge a pack
of good enough fellows who know nothing,' ... Madame Bazin came out
after a while; she was tired with her day's work, I suppose; and she
nestled up to her husband, and laid her head upon his breast. He had
his arm about her, and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. I
think Bazin was right, and he was really married. Of how few people
can the same be said!
"Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were charged
for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But
there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk, nor for
the pretty spectacle of their married life. And there was yet another
item uncharged. For these people's politeness really set us up again
in our own esteem. We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of
insult was still hot in our spirits, and civil usage seemed to restore
us to our position in the world.
"How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses
continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still
unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good
as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? Perhaps
they also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them
in my manner?"
[Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST
"We had the superb east end before our eyes all morning from the
window of our bedroom."--R. L. S.]
Is that not a lovely monument to have? Many of us who have made a
greater clatter in the world than old Bazin will be less fortunate
than he in this respect. And you see that although he had little
affection for La Fère, he lived five-and-twenty quiet years there
after Stevenson came his way. Yet not, in one sense, quiet, as the
bugles are for ever braying, and even the street boys whistle barrack
calls instead of music-hall ditties. As Madame told me, the town
exists solely for the military, and we may be sure that it is none the
sweeter on that account. But her little inn struck me as a wholesome
and entirely innocent establishment. Those "pretty children" are men
and women now, and the young man with the nascent whiskers, whom I
took to be a clerk in the town, was a grandson of the old folk. Not a
feature of the _auberge_ has changed, except that the Maltese Cross,
having served its day, has been taken down. Stevenson--who has lighted
a little lamp of fame on this humble shrine--and Sir Walter Simpson
and old Bazin have all passed away, while children's children sit in
the old seats; truly the meanest works of man's hands are more
enduring than man himself. Madame Bazin, to my regret, made a quick
effort to throw aside her apron, and needlessly to tidy her bodice,
when I asked her to face the camera. She was caught in the act by the
instantaneous plate. Even here, you see, the apron signifies
servitude, and must not appear in pictures; yet it and the cap, which
latter I have seldom seen north of Paris, are the only redeeming
features of the country Frenchwoman's dress. The women of rural France
give one the impression of being in permanent mourning, and
consequently, when they do go into real mourning, they have to
emphasise the fact with ridiculous yards of flowing crape. Madame
Bazin had never heard of Stevenson's death, and I felt curiously
guilty of an ill deed in telling her about that grave in far Samoa.
XVII.
The Oise runs through a stretch of pastoral country south of La Fère,
known as "the Golden Valley," but a strath rather than a valley in
character. It was a grey day on which I journeyed, and little that was
golden did I see. But the quaint old town of Noyon, as grey and hoar
as any in France, is rich in the gold of history; "a haunt of ancient
peace." It stands on a gentle hill, about a mile away from the river,
and is one of the cleanest of the old French towns that I have
visited, reminding me somewhat of Lichfield; in atmosphere, I imagine,
rather than in any outward resemblance, since I would be at a loss to
point to the likeness if I were asked. R. L. S. had no more agreeable
resting-place on all his voyage than at Noyon. The travellers put up
at a very prosperous-looking hostelry, the Hôtel du Nord, which stands
withdrawn a little way from the east end of the grand old
cathedral--the glory of Noyon, and one of the gems of early French
Gothic, though perhaps the least known to English tourists.
Seldom in France do we find the cathedral so regally free of
surrounding buildings. No shabby structures lean unworthy heads
against its old grey walls, and where, on the north side, the canons'
library, with its crumbling timbers of the fifteenth century, nestles
under the wing of the church, the effect is entirely pleasing. At the
west front, too, where there is a spacious close, with well-cared-for
houses and picturesque gateways, one has a feeling of reverence which
the surroundings of French cathedrals so often fail to inspire. There
is a pleasant touch of humour in Stevenson's description of the
exterior of the beautiful apse:
"I have seldom looked on the east end of a church with more complete
sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and settles down
broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some great old
battleship. Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases which figure for the
stern lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just
appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were
bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a
hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At any moment a
window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and
proceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail the sea no
longer ... but this, that was a church before ever they were thought
upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise.
The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for
miles around and certainly they have both a grand old age."
Inside the cathedral he found much to engage his mind, and the
somewhat perfunctory performances of certain priests jarred with the
noble serenity of the building. "I could never fathom how a man dares
to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say that
will not be an anti-climax?" But, on the whole, he "was greatly
solemnised," and he goes on to say: "In the little pictorial map of
our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves and sometimes
unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon Cathedral figures on a
most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department.
I can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my
elbow, and hear '_Ave Maria, ora pro nobis_,' sounding through the
church. All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior memories,
and I do not care to say more about the place. It was but a stack of
brown roofs at the best, where I believe people live very reputably in
a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun
is low, and the five bells are heard in all quarters telling that the
organ has begun. If ever I join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate
to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise."
[Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT
"The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us
the five bells hanging in their loft."--R. L. S.]
This pretty fancy of his need lose none of its prettiness when we know
that Noyon has not had a bishop since the Revolution, when the
cathedral became a dependency of the Bishop of Beauvais, though it had
been a bishopric so long ago as the year 531. But I am sorry R. L. S.
was evidently not aware that when at Noyon he was in the town where
John Calvin was born in 1709, his father being procurator-fiscal and
secretary of the diocese; for surely here was an opening for some real
Stevensonian _obiter scripta_? The beautiful old Town House, of Gothic
and Renaissance architecture, dates back to the end of the fifteenth
century, but all the ancient buildings of Noyon fall long centuries
short of its history in age, as King Pippin was crowned here in 752,
and his infant son Carloman was at the same time created King of
Noyon, while in 771 the town saw the coronation of Pippin's eldest
son, the mighty Charlemagne, no less.
XVIII.
The last wet day of the voyagers was that on which they set out from
Noyon. "These gentlemen travel for pleasure?" asked the landlady of
the little inn at Pimprez. "It was too much. The scales fell from our
eyes. Another wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into
the train." Happily, "the weather took the hint," and they paddled and
sailed the rest of the voyage under clear skies. At Compiègne they
"put up at a big, bustling hotel, where nobody observed our presence."
My impression of the famous town scarcely justified this, as in the
day that I lingered there I seemed to meet everybody a dozen times
over, and the company at a little café chantant in the evening was
like a gathering of old friends, so many of the faces were familiar.
Yet the town is populous, having some 17,000 inhabitants (about 2,000
of whom are English residents), and I was prepared for busier streets
than I found.
There can be few towns in France more agreeable to live in. It is
pleasantly situated on the river Oise, here wide and lively with
barge-traffic, and spanned by an elegant bridge. The older town lies
south of the river in a sort of amphitheatre; its streets are narrow
and tortuous, but with bright shops and cafés in the neighbourhood of
the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, while the fashionable suburbs extend,
in splendid quiet avenues, eastward and south from the centre of the
town, by the historic palace built in Louis XV.'s reign and the Petit
Parc, which is really very large. While a great many of the English
residents have chosen the town for the same reason that my hostess at
Moy put on one electric light--_pour l'economie, vous savez_--together
with its healthy and beautiful surroundings in the great forest of
Compiègne, many more are there for the employment afforded by the
important felt hat factory of Messrs. Moore, Johnson & Co., whose
commodious works stand near the station on the north of the river.
Despite its shops, its business prosperity, its red-legged soldiers,
its visitors, Compiègne is dull enough of an evening, and the brightly
lighted but almost empty cafés leave one wondering how the business
pays.
"My great delight in Compiègne," says inland voyager, "was the
town-hall. I doted upon the town-hall. It is a monument of Gothic
insecurity, all turreted and gargoyled, and slashed and bedizened with
half a score of architectural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt
and painted, and in a great square panel in the centre, in black
relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with
hand on hip and head thrown back. There is royal arrogance in every
line of him; the stirruped foot projects insolently from the frame;
the eye is hard and proud; the very horse seems to be treading with
gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have the breath of the
trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the front of the
town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his people.
"Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of
a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each
one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the
hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiègne. The
centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt
trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like
cavaliers. As the quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look
knowingly one to the other; and then, _kling_ go the three hammers on
the three little bells below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous,
from the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from
their labours with contentment.
"I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and
took care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that
even the 'Cigarette,' while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was
more or less a devotee himself. There is something highly absurd in
the exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop.
They would be more in keeping in a glass case before a Nürnberg clock.
Above all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people
are snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these
ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling
moon? The gargoyles may, fitly enough, twist their ape-like heads;
fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion
in an old German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be
put away in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the
children are abroad again to be amused."
[Illustration: COMPIÈGNE TOWN HALL
"My great delight in Compiègne was the Town Hall."--R. L. S.]
XIX.
There is but little interest in the remaining stages of Stevenson's
journey; not because the towns through which the canoeists now passed
are less worthy of note than any already described, but for the ample
reason that R. L. S. had, in some measure, lost his earlier delight in
the voyage. He pretends that on the broading bosom of the Oise the
canoes were now so far away from the life along the riverside, that
they had slipped out of touch with rural folk and rural ways. But this
is not strictly true, when we know that the river, as far as Pontoise,
is seldom greatly wider than the canals on which the _Arethusa_ and
the _Cigarette_ had set out with high hopes of adventure a fortnight
before. The towns are quaint and sleepy. The voyagers were nearing the
end, the river ran smooth, the sky was bright, and a packet of letters
at Compiègne had set them dreaming of home. Here was the secret; the
spell was broken; their appetite for adventure had been slaked; every
mile of easy-flowing water was taking them not away to unknown things,
but homeward to familiar ones.
Pont Sainte Maxence, the end of their first stage below Compiègne, is
a featureless little town, the Oise making a brave show through the
centre of it, and I do not suspect its church of any stirring history.
R. L. S. found its interior "positively arctic to the eye." It was
here he noticed the withered old woman making her orisons before all
the shrines; "like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view
of the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in
a great variety of heavenly securities." I passed through Creil and
Précy in the afternoon, following close to the river, which now
skirts a country of gentle hills on the east, but westward fringes a
vast level plain, with nothing but groves of poplar to break the line
of the distant horizon.
XX.
In the gloaming I arrived at Pontoise, where I was told a fête was in
progress; but the only signs of hilarity were two booths for the sale
of pastries and sweet stuffs on the square in front of the station,
and one small boy investing two sous in a greasy-looking puff. The
rues of Pontoise have high-sounding names, but they are dull beyond
words, though only eighteen miles away the "great sinful streets" of
Paris are gleaming with their myriad lights.
Pontoise in the daylight might have been different; but seen in the
dusk, I decided upon the eight o'clock train to Paris, and so ended my
pilgrimage. Nor did I feel any lowering enthusiasm at the end, for
Stevenson has nothing to tell us of the place beyond saying, "And so a
letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the last
time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them,
through rain and sunshine, for so long." He has not a word for the
twelfth-century church of St. Maclou, his "brither Scot," or the tomb
of St. Gautier at Nôtre Dame de Pontoise.
[Illustration: THE OISE AT PONTOISE
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY]
"At Pontoise we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river
of Oise that had faithfully piloted them through rain and sunshine so
long."--R. L. S.]
"You may paddle all day long," he concludes; "but it is when you come
back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that you find
Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most beautiful
adventures are not those we go to seek." Yet he was ever an adventurer
in search of beauty, and who shall say his quest was vain?
"The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"
"After repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living
for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed,
constructed, and triumphantly brought home."--R. L.
STEVENSON.
I.
There will, of course, be differences of opinion as to which is the
town most worthy of this description; but there is surely no better
judge than Mr. Joseph Pennell, who has seen every place of any
historic or natural attraction on the Continent, and whose taste for
the picturesque none will call in question. He is the author of the
phrase that heads this chapter, as applied to the little-known town of
Le Puy, "chief place" of the Department of Haute Loire in the south of
France. It is one of the few towns that have more than justified the
mental pictures I had formed of them before seeing the real thing. But
Le Puy is not only the most conceivably picturesque of towns; it is
deeply interesting in its character and history, no less than in its
appearance.
With the exception of Mr. Pennell, and among a circle of people who
have travelled much in France, I have met none who have ever visited
Le Puy. A young English governess to whom I spoke at a little
Protestant temple in the town had been staying there for close upon a
year, and had not met a single English visitor; so it would appear one
has an opportunity here to write of a place that is still untrampled
by the tourist hordes that devastate fair Normandy.
There are many and excellent reasons why few English or American
tourists make their way to this quaint and beautiful town of the
French highlands. It lies 352 miles by rail from Paris, and can only
be reached by a fatiguing journey in trains that seem to be playing at
railways, and have no serious intention of arriving anywhere. A good
idea of the roundabout railway service will be gathered from the fact
that the actual distance of the town from Paris is nearly 100 miles
less than the length of the railway journey. It can be reached by
leaving the Mediterranean line at Lyons and continuing for the best
part of a day on tiresome local trains; or via Orleans and Clermont
Ferrand, which would surely require the best part of two days. It was
by the latter route, and in easy stages, that I first arrived there
in the early evening of a grey June day four years ago.
Between Clermont Ferrand and Le Puy the railway traverses some of the
most beautiful scenery in Europe, but nothing that one sees on the way
prepares one for the sensation of the first glimpse of this wonderful
mountain-town. The train has been steadily puffing its slow way by
green valleys and pine-clad hills, across gorges as deep as the
deepest in Switzerland, and past little red-roofed hamlets for hours,
when suddenly, as it seems, a great peak thrusts itself heavenward,
carrying on its back a mass of tiny buildings, and on the top of all
an immense statue of the Virgin. Then another seems to spring up from
the valley, holding a church upon its head, and the whole country now,
as far as eye can reach, is studded with great conical hills thrown up
in some far-off and awful boiling of earth. Curiously, the train seems
turning tail on this wonderful scene, and one by one the different
objects that had suddenly attracted our attention are lost to view,
while we pursue a circuitous route, which in a quarter of an hour
brings them all into view again, and presently we have arrived at the
station of Le Puy, by the side of the little river Dolezon, between
which and the broader Borne extends the hill whereon the town is
built.
II.
The modern part of the town lies close to the railway in the level of
the valley, and as there is a population of more than 20,000 people,
the life of the streets is brisk enough to suggest a town of five
times that size in England. Along the Avenue de la Gare, the Boulevard
St. Jean, and the Rue St. Haon we go, wary of the electric trams, to
our hotel opposite the spacious Place du Breuil, where spouts a
handsome fountain to the memory of a local metal-worker who furnished
the town with its beautiful Musée Crozatier, and where the elegant
architecture of the Municipal Theatre, the Palais de Justice and the
Préfecture supply a touch of modern dignity that contrasts not
unpleasantly with the ancient and natural grandeur of the town.
[Illustration: LE PUY: CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE FROM PLACE DU
BREUIL]
I have stayed in many a strange hotel, but that of the "Ambassadeurs,"
whither we repaired, is perhaps the most uncommon in my experience. It
was reached from the main street through a long, dark tunnel, opening
at the end into a badly-lighted court, whence a flight of stairs gave
entrance to the hotel building, which inside was like an old and
partially-furnished barracks, with wide stone stairs and gloomy
passages eminently adapted for garrotting. But the bedroom was
commodious, and its windows gave on another market-place, where had
been the original frontage of the hotel. For all its cheerless
appearance, the "Ambassadeurs" was by no means uncomfortable, and,
needless to say, the cooking was excellent.
There are some towns that ask of you only to wander their streets, and
others that challenge you to closer acquaintance with their sights.
Paris or Brussels, for example, pours its bright life through
boulevard and park, and you are charmed to walk about with no urgent
call to any place in particular; but who can linger in Princes Street
of Edinburgh with the grey old castle inviting him to climb up to it,
or the Calton Hill boldly advertising itself with its mock Roman
remains? Le Puy has both the charm of the quaintest kinds of street
life and the challenge of its rare and curious monuments.
One has a restless feeling, a sense of things that "must be done,"
when one catches a glimpse of the stately old cathedral standing high
on the hill, and the massive Rock of Corneille with the great figure
of Notre Dame de France on top, or the church of St. Michel pricking
up so confidently on its isolated rock. The natural curiosity of man
is such that he cannot be content until he has clambered to these and
other high places in and around Le Puy. One makes first for the
cathedral, and a bewildering labyrinth of ancient and evil-smelling
lanes has to be wandered through before the building is reached. These
little streets are all paved with cobbles of black lava, and many of
the houses are built in part of the same material. Their dirtiness is
unqualified, and yet the people seem to live long amid their squalor,
for at every other door we note women of old years busy with their
needles and pillows making the lace, which is one of the chief
industries of the town.
III.
The nearer we come to the cathedral the more difficult is it to
observe its general proportions, and, indeed, it can only be seen to
advantage from one or other of the neighbouring heights. But it is a
building that, in almost any position, would still be remarkable, as
it is a striking example of Romanesque architecture. The great porch
is reached by a splendid flight of steps, sixty in number, where in
the second week of August each year pilgrims come in their thousands
to kneel and worship the Black Virgin, the chief glory of the town in
the eyes of its inhabitants. The builders of the cathedral have
striven to combine dignity and austerity, and the impression which
the outside of the building makes upon the visitor is strangely at
variance with the flummery that surrounds the worship of the Black
Virgin within. One feels that the men who back in the twelfth century
reared these massive walls and built this beautiful cloister had not
their lives dominated by a cheap and ugly wooden doll such as their
fellows of to-day bow down before. We found the sacristan a young man
of most amiable disposition; so friendly indeed that on one of our
subsequent visits, and during the office of High Mass, when he was
attending upon the celebrant, he nodded familiarly to us on
recognising us among the congregation. If the truth must be told, we
were more interested in the contents of the sacristy than in the
cathedral itself. Here were stored many rare and beautiful examples of
ancient wood-carving, picture frames, missals, altar vessels, and,
above all, a manuscript Bible of the ninth century. This
last-mentioned we were shown only on condition that we would tell no
one in the town. Then opening a great oaken cupboard, he produced
first a brass monstrance, similar to the usual receptacle for the
consecrated wafer of the Eucharist, but containing instead behind the
little glass disc a tiny morsel of white feather sewn to a bit of
cloth.
"This," said he, "is a piece of the wing of the angel who visited Joan
of Arc."
"Indeed," I remarked, with every evidence of surprise, "and who got
hold of the feather first?"
"The mother of Joan," he replied, as though he were giving the name of
his tailor; and he proceeded to describe with much circumstance and
detail the wonderful things that had been done by this bit of feather.
"It is, M'sieu, an object of the greatest veneration, and has
attracted pilgrims from far parts of France. It has cured the most
terrible diseases; it has brought riches to those who were poor; it
has brought children to barren women,"--and many other wonders I have
forgotten.
[Illustration: MARKET DAY AT LE PUY, SHOWING TYPES OF THE AUVERNGATS]
[Illustration: LACEMAKERS AT LE PUY]
In a very similar setting he showed us a tiny thorn. "This, M'sieu, is
a thorn from the crown that Jesus wore on the Cross," and while we
were still gazing upon the sacred relic he produced a small box sealed
with red wax and having a glass lid, behind which was preserved a good
six inches of "the true Cross." I thought of a Frenchman whom I had
met at an hotel recently--an unbelieving fellow--who said that there
was as much wood of "the true Cross" preserved in the churches of
France as would make a veritable ladder into heaven. Most wonderful of
all, the sacristan dived his hand into a sort of cotton bag, and
produced a Turkish slipper, worn and battered, but probably no more
than fifty years old. The good man handled the thing as if it had
been a cheap American shoe he was offering for sale. Then looking us
boldly in the face, he said, "_Voici, le soulier de la Sainte
Vierge_." The shoe of the holy Virgin! One did one's best to be
overcome with emotion, but I claim no success in that effort. The
ecclesiastical showman drew our attention to the pure Oriental
character of the workmanship of the sacred slipper, but I declare
frankly that it was not until the Protestant pastor of the town
mentioned the fact next day that I realised that the shoe was "a No.
9!" Among the other contents of the sacristy we noted two maces, one
of elaborate design richly ornamented in silver, and the other of
plain wood only slightly carved. We were told they were carried in
funeral processions, "the ornamental one for people of good family and
the plain one for common folk." Oh, land of liberty, equality,
fraternity!
After exhibiting to us the costly vestments of the bishops, canons,
and other dignitaries of the church, the sacristan came with us to
point out the far-famed Black Virgin of the cathedral, which a first
inspection of the interior had failed to reveal to us. We now found it
to be a small and ugly image fixed above the high altar. It was hardly
bigger than a child's doll, and was dressed in a little coat of rich
brocade. From the middle of the idol a smaller head, presumably that
of the Holy Child, projected through the cloth, and this, like the
head of the larger figure, wore a heavy crown of bright gilt. I do not
pretend to remember one tithe of the miracles attributed to this most
venerated object by our good friend, but I know at least that he
assured me it had burned for thirty-six hours during the Revolution
without being consumed, and had thrice been thrown by sacrilegious
hands into the river Borne, only to reappear mysteriously in its place
over the altar. This story does not run on all fours with the curt
description of the image given by M. Paul Joanne in his guide to the
Cevennes--"an imitation of the old Madonna destroyed in the
Revolution." It is eminently a case in which "you pays your money and
you takes your choice." I reckoned the entertainment provided by the
sacristan cheap at a franc.
IV.
Enough, perhaps, has been indicated to give some idea of the
superstitious character of the people of Le Puy. Nowhere in France
have I found so many evidences of mediæval superstition; the Black
Virgin is throned supreme in the minds of the people, and, unlike most
French communities--if we except the priest-ridden peasantry of
Brittany--the men-folk of Le Puy seem to be as devoted as their women
to the church. The black coats of the clergy swarm in street and
alley. In the town itself there are many institutions packed with
young priests, and some little way out, on the banks of the Borne,
there is a training school as large as a military barracks, with the
pale faces of black-gowned youths peeping from many windows. Almost
every conceivable type of priest is to be encountered here, from the
gaunt, ascetic enthusiast to the fat and ruby-nosed Friar Tuck. The
people of the southern highlands, like the old-fashioned folk of
Scotland, have had for generations a passion to see at least one of
their family in the priesthood, apart very often from any
consideration of fitness, moral or intellectual. Here, as I should
judge, is the reason for one's seeing so many coarse and ignorant
faces among the priests of Le Puy.
The gigantic figure of the Virgin crowning the rock of Corneille,
behind the cathedral, is reached by a long and toilsome pathway, but
the view from the top--for the statue is hollow, and contains a
stairway inside with numerous peep-holes--is perhaps unequalled in the
whole of France. For mile upon mile the country stretches away in
great billowy masses of dark mountain and green plain, and the little
white houses with their red roofs are sprinkled everywhere around Le
Puy, suggesting a sweet and wholesome country life that is hard to
reconcile with the dark superstition of the town. This monument,
however, is of little interest--a vulgar modern affair cast from 213
guns taken at Sebastopol. More to our taste is the quaint little
building called the Baptistry of St. John, which, standing near the
cathedral, takes us back to the fourth century, and earlier still, for
it is built on the foundation of an ancient Roman temple. You see, Le
Puy was a flourishing Roman town when our forefathers in England were
living in wattle huts. We have made some progress in England since
those far-off days, but here, though changes rude and great have taken
place, one may reasonably doubt whether there is much to choose
between the present condition of Le Puy and that vanished past.
[Illustration: _Image of the Black Virgin in the Cathedral_]
[Illustration: _Remains of Roman Temple, Le Puy, with a fountain to
Virgin, a Calvary, and the Mairie_
LE PUY]
V.
Threading our way downhill among the filthy _ruelles_, we pass into
the wide and modern Boulevard Carnot, where the Sunday market is being
held and everything may be bought, from a tin-opener to a donkey, from
a rosary to a cow. A spirited statue of the great La Fayette, who was
born not far away, at the castle of Chavagnac, stands at the top of
this street, where the new Boulevard Gambetta strikes westward with
its clanging electric trams. Down near the river-side, where the
market comes to an end, we visit the old church of the Dominicans,
dedicated to St. Laurence, and in a dark and musty corner we are shown
a tomb with a recumbent figure carved upon it. Here reposes, we are
told, the dust of the greatest of the heroes of old France--none other
than that mighty warrior Du Guesclin, memories of whom the wanderer in
French by-ways meets with as often as the tourist in England comes
upon a house that sheltered Charles II. after the battle of Worcester.
There is every reason for believing that the valorous but ugly Du
Guesclin--he was an "object of aversion" to his own parents--was
buried at St. Denis, but my excellent M. Joanne assures me that this
statue is an authentic likeness of the hero; and the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ (which in another place mentions St. Denis as the place of
burial) says that the church of St. Laurence "contains the remains of
Du Guesclin." What will you?
The electric tram lands us at the suburb of Espaly, and from the high
road we could almost throw a stone to the massive rock, with its
castle-like walls enclosing on the top a little garden of trees. But
it is another matter to pick our way, ankle-deep in mire, to the
entrance-gate, through the hovels that surround it. Clustering to the
rock we pass are buildings from which priests and "sisters" come and
go with a surprising mingling of the sexes, and when we have climbed
to the top a dark-eyed sister shows us for half a franc a collection
of the most extraordinary Romish trash we have ever looked upon. The
chapel is free to us, and within its incense-laden interior we find
several comfortable priests poring over books or sitting with
insensate stare at the candles burning on a particularly tawdry altar.
The place is in a way unique, as the chapel is not a building at all,
but is hewn out of the volcanic rock, being thus an artificial grotto
consecrated to worship. Its rough walls are hung with votive tablets
and studded with crude stuccos of many saints, giving it the
appearance of a toy bazaar. Only recently the large bronze statue of
St. Joseph that crowned the rock of Espaly, above the grotto-chapel,
was blown down, and visitors are invited to contribute towards the
cost of replacing it.
A little distance away is the higher and more remarkable volcanic mass
known as the Pic d'Aiguille, with a handsome and well-proportioned
church upon its summit. One has to climb a long and winding footpath
and then close on three hundred steps to reach the building, which we
found quite deserted, some village lads doing the "cake-walk" around
an angelic form with a box of donations to St. Michael, the patron
saint of the deserted sanctuary. These _gamins_ also seemed to derive
much pleasure from ringing the bell still hanging in the ancient
tower. It was a matter of speculation why the priests should continue
to use the stuffy and unwholesome grotto of St. Joseph, with this
airy, noble building lying vacant. We can only suppose that the toil
of climbing the higher rock is greater than their zeal. Near by the
base of the Pic d'Aiguille one notices a curious conjunction of old
paganism and modern mariolatry--an ancient temple of Diana flanked by
a massive crucifix on the one hand and a modern Gothic fountain and
shrine to the Virgin on the other.
VI.
After all, and somewhat unwillingly, I find that I have written rather
of the religious side of this interesting town than of its
picturesqueness. But sensational as the first impression of its unique
and beautiful outlines undoubtedly is, it is not that, nor yet the
quaint and entertaining habits of the people, that comes uppermost in
the mind after some days' acquaintance with the place. One leaves Le
Puy convinced, almost at a glance, of its claim to be considered the
most picturesque town in Europe, but depressed with the abounding
evidence that its people, despite their electric trams and their fine
modern buildings, are still largely the thralls of darkest
superstition. For the difference between the religion that here passes
for Roman Catholicism and that we know by the same name in England is
greater than the difference between the latter and the most
Calvanistic Protestantism. To me, at least, Le Puy will be ever the
city of the Black Virgin.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY]
[Illustration: HOUSE OF DU CHAYLA, AT PONT DE MONTVERT
"Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the
bridges of the town; and if you are curious you may see the
terrace-garden into which he dropped."--R. L. S.]
The Country of the Camisards
"These are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of
the Cevennes."--R. L. STEVENSON.
I.
The word Camisard in the south of France, like Covenanter in Scotland,
recalls
"Old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago."
Both describe people who had much in common, for the Camisards were
the Covenanters of France. The origin of the term need not detain us
more than a moment. It is variously attributed to the "Children of
God" having worn a _camise_, or linen shirt, as a sort of uniform; to
_camisade_, which means a night attack, that having been a feature of
their warfare; while some historians have derived it from _camis_, a
road runner. Enough that it stands for a race of people whose
devotion to the Reformed Faith, whose fearless stand for religious
liberty, entitles them to rank among the heroes of Protestantism.
As one may suppose that the general reader, however well informed, is
likely to be somewhat hazy in his knowledge of the Camisards--unless,
indeed, he has had the good fortune to read one of the later, as it is
one of the best, of Mr. S. R. Crockett's romances, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_,
which gives a vivid and moving picture of the Protestant rebellion in
the Cevennes--it may be well that I set down at once a brief outline
of the events which, two centuries ago, made these highlands of the
South one of the historic regions in storied France.
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, was a transforming
episode in the history of Europe. It represented the triumphant issue
of the sinister policy of the Jesuits, who had long been scheming to
undo the work of the Huguenot wars, whereby the rights of Protestants
to hold public worship and to take part in the government of the
country had been recognised as a sort of political compromise.
The atrocities inflicted by the Roman Catholics on their
fellow-citizens of the Protestant faith during the reign of terror,
which began in October of 1685, need not be recalled; they are among
the blackest pages in the annals of Romish tyranny. But we must know
that in the mountainous regions of the south of France, where the work
of the Reformation had been fruitful, and blessed in inverse ratio to
the poverty of the people and the barrenness of their country, these
hardy hill folk were too poor to quit their villages, and too devoted
to their religious faith to submit meekly to the new order. Like all
peoples whose lot it is to scrape a scanty living from a grudging
soil, the inhabitants of the Cevennes resemble in many ways the
Highlanders of Scotland and Wales. We find in them the same qualities
of sturdy independence, patience, endurance; the same strain of
gravity, associated with a deep fervour for the things that are
eternal. Thus isolated in their mountain fastnesses, hemmed in by the
ravening hordes of Catholicism and constituted authority, they
determined to fight for the faith they valued more than life. In this
hour of awful trial it was not surprising that, out of the frenzy of
despair, strange things were born, and an era of religious hysteria
began, simple women, poor ignorant men, children even, in great
numbers, being thought to come under the direct inspiration of God,
arising as "prophets" to urge the rude mountaineers into a holy war
with "His Most Christian Majesty, Louis, King of France and
Brittany."
But although there had been many encounters of an irregular kind
between the Camisards and the leagued officials of Pope and King in
the closing years of the seventeenth century, it was not until that
weird figure, Spirit Séguier, who has been called the "Danton of the
Cevennes," planned the murder of the Archpriest du Chayla at the
little town of Pont de Montvert, on the 23rd of July, 1702, that the
first blow in the Protestant rebellion may be said to have been
struck. Of this tragic event R. L. Stevenson writes:
"A persecution, unsurpassed in violence, had lasted near a score of
years, and this was the result upon the persecuted: hanging, burning,
breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left their
hoof-marks over all the country side; there were men rowing in the
galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; and not a
thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant."
On the 12th of August, nineteen days after the murder of the
Archpriest, the right hand of Séguier was stricken from his body, and
he was burned alive at the spot where he had driven home the first
knife into the oppressor of his people.
[Illustration: TWO VIEWS IN THE VILLAGE OF LA CAVALERIE
Scene of Mr. Crockett's romance "Flower-o'-the-Corn."]
II.
So began the war of the Camisards, for the faggots that burned the
prophet only added to the fire he lighted when he struck at Du Chayla.
Presently his place, as leader of the revolt, was taken by an old
soldier named Laporte, who gave the rising a touch of military
discipline, and soon the Camisards had many captains, all men who
believed themselves endowed with the gift of prophecy.
The Protestants of the Cevennes, thorough in every habit of life, took
up their arms and set about the making of entrenchments and works of
defence with the determination of men prepared to fight to a finish.
It is easy for us in these peaceful days to deprecate their vengeful
deeds, but let us remember, in charity, that if they met
blood-thirstiness with the same, they were maddened by a system of
oppression so brutal as to be almost beyond our belief. Their leader,
Roland, issued a dispatch which for callous suggestion has seldom been
equalled in the annals of war: "We, Count and Lord Roland,
Generalissimo of the Protestants of France, we decree that you have to
make away with, in three days, all the priests and missionaries who
are among you, under pain of being burned alive, yourselves as well as
they."
But the most picturesque figure among the Camisards was introduced
when Jean Cavalier, a baker's apprentice at Geneva, returned to his
native mountains, and by sheer force of a military genius to which
history offers few parallels became the chief leader of the Camisards
while still in his teens. The story of his life is romantic beyond the
invention of any novelist. Not only did he succeed over a period of
three years in defending many important parts of the Cevennes from
organised attacks, but in the course of that time he met and defeated
successively Count de Broglie and three Marshals of France--Montrevel,
Berwick, and Villars--although at one time there was a force of 60,000
soldiers in the field against him. At Nages, a little village in the
southern Cevennes, he encountered Montrevel, and, outnumbered by five
to one, he succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in effecting a
successful retreat with more than two thirds of his thousand men. Not
even the blessings of the Pope on the royalist troops, and on the
"holy militia," raised among the Catholic population, brought the
submission of the Camisards one day nearer. Commander after commander
retired baffled, and Montrevel's policy of extermination--during which
four hundred and sixty-six villages in the Upper Cevennes were
burned, and most of the population put to the sword--left Cavalier,
still a mere lad, master of the southward mountains, threatening even
to attack the great city of Nimes.
Marshal Villars, a renowned soldier, recognised the hopelessness of
continuing the methods of barbarism pursued by his predecessors, and
succeeded in concluding an honourable peace with Cavalier in the
summer of 1704, whereby the Camisards were granted certain important
rights affecting the liberty of conscience and of person. But Roland
and the more fanatical section of the Protestant army held out until
January of 1705, their battle-cry being, "No peace until we have our
churches," Cavalier's treaty having recognised the right to assemble
outside walled towns, but not in churches.
It is this extraordinary baker's apprentice--who at twenty-four had
concluded a long and desperate war, in which he played a part entitling
him to be remembered with national heroes such as William Tell and Sir
William Wallace--that Mr. S. R. Crockett has made the chief figure in
his brilliant romance of the Cevennes, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_.
III.
The little-known region of the Causses is "the Cevennes of the
Cevennes," but Stevenson in his travels did not visit the innermost
Cevennes, and was during most of his journey only on the outskirts of
the real country of the Camisards. The chief of these great plateaux
is the Causse de Sauveterre, which extends south-west from the town of
Mende for upwards of forty miles, and is in parts at least twenty
miles wide. It is divided from the Causse Méjan on the south by the
splendid gorges of the river Tarn, and due south of the Méjan, with
the beautiful valley of the Jonte between, lies the Causse Noir, some
twenty miles east and west, and ten from the Jonte on its north to the
no less beautiful glen on its south, where flows the river Dourbie.
Still southward, and with only this waterway dividing, extends the
splendid mass of the Causse du Larzac, some thirty miles in length,
from the neighbourhood of Millau to the ancient Roman town of Lodève,
which boasted a continuous bishopric from the year 323 to the
Revolution, and is now a bright and populous industrial centre. These
are the more notable of the Causses, and all, no doubt, formed one
mighty plateau in prehistoric times; but numerous swift flowing
rivers have through the ages worn them asunder, producing a series of
magnificent ravines that contain some of the finest scenery in France,
and on whose sides we can trace the slow and steady work of the
streams wearing down to their present courses through the limestone,
the local name for which is _cau_, whence _causse_.
[Illustration: LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL
(_From a photograph by_ Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)]
[Illustration: ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE]
To describe the character of the Camisard country, and to convey some
idea of it to English readers, is no easy matter, since there is
nothing in the British Islands, and little elsewhere in Europe, to
which it may be readily compared. Yet the effort must be made, since
the peculiar nature of the country is of first importance to the
understanding of its people and their historic resistance of all the
might of France two centuries ago.
Conceive, then, a vast expanse of rugged and rock-strewn land,
covering it may be an area of two or three hundred square miles, and
terminating abruptly on every side in mighty ravines, or ending in
precipitous cliffs, that look down on wide and fertile valleys, frown
on smiling plains. This is what the word Causse stands for, and the
wonder is that folk should be content to live in dreary little
villages high up on these stony fields, when a thousand feet and more
in the plains and valleys below rich and fruitful soil invites the
husbandman. But so it is, and in this region of France we have the
strange circumstance of two peoples, differing in many essentials of
character, living within a day's walk of each other, and mingling but
little in the intercourse of life. As you thread your way through the
valleys of the Tarn, the Dourbie, or any of the other streams that
follow the rifts between the Causses, you realise that up there among
the clouds live people who have small commerce with their fellows in
the valleys, and in such a town as Millau, whose inhabitants must look
each day of their lives at the giant walls of the Causse Noir and the
Larzac, upreared to the immediate east of their own paved streets,
there are thousands who have never scaled these heights.
Mr. Crockett gives us this graphic word-picture of the Larzac:
"The surface of the Causse--once Yvette had attained to the higher
levels--spread out before her, plain as the palm of a hand, save for
those curiously characteristic rocks, which, apparently without
connection with the underlying limestone, stand out like icebergs out
of the sea, irregular, pinnacled, the debris of temples destroyed or
ever foot of man trod there--spires, gargoyles, hideous monsters, all
dejected in some unutterable catastrophe, and become more horrible in
the moonlight, or, on the other hand, modified to the divine calm of
the Bhudda himself, by some effect of illumination or trick of cloud
umbration....
"A wonderful land, this of the Causses, where the rain never comes to
stay. Indeed, it might as well rain on a vast dry sponge, thirty miles
across and four or five thousand feet in height. The sheep up there
never drink. They only eat the sparse tender grass when the dew is
upon it. Yet from their milk the curious cheese called Roquefort is
made, which, being kept long in cool limestone cellars--the cellules
of the stony sponge--puts on something of the flavour of the rock
plants--thyme, juniper, dwarf birch, honeysweet heath--from which it
was distilled."
IV.
A country better adapted to the exigencies of defence against an
attacking army from the plains could not be imagined, for, as the
novelist says in another passage, "It seemed impossible for any living
thing to descend those frowning precipices. Even in broad daylight the
task appeared more suited to goats than to men." The roads which now
connect these great uplands with the lower country are marvels of
engineering, and you can count as many as twenty or thirty "elbows"
in the track, from the point at which it leaves the valley until it
disappears over the edge of the table-land, the entire length of it
being in view at one stroke of the eye. The task of ascending is
laborious in the extreme, and much sitting at cafés, which is the
habit of the townsfolk, does not equip them for the undertaking. Few
wayfarers are encountered, and when the summit of the Causse is gained
the signs of life are still meagre. The roads, now flat and dusty, lie
like bright ribbons on a dull and melancholy stretch of earth. Here
and there a lonely shepherd is seen tending a flock of shabby-looking
sheep, that crop the sparse herbage in fields where stones are more
plentiful than grass.
Miss M. Betham-Edwards is one of the few writers who have visited this
little-known corner of France, and in the following passage she refers
to what is perhaps its most curious feature:
[Illustration: THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC
(_From a Photograph by_ Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)]
"Another striking feature of the arid, waterless upper region is the
_aven_, or yawning chasm, subject of superstitious awe and terror
among the country people. Wherever you go you find the _aven_; in the
midst of a field--for parts of this sterile soil have been laid under
cultivation--on the side of a vertical cliff, of divers shapes and
sizes: these mysterious openings are locally known as 'Trous
d'enfer' (mouths of hell). Alike, fact and legend have increased the
popular dread. It was known that many an unfortunate sheep or goat had
fallen into some abyss, never, of course, to be heard of after. It was
said that a jealous seigneur of these regions had been seen thus to
get rid of his young wife--one tradition out of many. According to the
country-folk of Padirac, the devil, hurrying away with a captured
soul, was overtaken by St. Martin on horseback. A struggle, amid
savage scenery, ensued for possession of the soul. 'Accursed saint,'
cried Satan, 'thou wilt hardly leap my ditch'--with a tap of his heel
opening the rock before them, splitting it in two--the enormous chasm,
as he thought, making pursuit impossible. But St. Martin's steed
leaped it at a bound, the soul was rescued, and the prince of
darkness, instead of the saint, sent below."
Many of the _avens_ have been explored by M. E. A. Martel, and his
adventures in these underground tunnels and caves have rarely been
equalled in modern exploration.
V.
The scene of _Flower-o'-the-Corn_, so far as it is laid in the
Cevennes, occupies but a small part of that splendid chain of
mountains, but it is perhaps the most picturesque part. Much of the
action is centred in the little Camisard town of La Cavalerie, situate
at an altitude of nearly 2,500 feet on the lonely plateau of the
Larzac, some ten miles along the main road from Millau, a beautiful
and important cathedral town in the valley of the Tarn. To-day, as in
the past, the innkeeper is usually the man of most importance in these
mountain towns, but I have visited no _auberge_ that would compare, in
romantic situation, with that so graphically described by Mr. Crockett
under the style of "le Bon Chrétien" at La Cavalerie:
"To those unacquainted with the plan of such southern houses, it might
have been remarkable how quickly the remembrance of the strange
entrance-hall beneath was blotted out. At the first turn of the
staircase the ammoniacal stable smell was suddenly left behind. At the
second, there, in front of the ascending guest, was a fringed mat
lying on the little landing. At the third Maurice found himself in a
wide hall, lighted from the front, with an outlook upon an inner
courtyard in which was a Judas-tree in full leaf, with seats of wicker
and rustic branches set out. Here and there in the shade stood small
round tables, pleasantly retired, all evidencing a degree of
refinement to which Maurice had been a stranger ever since he left
those inns upon the post-roads of England, which were justly held to
be the wonder of the world."
One fears that the "good old times" have disappeared from the Causses,
as most of the inns, built, like many of the houses, in sunk positions
by the roadside, so that one enters on the top flat, sometimes by way
of a crazy wooden bridge, are sad advertisements of poverty. The
houses are often like that in which Mr. Crockett's heroine lodged in
the little Camisard town of St. Vernan, in the valley of the Dourbie,
"built out like a swallow's nest over the abyss." For it is noteworthy
that most of these highland villages cluster along the river courses,
as though the hill-folk were fain to have the sound of the glad waters
in their ears. In the valley of the Jonte I marvelled often at these
"swallows' nests." Many of the cottages have a scrap of garden,
surrounded by a wall not higher than three feet, from the base of
which the cliff sweeps down at an acute angle to the river bed, six
hundred feet below. Children play in these tiny eeries with as little
concern as youngsters in a city court.
Not all the surface of these great table-lands lies flat and
stone-strewn; one will often come on dark forests of pines, and
sometimes the woodman has a better return for his labour than the
shepherd. But on every hand the conditions of life are primitive
beyond anything in our own land. Here, more frequently than in his
native Normandy, may we find the sullen clod depicted by Millet in the
"Man with the Hoe." "Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox," as
Markham has described him in his powerful poem. It is, indeed,
difficult to realise that among these crumbling villages and beggarly
fields we are in the heart of fair France.
VI.
There is little to choose between the Catholic and Protestant
villages; all are more or less in a state of dilapidation, all have
poverty written on their walls; but to mingle with the people and
discuss affairs with them, quite apart from all questions of religion,
is a sure and ready way to discover how great is the difference
between the two classes. The one is usually a sullen and unintelligent
mortal, tied neck and crop to the stony soil on which he has been
born; the other bright, receptive of ideas, quick with life and hope,
and, if he be old, happy in the knowledge that his sons have gone
forth from this bare land equipped by the liberal training of the
Protestant schools to take dignified part in the great life of the
Republic. For you will find that even in the veritable strongholds
of a debased and superstitious Catholicism all the important officials
are Protestants.
[Illustration: MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR]
[Illustration: ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC]
The Protestants of to-day are no unworthy descendants of the men whom
Cavalier led against the forces of civil and religious tyranny, and
though these lonely mountains shelter also many who are still willing
slaves of the yoke which the sturdy "Sons of God" endeavoured to shake
off for ever, the Camisards of two centuries ago did not fight and die
in vain; their children's children are to-day the little leaven that
may yet "leaven the whole lump."
The Wonderland of France
I.
"Whatever you do, you must not miss the valley of the Tarn--the finest
scenery in Europe." Thus wrote a celebrated novelist and traveller to
me when sending some hints on my projected tour in the Cevennes, a
district which to Mr. S. R. Crockett is almost as familiar as his own
romantic Galloway. I have good reason to be grateful for his advice,
as the river Tarn is the waterway through what I shall venture to call
the Wonderland of France. A clever writer has observed that "there are
landscapes which are insane," and truly in this little-known corner of
southern France nature has performed some of her maddest, most
fantastic freaks. Here she is seen in a mood more sensational than the
weird imaginings of a Gustave Doré; there is no scenery that I have
looked upon or read about in any other part of Europe comparable with
this of the Tarn. In the old world at least it is unique, and we have
to go for comparison to the renowned cañons of the Colorado.
Not the least curious feature of the story of the Tarn, its awesome
gorges and wondrous caverns, is the fact that less than thirty years
ago the region was "discovered" to France by M. E. A. Martel, the
celebrated grottologist, with as much éclat as it had been an island
in an unknown sea. Of course, the whole district, like every other
part of France, had long ago taken its place in history and romance;
but although many a generation of peasant folk and monkish
fraternities had lived out their lives in these southern fastnesses,
the Tarn country-side had not before been explored by one in search of
the picturesque or the wonders of Nature. Thus, in every sense of the
word, M. Martel is to be reckoned a discoverer, and the surprise is
that, despite a somewhat tiresome journey, there are so few English
tourists who find their way to this enchanted land. The journey is no
more fatiguing than that to Geneva or Lucerne, which in the summer
months swarm with English visitors, and, for all their beauties,
possess nothing to equal the natural glories of the Tarn.
[Illustration: ON THE TARN
"One sits as in a cockle shell on the Enchanted Sea, gliding along
magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour."]
There are several ways of reaching this little-known corner of France,
but the best is undoubtedly by way of Mende, a fine town 434 miles
south of Paris, "chief place" of the Department of the Lozère. Mende,
although one of the cleanest and brightest of the French towns, with a
population of less than 10,000, and pleasantly situated in a wide
green valley, with low and sparsely-timbered hills billowing on every
side under a sky so blue and in atmosphere so clear that the eye seems
to acquire an unusual power of vision, would scarcely be worth the
journey for itself alone. But it is the real starting-place for the
descent of the Tarn gorges, and it possesses many excellent hotels and
an ample service of coaches for the journey across the great plateau
of the Causse de Sauveterre to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about
eighteen miles. This would be the most convenient route for the
traveller who depended upon the train and coach for his locomotion,
but those who, like the writer, make use of the bicycle, would be well
advised to make Florac their starting-point, as not the least
beautiful part of the river scenery lies between that pretty little
town and Ste. Enimie.
II.
It fitted well with my plans one summer to explore a much longer reach
of the Tarn than most visitors are in the habit of following, and I
should have been sorry indeed to have missed any part of the journey.
In company with another friend of the wheel, I struck eastward from
Mende along the lovely valley of the Lot, and crossing the great
mountain range that gives its name to the Department of the Lozère we
first came upon the Tarn at Pont de Montvert, some fourteen miles
north-east of Florac, at which point R. L. Stevenson began his
acquaintance with the river. From this sleepy old town the river runs
through a deep and narrow valley, the slopes thick with mighty
chestnut trees, and the scenery in parts somewhat reminiscent of our
Scottish Highlands, and totally unlike those reaches which, in its
south-westerly course, render it unique among the rivers of Europe.
For a few miles beyond Florac the aspect of the country is somewhat
similar in kind, but on a more massive scale, the valley wider and
more pastoral; but when one has reached the little town of Ispagnac,
which sits snugly amid its fruitful orchards, the real character of
the Tarn begins to reveal itself.
It was after sunset when we had come thus far on our journey to Ste.
Enimie, a distance of about seven miles from Florac, and never am I
likely to forget the weird and thrilling impression of our passage
from Ispagnac to Ste. Enimie, a matter of fifteen miles. The night
comes quickly in that latitude, and as we advanced along the
well-made road that follows the sinuous course of the river, at first
mounting steadily until the noise of the water is heard but faintly
far below, and then for mile upon mile gradually tending downward, the
gloaming deepened into dark, and the gorge of the river, at all times
awe-inspiring, took on in many a strange and mysterious shadow of the
night a moving touch of Dantesque grandeur. We had left behind us all
the tree-bearing slopes, and the river now ran in a great chasm of
volcanic cliffs, shooting their fantastic pinnacles a thousand feet
into the darkling sky, and presenting many an outline that might have
been mistaken for the towers and bastions of some eerie stronghold.
Not a soul was passed on all the miles of road, no sound was heard but
the varying noise of the water, nothing moved in our path except an
occasional bat, that zigzagged its noiseless flight across the road.
One sat on the saddle with a tight hold on the handle bars, and kept
as close as possible to the uprising rock, for towards the river was a
sheer drop of some 500 feet, and only a low coping stood between us
and disaster. So tortuous was the road, that, being at one time some
little distance in advance of my companion, I awaited his approach,
and could see the light of his lamp shoot out like a will-o'-the-wisp
into the middle of an abyss, and then disappear in a hollow of the
rocks, only to emerge again and flash upon an uncanny bridge across
some gaping gully. For a considerable time we gazed enraptured on
Venus, which is here seen with a radiance seldom witnessed in England,
and seemed to lie like a glittering gem on the very brow of a mighty
cliff. Presently summer lightning began to play along the riven lips
of the valley, and continued at thrilling intervals to add a touch of
dramatic intensity to a scene already sensational enough.
The only place of habitation through which we passed was the little
village of Prades, where the lighted window of a café with noise of
merriment within, and the solemn gruntling of oxen in an open stable,
gave one a little human encouragement though the street lay void and
black. As you may suppose, it was with no small satisfaction that we
at length wheeled into Ste. Enimie at half-past nine o'clock, and
found mine host of the Hôtel de Paris delighted to welcome two belated
voyagers.
III.
Ste. Enimie, which has a population of 1,000, is the chief town of its
canton, and is cosily tucked away close by the river side in a great
amphitheatre of hills and cliffs, the meeting-place of three important
highways: that by which we had come, and the road across the
Sauveterre from La Canourgue, and that across the other mighty
plateau, the Causse Méjan. The town is of great antiquity, and is said
to owe its origin to a certain princess named Enimie, daughter of
Clotaire II., who, being tainted with leprosy, was cured by some
waters at this place, and founded a monastery here at the close of the
sixth century. This religious house became one of the richest in all
Gévaudan, but was suppressed, like so many of its kind, at the time of
the great Revolution. The remains of the building are still an
interesting feature of the place, and high on the cliff above is the
hermitage of the saint, a little chapel built about the cave in which
she is supposed to have slept. The river is here crossed by a splendid
bridge, which the builders were busy improving at the time of our
visit.
[Illustration: A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN
_Showing the mass of the Causse Méjan rising on the left_]
[Illustration: IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN
"The river roars between precipices, that rise sheer and stupendous
from its brink."]
While the mistress of the hotel was preparing what we later pronounced
a most excellent meal, mine host was telling me surprising things in
the dining-room, to which one gained access through a fine
old-fashioned kitchen. With one of Taride's large scale maps before
me, whereon was shown a "national road" right through the gorges of
the Tarn to Millau, I asked for some particulars of the route, and was
smilingly informed that it did not yet exist.
"But it is here, shown by a thick red line, on this map."
"Quite so, m'sieu; many cyclists come here with a map like that and
think they can cycle all the way. But there is no road as yet, though
in five years or six there will be one. The only way to descend the
Tarn from here to Le Rozier is in a barque."
Now, experience has made me doubtful of anything a hotel-keeper in a
tourist resort will tell you about boats and coaches, for you never
know to what extent he is financially interested in the matter, and he
of the Hôtel de Paris was avowedly the agent of the company to whom
belong the boats used for the descent of the river. Although his hotel
had a modern and well-appointed annexe--token of the growing
popularity of the place where hotels are rapidly increasing--in person
he resembled a brigand grown stout with easeful days, and one
naturally grew more suspicious when he protested that it would not
make the difference of a sou to him whether we went by boat or toiled
ourselves to death across the mountains. A good friend at Florac--none
other than the Free Church minister--had also assured us there was no
road beyond Ste. Enimie, but that the boat charges were not dear. "Nor
are they," said the hotel-keeper; "it is only thirty-six francs
(thirty shillings) all the way, which is very cheap." We were unable
to see eye to eye with him then, but subsequently came round to his
opinion when we knew how much labour and skill could be purchased for
this modest outlay.
IV.
You must know that the Tarn and its ways are not to be measured by the
ordinary experiences of holiday travel. At seven o'clock in the
morning you wake and breakfast without loss of time, in order to set
out without delay and reach Le Rozier, thirty miles to the south, in
time for six o'clock dinner. On the beach, close by the hotel, lie a
number of flat-bottomed barques, rudely constructed affairs, exactly
similar to fishing-punts used in shallow English waters. A plank of
wood with a back to it, and covered with a loose cushion, is laid
athwart the primitive craft, and here you take your seat. It is
possible, I believe, for six passengers to be carried, but personally
I should be loath to trust myself in such a boat with more than four,
for two boatmen are necessary to each punt. The charge is for the boat
irrespective of numbers, so that we might have had two more in ours
without adding to the cost, but our bicycles helped us to square
matters. Our boatmen were rough, half-shaven fellows, and he who took
his place at the stern seemed to have been drinking unnecessarily
early in the morning. But both knew their business thoroughly, and
were alive to every current and whirlpool in the river.
Their system of navigation is at once simple and effective, the only
possible method of using the water-way. Armed with a strong pole, they
stand, the one in front and the other behind, and allow the barque to
glide down the swift current of the river, which runs, as I should
judge, at six or eight miles an hour. Its course is broken up by
innumerable gravel beds and rocky snags, and while we seem to be on
the very instant of dashing into a seething whirlpool one of the
boatmen will, with admirable precision, jab his pole into a hidden
gravel bank and thrust the boat once more into the main current.
Beautiful was it to watch how skilfully the men made use of this
current, and that, guiding the frail craft straight into what seemed a
perilous swirl of breakers, only that they might avail themselves of a
different current resulting therefrom, and pilot us into a quiet pool
by the beach on the very lip of a thundering weir.
[Illustration: THE CHATEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN
"One of the most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the
ancient Castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend
of the river."]
It is indeed difficult to convey any adequate idea of the sensation of
such a journey, where the water itself is at once the element and the
cause of the progress. One sits as in a cockle shell on the enchanted
sea, gliding along magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour;
but, alas! the bronzed youth at the prow and the hairy wine-bibber at
the stern are no creatures of fairyland, but the very serviceable
mortals without whose aid the wonders of the Tarn would have remained
to this day as distant as the realms of faëry.
The panorama, which seems to pass us slowly on both sides of the
river--for the absence of mechanical propulsion gives one the illusion
of sitting still while the cliffs on each hand move past the boat--is
of ceaseless change. For a time the hills reach up, green and
carefully cultivated, to the higher basaltic cliffs, that rise
perpendicular to the edge of the plateau, a thousand feet or more
above our level, and then as they suddenly narrow, with never a
foothold for the tiniest of creatures, the river roars between
precipices that soar sheer and stupendous from its water, or in some
cases lean forward so that at a little distance both sides seem to
meet and form an arch across the stream. And the whole is rich in
colour, the prevailing grey of the rocks being varied by great masses
in which warm reds and browns occur, while every crevice is picked out
with greenery, and wherever the foot of venturesome man can scramble
there have been those bold enough to terrace patches of the slopes
where vines and even tiny crops of wheat contrive to grow. One of the
most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the ancient
castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend of the
river, where above it the cliffs uprear with great hollows and
rotundities, illustrating how in the unknown ages the water has eaten
its way down from the upper level to its present bed.
The Château de La Caze is set about by many tall and leafy trees, and
one could imagine no holiday more enjoyable than a few days passed
here, for--Oh, ye romantic and practical Frenchmen!--the castle has
been transformed into an hotel, where all the appointments and even
the costumes of the servants recall the Middle Ages in which it was
built. As we approached, one of our boatmen took up a large conch and,
blowing into it, set the gorge echoing as from a foghorn; but we had
decided not to visit the château, as it was our purpose to lunch
farther down at La Malene, and the sounding of the conch was meant
only to attract the attention of some of the servants, to whom our
boatmen shouted that we had thrown on the river-bank about a quarter
of a mile above the castle a sack of loaves for its inmates.
V.
Between Ste. Enimie and La Malène there are four or five points at
which we have to change our barque, where the river leaps over
dangerous weirs, and several changes are necessary on the lower beach.
It is due to this manoeuvring and to a wait of nearly two hours at La
Malène, while the bateliers lunch and gossip boisterously at one of the
hotels--the voyageurs also being not unmindful of refreshment--that
Le Rozier is not reached until six o'clock, despite the rapid course
of the river.
La Malène is one of the three places south of Ste. Enimie, and still
in the real cañon of the Tarn, where the river is crossed by bridges;
all splendid structures, designed to withstand the spring floods when
the current carries with it many a mighty block of ice and all sorts
of debris from the hills. The first and newest of the bridges is
passed at St. Chely, a small and dirty, but extremely picturesque,
hamlet half-way between Ste. Enimie and La Malène, where we explored a
wonderful series of ancient cave dwellings, and where, by the way, an
enterprising photographer has joined the modern to the prehistoric by
painting an advertisement of his wares on the face of the cliff
overlooking the former haunts of the Troglodites.
La Malène is, to my thinking, one of the most beautiful points on the
route. The little town sits in the mouth of a great ravine that
reaches far into the Causse de Sauveterre, and on the opposite side
the majestic mass of the Causse Méjan climbs to well-nigh 1,800 feet
above the river, the mountain road wriggling upward from the bridge in
a series of wonderful twists and turns, "exactly like an apple paring
thrown over the shoulder of the engineer," as Mr. Crockett has said of
another highway in the farther south. It takes a man, walking at his
best, more than an hour to climb that same road, as I can testify, and
never for a moment during the ascent is the little town at the foot
out of view. This will convey some idea of the barrenness of the
mountain-side, where cattle and sheep crop a scanty herbage on fields
that slope like the roof of a house and are thickly strewn with stones
and boulders. At La Malène also there is a mediæval castle, which,
like La Caze, is the property of that great tourist agency, "La France
Pittoresque," and now serves as a hotel; but we were more interested
in the old church of Romanesque design, where we saw the common grave
of the thirty-nine villagers who were slain by the Republican troops
during the Terror, and are remembered throughout the Cevennes as "the
Martyrs of La Malène." It is striking proof of the terrible
thoroughness of that bloody regime that even to this remote and
sequestered nook the gory hand of the Terror stretched out.
[Illustration: PEYRELAU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE JONTE]
The French are the best of all road-makers; more than any of the
Latin peoples they have retained and fostered this gift of their Roman
forebears. The highway they are now constructing along the Tarn was
almost completed between St. Enimie and La Malène, at the time of our
passing, and a splendid road it promised to be, here running like a
gallery along the face of a cliff and there tunnelling some mighty
bluff that juts out into the cañon. But the river will always remain
the real highway, as the scenery can only be viewed to full advantage
from a seat in a barque, and the bateliers need not fear the
competition of the road that is in the making.
VI.
If one were innocent enough to believe the boatmen who live by the
tourist traffic, it would be difficult to know which part of the Tarn
is the most beautiful. At St. Enimie you would be assured, in the
event of your being undecided as to the whole trip, that the stretch
between that town and La Malène was by far the best; while at La
Malène you would find the local boatmen emphatic as to the unrivalled
beauty of the cañon between that point and Les Vignes, where the third
bridge stands; and as surely when you arrived there you would be told
the Tarn was only beginning to be worth seeing from there to Le
Rozier! Naturally, it is impossible for two boatmen to take you a
voyage which, occupying twelve hours, requires more than double that
time and many times more energy, to bring the empty boats back to the
starting-places. Thus the bateliers are prejudiced in favour of their
own particular part of the journey, and the only way is to make the
entire trip; but indeed that is for all who do not cycle imperative,
as the expense of reaching a railway station from any of the places
mentioned before Le Rozier would be prohibitive, and one must continue
the journey from the last-named place to Millau by coach and train,
for which only a small charge is made.
My own impression, if one can distinguish among scenes so differently
beautiful, is that the cañon between La Malène and Les Vignes presents
its most surprising aspect. At Les Detroits the giant walls lean
forward in a bold and menacing way, and further on, at the Cirque des
Baumes and Les Baumes Basses, we see some of Nature's most picturesque
effects, while the Pas de Soucy is a wild and thrilling part of the
journey, where the great basaltic masses are scattered about as if an
awful earthquake had but recently shaken them into their fantastic
positions.
But really there seems to be no end to the beauty of the Tarn, and
when one has arrived at Le Rozier fresh wonders await the eye, and
scenes rivalling anything we have witnessed are still to behold, if we
will make a short detour into the valley of the Jonte, where the
ancient town of Peyreleau sits like a queen enthroned among enfolding
hills. If one can go a little farther along this tributary of the Tarn
and visit the famous grotto of Dargilan, discovered by M. Martel in
1884, a strange and beautiful underworld, before which the most
extravagant fantasies of the Arabian Nights pale into insignificance,
will be revealed. There, by the light of torches, we can wander
through gigantic caverns of stalactite greater and more awe-inspiring
than any cathedral, and journey by canoe on underground rivers, in
what--those practical Frenchmen once again!--is "the property of the
Society 'La France Pittoresque.'"
Even that part of the Tarn between Le Rozier and Millau, no longer a
gorge, but broadening into a smiling and fruitful valley, with the
great impregnable wall of the Causse Noir frowning along its eastern
length, is full of beautiful vistas; but the wild and rugged grandeur
of the cañon has given place to scenes of pleasant pastoral life, and
we cycle along a highway fringed with cherry trees in fruit, passing
many a populous little town before we enter the leafy boulevards of
the historic and prosperous city of Millau.
[Illustration: BEAUCAIRE: SHOWING CASTLE AND BRIDGE ACROSS THE RHONE
TO TARASCON]
The Town of "Tartarin"
I.
The custom observed by English authors of giving fictitious names to
places described in works of romance--as for example, Mr. Hardy's
"Casterbridge" (Dorchester) and Mr. Barrie's "Thrums" (Kirriemuir)--has
so brought their readers to accept the most faithful realism for
romance, that when they take up a French novel they are apt to think
the places mentioned therein are treated in the same way. But those
who have any acquaintance with French fiction will know that the
novelists across the Channel follow a method entirely opposed to ours.
An English reader who may have enjoyed to the full the famous trilogy
of "Tartarin" books may well be excused if he supposes that the town
of Tarascon is largely a creation of their author, Alphonse Daudet. It
is true that if he has ever travelled from Paris to Marseilles by way
of Lyons and Avignon he will have passed through Tarascon, with its
wide and open station perched high on a viaduct, and the porter
bawling in his rich, southern tongue, "Tarascon, stop five minutes.
Change for Nîmes, Montpellier, Cette." And if he has--as he cannot
fail to have--delightful memories of the incomparable Tartarin, his
feet will itch to be out and wander the dusty streets in the hope of
looking upon the scenes of the hero's happy days; to peep perchance at
his tiny white-washed villa on the Avignon Road with its green
Venetian shutters, where the little bootblacks used to play about the
door and hail the great man as his portly figure stepped forth, bound
for the Alpine Club "down town." There would certainly be small other
reasons for tarrying at this ancient town of France; it owes such
interest as it possesses chiefly to the genius of Daudet, whose
inimitable humour has vivified and touched it with immortality.
I had been wandering a-wheel over many a league of these fair southern
roads one summer before I found myself at the ancient Roman city of
Nîmes, the rarest treasure of France, and it was a visit to Daudet's
birthplace there that suggested the idea of going on to Tarascon a
desire intensified by the ardour of a gentleman from that town whom I
met at a hotel, and who perspired with indignation as he denounced
"that Daudet" for libelling the good folk of Tarascon. "Tartarin! The
whole thing's a farce. There never was such a man!" But he asserted
that the town was well worth seeing, if I could only forget Daudet's
ribald nonsense.
It went well with my plans for reaching the main route back to Paris
to make a little journey through the fragrant olive groves along the
high road to Remoulins in order to visit the world-famous Roman
aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near to which a gipsy told
Tartarin he would one day be a king, and thence by the banks of the
river Gardon to Beaucaire and Tarascon. Not often have I made a
literary pilgrimage of so pleasant or profitable a nature.
II.
You must know, of course, what a rare fellow this Tartarin
was--_Coquin de bon sort_! I am not sure that I should speak of him in
the past tense; although his creator eventually gathered him to his
fathers, Tartarin was built for immortality, and at most his passing
was a translation; he is for all time the archetype of southern
character, and Tarascon is alive with him to-day. Of medium height,
stout of body, scant of hair on his head, but bushy-whiskered and
jovial-faced, you will see his like sipping absinth at any café on
the promenade of the sleepy old town, or playing a game of billiards
with the grand manner of a Napoleon figuring out a campaign.
Tartarin, blessed with all the imagination of the generous south, was
indeed an ineffectual Bonaparte, in the body of a good-natured
provincial. "We are both of the south," he observed to his devoted
admirer Pascalon, when that faithful henchman, at a crisis in
his hero's career, pointed out the similarity between him of
Corsica and him of Tarascon. Daudet makes him, in a bright flash of
self-knowledge, describe himself as "Don Quixote in the skin of Sancho
Panza," and Mr. Henry James has in this wise elaborated the point with
his usual deftness:
"There are two men in Tartarin, and there are two men in all of us;
only, of course, to make a fine case, M. Daudet has zigzagged the line
of their respective oddities. As he says so amusingly in _Tartarin of
Tarascon_, in his comparison of the very different promptings of these
inner voices, when the Don Quixote sounds the appeal, 'Cover yourself
with glory!' the Sancho Panza murmurs the qualification, 'Cover
yourself with flannel!' The glory is everything the imagination
regales itself with as a luxury of reputation--the _regardelle_ so
prettily described in the last pages of _Port Tarascon_; the flannel
is everything that life demands as a tribute to reality--a gage
of self-preservation. The glory reduced to a tangible texture too
often turns out to be mere prudent underclothing."
[Illustration: TARASCON: THE PUBLIC MARKET]
[Illustration: THE TARASQUE]
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF TARASCON]
It is true that a good deal of the humour that attaches to Tartarin is
of the unconscious sort. He and his brethren of Provence stand in
relation to their fellow-countrymen much as the Irish to the English
in the matter of humour, but in that only. They are often the butt of
northern witticisms, and are said to be experts in drawing the long
bow. Tarascon in this respect no more than many a score of little
towns in the Midi; but it suited the author's purpose admirably to
locate the home of his hero there, as the place possesses many quaint
little peculiarities of its own which fitted in admirably with the
scheme of Tartarin's remarkable career.
III.
Since I visited the town the Tarasconians have proved worthy of their
reputation, as a picture post card has been put in circulation bearing
a photograph of "_La Maison de Tartarin_." It shows a square and
comfortable white house, flat-roofed, with a series of loop-hole
windows that give it a murderous look. In front is a large garden,
where an old baobab stretches forth its branches and innumerable
exotics mingle their strange leaves in the beautiful disorder of the
primeval forest. So, at least, I gather from a French journal. Yet,
while pointing out the mendacity of the picture post card, the journal
in question publishes with every evidence of sincerity an equally
apocryphal account of the real Tartarin, who we are told, was a person
named originally Jean Pittalouga, a native of the south of Sardinia,
not a Frenchman at all. He was bought out of slavery by the
Brotherhood of the Trinity, and came to Tarascon to manage the
property of the fraternity in that town. As Sidi-Mouley-Abdallah was
the superior of Morocco and that country was part of Barbary,
Pittalouga became known in Tarascon, because of his romantic
experience among the Moors, first as _Sidi-Barbari_, and then as
_Barbarin_. The time came when the Trinity fraternity had to clear
out, and with them Barbarin, who now rented a neighbouring farm on the
outskirts of the town--the veritable "_Maison de Tartarin_" of the
post card. But he did not die there. He went away with the Trinity
fathers into Africa, and is believed to have been devoured entirely by
some terrible wild beast, with whom he had disputed the sovereignty of
the desert. To all of which, as Daudet remarks of the member of the
Jockey Club travelling _avec sa nièce_, "Hum! hum!"
One may note here that the author did first write of his comic hero as
Barbarin; but as the French law affords the fullest measure of
protection to living people whose names may be introduced in works of
fiction, and as there lived in Tarascon a certain M. Barbarin, who
wrote to Daudet a letter worthy of his hero, wherein he threatened the
utmost rigour of the law unless the novelist ceased to make sport of
"what was dearer to him than life itself, the unspotted name of his
ancestors," Daudet altered the name to Tartarin, and was inclined to
think in after years, when the fame of his creation had travelled
around the globe, that his hero would never have been so popular under
his original name. It may have been a case of "apt alliteration's
artful aid"; but one may suppose that Tartarin would have been equally
popular by any other name. He embodies the extravagant, and not the
least lovable, side of French character, as truly as Uriah Heep and
Mr. Pecksniff represent English humbug and hypocrisy; he has many
points of similarity with Mr. Pickwick, but the last-mentioned can
hardly be compared with him as reality seen through the eye of kindly
caricature.
IV.
Tartarin was, in a word, an epitomy of innocent vanities;
large-hearted, generous, he had the Cæsarian ambition to be the first
man in his town; he was imbued with the national hunger for "_la
Gloire_," and many were the amusing ways in which he sought to
demonstrate his prowess. To impress his townsmen, the dear old humbug
surrounded himself with all sorts of foreign curiosities. His garden
was stuffed with exotics from every clime, most notable of all the
wonderful baobab, which he grew in a flower-pot, although that is the
unmatched giant of the tree kingdom! His study was decked with the
weapons of many strange and savage people, and, like a miniature
museum, his possessions were ticketed thus: "Poisoned arrows! Do not
touch!" "Weapons loaded! Have a care!"
His earliest exploits were as chief of the "cap-hunters," for, you
see, in those days the good folk of Tarascon were great sports, and
the whole country-side having been denuded of game, they were reduced
to the device of going forth in hunting-parties, and after a jolly
picnic they would throw up their caps in the air and shoot at them as
they fell! "The man whose hat bears the greatest number of shot
marks is hailed as champion of the chase, and in the evening, with his
riddled cap stuck on the end of his rifle, he makes a triumphal entry
into Tarascon, midst the barking of dogs and fanfares of trumpets."
[Illustration: TARASCON: THE MAIRIE]
Tartarin, however, determined to cover himself with glory--as well as
flannel--by making an expedition into Algeria and Morocco, there to
try his prowess on the lions of the Atlas. His ludicrous adventures on
this great enterprise--how he shot a donkey and a blind lion, and
returned to Tarascon pursued by his devoted camel--form the theme of
the first of Daudet's three charming stories. The years pass with
Tartarin lording it at Baobab House, and at the club every evening
spinning his untruthful yarns, beginning: "Picture to yourself a
certain evening in the open Sahara." Then comes the further adventures
of "Tartarin in the Alps," and I confess that when, a good many years
ago, I first clambered up a portion of Mont Blanc it was of Tartarin's
famous ascent I thought rather than of Jacques Balmat's; the fiction
was more vivid in my mind than the fact; and again at the Castle of
Chillon--I say it fairly--the comic figure of Tartarin imprisoned
there was more engaging to the imagination than that of Bonnivard;
and, by the bye, in the famous dungeon one can see scratched on the
wall the signatures of both Lord Byron and Alphonse Daudet.
The last, and in some respects the best, of all the Tartarin
books--like Mulvaney, the mighty Tarasconian has his fame "dishpersed
most notoriously in sev'ril volumes"--is _Port Tarascon_, wherein are
detailed the mirthful misadventures of the great man, and many of his
townsmen who, under his direction, set sail to found a colony in
Polynesia, an undertaking that proved fatal to his fame, and ended
eventually in his self-exile across the river to Beaucaire, where he
died soon after; of sheer melancholy we may suppose.
V.
It was into the busy little town of Beaucaire, which lies around its
ancient castle of Bellicardo, on the west bank of the broad Rhone,
glaring across at Tarascon, that I wheeled one bright day in June.
Beaucaire, for all its canal, wharves, and signs of prosperous
industry, is as tidy a town as I have seen, and the fine old castle,
ruined by Richelieu, where in the golden age of Languedoc's poesy the
troubadors sang their ballads at the Court of Love, is beautifully
situated on a little hill by the river-side, quite near to the
magnificent suspension bridge which figures so humorously in _Port
Tarascon_. The rivalry between the two towns, their mutual jealousies,
furnished Daudet with many an opportunity to poke fun at them.
"Separated by the whole breadth of the Rhone, the two cities regard
each other across the river as irreconcilable enemies. The bridge that
has been thrown between them has not brought them any nearer. This
bridge is never crossed--in the first place, because it's very
dangerous. The people of Beaucaire no more go to Tarascon than those
of Tarascon go to Beaucaire." As the gentleman I met at Nîmes would
have said, "Zut! It is not true." But that is neither here nor there.
Tartarin, up to his forty-ninth year, had never spent a night away
from his own home. "The very limit of his travels was Beaucaire, and
yet Beaucaire is not far from Tarascon, as there is only the bridge to
cross. Unhappily that beastly bridge had been so often swept away by
the storms; it is so long, so rickety, and the Rhone so broad there
that--zounds, you understand!... Tartarin preferred to have a firm
grip of the ground." But this must have referred to the old bridge
that made way for the present magnificent structure, which crosses the
river in four spans and is 1,456 feet in length. However, it was this
suspension bridge, and no other, across which the hero's cronie
Bompard came with such bravery to witness for his friend, when
Tartarin, fallen from his high estate, was on trial at the court of
Tarascon for having been party to a gigantic swindle in the great
colonising fraud of Port Tarascon, a charge from which, as we know, he
was rightly acquitted. Bompard at the time of the trial was in hiding
at Beaucaire, where he had become conservator of the Castle and warden
of the Fair Grounds--Beaucaire's annual fair is famed all over
France--"but when I saw that Tartarin was really dragged into the dock
between the myrmidons of the law, then I could hold out no longer; I
let myself go--I crossed the bridge! I crossed it this morning in a
terrible tempest. I was obliged to go down on all fours the same way
as when I went up Mont Blanc.... When I tell you that the bridge was
swinging like a pendulum, you'll believe I had to be brave. I was, in
fact, heroic."
VI.
The view from the bridge as one crosses to Tarascon is as pleasant a
picture as may be seen in any part of old France. The noble stream,
broken by sedgy inlands, sweeps on between its low banks, and rising
sheer from the water's edge on a firm rock-base, almost opposite the
picturesque mass of Bellicardo, are the massive walls of the
ancient castle of Tarascon, founded by Count Louis II. in the
fourteenth century and finished by King Réné of Anjou in the
fifteenth, and at one time tenanted by Pope Urbain II., but now, like
many another palace of kings, fallen to the condition of a common
prison. Within these grim walls Tartarin passed some of his inglorious
days, but days not lacking romance, for was not Bompard from the
opposite height signalling o' nights to him by means of mysterious
lights?
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF TARASCON
(_Summer costume_)]
If one has never seen photographs of Tarascon it will be a surprise,
as it is surely a pleasure, to note how faithfully the artists who
illustrated Daudet's books have reproduced in their charming little
vignettes the chief features of the actual town. There to the south of
the bridge is the tiny quay from which we are to suppose the
_Tootoopumpum_ sailed away with the flower of Tarascon's aristocracy
on that ill-starred expedition to the South Seas. Daudet is careful to
preserve some slight respect for the truth by explaining that the
vessel was of shallow draft; but, even so, the Rhone is here not
navigable to ocean-going steamers.
Proceeding straight into the town, we arrive in a minute or so at the
Promenade, with its long rows of plane trees, as in most French towns,
only in Tarascon the trees seem to grow higher and leafier than
anywhere else. It opens out a short distance from the riverside, and
although it cannot be strictly called the "Walk Round" for the reason
which the author gives--that it encircles the town--it certainly
traverses a goodly portion of Tarascon, and takes in _en route_ that
"bit of a square" to which he makes so many sly allusions.
Almost the first thing one notices after crossing the bridge is the
"Hotel of the Emperors," close by the Hospice at the opening of the
Promenade. This title is worthy of Daudet himself! Along the south
side of the Promenade stand the chief cafés and shops; as one sits by
a table at a door watching the passers-by, the scene is entirely
agreeable. Everybody seems to have walked out of Daudet's page. The
men are of two types chiefly--those of the stout and bearded figure,
such as Tartarin himself possessed, and the thin and sharp-featured
fellows of Italian caste, like Bezuquet and Costecalde, with their
bright, black eyes and fierce moustachios. Most of them, this sunny
day, are abroad in their shirt sleeves, and almost to a man they wear
the soft black felt hats such as our English curates affect.
VII.
There is a musical jingle of spurs, as some baggy-trousered soldiers
pass on their way to the fine cavalry barracks which the town
possesses. There go a pair of comfortable-looking priests in their
long black gowns, their good fat fingers twined behind them; but
nowhere do we see the white habit of the friars, whose monastery of
Pampérigouste the gallant Tartarin and his crusaders defended from the
Government troops so long ago! The women-folk whom one sees about are
nearly all hatless, but they wear a dainty substitute in the shape of
a little cap of white muslin and lace, and a pelerine of the same
material over their shoulders and breast. Small, plump, swarthy, they
are true daughters of the south, and by that token better to look upon
than their sisters of the north. Here and there one may see a woman
touched with something of the Paris fashion, members of that local
aristocracy to which belonged the charming Clorinda of Pascalon's
hopeless passion.
There is a constant toot-toot or tinkle of bells as cyclists go by,
for the wheel has come into great popularity here as elsewhere since
Tartarin made his tragic exit across the bridge. Perhaps the most
unmistakable evidences of provincialism are supplied by the
antiquated types of vehicles with their fat-faced drivers and their
unshorn horses, many of the latter being harnessed with the most
extravagant kinds of collars and saddles that project a couple of feet
or more above the level of the animals' backs.
The whole scene is one of peaceful and happy life, and it is good to
look upon people who are in no hurry to do business and seem to take
things easily. Across the way, there, the chemist is standing at his
door, with those great glasses of coloured water, that seem to have
gone out of fashion in England, shining in his window, while he rolls
a cigarette for the white-legged postman who has stopped to give him a
letter, and chats with him in the passing. He might be Bezuquet
himself, did we not know of the misfortune that befell the latter,
when he was tatooed out of recognition by the South Sea Islanders, and
had to wear a mask when he came home!
[Illustration: TARASCON: "THE BIT OF A SQUARE"]
Going down a street that leads northward from the Promenade, we pass
the Mairie, a quaint old building from whose balcony floats, not the
Tarasque, but the tricolor, and by whose doorway are posted notices of
coming bull-fights, for Tarascon is still keen on its ancient sport
despite the restrictive legislation. Near by is the public market, and
the whole district swarms with dogs of every breed. We peep into
the church of St. Martha, which is no bad example of the Pointed
Gothic and occupies the site of an old Roman Temple. One of the kings
of Provence is buried here, but more interesting is the tomb of the
saint to whom the church is dedicated.
VIII.
St. Martha and the Tarasque are the peculiar glories of the
Tarasconians, who, you must know, would almost strike you if you
breathed the word "Tartarin" to them, and have never forgotten Daudet
for his satires on the town. We cannot do better than go to Daudet for
the legend of St. Martha and the beast.
"This Tarasque, in very ancient days, was nothing less than a terrible
monster, a most alarming dragon, which laid waste the country at the
mouth of the Rhone. St. Martha, who had come into Provence after the
death of our Lord, went forth and caught the beast in the deep
marshes, and binding its neck with a sky-blue ribbon, brought it into
the city captive, tamed by the innocence and piety of the saint. Ever
since then, in remembrance of the service rendered by the holy Martha,
the Tarasconians have kept a holiday, which they celebrate every ten
years by a procession through the city. This procession forms the
escort of a sort of ferocious, bloody monster, made of wood and
painted pasteboard, who is a cross between the serpent and the
crocodile, and represents, in gross and ridiculous effigy, the dragon
of ancient days. The thing is not a mere masquerade, for the Tarasque
is really held in veneration; she is a regular idol, inspiring a sort
of superstitious, affectionate fear. She is called in the country the
Old Grannie. The creature has herself stalled in a shed especially
hired for her by the town council."
Daudet's light sketch of the Tarasque may be supplemented by a more
circumstantial account of the strange ceremony from a writer on old
customs (William S. Walsh), who informs us that "the famous Miracle
Play of 'Sainte Marthe et la Tarasque,' instituted, it was said, by
King Réné in 1400, was one of the last Provençal _coronlas_ to
disappear, as in its day it was one of the most popular. Even after
the Mystery Play was itself abandoned, a remnant of it lingered on
until the middle of the nineteenth century in the annual procession of
La Tarasque, celebrated on July 29th, not only at Tarascon, but also
at Beaucaire. The main feature was the huge figure of a dragon, made
of wood and canvas, eight feet long, three feet high, and four feet
broad in the middle. The head was small, there was no neck, the body,
which was covered with scales, was shaped like an enormous egg, and
at the nether extremity was a heavy beam of wood for a tail. Sixteen
mummers, gaily caparisoned and known as the Knights of la Tarasque
were among its attendants. Eight of the knights concealed themselves
within the body to represent those who had been devoured, and
furnished the motive power, besides lashing the tail to right and
left, at imminent risk to the legs of the spectators. The other eight
formed the escort, and were followed by drummers and fifers and a long
procession of clergy and laity. The dragon was conducted by a girl in
white and blue, the leading string being her girdle of blue silk. When
the dragon was especially unruly and frolicsome she dashed holy water
over it. A continuous rattle of torpedoes and musketry was kept up by
those who followed in the dragon's train."
The celebration of the Tarasque has taken place several times, I
believe, since the prohibition, while the procession of St. Martha is
held annually; but as my visit did not synchronise with either, I had
to be content with securing photographs from a local photographer, who
was more inclined to discuss the weather and smoke his cigarette than
sell his wares, and left his wife--at the time of my call, in a state
of partial undress between changing her visiting costume for an indoor
dress--to do the business of hunting up prints for me. It will be
remembered by those who have read _Port Tarascon_ that Tartarin
foresaw his own downfall from the day on which, under the impression
that he was shooting at a whale, he planted a bullet in the gross
carcase of the Tarasque, which had been taken with the emigrants to
the South Seas and was swept overboard to become a waif of the waves.
IX.
One of the peculiarities of Tarascon is its railway station on the
outskirts of the town. It is situated some thirty feet above the level
of the street, and you gain the platform by climbing several long
flights of stairs, up which it is no light task to carry a
heavily-burdened bicycle. During most of the day there is little
evidence of life in or around the station, and a clerk will cheerfully
devote a quarter of an hour to explain to you the absurdities of the
railway time table; but five or six times a day the place wakes up on
the arrival of a train from or to the capital, for all the trains in
France seem to have a connection, however tardy and remote, with the
octopus of Paris. Then there is much ringing of bells and blowing of
trumpets, and you almost expect to see the quaint and portly form of
Tartarin himself returning from his great adventure in the Sahara
or his ascent of Mont Blanc. But you reflect that these and many other
of his doings were much too good to be true, and take your place in
the corner of the carriage, making yourself comfortable for the long
and dreary journey to Paris.
[Illustration: TARASCON: THE PROCESSION OF THE TARASQUE
_The little girl leading the monster represents Saint Martha_]
The last thing you see as the train steams away is the white stretch
of the Avignon Road lying between the railway and the river, its
little white houses and modern villas close-shuttered and growing
indistinct in the soft southern twilight.
"La Fête Dieu"
I.
For centuries the 19th of June has been to the people of France a day
of high festival. No one who has happened to be travelling in Normandy
or Brittany--or indeed in almost any of the French provinces--about
this time of the year can have failed to notice the celebration of the
Fête Dieu, and many may have wondered what it was all about. It has
existed so long as one of the national customs, varying in its
observance in different parts of the country, and having passed
through many periods of change, that a few years ago he would have
been accounted a rash and uninspired prophet who would have foretold
that the Republican Government might have the temerity to lay its
embargo on this sacred institution. But, behold the day when the
secular hand of M. Combes had stretched out into the remotest parts of
fair France, and following hard upon the upsetting of monastic peace,
came the prohibition of religious processions in public. The effect of
this order was to limit the fête in many places to a mere
perambulation of the exterior of the church, and in others the
procession was confined entirely to the interior, though here and
there, it would seem, the function took place just as it did
generations before M. Combes and the anti-clericals arose into power.
The festival is clearly of pagan origin, like so many of the
ceremonies of the Christian church; it corresponds with the Corpus
Feast in Spain, the exhibition of the holy sacrament having been
grafted on to the heathenish rights very early in the Christian era.
There seems to be evidences of the ceremony having been observed in
some form or other centuries before 673, as in that year an
ecclesiastical council, held at Braga in Spain, spoke of "the ancient
and traditional custom of solemnly carrying the Host on the
shoulders." It was Pope Urbain IV., who vainly endeavoured to stir up
a new crusade on behalf of his former diocese of Jerusalem, that
officially recognised and instituted as regular offices of the church
in 1264 the ceremonies connected with the Fête Dieu. But, despite this
papal ordinance, the festival did not become one of general observance
until, some generations later, there had grown around the purely
religious part of it a mass of painfully secular tomfoolery, which
turned the fête into a great saturnalia. In the days of that merry
monarch, King Réné, it had assumed such proportions that an entire
week was devoted to the celebration, "courts of love," tournaments,
jousts, mystery plays, and many other amusements being associated with
the solemn procession of the sacred sacrament. Flourishing more or
less, the fête continued annually, without interruption until the
great Revolution, which gave short shrift to the old taste for
processions; but under Louis XVIII. it was re-established, and the
State even furnished troops as escorts for those taking part in the
processions. Times are changed indeed when we find _Le Pèlerin_, an
illustrated weekly newspaper devoted entirely to the interests of
pilgrimages, publishing cartoons which show the police dispersing the
pious participants in the procession of the Fête Dieu, while rowdy
socialists are permitted to wave their red rags in the highway.
[Illustration: PROCESSION OF LA FÊTE DIEU
_Photographed at Morlaix, in Brittany_]
II.
The festival, which has thus fallen upon evil times, might possibly
have gone more steadily downhill to the limbo of old customs if the
Government had left it alone, as of recent years it has not been
gaining in popularity, and, practically speaking, only women and
children have shown active interest in it under the direction of the
priests and lay officials. Throughout Normandy it was a rare thing to
see men taking part; but in Brittany, and especially at the quaint old
town of Morlaix, which is famed for its high railway bridge and its
Fête Dieu, and holds an extremely jolly kermesse, with dancing and the
selling of cheap rubbish, immediately after the holy sacrament has
been carried through the streets, a larger proportion of men were to
be seen engaging in the ceremony; while in the far south, among the
peasants of Provence and Aveyron, the men have long been as attached
to this and similar fêtes of the church as the women, taking part with
a comic gravity of demeanour absurdly out of keeping with their
usually gay and careless behaviour. Generally speaking, the Fête Dieu,
as celebrated during modern years, has been a picturesque, but brief
and inoffensive ceremonial, that did not greatly disturb anybody, and
seemed to please the women and children. In the course of time it
might have died out as a public institution, though it must always
survive, in some manner, as a religious festival; but the Government,
in its crusade against the enemies of the Republic--for such
undoubtedly are the Catholic priests--may find that it has, by its
very prohibition, reawakened interest in this ancient and decrepid
institution of the church.
As for the familiar procession of the Fête Dieu, there is not very
much to describe: a brief notice of one may be taken as typical of
all. The first indication that the visitor would have of something
unusual toward was the strewing of the principal streets with rushes.
Almost every shopkeeper would be seen with an armful of the green
blades, laying them down to fullest advantage in the middle of the
road. This done, the next thing was to bring out long sheets of white
linen, which were tacked a little way below the windows of the first
story, and hung downward to within a foot or so of the ground, the
entire route being thus lined with a continuous stretch of white,
whereon busy hands had pinned roses and other flowers, sometimes
attempting designs such as a heart or a cross, or the monogram "I H
S." Each shopkeeper seemed to vie with his or her neighbour to produce
a more elaborate evidence of pious interest in the coming procession;
but I have noticed frequently that many performed their part in the
most perfunctory manner, only rushing up their white linen and
sticking on a flower or two when the head of the procession was
actually in sight, and whipping off the sheets as soon as it had
passed by.
III.
In many parts of the town, often in the front garden of a private
house, in some outside corner of a church or in a market-place,
elaborate shrines, made of wood, covered with cloth, and decorated
with rushes and flowers, would be erected. In one small town I have
counted upwards of a dozen such erections, enclosing gaudy statues of
the saints, especially well disposed towards those who supplied the
money for the shrines. But here again I have noticed the proverbial
economy of the French nation asserting itself, the attendant at such a
gorgeous shrine lighting the numerous candles only on the approach of
the procession, and blowing them out the instant it had passed, when
also the dismantling of the shrine would begin! I recall a
particularly gorgeous shrine which I saw many years ago in the town of
Falaise. At a considerable distance the numerous candles seemed to be
burning so brilliantly, that I was not altogether surprised on going
up and examining them to find the supposed candles were actually
incandescent electric lamps. Thus the preliminary arrangements of the
populace for the coming of the procession.
The route was, as a rule, one that had been followed for years, but
the erection of a particularly elaborate shrine by some person blessed
with pelf and piety, in a street not within the usual itinerary, would
be regarded as sufficient to justify a detour.
I have never witnessed the procession without being refreshed by its
suggestion of old-world ease. "Build your houses as if you meant them
to last for ever," was Ruskin's advice. "Proceed as if your procession
had started at the Flood and was going on till Doomsday," would seem
to be the motto that inspires the demonstrators in the Fête Dieu.
In the distance the sound of music is heard, and after a time at the
far end of the road the head of the procession is seen moving towards
us at a pace as much slower than a funeral as that is slower than a
horse race. First comes the beadle, or church officer attached to the
cathedral, whose blue or red uniform, with cocked hat, knee breeches,
white hose and buckled shoes, remind one of the dress of our soldiers
in the seventeenth century, a get-up very similar to that of the Swiss
Guard at the Vatican, these beadles being, indeed, generally known as
the "Swiss," though they are loutish and ignorant fellows, with as
much regard for religion as the chucker-out at a roaring London
tavern. But for all that, the Swiss makes a mighty picturesque figure
at the head of the procession, his sword hanging at his hip, and a
long mace carried in his hand as he steps out slowly and endeavours to
combine dignity with scowls at the children who follow him, the little
girls in their white muslin dresses, made for their first communion,
and the little boys in the sort of midshipman's suit universally worn
by French lads at the time of their confirmation, a white armlet being
donned on this occasion and a rosary tied around it. Following the
children, who carry banners with various religious devices, come bands
of music and different groups of men and women, who also march under
certain banners that indicate their membership of some brotherhood or
sisterhood.
IV.
There are brotherhoods of the Holy Sacrament in many parts of France
whose credentials date back to the Middle Ages, and who seem to exist
solely for the purpose of being privileged to walk in religious
processions, with a ludicrous gown lavishly trimmed, and having on the
front, after the manner of a herald's tabard, a picture of Christ. The
brethren of the various "charities," which in France correspond in
some degree to our friendly societies, also wear uniforms, and, in
some parts of the country assist in the procession. In the past many
unseemly disturbances arose out of the rivalry of these brotherhoods
as to their respective privileges in the Fête Dieu, and the sacred
function was often marred by the most disgraceful scenes of rowdyism
as the rivals fought for precedence, and especially for the right of
bearing the canopy under which the Holy Sacrament is carried through
the streets.
The approach of the Host is heralded by the acolytes in their scarlet
gowns with lace tunicles, who come singing, and precede the
white-robed members of the choir, lay brethren and priests, who are
either diligently reading from books, or mumbling unintelligently the
orisons provided for the occasion. Succeeding these come more
acolytes, swinging censers, and others who, walking backwards, bear
large baskets of rose leaves, and scatter their fragrant burdens in
handfuls on the road in front of the bishop. The latter, arrayed in
his most gorgeous vestments, advances slowly, holding aloft, with
well-assumed solemnity, to impress beholders with the awful sacredness
of his charge, the elaborate brass monstrance or cabinet which
encloses the consecrated wafer. The bishop, who thus displays before
the just and the unjust the Holy Sacrament, walks under a canopy of
richly embroidered cloth, carried on four posts by specially chosen
members of some of the brotherhoods, or perhaps by some unusually
devout laymen, whose purses have not been altogether closed when the
clerical hat has gone round.
Previously to the approach of the dais covering the bishop and his
holy burden, the spectators in the street have been laughing and
joking with and about the demonstrators, and some of the children in
the procession have shown lamentable forgetfulness of the solemn
nature of the function by putting out their tongues at us, and turning
back to say derisively, "les Anglais!"--for this was before the days
of the _Entente_. But the moment the bishop and the Host come up, down
flop the spectators on their knees, crossing themselves, the men
removing their hats, though I confess with pleasure that many a time I
have seen groups of men showing as much reverence to the sacred wafer
as Cockney crowds do to the Lord Mayor's coachman on show day.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF SAINTE ENIMIE]
The procession is now at an end so far as our particular standpoint is
concerned, and already the white sheets are disappearing all along the
road, shopkeepers turning their attention to business again. But it is
winding its way through other streets, pausing to make special
obeisance before the temporary shrines, and to rehearse prayers
cunningly adapted to the peculiar requirements of the saints to
whom the shrines are dedicated. And so after, it may be, two or three
hours perambulation, the demonstrators return to the cathedral, where
High Mass is celebrated; this over, they are free to make merry to
their heart's desire. And they do.
"M'sieu Meelin of Dundae"
I.
Please do not consider it an affectation of superior knowledge if I
begin by saying it is improbable that one out of a hundred of my
readers has ever heard of Morbihan and the wonderful druidical remains
in the Commune of Carnac. To be quite frank, I had never heard of them
myself until one dusty summer day when I cycled into the little
village of Carnac away on the south coast of Brittany, and within
sight of the historic bay of Quiberon. The village of Carnac, whose
population numbers only some six hundred souls, is one of the most
interesting in Brittany, where almost every hamlet has some historic
touch to engage the attention of the visitor. It consists practically
of a little square of houses surrounding the ancient parish church,
dedicated to Saint Corneille. This saint is the patron of cattle, and
in September the town is the centre of a series of most picturesque
celebrations, the peasants journeying hither from all parts of the
surrounding country, accompanied by their cattle, horses, and even
their pigs, for the pig is as notable a feature of rural life in
Brittany as it is in Ireland. Saint Corneille, for a reason which will
be explained further on, is supposed to take a very personal interest
in the welfare of the Breton's cattle, and to see the simple peasants
on their pilgrimage to his shrine, and later in the ceremonies of
parading their beasts around the church and kneeling before his statue
on the west front of the tower, kneeling again and sometimes even
fighting for a dip in the water from his fountain, is to realise how
sincere is their belief in his powers. But this is only by the way; my
present intention is not to spend any more time in describing the
quaint ceremonies that have long made Carnac a centre of pilgrimage,
and have been the theme of many a story and poem by French writers.
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC
(_The second view is a continuation of the first_)]
Leaving the little square and striking eastward along the main road, I
noticed a small, plain building, almost the last of the few straggling
houses in that direction, bearing in bold letters the legend "Musée
Miln." The name had a pleasant suggestion of my ain countree, and in a
trice I was knocking at the door, curious to know what lay behind. A
tall, well-knit, clean-shaven Breton of about forty years of age
opened and bade me welcome. He was carelessly dressed like any
village shopkeeper in his shirt sleeves, and wearing a pair of carpet
slippers; certainly presenting no aspect of the antiquary or the
scholar, although it was not long before I found that he was a man of
remarkable attainments in archæology. As far as I remember, the charge
for admission was one franc, and although at first it seemed a large
price to pay for looking at a roomful of things in glass cases, I left
with the conviction that I had made an excellent bargain.
The museum I found to consist of an extremely valuable assortment of
relics of the Stone and Bronze Ages. Admirably arranged and catalogued
were hundreds of flint arrowheads and axes, some of the latter being
of that earliest type before man had the sense to pierce the axe-head
for the handle, but stuck the wedge-like head of the axe through a
hole in the shaft. There were also many examples of rude instruments
belonging to the Bronze Age, some Roman swords and a skeleton in a
prehistoric stone coffin. The interest of these curiosities lay not
only in their intrinsic value to the antiquary, but in the fact that
they had all been dug up from the tumuli in the Commune of Carnac. But
to me they assumed at once a far more vivid interest, when the
custodian explained that the antiquary who had discovered most of
them, and whose money had founded the museum, was "M'sieu Meelin of
Dundae." When I explained that I was a countryman of this Mr. Miln,
the curator launched into a warm description of that worthy's
abounding good qualities, and recalled with the fervour of the French
his own personal association with Mr. Miln in the work of excavation.
He pointed with pride to a very ordinary oil painting of his old
friend and master, which disclosed him as a fresh-complexioned,
white-haired gentleman of unmistakable Scottish type, and assured me
that he was "_un homme très interessant et très aimable_." I could
readily believe the eulogy, as it was a kindly old Scotch face that
looked out of the canvas at me.
II.
I wonder if the memory of Mr. Miln is treasured in Dundee. The chances
are that what I have to tell of him may be news to his fellow-townsmen
of to-day. A reference to that excellent work, _Chambers's
Biographical Dictionary_, discloses the fact that he is remembered
there to the extent of exactly two lines:
"Miln, James (1819-81), a Scotch antiquary made excavations at Carnac
in Brittany, 1872-80."
That is all, but behind these two lines lie the long story of a
romantic life in a foreign land and a little measure of fame among an
alien people. In this respect the life of James Miln resembles
curiously the lives of so many of his fellow-countrymen, who have
wandered to the ends of the earth in the pursuit of their avocations,
and left traces of their work everywhere except in the place of their
birth.
My knowledge of the life of this notable Scotsman and his work is
gleaned from the scholarly little brochure written by M. Zacharie le
Rouzic, the slippered custodian of the "Musée Miln." It appears that
James Miln was born at Woodhill in 1819, and while still young
travelled in India, China, and spent some years in other parts of the
far east. On his return to Scotland he threw himself with enthusiasm
into antiquarian research and scientific studies. He succeeded to the
estate of Murie in Perthshire on the death of his father, James Yeanan
Miln, of Murie and Woodhill, and later to that of Woodhill in
Forfarshire at the death of his brother, to whom that property had
descended. His particular line of study for nearly forty years of his
life would seem to have been the origin and development of portable
firearms, and for a man of such peaceful pursuits it is strange to be
told that he was especially ardent in encouraging every experiment for
the perfection of rifles. Another of his hobbies was concerned with
the improvement of the telescope; but all kinds of scientific
instruments seem to have been objects of his study and inventive
genius. In the experimental days of photography he speedily achieved
success with the camera, and made a large collection of photographs of
ancient sculptures in the east of Scotland. An accomplished linguist
and something of an artist, he illustrated with his own pencil all his
works on archæology, which M. Le Rouzic assures us was always his
favourite study.
It was during the summer of 1873 that Miln first visited Carnac, where
he encountered his friend, Admiral Tremlett, of Tunbridge Wells, who
was interested in the wonderful neolithic remains in the
neighbourhood, and became his guide in a series of explorations.
Miln's enthusiasm was immediately aflame when he contemplated this
rich and sparsely-explored field of research awaiting the excavator.
His first idea was to purchase the ground on which some of the most
interesting remains were standing, but finding this impossible, he
approached the farmers on whose land the unbroken mounds, which
represented burial-places of prehistoric people, were situated, and
obtained leave from them to commence the work of excavation, to which
he immediately resolved to devote himself during 1875 and 1876. The
result was a series of important discoveries. Perhaps the most
important of the remains unearthed were those of a Roman villa,
consisting of eleven chambers, and surrounded by several other
buildings, among which were baths and a small temple, that were
believed to date back to the first half of the fourth century.
Numerous examples of Roman pottery, glass, jewellery, money, a bronze
statue of a bull, and many other curiosities were dug up. Within sight
of the museum, and only a few minutes' walk away, is a tumulus
surmounted by a little chapel to Saint Michael, and here in 1876 Miln
made many notable discoveries, including the remains of an
eleventh-century monastery.
[Illustration: THE MERCHANTS' TABLE
_One of the great dolmens near Carnac_]
III.
The results of these excavations were described in a large work
written and illustrated by himself, and issued in Edinburgh and Paris.
By January of 1877 he was busily prosecuting his explorations at
Kermaric, a gunshot distant from Carnac, and the work went steadily on
with the most fruitful results in many other parts of the district
until the end of 1880, when Miln returned to Edinburgh in order to
produce another book describing his researches. Unhappily, in the
midst of his literary labour, he was seized with a brief illness,
which at the end of six days resulted in his death on Friday, 28th
January, 1881, at twelve minutes to eleven, as the faithful M. le
Rouzic records.
James Miln was a member of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, la
Société royale des Antiquaries du Nord, the Academy of Copenhagen, and
several learned societies in England and the Continent. "_C'est avec
une douloureuse émotion que l'on apprit, à Carnac, la nouvelle de sa
mort_," to quote again his faithful henchman. The museum with its
precious contents was secured to Carnac through the efforts of Mr.
Robert Miln, the son of the antiquary, and his friend Admiral
Tremlett, and was opened on the 22nd May, 1882, since when it has
remained a centre of great interest and importance to all antiquarian
students, and an enduring monument to "M'sieu Meelin of Dondae."
This is a brief outline of the life of a little-known Scotsman, which
is worth recalling as an example of the quiet, unostentatious way in
which the Scot will carry on any enterprise that lies near to his
heart, with no eye to personal advertisement, but out of sheer
pleasure in the work his hand has found to do. Thus it is that one
meets with traces of our countrymen in the remote and unfrequented
corners of earth, and at the ring of an old name the mind of the
wanderer is carried back across "the waste of seas" to the land whose
sons, by some strange irony of fate, are prone to find their life-work
far from home.
IV.
But my story must not end here, although we take our leave of James
Miln and his museum. It is almost impossible to describe in any
adequate way the historic value of this part of Brittany. Stonehenge,
in England, is a national monument which we zealously treasure, yet
its value, compared with the neolithic remains of Morbihan, is as a
drop in a bucket of water. In the region to the east and north of
Carnac druidical remains are as plentiful as blackberries in an autumn
hedge. The sight of what are known as "_les alignements de Carnac_" is
one never to be forgotten. Standing on the little mound by the chapel
of Saint Michael already mentioned, and looking northward across the
plain, we see an enormous range of menhirs or druidical stones
standing like an army at attention. There are no fewer than 2,813 of
these massive stones to be seen from this point, and the imagination
is busy at once striving to picture the strange rites practised here
by unknown people before the dawn of history. Dotted all over the vast
plains are dolmens and cromlechs of varying size.
One of the largest dolmens that I visited is known as the Merchants'
Table. It stands near Locmariaquer, and consists of an enormous stone
laid flat on the top of a series of smaller stones. Originally the
supporting stones would be only slightly imbedded in the earth, but in
the ages that have passed the soil has accumulated until they are now
sunk six or eight feet deep, but still project above the ground to the
height of four or five feet. The roof-stone must weigh some hundred
tons, and one of the mysteries is how a people, whose instruments were
of the most primitive kind, could place such a mammoth block in so
elevated a position. The dolmens, of which the Merchants' Table is one
of the finest examples, were probably places of burial, and are always
approached by a smaller chamber of the same rude construction. The
interior of the one in question bears many strange carvings, that
remain an enigma even to the most erudite.
Some authorities believe these structures may have been used as
houses; others suppose them to have been altars, so that it will be
seen their purpose has not yet been decided upon by their most learned
students. The cromlechs, which are a series of stones standing in a
circle, were most probably sanctuaries, and there is reason to believe
that it was here the Druid priests practised their unknown rites.
They are generally to be found at the end of an "alignment," and are
oriented, so that the likelihood is the worshippers stood within the
long rows of stones, which would correspond to the choir of a
cathedral, and the priests were in the cromlech looking toward the
rising of the sun.
To return for the last time to the great army of menhirs, or single
stones, seen from St. Michael's chapel near Carnac, the legend popular
in the district is that when St. Corneille, a Pope of Rome, was being
pursued by an army of pagan soldiers, he had with him two oxen, which
carried his belongings and sometimes himself when he was fatigued. One
evening, when he had arrived near a village where he would have rested
the night, he determined to press on beyond it because he had heard a
young girl insult her mother! He saw soon afterwards that the
soldiers, who had been following him, were arranged in line of battle,
and he was between them and the sea. So he stopped, and transformed
the entire army into stones. This is at least a picturesque way for
accounting for those marvellous remains that have baffled the minds of
men to explain.
Round About a French Fair
I.
The rambler in old France can seldom undertake a little journey during
the summer without coming upon some town where a fair is in progress.
At least, that has been my own experience, and in the course of wide
wanderings through the highways and by-ways of the most delightful
land in Europe I have witnessed many fairs in towns so far apart as
Morlaix and Montluçon, Orleans and Beaucaire, Rennes and Lisieux.
Nowhere does the distinctive character of a people show itself more
strongly than in its public fairs and rejoicings. Thus, if one desired
to get at a glance a glimpse into the different natures of the Briton
and the Gaul, a visit to Glasgow Fair or Nottingham's famous Goose
Fair, followed by a look round the great fair of Rennes or Orleans,
would do more for one's education in this regard than a great deal of
book learning.
An extensive and peculiar knowledge of Scottish and English
holiday-making, which the vagrant life of journalism has enabled me to
acquire, goes far to justify in my mind, when I think of the Frenchman
and his merry-making, the charge directed against us by our friends
across the Channel--that we take our pleasures sadly. There is very
little to choose between an English and Scottish festival of the
common people, though that little of brightness and genuine high
spirits is in favour of the former. A more vulgar, tasteless,
saddening spectacle than a Scottish saturnalia it is difficult to
conceive. For ill manners, foul speech, stupid and low diversions, I
have seen nothing so lacking in all the elements of joy as an Ayrshire
country fair; it has made me blush for my countrymen. But when such a
melancholy festival has awakened memory's contrasts of sights seen in
merry France, I have been glad to believe that, speaking generally,
while a fair in Scotland or in England stirs up the less worthy
elements in the people's character, such an occasion in France, on the
contrary, calls forth some of the better traits of the people.
[Illustration: _Familiar types_
_A Lacemaker at Le Monastier_
WOMEN OF THE CEVENNES]
In our own time, and due in some measure to the growth of refinement
arising out of our improved education, the institution of the public
fair in this country has been steadily declining in popularity; but in
France it still flourishes. There are other reasons for this,
though the chief is--again accepting a French criticism--that we are
essentially a nation of shopkeepers. The origin of the fair was, of
course, the bringing together of people with goods to sell or barter,
and a touch of pleasure was given to the business by the association
of amusements therewith. Time was when Nottingham Goose Fair was an
event of the highest importance in the commercial life of the
district, and continued over a period of a month; but with the rise of
the shopkeeper, who has ever a jealous eye on the huckster, this, like
many another of our fairs, has been gradually curtailed, on the plea
of its interfering with regular business, until it is now limited to a
week, and is threatened with reduction to three days. In France,
however, many of the fairs still last for a month, although the most
celebrated of all, that of Beaucaire, which is almost continental in
its importance and is less a festival than a commercial institution,
is held for one week only. At Orleans one of the finest fairs in
France takes place annually in June, and continues for a whole month.
It may be taken as typical of these provincial carnivals, and in
endeavouring to give my readers some idea of its leading features, I
shall be describing to them the character of French fairs in general.
II.
Most of the towns in France are peculiarly adapted for the holding of
festivals, with their wide main street and "bit of a square"; but
Orleans is especially fortunate in this respect. Although it is a town
of not more than seventy thousand inhabitants, it possesses a series of
spacious boulevards and public squares which would be thought remarkable
in an English city of three or four times that population. The chief
part of Orleans lies on the north bank of the wide and swiftly-flowing
Loire, and the boulevards, following roughly the outline of an arc,
compass the town with the river for base. The great width of these
highways--at a moderate estimate six times that of the Strand--makes
it possible for an immense number of booths and stalls to be ranged
along them without in any degree obstructing the regular road traffic.
Thus, if you arrive at the railway station during the fair month, you
will find the entire stretch of the northern thoroughfares--close on a
mile and a half as I should estimate--occupied by the show people, who
have created a boulevard within a boulevard, as the fair-ground is one
long avenue of booths, with a wide promenade between and roadways as
roomy as an English turnpike still remaining free to ordinary traffic
on the outer edges.
If it were the first affair of its kind you had seen in France, you
would be immediately impressed by the remarkable cleanliness of the
shows and of the attendants at the numerous stalls, where every
variety of goods are on sale. What may be described as the business
part of the fair is distinct from that devoted to amusements, and the
high-class character of the stalls and their keepers is explained when
we know that the tradesmen of the town have become hucksters for the
nonce, most of these temporary structures being fitted up and
conducted by local shopkeepers. The appointments of some of them are
elaborate to a surprising degree, but never defaced by such crude and
tasteless displays as we find at English fairs.
III.
To mention the varieties of business represented by these stalls would
be to enumerate every trade in the town, and a few more. Bakers and
pastrycooks are there in abundance; the stalls at which a bewildering
choice of sweetmeats is displayed are marvels of neatness, and their
name is legion. As many as five or six smartly-dressed young women
with white oversleeves will be busy at one counter supplying the
customers, who are endeavouring to increase the purchasing value of
their coppers by speculating at the roulette table kept by the
proprietor, for at such time the Frenchman introduces the gambling
element into every transaction where it can be applied. At the
miscellaneous stalls, where all sorts of fancy goods are on sale, the
"wheel of fortune" is practically the only method of exchange. Many of
the places are run on the principle of "all one price," and thrifty
housewives may be seen deliberating on the respective merits of knives
and forks, cruet-stands, butter-dishes, and scores of minor household
utensils, each to be had at the price of half a franc (fivepence). It
is clear that the women-folk regard the occasion as an opportunity for
getting unusual value for their money. Peasants may purchase an entire
suit of clothes at some of the stalls, and if they are wishful of a
crucifix or an image of the sacred heart, here they are in abundance,
with rosaries, bambinoes, and all the brightly-coloured symbols of
Catholic worship.
But the real interest of the fair, and, of course, its most
picturesque part, lies in the great Boulevard Alexandré Martin, which
stretches eastward from the railway station. Here are congregated most
of the places of entertainment. These, no less than the temporary
shops of the tradesmen, present a striking contrast to anything one
may see at an English fair. The Frenchman's instinctive feeling for
art is everywhere noticeable, and the exterior decoration of the shows
exhibits a lightness and daintiness of touch quite unknown in the same
connection in England. The gilded horror of the ghost-show exterior,
so familiar a feature of our own fairs, has no counterpart in France,
but the booths wherein are exhibited "freaks of Nature" are curiously
similar in both countries, the crude pictures on the canvas fronts
being preposterous exaggerations of the objects to be seen within.
IV.
What strikes one particularly in wandering through the fair-ground at
Orleans is that while all is different from an English festival, the
difference is one of degree and not of kind. Here, for example, are
several circuses, where performances very similar to those given by
any travelling circus in our own land are "about to commence." On the
outside platform two clowns are shouting to the crowd to walk up; the
gorgeous ring-master with his whip joins in the general advertisement;
a girl and a boy are dancing to the music of a small but noisy
orchestra. There is this difference, however, between a French circus
and an English one: the whole enterprise wears a more noticeable
appearance of success, is better housed, the place being brilliantly
lighted by electricity generated by an excellent portable plant, the
performers better dressed. But curiously enough, the finest travelling
circus I have ever seen in any land was Anderson's "Cirque Féerique,"
which I came upon during a flying visit to the industrial town of
Vierzon, some hundred and twenty-five miles south of Paris. The
proprietor was a Scotsman! "Mother Goose" was the chief item of the
performance, and the coloured posters of the old lady and her goose
had been printed in England!
Pitched close to such a circus stands a large wooden opera-house,
capable of holding from six to eight hundred people, the seats being
arranged on an inclined plane, the higher priced ones as substantial
and comfortable as the stalls of one of our provincial theatres. The
stage is commodious, and the performers as accomplished as any touring
company that visits the second-class English towns. Indeed, their
performance of "Les Cloches de Corneville" was given with a _verve_
and a finish not seldom lacking in more ambitious opera companies one
has seen at home. Instead of an orchestra, a very clever and
good-looking young lady pianist played the accompaniments throughout
the entire performance.
The travelling theatres, too, force comparison with the regular
playhouses in the smaller English towns, rather than with the wretched
"tuppenny" shows that represent the drama at an English fair. Like the
opera-house just described, they are fitted up substantially, and in
good taste, the charges for admission ranging from half a franc to
three or four francs. Many notable French actors have graduated from
these portable theatres, and, indeed, those who perform in them are of
a class considerably above the mummers who exhibit in our "fit-ups";
they are the best type of "strolling-players."
One of the most detestable features of an English fair is the
appalling noise created by mechanical organs. This is happily absent
from the French fête, and of the few contrivances of the kind which I
remember at Orleans there was only one designed solely for the sake of
noise. Perhaps the most remarkable of these orchestrions was a real
triumph of musical machinery, around which, and contained within an
immense and brilliantly lighted wooden building, whirled an endless
chain of fairy coaches, hobby horses, swan boats, and other fantastic
vehicles, eminently contrived for the purpose of producing giddiness.
This was truly the _pièce de résistance_ of the Orleans Fair, and it
would be impossible to conceive a more striking contrast than that
between this really magnificent construction and the familiar English
merry-go-round. Externally the building would have borne favourable
comparison with a "Palace of Electricity" at some of our international
exhibitions. The façade was of Byzantine style, and myriads of
beautifully-coloured electric lamps picked out the design, two huge
peacocks with outspread tails, also composed of coloured lights, being
introduced with most artistic effect on each side of the glittering
archway. Inside, the decorations were gorgeous "to the _n_th degree,"
as Mr. W. E. Henley might have said, but the scheme of colours was in
perfect harmony, the whole making up a veritable feast of light that
must dazzle and fascinate the simple country-folk wherever this
wonderful merry-go-round is set up. At a moderate estimate, I should
name £10,000 as the cost of this single show, and perhaps that will
indicate the lavish way in which the French are catered for by their
travelling showmen.
Cinematographs there were in profusion, most of them exhibiting scenes
of a kind which would speedily be suppressed on this side the Channel;
shooting galleries galore, exactly like our own; peep-shows,
marionette theatres, panoramas; a booth with a two-headed bull and
other monsters, a Breton bagpiper playing his instrument outside being
worthy of inclusion in the list; but one saw no "fat women"--possibly
because they are such common objects of French life! A large
switchback railway seemed to be very popular, and, like all the rival
attractions, its proprietors claimed for it the distinction of having
come "direct from the Paris Exhibition," where it had been awarded
first prize. The smallest side-shows, consisting of perhaps a few
distorting mirrors, had all been "exhibited at Paris," and the
two-headed bull was advertised by a huge painting showing all the
crowned heads of Europe and President Loubet examining the beast,
which, on inspection, turned out to be only a little removed from the
normal by having a head slightly broader than usual, with the
incipient formation of a third eye in its forehead, and a muzzle
remotely suggestive of two joined together.
V.
A performance which I enjoyed not a little was given by a quack
doctor. An enormous carriage, resembling in outline an old
stage-coach, but decorated with much carved moulding and thickly
covered with gilt and crimson, which produced a most bizarre effect,
stood in an open space. Seated on the roof was a boy, who turned a
machine which emitted the only hideous noise to be heard at the fair.
In the open fore-part, richly cushioned, a man stood dressed in a
dazzling suit of brass armour, his glittering helmet lying in front of
him, and in his hand a small bottle of clear liquid. He was of the
southern type, swarthy, wonderfully fluent of speech. He assured a
gaping crowd that his medicine could cure any disease from toothache
to tetanus, and he invited any sufferer to step up. Immediately one
did so, the boy ground out the hideous din above, and the doctor sat
for a few noisy seconds while his patient told him his trouble! Then
the racket was stopped with a wave of the quack's hand, and he
explained for five minutes, in vivid words, the terrible nature of the
patient's disease, and invited the poor wretch to pick any bottle from
the stock in front of him. This done, he had to open his waistcoat and
shirt--for it was a severe pain in the left side from which he
suffered--and the quack in armour struck the bottom of the bottle on
his knee, thus causing the cork to pop out. He now shook the bottle
vigorously with his forefinger on the neck, and the fluid changed into
green, brown, and finally black, whereat the simpletons around
marvelled, as they were meant to do. The comic practitioner next
thrust the bottle into the open shirt-front of his patient, and shook
the contents of it against the victim's skin, pressing his hand for a
few moments on the part. Then he asked the fellow to step down as
cured, and go among the crowd "telling his experience." A dozen cases
were treated in less than half an hour--people with neuralgia,
sprained wrists and ankles--and always the same formula as to
consultation, explanation, application! A handful of liquid applied to
a man's cheek evaporated mysteriously and worked wonders. Intending
patients were told that the doctor could be consulted at the hotel
near by during certain hours each day, and many must have gone to him
there, for the fluent humbug had every appearance of driving a
prosperous practice.
VI.
But the feature of this fair which, more than any other, distinguished
it sharply from anything to be seen in our country, was "The Grand
Theatre of the Walkyries and of the Passion of N. S. J. C." The
mysterious initials stand for the French of "Our Lord Jesus Christ." A
gentleman with a shaggy head of hair, dressed in a well-fitting
frock-coat, and possessed of an excellent voice, stood on the platform
outside, surrounded by oil paintings of sacred pictures and a dozen
or more performers in the costumes of Roman soldiers, apostles and
other Biblical characters. Judas was readily distinguished by his red
hair, Mary by her nunlike garb. The showman announced that the
performance was "about to commence," and urged us to walk up and
witness the most pleasing spectacle of the fair. A hand-bill
distributed among the crowd described the entertainment as a
"mimodrame biblique" of the Passion, played, sung, enterpreted and
mimicked by forty persons! "This spectacle, unique in France, will
leave in the minds of the inhabitants of this town an unforgettable
memory. It is not to be confounded with anything else you may have
seen; it is no mere series of living pictures. At each performance M.
Chaumont, the originator, will present twenty-one tableaux, three
hundred costumes will be used, and three apotheoses will be shown. The
establishment is comfortable, lighted by electricity from a plant of
thirty-horse power. It is a spectacle of the best taste, pleasing to
everyone, and families may come here with the fullest confidence.
Balloons will be distributed to the children every Thursday." So ran
the circular, which also contained the information (mendacious, I
doubt not) that the entertainment was the property of a limited
company with a capital of £20,000.
When the signal to begin was given the place was not more than half
filled, and the audience seemed in no reverential mood. A pianist
began to play on a very metallic piano, and outside the voice of the
manager was still heard urging the crowd to "walk up" and "be in
time." The drop-curtain was rolled up, and the manager stepped inside
the building as a number of characters in the sacred drama filed on to
the stage. He explained, in a rapid torrent of words, what they were
supposed to be doing, but Judas jingled the filthy lucre so lustfully
that the pantomime was very obvious in its purport. The curtain fell
again, and the manager stepped outside to harangue the crowd while the
second tableau was being prepared; but the ringing of a bell brought
him in again, and so on through the whole series.
It must be confessed that the performance was carried out with no
small dramatic ability, and M. Chaumont gave a wonderfully realistic
interpretation of the rôle of Christ, some of the tableaux being
strikingly conceived, as, for examples, the kiss of Judas and Christ
before Pilate, the latter character being admirably represented by a
performer who looked a veritable Roman proconsul, and washed his hands
with traditional dignity. The Crucifixion, too, was represented with
vivid reality; but the audience was disposed to laugh at the writhing
of the malefactors on their crosses, and did indeed giggle when the
soldier held up the sponge of vinegar to the dying Saviour. It was
obvious that the whole performance, although really discharged by the
actors with remarkable fidelity to tradition, and a commendable
assumption of reverence, was more amusing than impressive to the
spectators, who, though moved to laughter when St. Veronica pressed
her handkerchief to the face of Christ and, turning to the audience,
displayed the miraculous impression of His features, applauded the
more dramatic scenes liberally. What interested me personally was M.
Chaumont's idea of a miracle. Save that of St. Veronica, I have
forgotten the others enacted; they were quite unfamiliar to me, but in
the instant of each miracle a limelight was flashed for two or three
seconds from "the flies," and this was supposed to betoken the
super-natural character of the affair.
VII.
Of course, such a spectacle as I have described would be quite
impossible in our country to-day, although time was in our history,
when miracle plays were a recognised feature of the church in England.
It was in no sense comparable with any of the passion plays still
performed periodically in some continental towns, and while the
incongruous surroundings of "The Grand Theatre of the Passion of
N.S.J.C." were not calculated to induce a spirit of reverence in the
spectators, it was a saddening spectacle to find an audience of
Catholic people taking so lightly the representation of scenes which,
however wrong in the light of history, should have been to them sacred
subjects of faith.
It was characteristically French that immediately opposite the theatre
wherein this Biblical pantomime was presented stood a large exhibition
containing an enormous collection of pathological models and
curiosities. This was, without doubt, the foulest display of
unspeakable horrors to be seen in any civilised country in our time,
for under the hypocritical plea of illustrating, by wax models and
otherwise, the obstetrics of human life and the diseases of the body,
its proprietor--a woman, if you will believe me--had gathered together
a collection of incredible horrors which men and women, and even young
people, were allowed to inspect on the payment of one franc. The same
exhibition, which is probably not over-valued at £20,000, was actually
brought to London some few years ago, but the police speedily cleared
it out of our country.
These blots, however, are the only blemishes on the Orleans Fair, and
for brightness, gaiety, and general good taste, I must conclude as I
began, by saying that a French carnival is in every sense a more
pleasing spectacle than any of our English or Scottish fairs present.
The Palace of the Angels
I.
It was in Evreux, while cycling through Normandy one summer, that my
wife and I met three "new women," who were also touring the country
a-wheel. Their route was for the most part the reverse of ours, but
not so extended, and in discussing the country with them I asked how
long they had spent at Mont St. Michel. "Oh, we have not gone there,"
was the reply; "we were told it wasn't interesting, and so we have
kept away from it." We were saddened to find that three English women,
especially of the "advanced type," could know so little of the
monuments of France as to accept the irresponsible opinion of some
one-eyed tourist, who in his or her idle babble had said Mont St.
Michel was not worth visiting.
Not interesting, indeed! There is not in the whole of Normandy, in all
France, in historic England even, an example of so much interest
concentrated in so small a space. An enthusiastic Frenchman has
described it as the eighth wonder of the world. Victor Hugo has said
that Mont St. Michel is to France what the Pyramids are to Egypt.
Large and deeply interesting volumes have been written about it. It
will form a theme for writers for generations to come, and artists
will employ their pencils here so long as a vestige of the wonderful
buildings remains.
There is a strong temptation in writing of Mont St. Michel to fall
into the style of the junior reporter, who will blandly tell you that
a thing is indescribable, and immediately proceed to describe it. One
is persuaded that this marvellous monument of the Middle Ages cannot
be adequately described in plain prose, however apt the pen, yet one
is equally desirous of making the attempt. But I shall promise my
readers on this occasion to make no effort at an elaborate
description, which, indeed, the space of a single chapter renders
impossible, and to attempt no more than a general sketch of the most
noteworthy features of the Mount.
II.
To begin with, I take it for granted that the reader, if he or she has
not already visited Mont St. Michel, is at least aware that it is
situated in the bay of the same name, near the point where the coasts
of Normandy and Brittany merge, and thus some forty-three miles
south-east of Jersey. The story of Mont St. Michel, even had the hand
of man never reared upon the rock one of the most remarkable
structures the human mind has conceived, could scarcely have failed to
be interesting. During the Roman occupation of France, or Gaul as it
was then called, the great stretch of sea that lies to-day between the
Mount and Jersey was then a vast forest, through which some fourteen
miles of Roman military road were constructed. But in the third
century the invasion of the sea compelled the Romans to alter the
course of their road, and in the next century both the Mount and the
small island of Tombelaine, which lies scarcely two miles away, were
isolated at high tide. So on from century to century the sea has
gradually eaten away this part of Normandy, until now some hundred and
ninety square miles of land are entirely submerged at high tide. This
alone is sufficient to invest the Mount with a peculiar interest, for
one can stand upon it to-day and, gazing far away to sea, contemplate
the absolute mastery of Neptune, whose ravages have left of all the
great forest of Scissy nothing more than a handful of trees growing
sturdily among the rocks on the north side of the Mount.
But it is the human interest attaching to Mont St. Michel that
outweighs everything else. The rock is steeped in religious lore, and
in the annals of war there is no place in France more historic.
Originally a monastery, it became in time an impregnable fortress as
well; the rough warrior lived side by side upon it with the studious
monk, and there the clash of battle was as regular an occurrence for
years on end as the mass and vespers. In its old age it became a
prison, one of the most dreaded in a land of terrible prisons, and
just as it had been absolutely impregnable to attack (the English
without success besieging it for eleven years in the fifteenth
century), so was it an inviolable prison, only one man ever having
been able to effect his escape, and even in his case escape would have
been impossible but for the facilities unconsciously placed in his
hands by his gaolers.
III.
The first thought that comes to the visitor as he views the Mount from
the shore is, What could have induced anyone to choose so difficult a
site for the foundation of a monastery? But here legend conveniently
steps in and explains all. In the eighth century Aubert, the Bishop of
Avranches, one of the most pious in an age of piety, was in the habit
of retiring to the Mount for rest and meditation, and during one of
his visits there the Archangel Saint Michael, the Prince of the Armies
of the Lord, appeared to him and told him to build on the top of the
Mount a sanctuary in his honour. From which it will be seen that even
angels in those days were not above self-advertisement. But Aubert,
though a bishop, was "even as you and I," and when he awoke in the
morning he had some doubt as to whether he had been dreaming or had
really entertained the Archangel; so he prolonged his stay in the hope
of receiving another visit; nor was he disappointed. A few days later
Saint Michael appeared to him once more, and rather sharply repeated
his command. But even now Aubert was not convinced, and he determined
to give Saint Michael a third chance, which the Saint was nothing
loath to accept, repeating his instructions in a most peremptory
manner. He also touched the bishop's head, leaving a hole in the skull
"for a sign." We have heard of a surgical operation to introduce a
joke, but this is the only case on record where a saint has found it
necessary to perform a surgical operation for the introduction of a
command into the head of a bishop, and Aubert, like a sensible man,
concluding that one hole in his skull was sufficient, immediately set
about the building of "the Palace of the Angels." Aubert's skull is
still preserved in the Church of Saint Gervais at Avranches, and the
startling effect of Saint Michael's touch may be seen to this day!
This is only one of the innumerable legends relating to the origin of
the Abbey. Another is worthy of mention, illustrating, as it does, the
advantages of co-operation with an angel when one is performing so
difficult a task as Aubert took up. On the top of the Mount were two
large rocks which interfered seriously with building, and could be
moved by no human efforts. Saint Michael, therefore, appeared to a
devout peasant who lived on the coast and bore the familiar name of
Bain, telling him to take his sons to the Mount and move the rocks.
Despite the Caledonian flavour of his name, Bain did not wait to have
his skull perforated by the Archangel, but went forthwith together
with eleven of his children and tried to move the rocks. They could
not stir them one hair's-breadth, however; whereupon Aubert asked Bain
if he had brought all his children, and the good man explained that
they were all there except the baby, which was with its mother. The
Bishop then instructed him to go at once and fetch the infant, "for
God often chooses the weak to confound the strong." The child was
brought, and at a touch of his little foot the rocks went tumbling
down the Mount, in proof of which one of them may be seen to this day
with a little chapel to Saint Aubert built on the top of it.
One more of the many miracles associated with the beginning of the
great work should not be left unmentioned. Saint Aubert was naturally
much exercised as to where he should rear his sanctuary, the pinnacle
of a lonely rock being an unusual place to build on even in those
unusual days, but here again the Archangel, who had manifested so much
personal interest in the work, came to his rescue, and caused a heavy
dew to fall on the Mount, leaving a dry space on the top. Upon this
dry space was the church to be built.
In 709 Saint Aubert had practically completed the structure, and the
church was dedicated to Saint Michael after two precious relics
(namely, a piece of a scarlet veil, which the Archangel had left on
the occasion of his famous appearance at Monte Gargano in Naples,
together with a piece of the marble on which he had stood) had been
placed in a casket on the altar. Not a vestige of the oratory built by
Saint Aubert, nor of the church erected in 963 by Richard, remains.
The oldest part of the buildings now existing represents a church
founded in 1020 by Richard, second Duke of Normandy, and constructed
under the direction of the Abbot Hildebert II. The transepts, the
greater part of the nave, and the crypts date back to this period.
IV.
The whole scheme of the wonderful memorial that fascinates the eye of
the latter-day tourist owed its conception to this eleventh-century
abbot, and surely no heaven-born architect ever conceived a more
audacious plan. His project was not merely to occupy the limited space
on the summit of the Mount with his religious buildings, but to start
far down the sides of the rock, and, by utilising the Mount just as
the sculptor makes use of a skeleton frame whereon to plaster the clay
in which he models his statue, so to rear upward gigantic walls and
buttresses which at the top would carry a huge platform to hold the
superstructures, creating thus a collection of vast buildings with the
live rock thrust up in the centre for foundation. It is to the glory
of Saint Michael that for no less than five centuries this colossal
scheme of Hildebert's was carried out with absolute unity of purpose
by his successors, an achievement only possible among religious
workers. The result was that this lonely Mount gradually became
clothed with a series of most beautiful buildings, which to the eye of
the beholder seem to have grown by some natural process out of the
rock itself.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF MONT ST. MICHEL]
To the student of architecture it would be impossible to mention any
monument more worthy of study than this. Not only do we find within
its innumerable cloisters, crypts, and halls, specimens of the purest
Gothic that exists, but at every turn we are presented with structures
that conform to the very highest ideals of art, in being at once
useful and beautiful. There is not a single buttress, not a window,
not an arch, not a pillar, that does not discharge some duty, and the
removal of which would not weaken in some degree a part of the scheme.
V.
The best way to secure an intelligible notion of the work of these
monkish builders is to walk around the Mount at low tide and study the
buildings from the outside. The feature that will most impress one in
following this course is the wonderful north side of the Mount, known
as the Merveille, which rears its massive walls sheer from the rock
face, supported along its entire length by enormous buttresses, that
spring with a fine suggestion of strength and permanency from their
rocky base. The principal buildings, apart from the church, are
contained within these massive walls. To the west we have, in three
stories, the Cellar, the Salle des Chevaliers, and above the latter
the open Cloister, the most perfect example of its kind in the world.
The eastern part begins with the Almonry, above which is the Salle des
Hôtes, and on the top of that the Refectory.
The whole effect of the Merveille is superb, yet what is it more than
a great wall, held up by mighty buttresses, pierced in different ways
to light the chambers within and to make each suitable for its
particular office? The most perfect economy has been observed
throughout, the buttresses are terminated the moment their services
are not required, and the Refectory, which carries a light wooden
roof, is lighted by means of long narrow lancets which give to the
wall far more strength than would have been possible had it been
pierced by wide windows; still, the lighting within is perfect. In
brief, the Merveille, apart from the numerous other buildings that
went to form the monastic and military establishment, is enough to
send an architect into raptures, and might, if he knew not the dangers
of the incoming tide, which has to cover nine miles of land at the
rate of a race-horse, induce him to tarry over long in feasting his
eyes on this marvellous achievement. It is beautiful beyond
description, and yet we may be certain that its builders never
thought of mere beauty in its construction, but built purely to meet
the exigencies of the situation, and to provide the best possible
accommodation for the inhabitants of the monastery and their
dependants. As one writer has put it, "the beauty just happened." It
is only when we find builders striving after effect that we are face
to face with decadent art.
Continuing our walk round the rock on those sands that have been the
scene of many a bitter battle, we pass under the ramparts, beginning
with the Tour du Nord at the eastern end of the Merveille. Here,
again, the beautiful union of art and Nature is observed, this
magnificent tower seeming to be but the natural growth of the shelving
rocks at its base. It is no surprise to know that through the ages
which knew not the Maxim or the 100-ton gun, the splendid
fortifications successfully resisted every attack of the envious
English, the Bretons, and the Huguenots. The modern town is huddled
picturesquely between the ramparts and the Abbey to the east and
south.
VI.
Having completed the tour around the Mount, the visitor should proceed
along the ramparts, and reach the entrance to the Abbey by the
staircase known as the Grand Degré, which leads into the Barbican, and
through the massive and beautiful Châtelet into the more ancient
entrance of the Abbey, known as Belle-Chaise, where are situated the
Guard Room and the Government Room. Here the guide will take us in
hand, and march us from point to point of interest in the interior.
But it is impossible, in the space of a short chapter, to attempt a
description of this, that would follow in any detail the stipulated
round of the apartments at present shown to the public.
Suffice it to say that you will first be taken to the Church, which is
now, and likely to be for many years, in the hands of the restorers.
Only four bays of the seven that went to the making of the great
Norman nave remain, and these have had to be much restored; but here
it is a pleasure to record that the restoration has been carried out
with perfect taste, so that the latter-day visitor has an excellent
idea of the appearance of the Abbey and its dependent buildings as
these were in the heyday of Mont St. Michel's prosperity.
From the Church we shall enter the Cloister, already mentioned as
being the topmost of the three western stories of the Merveille. Here
was the recreation ground of the monks, and nothing could be more
exquisite than the elegant proportions of the slender pillars that
support the vaulted roofs of the double arcade. From the Cloister we
visit the Refectory, where many a strange gathering of monks has taken
place in days of old, for it is one of the interesting things in the
history of Mont St. Michel that, while in its earlier ages it was a
centre of learning and genuine religion, it became corrupt and
scandalous under the commendatory abbots, who were men neither of
morals nor religion, and who allowed all sorts of abuses within these
sacred walls. At one time, indeed, the Abbot of Mont St. Michel was
the five-year-old son of Louis the Just. In the south-west corner of
the Refectory is the pit that formerly contained a lift whereby
provisions could be hauled up from the bottom story, and the leavings
of the monks sent down to the Almonry for distribution among the poor.
The Salle des Chevaliers, which will next be visited, is described by
a learned writer as "perhaps the finest Gothic chamber in the world,"
and is believed to have been built as a great workroom for the monks,
but received its present name either from the fact that the first
investitures of the Order of St. Michael were made herein, or that it
was the lodging of the 190 knights who came to the Mount to defend it
against the English. In this beautiful apartment, lighted and
ventilated in a way that is a model to present-day builders, the monks
wrote and illuminated the manuscripts which earned for the abbey the
title of "The City of Books." Reached from this room is the Salle des
Hôtes, wherein the grand visitors were entertained by the abbot in a
style befitting their rank, as under the rule of St. Benedict it was
forbidden for laymen to enter the apartments reserved for the monks.
Like all the other buildings, however, it has served many another
purpose than that for which it was originally designed, and at one
time was actually used as a _Plomberie_ where the lead was worked for
roofing and other purposes connected with the Abbey.
The Cellar is, in its way, as beautiful as any of the other
apartments, although nothing was attempted by its builders but to
provide a capacious storeroom for the inhabitants of the Mount, and to
secure, in its strong pillars, strength to support the buildings
rising above it. The provisions were hauled up from the sands by means
of a great wheel and a rope, the latter being carried out on a little
drawbridge to enable it to drop clear of the rocks. This arrangement,
by the way, is associated with one of the most audacious attempts to
secure the Abbey during the wars of the Huguenots. A traitor within
arranged with two Huguenot leaders that on the day of St. Michael, in
September, at eight o'clock in the evening, in the year 1591, he would
haul up their men by means of this rope, and introduce them to the
Cellar, while the monks were engaged in devotions, so placing the
Mount at their mercy. But he proved a double traitor, for after
seventy-eight men had been so hauled up, and, with one exception,
quietly killed by the soldiers of the garrison as they arrived, the
leaders below became suspicious of a trap, and asked that a monk
should be thrown down as evidence that the plot was successful. The
Governor immediately had one of the murdered Huguenots dressed in the
gown of a monk and thrown down, but the Sieur Montgomery was not
satisfied with this, and he called up that one of his men should come
out on the drawbridge and assure them below that all was well. So the
Governor sent the one man he had spared and instructed him to answer
down that the Huguenots were masters of the Abbey. He was faithful to
death, however, and called down that they were betrayed. Instead of
being immediately killed, the Governor was so impressed with his
courage, that he spared him, and the Huguenots hastily rode away.
The Almonry is the last of the great apartments which are contained in
the Merveille, and it is from this that visitors make their exit into
the courtyard of the Abbey; but many other interesting chambers are
shown, such as the Crypte de l'Aquilon, the Charnier, the Promenoir or
ancient cloister, and the famous Crypte des Gros-Piliers, which is
also known as l'Eglise Basse, its pillars, of enormous girth, being
designed to support the heavy masonry of the Abbey above. The Cachots,
or prisons, are also an important feature of the sights described by
the guide, and many harrowing tales are told of famous prisoners who
went mad during their incarceration in these dread dungeons. But it is
a pity that this part is shown at all, as the recollection of these
hideous holes is likely to confuse many visitors' impressions of the
place.
VII.
Here, then, is a very brief and a sadly-imperfect sketch of this rare
legacy which the Middle Ages have left to lucky France. It need only
be added that not one visit, nor two, is sufficient to an adequate
appreciation of the beauties of Mont St. Michel; several days,
instead of several hours, as is too often the custom of the breathless
tourist, should be spent on the Mount. There is accommodation in
plenty, for the three hotels, all kept by members of the same family
(and each at daggers drawn with the others), give splendid
entertainment at moderate rates; and practically all the houses are
annexes to one or other of these establishments, so that except during
August and September accommodation is never difficult to obtain. Nor
are the buildings of the Abbey and the Merveille the only things of
interest on the Mount to-day, for though it is a strangely-different
scene from that in the olden days of pilgrimage, it is, perhaps, as
interesting if we choose to regard as pilgrims the countless tourists
who swarm here from all the ends of the earth, and we shall find among
them even more material for study than was afforded to the monks in
ages past. Then if rain should keep us prisoner for an hour or two at
times, we need not weary sitting at our window, watching the carriages
and bicycles arriving at the entrance to the Cour de l'Avancée, where
they are immediately besieged by representatives of each of the
hotels, and probably a simple Briton, innocent of French or the ways
of this curious community, will find himself divided into three, his
luggage being captured by the representative of Poulard _aîné_, his
bicycle being taken by the tout for Poulard _jeune_, and he himself
led captive by the buxom female who canvasses for _veuve_ Poulard.
[Illustration: _The Merveille_
_Interior of the Abbey_
MONT ST. MICHEL]
We remember one occasion when, at a high tide, which necessitated the
use of a boat for debarking visitors, a solitary English female, of
the type so properly satirised by French caricaturists, arrived by the
diligence, and was rowed in lonely state through the entrance to the
outer court. As the boat grounded she stood up, an angular vision in
drab, with dark blue spectacles and a straw hat. In answer to the
inquiring shouts of the hotel representatives, she innocently replied
in the one word she knew, "Poulard," and there was a rush for her, in
which the elder Poulard, thanks to exceptional height and strength,
was able to dispose of his rivals, and lift this representative of
British womanhood bodily into the kitchen of his hotel. She would
probably be as much surprised as most of us are on visiting the place
for the first time, to discover that after leaving this kitchen and
ascending two stairs in the hope of arriving immediately at our
bedroom, the maid calmly opens a door, and we find ourselves in
another street, that rises step after step for one hundred yards or
so, and brings us to one of the dependencies of the hotel, where
probably we may have two or three stories to climb. You have a
feeling all the time you are on the Mount that, somehow, you are
living on the top of slates, as the houses look down upon each other,
and in many cases you can walk from the top flat out on to a street at
the back.
In a word, Mont St. Michel is unique. A stay here is an experience
unlike any to be had elsewhere in Europe. "Not worth visiting"
forsooth!
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE***
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