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Title: The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition
Vol. 1 (of 25)
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Commentator: Andrew Lang
Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21686]
Language: English
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THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
SWANSTON EDITION
VOLUME I
_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale._
_This is No. 1678_
[Illustration: AN INLAND VOYAGE TITLE-PAGE DESIGNED BY MR. WALTER CRANE]
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ANDREW LANG
VOLUME ONE
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXI
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION TO THE SWANSTON EDITION ix
AN INLAND VOYAGE
ANTWERP TO BOOM 7
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 11
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 16
AT MAUBEUGE 21
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO QUARTES 26
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE:
WE ARE PEDLARS 31
THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT 36
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO LANDRECIES 41
AT LANDRECIES 46
SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS 50
THE OISE IN FLOOD 55
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOÎTE:
A BY-DAY 62
THE COMPANY AT TABLE 68
DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY 74
LA FÈRE OF CURSED MEMORY 79
DOWN THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 84
NOYON CATHEDRAL 86
DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIÈGNE 91
AT COMPIÈGNE 94
CHANGED TIMES 99
DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS 105
PRÉCY AND THE MARIONNETTES 111
BACK TO THE WORLD 120
EPILOGUE 122
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES
VELAY
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE 143
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 149
I HAVE A GOAD 158
UPPER GÉVAUDAN
A CAMP IN THE DARK 167
CHEYLARD AND LUC 177
OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS
FATHER APOLLINARIS 183
THE MONKS 188
THE BOARDERS 195
UPPER GÉVAUDAN (_continued_)
ACROSS THE GOULET 203
A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 206
THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS
ACROSS THE LOZÈRE 213
PONT DE MONTVERT 218
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 224
FLORAC 234
IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 237
THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 241
THE LAST DAY 248
FAREWELL, MODESTINE! 253
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 257
EDINBURGH:
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTORY 271
II. OLD TOWN: THE LANDS 278
III. THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 285
IV. LEGENDS 291
V. GREYFRIARS 298
VI. NEW TOWN: TOWN AND COUNTRY 305
VII. THE VILLA QUARTERS 311
VIII. THE CALTON HILL 314
IX. WINTER AND NEW YEAR 320
X. TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 327
INTRODUCTION TO THE SWANSTON EDITION
So much has been written on R. L. Stevenson, as a boy, a man, and a man
of letters, so much has been written both by himself and others, that I
can hope to add nothing essential to the world's knowledge of his
character and appreciation of his genius. What is essential has been
said, once for all, by Sir Sidney Colvin in "Notes and Introductions" to
R. L. S.'s "Letters to His Family and Friends." I can but contribute the
personal views of one who knew, loved, and esteemed his junior that is
already a classic; but who never was of the inner circle of his
intimates. We shared, however, a common appreciation of his genius, for
he was not so dull as to suppose, or so absurd as to pretend to suppose,
that much of his work was not excellent. His tale "Thrawn Janet" "is
good," he says in a letter, with less vigour than but with as much truth
as Thackeray exclaiming "that's genius," when he describes Becky's
admiration of Rawdon's treatment of Lord Steyne, in the affray in Curzon
Street. About the work of other men and novelists, or poets, we were
almost invariably of the same mind; we were of one mind about the great
Charles Gordon. "He was filled," too, "with enthusiasm for Joan of Arc,"
says his biographer, "a devotion, and also a cool headed admiration,
which he never lost." In a letter he quotes Byron as having said that
Jeanne "was a fanatical strumpet," and he cries shame on the noble
poet. He projected an essay on the Blessed Maid, which is not in "the
veniable part of things lost."
Thus we were so much of the same sentiments, in so many ways, that I can
hope to speak with sympathy, if not always with complete understanding,
of Stevenson. Like a true Scot, he was interested in his ancestry, his
heredity; regarding Robert Fergusson, the young Scottish poet, who died
so young, in an asylum, as his spiritual forefather, and hoping to
attach himself to a branch of the Royal Clan Alpine, the MacGregors, as
the root of the Stevensons. Of Fergusson, he had, in early youth, the
waywardness, the liking for taverns and tavern talk, the half-rueful
appreciation of the old closes and wynds of Old Edinburgh, a touch of
the recklessness and more than all the pictorial power which, in
Fergusson, Burns so magnanimously admired.
But genealogical research shows that Stevenson drew nothing from the
dispossessed MacGregors, a clan greatly wronged, from Robert Bruce's
day, and greatly given to wronging others. Alan Breck did not like "the
Gregara," apart from their courage, and in Alan's day they were not
consistent walkers.
Stevenson, as far as one can learn, had no Celtic blood; none, at least,
of traceable infusion: he was more purely Lowland than Sir Walter Scott.
His paternal line could be traced back to a West Country Stevenson of
1675; probably a tenant farmer, who was contemporary with the Whig
rising at Bothwell Bridge, with the murder of Archbishop Sharp, with
Claverhouse, and Sir George Mackenzie, called "the bluidy Advocate." An
earnest student of Mr. Wodrow's "History of the Sufferings," Louis did
not find "James Stevenson in Nether Carsewell" among the many martyrs
who live in the _Libre d'Or_ of the Remnant. But he had "a Covenanting
childhood;" his father, Mr. Thomas Stevenson, was loyal to the positions
of John Knox (the theological positions); and, brought up in these,
Louis had a taste, when the tenets of Calvin ceased to convince his
reason, of what non-Covenanters endured at the hands of the godly in
their day of power.
Every little Presbyterian, fifty years ago, was compelled to be familiar
with the Genevan creed, as expressed in "The Shorter Catechism," but
most little Presbyterians regarded that document as a necessary but
unintelligible evil--the sorrow that haunted the Sabbath. I knew it by
rote, Effectual Calling and all, but did not perceive that it possessed
either meaning or actuality. Nobody was so unkind as to interpret the
significance of the questions and answers; but somebody did interpret
them for Stevenson, or his early genius enabled him to discover what it
is all about, as he told me once, and it seems that the tendency of the
theology is terribly depressing. A happier though more or less
theological influence on his childhood he found in the adventures and
sufferings of the Covenanters. It is curious (and shows how much early
education can do) that he never was a little Royalist: always his heart,
like Lockhart's, which is no less strange, was with the true blue
Remnant. I can remember no proof that he was fascinated by the greatness
of Montrose.
As is well known, at about the age of sixteen he perverted a romance of
his own making, "Hackston of Rathillet" (a fanatic of Fife), into a
treatise: "The Pentland Rising, a Page of History," published in 1866.
One would rather have possessed the romance.
Stevenson came from the Balfours of Pilrig, and was of gentle blood, on
the spindle side. An ancestress of his mother was a granddaughter of Sir
Gilbert Elliot (as a "law lord," or judge, Lord Minto), and so he could
say: "I have shaken a spear in the debatable land, and shouted the
slogan of the Elliots": perhaps "And wha dares meddle wi' me!" In "Weir
of Hermiston" he returns to "the auld bauld Elliots" with zest. He was
not, perhaps, aware that, through some remote ancestress on the spindle
side, he "came of Harden's line," so that he and I had a common forebear
with Sir Walter Scott, and were hundredth cousins of each other, if we
reckon in the primitive manner by female descent. Of these Border
ancestors, Louis inherited the courage; he was a fearless person, but
one would not trace his genius to "The Bard of Rule," an Elliot named
"Sweet Milk" who was slain in a duel by another minstrel, about 1627.
Genius is untraceable; the granite intellect of Louis's great
engineering forefathers, the Stevensons, was not, like his, tuneful:
though his father was imaginative, diverting himself with daydreams; and
his uncle, Alan Stevenson, the builder of Skerryvore, yielded to the
fascinations of the religious Muse. A volume of verse was the pledge of
this dalliance. His mother, who gave him her gay indifference to
discomfort and readiness for travel, also read to him, in his childhood,
much good literature; for not till he was eight years of age was he an
unreluctant reader--which is strange. The whole record of his life, from
his eighteenth month, is a chronicle of fever and ill-health, borne
always with heroic fortitude. His dear nurse, Alison Cunningham, seems
to have been a kind of festive Cameronian. Her recitation of hymns was,
though she hated "the playhouse," "grand and dramatic." There is a hymn,
"Jehovah Tsidkenu," in which he rejoiced; and no wonder, for the refrain
"Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me," moves with the galloping
hoof-beats of
"'Tis up wi' the bonnets o' Bonny Dundee!"
I have, however, ascertained that this theological piece is not sung to
the tune, "The cavalry canter of Bonny Dundee." When the experiment is
made, the results are unspeakably strange.
It need not be said, Stevenson has told us in verse and prose, that in
childhood "his whole vocation was endless imitation." He was the hunter
and the pirate and the king--throwing his fancy very seriously into each
of his _rôles_, though visualizing never passed with him, as with some
children it does, into actual hallucination. He had none of the
invisible playmates that, to some children, are visible and real. He was
less successful than Shelley in seeing apparitions: but the dreams which
he communicated to Mr. Frederic Myers were curious illustrations of his
subconscious activities--his Brownies, as he called them. They told him
stories of which he could not foresee the end; one led up to a love
affair forbidden even by exogamous law (with male descent and the
sub-class system), and thus a fine plot was ruined.
Throughout life, he always played his part, as in childhood, with full
conscious and picturesque effect, as did the great Montrose and the
English Admirals, in whom he notes this dramatic trait. He was not a
_poseur_; he was merely sensitively conscious of himself and of life as
an art. As a little boy with curls and a velvet tunic, he read
"Ministering Children," and yearned to be a ministering child. An
opportunity seemed to present itself; the class of boys called "keelies"
by the more comfortable boys in Edinburgh, used to play in the street
under the windows of his father's house. One lame boy, a baker's son,
could only look on. Here was a chance to minister! Louis, with a beating
heart, walked out on his angelic mission.
"Little boy, would you like to play with me?" he asked.
"You go to ----!" was the answer of the independent son of the hardy
baker.
It is difficult to pass from the enchanted childhood of this eternal
child, with its imaginative playing at everything, broken only by fevers
whereof the dreams were the nightmares of unconscious genius. He has
told of all this as only he could tell it.
As a boy, despite his interrupted education, he laid the foundations of
a knowledge of French and German, acquired Latin, and was not like that
other boy who, _Euclide viso, cohorruit et evasit._ He was a
mathematician! He never played cricket, I deeply regret to say, and his
early love of football deserted him. He was no golfer, and a good day's
trout-fishing, during which he neglected to kill each trout as it was
taken, caused remorse, and made him abandon the contemplative boy's
recreation. Boating, riding, and walking were his exercises. He read the
good books that never lose their charm--Scott, Dumas, Shakespeare, "The
Arabian Nights"; when very young he was delighted with "The Book of
Snobs"; he also read Mayne Reid and "Ballantyne the Brave," and any
story that contained _Skeltica_, cloaks, swords, wigs on the green,
pirates and great adventures. He lived in literature, for Romance.
His doings at Edinburgh University, and as a budding engineer, he has
chronicled; he took part in snowball rows, in the debates of the
Speculative Society, and in private dramatic performances, organized by
his senior and friend, Professor Fleeming Jenkin. To "dress up" in old
costumes always pleased him. He happened to praise the acting of a girl
of fourteen, who, in her family circle, said, "Perhaps when I am old,
like the lady in Ronsard, I will say 'R. L. Stevenson sang of me.'" His
gambols "with the wild Prince and Poins" are not unrecorded. These were
his Fergussonian years. Perhaps he might have expressed Burns's esteem
for the "class of men called black-guards," as far as their
unconventionality is concerned. He saw a great deal of life in many
varieties; like Scott in Liddesdale, "he was making himsel' a' the
time." With his cousin R. A. M. Stevenson, Walter Ferrier, Mr. Charles
Baxter, and Sir Walter Simpson (a good golfer and not a bad bat), he
performed "acts of Libbelism," and discussed all things in the universe.
He was wildly gay, and profoundly serious, he had the earnestness of the
Covenanter in forming speculations more or less unorthodox. It is
needless to dwell on the strain caused by his theological ideals and
those of a loving but sternly Calvinistic sire, to whom his love was
ever loyal.
These things bred melancholy, of necessity, and melancholy was purged by
an almost unexampled interest, not in literature alone, but in the
technique of style, and the construction of sentences and periods. Few
of his confessions are better known than those on his apprenticeship in
style to the great authors of the past. He gave himself up to the
schools of Hazlitt, Lamb, Wordsworth, Sir Thomas Browne, Defoe,
Hawthorne, Montaigne, Baudelaire, William Morris, and Obermann (De
Senancour).
This he did when he was aged about eighteen, when other lads are trying
to write Latin prose like Cicero, or Livy, or Tacitus (Tacitus is the
easiest to ape, in a way), and Latin verse like Ovid, or Horace, or
Virgil. This they do because it is "part of the curricoolum," as the
Scottish baronet said, of school and college. But I do not remember
anecdotes of other boys with a genius for English prose who set
themselves to acquire style before they deemed that they had anything in
particular to say.
In English essays at college a young fellow may be told by his tutor not
to imitate Carlyle or Macaulay: the attempt to repeat the tones of
Thackeray is most incident to youth. But to aim, like Stevenson while a
student of Edinburgh University, at "the choice of the essential note
and the right word," in exercises written for his own improvement, is a
thing so original that it keeps me wondering. Like most of us, I have
always thought, with Mr. Froude, when asked how he acquired his style,
that a man sits down and says what he has to say, and there is an end of
it. We must not write like Clarendon now, even if we could; our
sentences must be brief. It would be affectation to write like Sir
Thomas Browne, if we could; or like de Quincey; and nobody can write
like Mr. Ruskin, when he is simple, or like the late Master of Balliol,
Mr. Jowett.
How far and how early Stevenson succeeded in the pursuit of style may be
seen in his "Juvenilia": for example, in the essay on the Old Gardener.
But one is inclined to think that he succeeded because he had a very
keen natural perception of all things, was a most minute observer, knew
what told in the matter of words, in fact, had a genius of his own; and
that these graces came to him, though he says that they did not, by
nature. He tells us how often he wrote and rewrote some of his
chapters, some of his books. His _prima cura_ we have not seen; perhaps
it was as good as his most polished copy. "Prince Otto" has even seemed
to me, in places, over-written. He now and then ran near the rock of
preciosity, though he very seldom piled up his barque on that reef. His
style is, to the right reader, a perpetual feast, "a dreiping roast,"
and his style cannot be parodied. I never saw a parody that came within
a league of the jest it aimed at, save one burlesque of the deliberately
stilted manner of his "New Arabian Nights." This triumph was achieved by
Mr. Walter Pollock.
Stevenson's manner was too appropriate to his matter for parody: for
nobody could reproduce his matter and the vividness of his
visualization. When his characters were Scots, Lowlanders or
Highlanders, it seems to me that their style has no rival except in the
talk of Sir Walter's countrymen. A minute student who knew Stevenson,
has told me that he once suggested "chafts," where Louis had written
"cheeks" or "jaws," and that the emendation was accepted, but his Scots
always use "the right word," and never (in prose) say "tae" for "to," I
think. Theirs is the good Scots.
Perhaps I am biased in my doubt concerning the usefulness of his
persistence in re-writing, by my regret that he destroyed so many of his
romances, as not worthy of him. "King's chaff is better than other
folk's corn" says our proverb. In his day, I bored him by pressing him
to write more, and more rapidly; he never could have been commonplace,
he never could have been less than excellent. But his conscience was
adamant: no man was less of an improviser, as, fortunately, Scott was;
had he _not_ been, there would not be so many Waverley Novels.
Stevenson was hard on Scott, who wrote much as he himself did in
boyhood. "I forgot to say," remarks the early Stevensonian hero, after
describing a day full of adventures with Red Indians, "that I had made
love to a beautiful girl." There is a faint resemblance to this
over-sight in a long sentence of "Guy Mannering," which Stevenson
criticized; but "Guy Mannering" was written in about six weeks, "to
refresh the machine." Fastidious himself, conscientious almost to a
fault in style, Stevenson's joy was in the romances of Xavier de
Montépin and Fortuné du Boisgobey, names which suggest
"Old crusading knights austere,
That bore King Louis company."
When Dumas and Scott, and perhaps Mrs. Radcliffe, had been read too
recently, Louis went to Fortuné and Xavier, and, doubtless, to the
father of them, Gaboriau. None of these benefactors of the race was a
student of style, but they gave him what Thackeray liked, stories "hot,
_with_," as he says, briefly but adequately.
All of us are led, like that ancient people Israel, like all humanity,
by a way we know not, and a path we do not understand. If some
benevolent genie, who understood Stevenson's qualities and genius, could
have directed his career, how would that spirit have educated him?
For some reason not intelligible he was put on an allowance of five
shillings weekly, for his _menus plaisirs_, till he was twenty-three
years of age. He never was an expensive man (except in giving, wherein
he knew no stint); his favourite velvet coats, his yellow shoes, his
black shirts, with a necktie of a scrap of carpet, he said (I failed to
guess its nature), were not extravagant. (The last occasion on which I
saw him in the legendary velvet coat was also the only moment in which I
viewed the author of his being. The circumstances were of the wildest
comedy, but the tale can never be told; though in all respects it
redounds to the credit of everybody concerned. Not one of us let a laugh
out of himself.)
But a young man in his position likes to do many harmless things which
cannot be done on five shillings a week, and so he sought the haunts of
"thieves and chimney sweeps!" he says, and wrote sonnets in those shy
retreats, which are known, perhaps, in Scotland, as "shebeens." Why
"shebeens"? Is the word Gaelic misspelled? Cases of "shebeening" are
tried before the Edinburgh magistrates, and as "my circle was being
continually changed by the action of the police magistrates" (he says)
conceivably his was a shebeening circle.
Another lad of his age, some eighty years earlier, was partial, like
him, to taverns and old clothes. "They be good enough for drinking in,"
said Walter Scott, when Erskine, or some other friend, ventured to
remonstrate. Scott, like Stevenson, knew queer people, knew beggars--but
had not one of them shaken hands with Prince Charles? Certainly, after
Scott met Green Mantle, and sheltered her, as she came from church,
under his umbrella (a piece of furniture which Stevenson can never have
possessed), he left off his old clothes, and went into the best company.
But R. L. S. did not delight in the good company of his native town; nor
did he suffer gladly the conventional raiment of the evening hours.
Green Mantle there was none, as far as we learn. He was not popular with
the young Scots of his age, his biographer says so candidly; candidly
have they said as much to me, yet they were good fellows.
From childhood he had enjoyed all the indulgences of an only son, and an
invalid; now he was "brought up short," and there were the religious
disputes with a sire to whom he was devoted. The climate of his own
romantic town (the worst in the world) was his foe; the wandering spirit
in his blood called him to the south and the sun; he tells of months in
which he had no mortal to whom he could speak freely, his cousin Bob
being absent; he was unhappy; he was out of his _milieu_.
What would the genie have done for him? Neither of the English
Universities would have been to his taste; the rebel in him would have
kicked at morning chapel, lectures, cap and gown, Proctors, the talk of
"oars" and "bats"; manifestly Balliol was not the place for R. L. S.,
though he might have been happy with his contemporary John Churton
Collins. He, I remember--even to the velvet coat--was like Stevenson,
and was a rebel. Grant Allen, too, would have been his contemporary--the
only man in Oxford who took to Herbert Spencer, whom Stevenson also read
with much edification.
Yet it is clear that Stevenson should not have been domiciled in the
paternal mansion of Heriot Row. The genie might have transported him to
a German University, perhaps to Heidelberg.
_Dis aliter visum_, and the result, for us, is his matchless book on
Edinburgh. To see a copy thereof is to take it up, and read through it
again; it is better at every reading.
In 1871 he broke to his father the news that the profession of
engineering was not for him. The Scottish Bar (1874-1875) was not more
attractive, and in 1873 his meeting with Mr. (now Sir) Sidney Colvin
(then Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge, and already well known
as a critic), and with a lady, Mrs. Sitwell, to whom many of his most
carefully written early letters are addressed, probably sealed Stevenson
into the profession of literature.
He has left this note on his prospects:
I think now, this 5th or 6th of April, 1873, that I can see my
future life. I think it will run stiller and stiller year by year; a
very quiet, desultorily studious existence. If God only gives me
tolerable health, I think now I shall be very happy; work and
science calm the mind and stop gnawing in the brain; and as I am
glad to say that I do now recognise that I shall never be a great
man, I may set myself peacefully on a smaller journey; not without
hope of coming to the inn before nightfall.
O dass mein Leben
Nach diesem Ziel ein ewig Wandeln sey!
DESIDERATA
I. Good Health
II. 2 to 3 hundred a year
III. O du lieber Gott, _friends_!
AMEN
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
He wrote an article, this born wayfarer, on "Roads," which was accepted
by P. G. Hamerton for the "Portfolio," but in November, 1873, "nervous
exhaustion, with a threatening of phthisis," caused him to be "Ordered
South" to Mentone--a lonely exile. Here he was joined by Mr. Colvin, and
in Mr. Colvin's rooms, for I also was "ordered South," I first met this
surprising figure. Our schooldays had just overlapped; he was a "gyte"
(a child in the lowest form; "class" we called it), when I was in the
highest, but I had never seen him, nor heard of him.
In some rhymes of his later years, when Count Nerli was painting his
portrait, Louis wrote:
"Oh, will he paint me the way I like, and as bonny as a girlie,
Or will he make me an ugly tyke; and be d---- to Mr. Nerli?"
When first we met, he really was "as bonny as a girlie"; with his oval
face, his flushed cheeks, his brown eyes, large and radiant, and his
hair of a length more romantic than conventional. He wore a wide blue
cloak, with a grace which hovered between that of an Italian poet and an
early pirate.
It was impossible not to discover, in a short conversation, that he was
very clever, but, as a girl said once of her first meeting with another
girl, "We looked at each other with horny eyes of disapproval." I
thought that he was affecting the poet, and in me he found a donnish
affectation of the British sportsman. He said later that I complained,
concerning Monsieur Paul de St. Victor, that he was "no sportsman,"
though his style was effulgent.
We seldom met again, unhappily, for I was then with a family in whose
company he would have been happy: all young, all kind, simple, and
beautiful, and all doomed. Stevenson was then seriously ill, certainly a
short walk fatigued him.
The next news I had of him was in his essay, "Ordered South," concerning
the emotions, apathies, and pleasures, on that then fairy coast, of a
young man who thinks that his days are numbered. After reading this
paper, I was absolutely convinced that, among the writers of our
generation, Stevenson was first, like Eclipse, and the rest nowhere.
There was nobody to be spoken of in his company as a writer. It was not
his style alone--Pater's style had bewitched me in his first book--but
it was the life that underlay the style of Stevenson.
He came home, and found peace at home, and a less inadequate allowance,
and he put up a brazen plate, "R. L. Stevenson, Advocate," on the door in
Heriot Row. But his practice was a jest. Some senior men sought his
society, his old friends were with him; his articles were welcomed by
Mr. Leslie Stephen in "The Cornhill Magazine," and were eagerly expected
by a few. Directed by Mr. Stephen, he found Mr. Henley in the Edinburgh
Infirmary, and that friendship began which was of such considerable
influence in his life and work.
Mr. Henley's "maimed strength," his impeded vigour, even his blond
upstanding hair and "beard all tangled," his uncomplaining fortitude
under the most cruel trials, and the candid freshness of his
conversation on men and books, won Stevenson's heart.
In London, Stevenson appeared now and again at the Savile Club, then
tenanting a rather gloomy little house in Savile Row. The members were
mostly connected with science, literature, journalism, and the stage,
and Stevenson became intimate with many of them, especially with the
staff and the sub-editor (in those days) of "The Saturday Review," Mr.
Walter Pollock; and with Mr. Saintsbury, Mr. Traill, Mr. Charles
Brookfield, Sir Walter Besant; a little later with Mr. Edmund Gosse, who
was by much his favourite in this little society. In addition to the
chaff of the "Saturday" reviewers, he enjoyed the talk of Prof.
Robertson Smith, Prof. W. H. Clifford, and Prof. Fleeming Jenkin.
Stevenson never wrote, to my knowledge, in "The Saturday Review";
journalism never "set his genius." For one reason among many, his manner
was by far too personal in those days of unsigned contributions. He
needed money, he wished to be financially independent, but, in the
Press, his independence could not be all that he desired. He did not
wield the ready, punctual pen of him whom Lockhart most invidiously
calls "the bronzed and mother-naked gentleman of the Press."
His conversation at luncheon, and after luncheon, in the Club was the
delight of all, but, for various reasons, I was seldom present. I do
remember an afternoon when I had him all to myself, but that was later.
He poured out stories of his American wanderings, including a tale of a
murderous lonely inn, kept by Scots, whose genius tended to
assassination. He knew nothing of their exploits at home, but, then or
afterwards, I heard of them from a boatman on Loch Awe. Their mother was
a witch!
At this period Stevenson was much in Paris, and alone, or with his
cousin Bob dwelt at Barbizon and other forest haunts of painters. The
chronicle of these merry days is written in the early chapters of "The
Wrecker."
In literature he was "finding himself," in his Essays, but the world did
not find him easily or early.
History much attracted him, as it did Thackeray, who said, "I like
history, it is so gentlemanly." But it can only be written by gentlemen
of independent means. Stevenson's favourite period was that of the
France of the fifteenth century, and he studied later some aspects of
that time in essays on Charles d'Orleans, in his admirable picture of
Villon as a man and poet, and especially in "A Lodging for the Night,"
and "The Sieur de Malétroit's Door," shut on a windy night in the month
after the Maid failed at Paris (September, 1429).
These unexcelled short stories really revealed Stevenson as the
narrator, his path lay clear before him. But even his friends were then
divided in opinion; some preferring his essays, and his two books of
sentimental travel, "An Inland Voyage" (1878) and "Travels with a
Donkey" (1879). These were, indeed, admirable in style, humour,
description, and incident, but the creative imagination in the stories
of Villon's night and of the Sieur de Malétroit's door, the painting of
character, the romance, the vividness, were worth many such volumes.
They were well received by the Press, these sketches of travel, but, as
Monsieur Got says in his "Journal" (1857), "Les succès des délicats
sont, même quand ils s'établissent, trop lents à s'établir. La foule
s'est tellement démocratisée qu'il n'a pas de salut si l'on ne frappe
brutalement." The needful brutality was not employed till Stevenson
"knocked them" with "Jekyll and Hyde."
"The world is so full of a number of things," that a few essays, two or
three short stories in a magazine, a little book of sketches in prose,
may be masterpieces in their three several ways, but they escape the
notice of all but a few amateurs. Mr. Kipling's knock was much more
insistent; he could not be unheard. It was not by essays on Burns and
Knox, however independently done, that Stevenson could make his mark.
Concerning these heroes, Scotland has a vision of her own, and no man
must undo it; no man must tell, about Knox, facts ignored by Professors
of Church History. Indeed, to study Knox afresh demands research for
which Stevenson had not the opportunity. The Covenanting side of his
nature appeared in his study of the moral aspect of Burns; his feet of
clay. It is agreed that we must veil the feet of clay. As Lockhart says,
Scott infuriated Mr. Alexander Peterkin by remarking that Burns "was not
chivalrous." Stevenson went further, and annoyed the Peterkins of his
day. His task required courage: it was not found wanting.
In 1877, Stevenson had a new, if very narrow, opening. A friend of his
at Edinburgh University, a young Mr. Caldwell Brown (so Stevenson named
him to me; his real name seems to have been Glasgow Brown), came to the
great metropolis to found a Conservative weekly journal. "London" was
its name, but Edinburgh was its nature, and base, if a base it had. The
editor was "in the air"; he knew nothing of his business and its
difficulties; nothing of what the Conservative public, with sixpences to
spend, was likely to want. He approached some of Stevenson's friends,
and he gave the Conservative party scores of lively _ballades,
villanelles_, and _rondeaux_. They were brilliant. Stevenson would not
tell me the author's name; he proved to be Mr. Henley, who came to town,
and, on the death of Mr. Brown, edited this unread periodical. There
were "Society" notes, although Mr. Henley's haunts were not those of
that kind of society, and one occasional contributor ventured to
remonstrate about the chatter on the "professional beauties" of that
distant day.
The "New Arabian Nights," with all their humour, and horror, all their
intellectual high spirits, and reckless absurdity, were poured by
Stevenson into this outcast flutterer of a Tory paper, to the great joy
of some of the very irregular contributors. (It was an honest
flutterer--its contributors received their wages.)
Then "London" died, and then seriousness enough came into the life of
our Arabian author. In August, 1879, he disappeared; he went to America
to marry the lady whom he had first met at Fontainebleau, whom he wedded
at San Francisco (1880), and loved with all his heart.
Reconciled to his father, he returned to Scotland. His health had been
anew impaired by troubles and privations, and the rest of his life in
the Old World was occupied by a series of maladies, vain roamings in
search of climate, and hard work constantly interrupted.
From his early childhood onwards, an army of maladies surrounded him,
invested him, cut him off if, in an hour of health, he ventured on any
sally; but they never overcame his invincible resolution. He was, as one
of his favourite old authors says about I forget what emperor, "an
entertainer of fortune by the day," making the most of every sunny hour,
and the best of every hour passed under the shadow of imminent death. I
remember that, soon after his marriage, he was staying in London at the
house of a friend. Going to see him, I noted in him a somewhat anxious
look, and I did not wonder at it! Mr. Henley was seated in a great
chair, the whole of his face, from the eyes downwards, muffled in a huge
crimson silk pocket handkerchief, of which the point covered his aureate
beard.
The room was a large room, and as Louis flitted about it, _more suo_, he
managed to tell me privily that Henley had a very bad cold, and that he
himself caught every cold which came within a limited radius. He _did_
catch that cold, I heard, and when once such an invader entered his
system, nobody knew what the end of it might be. His lungs usually
suffered; hemorrhage was frequent and often alarming. In one of these
accesses, unable to speak, he wrote, "Do not be frightened. If this is
the end it is an easy one."
Many scraps written by him in circumstances like these used to exist;
some of them, though brief, were rich in the simple eloquence of
indignation.
Almost no climate did him any good: in 1880-1881, he chiefly suffered at
Davos, and in the tempests of September, in Braemar. At Davos he had few
consolations except the society of Mr. J. A. Symonds (the Opalstein of
his essay on "Talk and Talkers") and his family. He was still attached
to the indigent Muse of History: meditating a "History of the
Highlands," and another book on that much trampled topic, the Union of
1707. When one thinks of the commercial statistics necessary to the
student of the Union--to take that grim aspect of it alone--_enfin_, "I
have been there, and would not go." In the nature of things the History
of the Union would have become a romance, with that impudent,
entertaining rogue, Ker of Kersland, and his bewildered Cameronians, for
the heroes: with Hamilton the waverer, and the dark, sardonic Lockhart
of Carnwath, and Daniel Defoe as the English looker-on. The study of
Highland history led to the reading of the Trial of James of the Glens,
and the vain hunt for Alan Breck, and so to "Kidnapped."
Stevenson felt and described the exhilaration of Alpine mornings, but
his style was as sensitive as his bronchial apparatus, and he declares
that when he tried to write, the style suffered from "yeasty inflation,"
while his nights were haunted by the nightmares of his childhood.
The next change carried him to a cottage near Pitlochry, whence he wrote
that he was engaged in the composition of "crawlers." The first and best
of these, "Thrawn Janet," was (with his "Tod Lapraik" in "Kidnapped")
the only pendant to Scott's "Wandering Willie's Tale," in the northern
vernacular. The tale has a limited circle; no Southern can appreciate
all its merits, the thing is so absolutely and essentially Scots;
especially the atmosphere. He said that it was "true for a hill parish
in Scotland in old days, not true for mankind and the world." So it is
fortunate to be a native of a hill parish in Scotland!
"The Merry Men," as "a fantasia or vision of the sea," is excellent; the
poor negro never was, to myself, "convincing." However, knowing
Stevenson's taste in art, I designed for him, in Skeltic taste, an
illustration (coloured) of the negro pursuing the wicked uncle (in the
philabeg) over the crests of Ben Mor, Mull.
Descending from these heights, Stevenson, like every bookish Scot,
"ettled at" a professorial chair--that of "History and Constitutional
Law," in the University of Edinburgh.
The election was in the winter, the legist and historian occupied the
autumn in composing the first half of "Treasure Island" (originally "The
Sea Cook").
Everyone knows the story: how, playing with his stepson, Stevenson drew
a map of an island--an island like a _dragon seyant_; considered the
caves and hills and streams, and thought of the place as a haunt of
these serviceable pirates, who always dumped down their hard-earned swag
on distant and on deadly shores, which they carefully abstained from
revisiting. The legends of Captain Kidd's _caches_ have long haunted the
imagination; the idea of Hidden Treasure has its eternal charm, and the
story thereof was told, once for all, by Poe. Soon after "Treasure
Island" appeared there was a real treasure hunt. The deposit, so I was
informed, was "put down by a Fin," and Mr. Rider Haggard and I were
actually paying (at least Mr. Haggard sent me a cheque) for shares in
this alluring enterprise, when I learned that the Fin (or Finn? a native
of Finland), had looted the church plate of some Spanish cathedral in
America. Knowing this, I returned his cheque to Mr. Haggard; happily,
for the isle was the playroom of young earthquakes, which had upset the
soil and the landmarks to such a degree that the gentleman adventurer
returned--_bredouille_! I hope Stevenson had nothing on.
In the Highland cottage, during the rain eternal, he amused himself with
writing his story, as Shelley, Byron, Polidori, and Mary Godwin had
diverted themselves in Swiss wet weather, with their ghost stories,
"Frankenstein," and Byron's good opening of a romance of a vampire.
Visitors came--Mr. Colvin, Mr. Gosse, and Dr. Japp--they liked the tale
as chapter by chapter was read aloud, and it was offered to a penny
periodical for boys. A much better market might easily have been found;
indeed, Stevenson "wasted his mercies." He was paid like the humblest of
unknown scribblers; not even illustrations were given to the obscure
romance running in dim inner pages of the periodical, and it appears
that, as Théophile Gautier's editor said about one of _his_ narratives,
"the _abonné_ was bored with the style."
It was an audacious thing for a man of Louis's health, and intermittent
inspiration, to send in half the "copy," meaning to send the rest later
from Davos. He might not be able, physically, to write--the inspiration
might vanish--and there was John Addington Symonds, eager for him to
write on the "Characters" of Theophrastus! He might as well have
written, or better, on the "Characters" of Sir Thomas Overbury, which
are rather less remote from the ken of the British public than those of
the Greek.
If any young man or woman, not in possession of independent means, reads
these lines of mine, let him or her take warning, and deserting history,
morals, the essay, biography, and shunning anthropology as they would
kippered sturgeon or the devil, cleave only to fiction!
Biography also allured Stevenson--his literary tastes were nearly his
ruin; he wanted, at Davos, to write a "Life of Hazlitt," and at
Bournemouth a biography of Arthur, Duke of Wellington. But time and
strength were lacking; nor have we R. L. S.'s mature opinion of the
strategy and tactics of the victor of Assaye. The Muse of piratical
enterprise returned, and "Treasure Island" reached its haven, with no
applause, in the paper for boys.
In the following May, Messrs. Cassell proposed to publish "Treasure
Island" in book form, being spirited up, I suppose, by Mr. Henley, who
was editing for them "The Magazine of Art," in which Stevenson wrote two
or three articles. (I remember that a letter of my own to "The Editor,"
as Mr. Henley had proudly signed himself, came automatically into the
hands of the General Editor, a clergyman, if I do not err, and that my
observations on the Art of Savages, lighting on the wrong sort of
ground, sprang up and nearly choked Mr. Henley.) Stevenson was already
the victim of the Yankee pirate, whose industry, at least, made his
name, though wrongly spelled, known to the community which later paid
him so well for his work, and displayed for him an enthusiasm of
affectionate admiration.
In 1884 he worked at the often rewritten "Prince Otto," and did a
pot-boiler--"The Black Arrow"--which pleased the boy public of the paper
much better than "Treasure Island." His time, from January, 1883, to
May, 1884, was passed at Hyères. In the end of November, "Treasure
Island" was published in book form, and was warmly welcomed by the Press
and by such friends of the author as retained, at least in letters, any
smack of youth. It was forced, as far as "You must read it, please,"
even on the friends of the friends, and so on in successive waves, yet
it did not reach a wide circle: five or six thousand copies were sold in
the first year. That is failure in the eyes of many of our novelists
whose style does not bore the unfastidious _abonné_. Stevenson, in
writing an article for a magazine on his "First Book," chose "Treasure
Island," for books other than novels do not count as books. He spoke of
terror as the motive and interest of the tale; the dread for each and
all of a mutiny headed by his ruthless favourite, John Silver. Indeed,
terror, whether caused by the eccentric furies of Mr. William Bones,
mariner, or of the awful blind Pew with his tapping staff, runs through
the volume as the dominant motive. But there is so much else: the many
landscapes, so various and so vivid; the humour of the Doctor and the
Squire, the variety of the seamen's characters; the Man of the Island,
with his craving for a piece of cheese; above all, John Silver. He is
terrible, this coldly cruel, crafty, and masterful Odysseus of the
Pacific. His creator liked him, but I could have seen Silver withering
on the wuddie at Execution Dock, or suspended from a yardarm, without
shedding the tears of sensibility. "A pirate is rather a beast than
otherwise," says a young critic in "The Human Boy," and I cannot get
over Silver gloating on the prospect of torturing Trelawny. At all
events, he is an original creation, and a miraculous portent in a boy's
book.
Fiercer attacks of illness in various forms drove Stevenson to
Bournemouth; he was engaged, when he had the strength, on those plays
(in collaboration with Mr. Henley) which prove that he had not the
mysterious gift of writing for the stage. "I hope Mr. Henley wrote most
of it," said a lady, as she left the theatre where she had seen "Deacon
Brodie" played. Had Deacon Brodie been Archdeacon Brodie, there would
have been more piquancy in the contrast of his "double life."
This idea of the double life of each man had long haunted Stevenson. He
told me once that he meant to write a story "about a fellow who was two
fellows," which did not, when thus stated, seem a fortunate idea.
However, happily, he continued to think of Hyde and Jekyll, yet knew not
how to manage them. One night, after eating bread and jam freely, he had
a nightmare; he saw Hyde, pursued, take refuge in a closet, swallow "the
mixture as before"--the mysterious powder or potion--and change horribly
into Jekyll.
He set to work at once, and in three feverish days completed the first
draft of his parable. In this the Hyde aspect was only Jekyll's
unassuming disguise, adopted at hours when he wished to be a little gay.
Stevenson burned his first draft, and rewrote the whole in three days.
He knew, it seems, that the magical powder was an error. One sees how
the thing could be managed otherwise, with a slight strain on the
resources of psychical research. But in no way could the story have
attained "the probable impossible," which Aristotle preferred to "the
improbable possible."
Stevenson sent the manuscript to my friend Mr. Charles Longman, who, in
turn, sent it to me. I began to read it one night, in the security of a
modest London drawing-room, and, naturally, it fascinated me from the
first page. Then I came to a certain page, which produced such an
emotion that I threw the manuscript on a chair, and scuttled
apprehensively to the safety of bed. Later, a kinsman, who seldom read a
book, told me that, living alone in a great Highland house, he had
thrown down the printed book at the same passage, and made the same
inglorious retreat. Anyone who knows the book, knows what the passage
is.
The story was produced in a paper-covered volume costing a shilling, and
was little heeded till a reviewer in _The Times_ "caught this great
stupid public by the ear," as Thackeray said.
The clergy of all denominations did the rest. As they had preached on
"Pamela," a hundred and forty years earlier, so they called the
attention of their flocks to Hyde and to Jekyll. "Who are Hyde and
Jekyll, my brethren? _You_ are Hyde and Jekyll. _I_ am Jekyll and Hyde;
each of us is Jekyll, and, alas, _each of us is Hyde_!"
Stevenson had long ago "found himself"; now he was found by the public.
The names of his two rascally heroes (Dr. Jekyll is even less of a
gentleman than Hyde) became proverbial.
The gruesome parable occupied an interval in the making of what I
suppose is his masterpiece--"Kidnapped." The story centres on the Appin
Murder of 1751, about which he had made inquiries in the neighbourhood
of Rannoch, where Alan Breck skulked after the shooting of Campbell of
Glenure in the hanging wood south of Ballachulish. Stevenson could not
learn who "the other man" was--the real murderer in the romance. I know,
but respect the Celtic secret. The fatal gun was found, very many years
after the deed, by an old woman, in a hollow tree, and it was _not_ the
gun of James Stewart.
(I have a friend whose great-great-grandfather was standing beside James
of the Glens, watching the digging of potatoes. A horse was heard
approaching at such a pace that James said, "Whoever the rider is, the
horse is not his own." As he galloped past, the rider shouted: "Glenure
is shot!" "Who did it I don't know, but I am the man that will hang for
it," said James, too truly.)
Of "Kidnapped," Stevenson said (as Thackeray said of Henry Esmond and
Lady Castlewood, as Scott says of Dugald Dalgetty) that, in this book
alone of his, "the characters took the bit in their teeth," at a certain
point. "It was they who spoke, it was they who wrote the remainder of
the story."
They are spontaneous, they are living. Balfour, in the _scenario_ of the
tale, was to have been kidnapped and carried to the American
plantations. But he and Alan "went their ain gait." At the end, you can
see the pen drop from the weary fingers; they left half-told the story
of Alan, to be continued in "Catriona."
A love of Jacobite times, and of Alan Breck's country, Lochaber,
Glencoe, Mamore, may bias me; but in "Kidnapped" Stevenson appears to me
to reach the height of his genius in designing character and landscape;
in humour, dialogue, and creative power. As in his preceding stories,
there is hardly the flutter of a petticoat, but the tale, like Prince
Charles at Holyrood, can point to a Highland man of the sword, and say,
"These are my beauties." I remember that Mr. Matthew Arnold admired the
story greatly, and _he_ had no Jacobite or local bias.
In May, 1887, Stevenson lost his father, and paid his last visit to his
native country.
It was during this period, in 1886 probably, that I, for the first time,
saw Stevenson confined to bed in one of his frequent illnesses, and
then, also, I saw him for the last time. So emaciated was he (we need
not dwell on what seemed that "last face of Hippocrates"), that we could
not believe there remained for him some crowded years of life and
comparatively healthy and joy-bestowing energy. If the ocean was
henceforth to roll between us, at least he said that we were always best
friends when furthest apart; though, indeed, we were never so intimate
as to be otherwise than friendly. It was never the man that I knew best;
but the genius that I delighted in, "on this side idolatry." Always, in
verse or in prose, in Scots or in English, he made one reader happy; by
a kind of pre-established harmony of taste which might not have
prevailed in the intercourse of every day's life.
In August, 1887, Stevenson left England for ever, arriving at New York
as a lion, hunted by reporters, whom, no doubt, he received with the
majestic courtesy of his own Prince of Bohemia. Two versions of Jekyll
and Hyde were being acted; all this was very unlike the calm
indifference of his native land. It seems that in Jekyll, as "Terryfled"
(in Scott's phrase), there is a "love interest"; love is alien to Dr.
Jekyll, as to the shepherd before he found that Love was a dweller on
the rocks. The Terryfication was, at least, an advertisement. To
advertise himself, in the modern way, Stevenson was not competent. He
never was interviewed as a Celebrity at Home, as far as I am aware.
Indeed, he loved not society papers, and lit a bonfire and danced a
dance around it in his garden, when some editor of a journal of that
sort was committed to prison. His name is not mentioned, but Stevenson
and I had against him a grudge of very old standing.
Dollars in sufficient profusion were offered for his works, and in the
Adirondack Hills, beside a frozen river in the starlit night, he dreamed
of "a story of many years and countries, of the sea and the land,
savagery and civilization." He thought of that old Indian marvel, the
suspended life of the buried fakir, over whose grave the corn is sown
and grown. He thought of an evil genius on whom this method should be
tried in frozen Canadian earth. Thus, what seems like the far-fetched
idea of a wearied fancy in "The Master of Ballantrae" was, from the
first, of the essence of that bitter romance. The new conception fitted
in with a tale, already dreamed of on the Perthshire moors, about the
dark adventurous years of the Jacobite eclipse. The Prince was hidden in
a convent of Paris, or flashing for a moment in the Mall, or cruising, a
dingy bearded wanderer, in Germany or the Netherlands; while his
followers were serving under French colours, under Montcalm or
Lally-Tolendal. Men who had charged side by side at Gledsmuir and
Culloden, might meet as foes in Canada or Hindostan. There is matter
enough, in 1750-1765, for scores of romances, but who now can write
them? But the Master did not now begin his deeds of bale. Stevenson's
stepson, Mr. Osbourne, then very young, himself wrote "The Finsbury
Tontine; or The Game of Bluff," and I was informed at the time by
Stevenson's devoted admirer, Mr. McClure, that the book was completed by
Mr. Osbourne for the Press. Then Stevenson took up the manuscript, and,
as Mr. Osbourne says, "forced the thing to live as it had never lived
before." Indeed, the style of "The Wrong Box" throughout, is Louis's
style in such romantic farces as "The New Arabian Nights," a manner of
his own creation.
I seem to remember that I saw the finished manuscript, or perhaps an
early copy of the book, and I did not care for it. Mr. Kipling rather
surprised me by finding it so very amusing. Mr. Osbourne says that the
story "still retains (it seems to me) a sense of failure," and that the
public does not relish it. For my own part, on later re-readings, the
little farce has made me laugh hysterically at the sorrows of Mr.
William Pitman, that mild drawing-master, caught up and whirled away
into adventures worthy of the great Fortuné du Boisgobey. The scene in
which he is described as the American Broadwood, a person inured to a
simple patriarchal life, a being of violent passions; with the immortal
John in the character of the Great Vance; and that joy for ever, Uncle
Joseph, with his deathless thirst for popular information and
instruction--these personages, this "educated insolence," never cease to
amuse. Uncle Joseph is no caricature. But the world likes its
sensational novels to be written with becoming seriousness; in short,
"The Wrong Box" is aimed at a small but devoted circle of admirers.
People constantly ask men who have collaborated how they do the
business? As a rule, so some French collaborator says, "some one is the
dupe, and he is the man of genius." This was not true, too notably, in
the case of Alexandre Dumas, nor was it true in Stevenson's case. As a
rule, one man does the work, and the other looks on, but, again, this
was not the way in which Stevenson and Mr. Osbourne worked. They first
talked over the book together, and ideas were struck out in the
encounter of minds. This practice may, very probably, prove unfruitful,
or even injurious, to many writers; they are confused rather than
assisted. After or during the course of the conversations (when he had
an ally), after reflection, when he had not, Stevenson used to write out
a series of chapter headings. One, I remember, was "The Master of
Ballantrae to the Rescue," an incident in a tale which he began about
the obscure adventures of Prince Charles in 1749-1750. "Ballantrae to
the Rescue"--the sound was promising, but I do not know who was to be
obliged by the Master.
After the list of chapters was completed, Mr. Osbourne used to write the
first draft, "to break the ground," and then each wrote and rewrote, an
indefinite number of times. The style, the general effect produced, are
the style and the effect of Stevenson. "He liked the comradeship." More
care was taken than on a novel of which I and another were greatly
guilty. My partner represented Mr. Nicholas Wogan as rubbing his hands
after a bullet at Fontenoy (as history and I made quite clear) had
deprived Mr. Wogan of one of his arms. There is no such error in the
"Iliad," despite the unnumbered multitude of collaborators detected by
the Higher Criticism.
In June, 1888, Stevenson sailed out on the Pacific in search of health,
and followed the shining shadow through the isles and seas till he made
his last home at Samoa. It was a three years' cruise among "summer isles
of Eden." Perhaps no book of Stevenson's is less popular than his
narrative of storm and calm, of beachcombers and brown Polynesian
princes. The scenery is too exotic for the general taste. The joy and
sorrow of Stevenson was to find a society "in much the same
convulsionary and transitional state" as the Highlands and Islands after
1745. He was always haunted, and in popularity retarded, by History. He
wanted to know about details of savage custom and of superstitious
belief, a taste very far from being universal even in the most highly
cultivated circles, where Folklore is a name of fear. He found among the
natives such fatal Polynesian fairy ladies as they of Glenfinlas, on
whom Scott wrote the ballad. He found a medicine-man who hypnotized him
from behind his back, which nobody at home had been able to do before
his face. He exchanged stories with the clansmen--Scots for Polynesian;
they were much the same in character and incident. He had found, in
Polynesia, the way out of our own present. He met a Polynesian Queen--a
Mary Stuart or a Helen of Troy grown old. "She had been passed from
chief to chief; she had been fought for and taken in war"; a "Queen of
Cannibals, tattooed from head to foot." Now she had reached the Elysian
plain and a windless age, living in religion, as it were: "she passes
all her days with the sisters."
She was not a white woman: none of these people, so courteous and kind,
were white, were up-to-date. In London and New York amateurs did not
want to be told about them in Stevenson's "Letters from the South
Seas." Stevenson "collected songs and legends": fortunately he also
worked at "The Master of Ballantrae," in spite of frequent illnesses,
and many perils of the sea. "The Master of Ballantrae" was finished at
Honolulu; the closing chapters are the work of a weary pen.
He had made tryst with an evil genius that was essential to the
conception of the book, and with a hideous tale of fraternal hatred,
told by a constitutional coward. Everything is under the shadow of
thunder and lit by lightning. A glimpse of Allan Breck, and the
babblings of the Chevalier Bourke, are the only relief. But the life is
as clearly seen as life in Stevenson's books always is, for example when
the guinea is thrown through the stained window pane, or the old
serving-man holds the candle to light the duel of brothers who are born
foes; or as in the final scenes of desperate wanderings in the company
of murderers through Canadian snows. But the book, as Sir Henry Yule
said, is "as grim as the road to Lucknow"--as it was intended to be.
A fresh cruise, in the following year, bettered his health, and brought
him the anecdote of a mystery of the sea which was the germ of "The
Wrecker." He saw Samoa, and bought land there--Vailima--the last and
best of his resting-places; and here he was joined, in 1891, by his
intrepid mother. He was now a lord of land, a householder in his
unpretentious Abbotsford, and "a great chief" among the natives,
distracted as they were by a king _de facto_, and a king over the water,
with the sonorous names of Malietoa and Mataafa. Samoan politics, the
strifes of Germany, England, and the States, were labyrinthine: their
chronicle is written in his "Footnote to History." My conjectures as to
the romantic side of his dealings with the rightful king are vague and
need not be recorded. "You can be in a new conspiracy every day," said
an Irishman with zest, but conspiracies are better things in fiction
than in real life; and Stevenson had no personal ambitions, and, withal,
as much common sense as Shelley displayed in certain late events of his
life. He turned to the half-finished "Wrecker" and completed it.
When the story began to appear in "Scribner's Magazine" it seemed full
of vivacity and promise. The opening scenes in the Pacific were like
Paradise, as the author said, to dwellers in Brixton, or other purlieus
of London. The financial school at which Loudon Dodd was educated in
Stock Exchange flutters was rather less convincing than any dream of
Paradise, but none the less amusing. At home in Edinburgh, with the old
Scottish master of jerry-building and of "plinths," the atmosphere was
truly Scots, tea-coseys and all, while the reminiscences of Paris and
Fontainebleau, and the _grandeurs et misères_ of "the young
Americo-Parisienne sculptor" were perfectly fresh to the world, though
some of the anecdotes were known to Stevenson's intimates. Mr. James
Pinkerton is a laudable creation, with his loyalty, his innocence, his
total ignorance and complete lack of taste, and his scampers too near
the wind of commercial probity. The spirit of hustle incarnate in a man
otherwise so innocent, the ideals caught from heaven knows what American
works for the young, and the inspired patriotism, the blundering
enthusiastic affection, make the early Pinkerton a study as original as
it is entertaining.
The sale by auction of the wreck, which, by arrangement, is to be
Pinkerton's prey, the mysterious opposition of the other bidder, so
determined to win an object apparently so worthless, is no less
thrilling than the sale of the fur coat in Boisgobey's "Crime de
l'Opéra." But the reader knows why the fur coat is so much desired,
whereas I remember being driven so wild by curiosity about the value of
the wreck that I wrote to Louis, desiring to learn the secret. He would
not divulge it, and when, after the voyage to the island and the
excitement of knocking the wreck to pieces were over--when the secret
came out, it was neither pleasant nor probable. That a mild British
amateur of water-colour drawing should have taken part in a massacre of
men, shot painfully with cheap revolvers, was an example of "the
possible improbable," and much more of a tax on belief than the
transformation of Dr. Jekyll. When I mildly urged this criticism, I
learned, by return of post, from a correspondent usually as dilatory as
Wordsworth, that I was a stay-at-home person ignorant of the world, and
of life as it is lived by full-blooded men on the high seas. That was
very true, but the amateur in water-colour was also a mild kind of good
being. "What would I have done with the crew who were such compromising
witnesses, and were butchered?" I would have marooned them.
"The Beach of Falesá" is a revelation of unfamiliar life and character,
and one is attached to the little brown heroine. There was to have been
"a supernatural element," better, probably, than the device of the
Æolian harps hung in the thicket. "I have got the smell and the look of
the thing a good deal," he said, and he had got the style of his rough
English narrator, who was, as he told the missionary, "what you call a
sinner, what I call a sweep," but repented in time.
A period of many projects followed; one, "The Young Chevalier," had a
germ in "The Letter of Henry Goring" (1749-1750), with which I brought
him acquainted, not knowing then that it was merely a romance by the
prolific Eliza Heywood. It was in this tale that the Master of
Ballantrae was to come to the rescue, and I think that a Scottish
assassin (who lurks obscure in real history) and Mandrin, the famed
French robber, were to appear, but only a chapter is published among
other fragments. As it stands, Prince Charles's eyes are alternately
blue and brown; brown was their actual colour--they were like
Stevenson's own.
Fortunately, the "Chevalier" was deserted for the continuation of
"Kidnapped," a sequel which is as good as, or, thanks to the two
heroines, Catriona and Barbara Grant, is even better than, the original.
To think of it is to wish to take it from the shelf and read it again.
It is all excellent, from the scenes where Alan is hiding under a
haystack (suggested by an adventure of the Chevalier Johnstone after
Culloden), and the first meeting with that good daughter of Clan Alpine
and of James Mor, onwards.
Stevenson excited a good deal of odium among fiery Celts by his
scoundrel Master of Lovat. There is no reason, as far as I am aware, to
suppose that Simon was a scoundrel, but, as a figure in fiction, he is
very firmly drawn. The abortive duel of Balfour with the Highland
Ensign, who conceives high esteem of "Palfour," is in the author's best
manner, as are the days of prison in that "unco place, the Bass," and he
was justly proud of the wizard tale of Tod Lapraik. The bristling
demeanour of Alan Breck and James Mor (a very gallant but distinctly
unfortunate son of Rob Roy), seems a correct picture. Indeed, James Mor
was correctly divined, probably from letters of his published in Scott's
"Rob Roy." It does not appear that Stevenson ever saw a number of
James's letters in the character of a spy (a spy who appears to be
carefully bamboozling his employers), which exist in the Newcastle MSS.
in the British Museum. But the James of these letters is the James of
"Catriona." The scenes with the advocates of James of the Glens, at
Inveraray, read as if they had been recorded in shorthand, at the
moment. David himself is, of course, the Lowland prig he is meant to be,
but Catriona, at last, was a moving heroine, though Stevenson, justly,
preferred to her the beautiful Miss Grant, and entirely overcame the
difficulty of making us realise her beauty. The Princess, in "Prince
Otto," is a fair shadow, compared to Miss Grant, and Stevenson at last
convinced most readers that if he had omitted the interest of womanhood,
it was not from incompetence--though it may have been from diffidence.
At this time we used to receive letters from him not infrequently; he
sent me the "Luck of Apemama," which he sacrilegiously purchased from
its holder. This fetish, the palladium of the island, was in one point
remarkable--a very ordinary shell in a perfectly new box of native make.
Why it was thought "great medicine" and ignorantly worshipped, the
pale-face student of magic and religion could not understand. However,
it was the Luck of the island, and when it crossed the sea to Europe a
pestilence of measles fell on the native population. There was no
manifest connection of cause and effect.
Stevenson's letters to me were merely such notes as he might have
written had we both been living within the four-mile radius; usually
notes about books which he needed, always brightened with a quip and
some original application of slang. Occasionally there were rhymes. One
was about a lady:
"Who beckled, beckled, beckled gaily."
Another had the refrain:
"The dibs that take the islands
Are the dollars of Peru."
One long and lively piece was on the Achaean hero of a fantastic romance
by Mr. Rider Haggard and myself: the Ithacan, the Stormer of the City.
Stevenson exclaimed:
"Ye wily auld blackguard,
How far ye hae staggered,
Frae Homer to Haggard
And Lang."
How variously excellent he was as a letter-writer the readers of his
correspondence know, and how vast, considering his labours and his
health, that correspondence is! Often it is freakish, often it is
serious, but except in some epistles of the period of his
apprenticeship, it is never written as if he anticipated the publisher
and the editor. Good examples are his letters to a reviewer, who,
criticizing him without knowing him, wrote as if he were either an
insensible athletic optimist, or a sufferer who was a _poseur_. "The
fact is, consciously or not, you doubt my honesty.... _Any brave man may
make out_ a life which shall be happy for himself, and, by so being,
beneficent to those about him. And if he fail, why should I hear him
weeping?" Why, indeed? Think of Mr. Carlyle! "Did I groan loud, or did I
groan low, Wackford?" said Mr. Squeers. Mr. Carlyle groaned loud,
sometimes with fair reason. Stevenson did not groan at all. If he
posed, if his silence was a pose, it was heroic. But his intellectual
high spirits were almost invincible. If he had a pen in his hand, the
_follet_ of Molière rode it. Mr. Thomas Emmett, that famous Yorkshire
cricketer, has spoken words of gold: "I was always happy as long as I
was bowling." Stevenson, I think, was almost always happy when he was
writing, when the instrument of his art was in his fingers.
Consider the deliberate and self-conscious glumness; the willful making
the worst of things (in themselves pretty bad, I admit), that mark the
novels of eminent moderns who thrive on their inexpensive pessimism, and
have a name as _Psychologues! Ohé, les Psychologues_! Does anyone
suppose that Stevenson could not have dipped his pencil in squalor and
gloom, and psychology, and "oppositions of science falsely so-called,"
as St. Paul, in the spirit of prophecy, remarks? "Ugliness is only the
prose of horror," he said. "It is when you are not able to write
'Macbeth' that you write 'Thérèse Raquin' ... In any case, and under any
fashion, the great man produces beauty, terror, and mirth, and the
little man produces----" We know what he produces, and though his books
may be praised as if the little man were a Sophocles up to date, he and
his works are a weariness to think upon. In them is neither beauty,
mirth, nor terror, except the terror of illimitable ennui.
None the less, I believe that the little men of woe are happy; are
enjoying themselves, while they are writing, while they are doing their
best to make the public comfortably miserable. If these authors were as
candid as Stevenson they would admit that they enjoy their "merry days
of desolation," and that the world is not such a bad place for them,
after all. But perhaps before this truth can be accepted and confessed
by these eminent practitioners in pessimism, a gleam of humour must
arise on their darkness--and that is past praying for. There is a burden
of a Scots song which, perhaps, may have sung itself in the ear of
Louis, when life was at its darkest:
_"And werena my heart licht I wad die!"_
Having finished "Catriona," at about the age that Scott had when he
wrote his first novel, "Waverley," Stevenson thought of "Weir of
Hermiston," ("I thought of Mr. Pickwick," says Dickens with admirable
simplicity), and fell to that work furiously, as was his wont when a
great theme dawned on him. But soon, as usual, came the cold fit; his
inspirations being intermittent for some untraced reason, physical or
psychological. Possibly he foresaw the practical difficulty of his
initial idea: that the Roman Father should sit on the bench of Scottish
Themis and try his own son on a capital charge. This would not have been
permitted to occur in Scotland, even when "the Fifteen" were first
constituted into a Court. If humane emotions did not forbid, it must
have been clear that no Scottish judge (they were not "kinless loons")
would have permitted his son to be found guilty. Conceivably this
damping circumstance occurred to Stevenson. He dropped, for a while, the
hanging judge, and began "St. Ives" as a short story. It was now that,
early in 1893, under an attack of hemorrhage, Stevenson dictated his
tale to his stepdaughter, on his fingers, in the gesture alphabet of the
dumb. Perhaps this feat is as marvelous as Scott's dictating "The Bride
of Lammermoor," _in tormentis_, to Will Laidlaw.
We see how his maladies hung on Stevenson's flank, even in Samoa, where
his health had so remarkably improved, and permitted to him unwonted
activities. After a visit to Sydney, he took up "The Ebb-Tide" in
collaboration with Mr. Osbourne, whose draft of the first chapters he
warmly applauded. It is not one of his central successes. His pencil was
dipped in moral gloom, but even to the odious Cockney scoundrel, Huish,
his Shakespearian tolerance accorded the virtue of indomitable courage.
He could not help filling the book full with his abundant vitality and
his keen observation of the islands and the beachcombers. The thing, to
use an obsolete piece of slang, is _vécu_. There were other projects,
many of them, which dawned rosily, and faded into the grey; and there
was the rich and copious correspondence dated from Vailima. His friends,
no doubt, hearing of his good health, now and then, hoped to see his
face again; the grouse on the hills of home were calling their eternal
_Come back! come back!_
Stevenson, who himself could live contentedly on so little, was the most
open-handed of men, the most liberal and cheerful of givers; and whether
to Samoans in distressful times, or to others who sought his aid, his
purse was never closed; while his hospitality was like Sir Walter's.
Probably, in his hour of greatest success, he never was among "the best
sellers." But any financial anxieties which may have beset him were
assuaged, and his heart was greatly held up, by the success of the
beautiful "Edinburgh Edition" of his works, conceived and carried out by
the energy of his friend of old Edinburgh days, Mr. Charles Baxter.
His latest work was "Weir of Hermiston"; the plenitude of his genius
shines in every page. He himself thought that this was his best work;
so far as we can judge by the considerable fragment that exists, he
was in the right. There is nothing immature, nothing here of the boy;
he is approaching, in his tale, a fateful point of passion and
disaster; his characters, especially the elder woman, the nurse, are
entirely human, with no touch of caprice; they all live their separate
lives in our memories. Then the end came. One moment of bewildered
consciousness--then unconsciousness and death. He had written to me,
some months before, a letter full of apprehensions of the fate of
Scott and Swift; whether warned by some monitory experience, or
whether he had merely chanced to be thinking of the two great men who
outlived themselves. To him death had come almost as a friend in the
fullness of his powers; there was no touch of weakness or decay, and
he was mourned like a king by his Samoans, by his family, by all who
had known him, and by many thousands who had never seen his face.
There was mourning at home in Scotland (where we hoped against hope
that the news was untrue), in England, in Europe, in America, in
Australia and the Isles. He who had been such "a friendly writer," who
had created for us so many friends in his characters, had made more
friends for himself, friends more and more various in age, race,
tastes, character, and temper, than any British writer, perhaps, since
Dickens. He was taken from us untimely; broken was our strong hope in
the future gifts of his genius, and there was a pain that does not
attend the peaceful passing, in the fullness of years and wisdom and
honour, of an immortal like Tennyson.
Any attempt by a contemporary to "place" Stevenson, to give him his
"class" in English literature, would be a folly. The future must judge
for itself, and, if we may estimate the taste of the future by that of
the present, the reading public will not often look behind the most
recent publications of its own day. But _les délicats_ will look back on
Stevenson as they now look back on Fielding, who, to my simple thinking,
remains unsurpassed as a novelist; and as they turn to Lamb and Hazlitt
as essayists. The poet is, of course, at his best immortal--time cannot
stale _Beowulf_, or the nameless lyrists of the fourteenth century, or
Chaucer, or Spenser, and so with the rest, _la mort n'y mord_. But it is
as a writer of prose that Stevenson must be remembered. If he is not the
master British essayist of the later nineteenth century, I really cannot
imagine who is to be preferred to him. His vivacity, vitality, his
original reflections on life, his personal and fascinating style, claim
for him the crown. Nobody, perhaps, places him beside Lamb, and he would
not have dreamed of being equaled in renown with Hazlitt, while he is,
I conceive, more generally sympathetic than Mr. Pater, whose place is
apart, whose province is entirely his own. When we think of Stevenson as
a novelist, there is this conspicuous drawback, that he never did write
a novel on characters and conditions in the mid-stream of the life that
was contemporary with himself. He does not compete, therefore, with
Thackeray and Dickens, Mr. Hardy and Mr. Meredith, but Scott is also no
competitor.
"St. Ronan's Well" is Scott's only novel that deals with precisely
contemporary life, and "St. Ronan's Well" is a kind of backwater; the
story of a remote contemporary watering-place, of local squireens, and
of a tragedy, mangled in deference to James Ballantyne. Scott did not
often care to trust himself out of the last echoes of "the pipes that
played for Charlie," and though his knowledge of contemporary life was
infinitely wider than Stevenson's, we see many good reasons for his
abstention from use of his knowledge. For example, it is obvious that he
could not attempt a romance of the War in the Peninsula, and of life in
London, let us say, while Wellington was holding Torres Vedras. Even
among Stevenson's abandoned projects, there is not, I think, one which
deals with English society in the 'eighties. His health and his fugitive
life imposed on him those limitations against which his taste did not
rebel, for his taste led him to the past, and to adventure in a present
not English, but exotic. He is not in the same field, so to speak, as
Richardson and Fielding, Dickens and Thackeray, Mr. Hardy and Mr.
Meredith; and their field, the great living world of their time, is what
the general reader wants the novelist to deal with as he best may.
Shakespeare, to be sure, wrote no drama on Elizabethan times in England;
we must go to Heywood and Ben Jonson for the drama of his contemporary
world. Many circumstances caused Stevenson, when at his best, to be a
historical novelist, and he is, since Scott and Thackeray, the best
historical novelist whom we have.
Add to all this his notable eminence in tales of shorter scope; in
essays, whether on life or on literature, so various and original, so
graceful and so strong; add the fantasies of his fables, and remember
that almost all he did is good--and we must, I think, give to Stevenson
a very high place in the literature of his century.
Of his verse I have hitherto said nothing, and I do not think that if he
had written verse alone, his place would have been highly distinguished.
His "Child's Garden of Verse" is a little masterpiece in a _genre_ of
his own invention. His verses in Scots are full of humour, and he had a
complete mastery of the old Northern English of the Lowlands. His more
serious poems often contain ideas and the expression of moods which he
handled better, I think, in his prose. Even the story of "Ticonderoga" I
would rather have received from him in prose than in his ballad measure.
Possibly I am prejudiced a little by his willfulness in giving to a
Cameron the part of the generous hero; true to his word, in spite of the
desire to avenge a brother, and of the thrice-repeated monition of the
dead. It is not that I grudge any glory to the children of Lochiel, a
clan, in General Wolfe's opinion, the bravest where all were brave, a
clan of constant and boundless loyalty. But in Stevenson's own note to
his poem, the Cameron "swears by his sword and Ben Cruachan," and
"Cruachan" is a slogan of the Campbells. The hero, as a matter of fact,
was a Campbell of Inverawe. "Between the name of _Cameron_ and that of
_Campbell_ the Muse will never hesitate," says Stevenson. One name means
"Wry mouth," the other "Crooked nose"; so far, the Muse has a poor
choice! But the tale is a tale of the Campbells, of Clan Diarmaid, and
the Muse must adhere to the historic truth.
This essay must not close on a difference of opinion concerning
historical events--a jarring note.
There are points enough in Stevenson's character and opinions which I
have not touched; such as his religious views. He never mentioned the
topic of religion in my hearing; it is to his printed words that the
reader must turn, and he cannot but perceive that Stevenson's was a
deeply religious nature. With his faith, whatever its tenets may have
been, was implicated his uneasily active conscience; his sense of duty.
This appears to have directed his life; and was practically the same
thing as his sense of honour. Honour, I conceive, is, in a phrase of
Aristotle's, duty "with a bloom on it."
Readers of his Letters, and of his Biography by his cousin, Mr. Balfour;
readers of his essays, and of his novels, must see that he was keenly
interested in cases of conscience; in the right course to steer in an
apparent conflict of duties. To say that his theory of the right course,
in a hypothetical instance, was always the same as my own would be to
abuse the confidence of the reader. As Preston-grange observes: "I would
never charge myself with Mr. David's conscience; and if you could cast
some part of it (as you went by) in a moss bog, you would find yourself
to ride much easier without it"; and _not_, perhaps, always in the wrong
direction. There is a case of conscience in "The Wrecker," something
about opium-smuggling, and the conscience of Mr. Loudon Dodd (a truly
Balfourian character), which I have studied, aided by other casuists,
for a summer's day. We never could agree as to what the case really was,
as to what was the moral issue.
Casuistry may not be my strong point. I have found myself between no
less authorities than a Chancellor of England and a learned Jesuit, both
of whom, I thought, would certainly accept my view of a very unusual
case of conduct. A certain cleric, in his ecclesiastical duties,
happened to overhear an automatically uttered remark by another person;
who never meant to speak or to be overheard. The cleric acted on this
information, with results distressing to a pair of true lovers. I
maintained that he did wrong. "There was no appeal," I said, "to the
umpire. Nobody in the field asked 'How's that?'" But the Chancellor and
the learned Jesuit backed the clergyman.
Now, I never knew for certain how "Mr. David's conscience" would decide,
but I think he would have been with me on this occasion, and with the
Rules of the Game.
There was a very pleasant trait in Stevenson's character which, perhaps,
does not display itself in most of his writings; his great affection for
children. In "A Child's Garden of Verse," delightful as it is, and not
to be read without "a great inclination to cry," the child is himself,
the child "that is gone." But, in an early letter, he writes: "Kids is
what is the matter with me ... Children are too good to be true." He had
a natural infatuation, so to say, for children as children, which many
men of the pen overcome with no apparent difficulty. He could not
overcome it; little boys and girls were his delight, and he was theirs.
At Molokai, the Leper Island, he played croquet with the little girls;
refusing to wear gloves, lest he should remind them of their condition.
Sensitive and weak in body as he was, Nelson was not more fearless. It
was equally characteristic of another quality of his, the open hand,
that he gave a grand piano to these leper children.
He says:
"But the nearest friends are the auldest friends,
And the grave's the place to seek them."
Among the nearest and the oldest friends of his I never was, but to few
friends, nearer and older, does my _desiderium_ go back so frequently;
simply because almost every day brings something newly learned or known,
which would have appealed most to his unequaled breadth of knowledge
and interest and sympathy.
ANDREW LANG.
AN INLAND VOYAGE
"Thus sang they in the English boat."
MARVELL.
_TO_
_SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, BART._
_My dear "Cigarette,"_
_It was enough that you should have shared so liberally in the rains and
portages of our voyage; that you should have had so hard a paddle to
recover the derelict "Arethusa" on the flooded Oise: and that you should
thenceforth have piloted a mere wreck of mankind to Origny
Sainte-Benoîte and a supper so eagerly desired. It was perhaps more than
enough, as you once somewhat piteously complained, that I should have
set down all the strong language to you, and kept the appropriate
reflections for myself. I could not in decency expose you to share the
disgrace of another and more public shipwreck. But now that this voyage
of ours is going into a cheap edition, that peril, we shall hope, is at
an end, and I may put your name on the burgee._
_But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate of our two ships. That,
sir, was not a fortunate day when we projected the possession of a canal
barge; it was not a fortunate day when we shared our daydream with the
most hopeful of daydreamers. For a while, indeed, the world looked
smilingly. The barge was procured and christened, and as the "Eleven
Thousand Virgins of Cologne," lay for some months, the admired of all
admirers, in a pleasant river and under the walls of an ancient town. M.
Mattras, the accomplished carpenter of Moret, had made her a centre of
emulous labour; and you will not have forgotten the amount of sweet
champagne consumed in the inn at the bridge end, to give zeal to the
workmen and speed to the work. On the financial aspect I would_ _not
willingly dwell. The "Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne" rotted in the
stream where she was beautified. She felt not the impulse of the breeze;
she was never harnessed to the patent track-horse. And when at length
she was sold, by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there were sold along
with her the "Arethusa" and the "Cigarette", she of cedar, she, as we
knew so keenly on a portage, of solid-hearted English oak. Now these
historic vessels fly the tricolour and are known by new and alien
names._
_R. L. S._
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin
against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist, for
it is the reward of his labours. When the foundation-stone is laid, the
architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the
public eye. So with the writer in his preface: he may have never a word
to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in
hand, and with an urbane demeanour.
It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of
manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been written
by someone else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was
good. But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that
perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments
towards a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to invite
him in with country cordiality.
To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in
proof, than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. It occurred
to me that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but the
last as well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of
country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in my steps. The more
I thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste grew into
a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which is no more
than an advertisement for readers.
What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua brought back from
Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so
nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people
prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.
I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the negative
point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp.
Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it
contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, nor
so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself.--I
really do not know where my head can have been. I seem to have forgotten
all that makes it glorious to be man.--'Tis an omission that renders the
book philosophically unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may
please in frivolous circles.
To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed I
wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards him an
almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my reader:--if
it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine.
R. L. S.
AN INLAND VOYAGE
ANTWERP TO BOOM
We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and a lot of dock
porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the slip. A crowd
of children followed cheering. The _Cigarette_ went off in a splash and
a bubble of small breaking water. Next moment the _Arethusa_ was after
her. A steamer was coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse
warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay. But
in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the
Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other long-shore vanities
were left behind.
The sun shone brightly; the tide was making--four jolly miles an hour;
the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For my part, I had
never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my first experiment out
in the middle of this big river was not made without some trepidation.
What would happen when the wind first caught my little canvas? I suppose
it was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the unknown as to
publish a first book, or to marry. But my doubts were not of long
duration; and in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I
had tied my sheet.
I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; 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 commonplace, 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. I believe this is every one's experience: but an
apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents
mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish
sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been some
one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger; to tell me
how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how the good in
a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or
never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on
the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among us will go to
the head of the march to sound the heady drums.
It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past laden with
hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and grey
venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the embankment.
Here and there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy
shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. The wind served us well
up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel, and we were running pretty
free when we began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long way
on the right bank of the river. The left bank was still green and
pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here and there
a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with
her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver
spectacles. But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with
every minute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge
over the river, indicated the central quarters of the town.
Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that the
majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that they can speak
English, which is not justified by fact. This gave a kind of haziness to
our intercourse. As for the Hôtel de la Navigation, I think it is the
worst feature of the place. It boasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at
one end, looking on the street; and another sanded parlour, darker and
colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tricolor subscription box by way
of sole adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three
uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. The food, as
usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character; indeed, I
have never been able to detect anything in the nature of a meal among
this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day
long in an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly German, and somehow
falling between the two.
The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the old
piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold its
lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer
apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman;
but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight
with a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in
the Scots phrase) barnacled.
There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out of
England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts of
curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified. She spoke to us
very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as to the manners of
the present day in England, and obligingly corrected us when we
attempted to answer. But as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps our
information was not so much thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to
pick up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority. It is good policy,
and almost necessary in the circumstances. If a man finds a woman admire
him, were it only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin at
once to build upon the admiration. It is only by unintermittent snubbing
that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss
Harlowe would have said, "are such _encroachers_." For my part, I am
body and soul with the women; and after a well-married couple, there is
nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine huntress. It
is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried
the same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts.
But there is this about some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist
among men, that they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and
cold zone without the countenance of any trousered being. I declare,
although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to women
for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or indeed to
any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as
the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when I think of the slim and
lovely maidens, running the woods all night to the note of Diana's horn;
moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest
and the starlight, not touched by the commotion of man's hot and turbid
life--although there are plenty other ideals that I should prefer--I
find my heart beat at the thought of this one. 'Tis to fail in life, but
to fail with what a grace! That is not lost which is not regretted. And
where--here slips out the male--where would be much of the glory of
inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome?
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL
Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain began
heavy and chill. The water of the canal stood at about the drinking
temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion the surface was
covered with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion
of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through this
misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came
out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home humours.
A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bordered
the canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous
masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the
banks, the wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. There was
hardly enough to steer by. Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory.
A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path
with a "_C'est vite, mais c'est long_."
The canal was busy enough. 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 a flower-pot in one of
the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day's
dinner, and a handful of children. These barges were all tied one behind
the other with tow ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty; and
the line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange
construction. It had neither paddle-wheel nor screw; but by some gear
not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over
its bow a small bright chain which lay along the bottom of the canal,
and paying it out again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by
link, with its whole retinue of loaded skows. Until one had found out
the key to the enigma, there was something solemn and uncomfortable in
the progress of one of these trains, as it moved gently along the water
with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy alongside dying away into
the wake.
Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, 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. It is a mystery
how things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the
barges waiting their turn at a lock affords a fine lesson of how easily
the world may be taken. There should be many contented spirits on board,
for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.
The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the canal
slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge floats by
great forests and through great cities with their public buildings and
their lamps at night; and for the barge, in his floating home,
"travelling abed," it is merely as if he were listening to another man's
story or turning the leaves of a picture-book in which he had no
concern. He may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the
banks of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside.
There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of
health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy
people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet
time of it in life, and dies all the easier.
I am sure I would rather be a barge 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. The barge is on shipboard--he is master in his own
ship--he can land whenever he will--he can never be kept beating off a
lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron; and,
so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly still with him as is
compatible with the return of bed-time or the dinner-hour. It is not
easy to see why a barge should ever die.
Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful reach of
canal like a squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. There were two
eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the _Arethusa_; and
two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the _Cigarette_. The
master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course of
disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked
_à la papier_, he dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish
newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two
minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain
began to patter on our shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as we
could. The spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught flame
every minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long, there
were several burnt fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of
cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so much display; and
when we desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound egg was
little more than loo-warm; and as for _à la papier_, it was a cold and
sordid _fricassée_ of printer's ink and broken egg-shell. We made shift
to roast the other two, by putting them close to the burning spirits;
and that with better success. And then we uncorked the bottle of wine,
and sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees. It rained
smartly. Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no
nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business; and
people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for
laughter. From this point of view, even egg _à la papier_ offered by way
of food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this
manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not invite
repetition; and from that time forward, the Etna voyaged like a
gentleman in the locker of the _Cigarette_.
It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and we got
aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away. The rest of the
journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the unfavouring
air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then a spell of paddling,
drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly trees.
It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-lane,
going on from village to village. Things had a settled look, as in
places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges
as we went below, with a true conservative feeling. But even more
conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go
by without one glance. They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and
along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. They were
indifferent, like pieces of dead nature. They did not move any more than
if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered,
the water lapped, but they continued in one stay like so many churches
established by law. You might have trepanned every one of their innocent
heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their
skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber
stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I do
dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever and
a day, by still and depopulated waters.
At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress who
spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple of
leagues from Brussels. At the same place the rain began again. It fell
in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was thrown up
into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There were no beds to be
had in the neighbourhood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and
address ourselves to steady paddling in the rain.
Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered
windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich
and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of
the canal. I seem to have seen something of the same effect in
engravings: opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage
of storm. And throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart, which
trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform
distance in our wake.
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE
The rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the air was
chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of us. Nay, now
we found ourselves near the end of the Allée Verte, and on the very
threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by a serious difficulty. The
shores were closely lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the lock.
Nowhere was there any convenient landing-place; nowhere so much as a
stable-yard to leave the canoes in for the night. We scrambled ashore
and entered an _estaminet_ where some sorry fellows were drinking with
the landlord. The landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no
coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come
with no mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of
us. One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the corner
of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something else
besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by his
hearers.
Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin, and at the
top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The _Arethusa_
addressed himself to these. One of them said there would be no
difficulty about a night's lodging for our boats; and the other, taking
a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by Searle and Son.
The name was quite an introduction. Half a dozen other young men came
out of a boat-house bearing the superscription ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and
joined in the talk. They were all very polite, voluble, and
enthusiastic; and their discourse was interlarded with English boating
terms, and the names of English boat-builders and English clubs. I do
not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where I should have
been so warmly received by the same number of people. We were English
boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. I wonder
if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English Protestants
when they came across the Channel out of great tribulation. But, after
all, what religion knits people so closely as a common sport?
The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were washed down for
us by the Club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything
made as snug and tidy as a picture. And in the meanwhile we were led
upstairs by our new-found brethren, for so more than one of them stated
the relationship, and made free of their lavatory. This one lent us
soap, that one a towel, a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags.
And all the time such questions, such assurances of respect and
sympathy! I declare I never knew what glory was before.
"Yes, yes; the _Royal Sport Nautique_ is the oldest club in Belgium."
"We number two hundred."
"We"--this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract of many
speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great deal of talk;
and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems to me to
be--"We have gained all races, except those where we were cheated by the
French."
"You must leave all your wet things to be dried."
"O! _entre frères!_ In any boat-house in England we should find the
same." (I cordially hope they might.)
"_En Angleterre, vous employez des sliding-seats, n'est-ce pas?_"
"We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening,
_voyez-vous, nous sommes sèrieux_."
These were the words. They were all employed over the frivolous
mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in the evening they
found some hours for the serious concerns of life. I may have a wrong
idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark. People
connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their days in
getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards. It is their
profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover
their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really and
originally like, from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce.
And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite
legible in their hearts. They had still those clean perceptions of what
is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which envious
old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The nightmare illusion of middle
age, the bear's hug of custom gradually squeezing the life out of a
man's soul, had not yet begun for these happy-starred young Belgians.
They still knew that the interest they took in their business was a
trifling affair compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection
for nautical sports. To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying
Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept
your soul alive. Such a man may be generous; he may be honest in
something more than the commercial sense; he may love his friends with
an elective, personal sympathy, and not accept them as an adjunct of the
station to which he has been called. He may be a man, in short, acting
on his own instincts, keeping in his own shape that God made him in; and
not a mere crank in the social engine-house, welded on principles that
he does not understand, and for purposes that he does not care for.
For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than
fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an
office, who says so. And for certain the one is a great deal better for
the health. There should be nothing so much a man's business as his
amusements. Nothing but money-grubbing can be put forward to the
contrary; no one but
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven,
durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that would represent
the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for
mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their
transactions; for the man is more important than his services. And when
my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his hopeful
youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his
ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and
whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched
Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk.
When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to the
Club's prosperity, one of their number escorted us to an hotel. He would
not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass of wine.
Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand why prophets were
unpopular in Judea, where they were best known. For three stricken
hours did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and
boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough to order our bedroom
candles.
We endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the diversion
did not last a moment: the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied,
answered the question, and then breasted once more into the swelling
tide of his subject. I call it his subject; but I think it was he who
was subjected. The _Arethusa_, who holds all racing as a creature of the
devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma. He durst not own his
ignorance, for the honour of Old England, and spoke away about English
clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears.
Several times, and, once above all, on the question of sliding-seats,
he was within an ace of exposure. As for the _Cigarette_, who has rowed
races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his
wanton youth, his case was still more desperate; for the Royal Nautical
proposed that he should take an oar in one of their eights on the
morrow, to compare the English with the Belgian stroke. I could see my
friend perspiring in his chair whenever that particular topic came up.
And there was yet another proposal which had the same effect on both of
us. It appeared that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as most
other champions) was a Royal Nautical Sportsman. And if we would only
wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be so condescending
as to accompany us on our next stage. Neither of us had the least desire
to drive the coursers of the sun against Apollo.
When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and ordered
some brandy and water. The great billows had gone over our head. The
Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a man would wish
to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought too nautical for
us. We began to see that we were old and cynical; we liked ease and the
agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and the other subject;
we did not want to disgrace our native land by messing an eight, or
toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist. In short, we had
recourse to flight. It seemed ungrateful, but we tried to make that good
on a card loaded with sincere compliments. And indeed it was no time for
scruples; we seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our
necks.
AT MAUBEUGE
Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal Nauticals,
partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks
between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by
train across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks in a day's
journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole distance on
foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment to
the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all
right-thinking children.
To pass the frontier even in a train is a difficult matter for the
_Arethusa_. He is somehow or other a marked man for the official eye.
Wherever he journeys there are the officers gathered together. Treaties
are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit
throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on all
the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly clergymen,
schoolmistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and
rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, "Murray" in hand, over the
railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the _Arethusa_ is
taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing.
If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about
the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he is
suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated by a
general incredulity. He is a born British subject, yet he has never
succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality. He
flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for
anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable
means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of
official or popular distrust....
For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, too, have been knolled to
church, and sat at good men's feasts; but I bear no mark of it. I am as
strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles. I might come from
any part of the globe, it seems, except from where I do. My ancestors
have laboured in vain, and the glorious Constitution cannot protect me
in my walks abroad. It is a great thing, believe me, to present a good
normal type of the nation you belong to.
Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; but I was,
and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at last between
accepting the humiliation and being left behind by the train. I was
sorry to give way; but I wanted to get to Maubeuge.
Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the _Grand Cerf_. It
seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen; at least,
these were all that we saw, except the hotel servants. We had to stay
there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us, and at
last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back to liberate
them. There was nothing to do, nothing to see. We had good meals, which
was a great matter; but that was all.
The _Cigarette_ was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the
fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. And
besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the other's
fortified places already, these precautions are of the nature of
shutting the stable door after the steed is away. But I have no doubt
they help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great thing if you
can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a
mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even the Freemasons, who have been
shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among
them, however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel himself to
be at bottom, but comes home from one of their _coenacula_ with a
portentous significance for himself.
It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can live
in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think the spectacle of a
whole life in which you have no part paralysis personal desire. You are
content to become a mere spectator. The baker stands in his door; the
colonel with his three medals goes by to the _café_ at night; the troops
drum and trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold as so many lions. It
would task language to say how placidly you behold all this. In a place
where you have taken some root, you are provoked out of your
indifference; you have a hand in the game; your friends are fighting
with the army. But in a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon
familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you
stand so far apart from the business that you positively forget it would
be possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around you,
that you do not remember yourself to be a man. Perhaps, in a very short
time, you would be one no longer. Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all
nature seething around them, with romance on every side; it would be
much more to the purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country
town, where they should see just so much of humanity as to keep them
from desiring more, and only the stale externals of man's life. These
externals are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead
language in our eyes and ears. They have no more meaning than an oath or
a salutation. We are so much accustomed to see married couples going to
church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and
novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they wish
to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live
for each other.
One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his
outside. That was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough looking
little man, as well as I can remember; but with a spark of something
human in his soul. He had heard of our little journey, and came to me at
once in envious sympathy. How he longed to travel! he told me. How he
longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world before he went into
the grave! "Here I am," said he. "I drive to the station. Well. And then
I drive back again to the hotel. And so on every day, and all the week
round. My God, is that life?" I could not say I thought it was--for him.
He pressed me to tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to go; and
as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might not this have been a
brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies after Drake? But it is an
evil age for the gypsily inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on
a three-legged stool, he it is who has the wealth and glory.
I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the _Grand Cerf_?
Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny when
we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined him for good.
Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and
pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the
sunset every day above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that it is
a respectable position to drive an omnibus? Very well. What right has
he, who likes it not, to keep those who would like it dearly out of this
respectable position? Suppose a dish were not to my taste, and you told
me that it was a favourite amongst the rest of the company, what should
I conclude from that? Not to finish the dish against my stomach, I
suppose.
Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise
superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint
that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this:
that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and
superfluously useless, although it were as respectable as the Church of
England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all
concerned.
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED
TO QUARTES
About three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the _Grand Cerf_
accompanied us to the water's edge. The man of the omnibus was there
with haggard eyes. Poor cage-bird! Do I not remember the time when I
myself haunted the station, to watch train after train carry its
complement of freemen into the night, and read the names of distant
places on the time-bills with indescribable longings?
We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began. The wind
was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of nature
any more clement than the doings of the sky. For we passed through a
stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely
enough diversified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow
among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather.
But the wind blew so hard, we could get little else to smoke. There were
no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. A
group of children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a
little distance all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder what they
thought of us.
At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place being
steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. Near a dozen grimy
workmen lent us a hand. They refused any reward; and, what is much
better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of insult.
"It is a way we have in our countryside," said they. And a very
becoming way it is. In Scotland, where also you will get services for
nothing, the good people reject your money as if you had been trying to
corrupt a voter. When people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it
is worth while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be common
to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod
threescore years and ten in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our
ears from birth to burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand, and
almost offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act
of war against the wrong.
After Hautmont, 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 great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms;
and the fields, as they were often very 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 atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting
purity. 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 the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically marked. One
beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black, came to
the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me as I went
by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play. A moment after I
heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling
to shore. The bank had given way under his feet.
Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and a
great many fishermen. These sat along the edges of the meadows,
sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score. They
seemed stupefied with contentment; and when we induced them to exchange
a few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded quiet and
far away. There was a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the
kind of fish for which they set their lures; although they were all
agreed in this, that the river was abundantly supplied. Where it was
plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we
could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them had ever
caught a fish at all. I hope, since the afternoon was so lovely, that
they were one and all rewarded; and that a silver booty went home in
every basket for the pot. Some of my friends would cry shame on me for
this; but I prefer a man, were he only an angler, to the bravest pair of
gills in all God's waters. I do not affect fishes unless when cooked in
sauce; whereas an angler is an important piece of river scenery, and
hence deserves some recognition among canoeists. He can always tell you
where you are after a mild fashion; and his quiet presence serves to
accentuate the solitude and stillness, and remind you of the glittering
citizens below your boat.
The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills,
that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes. There were
some children on the tow-path, with whom the _Cigarette_ fell into a
chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. It was in vain that I warned
him. In vain I told him, in English, that boys were the most dangerous
creatures; and if once you began with them, it was safe to end in a
shower of stones. For my own part, whenever anything was addressed to
me, I smiled gently and shook my head as though I were an inoffensive
person inadequately acquainted with French. For indeed I have had such
experience at home, that I would sooner meet many wild animals than a
troop of healthy urchins.
But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters. When the
_Cigarette_ went off to make inquiries, I got out upon the bank to smoke
a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once the centre of much
amiable curiosity. The children had been joined by this time by a young
woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and this gave me more
security. When I let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl
nodded her head with a comical grown-up air. "Ah, you see," she said,
"he understands well enough now; he was just making believe." And the
little group laughed together very good-naturedly.
They were much impressed when they heard we came from England; and the
little girl proffered the information that England was an island "and a
far way from here--_bien loin d'ici_."
"Ay, you may say that,--a far way from here," said the lad with one arm.
I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they seemed to make
it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first saw the day.
They admired the canoes very much. And I observed one piece of delicacy
in these children, which is worthy of record. They had been deafening us
for the last hundred yards with petitions for a sail; ay, and they
deafened us to the same tune next morning when we came to start; but
then, when the canoes were lying empty, there was no word of any such
petition. Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a
vessel? I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil; unless
perhaps the two were the same thing! And yet 'tis a good tonic; the cold
tub and bath-towel of the sentiments; and positively necessary to life
in cases of advanced sensibility.
From the boats they turned to my costume. They could not make enough of
my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe.
"They make them like that in England," said the boy with one arm. I was
glad he did not know how badly we make them in England nowadays. "They
are for people who go away to sea," he added, "and to defend one's life
against great fish."
I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little
group at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even my pipe, although it
was an ordinary French clay, pretty well "trousered," as they call it,
would have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so far away.
And if my feathers were not very fine in themselves, they were all from
over seas. One thing in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all
politeness; and that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes. I
suppose they were sure the mud at any rate was a home product. The
little girl (who was the genius of the party) displayed her own sabots
in competition; and I wish you could have seen how gracefully and
merrily she did it.
The young woman's milk-can, a great amphora of hammered brass, stood
some way off upon the sward. I was glad of an opportunity to divert
public attention from myself, and return some of the compliments I had
received. So I admired it cordially both for form and colour, telling
them, and very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold. They were not
surprised. The things were plainly the boast of the countryside. And the
children expatiated on the costliness of these amphorae, which sell
sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried
on donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in
themselves; and how they were to be seen all over the district, and at
the larger farms in great number and of great size.
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
WE ARE PEDLARS
The _Cigarette_ returned with good news. There were beds to be had some
ten minutes' walk from where we were, at a place called Pont. We stowed
the canoes in a granary, and asked among the children for a guide. The
circle at once widened round us, and our offers of reward were received
in dispiriting silence. We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the
children; they might speak to us in public places, and where they had
the advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to venture off alone
with two uncouth and legendary characters, who had dropped from the
clouds upon their hamlet this quiet afternoon, sashed and be-knived, and
with a flavour of great voyages. The owner of the granary came to our
assistance, singled out one little fellow and threatened him with
corporalities; or I suspect we should have had to find the way for
ourselves. As it was, he was more frightened at the granary man than the
strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the former. But I fancy
his little heart must have been going at a fine rate; for he kept
trotting at a respectful distance in front, and looking back at us with
scared eyes. Not otherwise may the children of the young world have
guided Jove or one of his Olympian compeers on an adventure.
A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering
windmill. The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields. A brisk
little woman passed us by. She was seated across a donkey between a pair
of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her
heels upon the donkey's side, and scattered shrill remarks among the
wayfarers. It was notable that none of the tired men took the trouble to
reply. Our conductor soon led us out of the lane and across country. The
sun had gone down, but the west in front of us was one lake of level
gold. The path wandered a while in the open, and then passed under a
trellis like a bower indefinitely prolonged. On either hand were shadowy
orchards; cottages lay low among the leaves, and sent their smoke to
heaven; every here and there, in an opening, appeared the great gold
face of the west.
I never saw the _Cigarette_ in such an idyllic frame of mind. He waxed
positively lyrical in praise of country scenes. I was little less
exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows, the rich
lights and the silence, made a symphonious accompaniment about our walk;
and we both determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep in
hamlets.
At last the path went between two houses, and turned the party out into
a wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach on
either hand, by an unsightly village. The houses stood well back,
leaving a ribbon of waste land on either side of the road, where there
were stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish-heaps, and a little
doubtful grass. Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of
the street. 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.
The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was full, or else
the landlady did not like our looks. I ought to say, that with our long,
damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a doubtful type of
civilization: like rag-and-bone men, the _Cigarette_ imagined. "These
gentlemen are pedlars?--_Ces messieurs sont des marchands?_"--asked the
landlady. And then, without waiting for an answer, which I suppose she
thought superfluous in so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who
lived hard by the tower, and took in travellers to lodge.
Thither went we. But the butcher was flitting, and all his beds were
taken down. Or else he didn't like our look. As a parting shot, we had
"These gentlemen are pedlars?"
It began to grow dark in earnest. We could no longer distinguish the
faces of the people who passed us by with an inarticulate good-evening.
And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with their oil; for
we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village. I believe
it is the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our predicament
every pace counted three times over. We were much cast down when we came
to the last auberge; and looking in at the dark door, asked timidly if
we could sleep there for the night. A female voice assented in no very
friendly tones. We clapped the bags down and found our way to chairs.
The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and
ventilators of the stove. But now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new
guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved us another expulsion; for
I cannot say she looked gratified at our appearance. We were in a large
bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of Music and
Painting, and a copy of the law against public drunkenness. On one side,
there was a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles. Two labourers
sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking
lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two; and the landlady began to
derange the pots upon the stove and set some beefsteak to grill.
"These gentlemen are pedlars?" she asked sharply. And that was all the
conversation forthcoming. We began to think we might be pedlars after
all. I never knew a population with so narrow a range of conjecture as
the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre. But manners and bearing have not a
wider currency than bank-notes. You have only to get far enough out of
your beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing. These
Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the average pedlar.
Indeed, we had some grounds for reflection while the steak was getting
ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and
how our best politeness and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit
quite suitably with the character of packmen. At least it seemed a good
account of the profession in France, that even before such judges we
could not beat them at our own weapons.
At last we were called to table. The two hinds (and one of them looked
sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with over-work and
under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of bread-berry,
some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with
sugar-candy, and one tumbler of swipes. The landlady, her son, and the
lass aforesaid, took the same. Our meal was quite a banquet by
comparison. We had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have been,
some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and
white sugar in our coffee.
You see what it is to be a gentleman--I beg your pardon, what it is to
be a pedlar. It had not before occurred to me that a pedlar was a great
man in a labourer's alehouse; but now that I had to enact the part for
an evening I found that so it was. He has in his hedge quarters somewhat
the same pre-eminency as the man who takes a private parlour in a hotel.
The more you look into it, the more infinite are the class distinctions
among men; and possibly, by a happy dispensation, there is no one at all
at the bottom of the scale; no one but can find some superiority over
somebody else, to keep up his pride withal.
We were displeased enough with our fare. Particularly the _Cigarette_,
for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the adventure, tough
beefsteak and all. According to the Lucretian maxim, our steak should
have been flavoured by the look of the other people's bread-berry. But
we did not find it so in practice. You may have a head-knowledge that
other people live more poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable--I
was going to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe--to sit at
the same table and pick your own superior diet from among their crusts.
I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy boy at school with his
birthday cake. It was odious enough to witness, I could remember; and I
had never thought to play the part myself. But there again you see what
it is to be a pedlar.
There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much more
charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. And I fancy it must
arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the easy and
the not so easy in these ranks. A workman or a pedlar cannot shutter
himself off from his less comfortable neighbours. If he treats himself
to a luxury he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what
should more directly lead to charitable thoughts?.... Thus the poor man,
camping out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful he
puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry.
But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the
fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters
are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly
bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new. He finds
himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of
Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the
skylarks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so
unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined at one table, this
philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT
Like the lackeys in Molière's farce, when the true nobleman broke in on
their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted with a
real pedlar. To make the lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen
like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration than the sort
of scurvy fellows we were taken for: like a lion among mice, or a ship
of war bearing down upon two cock-boats. Indeed, he did not deserve the
name of pedlar at all: he was a travelling merchant.
I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur Hector
Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the alehouse door in a tilt cart
drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a lean,
nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor,
and something the look of a horse-jockey. He had evidently prospered
without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with stern
simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening
passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture.
With him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair tied in a
yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse and
military _képi_. It was notable that the child was many degrees better
dressed than either of the parents. We were informed he was already at a
boarding-school; but the holidays having just commenced, he was off to
spend them with his parents on a cruise. An enchanting holiday
occupation, was it not, to travel all day with father and mother in the
tilt cart full of countless treasures; the green country rattling by on
either side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him with
envy and wonder? It is better fun, during the holidays, to be the son of
a travelling merchant than son and heir to the greatest cotton-spinner
in creation. And as for being a reigning prince--indeed I never saw one
if it was not Master Gilliard!
While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the donkey, and
getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed up the
remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and
Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day,
and was peevish and dazzled by the light. He was no sooner awake than he
began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and
cold potatoes--with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit to his
appetite.
The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little girl;
and the two children were confronted. Master Gilliard looked at her for
a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror
before he turns away. He was at that time absorbed in the galette. His
mother seemed crestfallen that he should display so little inclination
towards the other sex; and expressed her disappointment with some
candour and a very proper reference to the influence of years.
Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us hope she will
like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But it is odd enough: the very
women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem to find even
its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded in their own sons.
The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably because
she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and accustomed to
strange sights. And besides there was no galette in the case with her.
All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young lord.
The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child. Monsieur kept
insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the children at school by
name; and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and
exact to a strange degree, and, if asked anything, he would sit and
think--and think, and if he did not know it, "my faith, he wouldn't tell
you at all--_ma foi, il ne vous le dira pas_": which is certainly a very
high degree of caution. At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his
wife, with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at
such or such a time when he had said or done something memorable; and I
noticed that Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries. She herself was
not boastful in her vein, but she never had her fill of caressing the
child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that
was fortunate in his little existence. No schoolboy could have talked
more of the holidays which were just beginning and less of the black
school-time which must inevitably follow after. She showed, with a pride
perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen
with tops and whistles and string. When she called at a house in the way
of business, it appeared he kept her company; and whenever a sale was
made, received a sou out of the profit. Indeed they spoiled him vastly,
these two good people. But they had an eye to his manners for all that,
and reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which occurred from
time to time during supper.
On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar. I might
think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes in French
belonged to a different order; but it was plain that these distinctions
would be thrown away upon the landlady and the two labourers. In all
essential things we and the Gilliards cut very much the same figure in
the alehouse kitchen. M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and took a
higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the ground of
his driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot. I daresay
the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, though in no ill
sense, to be as far up in the profession as the new arrival.
And of one thing I am sure: that every one thawed and became more
humanized and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon
the scene. I would not very readily trust the travelling merchant with
any extravagant sum of money; but I am sure his heart was in the right
place. In this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places
in a man--above all, if you should find a whole family living together
on such pleasant terms,--you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest
for granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind
that you can do perfectly well without the rest, and that ten thousand
bad traits cannot make a single good one any the less good.
It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off to his
cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded to divest
himself of the better part of his raiment, and play gymnastics on his
mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of
laughter.
"Are you going to sleep alone?" asked the servant lass.
"There's little fear of that," says Master Gilliard.
"You sleep alone at school," objected his mother. "Come, come, you must
be a man."
But he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays;
that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the discussion with
kisses: his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she.
There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should
sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio. We, on our part,
had firmly protested against one man's accommodation for two; and we had
a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the
beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one table. There was not so much
as a glass of water. But the window would open, by good fortune.
Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty
snoring: the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people of the inn,
all at it, I suppose, with one consent. The young moon outside shone
very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the alehouse where all
we pedlars were abed.
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED
TO LANDRECIES
In the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out to us
two pails of water behind the street-door. "_Voilà de l'eau pour vous
débarbouiller_," says she. And so there we made a shift to wash
ourselves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer
doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods
for the day's campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a
part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo
crackers all over the floor.
I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in France;
perhaps Austerlitz crackers. There is a great deal in the point of view.
Do you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of Southampton, was
put down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge?
He had a mind to go home again, it seems.
Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk from
Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water. We left our
bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet orchards
unencumbered. Some of the children were there to see us off, but we were
no longer the mysterious beings of the night before. A departure is much
less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the golden evening.
Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we
should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity.
The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags,
were overcome with marveling. At sight of these two dainty little
boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining
from the sponge, 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 rapt
observers. These gentlemen pedlars, indeed! Now you see their quality
too late.
The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps. We were
soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once
more. But there were some calm intervals, and one notably, when we were
skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place
most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the
riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft
into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full
of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and
nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses
and public monuments? 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 sweetbrier.
I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most civil
society. An old oak that has been growing where he stands since before
the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater
part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and
death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in
history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted,
their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings
pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful,
giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but
the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? Heine wished to lie like
Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with one
tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be
buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate from
oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the
forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green spires, so
that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness and dignity. I think I
feel a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to bough in my vast
mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven,
leafy surface.
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. And the rest of
the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in squalls, until
one's heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding weather. It was odd how
the showers began when we had to carry the boats over a lock, and must
expose our legs. They always did. This is a sort of thing that readily
begets a personal feeling against nature. There seems no reason why the
shower should not come five minutes before or five minutes after,
unless you suppose an intention to affront you. The _Cigarette_ had a
mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties. But I
had to bear the brunt uncovered. I began to remember that nature was a
woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great
satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred. He instanced, as
a cognate matter, the action of the tides, "which," said he, "was
altogether designed for the confusion of canoeists, except in so far as
it was calculated to minister to a barren vanity on the part of the
moon."
At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused to go any
farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank to have a
reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I take to have been the devil,
drew near and questioned me about our journey. In the fullness of my
heart I laid bare our plans before him. He said it was the silliest
enterprise that ever he heard of. Why, did I not know, he asked me, that
it was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to mention
that, at this season of the year, we should find the Oise quite dry?
"Get into a train, my little young man," said he, "and go you away home
to your parents." I was so astounded at the man's malice that I could
only stare at him in silence. A tree would never have spoken to me like
this. At last I got out with some words. We had come from Antwerp
already, I told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the
rest in spite of him. Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I
would do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not. The
pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to my
canoe, and marched off, waggling his head.
I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows, who
imagined I was the _Cigarette's_ servant, on a comparison, I suppose, of
my bare jersey with the other's mackintosh, and asked me many questions
about my place and my master's character. I said he was a good enough
fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head. "O no, no," said one,
"you must not say that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him."
I believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again. It
was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, as if
they were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman, and
have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young men.
When I recounted this affair to the _Cigarette_, "They must have a
curious idea of how English servants behave," says he, dryly, "for you
treated me like a brute beast at the lock."
I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a fact.
AT LANDRECIES
At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we found
a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-jugs with real
water in them, and dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real wine.
After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements
during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances fell
on my heart like sunshine. There was an English fruiterer at dinner,
travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the _café_ we
watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at corks, and I don't
know why, but this pleased us.
It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected; for
the weather next day was simply bedlamite. It is not the place one would
have chosen for a day's rest; for it consists almost entirely of
fortifications. Within the ramparts 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
ever heard of that military hero, we bore the associations of the spot
with fortitude.
In all garrison towns, guard-calls and _réveilles_, and such like, make
a fine romantic interlude in civic business. Bugles, and drums, and
fifes are of themselves most excellent things in nature; and when they
carry the mind to marching armies, and the picturesque vicissitudes of
war, they stir up something proud in the heart. But in a shadow of a
town like Landrecies, with little else moving, these points of war made
a proportionate commotion. Indeed, they were the only things to
remember. 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.
The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological
effect--nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape,--stands alone
among the instruments of noise. And if it be true, as I have heard it
said, that drums are covered with asses' skin, what a picturesque irony
is there in that! As if this long-suffering animal's hide had not been
sufficiently belaboured during life, now by Lyonnese costermongers, now
by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor
hinder quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after
night round the streets of every garrison town in Europe. And up the
heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag
a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also
must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades,
batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.
Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this
trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in life,
and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this
state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin
reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a
man's heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses
which we, in our big way of talking nickname Heroism:--is there not
something in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's persecutors? Of
old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale, and I must
endure; but now that I am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely
audible in country lanes have become stirring music in front of the
brigade; and for every blow that you lay on my old great-coat you will
see a comrade stumble and fall.
Not long after the drums had passed the _café_ the _Cigarette_ and the
_Arethusa_ began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was
only a door or two away. But although we had been somewhat indifferent
to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us. All day, we
learned, people had been running out between the squalls to visit our
two boats. Hundreds of persons, so said report, although it fitted ill
with our idea of the town--hundreds of persons had inspected them where
they lay in a coal-shed. We were becoming lions in Landrecies, who had
been only pedlars the night before in Pont.
And now, when we left the _café_, we were pursued and overtaken at
the hotel door by no less a person than the _Juge de Paix:_ a
functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots
Sheriff-Substitute. He gave us his card and invited us to sup with
him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do
these things. It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he; and
although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place,
we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so
politely introduced.
The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed bachelor's
establishment, with a curious collection of old brass warming-pans upon
the walls. Some of these were most elaborately carved. It seemed a
picturesque idea for a collector. You could not help thinking how many
nightcaps had wagged over these warming-pans in past generations; what
jests may have been made and kisses taken, while they were in service;
and how often they had been uselessly paraded in the bed of death. If
they could only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes
had they not been present!
The wine was excellent. When we made the Judge our compliments upon a
bottle, "I do not give it you as my worst," said he. I wonder when
Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces. They are worth learning;
they set off life, and make ordinary moments ornamental.
There were two other Landrecienses present. One was the collector of
something or other, I forget what; the other, we were told, was the
principal notary of the place. So it happened that we all five more or
less followed the law. At this rate, the talk was pretty certain to
become technical. The _Cigarette_ expounded the Poor Laws very
magisterially. And a little later I found myself laying down the Scots
Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know nothing. The
collector and the notary, who were both married men, accused the Judge,
who was a bachelor, of having started the subject. He deprecated the
charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all the men I have ever
seen, be they French or English. How strange that we should all, in our
unguarded moments, rather like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the
women!
As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits
proved better than the wine; the company was genial. This was the
highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise. After all,
being in a Judge's house, was there not something semi-official in the
tribute? And so, remembering what a great country France is, we did full
justice to our entertainment. Landrecies had been a long while asleep
before we returned to the hotel; and the sentries on the ramparts were
already looking for daybreak.
SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL
CANAL BOATS
Next day we made a late start in the rain. The Judge politely escorted
us to the end of the lock under an umbrella. We had now brought
ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather not often
attained except in the Scottish Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a
glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was not
heavy, we counted the day almost fair.
Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal, many of them
looking mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jerkin of Archangel tar
picked out with white and green. Some carried gay iron railings, and
quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children played on the decks, as
heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron side;
men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did
their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of
watch-dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside
until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word
to the dog aboard the next. We must have seen something like a hundred
of these embarkations in the course of that day's paddle, ranged one
after another like the houses in a street; and from not one of them were
we disappointed of this accompaniment. It was like visiting a menagerie,
the _Cigarette_ remarked.
These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the
mind. They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their
washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene; and yet if
only the canal below were to open, one junk after another would hoist
sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of France; and the
impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four winds. The
children who played together to-day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each
at his own father's threshold, when and where might they next meet?
For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal of
our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of Europe. It
was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a swift river at the
tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses for days together on some
inconsiderable junction. We should be seen pottering on deck in all the
dignity of years, our white beards falling into our laps. We were ever
to be busied among paint-pots; so that there should be no white fresher,
and no green more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals.
There should be books in the cabin, and tobacco-jars, and some old
Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as a violet in
April. There should be a flageolet, whence the _Cigarette_, with cunning
touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying
that aside, upraise his voice--somewhat thinner than of yore, and with
here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note--in rich and
solemn psalmody.
All this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard one of these
ideal houses of lounging, I had plenty to choose from, as I coasted one
after another, and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. At last I saw a
nice old man and his wife looking at me with some interest, so I gave
them good-day and pulled up alongside. I began with a remark upon their
dog, which had somewhat the look of a pointer; thence I slid into a
compliment on Madame's flowers, and thence into a word in praise of
their way of life.
If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get a slap in
the face at once. The life would be shown to be a vile one, not without
a side shot at your better fortune. Now, what I like so much in France
is the clear unflinching recognition by everybody of his own luck. They
all know on which side their bread is buttered, and take a pleasure in
showing it to others, which is surely the better part of religion. And
they scorn to make a poor mouth over their poverty, which I take to be
the better part of manliness. I have heard a woman, in quite a better
position at home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer to her own
child with a horrid whine as "a poor man's child." I would not say such
a thing to the Duke of Westminster. And the French are full of this
spirit of independence. Perhaps it is the result of republican
institutions, as they call them. Much more likely it is because there
are so few people really poor that the whiners are not enough to keep
each other in countenance.
The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired their
state. They understood perfectly well, they told me, how Monsieur envied
them. Without doubt Monsieur was rich; and in that case he might make a
canal boat as pretty as a villa--_joli comme un château_. And with that
they invited me on board their own water villa. They apologized for
their cabin; they had not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be.
"The fire should have been here, at this side," explained the husband.
"Then one might have a writing-table in the middle--books--and"
(comprehensively) "all. It would be quite coquettish--_ça serait
tout-à-fait coquet_." And he looked about him as though the improvements
were already made. It was plainly not the first time that he had thus
beautified his cabin in imagination; and when next he makes a hit, I
should expect to see the writing-table in the middle.
Madame had three birds in a cage. They were no great thing, she
explained. Fine birds were so dear. They had sought to get a
_Hollandais_ last winter in Rouen (Rouen? thought I; and is this whole
mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chimneys, so far a
traveller as that? and as homely an object among the cliffs and orchards
of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?)--they had sought to get
a _Hollandais_ last winter in Rouen; but these cost fifteen francs
apiece--picture it--fifteen francs!
"_Pour un tout petit oiseau_--For quite a little bird," added the
husband.
As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good people
began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in life, as if
they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies. It was, in the Scots
phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour with the world. If
people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so
long as he boasts of what he really has, I believe they would do it more
freely and with a better grace.
They began to ask about our voyage. You should have seen how they
sympathized. They seemed half ready to give up their barge and follow
us. But these _canaletti_ are only gypsies semi-domesticated. The
semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's
brow darkened. "_Cependant_," she began, and then stopped; and then
began again by asking me if I were single.
"Yes," said I.
"And your friend who went by just now?"
He also was unmarried.
O then--all was well. She could not have wives left alone at home; but
since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the best we
could.
"To see about one in the world," said the husband, "_il n'y a que
ça_--there is nothing else worth while. A man, look you, who sticks in
his own village like a bear," he went on, "--very well, he sees
nothing. And then death is the end of all. And he has seen nothing."
Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this canal
in a steamer.
"Perhaps Mr. Moens in the _Ytene_," I suggested.
"That's it," assented the husband. "He had his wife and family with him,
and servants. He came ashore at all the locks and asked the name of the
villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote
them down. Oh, he wrote enormously! I suppose it was a wager."
A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but it
seemed an original reason for taking notes.
THE OISE IN FLOOD
Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light
country cart at Étreux: and we were soon following them along the side
of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars. Agreeable villages
lay here and there on the slope of the hill; notably, Tupigny, with the
hop-poles hanging their garlands in the very street, and the houses
clustered with grapes. There was a faint enthusiasm on our passage;
weavers put their heads to the windows; children cried out in ecstasy at
sight of the two "boaties"--_barquettes_; and bloused pedestrians, who
were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the nature of
his freight.
We had a shower or two, but light and flying. The air was clean and
sweet among all these green fields and green things growing. There was
not a touch of autumn in the weather. And when, at Vadencourt, we
launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set
all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise.
The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt all the way
to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart at each
mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea. The water was
yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among half-submerged
willows, and made an angry clatter along stony shores. The course kept
turning and turning in a narrow and well-timbered valley. Now the river
would approach the side, and run griding along the chalky base of the
hill, and show us a few open colza-fields among the trees. Now it would
skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through
a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight. Again,
the foliage closed so thickly in front that there seemed to be no issue;
only a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars, under which
the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past like a
piece of the blue sky. On these different manifestations the sun poured
its clear and catholic looks. The shadows lay as solid on the swift
surface of the stream as on the stable meadows. The light sparkled
golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills in communion
with our eyes. And all the while the river never stopped running or took
breath; and the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering from top to
toe.
There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on
the shivering of the reeds. There are not many things in nature more
striking to man's eye. It is such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and
to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every
nook along the shore is enough to infect a silly human with alarm.
Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist-deep in the
stream. Or perhaps they have never got accustomed to the speed and fury
of the river's flux, or the miracle of its continuous body. Pan once
played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he
still plays upon these later generations down all the valley of the
Oise; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the
beauty and the terror of the world.
The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took it up and shook it,
and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a nymph. To
keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying of
the paddle. The river was in such a hurry for the sea! Every drop of
water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened crowd. But
what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded? All the objects of
sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing
river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight
that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument, and the blood
shook oft its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways
of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if
circulation were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of
threescore years and ten. The reeds might nod their heads in warning,
and with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was
strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the
willows. But the reeds had to stand where they were, and those who stand
still are always timid advisers. As for us, we could have shouted aloud.
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.
Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the
exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer contain ourselves and our
content. The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and stretch
ourselves on shore. And so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on
the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world
excellent. It was the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it
with extreme complacency.
On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the hill, a
ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular intervals.
At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds against the sky: for
all the world (as the _Cigarette_ declared) like a toy Burns who should
have just ploughed up the Mountain Daisy. He was the only living thing
within view, unless we are to count the river.
On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed
among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon
musical on a chime of bells. There was something very sweet and taking
in the air he played; and we thought we had never heard bells speak so
intelligibly or sing so melodiously as these. It must have been to some
such measure that the spinners and the young maids sang "Come away,
Death," in the Shakespearian Illyria. There is so often a threatening
note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I
believe we have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but
these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive
cadence that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were
always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of
still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a
rookery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing,
good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the time of his
meditations. I could have blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever
may be concerned with such affairs in France, who had left these sweet
old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not held meetings, and made
collections, and had their names repeatedly printed in the local paper,
to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted substitutes,
who should bombard their sides to the provocation of a brand-new
bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with terror and riot.
At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew. The
piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of the
Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who have sat
out a noble performance and returned to work. The river was more
dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and violent.
All the way down we had had our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a
weir which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes
that we must withdraw the boats from the water and carry them round. But
the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds.
Every two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and
usually involved more than another in its fall. Often there was free
water at the end, and we could steer round the leafy promontory and hear
the water sucking and bubbling among the twigs. Often, again, when the
tree reached from bank to bank, there was room by lying close to shoot
through underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out
upon the trunk itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, when the
stream was too impetuous for this, there was nothing for it but to land
and "carry over." This made a fine series of accidents in the day's
career, and kept us aware of ourselves.
Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long way, and
still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the sun, the swift
pace, and the church bells, the river made one of its leonine pounces
round a corner, and I was aware of another fallen tree within a
stone-cast. I had my back-board down in a trice, and aimed for a place
where the trunk seemed high enough above the water, and the branches
not too thick to let me slip below. When a man has just vowed eternal
brotherhood with the universe, he is not in a temper to take great
determinations coolly, and this, which might have been a very important
determination for me, had not been taken under a happy star. The tree
caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make less
of myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands,
and bereaved me of my boat. The _Arethusa_ swung round broadside on,
leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and, thus
disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away
down stream.
I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which
I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about. My thoughts
were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung to my
paddle. The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my
shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the
Oise in my trousers-pockets. You can never know, till you try it, what a
dead pull a river makes against a man. Death himself had me by the
heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now join personally
in the fray. And still I held to my paddle. At last I dragged myself on
to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a
mingled sense of humour and injustice. A poor figure I must have
presented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team. But there was the
paddle in my hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these
words inscribed: "He clung to his paddle."
The _Cigarette_ had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the
moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side. He
had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already on my
elbows I had declined and sent him down stream after the truant
_Arethusa_. The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe,
let alone two, upon his hands. So I crawled along the trunk to shore,
and proceeded down the meadows by the riverside. I was so cold that my
heart was sore. I had now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly
shivered. I could have given any of them a lesson. The _Cigarette_
remarked facetiously that he thought I was "taking exercise" as I drew
near, until he made out for certain that I was only twittering with
cold. I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the
india-rubber bag. But I was not my own man again for the rest of the
voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my
body. The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not,
I was a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the universe
had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a running
stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had heard
some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would the wicked river drag me
down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time? Nature's
good-humour was only skin-deep after all.
There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the stream,
and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in Origny
Sainte-Benoîte, when we arrived.
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOÎTE
A BY-DAY
The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest; indeed, I
do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice of services as
were here offered to the devout. And while the bells made merry in the
sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the beets
and colza.
In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a
foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music, "_O France, mes
amours_." It brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady called
in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. She was not
the first nor the second who had been taken with the song. There is
something very pathetic in the love of the French people, since the war,
for dismal patriotic music-making. I have watched a forester from Alsace
while someone was singing "_Les malheurs de la France_," at a baptismal
party in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau. He arose from the table and
took his son aside, close by where I was standing. "Listen, listen," he
said, bearing on the boy's shoulder, "and remember this, my son." A
little after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him
sobbing in the darkness.
The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made a
sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts
are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire. In
what other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world
into the street? But affliction heightens love; and we shall never know
we are Englishmen until we have lost India. Independent America is still
the cross of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer George without
abhorrence; and I never feel more warmly to my own land than when I see
the Stars and Stripes, and remember what our empire might have been.
The hawker's little book, which I purchased, was a curious mixture. Side
by side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the Paris music-halls,
there were many pastoral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I
thought, and instinct with the brave independence of the poorer class in
France. There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried in his axe, and
the gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade. It was not very well
written, this poetry of labour, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed
what was weak or wordy in the expression. The martial and the patriotic
pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish productions one and
all. The poet had passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang for an army
visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed; and sang not of
victory, but of death. There was a number in the hawker's collection
called "Conscrits Français," which may rank among the most dissuasive
war-lyrics on record. It would not be possible to fight at all in such a
spirit. The bravest conscript would turn pale if such a ditty were
struck up beside him on the morning of battle; and whole regiments would
pile their arms to its tune.
If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the influence of national
songs, you would say France was come to a poor pass. But the thing will
work its own cure, and a sound-hearted and courageous people weary at
length of sniveling over their disasters. Already Paul Déroulède has
written some manly military verses. There is not much of the
trumpet-note in them, perhaps, to stir a man's heart in his bosom; they
lack the lyrical elation, and move slowly; but they are written in a
grave, honourable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a
good cause. One feels as if one would like to trust Déroulède with
something. It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his
fellow-countrymen that they may be trusted with their own future. And in
the meantime, here is an antidote to "French Conscripts" and much other
doleful versification.
We had left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we shall
call Carnival. I did not properly catch his name, and perhaps that was
not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position to hand him down with
honour to posterity. To this person's premises we strolled in the course
of the day, and found quite a little deputation inspecting the canoes.
There was a stout gentleman with a knowledge of the river, which he
seemed eager to impart. There was a very elegant young gentleman in a
black coat, with a smattering of English, who led the talk at once to
the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. And then there were three handsome
girls from fifteen to twenty; and an old gentleman in a blouse, with no
teeth to speak of, and a strong country accent. Quite the pick of
Origny, I should suppose.
The _Cigarette_ had some mysteries to perform with his rigging in the
coach-house, so I was left to do the parade single-handed. I found
myself very much of a hero whether I would or not. The girls were full
of little shudderings over the dangers of our journey. And I thought it
would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies. My mishap of
yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep sensation. It was
Othello over again, with no less than three Desdemonas and a sprinkling
of sympathetic senators in the background. Never were the canoes more
flattered, or flattered more adroitly.
"It is like a violin!" cried one of the girls in an ecstasy.
"I thank you for the word, mademoiselle," said I. "All the more since
there are people who call out to me that it is like a coffin."
"Oh I but it is really like a violin. It is finished like a violin," she
went on.
"And polished like a violin," added a senator.
"One has only to stretch the cords," concluded another, "and then
tum-tumty-tum"--he imitated the result with spirit.
Was not this a graceful little ovation? Where this people finds the
secret of its pretty speeches, I cannot imagine; unless the secret
should be no other than a sincere desire to please! But then no disgrace
is attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas in England to
talk like a book is to give in one's resignation to society.
The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach-house, and somewhat
irrelevantly informed the _Cigarette_ that he was the father of the
three girls and four more: quite an exploit for a Frenchman.
"You are very fortunate," answered the _Cigarette_ politely.
And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, stole away
again.
We all got very friendly together. The girls proposed to start with us
on the morrow, if you please! And, jesting apart, every one was anxious
to know the hour of our departure. Now, when you are going to crawl into
your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable;
and so we told them not before twelve, and mentally determined to be off
by ten at latest.
Towards evening we went abroad again to post some letters. It was cool
and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for one or two
urchins who followed us as they might have followed a menagerie; the
hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides through the clear air;
and the bells were chiming for yet another service.
Suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth sister, in
front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. We had been very
merry with them a little while ago, to be sure. But what was the
etiquette of Origny? Had it been a country road, of course we should
have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips, ought
we to do even as much as bow? I consulted the _Cigarette_.
"Look," said he.
I looked. There were the four girls on the same spot; but now four backs
were turned to us, very upright and conscious. Corporal Modesty had
given the word of command, and the well-disciplined picket had gone
right-about-face like a single person. They maintained this formation
all the while we were in sight; but we heard them tittering among
themselves, and the girl whom we had not met laughed with open mouth,
and even looked over her shoulder at the enemy. I wonder was it
altogether modesty after all? or in part a sort of country provocation?
As we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating in the
ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees
that grow along their summit. It was too high up, too large, and too
steady for a kite; and as it was dark, it could not be a star. For
although a star were as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so amply
does the sun bathe heaven with radiance, that it would sparkle like a
point of light for us. The village was dotted with people with their
heads in air; and the children were in a bustle all along the street and
far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where we could still see
them running in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, which had
left St. Quentin at half-past five that evening. Mighty composedly the
majority of the grown people took it. But we were English, and were soon
running up the hill with the best. Being travellers ourselves in a small
way, we would fain have seen these other travellers alight.
The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill. All
the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared.
Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or come safely
to land somewhere in that blue uneven distance, into which the roadway
dipped and melted before our eyes? Probably the aeronauts were already
warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these
unhomely regions of the air. The night fell swiftly. Roadside trees and
disappointed sightseers, returning though the meadows, stood out in
black against a margin of low red sunset. It was cheerfuller to face the
other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the colour of
a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the white cliffs
behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk kilns.
The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in Origny
Sainte-Benoîte by the river.
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOÎTE
THE COMPANY AT TABLE
Although we came late for dinner, the company at table treated us to
sparkling wine. "That is how we are in France," said one. "Those who sit
down with us are our friends." And the rest applauded.
They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday with.
Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north. One
ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and beard,
the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small, not even a
lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its capture. For
such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson's, his
arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal
exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a
steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued
person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane:
"_Tristes têtes de Danois!_" as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.
I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good
fellows now gone down into the dust. We shall never again see Gaston in
his forest costume--he was Gaston with all the world, in affection, not
in disrespect--nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the
woodland horn. Never again shall his kind smile put peace among all
races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in France. Never
more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than he, sit
all unconsciously for his industrious pencil. He died too early, at the
very moment when he was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts, and
blossom into something worthy of himself; and yet none who knew him will
think he lived in vain. I never knew a man so little, for whom yet I had
so much affection; and I find it a good test of others, how much they
had learned to understand and value him. His was indeed a good influence
in life while he was still among us; he had a fresh laugh, it did you
good to see him; and however sad he may have been at heart, he always
bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took fortune's worst as it
were the showers of spring. But now his mother sits alone by the side of
Fontainebleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and
penurious youth.
Many of his pictures found their way across the Channel: besides those
which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in London with
two English pence, and perhaps twice as many words of English. If any
one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the manner of
Jacques, with this fine creature's signature, let him tell himself that
one of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his
lodging. There may be better pictures in the National Gallery; but not a
painter among the generations had a better heart. Precious in the sight
of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints.
It had need to be precious; for it is very costly, when by the stroke, a
mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and _peace-looker_, of a
whole society is laid in the ground with Caesar and the Twelve Apostles.
There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; and when the
dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the door for a figure that
is gone.
The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the
landlady's husband: not properly the landlord, since he worked himself
in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at evening as a
guest: a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with baldish
head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. On Saturday, describing
some paltry adventure at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into a score of
fragments. Whenever he made a remark, he would look all round the table
with his chin raised, and a spark of green light in either eye, seeking
approval. His wife appeared now and again in the doorway of the room,
where she was superintending dinner, with a "Henri, you forget
yourself," or a "Henri, you can surely talk without making such a
noise." Indeed, that was what the honest fellow could not do. On the
most trifling matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and
his voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. I never saw such a petard
of a man; I think the devil was in him. He had two favourite
expressions--"it is logical," or illogical, as the case might be; and
this other, thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a
banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous story: "I am a
proletarian, you see." Indeed, we saw it very well. God forbid that ever
I should find him handling a gun in Paris streets! That will not be a
good moment for the general public.
I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and evil of his
class, and to some extent of his country. It is a strong thing to say
what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although it be in doubtful
taste to repeat the statement too often in one evening. I should not
admire it in a duke, of course; but as times go, the trait is honourable
in a workman. On the other hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put
one's reliance upon logic; and our own logic particularly, for it is
generally wrong. We never know where we are to end, if once we begin
following words or doctors. There is an upright stock in a man's own
heart, that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the
sympathies and appetites, know a thing or two that have never yet been
stated in controversy. Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and,
like fisticuffs, they serve impartially with all sides. Doctrines do not
stand or fall by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they
are cleverly put. An able controversialist no more than an able general
demonstrates the justice of his cause. But France is all gone wandering
after one or two big words; it will take some time before they can be
satisfied that they are no more than words, however big; and when once
that is done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting.
The conversation opened with details of the day's shooting. When all the
sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory _pro indiviso_,
it is plain that many questions of etiquette and priority must arise.
"Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, "here is a field of
beet-root. Well. Here am I then. I advance, do I not? _Eh bien!
sacristi_," and the statement, waxing louder, rolls off into a
reverberation of oaths, the speaker glaring about for sympathy, and
everybody nodding his head to him in the name of peace.
The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in keeping order:
notably one of a Marquis.
"Marquis," I said, "if you take another step I fire upon you. You have
committed a dirtiness, Marquis."
Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and withdrew.
The landlord applauded noisily. "It was well done," he said. "He did all
that he could. He admitted he was wrong." And then oath upon oath. He
was no marquis-lover either, but he had a sense of justice in him, this
proletarian host of ours.
From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general comparison of
Paris and the country. The proletarian beat the table like a drum in
praise of Paris. "What is Paris? Paris is the cream of France. There are
no Parisians: it is you and I and everybody who are Parisians. A man has
eighty chances per cent to get on in the world in Paris." And he drew
a vivid sketch of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch,
making articles that were to go all over the world. "_Eh bien, quoi,
c'est magnifique, ça!_" cried he.
The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant's life; he thought
Paris bad for men and women; "centralization," said he----
But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. It was all logical, he
showed him, and all magnificent. "What a spectacle! What a glance for an
eye!" And the dishes reeled upon the table under a cannonade of blows.
Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the liberty of
opinion in France. I could hardly have shot more amiss. There was an
instant silence, and a great wagging of significant heads. They did not
fancy the subject, it was plain; but they gave me to understand that the
sad Northman was a martyr on account of his views. "Ask him a bit," said
they. "Just ask him."
"Yes, sir," said he, in his quiet way, answering me, although I had not
spoken, "I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in France than you
may imagine." And with that he dropped his eyes, and seemed to consider
the subject at an end.
Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or why, or when, was
this lymphatic bagman martyred? We concluded at once it was on some
religious question, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition,
which were principally drawn from Poe's horrid story, and the sermon in
"Tristram Shandy," I believe.
On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the question;
for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathizing deputation at our
departure, we found the hero up before us. He was breaking his fast on
white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of martyr,
I conclude. We had a long conversation, and made out what we wanted in
spite of his reserve. But here was a truly curious circumstance. It
seems possible for two Scotsmen and a Frenchman to discuss during a
long half-hour, and each nationality have a different idea in view
throughout. It was not till the very end that we discovered his heresy
had been political, or that he suspected our mistake. The terms and
spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in our eyes,
suited to religious beliefs. And _vice versa_.
Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries. Politics are
the religion of France; as Nanty Ewart would have said, "A d----d bad
religion"; while we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for little
differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew word which perhaps neither of
the parties can translate. And perhaps the misconception is typical of
many others that may never be cleared up: not only between people of
different race, but between those of different sex.
As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist, or perhaps only a
Communard, which is a very different thing; and had lost one or more
situations in consequence. I think he had also been rejected in
marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering business
which deceived me. He was a mild, gentle creature, anyway; and I hope he
has got a better situation, and married a more suitable wife since
then.
DOWN THE OISE
TO MOY
Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. Finding us easy in our ways,
he regretted having let us oil so cheaply; and taking me aside, told me
a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the
narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once
dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an
inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had
gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he
would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.
He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks. He grew
pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him in
silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the
landing-place, passed the word in English slang to the _Cigarette_.
In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, there must
have been fifty people about the bridge. We were as pleasant as we could
be with all but Carnival. We said good-bye, shaking hands with the old
gentleman who knew the river and the young gentleman who had a
smattering of English; but never a word for Carnival. Poor Carnival!
here was a humiliation. He who had been so much identified with the
canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had shown off the boats
and even the boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, to be now so
publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan! I never saw anybody look
more crestfallen than he. He hung in the background, coming timidly
forward ever and again as he thought he saw some symptom of a relenting
humour, and falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. Let
us hope it will be a lesson to him.
I would not have mentioned Carnival's peccadillo had not the thing been
so uncommon in France. This, for instance, was the only case of
dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole voyage. We talk very much
about our honesty in England. It is a good rule to be on your guard
wherever you hear great professions about a very little piece of virtue.
If the English could only hear how they are spoken of abroad they might
confine themselves for a while to remedying the fact; and perhaps even
when that was done, give us fewer of their airs.
The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at our start,
but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it was black with
sightseers! We were loudly cheered, and for a good way below young lads
and lasses ran along the bank, still cheering. What with current and
paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. It was no joke to keep
up with us upon the woody shore. But the girls picked up their skirts as
if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed until their breath
was out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of
companions; and just as they too had had enough, the foremost of the
three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not
Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus after all, could have
done a graceful thing more gracefully. "Come back again!" she cried; and
all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated the
words, "Come back." But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling,
and we were alone with the green trees and running water.
Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous
stream of life.
"The merchant bows unto the seaman's star,
The ploughman from the sun his season takes."
And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate. There is a
headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like a
straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is full of curves like this,
your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant
pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. For
though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it
will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little streams will
have fallen in; many exhalations risen towards the sun; and even
although it were the same acre, it will no more be the same river of
Oise. And thus, O graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my
life should carry me back again to where you await death's whistle by
the river, that will not be the old I who walks the street; and those
wives and mothers, say, will those be you?
There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact. In
these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. It
ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that I
strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all the
rest of the way with one hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve
mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the
meanwhile. We had to put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves
off the sand of the bottom with our feet. And still it went on its way
singing among the poplars, and making a green valley in the world. After
a good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so
agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my life;
which was after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that
had blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a
third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but from its
great preoccupation over its business of getting to the sea. A difficult
business, too; for the detours it had to make are not to be counted. The
geographers seem to have given up the attempt; for I found no map
represent the infinite contortion of its course. A fact will say more
than any of them. After we had been some hours, three if I mistake not,
flitting by the trees at this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came
upon a hamlet and asked where we were, we had got no farther than four
kilometres (say two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were not for
the honour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as well
have been standing still.
We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. The leaves
danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. The river hurried on
meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay. Little we cared. The river
knew where it was going; not so we: the less our hurry, where we found
good quarters and a pleasant theatre for a pipe. At that hour,
stockbrokers were shouting in Paris Bourse for two or three per cent;
but we minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a
hecatomb of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is the
resource of the faithless. Where a man can trust his own heart, and
those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in
the meanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question is solved.
We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon; because,
where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. If it
had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, we should have paddled
right into the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. We met a
man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much interested in our
cruise. And I was witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the
_Cigarette:_ who, because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts
of adventures in that country, where he has never been. He was quite
feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession.
Moy (pronounce Moÿ) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a
château in a moat. The air was perfumed with hemp from neighbouring
fields. At the Golden Sheep we found excellent entertainment. German
shells from the siege of La Fère, Nürnberg figures, gold-fish in a bowl,
and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the public room. The
landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body, with
something not far short of a genius for cookery. She had a guess of her
excellence herself. After every dish was sent in, she would come and
look on at the dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes. "_C'est
bon, n'est-ce pas?_" she would say; and when she had received a proper
answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. That common French dish,
partridge and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the Golden
Sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in
consequence. Sweet was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy.
LA FÈRE OF CURSED MEMORY
We lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we were fond of being
philosophical, and scorned long journeys and early starts on principle.
The place, moreover, invited to repose. People in elaborate shooting
costumes sallied from the château with guns and game-bags; and this was
a pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant
pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning. In this way, all the
world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the
reigning monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in
tranquility. An imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience.
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or
misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a
thunderstorm.
We made a very short day of it to La Fère; but the dusk was falling, and
a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats. La Fère is a
fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart. Between the
first and the second extends a region of waste land and cultivated
patches. Here and there along the wayside were posters forbidding
trespass in the name of military engineering. At last, a second gateway
admitted us to the town itself. Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs
of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the air. The town was full of
the military reserve, out for the French Autumn Manoeuvres, and the
reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable great-coats. It was
a fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the
windows.
The _Cigarette_ and I could not sufficiently congratulate each other on
the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fère.
Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such beds as we were to sleep
in!--and all the while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the
poplared countryside! It made our mouths water. The inn bore the name of
some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I
shall never forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as
we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but
from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. A rattle of
many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of tablecloth;
the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to
eat.
Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hostelry, with
all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers charged with viands,
you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp
rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do
not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort
of glory: but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen,
who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with
surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady, however: there she was,
heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. Her I asked
politely--too politely, thinks the _Cigarette_--if we could have beds:
she surveying us coldly from head to foot.
"You will find beds in the suburb," she remarked. "We are too busy for
the like of you."
If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of
wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I: "If we cannot
sleep, we may at least dine,"--and was for depositing my bag.
What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
landlady's face! She made a run at us, and stamped her foot.
"Out with you--out of the door!" she screeched. "_Sortez! sortez! sortez
par la porte!_"
I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the rain
and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a
disappointed mendicant. Where were the boating men of Belgium? where the
Judge and his good wines? and where the graces of Origny? Black, black
was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was that to the
blackness in our heart? This was not the first time that I have been
refused a lodging. Often and often have I planned what I should do if
such a misadventure happened to me again. And nothing is easier to plan.
But to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the indignity? Try
it; try it only once; and tell me what you did.
It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of
police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal rejection from
an inn-door, change your views upon the subject like a course of
lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world
bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air;
but once get under the wheels, and you wish society were at the devil. I
will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I
will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality.
For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever
it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire if it had been
handy. There was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval of
human institutions. As for the _Cigarette_, I never knew a man so
altered. "We have been taken for pedlars again," said he. "Good God,
what it must be to be a pedlar in reality!" He particularized a
complaint for every joint in the landlady's body. Timon was a
philanthropist alongside of him. And then, when he was at the top of his
maledictory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whimperingly to
commiserate the poor. "I hope to God," he said,--and I trust the prayer
was answered,--"that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this the
imperturbable _Cigarette_? This, this was he. O change beyond report,
thought, or belief!
Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew brighter
as the night increased in darkness. We trudged in and out of La Fère
streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people were copiously
dining; we saw stables where carters' nags had plenty of fodder and
clean straw; we saw no end of reservists, who were very sorry for
themselves this wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for their country
homes; but had they not each man his place in La Fère barracks? And we,
what had we?
There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. People gave us
directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the
effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace. We were
very sad people indeed by the time we had gone all over La Fère; and the
_Cigarette_ had already made up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup
off a loaf of bread. But right at the other end, the house next the
town-gate was full of light and bustle. "_Bazin, aubergiste, loge à
pied_," was the sign. "_À la Croix de Malte_." There were we received.
The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking; and we were
very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the
streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the
barracks.
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. There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he
said. And if any one has read Zola's description of the workman's
marriage-party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard
Bazin by way of antidote. 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, "and 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."
It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the clouds. We
sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. At the guardhouse
opposite, the guard was being for ever turned out, as trains of field
artillery kept clanking in out of the night, or patrols of horsemen
trotted by in their cloaks. 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?
DOWN THE OISE
THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY
Below La Fère the river runs through a piece of open pastoral country;
green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the Golden Valley. In wide
sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of
water visits and makes green the fields. Kine, and horses, and little
humorous donkeys, browse together in the meadows, and come down in
troops to the riverside to drink. They make a strange feature in the
landscape; above all when they are startled, and you see them galloping
to and fro with their incongruous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as
of great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations. There
were hills in the distance upon either hand; and on one side, the river
sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gobain.
The artillery were practicing at La Fère, and soon the cannon of heaven
joined in that loud play. Two continents of cloud met and exchanged
salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and
clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds
were all frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing
their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when
they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the
cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad
over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And
altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had a very rousing
battle-piece performed for our amusement.
At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the wet
meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and
grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace.
There was a manufacturing district about Chauny, and after that the
banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could see
nothing but clay sides, and one willow after another. Only, here and
there, we passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon
the bank would stare after us until we turned the corner. I daresay we
continued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a night after.
Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours longer by
their variety. When the showers were heavy, I could feel each drop
striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation of
small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I decided I should buy a
mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these
individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time
made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. The _Cigarette_
was greatly amused by these ebullitions. It gave him something else to
look at besides clay banks and willows.
All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places, or
swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were
undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had
been so many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed
its fancy, and to be bent upon undoing its performance. What a number of
things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its
heart!
NOYON CATHEDRAL
Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain surrounded
by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs,
surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers.
As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon
another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling, they did
not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and
solemn, over all. As the streets drew near to this presiding genius,
through the market-place under the Hôtel de Ville, they grew emptier and
more composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the
great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway. "Put off thy shoes
from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
The Hôtel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a
stone-cast of the church; and we had the superb east-end before our eyes
all morning from the window of our bedroom. 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 battle-ship. 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; the old ships of battle are all broken
up, and live only in pictures; 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.
The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the
five bells hanging in their loft. From above, the town was a tessellated
pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly
traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in
a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of Château Coucy.
I find I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of
mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made
a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first
glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest
in detail. The height of spires cannot be taken by trigonometry; they
measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye! And
where we have so many elegant proportions, growing one out of the other,
and all together into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself,
and became something different and more imposing. 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? For though I have heard a
considerable variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so
expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches
day and night; not only telling you of man's art and aspirations in the
past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like
all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself;--and every man is
his own doctor of divinity in the last resort.
As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the sweet
groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons.
I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two
of the play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of the
service I beheld. Four or five priests and as many choristers were
singing _Miserere_ before the high altar when I went in. There was no
congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the
pavement. After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and
two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black
with a white veil, came from behind the altar, and began to descend the
nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and child upon a table. The
priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed after,
singing "Ave Mary" as they went. In this order they made the circuit of
the cathedral, passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar.
The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down-looking
old man. He kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon
me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart.
Two others, who bore the burthen of the chant, were stout, brutal,
military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with
some lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave Mary" like a garrison catch. The
little girls were timid and grave. As they footed slowly up the aisle,
each one took a moment's glance at the Englishman; and the big nun who
played marshal fairly stared him out of countenance. As for the
choristers, from first to last they misbehaved as only boys can
misbehave; and cruelly marred the performance with their antics.
I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on. Indeed it would
be difficult not to understand the _Miserere_, which I take to be the
composition of an atheist. If it ever be a good thing to take such
despondency to heart, the _Miserere_ is the right music, and a cathedral
a fit scene. So far I am at one with the Catholics:--an odd name for
them, after all? But why, in God's name, these holiday choristers? why
these priests who steal wandering looks about the congregation while
they feign to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her
procession and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this
spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one
little misadventures that disturb a frame of mind laboriously edified
with chants and organings? In any playhouse reverend fathers may see
what can be done with a little art, and how, to move high sentiments, it
is necessary to drill the supernumeraries and have every stool in its
proper place.
One other circumstance distressed me. I could bear a _Miserere_ myself,
having had a good deal of open-air exercise of late; but I wished the
old people somewhere else. It was neither the right sort of music nor
the right sort of divinity for men and women who have come through most
accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of their own upon
the tragic element in life. A person up in years can generally do his
own _Miserere_ for himself; although I notice that such an one often
prefers _Jubilate Deo_ for his ordinary singing. On the whole, the most
religious exercise for the aged is probably to recall their own
experience; so many friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many
slips and stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling
providences; there is surely the matter of a very eloquent sermon in all
this.
On the whole, I was greatly solemnized. 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.
DOWN THE OISE
TO COMPIÈGNE
The most patient people grow weary at last with being continually wetted
with rain; except of course in the Scottish Highlands, where there are
not enough fine intervals to point the difference. That was like to be
our case, the day we left Noyon. I remember nothing of the voyage; it
was nothing but clay banks and willows, and rain; incessant, pitiless,
beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez,
where the canal ran very near the river. We were so sadly drenched that
the landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we
sat in a steam of vapour, lamenting our concerns. The husband donned a
game-bag and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching
us. I think we were worth looking at. We grumbled over the misfortune of
La Fère; we forecast other La Fères in the future;--although things went
better with the _Cigarette_ for spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether
than I; and a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady that carried
off the india-rubber bags. Talking of La Fère put us talking of the
reservists.
"Reservery," said he, "seems a pretty mean way to spend one's autumn
holiday."
"About as mean," returned I dejectedly, "as canoeing."
"These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?" asked the landlady, with
unconscious irony.
It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. Another wet day, it was
determined, and we put the boats into the train.
The weather took the hint. That was our last wetting. The afternoon
faired up: grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but now singly, and
with a depth of blue around their path; and a sunset in the daintiest
rose and gold inaugurated a thick night of stars and a month of unbroken
weather. At the same time, the river began to give us a better outlook
into the country. The banks were not so high, the willows disappeared
from along the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course and
marked their profile on the sky.
In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to discharge
its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had no lack of company to fear.
Here were all our old friends; the _Deo Gratias_ of Condé and the _Four
Sons of Aymon_ journeyed cheerily down stream along with us; we
exchanged waterside pleasantries with the steersman perched among the
lumber, or the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the
children came and looked over the side as we paddled by. We had never
known all this while how much we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to
see the smoke from their chimneys.
A little below this junction we made another meeting of yet more
account. For there we were joined by the Aìsne, already a far-travelled
river and fresh out of Champagne. Here ended the adolescence of the
Oise; this was his marriage-day; thenceforward he had a stately,
brimming march, conscious of his own dignity and sundry dams. He became
a tranquil feature in the scene. The trees and towns saw themselves in
him, as in a mirror. He carried the canoes lightly on his broad breast;
there was no need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness became the
order of the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the paddle, now on
this side, now on that, without intelligence or effort. Truly we were
coming into halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were floated towards
the sea like gentlemen.
We made Compiègne as the sun was going down: a fine profile of a town
above the river. Over the bridge, a regiment was parading to the drum.
People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the
stream. And as the two boats shot in along the water, we could see them
pointing them out and speaking one to another. We landed at a floating
lavatory, where the washerwomen were still beating the clothes.
AT COMPIÈGNE
We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiègne, where nobody observed
our presence.
Reservery and general _militarismus_ (as the Germans call it) were
rampant. A camp of conical white tents without the town looked like a
leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls of the
_cafés_, and the streets kept sounding all day long with military music.
It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation;
for the men who followed the drums were small, and walked shabbily. Each
man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he
went. There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall
Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a
natural phenomenon. Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major
pacing in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swinging plaids,
the strange elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time--and
the bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take
up the martial story in their place?
A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our regiments on
parade to her French schoolmates, and as she went on, she told me, the
recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the countrywoman
of such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice
failed her and she burst into tears. I have never forgotten that girl;
and I think she very nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady,
with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an insult. She
may rest assured of one thing: although she never should marry a heroic
general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she will
not have lived in vain for her native land.
But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the march
they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters. I remember
once seeing a company pass through the forest of Fontainebleau, on the
Chailly road, between the Bas Bréau and the Reine Blanche. One fellow
walked a little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching
song. The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in
time. A young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance
at the words. You never saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous as
their gait; schoolboys do not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and
you would have thought it impossible to tire such willing marchers.
My great delight in Compiègne 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 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
good 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.
In Compiègne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us; and the
authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand them over
upon application.
In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag at
Compiègne. The spell was broken. We had partly come home from that
moment.
No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to
have to write, but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday
feeling.
"Out of my country and myself I go." I wish to take a dive among new
conditions for a while, as into another element. I have nothing to do
with my friends or my affections for the time; when I came away, I left
my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to
await me at my destination. After my journey is over, I shall not fail
to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I
have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for
no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with
your perpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel that I am
a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations
that I came away to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life, I
am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a week's furlough?
We were up by six, the day we were to leave. They had taken so little
note of us that I hardly thought they would have condescended on a bill.
But they did, with some smart particulars too, and we paid in a
civilized manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel,
with the india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared to know about us.
It is not possible to rise before a village; but Compiègne was so grown
a town, that it took its ease in the morning, and we were up and away
while it was still in dressing-gown and slippers. The streets were left
to people washing doorsteps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers
upon the town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their
gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of professional
responsibility. _Kling_ went they on the bells for the half-past six as
we went by. I took it kindly of them to make me this parting compliment;
they never were in better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday.
There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen--early and
late--who were already beating the linen in their floating lavatory on
the river. They were very merry and matutinal in their ways; plunged
their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock. It would be
dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold dabble of a most
dispiriting day's work. But I believe they would have been as unwilling
to change days with us as we could be to change with them. They crowded
to the door to watch us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon the
river; and shouted heartily alter us till we were through the bridge.
CHANGED TIMES
There is a sense in which those mists never rose from off our journey;
and from that time forth they lie very densely in my note-book. As long
as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us near by people's doors,
and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian fields.
But now that it had grown so wide, the life along shore passed us by at
a distance. It was the same difference as between a great public highway
and a country by-path that wanders in and out of cottage gardens. We now
lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated
into civilized life, where people pass without salutation. In sparsely
inhabited places, we make all we can of each encounter; but when it
comes to a city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak unless we have
trodden on a man's toes. In these waters we were no longer strange
birds, and nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from the last
town. I remember, when we came into L'Isle Adam, for instance, how we
met dozens of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and there was
nothing to distinguish the true voyager from the amateur, except,
perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail. The company in one boat
actually thought they recognized me for a neighbour. Was there ever
anything more wounding? All the romance had come down to that. Now, on
the upper Oise, where nothing sailed as a general thing but fish, a pair
of canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange
and picturesque intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of
light and passing intimacy all along our route. There is nothing but
tit-for-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to
trace: for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never
yet been a settling-day since things were. You get entertainment pretty
much in proportion as you give. As long as we were a sort of odd
wanderers, to be stared at and followed like a quack doctor or a
caravan, we had no want of amusement in return; but as soon as we sank
into commonplace ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disenchanted.
And here is one reason of a dozen, why the world is dull to dull
persons.
In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, and that
quickened us. Even the showers of rain had a revivifying effect, and
shook up the brain from torpor. But now, when the river no longer ran in
a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, out-right, but
imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day after day
without variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of the mind
which follows upon much exercise in the open air. I have stupefied
myself in this way more than once; indeed, I dearly love the feeling;
but I never had it to the same degree as when paddling down the Oise. It
was the apotheosis of stupidity.
We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes when I found a new paper, I took a
particular pleasure in reading a single number of the current novel; but
I never could bear more than three installments; and even the second was
a disappointment. As soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it
lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with
these _feuilletons_, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence,
like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. The less I
saw of the novel, the better I liked it: a pregnant reflection. But for
the most part, as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world,
and employed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner
in poring upon maps. I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in
an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are
singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to
the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before
makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts on these
evenings with the blankest unconcern. We cared not a fraction for this
place or that. We stared at the sheet as children listen to their
rattle; and read the names of towns or villages to forget them again at
once. We had no romance in the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free.
If you had taken the maps away while we were studying them most
intently, it is a fair bet whether we might not have continued to study
the table with the same delight.
About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating. I think
I made a god of my belly. I remember dwelling in imagination upon this
or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before we got in for the
night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance. Sometimes we paddled
alongside for a while, and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies
as we went. Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but not within reach
upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we
were approaching Verberie, the _Cigarette_ brought my heart into my
mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne.
I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by
eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious that we can stomach
the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner-hour thankfully
enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read
something, if it were only "Bradshaw's Guide." But there is a romance
about the matter after all. Probably the table has more devotees than
love; and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than
scenery. Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the
less immortal for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we
are. To detect the flavour of aean olive is no less a piece of human
perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.
Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the proper inclination, now
right, now left; to keep the head down stream; to empty the little pool
that gathered in the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against the
glittering sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass
below the whistling tow-rope of the _Deo Gratias_ of Condé, or the _Four
Sons of Aymon_--there was not much art in that; certain silly muscles
managed it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole
holiday, and went to sleep. We took in, at a glance, the larger features
of the scene; and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling
washerwomen on the bank. Now and again we might be half-wakened by some
church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung
about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away. But these
luminous intervals were only partially luminous. A little more of us was
called into action, but never the whole. The central bureau of nerves,
what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without
disturbance, like a Government office. The great wheels of intelligence
turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist. I have gone
on for half an hour at a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the
hundreds. I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid
that, as a low form of consciousness. And what a pleasure it was! What a
hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about! There is nothing captious
about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in
life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and
longaevous like a tree.
There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied what
I may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my
abstraction. What philosophers call _me_ and _not-me_, _ego_ and _non
ego_, preoccupied me whether I would or no. There was less _me_ and
more _not-me_ than I was accustomed to expect. I looked on upon somebody
else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody else's feet
against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate
relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks. Nor
this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of
my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or
perhaps for the somebody else who did the paddling. I had dwindled into
quite a little thing in a corner of myself. I was isolated in my own
skull. Thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they were not my
thoughts, they were plainly some one else's; and I considered them like
a part of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near
Nirvana as would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, I
make the Buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an agreeable state, not
very consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a
money point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one that
sets a man superior to alarms. It may be best figured by supposing
yourself to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. I have a
notion that open-air labourers must spend a large portion of their days
in this ecstatic stupor, which explains their high composure and
endurance. A pity to go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a
better paradise for nothing!
This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take it all in
all. It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished. Indeed, it lies
so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair of getting the
reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my
condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees
and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my
notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the
rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to
lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes
an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the
object of pleased consideration;--and all the time, with the river
running and the shores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my
strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France.
DOWN THE OISE
CHURCH INTERIORS
We made our first stage below Compiègne to Pont Sainte Maxence. I was
abroad a little after six the next morning. The air was biting, and
smelt of frost. In an open place a score of women wrangled together over
the day's market; and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and
querulous like that of sparrows on a winter's morning. The rare
passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to
set the blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, although the
chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine. If you wake early
enough at this season of the year, you may get up in December to break
your fast in June.
I found my way to the church; for there is always something to see about
a church, whether living worshipers or dead men's tombs; you find there
the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is
not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary
gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it
looked colder. The white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the
tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the
solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and
waiting penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged
in her devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads
when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and slapping
their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by
the nature of her exercises. She went from chair to chair, from altar
to altar, circumnavigating the church. To each shrine she dedicated an
equal number of beads and an equal length of time. 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. She would risk nothing on the credit of any single
intercessor. Out of the whole company of saints and angels, not one but
was to suppose himself her champion-elect against the Great Assize! I
could only think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon
unconscious unbelief.
She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and
parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with which she interrogated
mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what you call seeing, whether
you might not call her blind. Perhaps she had known love: perhaps borne
children, suckled them and given them pet names. But now that was all
gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she
could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and
juggle for a slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp that I escaped
into the streets and the keen morning air. Morning? why, how tired of it
she would be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? It is
fortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justify our
lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a
number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower
of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private
somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children and discontented old
folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life.
I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's paddle: the old
devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But I was soon in the seventh heaven
of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe,
while I was counting his strokes, and forgetting the hundreds. I used
sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have
made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out
of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the moon
about my only occupation.
At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another
floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with
washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad jokes
are about all I remember of the place. I could look up my history-books,
if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or two; for it figured
rather largely in the English wars. But I prefer to mention a girls'
boarding-school, which had an interest for us because it was a girls'
boarding-school, and because we imagined we had rather an interest for
it. At least--there were the girls about the garden; and here were we on
the river; and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by.
It caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied
and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been introduced at
a croquet party! But this is a fashion I love: to kiss the hand or wave
a handkerchief to people I shall never see again, to play with
possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It gives the
traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a traveller everywhere, and
that his journey is no more than a siesta by the way on the real march
of life.
The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with
gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of the
Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an _ex voto_,
which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from
the vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct the _Saint
Nicolas_ of Creil to a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, and
would have made the delight of a party of boys on the waterside. But
what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. You might
hang up the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome: one that is to
plough a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty
poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle and a mass. But the
_Saint Nicolas_ of Creil, which was to be tugged for some ten years by
patient draught-horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering
overhead, and the skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all
its errands in green inland places, and never get out of sight of a
village belfry in all its cruising; why, you would have thought if
anything could be done without the intervention of Providence, it would
be that! But perhaps the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet,
reminding people of the seriousness of life by this preposterous token.
At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint on the
score of punctuality. Day and hour can be specified; and grateful people
do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers have been
punctually and neatly answered. Whenever time is a consideration, Saint
Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a sort of pleasure in
observing the vogue he had in France, for the good man plays a very
small part in my religion at home. Yet I could not help fearing that,
where the Saint is so much commended for exactitude, he will be expected
to be very grateful for his tablet.
This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance
anyway. Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come to them
be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed is a secondary matter after
all, so long as they feel gratitude. The true ignorance is when a man
does not know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine
that he has got it for himself. The self-made man is the funniest
wind-bag after all! There is a marked difference between decreeing light
in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box
of patent matches; and do what we will, there is always something made
to our hand, if it were only our fingers.
But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil
Church. The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had never
previously heard) is responsible for that. This Association was founded,
according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory
Sixteenth, on the 17th of January, 1832: according to a coloured
bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, sometime or other, by the
Virgin giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving
another to Saint Catharine of Siena. Pope Gregory is not so imposing,
but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly make out whether the
Association was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good works; at
least it is highly organized: the names of fourteen matrons and misses
were filled in for each week of the month as associates, with one other,
generally a married woman, at the top for _zélatrice:_ the leader of the
band. Indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the
duties of the Association. "The partial indulgences are attached to the
recitation of the rosary." On "the recitation of the required
_dizaine_," a partial indulgence promptly follows. When people serve the
kingdom of heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I should always be
afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spirit into their
dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid
business of this life.
There is one more article, however, of happier import. "All these
indulgences," it appeared, "are applicable to souls in purgatory." For
God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory
without delay! Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring
to serve his country out of unmixed love. Suppose you were to imitate
the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not
greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find
themselves none the worse either here or hereafter.
I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether a
Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these signs,
and do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot help answering that
he is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and mean to the faithful as
they do to me. I see that as clearly as a proposition in Euclid. For
these believers are neither weak nor wicked. They can put up their
tablet commending Saint Joseph for his despatch, as if he were still a
village carpenter; they can "recite the required _dizaine_," and
metaphorically pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job for
Heaven; and then they can go out and look down unabashed upon this
wonderful river flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point
stars, which are themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater
than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid,
that my Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there goes with
these deformities some higher and more religious spirit than I dream.
I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me! Like the
ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, I look for my
indulgence on the spot.
PRÉCY AND THE MARIONNETTES
We made Précy about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In
a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside. A faint mist
began to rise and confound the different distances together. There was
not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the
river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the
hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all
seemed to have been deserted the day before, and I felt inclined to walk
discreetly as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden we came
round a corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was a
bevy of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. Their laughter, and
the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the
neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and
ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts. We were
within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here were females of our own
species playing croquet, just as if Précy had been a place in real life,
instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel. For, to be frank, the
peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after
having passed by such a succession of people in petticoats digging and
hoeing and making dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made
quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at once of
being fallible males.
The inn at Précy is the worst inn in France. Not even in Scotland have I
found worse fare. It was kept by a brother and sister, neither of whom
was out of their teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us,
and the brother, who had been tippling, came in and brought with him a
tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. We found pieces of loo-warm
pork among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the
_ragoût_. The butcher entertained us with pictures of Parisian life,
with which he professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the
while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling precariously, and
sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst of these diversions, bang
went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a
proclamation. It was a man with marionnettes announcing a performance
for that evening.
He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part of the
girls' croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which are so common
in France to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by the time we
strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the audience.
It was the most absurd contention. The show-people had set out a certain
number of benches, and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple of
sous for the accommodation. They were always quite full--a bumper
house--as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman
appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her
tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the
outside with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried
an angel's temper. The showman roared from the proscenium; he had been
all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, "not even on the borders of
Germany," had he met with such misconduct. Such thieves and rogues and
rascals, as he called them! And every now and again the wife issued on
another round, and added her shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked
here, as elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the
material of insult. The audience laughed in high good-humour over the
man's declamations, but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's
pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honour of
the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd,
and received a smarting retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies
beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and
indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of
these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of
this, she was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames could persuade
their neighbours to act with common honesty, the mountebanks, she
assured them, would be polite enough: mesdames had probably had their
bowl of soup, and perhaps a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks
also had a taste for soup, and did not choose to have their little
earnings stolen from them before their eyes. Once, things came as far as
a brief personal encounter between the showman and some lads, in which
the former went down as readily as one of his own marionnettes to a peal
of jeering laughter.
I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am pretty well
acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or less artistic; and
have always found them singularly pleasing. Any stroller must be dear to
the right-thinking heart; if it were only as a living protest against
offices and the mercantile spirit, and as something to remind us that
life is not by necessity the kind of thing we generally make it. Even a
German band, if you see it leaving town in the early morning for a
campaign in country places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic
flavour for the imagination. There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but
his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. "We are not
cotton-spinners all"--or, at least, not all through. There is some life
in humanity yet: and youth will now and again find a brave word to say
in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situation to go strolling with a
knapsack.
An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse with French
gymnasts; for England is the natural home of gymnasts. This or that
fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to know a word or two of
English, to have drunk English _aff-'n'-aff_, and perhaps performed in
an English music-hall. He is a countryman of mine by profession. He
leaps, like the Belgian boating men, to the notion that I must be an
athlete myself.
But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of the
artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the
most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not
accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor
that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of
thoughts. He has something else to think about beside the money-box. He
has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an
aim before him that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a
pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because there is no end to
it short of perfection. He will better upon himself a little day by day;
or even if he has given up the attempt, he will always remember that
once upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time
he had fallen in love with a star. "'Tis better to have loved and lost."
Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he
should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would
move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The
lout he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but
there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it
fresh and haughty.
To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves a fine stamp on a man's
countenance. I remember once dining with a party in the inn at Château
Landon. Most of them were unmistakable bagmen; others well-to-do
peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood
out from among the rest surprisingly. It looked more finished; more of
the spirit looked out through it; it had a living, expressive air, and
you could see that his eyes took things in. My companion and I wondered
greatly who and what he could be. It was fair-time in Château Landon,
and when we went along to the booths we had our question answered; for
there was our friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. He
was a wandering violinist.
A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying, in the
Department of Seine et Marne. There was a father and mother; two
daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea
of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a
recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss. The mother was
the genius of the party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard
to such a pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could not find
words to express his admiration for her comic countryman. "You should
see my old woman," said he, and nodded his beery countenance. One night
they performed in the stable-yard, with flaring lamps--a wretched
exhibition, coldly looked upon by a village audience. Next night, as
soon as the lamps were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and they had
to sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to the
barn where they harboured, cold, wet, and supperless. In the morning, a
dear friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers as I have
myself, made a little collection, and sent it by my hands to comfort
them for their disappointment. I gave it to the father; he thanked me
cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking of roads,
and audiences, and hard times.
When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat. "I am
afraid," said he, "that Monsieur will think me altogether a beggar; but
I have another demand to make upon him." I began to hate him on the
spot. "We play again to-night," he went on. "Of course, I shall refuse
to accept any more money from Monsieur and his friends, who have been
already so liberal. But our programme of to-night is something truly
creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honour us with
his presence." And then, with a shrug and a smile: "Monsieur
understands--the vanity of an artist!" Save the mark! The vanity of an
artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged,
tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman, and
the vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect!
But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin. It is nearly two
years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see him often
again. Here is his first programme, as I found it on the
breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of bright
days:--
_"Mesdames et Messieurs,_
_"Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront l'honneur de
chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants.
"Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera--Mignon--Oiseaux
légers--France--Des Français dorment là--Le château bleu--Où
voulez-vous aller?
"M. de Vauversin--Madame Fountaine et M. Robinet--Les plongeurs à
cheval--Le mari mécontent--Tais-toi, gamin--Mon voisin
l'original--Heureux comme ça--Comme on est trompé."_
They made a stage at one end of the _salle-à-manger_. And what a sight
it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a
guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario's eyes with the obedient,
kindly look of a dog! The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or
auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the
excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your
eagerness; for there all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it
is a competition who shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de
Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario.
M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black hair, a
vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be delightful if he
had better teeth. He was once an actor in the Châtelet; but he
contracted a nervous affection from the heat and glare of the
footlights, which unfitted him for the stage. At this crisis
Mademoiselle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar,
agreed to share his wandering fortunes. "I could never forget the
generosity of that lady," said he. He wears trousers so tight that it
has long been a problem to all who knew him how he manages to get in and
out of them. He sketches a little in water-colours; he writes verses; he
is the most patient of fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of
the inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river.
You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle of wine;
such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own
mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should
hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep. For it
was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only
amounted to a franc and a half, to cover three francs of railway fare
and two of board and lodging. The Maire, a man worth a million of money,
sat in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mlle. Ferrario, and yet
gave no more than three _sous_ the whole evening. Local authorities look
with such an evil eye upon the strolling artist. Alas! I know it well,
who have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the
strength of the misapprehension. Once M. de Vauversin visited a
commissary of police for permission to sing. The commissary, who was
smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance.
"Mr. Commissary," he began, "I am an artist." And on went the
commissary's hat again. No courtesy for the companions of Apollo! "They
are as degraded as that," said M. de Vauversin, with a sweep of his
cigarette.
But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been
talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his
wandering life. Someone said, it would be better to have a million of
money down, and Mlle. Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that
mightily. "_Eh bien, moi non_;--not I," cried De Vauversin, striking the
table with his hand. "If anyone is a failure in the world, is it not I?
I had an art, in which I have done things well--as well as some--better
perhaps than others; and now it is closed against me. I must go about
the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. Do you think I
regret my life? Do you think I would rather be a fat burgess, like a
calf? Not I! I have had moments when I have been applauded on the
boards: I think nothing of that; but I have known in my own mind
sometimes, when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found
a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then,
messieurs, I have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing
well, what it was to be an artist. And to know what art is, is to have
an interest for ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns.
_Tenez, messieurs, je vais vous le dire_--it is like a religion."
Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the
inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de
Vauversin. I have given him his own name, lest any other wanderer should
come across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and Mademoiselle
Ferrario; for should not all the world delight to honour this
unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses? May Apollo send him rhymes
hitherto undreamed of; may the river be no longer scanty of her silver
fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, nor
the village jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners; and may he
never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with his
dutiful eyes and accompany on the guitar!
The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment. They performed a
piece, called _Pyramus and Thisbe_, in five mortal acts, and all written
in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers. One marionnette was the
king; another the wicked counselor; a third, credited with exceptional
beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate
fathers, and walking gentlemen. Nothing particular took place during the
two or three acts that I sat out; but you will be pleased to learn that
the unities were properly respected, and the whole piece, with one
exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. That exception was the
comic countryman, a lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose
and in a broad _patois_ much appreciated by the audience. He took
unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked his
fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever
none of the versifying suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his
own account in comic prose.
This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the showman
made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference to
applause and hisses, and their single devotion to their art, were the
only circumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy would so
much as raise a smile. But the villagers of Précy seemed delighted.
Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it
is nearly certain to amuse. If we were charged so much a head for
sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in
flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty! But these
things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe; and
the Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively
not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather
overhead.
BACK TO THE WORLD
Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and nothing
whatever in my note-book. The river streamed on steadily through
pleasant riverside landscapes. Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in
blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation of the two
colours was like that of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A
symphony in forget-me-not; I think Théophile Gautier might thus have
characterized that two days' panorama. The sky was blue and cloudless,
and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror
to the heaven and the shores. The washerwomen hailed us laughingly, and
the noise of trees and water made an accompaniment to our dozing
thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream.
The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held the mind
in chain. It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong and easy in its
gait, like a grown man full of determination. The surf was roaring for
it on the sands of Havre.
For my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my
fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my
ocean. To the civilized man, there must come, sooner or later, a desire
for civilization. I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was weary of
living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick of it once
more; I wished to get to work; I wished to meet people who understood my
own speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, as a man and no
longer as a curiosity.
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. For so many miles had this fleet
and footless beast of burthen charioted our fortunes, that we turned our
back upon it with a sense of separation. We had made a long détour out
of the world, but now we were back in the familiar places, where life
itself makes all the running, and we are carried to meet adventure
without a stroke of the paddle. Now we were to return, like the voyager
in the play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected the while
in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; and
whither and how far the world had voyaged in our absence. You may paddle
all day long; 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.
EPILOGUE
The country where they journeyed, that green, breezy valley of the
Loing, is one very attractive to cheerful and solitary people. The
weather was superb; all night it thundered and lightened, and the rain
fell in sheets; by day, the heavens were cloudless, the sun fervent, the
air vigorous and pure. They walked separate; the _Cigarette_ plodding
behind with some philosophy, the lean _Arethusa_ posting on ahead. Thus
each enjoyed his own reflections by the way; each had perhaps time to
tire of them before he met his comrade at the designated inn; and the
pleasures of society and solitude combined to fill the day. The
_Arethusa_ carried in his knapsack the works of Charles of Orleans, and
employed some of the hours of travel in the concoction of English
roundels. In this path he must thus have preceded Mr. Lang, Mr. Dobson,
Mr. Henley, and all contemporary roundeleers; but, for good reasons, he
will be the last to publish the result. The _Cigarette_ walked burthened
with a volume of Michelet. And both these books, it will be seen, played
a part in the subsequent adventure.
The _Arethusa_ was unwisely dressed. He is no precisian in attire; but
by all accounts he was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; having
set forth, indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the most unfashionable
spot in Europe, Barbizon. On his head he wore a smoking-cap of Indian
work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt of
an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical called black; a light tweed
coat made by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and
leathern gaiters completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally
lean; and his face is not, like those of happier mortals, a certificate.
For years he could not pass a frontier, or visit a bank, without
suspicion; the police everywhere, but in his native city, looked askance
upon him; and (although I am sure it will not be credited) he is
actually denied admittance to the casino of Monte Carlo. If you will
imagine him dressed as above, stooping under his knapsack, walking
nearly five miles an hour with the folds of the ready-made trousers
fluttering about his spindle shanks, and still looking eagerly round him
as if in terror of pursuit--the figure, when realized, is far from
reassuring. When Villon journeyed (perhaps by the same pleasant valley)
to his exile at Roussillon, I wonder if he had not something of the same
appearance. Something of the same preoccupation he had beyond a doubt,
for he too must have tinkered verses as he walked, with more success
than his successor. And if he had anything like the same inspiring
weather, the same nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding
down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the
wild bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare
inn-chamber--the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable blue of
noon, the same high-coloured, halcyon eves--and above all, if he had
anything like as good a comrade, anything like as keen a relish for what
he saw, and what he ate, and the rivers that he bathed in, and the
rubbish that he wrote, I would exchange estates to-day with the poor
exile, and count myself a gainer.
But there was another point of similarity between the two journeys, for
which the _Arethusa_ was to pay dear: both were gone upon in days of
incomplete security. It was not long after the Franco-Prussian war.
Swiftly as men forget, that countryside was still alive with tales of
uhlans and outlying sentries, and hairbreadth 'scapes from the
ignominious cord, and pleasant momentary friendships between invader and
invaded. A year, at the most two years, later you might have tramped
all that country over and not heard one anecdote. And a year or two
later, you would--if you were a rather ill-looking young man in
nondescript array--have gone your rounds in greater safety; for along
with more interesting matter, the Prussian spy would have somewhat faded
from men's imaginations.
For all that, our voyager had got beyond Château Renard before he was
conscious of arousing wonder. On the road between that place and
Châtillon-sur-Loing, however, he encountered a rural postman; they fell
together in talk, and spoke of a variety of subjects; but through one
and all, the postman was still visibly preoccupied, and his eyes were
faithful to the _Arethusa's_ knapsack. At last, with mysterious
roguishness, he inquired what it contained, and on being answered, shook
his head with kindly incredulity. "_Non_," said he, "_non, vous avez des
portraits_." And then with a languishing appeal, "_Voyons_, show me the
portraits!" It was some little time before the _Arethusa_, with a shout
of laughter, recognized his drift. By portraits he meant indecent
photographs; and in the _Arethusa_, an austere and rising author, he
thought to have identified a pornographic _colporteur_. When
country-folk in France have made up their minds as to a person's
calling, argument is fruitless. Along all the rest of the way, the
postman piped and fluted meltingly to get a sight of the collection; now
he would upbraid, now he would reason--"_Voyons_, I will tell nobody";
then he tried corruption, and insisted on paying for a glass of wine;
and at last, when their ways separated--"_Non_," said he, "_ce n'est pas
bien de votre part. O non, ce n'est pas bien_." And shaking his head
with quite a sentimental sense of injury, he departed unrefreshed.
On certain little difficulties encountered by the _Arethusa_ at
Châtillon-sur-Loing, I have not space to dwell; another Châtillon, of
grislier memory, looms too near at hand. But the next day, in a certain
hamlet called La Jussière, he stopped to drink a glass of syrup in a
very poor, bare drinking-shop. The hostess, a comely woman, suckling a
child, examined the traveller with kindly and pitying eyes. "You are not
of this Department?" she asked. The _Arethusa_ told her he was English.
"Ah!" she said, surprised. "We have no English. We have many Italians,
however, and they do very well; they do not complain of the people of
hereabouts. An Englishman may do very well also; it will be something
new." Here was a dark saying, over which the _Arethusa_ pondered as he
drank his grenadine; but when he rose and asked what was to pay, the
light came upon him in a flash. "_O, pour vous_," replied the landlady,
"a halfpenny!" _Pour vous_? By heaven, she took him for a beggar! He
paid his halfpenny, feeling that it were ungracious to correct her. But
when he was forth again upon the road, he became vexed in spirit. The
conscience is no gentleman, he is a rabbinical fellow; and his
conscience told him he had stolen the syrup.
That night the travellers slept in Gien; the next day they passed the
river and set forth (severally, as their custom was) on a short stage
through the green plain upon the Berry side, to Châtillon-sur-Loire. It
was the first day of the shooting; and the air rang with the report of
fire-arms and the admiring cries of sportsmen. Overhead the birds were
in consternation, wheeling in clouds, settling and re-arising. And yet
with all this bustle on either hand, the road itself lay solitary. The
_Arethusa_ smoked a pipe beside a milestone, and I remember he laid down
very exactly all he was to do at Châtillon: how he was to enjoy a cold
plunge, to change his shirt, and to await the _Cigarette's_ arrival, in
sublime inaction, by the margin of the Loire. Fired by these ideas, he
pushed the more rapidly forward, and came, early in the afternoon, and
in a breathing heat, to the entering-in of that ill-fated town. Childe
Roland to the dark tower came.
A polite gendarme threw his shadow on the path.
"_Monsieur est voyageur_?" he asked.
And the _Arethusa_, strong in his innocence, forgetful of his vile
attire, replied--I had almost said with gaiety: "So it would appear."
"His papers are in order?" said the gendarme. And when the _Arethusa_,
with a slight change of voice, admitted he had none, he was informed
(politely enough) that he must appear before the Commissary.
The Commissary sat at a table in his bedroom, stripped to the shirt and
trousers, but still copiously perspiring; and when he turned upon the
prisoner a large meaningless countenance, that was (like Bardolph's)
"all whelks and bubuckles," the dullest might have been prepared for
grief. Here was a stupid man, sleepy with the heat and fretful at the
interruption, whom neither appeal nor argument could reach.
_The Commissary:_ "You have no papers?"
_The Arethusa:_ "Not here."
_The Commissary:_ "Why?"
_The Arethusa:_ "I have left them behind in my valise."
_The Commissary:_ "You know, however, that it is forbidden to circulate
without papers?"
_The Arethusa:_ "Pardon me: I am convinced of the contrary. I am here on
my rights as an English subject by international treaty."
_The Commissary (with scorn):_ "You call yourself an Englishman?"
_The Arethusa:_ "I do."
_The Commissary:_ "Humph.--What is your trade?"
_The Arethusa:_ "I am a Scottish Advocate."
_The Commissary (with singular annoyance):_ "A Scottish Advocate! Do
you then pretend to support yourself by that in this Department?"
The _Arethusa_ modestly disclaimed the pretension. The Commissary had
scored a point.
_The Commissary:_ "Why, then, do you travel?"
_The Arethusa:_ "I travel for pleasure."
_The Commissary (pointing to the knapsack, and with sublime
incredulity):_ "_Avec ça? Voyez-vous, je suis un homme intelligent!_"
(With that? Look here, I am a person of intelligence!)
The culprit remaining silent under this home-thrust, the Commissary
relished his triumph for a while, and then demanded (like the postman,
but with what different expectations!) to see the contents of the
knapsack. And here the _Arethusa_, not yet sufficiently awake to his
position, fell into a grave mistake. There was little or no furniture in
the room except the Commissary's chair and table; and to facilitate
matters, the _Arethusa_ (with all the innocence on earth) leant the
knapsack on a corner of the bed. The Commissary fairly bounded from his
seat; his face and neck flushed past purple, almost into blue; and he
screamed to lay the desecrating object on the floor.
The knapsack proved to contain a change of shirts, of shoes, of socks,
and of linen trousers, a small dressing-case, a piece of soap in one of
the shoes, two volumes of the _Collection Jannet_ lettered "Poésies de
Charles d'Orleans," a map, and a version-book containing divers notes in
prose and the remarkable English roundels of the voyager, still to this
day unpublished: the Commissary of Châtillon is the only living man who
has clapped an eye on these artistic trifles. He turned the assortment
over with a contumelious finger; it was plain from his daintiness that
he regarded the _Arethusa_ and all his belongings as the very temple of
infection. Still there was nothing suspicious about the map, nothing
really criminal except the roundels; as for Charles of Orleans, to the
ignorant mind of the prisoner, he seemed as good as a certificate; and
it was supposed the farce was nearly over.
The inquisitor resumed his seat.
_The Commissary (after a pause):_ "_Eh bien, je vais_ _vous dire ce que
vous êtes. Vous êtes allemand el vous venez chanter à la foire._" (Well,
then, I will tell you what you are. You are a German, and have come to
sing at the fair.)
_The Arethusa:_ "Would you like to hear me sing? I believe I could
convince you of the contrary."
_The Commissary:_ "_Pas de plaisanterie, monsieur_!"
_The Arethusa:_ "Well, sir, oblige me at least by looking at this book.
Here, I open it with my eyes shut. Read one of these songs--read this
one--and tell me, you who are a man of intelligence, if it would be
possible to sing it at a fair?"
_The Commissary (critically):_ "_Mais oui. Tres bien._"
_The Arethusa:_ "_Comment, monsieur!_ What! But do you not observe it is
antique? It is difficult to understand, even for you and me; but for the
audience at a fair, it would be meaningless."
_The Commissary (taking a pen):_ "_Enfin, il faut en finir._ What is
your name?"
_The Arethusa (speaking with the swallowing vivacity of the English):_
"Robert-Louis-Stev'ns'n."
_The Commissary (aghast):_ "_Hé! Quoi?_"
_The Arethusa (perceiving and improving his advantage):_
"Rob'rt-Lou's-Stev'ns'n."
_The Commissary (after several conflicts with his pen):_ "_Eh bien, il
faut se passer du nom. Ça ne s'écrit pas._" (Well, we must do without
the name: it is unspellable.)
The above is a rough summary of this momentous conversation, in which I
have been chiefly careful to preserve the plums of the Commissary; but
the remainder of the scene, perhaps because of his rising anger, has
left but little definite in the memory of the _Arethusa_. The Commissary
was not, I think, a practiced literary man; no sooner, at least, had he
taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the
_procès-verbal_, than he became distinctly more uncivil, and began to
show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "You
lie." Several times the _Arethusa_ let it pass, and then suddenly
flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further
questions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised him, if
he did, that he should bitterly repent it. Perhaps if he had worn this
proud front from the first, instead of beginning with a sense of
entertainment and then going on to argue, the thing might have turned
otherwise; for even at this eleventh hour the Commissary was visibly
staggered. But it was too late; he had been challenged; the
_procès-verbal_ was begun; and he again squared his elbows over his
writing, and the _Arethusa_ was led forth a prisoner.
A step or two down the hot road stood the gendarmerie. Thither was our
unfortunate conducted, and there he was bidden to empty forth the
contents of his pockets. A handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and
tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. Not a
file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to
condemn. The very gendarme was appalled before such destitution.
"I regret," he said, "that I arrested you, for I see that you are no
_voyou_." And he promised him every indulgence.
The _Arethusa_, thus encouraged, asked for his pipe. That he was told
was impossible, but if he chewed, he might have some tobacco. He did not
chew, however, and asked instead to have his handkerchief.
"_Non_," said the gendarme. "_Nous avons eu des histoires de gens qui se
sont pendus._" (No, we have had histories of people who hanged
themselves.)
"What!" cried the _Arethusa_. "And is it for that you refuse me my
handkerchief? But see how much more easily I could hang myself in my
trousers!"
The man was struck by the novelty of the idea, but he stuck to his
colours, and only continued to repeat vague offers of service.
"At least," said the _Arethusa_, "be sure that you arrest my comrade; he
will follow me ere long on the same road, and you can tell him by the
sack upon his shoulders."
This promised, the prisoner was led round into the back court of the
building, a cellar door was opened, he was motioned down the stair, and
bolts grated and chains clanged behind his descending person.
The philosophic and still more the imaginative mind is apt to suppose
itself prepared for any mortal accident. Prison, among other ills, was
one that had been often faced by the undaunted _Arethusa_. Even as he
went down the stairs, he was telling himself that here was a famous
occasion for a roundel, and that like the committed linnets of the
tuneful cavalier, he too would make his prison musical. I will tell the
truth at once: the roundel was never written, or it should be printed in
this place, to raise a smile. Two reasons interfered: the first moral,
the second physical.
It is one of the curiosities of human nature, that although all men are
liars, they can none of them bear to be told so of themselves. To get
and take the lie with equanimity is a stretch beyond the stoic; and the
_Arethusa_, who had been surfeited upon that insult, was blazing
inwardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. But the physical had also
its part. The cellar in which he was confined was some feet underground,
and it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up in the
wall, and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. The walls were of
naked masonry, the floor of bare earth; by way of furniture there was an
earthenware basin, a water-jug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue-grey
cloak for bedding. To be taken from the hot air of a summer's afternoon,
the reverberation of the road and the stir of rapid exercise, and
plunged into the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, struck
an instant chill upon the _Arethusa's_ blood. Now see in how small a
matter a hardship may consist: the floor was exceedingly uneven under
foot, with the very spade-marks, I suppose, of the labourers who dug the
foundations of the barrack; and what with the poor twilight and the
irregular surface, walking was impossible. The caged author resisted
for a good while, but the chill of the place struck deeper and deeper;
and at length, with such reluctance as you may fancy, he was driven to
climb upon the bed and wrap himself in the public covering. There, then,
he lay upon the verge of shivering, plunged in semi-darkness, wound in a
garment whose touch he dreaded like the plague, and (in a spirit far
removed from resignation) telling the roll of the insults he had just
received. These are not circumstances favourable to the muse.
Meantime (to look at the upper surface where the sun was still shining
and the guns of sportsmen were still noisy through the tufted plain) the
_Cigarette_ was drawing near at his more philosophic pace. In those days
of liberty and health he was the constant partner of the _Arethusa_, and
had ample opportunity to share in that gentleman's disfavour with the
police. Many a bitter bowl had he partaken of with that disastrous
comrade. He was himself a man born to float easily through life, his
face and manner artfully recommending him to all. There was but one
suspicious circumstance he could not carry off, and that was his
companion. He will not readily forget the Commissary in what is
ironically called the free town of Frankfort-on-the-Main; nor the
Franco-Belgian frontier; nor the inn at La Fère; last, but not least, he
is pretty certain to remember Châtillon-sur-Loire.
At the town entry, the gendarme culled him like a wayside flower; and a
moment later two persons in a high state of surprise were confronted in
the Commissary's office. For if the _Cigarette_ was surprised to be
arrested, the Commissary was no less taken aback by the appearance and
appointments of his captive. Here was a man about whom there could be no
mistake: a man of an unquestionable and unassailable manner, in
apple-pie order, dressed not with neatness merely but elegance, ready
with his passport at a word, and well supplied with money: a man the
Commissary would have doffed his hat to on chance upon the highway; and
this _beau cavalier_ unblushingly claimed the _Arethusa_ for his
comrade! The conclusion of the interview was foregone; of its humours I
remember only one. "Baronet?" demanded the magistrate, glancing up from
the passport. "_Alors, monsieur, vous êtes le fils d'un baron?_" And
when the _Cigarette_ (his one mistake throughout the interview) denied
the soft impeachment, "_Alors_," from the Commissary, "_ce n'est pas
voire passeport!_" But these were ineffectual thunders; he never dreamed
of laying hands upon the _Cigarette_; presently he fell into a mood of
unrestrained admiration, gloating over the contents of the knapsack,
commending our friend's tailor. Ah! what an honoured guest was the
Commissary entertaining! What suitable clothes he wore for the warm
weather! What beautiful maps, what an attractive work of history he
carried in his knapsack! You are to understand there was now but one
point of difference between them: what was to be done with the
_Arethusa_? the _Cigarette_ demanding his release, the Commissary still
claiming him as the dungeon's own. Now it chanced that the _Cigarette_
had passed some years of his life in Egypt, where he had made
acquaintance with two very bad things, cholera morbus and pashas; and in
the eye of the Commissary, as he fingered the volume of Michelet, it
seemed to our traveller there was something Turkish. I pass over this
lightly; it is highly possible there was some misunderstanding, highly
possible that the Commissary (charmed with his visitor) supposed the
attraction to be mutual, and took for an act of growing friendship what
the _Cigarette_ himself regarded as a bribe. And at any rate, was there
ever a bribe more singular than an odd volume of Michelet's history! The
work was promised him for the morrow, before our departure; and
presently after, either because he had his price, or to show that he was
not the man to be behind in friendly offices, "_Eh bien_," he said, "_je
suppose qu'il faut lâcher votre camarade_." And he tore up that feast of
humour, the unfinished _procès-verbal_. Ah, if he had only torn up
instead the _Arethusa's_ roundels! There are many works burnt at
Alexandria, there are many treasured in the British Museum, that I could
better spare than the _procès-verbal_ of Châtillon. Poor bubuckled
Commissary! I begin to be sorry that he never had his Michelet:
perceiving in him fine human traits, a broad-based stupidity, a gusto in
his magisterial functions, a taste for letters, a ready admiration for
the admirable. And if he did not admire the _Arethusa_, he was not alone
in that.
To the imprisoned one, shivering under the public covering, there came
suddenly a noise of bolts and chains. He sprang to his feet, ready to
welcome a companion in calamity; and instead of that, the door was flung
wide, the friendly gendarme appeared above in the strong daylight, and
with a magnificent gesture (being probably a student of the
drama)--"_Vous êtes libre_!" he said. None too soon for the _Arethusa_.
I doubt if he had been half an hour imprisoned; but by the watch in a
man's brain (which was the only watch he carried) he should have been
eight times longer; and he passed forth with ecstasy up the cellar
stairs into the healing warmth of the afternoon sun; and the breath of
the earth came as sweet as a cow's into his nostril; and he heard again
(and could have laughed for pleasure) the concord of delicate noises
that we call the hum of life.
And here it might be thought that my history ended; but not so, this was
an act-drop and not the curtain. Upon what followed in front of the
barrack, since there was a lady in the case, I scruple to expatiate. The
wife of the Maréchal-des-logis was a handsome woman, and yet the
_Arethusa_ was not sorry to be gone from her society. Something of her
image, cool as a peach on that hot afternoon, still lingers in his
memory: yet more of her conversation. "You have there a very fine
parlour," said the poor gentleman. "Ah!" said Madame la Maréchale
(des-logis), "you are very well acquainted with such parlours!" And you
should have seen with what a hard and scornful eye she measured the
vagabond before her! I do not think he ever hated the Commissary; but
before that interview was at an end, he hated Madame la Maréchale. His
passion (as I am led to understand by one who was present) stood
confessed in a burning eye, a pale cheek, and a trembling utterance;
Madame, meanwhile tasting the joys of the matador, goading him with
barbed words and staring him coldly down.
It was certainly good to be away from this lady, and better still to sit
down to an excellent dinner in the inn. Here, too, the despised
travellers scraped acquaintance with their next neighbour, a gentleman
of these parts, returned from the day's sport, who had the good taste to
find pleasure in their society. The dinner at an end, the gentleman
proposed the acquaintance should be ripened in the _café_.
The _café_ was crowded with sportsmen conclamantly explaining to each
other and the world the smallness of their bags. About the centre of the
room the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_ sat with their new acquaintance;
a trio very well pleased, for the travellers (after their late
experience) were greedy of consideration, and their sportsman rejoiced
in a pair of patient listeners. Suddenly the glass door flew open with a
crash; the Maréchal-des-logis appeared in the interval, gorgeously
belted and befrogged, entered with salutation, strode up the room with a
clang of spurs and weapons, and disappeared through a door at the far
end. Close at his heels followed the _Arethusa's_ gendarme of the
afternoon, imitating, with a nice shade of difference, the imperial
bearing of his chief; only, as he passed, he struck lightly with his
open hand on the shoulder of his late captive, and with that ringing,
dramatic utterance of which he had the secret--"_Suivez!_" said he.
The arrest of the members, the oath of the Tennis Court, the signing of
the Declaration of Independence, Mark Antony's oration, all the brave
scenes of history, I conceive as having been not unlike that evening in
the _café_ at Châtillon. Terror breathed upon the assembly. A moment
later, when the _Arethusa_ had followed his recaptors into the farther
part of the house, the _Cigarette_ found himself alone with his coffee
in a ring of empty chairs and tables, all the lusty sportsmen huddled
into corners, all their clamorous voices hushed in whispering, all their
eyes shooting at him furtively as at a leper.
And the _Arethusa_? Well, he had a long, sometimes a trying, interview
in the back kitchen. The Maréchal-des-logis, who was a very handsome
man, and I believe both intelligent and honest, had no clear opinion on
the case. He thought the Commissary had done wrong, but he did not wish
to get his subordinates into trouble; and he proposed this, that, and
the other, to all of which the _Arethusa_ (with a growing sense of his
position) demurred.
"In short," suggested the _Arethusa_, "you want to wash your hands of
further responsibility? Well, then, let me go to Paris."
The Maréchal-des-logis looked at his watch.
"You may leave," said he, "by the ten o'clock train for Paris."
And at noon the next day the travellers were telling their misadventure
in the dining-room at Siron's.
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY
IN THE CEVENNES
_My dear Sidney Colvin,_
_The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and
fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to
the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the
wilderness of this world--all, too, travellers with a donkey; and the
best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate
voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the
end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when
we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.
Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of
him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private
messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for
them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays
the postage. Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an old
and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall
a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear
Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself
Affectionately yours,
R. L. S._
VELAY
_Many are the mighty things, and naught
is more mighty than man.... He
masters by his devices the tenant of the
fields._
SOPHOCLES.
_Who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass?_
JOB.
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE
In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley
fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier
is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of
language, and for unparalleled political dissension. There are adherents
of each of the four French parties--Legitimists, Orleanists,
Imperialists, and Republicans--in this little mountain-town; and they
all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Except for business
purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have
laid aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain Poland. In
the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-point; every one was
anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from
the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise
with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le
Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this
big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward
through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto
unheard-of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man
who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful
interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were ready
to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathizers supported me at the
critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by
glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast.
It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at
the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indian summer to
be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have
the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more
harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by
dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned
sure by those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all, for a solitary
traveller, is troublesome to pitch and troublesome to strike again; and
even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A
sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready--you have only to get
into it; it serves a double purpose--a bed by night, a portmanteau by
day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every
curious passer-by. This is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is
but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the
convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must
sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. I decided on a
sleeping-sack; 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.
This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two
triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom
of the sack by day. I call it "the sack," but it was never a sack by
more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green
waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It was
commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious
turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I
could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur
cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears, and a band to pass under my
nose like a respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make
myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones,
and a bent branch.
It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on
my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of
burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals--flighty, timid,
delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive
to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow
galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's
an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of
the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy,
and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to
a donkey.
There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect
according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as
Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive
she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a
kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and
high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on
the spot. Our first interview was in Monastier market-place. To prove
her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to ride,
and one after another went head over heels into the air; until a want of
confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was
discontinued from a dearth of subjects. I was already backed by a
deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers
and sellers came round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I
and Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At
length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty-five
francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs
and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her,
was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it
should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my mattress, or
self-acting bedstead on four castors.
I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the
witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. He professed
himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often
bought white bread for the donkey when he had been content with black
bread for himself; but this, according to the best authorities, must
have been a flight of fancy. He had a name in the village for brutally
misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear
made a clean mark down one cheek.
By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for
me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thoughtfully completed my
kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armoury and utensils, I took a
revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny
candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. The main cargo
consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing--besides my travelling
wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer--some books,
and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a
double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by
cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I
carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and
by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of
carriage than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For
more immediate needs I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of
Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a
considerable quantity of black bread and white, like Father Adam, for
myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the destinations were
reversed.
Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in
threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death
in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the
nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my
attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left
out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before
telling my own mishaps, let me, in two words, relate the lesson of my
experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full
length--not doubled, for your life--across the pack-saddle, the
traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the
imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend
to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon
learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a
well-adjusted stone.
On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we
began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after my hopes were in the
dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I
returned it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that
the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on
and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it
would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads;
and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a
deal of freedom.
I had a common donkey pack-saddle--a _barde_, as they call it--fitted
upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects. The doubled
sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my
waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing
the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all corded together
in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked on the result with
fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck-cargo, all poised above the
donkey's shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new
pack-saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened
with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by
the way, even a very careless traveller should have seen disaster
brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, was the work of too many
sympathizers to be very artfully designed. It is true they tightened the
cords with a will; as many as three at a time would have a foot against
Modestine's quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned
afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise of force,
can make a more solid job than half a dozen heated and enthusiastic
grooms. I was then but a novice; even after the misadventure of the pad
nothing could disturb my security, and I went forth from the stable-door
as an ox goeth to the slaughter.
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER
The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these
preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. As long
as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of
some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She
tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait;
from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so
small under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford
without difficulty--there was no doubt about the matter, she was
docility itself--and once on the other bank, where the road begins to
mount through pine woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff,
and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up
her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former
minuet. Another application had the same effect, and so with the third.
I am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience
to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over
from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her
breathing was distressed; it was plain that she could go no faster on a
hill. God forbid, thought I, that I should brutalize this innocent
creature; let her go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow.
What that pace was there is no word mean enough to describe; it was
something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run; it
kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five
minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of
the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance
exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went
on a few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to
browse. The thought that this was to last from here to Alais nearly
broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys this promised to be the most
tedious. I tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my
foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision ever present to me of
the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever
infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like
things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the goal.
In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty
years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the
green tail-coat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and
stopped to consider our pitiful advance.
"Your donkey," says he, "is very old?"
I told him, I believed not.
Then, he supposed, we had come far.
I told him, we had but newly left Monastier.
"_Et vous marchez comme ça!_" cried he; and, throwing back his head, he
laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half prepared to feel
offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, "You must have no
pity on these animals," said he; and, plucking a switch out of a
thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the stern-works, uttering a
cry. The rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a good round pace,
which she kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least
symptom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. Her former
panting and shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of comedy.
My _deus ex machinâ_, before he left me, supplied some excellent, if
inhumane, advice; presented me with the switch, which he declared she
would feel more tenderly than my cane; and finally taught me the true
cry or masonic word of donkey-drivers, "Proot!" All the time, he
regarded me with a comical, incredulous air, which was embarrassing to
confront; and smiled over my donkey-driving, as I might have smiled over
his orthography, or his green tail-coat. But it was not my turn for the
moment.
I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned the art to
perfection. And certainly Modestine did wonders for the rest of the
forenoon, and I had a breathing space to look about me. It was Sabbath;
the mountain-fields were all vacant in the sunshine; and as we came down
through St. Martin de Frugères, the church was crowded to the door,
there were people kneeling without upon the steps, and the sound of the
priest's chanting came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a home
feeling on the spot; for I am a countryman of the Sabbath, so to speak,
and all Sabbath observances, like a Scottish accent, strike in me mixed
feelings, grateful and the reverse. It is only a traveller, hurrying by
like a person from another planet, who can rightly enjoy the peace and
beauty of the great ascetic feast. The sight of the resting country does
his spirit good. There is something better than music in the wide,
unusual silence; and it disposes him to amiable thoughts, like the sound
of a little river or the warmth of sunlight.
In this pleasant humour I came down the hill to where 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. Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an
amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire.
On all sides, Goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths,
practicable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of France;
and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up
at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in
an isolation, you would think, like that of Homer's Cyclops. But it is
not so; the postman reaches Goudet with the letter-bag; the aspiring
youth of Goudet are within a day's walk of the railway at Le Puy; and
here in the inn you may find an engraved portrait of the host's nephew,
Régis Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two Americas," a
distinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars,
at Tammany Hall, New York, on the 10th April 1876.
I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as
we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, "Proot!" seemed to
have lost its virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted mellifluously
like a sucking-dove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor
intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace; nothing but a blow would
move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels,
incessantly belabouring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she
relapsed into her own private gait. I think I never heard of any one in
as mean a situation. I must reach the lake of Bouchet, where I meant to
camp, before sundown, and, to have even a hope of this, I must instantly
maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The sound of my own blows sickened
me. Once, when I looked at her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of
my acquaintance who formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased
my horror of my cruelty.
To make matters worse, we encountered another donkey, ranging at will
upon the roadside; and this other donkey chanced to be a gentleman. He
and Modestine met nickering for joy, and I had to separate the pair and
beat down their young romance with a renewed and feverish bastinado. If
the other donkey had had the heart of a male under his hide, he would
have fallen upon me tooth and hoof; and this was a kind of
consolation--he was plainly unworthy of Modestine's affection. But the
incident saddened me, as did everything that spoke of my donkey's sex.
It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun upon my
shoulders; and I had to labour so consistently with my stick that the
sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket,
and the pilot-coat would take an ugly slew to one side or the other; and
I had to stop Modestine, just when I had got her to a tolerable pace of
about two miles an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load.
And at last, in the village of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole
hypothec, turned round and grovelled in the dust below the donkey's
belly. She, none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to
smile, and a party of one man, two women, and two children came up, and,
standing round me in a half circle, encouraged her by their example.
I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted; and the instant
I had done so, without hesitation, it toppled and fell down upon the
other side. Judge if I was hot! And yet not a hand was offered to assist
me. The man, indeed, told me I ought to have a package of a different
shape. I suggested, if he knew nothing better to the point in my
predicament, he might hold his tongue. And the good-natured dog agreed
with me smilingly. It was the most despicable fix. I must plainly
content myself with the pack for Modestine, and take the following items
for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quart flask, a pilot-jacket
heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black bread, and an open
basket full of meats and bottles. I believe I may say I am not devoid of
greatness of soul; for I did not recoil from this infamous burden. I
disposed it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then
proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was
indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in
the whole length; and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help
myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with
six or seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and he
and his acolytes laughed loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered
having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity
in the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with
penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon
me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But
oh, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it!
A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, set her
heart upon a by-road, and positively refused to leave it. I dropped all
my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice
across the face. It was pitiful to see her lift her head with shut eyes,
as if waiting for another blow. I came very near crying, but I did a
wiser thing than that, and sat squarely down by the roadside to consider
my situation under the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of
brandy. Modestine, in the meanwhile, munched some black bread with a
contrite hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice to
the gods of shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottle destined to carry
milk; I threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act by general
average, kept the black bread for Modestine; lastly, I threw away the
cold leg of mutton and the egg-whisk, although this last was dear to my
heart. Thus I found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed
the boating-coat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it under
one arm, and although the cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung
almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that I set
forth again.
I I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cruelly I chastised
her. If I were to reach the lake-side before dark she must bestir her
little shanks to some tune. Already the sun had gone down into a
windy-looking mist; and although there were still a few streaks of gold
far off to the east on the hills and the black fir-woods, all was cold
and grey about our onward path. An infinity of little country by-roads
led hither and thither among the fields. It was the most pointless
labyrinth. I could see my destination overhead, or rather the peak that
dominates it, but choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by turning
away from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or northward along
the margin of the hills. The failing light, the waning colour, the
naked, unhomely, stony country through which I was travelling, threw me
into some despondency. I promise you, the stick was not idle; I think
every decent step that Modestine took must have cost me at least two
emphatic blows. There was not another sound in the neighbourhood but
that of my unwearying bastinado.
Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the dust,
and, as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously loosened, and
the road scattered with my dear possessions. The packing was to begin
again from the beginning; and as I had to invent a new and better
system, I do not doubt but I lost half an hour. It began to be dusk in
earnest as I reached a wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of
being a road which should lead everywhere at the same time; and I was
falling into something not unlike despair when I saw two figures
stalking towards me over the stones. They walked one behind the other
like tramps, but their pace was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall,
ill-made, sombre, Scottish-looking man; the mother followed, all in her
Sunday's best, with an elegantly embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a
new felt hat atop, and proffering, as she strode along with kilted
petticoats, a string of obscene and blasphemous oaths.
I hailed the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west
and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without slackening
his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my
path. The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I shouted
and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and
turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself,
I was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped as
I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she was a
handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son once more
answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But
this time I simply collared the mother, who was nearest me, and,
apologizing for my violence, declared that I could not let them go until
they had put me on my road. They were neither of them offended--rather
mollified than otherwise; told me I had only to follow them; and then
the mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I
replied, in the Scottish manner, by inquiring if she had far to go
herself. She told me, with another oath, that she had an hour and a
half's road before her. And then, without salutation, the pair strode
forward again up the hillside in the gathering dusk.
I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, after a sharp
ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a plateau. The view,
looking back on my day's journey, was both wild and sad. Mount Mézenc
and the peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a
cold glitter in the east; and the intervening field of hills had fallen
together into one broad wash of shadow, except here and there the
outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here and there a white,
irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a
blot where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Laussonne wandered in a
gorge.
Soon we were on a high-road, and surprise seized on my mind as I beheld
a village of some magnitude close at hand; for I had been told that the
neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout. The road
smoked in the twilight with children driving home cattle from the
fields; and a pair of mounted stride-legged women, hat and cap and all,
dashed past me at a hammering trot from the canton where they had been
to church and market. I asked one of the children where I was. At
Bouchet St. Nicholas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south of my
destination, and on the other side of a respectable summit, had these
confused roads and treacherous peasantry conducted me. My shoulder was
cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like tooth-ache from
perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my design to camp, and asked
for the _auberge_.
I HAVE A GOAD
The _auberge_ of Bouchet St. Nicholas was among the least pretentious I
have ever visited; but I saw many more of the like upon my journey.
Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of
two stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a
suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other dining; furniture
of the plainest, earthen floors, a single bed-chamber for travellers,
and that without any convenience but beds. In the kitchen cooking and
eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. Any one
who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table. The
food is sometimes spare; hard fish and omelette have been my portion
more than once; the wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to
man; and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and rubbing
against your legs, is no impossible accompaniment to dinner.
But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves
friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the doors you cease to be
a stranger; and although these peasantry are rude and forbidding on the
highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their
hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais,
and asked the host to join me. He would take but little.
"I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?" he said, "and I am capable
of leaving you not enough."
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. My knife was
cordially admired by the landlord of Bouchet, and the spring filled him
with wonder.
"I should never have guessed that," he said. "I would bet," he added,
weighing it in his hand, "that this cost you not less than five francs."
When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped.
He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, astonishingly
ignorant. His wife, who was not so pleasant in her manners, knew how to
read, although I do not suppose she ever did so. She had a share of
brains, and spoke with a cutting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast.
"My man knows nothing," she said, with an angry nod; "he is like the
beasts."
And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. There was no
contempt on her part, and no shame on his; the facts were accepted
loyally, and no more about the matter.
I was tightly cross-examined about my journey; and the lady understood
in a moment, and sketched out what I should put into my book when I got
home. "Whether people harvest or not in such or such a place; if there
were forests; studies of manners; what, for example, I and the master of
the house say to you; the beauties of Nature, and all that." And she
interrogated me with a look.
"It is just that," said I.
"You see," she added to her husband, "I understood that."
They were both much interested by the story of my misadventures.
"In the morning," said the husband, "I will make you something better
than your cane. Such a beast as that feels nothing; it is in the
proverb--_dur comme un âne_; you might beat her insensible with a
cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere."
Something better! I little knew what he was offering.
The sleeping-room was furnished with two beds. I had one; and I will own
I was a little abashed to find a young man and his wife and child in the
act of mounting into the other. This was my first experience of the
sort; and if I am always to feel equally silly and extraneous, I pray
God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of
the woman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit
embarrassed by my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was
more trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in
countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could
not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to
conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. He told me
that he was a cooper of Alais travelling to St. Etienne in search of
work, and that in his spare moments he followed the fatal calling of a
maker of matches. Me he readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant.
I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23rd), and hastened my
toilette guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's
wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood
of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty
clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform; and
the only speck of colour was away behind Mount Mézenc and the eastern
hills, where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn.
It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea; and I
had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People were trooping out to
the labours of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to
stare upon the stranger. I had seen them coming back last night, I saw
them going afield again; and there was the life of Bouchet in a
nutshell.
When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the landlady was in
the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair; and I made her my
compliments upon its beauty.
"Oh, no," said the mother; "it is not so beautiful as it ought to be.
Look, it is too fine."
Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse physical
circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, the defects of
the majority decide the type of beauty.
"And where," said I, "is monsieur?"
"The master of the house is upstairs," she answered, "making you a
goad."
Blessed be the man who invented goads! Blessed the innkeeper of Bouchet
St. Nicholas, who introduced me to their use! This plain wand, with an
eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it in my
hands. Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. A prick, and she passed the
most inviting stable-door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gallant
little trotlet that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable speed,
when all was said; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the best
of it. But what a heavenly change since yesterday! No more wielding of
the ugly cudgel; no more flailing with an aching arm; no more broadsword
exercise, but a discreet and gentlemanly fence. And what although now
and then a drop of blood should appear on Modestine's mouse-coloured
wedge-like rump? I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed; but
yesterday's exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The perverse
little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go
with pricking.
It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride-legged
ladies and a pair of post-runners, the road was dead solitary all the
way to Pradelles. I scarce remember an incident but one. A handsome foal
with a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch of
common, sniffed the air martially as one about to do great deeds, and,
suddenly thinking otherwise in his green young heart, put about and
galloped off as he had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long
while afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the
note of his bell; and when I struck the high-road, the song of the
telegraph-wires seemed to continue the same music.
Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, surrounded by
rich meadows. They were cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave the
neighbourhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay. On
the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the
horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape, with black blots of
fir-wood and white roads wandering through the hills. Over all this the
clouds shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing,
exaggerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief
the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, but one
stimulating to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and
all that I beheld lay in another county--wild Gévaudan, mountainous,
uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves.
Wolves, alas! like bandits, seem to flee the traveler's advance, and
you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe and not meet with an
adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the
frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorable BEAST,
the Napoléon Bonaparte of wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten
months at free quarters in Gévaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and
children and "shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty"; he pursued
armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise
and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing
before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender,
and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And yet, when he was
shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for
that. "Though I could reach from pole to pole," sang Alexander Pope; the
Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf
they would have changed the history of man. M. Élie Berthet has made him
the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do not wish to read again.
I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's desire
that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, "who performed many miracles,
although she was of wood," and before three-quarters of an hour I was
goading Modestine down the deep descent that leads to Langogne on the
Allier. On both sides of the road, in big dusty fields, farmers were
preparing for next spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked
stolid oxen were patiently haling at the plough. I saw one of these mild
formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in
Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying lay at an
angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those
of caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed round his big
honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master
bade him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all
these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer
here and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind
carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy,
breathing, rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, the
highlands of Gévaudan kept mounting in front of me against the sky.
I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the Allier;
so near are these two confluents in their youth. Just at the bridge of
Langogne, as the long-promised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of
some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, "_D'où
'st-ce-que vous venez?_" She did it with so high an air that she set me
laughing, and this cut her to the quick. She was evidently one who
reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I
crossed the bridge and entered the county of Gévaudan.
UPPER GÉVAUDAN
_The way also here was very wearisome
through dirt and slabbiness; nor was
there on all this ground so much as one
inn or victualling-house wherein to
refresh the feebler sort._
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
A CAMP IN THE DARK
The next day (Tuesday, September 24th) it was two o'clock in the
afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired,
for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future, and have no
more ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le
Cheylard l'Évéque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A
man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought
it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey
might cover the same distance in four hours.
All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed
alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly;
plentiful hurrying clouds--some, dragging veils of straight rain-shower,
others massed and luminous as though promising snow--careered out of the
north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated
basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen and such-like
sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines,
woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few
naked cottages and bleak fields,--these were the characters of the
country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and
stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three
or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on
hillsides or at the borders of a wood.
There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make
a passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth
of tracks. It must have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and
went on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours
afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued
from a fir-wood where I had long been wandering, and found, not the
looked-for village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble
hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead;
and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a
dozen cows, and perhaps as many more black figures, which I conjectured
to be children, although the mist had almost unrecognisably exaggerated
their forms. These were all silently following each other round and
round in a circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and
reverences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent and lively
thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and
fantastic to behold. Even I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer,
felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, I was
pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through
the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as
before a fair wind; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute
became demented. The tendency of lost travellers to go round in a circle
was developed in her to the degree of passion, and it took all the
steering I had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a
single field.
While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and
cattle began to disperse, until only a pair of girls remained behind.
From these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were
but little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired
into his house, and barricaded the door on my approach; and I might beat
and shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me
a direction which, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood,
complacently watched me going wrong without adding a sign. He did not
care a stalk of parsley if I wandered all night upon the hills! As for
these two girls, they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a
thought but mischief. One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me
follow the cows, and they both giggled and joggled each other's elbows.
The Beast of Gévaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; I
began to think of him with sympathy.
Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into another
wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and darker. Modestine,
suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own
accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first
sign of intelligence I had occasion to remark in her. At the same time,
the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain
came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sighted
some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of Fouzilhic; three
houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. Here I found a delightful
old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on
the road for Cheylard. He would hear of no reward, but shook his hands
above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly
in unmitigated _patois_.
All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon dinner and a
fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in my bosom. Alas, and I
was on the brink of new and greater miseries! Suddenly, at a single
swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in many a black night, but
never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it
was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a
tree--this was all that I could discriminate. The sky was simply
darkness overhead; even the flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to
human eyesight. I could not distinguish my hand at arm's-length from the
track, nor my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or the sky.
Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of the
country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. Since Modestine
had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this
predicament. But the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from
the name; in half a minute she was clambering round and round among some
boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have
camped long before had I been properly provided; but as this was to be
so short a stage, I had brought no wine, no bread for myself, and little
over a pound for my lady friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were
both handsomely wetted by the showers. But now, if I could have found
some water, I should have camped at once in spite of all. Water,
however, being entirely absent, except in the form of rain, I determined
to return to Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little farther on my way--"a
little farther lend thy guiding hand."
The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this sensible
roaring blackness I was sure of nothing but the direction of the wind.
To this I set my face; the road had disappeared, and I went across
country, now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to
Modestine, until I came once more in sight of some red windows. This
time they were differently disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but
Fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant from the other in space, but worlds
away in the spirit of its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and
groped forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg in bog, until I
gained the entrance of the village. In the first lighted house there was
a woman who would not open to me. She could do nothing, she cried to me
through the door, being alone and lame; but if I would apply at the next
house there was a man who could help me if he had a mind.
They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and a girl, and
brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. The man was not
ill-looking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned against the doorpost,
and heard me state my case. All I asked was a guide as far as Cheylard.
"_C'est que, voyez-vous, il fait noir_," said he.
I told him that was just my reason for requiring help.
"I understand that," said he, looking uncomfortable; "_mais--c'est--de
la peine_."
I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I rose as high as ten
francs; but he continued to shake his head. "Name your own price then,"
said I.
"_Ce n'est pas ça_," he said at length, and with evident difficulty;
"but I am not going to cross the door--_mais je ne sortirai pas de la
porte_."
I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that I should do.
"Where are you going beyond Cheylard?" he asked by way of answer.
"That is no affair of yours," I returned, for I was not going to indulge
his bestial curiosity; "it changes nothing in my present predicament."
"_C'est vrai, ça_," he acknowledged, with a laugh; "_oui, c'est vrai. Et
d'où venez-vous?_"
A better man than I might have felt nettled.
"Oh," said I, "I am not going to answer any of your questions, so you
may spare yourself the trouble of putting them. I am late enough
already; I want help. If you will not guide me yourself, at least help
me to find some one else who will."
"Hold on," he cried suddenly. "Was it not you who passed in the meadow
while it was still day?"
"Yes, yes," said the girl, whom I had not hitherto recognized; "it was
monsieur; I told him to follow the cow."
"As for you, mademoiselle," said I, "you are a _farceuse_."
"And," added the man, "what the devil have you done to be still here?"
What the devil, indeed! But there I was. "The great thing," said I, "is
to make an end of it," and once more proposed that he should help me to
find a guide.
"_C'est que_," he said again, "_c'est que_--_il fait noir_."
"Very well," said I; "take one of your lanterns."
"No," he cried, drawing a thought backward, and again entrenching
himself behind one of his former phrases; "I will not cross the door."
I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror struggling on his face with
unaffected shame; he was smiling pitifully and wetting his lip with his
tongue, like a detected schoolboy. I drew a brief picture of my state,
and asked him what I was to do.
"I don't know," he said; "I will not cross the door."
Here was the Beast of Gévaudan, and no mistake.
"Sir," said I, with my most commanding manners, "you are a coward."
And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who hastened to
retire within their fortifications; and the famous door was closed
again, but not till I had overheard the sound of laughter. _Filia
barbara pater barbarior._ Let me say it in the plural: the Beasts of
Gévaudan.
The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I ploughed distressfully among
stones and rubbish-heaps. All the other houses in the village were both
dark and silent; and though I knocked at here and there a door, my
knocking was unanswered. It was a bad business; I gave up Fouzilhac with
my curses. The rain had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising,
began to dry my coat and trousers. "Very well," thought I, "water or no
water, I must camp." But the first thing was to return to Modestine. I
am pretty sure I was twenty minutes groping for my lady in the dark; and
if it had not been for the unkindly services of the bog, into which I
once more stumbled, I might have still been groping for her at the dawn.
My next business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was
cold as well as boisterous. How, in this well-wooded district, I should
have been so long in finding one, is another of the insoluble mysteries
of this day's adventures; but I will take my oath that I put near an
hour to the discovery.
At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, suddenly crossing
the road, made a cave of unmitigated blackness right in front. I call it
a cave without exaggeration; to pass below that arch of leaves was like
entering a dungeon. I felt about until my hand encountered a stout
branch, and to this I tied Modestine, a haggard, drenched, desponding
donkey. Then I lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of
the road, and unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where the lantern
was, but where were the candles? I groped and groped among the tumbled
articles, and, while I was thus groping, suddenly I touched the
spirit-lamp. Salvation! This would serve my turn as well. The wind
roared unwearyingly among the trees; I could hear the boughs tossing and
the leaves churning through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my
encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. At
the second match the wick caught flame. The light was both livid and
shifting; but it cut me off from the universe, and doubled the darkness
of the surrounding night.
I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up half the
black bread for her supper, reserving the other half against the
morning. Then I gathered what I should want within reach, took off my
wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my
knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my sleeping-bag, insinuated my
limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in like a _bambino_. I
opened a tin of Bologna sausage, and broke a cake of chocolate, and that
was all I had to eat. It may sound offensive, but I ate them together,
bite by bite, by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash down this
revolting mixture was neat brandy: a revolting beverage in itself. But
I was rare and hungry; ate well, and smoked one of the best cigarettes
in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the flap of
my fur cap over my neck and eyes, put my revolver ready to my hand, and
snuggled well down among the sheepskins.
I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating
faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which my mind
remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue
leaped between them, and they would no more come separate. The wind
among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes
together with a steady, even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it
would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would
patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night
after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this
perturbing concert of the wind among the woods, but whether it was a
difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was
myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind
sang to a different tune among these woods of Gévaudan. I hearkened and
hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body and
subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to
listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at
the foreign clamour in my ears.
Twice in the course of the dark hours--once when a stone galled me
underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient Modestine, growing
angry, pawed and stamped upon the road--I was recalled for a brief while
to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace-like edge
of the foliage against the sky. When I awoke for the third time
(Wednesday, September 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light,
the mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the
ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine tied
to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of
inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over
the experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and
pleasant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which
annoyed me would not have been there had I not been forced to camp
blindfold in the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience
except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of
Peyrat's "Pastors of the Desert" among the mixed contents of my
sleeping-bag; nay, more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened
with unusually lightsome and clear sensations.
With that I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and,
breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to see
in what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and
with a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I
have been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate
adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be
found by morning in a random woodside nook in Gévaudan--not knowing
north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon
the earth, an inland castaway--was to find a fraction of my daydreams
realized. I was on the skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with
a few beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and in front, it
broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy dale.
All around there were bare hill-tops, some near, some far away, as the
perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much higher than the
rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden specks of autumn in the
birches tossed shiveringly. Overhead the sky was full of strings and
shreds of vapour, flying, vanishing, reappearing, and turning about an
axis like tumblers, as the wind hounded them through heaven. It was wild
weather and famishing cold. I ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful
of brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the cold should have time to
disable my fingers. And by the time I had got all this done, and had
made my pack and bound it on the pack-saddle, the day was tiptoe on the
threshold of the east. We had not gone many steps along the lane, before
the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold over some cloud
mountains that lay ranged along the eastern sky.
The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly forward. I
buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on in a pleasant frame of mind
with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there was Fouzilhic once more
in front of me. Nor only that, but there was the old gentleman who had
escorted me so far the night before, running out of his house at sight
of me, with hands upraised in horror.
"My poor boy!" he cried, "what does this mean?"
I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like clappers in a
mill, to think how lightly he had let me go; but when he heard of the
man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind.
"This time, at least," said he, "there shall be no mistake."
And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about half a mile,
and until I was almost within sight of Cheylard, the destination I had
hunted for so long.
CHEYLARD AND LUC
Candidly, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. A few broken
ends of village, with no particular street, but a succession of open
places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine
to Our Lady of all Graces on the summit of a little hill; and all this,
upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked valley. What
went ye out for to see? thought I to myself. But the place had a life of
its own. I found a board commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for
the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering
church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants subscribed forty-eight
francs ten centimes for the "Work of the Propagation of the Faith." Some
of this, I could not help hoping, would be applied to my native land.
Cheylard scrapes together halfpence for the darkened souls in Edinburgh,
while Balquhidder and Dunrossness bemoan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to
the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with
evangelists, like schoolboys bickering in the snow.
The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not
ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the clothes,
the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest.
There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at
the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be
forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. They were much
interested in my misadventure. The wood in which I had slept belonged to
them; the man of Fouzilhac they thought a monster of iniquity, and
counseled me warmly to summon him at law--"because I might have died."
The good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over a pint of
uncreamed milk.
"You will do yourself an evil," she said. "Permit me to boil it for
you."
After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she having an
infinity of things to arrange, I was permitted, nay requested, to make a
bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and gaiters were hung up to dry,
and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest
daughter let down a hinged table in the chimney-corner for my
convenience. Here I wrote, drank my chocolate, and finally ate an
omelette before I left. The table was thick with dust; for, as they
explained, it was not used except in winter weather. I had a clear look
up the vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapour, to
the sky; and whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my
legs were scorched by the blaze.
The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when I came to charge
Modestine showed himself full of the prudence of his art. "You will have
to change this package," said he; "it ought to be in two parts, and then
you might have double the weight."
I explained that I wanted no more weight; and for no donkey hitherto
created would I cut my sleeping-bag in two.
"It fatigues her, however," said the innkeeper; "it fatigues her greatly
on the march. Look."
Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on the inside,
and blood was running from under her tail. They told me when I started,
and I was ready to believe it, that before a few days I should come to
love Modestine like a dog. Three days had passed, we had shared some
misadventures, and my heart was still as cold as a potato towards my
beast of burden. She was pretty enough to look at; but then she had
given proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but
aggravated by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. And I
own this new discovery seemed another point against her. What the devil
was the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a
few necessaries? I saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, when I
should have to carry Modestine. Æsop was the man to know the world! I
assure you I set out with heavy thoughts upon my short day's march.
It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted me upon the
way; it was a leaden business altogether. For first, the wind blew so
rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one hand from Cheylard to
Luc; and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly countries
in the world. It was like the worst of the Scottish Highlands, only
worse; cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant
of life. A road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line
of the road was marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow.
Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than
my much-inventing spirit can suppose. 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 civilization, and find the globe granite
underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life,
and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing
that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a
gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that
serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so
exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?
I came out at length above the Allier. 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, which, I heard with interest, weighed
fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October. Through
this sorry landscape trickled the Allier and a tributary of nearly equal
size, which came down to join it through a broad nude valley in
Vivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, and the clouds massed in
squadron; but the fierce wind still hunted them through heaven, and cast
great ungainly splashes of shadow and sunlight over the scene.
Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged between hill
and river. It had no beauty, nor was there any notable feature, save the
old castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brand-new Madonna. But
the inn was clean and large. The kitchen, with its two box-beds hung
with clean check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its
chimney-shelf four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious
statuettes, its array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very
model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, suitable for
bandits or noblemen in disguise. Nor was the scene disgraced by the
landlady, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, clothed and hooded in
black like a nun. Even the public bedroom had a character of its own,
with the long deal tables and benches, where fifty might have dined, set
out as for a harvest-home, and the three box-beds along the wall. In one
of these, lying on straw and covered with a pair of table-napkins, did I
do penance all night long in goose-flesh and chattering teeth, and sigh,
from time to time as I awakened, for my sheepskin sack and the lee of
some great wood.
OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS
_I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere--
And what am I, that I am here?_
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
FATHER APOLLONARIS
Next morning (Thursday, 26th September) I took the road in a new order.
The sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full length across the
saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging
out of either end. It was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and,
as I began to see, it would ensure stability, blow high, blow low. But
it was not without a pang that I had so decided. For although I had
purchased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet
jealously uneasy lest the flaps should tumble out and scatter my effects
along the line of march.
My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march of Vivarais
and Gévaudan. The hills of Gévaudan on the right were a little more
naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais upon the left, and the former
had a monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges
and died out in solitary burrs upon the shoulders and the summits. Black
bricks of fir-wood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and
here and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the river;
the only bit of railway in Gévaudan, although there are many proposals
afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell me, a station
standing ready built in Mende. A year or two hence and this may be
another world. The desert is beleaguered. Now may some Languedocian
Wordsworth turn the sonnet into _patois:_ "Mountains and vales and
floods, heard YE that whistle?"
At a place called La Bastide 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. The sun
came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, 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 on 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
channeled slopes. The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now
broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly in the sun. I
drew a long breath. It was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene
of some attraction for the human heart. I own I like definite form in
what my eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like the
sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence
coloured, I should go the length of twopence every day of my life.
But if things had grown better to the south, it was still desolate and
inclement near at hand. A spidery cross on every hill-top marked the
neighbourhood of a religious house; and a quarter of a mile beyond, the
outlook southward opening out and growing bolder with every step, a
white statue of the Virgin at the corner of a young plantation directed
the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows. Here, then, 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.
I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clanging of a
bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why, my heart sank within me at the
sound. 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. And suddenly, on turning a corner, fear took hold
on me from head to foot--slavish, superstitious fear; and though I did
not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have
passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead. For
there, upon the narrow new-made road, between the stripling pines, was a
mediæval friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs. Every Sunday of my
childhood I used to study the Hermits of Marco Sadeler--enchanting
prints, full of wood and field and mediæval landscapes, as large as a
county, for the imagination to go a-travelling in; and here, sure
enough, was one of Marco Sadeler's heroes. He was robed in white like
any spectre, and the hood falling back, in the instancy of his
contention with the barrow, disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as a
skull. He might have been buried any time these thousand years, and all
the lively parts of him resolved into earth and broken up with the
farmer's harrow.
I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I address a
person who was under a vow of silence? Clearly not. But drawing near, I
doffed my cap to him with a far-away superstitious reverence. He nodded
back, and cheerfully addressed me. Was I going to the monastery? Who was
I? An Englishman? Ah, an Irishman, then?
"No," I said, "a Scotsman."
A Scotsman? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman before. And he looked me
all over, his good, honest, brawny countenance shining with interest, as
a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I learned with
disgust that I could not be received at Our Lady of the Snows; I might
get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and
it turned out that I was not a pedlar, but a literary man, who drew
landscapes and was going to write a book, he changed his manner of
thinking as to my reception (for I fear they respect persons even in a
Trappist monastery), and told me I must be sure to ask for the Father
Prior, and state my case to him in full. On second thoughts he
determined to go down with me himself; he thought he could manage for me
better. Might he say that I was a geographer?
No; I thought, in the interests of truth, he positively might not.
"Very well, then" (with disappointment), "an author."
It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young Irishmen, all
priests, long since, who had received newspapers and kept him informed
of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in England. And he asked me
eagerly after Dr. Pusey, for whose conversion the good man had continued
ever since to pray night and morning.
"I thought he was very near the truth," he said; "and he will reach it
yet; there is so much virtue in prayer."
He must be a stiff, ungodly Protestant who can take anything but
pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. While he was thus near the
subject, the good father asked me if I were a Christian; and when he
found I was not, or not after his way, he glossed it over with great
good-will.
The road which we were following, and which this stalwart father had
made with his own two hands within the space of a year, came to a
corner, and showed us some white buildings a little farther on beyond
the wood. At the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We were
hard upon the monastery. Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's
name) stopped me.
"I must not speak to you down there," he said. "Ask for the Brother
Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as you go out again
through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made
your acquaintance."
And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and crying out
twice, "I must not speak! I must not speak!" he ran away in front of me,
and disappeared into the monastery door.
I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to revive my
terrors. But where one was so good and simple, why should not all be
alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as
Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would
permit. It was the first door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had
not shown an indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form,
though with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaller, and
a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me a
while. I think my sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled
the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it
to the Father Prior. But whether it was my address, or the sack, or the
idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on
strangers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no difficulty as to
my reception. Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I
and my pack were received into Our Lady of the Snows.
THE MONKS
Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of
thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to
stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say he
listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air,
like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly, when I remember that I
descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that
time more than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken
bread, I can well understand that he would find an earthly savour in my
conversation. But his manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious;
and I find I have a lurking curiosity as to Father Michael's past.
The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery
garden. This is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and
beds of parti-coloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue
of the Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around it four-square,
bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and weather, and with no other
features than a belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white,
brothers in brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and when I
first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at their
prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood
commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind; the snow falls off
and on from October to May, and sometimes lies six weeks on end; but if
they stood in Eden with a climate like heaven's, the buildings
themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my
part, on this wild September day, before I was called to dinner, I felt
chilly in and out.
When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a hearty
conversible Frenchman (for all those who wait on strangers have the
liberty to speak), led me to a little room in that part of the building
which is set apart for _MM. les retraitants_. It was clean and
whitewashed, and furnished with strict necessaries, a crucifix, a bust
of the late Pope, the "Imitation" in French, a book of religious
meditations, and the "Life of Elizabeth Seton"--evangelist, it would
appear, of North America and of New England in particular. As far as my
experience goes, there is a fair field for some more evangelisation in
these quarters; but think of Cotton Mather! I should like to give him a
reading of this little work in heaven, where I hope he dwells; but
perhaps he knows all that already, and much more; and perhaps he and
Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and gladly unite their voices in the
everlasting psalm. Over the table, to conclude the inventory of the
room, hung a set of regulations for _MM. les retraitants:_ what services
they should attend, when they were to tell their beads or meditate, and
when they were to rise and go to rest. At the foot was a notable N. B.:
"_Le temps libre est employé a l'examen de conscience, à la confession,
à faire de bonnes résolutions,"_ etc. To make good resolutions, indeed!
You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head.
I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Ambrose returned. An English
boarder, it appeared, would like to speak with me. I professed my
willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young, little Irishman of
fifty, a deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing
on his head what, in default of knowledge, I can only call the
ecclesiastical shako. He had lived seven years in retreat at a convent
of nuns in Belgium, and now five at Our Lady of the Snows; he never saw
an English newspaper; he spoke French imperfectly, and had he spoken it
like a native, there was not much chance of conversation where he dwelt.
With this, he was a man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and
simple-minded like a child. If I was pleased to have a guide about the
monastery, he was no less delighted to see an English face and hear an
English tongue.
He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries,
Hebrew Bibles, and the Waverley Novels. Thence he led me to the
cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the vestry, where the
brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his
religious name upon a board--names full of legendary suavity and
interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, Raphael, or Pacifique; into the
library, where were all the works of Veuillot and Chateaubriand, and the
"Odes et Ballades," if you please, and even Molière, to say nothing of
innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians.
Thence my good Irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers bake
bread, and make cart-wheels, and take photographs; where one
superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of
rabbits. For in a Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his
own choice, apart from his religious duties and the general labours of
the house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and
join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; but in his private
hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on what he
likes. Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with literature;
while Father Apollinaris busies himself in making roads, and the Abbot
employs himself in binding books. It is not so long since this Abbot was
consecrated, by the way; and on that occasion, by a special grace, his
mother was permitted to enter the chapel and witness the ceremony of
consecration. A proud day for her to have a son a mitred abbot; it makes
you glad to think they let her in.
In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and brethren
fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to our passage than if
we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good deacon had a permission to
ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the hands,
almost like that of a dog's paws in swimming, or refused by the usual
negative signs, and in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain
air of contrition, as of a man who was steering very close to evil.
The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two meals
a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, which begins
somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and during which they eat
but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the afternoon,
twelve hours after they have begun the toil and vigil of the day. Their
meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly; and though each
is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence.
Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly over-eat 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 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 eye, was one that served rather to increase the general
impression of vivacity and strength.
Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet-tempered, with what I can
only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conversation. There is a note,
in the direction to visitors, telling them not to be offended at the
curt speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to
speak little. The note might have been spared; to a man the hospitallers
were all brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the
monastery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conversation. With
the exception of Father Michael, who was a man of the world, they showed
themselves full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of
subjects--in politics, in voyages, in my sleeping-sack--and not without
a certain pleasure in the sound of their own voices.
As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder how they
bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, apart from any view
of mortification, I can see a certain policy, not only in the exclusion
of women, but in this vow of silence. I have had some experience of lay
phalansteries, of an artistic, not to say a bacchanalian, character; and
seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily
dispersed. With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted
longer. In the neighbourhood of women it is but a touch-and-go
association that can be formed among defenceless men; the stronger
electricity is sure to triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of
youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and the arts and
sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet
eyes and a caressing accent. And next after this, the tongue is the
great divider.
I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious
rule; but there is yet another point in which the Trappist order appeals
to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the morning 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.
From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand the monk's
existence. A long novitiate and every proof of constancy of mind and
strength of body is required before admission to the order; but I could
not find that many were discouraged. In the photographer's studio, which
figures so strangely among the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the
portrait of a young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This was
one of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and
drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the garrison of
Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both sides of life before
deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he returned to
finish his novitiate.
This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the
Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of death as
he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent existence; and when
the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried
him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual
chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated
belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has
gone to God.
At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the
gallery to hear compline and _Salve Regina_, with which the Cistercians
bring every day to a conclusion. 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.
But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth
Seton's memoirs--a dull work--the cold and the raving of the wind among
the pines (for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins
the woods) disposed me readily to slumber. I was awakened at black
midnight, as it seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the
first stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the
chapel; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning
the uncomforted labours of their day. The dead in life--there was a
chill reflection. And the words of a French song came back into my
memory, telling of the best of our mixed existence:
"Que t'as de belles filles,
Giroflé!
Girofla!
Que t'as de belles filles,
_L'Amour les comptera!_"
And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to
love.
THE BOARDERS
But there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the Snows. At
this late season there were not many boarders; and yet I was not alone
in the public part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate,
with a small dining-room on the ground floor and a whole corridor of
cells similar to mine upstairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for
a regular _retraitant_; but it was somewhere between three and five
francs a day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like
myself might give what they chose as a free-will offering, but nothing
was demanded. I may mention that when I was going away Father Michael
refused twenty francs as excessive. I explained the reasoning which led
me to offer him so much; but even then, from a curious point of honour,
he would not accept it with his own hand. "I have no right to refuse for
the monastery," he explained, "but I should prefer if you would give it
to one of the brothers."
I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at supper I found two
other guests. One was a country parish priest, who had walked over that
morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy four days of
solitude and prayer. He was a grenadier in person, with the hale colour
and circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he complained much of how he
had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy
portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted
cassock, through the bleak hills of Gévaudan. The other was a short,
grizzling, thick-set man, from forty-five to fifty, dressed in tweed
with a knitted spencer, and the red ribbon of a decoration in his
button-hole. This last was a hard person to classify. He was an old
soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank of commandant; and
he retained some of the brisk decisive manners of the camp. On the other
hand, as soon as his resignation was accepted, he had come to Our Lady
of the Snows as a boarder, and, after a brief experience of its ways,
had decided to remain as a novice. Already the new life was beginning to
modify his appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and
smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a
Trappist, but partook of the character of each. And certainly here was a
man in an interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and
trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering
on the grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like
phantoms, communicate by signs.
At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in
France, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell on
the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in England dwell on the
example of Carthage. The priest and the commandant assured me of their
sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy sighing over the bitterness
of contemporary feeling.
"Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not absolutely
agree," said I, "but he flies up at you in a temper."
They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian.
While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but a
word in praise of Gambetta's moderation? The old soldier's countenance
was instantly suffused with blood; with the palms of his hands he beat
the table like a naughty child.
"_Comment, monsieur?_" he shouted. "_Comment?_ Gambetta moderate? Will
you dare to justify these words?"
But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And suddenly, in
the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warning look directed on
his face; the absurdity of his behaviour was brought home to him in a
flash; and the storm came to an abrupt end, without another word.
It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, September 27th),
that this couple found out I was a heretic. I suppose I had misled them
by some admiring expressions as to the monastic life around us; and it
was only by a point-blank question that the truth came out. I had been
tolerantly used both by simple Father Apollinaris and astute Father
Michael; and the good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious
weakness, had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, "You must be a
Catholic and come to heaven." But I was now among a different sect of
orthodox. These two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the
worst of Scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse.
The priest snorted aloud like a battle-horse.
"_Et vous prétendez mourir dans cette espèce de croyance?_" he demanded;
and there is no type used by mortal printers large enough to qualify his
accent.
I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing.
But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. "No, no," he
cried; "you must change. You have come here, God has led you here, and
you must embrace the opportunity."
I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affections, though I
was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men
circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life.
"Your father and mother?" cried the priest. "Very well; you will convert
them in their turn when you go home."
I think I see my father's face! I would rather tackle the Gætulian lion
in his den than embark on such an enterprise against the family
theologian.
But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my
conversion; and the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which the
people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during
1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most
effective proselytizing. They never sought to convince me in argument,
where I might have attempted some defence; but took it for granted that
I was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on
the point of time. Now, they said, when God had led me to Our Lady of
the Snows, now was the appointed hour.
"Do not be withheld by false shame," observed the priest, for my
encouragement.
For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has
never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this
or that creed on the eternal side of things, however much he may see to
praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus
created was both unfair and painful. I committed my second fault in
tact, and tried to plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and
we were all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and
undiscriminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits,
would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men think
differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest
with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of
hell. The damned, he said--on the authority of a little book which he
had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction,
he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket--were to
occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal
tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with
his enthusiasm.
As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the Prior, since
the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately before him.
"_C'est mon conseil comme ancien militaire_," observed the commandant;
"_et celui de monsieur comme prêtre_."
"_Oui_," added the _curé_, sententiously nodding; "_comme ancien
militaire_--_et comme prêtre_."
At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in came
one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig, and with
an Italian accent, who threw himself at once into the contention, but in
a milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant
brethren. Look at _him_, he said. The rule was very hard; he would have
dearly liked to stay in his own country, Italy--it was well known how
beautiful it was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no Trappists
in Italy; and he had a soul to save; and here he was.
I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has
dubbed me, "a faddling hedonist," for this description of the brother's
motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should have preferred to think he
had chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes; and
this shows how profoundly I was out of sympathy with these good
Trappists, even when I was doing my best to sympathize. But to the curé
the argument seemed decisive.
"Hear that!" he cried. "And I have seen a marquis here, a marquis, a
marquis"--he repeated the holy word three times over--"and other persons
high in society; and generals. And here, at your side, is this
gentleman, who has been so many years in armies--decorated, an old
warrior. And here he is, ready to dedicate himself to God."
I was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I pled cold feet, and
made my escape from the apartment. It was a furious windy morning, with
a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; and I
wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely
staggered and beaten upon by the gale, but rewarded with some striking
views.
At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was recommenced, and
on this occasion still more distastefully to me. The priest asked me
many questions as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received
my replies with a kind of ecclesiastical titter.
"Your sect," he said once; "for I think you will admit it would be doing
it too much honour to call it a religion."
"As you please, monsieur," said I. "_La parole est à vous."_
At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance; and although he was on his
own ground, and, what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so holding
a claim upon my toleration, I could not avoid a protest against this
uncivil usage. He was sadly discountenanced.
"I assure you," he said, "I have no inclination to laugh in my heart. I
have no other feeling but interest in your soul."
And there ended my conversion. Honest man! he was no dangerous deceiver;
but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long may he tread Gévaudan
with his kilted skirts--a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his
parishioners in death! I daresay he would beat bravely through a
snowstorm where his duty called him; and it is not always the most
faithful believer who makes the cunningest apostle.
UPPER GÉVAUDAN
_(Continued)_
_The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit;
The air was still, the water ran;
No need there was for maid or man,
When we put up, my ass and I,
At God's green caravanserai._
OLD PLAY.
ACROSS THE GOULET
The wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear; so it was under
better auspices that I loaded Modestine before the monastery gate. My
Irish friend accompanied me so far on the way. As we came through the
wood, there was Père Apollinaire hauling his barrow; and he too quitted
his labours to go with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand
between both of his in front of him. I parted first from one and then
from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the
traveller who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth
upon another. Then Modestine and I mounted the course of the Allier,
which here led us back into Gévaudan towards its sources in the forest
of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn before we left its
guidance. Thence, over a hill, our way lay through a naked plateau,
until we reached Chasseradès at sundown.
The company in the inn kitchen that night were all men employed in
survey for one of the projected railways. They were intelligent and
conversible, and we decided the future of France over hot wine, until
the state of the clock frightened us to rest. There were four beds in
the little upstairs room; and we slept six. But I had a bed to myself,
and persuaded them to leave the window open.
"_Hé, bourgeois; il est cinq heures!_" was the cry that wakened me in
the morning (Saturday, September 28th). The room was full of a
transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other three beds and the
five different nightcaps on the pillows. But out of the window the dawn
was growing ruddy in a long belt over the hill-tops, and day was about
to flood the plateau. The hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a
promise of calm weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. I was soon
under way with Modestine. The road lay for a while over the plateau, and
then descended through a precipitous village into the valley of the
Chassezac. This stream ran among green meadows, well hidden from the
world by its steep banks; the broom was in flower, and here and there
was a hamlet sending up its smoke.
At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a bridge, and, forsaking
this deep hollow, set itself to cross the mountain of La Goulet. It
wound up through Lestampes by upland fields and woods of beech and
birch, and with every corner brought me into an acquaintance with some
new interest. Even in the gully of the Chassezac my ear had been struck
by a noise like that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of
many miles; but this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to it,
seemed to change in character, and I found at length that it came from
some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural horn. The narrow
street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, from wall to wall--black sheep
and white, bleating with one accord like the birds in spring, and each
one accompanying himself upon the sheep-bell round his neck. It made a
pathetic concert, all in treble. A little higher, and I passed a pair of
men in a tree with pruning-hooks, and one of them was singing the music
of a _bourrée_. Still further, and when I was already threading the
birches, the crowing of cocks came cheerfully up to my ears, and along
with that the voice of a flute discoursing a deliberate and plaintive
air from one of the upland villages. I pictured to myself some grizzled,
apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden in
the clear autumn sunshine. All these beautiful and interesting sounds
filled my heart with an unwonted expectation; and it appeared to me
that, once past this range which I was mounting, I should descend into
the garden of the world. Nor was I deceived, for I was now done with
rains and winds and a bleak country. The first part of my journey ended
here; and this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the other and
more beautiful.
There are other degrees of _feyness_, as of punishment, besides the
capital; and I was now led by my good spirits into an adventure which I
relate in the interest of future donkey-drivers. The road zigzagged so
widely on the hillside, that I chose a short cut by map and compass, and
struck through the dwarf woods to catch the road again upon a higher
level. It was my one serious conflict with Modestine. She would none of
my short cut; she turned in my face; she backed, she reared; she, whom I
had hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a loud hoarse
flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. I plied the goad with one
hand; with the other, so steep was the ascent, I had to hold on the
pack-saddle. Half a dozen times she was nearly over backwards on the top
of me; half a dozen times, from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly
giving it up, and leading her down again to follow the road. But I took
the thing as a wager, and fought it through. I was surprised, as I went
on my way again, by what appeared to be chill rain-drops falling on my
hand, and more than once looked up in wonder at the cloudless sky. But
it was only sweat which came dropping from my brow.
Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked road--only upright
stones posted from space to space to guide the drovers. The turf
underfoot was springy and well scented. I had no company but a lark or
two, and met but one bullock-cart between Lestampes and Bleymard. In
front of me I saw a shallow valley, and beyond that the range of the
Lozère, sparsely wooded and well enough modeled in the flanks, but
straight and dull in outline. There was scarce a sign of culture; only
about Bleymard, the white high-road from Villefort to Mende traversed a
range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and sounding from side to side
with the bells of flocks and herds.
A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES
From Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to
scale a portion of the Lozère. An ill-marked stony drove-road guided me
forward; and I met nearly half a dozen bullock-carts descending from the
woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the
top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I
struck leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of
green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to
serve me for a water-tap. "In a more sacred or sequestered bower ... nor
nymph nor faunus haunted." The trees were not old, but they grew thickly
round the glade: there was no outlook, except north-eastward upon
distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment
felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my
arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to
decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty
meal; and as soon as the sun went down I pulled my cap over my eyes and
fell asleep.
Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof: but in the open world it
passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are
marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal
death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and
living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear
Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest, she
turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who
dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping
hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that
the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a
cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the
meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new
lair among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain down with the
fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night.
At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these
sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? Do the stars rain down
an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother earth below our
resting bodies? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who are the deepest
read in these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of
this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare the
thing takes place, and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it
is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber, only, like the
luxurious Montaigne, "that we may the better and more sensibly relish
it." We have a moment to look up on the stars. And there is a special
pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with
all outdoor creatures in our neighbourhood, that we have escaped out of
the Bastille of civilization, and are become, for the time being, a mere
kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock.
When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was
standing by me half full of water. I emptied it at a draught; and
feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to
make a cigarette. The stars were clear, coloured, and jewel-like, but
not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around
me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness
of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the
length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward;
but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of
the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the colour
of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish
grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the
stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I
could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at
each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a
second the highest light in the landscape.
A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed
down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the
air was being renewed all night long. I thought with horror of the inn
at Chasseradès and the congregated nightcaps; with horror of the
nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and
pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene
possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The
outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a
gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed,
was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open
house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths which are
revealed to savages and hid from political economists; at the least, I
had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet even while I was
exulting in my solitude I became aware of a strange lack. I wished a
companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but
ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than
solitude, and which rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. And to
live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most
complete and free.
As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole towards
me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the crowing of cocks
or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm; but steadily and
gradually it took articulate shape in my ears, until I became aware
that a passenger was going by upon the high-road in the valley, and
singing loudly as he went. There was more of good-will than grace in his
performance; but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice
took hold upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens.
I have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities; some of them
sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard the
rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after hours of
stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the range of my hearing as
I lay abed. There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black
hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business.
But here the romance was double: first, this glad passenger, lit
internally with wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night;
and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone
in the pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the stars.
When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of the stars had
disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night still burned
visibly overhead; and away towards the east I saw a faint haze of light
upon the horizon, such as had been the Milky Way when I was last awake.
Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, and by its glow-worm light put on my
boots and gaiters; then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my
can at the water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil myself some
chocolate. The blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had so
sweetly slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting
into gold along the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee possessed
my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day. I heard the runnel
with delight; I looked round me for something beautiful and unexpected;
but the still black pine-trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass,
remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered but the light, and
that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and
moved me to a strange exhilaration.
I drank my water-chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, and
strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. While I was
thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a heavy sigh, poured
direct out of the quarter of the morning. It was cold, and set me
sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed their black plumes in its
passage; and I could see the thin distant spires of pine along the edge
of the hill rock slightly to and fro against the golden east. Ten
minutes later, the sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside,
scattering shadows and sparkles, and the day had come completely.
I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent that lay
before me; but I had something on my mind. It was only a fancy; yet a
fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been most hospitably received
and punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, the
water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing
of the tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I
commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's debt for all
this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half-laughing
way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had
left enough for my night's lodging. I trust they did not fall to some
rich and churlish drover.
THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS
_We travelled in the print of olden wars;
Yet all the land was green;
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.
They pass and smile, the children of the sword--
No more the sword they wield;
And O, how deep the corn
Along the battlefield!_
W. P. BANNATYNE.
ACROSS THE LOZÈRE
The track that I had followed in the evening soon died out, and I
continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such
as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was already warm. I tied my
jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine
herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first
time in my experience, into a jolting trot that sent the oats swashing
in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gévaudan,
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. A multitude of little
birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path; they perched on the
stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and I saw them
circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to time,
translucent flickering wings between the sun and me.
Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like a
distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to think it
the voice of a neighbouring waterfall, and sometimes a subjective result
of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I continued to advance, the
noise increased, and became like the hissing of an enormous tea urn, and
at the same time breaths of cool air began to reach me from the
direction of the summit. At length I understood. It was blowing stiffly
from the south upon the other slope of the Lozère, and every step that I
took I was drawing nearer to the wind.
Although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly at last
that my eyes rose above the summit. 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 at 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.
The Lozère lies nearly east and west, cutting Gévaudan into two unequal
parts; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then
standing, rises upwards of five thousand six hundred feet above the sea,
and in clear weather commands a view over all lower Languedoc to the
Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken with people who either pretended or
believed that they had seen, from the Pic de Finiels, white ships
sailing by Montpellier and Cette. Behind was the upland northern country
through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, without wood,
without much grandeur of hill-form, and famous in the past for little
besides wolves. But in front of me, half veiled in sunny haze, lay a new
Gévaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring events. Speaking
largely, I was in the Cevennes at Monastier, and during all my journey;
but there is a strict and local sense in which only this confused and
shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this sense
the peasantry employ the word. These are the Cevennes with an emphasis:
the Cevennes of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills,
a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between the
Grand Monarch with all his troops and marshals on the one hand, and a
few thousand Protestant mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and
eighty years ago, the Camisards held a station even on the Lozère, where
I stood; they had an organization, arsenals, a military and religious
hierarchy; their affairs were "the discourse of every coffee-house" in
London; England sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied
and murdered; with colours and drums, and the singing of old French
Psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daylight, marched before walled
cities, and dispersed the generals of the king; and sometimes at night,
or in masquerade, possessed themselves of strong castles, and avenged
treachery upon their allies and cruelty upon their foes. There, a
hundred and eighty years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, "Count and Lord
Roland, generalissimo of the Protestants in France," grave, silent,
imperious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed in his
wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a
genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at
fifty-five the English Governor of Jersey. There again was Castanet, a
partisan leader in a voluminous peruke and with a taste for
controversial divinity. Strange generals, who moved apart to take
counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels
or slept in an unguarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their hearts!
And there, to follow these and other leaders, was the rank and file of
prophets and disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to run upon
the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, eager to fight,
eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of brain-sick children,
and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls with
which they charged their muskets.
I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of
nothing more notable than the child-eating Beast of Gévaudan, the
Napoléon Bonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of
a romantic chapter--or, better, a romantic footnote--in the history of
the world. What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism? I was told
that Protestantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant
resistance; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery
parlour. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively
and generous tradition. Again, if in the northern Cevennes the people
are narrow in religious judgments, and more filled with zeal than
charity, what was I to look for in this land of persecution and
reprisal--in a land where the tyranny of the Church produced the
Camisard rebellion, and the terror of the Camisards threw the Catholic
peasantry into legalized revolt upon the other side, so that Camisard
and Florentin skulked for each other's lives among the mountains?
Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, the
series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end; and only a little
below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a break-neck slope,
turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley between
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 the 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 had closed round my path,
and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. The
track became a road, and went up and down in easy undulations. I passed
cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted; and I saw not a human
creature, nor heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, however,
in a different country from the day before. The stony skeleton of the
world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. The slopes were
steep and changeful. Oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown,
wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong and luminous
colours. Here and there another stream would fall in from the right or
the left, down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary boulders. The river
in the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all
hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed a while 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; and at every pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be
out of these hot, dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body
in the mountain air and water. All the time as I went on I never forgot
it was the Sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder; and I heard
in spirit the church-bells clamouring all over Europe, and the psalms of
a thousand churches.
At length a human sound struck upon my ear--a cry strangely modulated
between pathos and derision; and looking across the valley, I saw a
little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and
dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the rogue had
picked me out as I went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood,
driving Modestine; and he made me the compliments of the new country in
this tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises are lovely and
natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming through so much
clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my
ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river.
A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the Tarn at
Pont de Montvert of bloody memory.
PONT DE MONTVERT
One of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I
remember rightly, the Protestant temple; but this was but the type of
other novelties. A subtle atmosphere distinguishes a town in England
from a town in France, or even in Scotland. At Carlisle you can see you
are in the one country; at Dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure
that you are in the other. I should find it difficult to tell in what
particulars Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or
even Bleymard; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to the
eyes. The place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring riverbed, wore
an indescribable air of the South.
All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public-houses, as all
had been Sabbath peace among the mountains. There must have been near a
score of us at dinner by eleven before noon; and after I had eaten and
drunken, and sat writing up my journal, I suppose as many more came
dropping in one after another, or by twos and threes. In crossing the
Lozère I had not only come among new natural features, but moved into
the territory of a different race. These people, as they hurriedly
despatched their viands in an intricate sword-play of knives, questioned
and answered me with a degree of intelligence which excelled all that I
had met, except among the railway folk at Chasseradès. They had open
telling faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. They not only
entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one
declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such
another.
Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen a pretty
woman since I left Monastier, and there but one. Now of the three who
sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly not beautiful--a poor
timid thing of forty, quite troubled at this roaring _table d'hôte_,
whom I squired and helped to wine, and pledged and tried generally to
encourage, with quite a contrary effect; but the other two, both
married, were both more handsome than the average of women. And
Clarisse? What shall I say of Clarisse? She waited the table with a
heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey eyes
were steeped in amorous languor; her features, although fleshy, were of
an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril 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. It seemed pitiful to see so good a model
left to country admirers and a country way of thought. Beauty should at
least have touched society; then, in a moment, it throws off a weight
that lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an
elegance, learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment,
_patet dea_. 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.
Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might say at home, is a
place memorable in the story of the Camisards. It was here that the war
broke out; here that those southern Covenanters slew their Archbishop
Sharpe. The persecution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the
other, are almost equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern
days, and with our easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protestants
were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. They
were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the breast would exhort
their parents to good works. "A child of fifteen months at Quissac spoke
from its mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly and with a loud
voice." Marshal Villars has seen a town where all the women "seemed
possessed by the devil," and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies
publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged at
Montpellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she
declared that she was weeping tears of blood for the misfortunes of the
Protestants. And it was not only women and children. Stalwart dangerous
fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield the forest axe, were
likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and
streaming tears. 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 hoofmarks over all the countryside; 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.
Now the head and forefront of the persecution--after Lamoignon de
Bâvile--François de Langlade du Chayla (pronounce Chéïla), Archpriest of
the Cevennes and Inspector of Missions in the same country, had a house
in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de Montvert. He was a
conscientious person, who seems to have been intended by nature for a
pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned all the
moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in his youth in China,
he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only succoured and
brought back to life by the charity of a pariah. We must suppose the
pariah devoid of second-sight, and not purposely malicious in this act.
Such an experience, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the
desire to persecute; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put
together; and, having been a Christian martyr, Du Chayla became a
Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of the Faith went
roundly forward in his hands. His house in Pont de Montvert served him
as a prison. There he closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal,
and plucked out the hairs of their beards, to convince them that they
were deceived in their opinions. And yet had not he himself tried and
proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the Buddhists in
China?
Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight was rigidly
forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the
mountain-paths, had already guided several troops of fugitives in safety
to Geneva; and on him, with another convoy, consisting mostly of women
dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands.
The Sunday following, there was a conventicle of Protestants in the
woods of Altefage upon Mount Bouges; where there stood up one
Séguier--Spirit Séguier, as his companions called him--a wool-carder,
tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. He
declared, in the name of God, that the time for submission had gone by,
and they must betake themselves to arms for the deliverance of their
brethren and the destruction of the priests.
The next night, 24th July 1702, a sound disturbed the Inspector of
Missions as he sat in his prison-house at Pont de Montvert: the voices
of many men upraised in psalmody drew nearer and nearer through the
town. It was ten at night; he had his court about him, priests,
soldiers, and servants, to the number of twelve or fifteen; and now
dreading the insolence of a conventicle below his very windows, he
ordered forth his soldiers to report. But the psalm-singers were already
at his door, fifty strong, led by the inspired Séguier, and breathing
death. To their summons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old
persecutor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. One Camisard (for,
according to some, it was in this night's work that they came by the
name) fell at this discharge: his comrades burst in the door with
hatchets and a beam of wood, overran the lower story of the house, set
free the prisoners, and finding one of them in the _vine_, a sort of
Scavenger's Daughter of the place and period, redoubled in fury against
Du Chayla, and sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors.
But he, on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely
held the staircase.
"Children of God," cried the prophet, "hold your hands. Let us burn the
house, with the priest and the satellites of Baal."
The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du Chayla and his men
lowered themselves into the garden by means of knotted sheets; some
escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the
archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the
hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A
poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely
according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least
one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and
the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged
him to the public place of the town, raging and calling him damned--"If
I be damned," said he, "why should you also damn yourselves?"
Here was a good reason for the last; but in the course of his
inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a contrary
direction; and these he was now to hear. One by one, Séguier first, the
Camisards drew near and stabbed him. "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. With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away
towards Frugères, farther up the Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance,
leaving Du Chayla's prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced with
two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place.
'Tis a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of psalms; and it seems
as if a psalm must always have a sound of threatening in that town upon
the Tarn. But the story does not end, even so far as concerns Pont de
Montvert, with the departure of the Camisards. The career of Séguier was
brief and bloody. Two more priests and a whole family at Ladevèze, from
the father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders; and yet
he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all the time by the
presence of the soldiery. Taken at length by a famous soldier of
fortune, Captain Poul, he appeared unmoved before his judges.
"Your name?" they asked.
"Pierre Séguier."
"Why are you called Spirit?"
"Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me."
"Your domicile?"
"Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven."
"Have you no remorse for your crimes?"
"I have committed none. _My soul is like a garden full of shelter and of
fountains._"
At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had his right hand
stricken from his body, and was burned alive. And his soul was like a
garden? So perhaps was the soul of Du Chayla, the Christian martyr. And
perhaps if you could read in my soul, or I could read in yours, our own
composure might seem little less surprising.
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.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN
A new road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florac by the valley of the
Tarn; 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 high
above. A thin fringe of ash trees ran about the hill-tops, like ivy on a
ruin; but, on the lower slopes, and far up every glen, the Spanish
chestnut trees stood each four-square to heaven under its tented
foliage. Some were planted, each on its own terrace no larger than a
bed; some, trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and prosper
and be straight and large upon the rapid slopes of the valley; others,
where there was a margin to the river, stood marshaled in a line and
mighty like cedars of Lebanon. Yet even where they grew most thickly
they were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart
individuals; and the dome of each tree stood forth separate and large,
and as it were a little bill, from among the domes of its companions.
They gave forth a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air of the
afternoon; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the green; and
the sun so shone through and kindled the broad foliage, that each
chestnut was relieved against another, not in shadow, but in light. A
humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in despair.
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
hole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon
the ruins of the old. Thus they partake of the nature of many different
trees; and even their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the
sky, have a certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. But
their individuality, although compounded of so many elements, is but the
richer and the more original. And to look down upon a level filled with
these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts
cluster "like herded elephants" upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise
to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature.
Between Modestine's laggard humour and the beauty of the scene, we made
little progress all that afternoon; and at last finding the sun,
although still far from setting, was already beginning to desert the
narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp in.
This was not easy to find; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground,
where it was unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I
should have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet
or my head in the river.
After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little
plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the
trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble,
I goaded and kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there I hastened to
unload her. There was only room for myself upon the plateau, and I had
to go nearly as high again before I found so much as standing-room for
the ass. It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace,
certainly not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut,
and having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut-leaves,
of which I found her greedy, I descended once more to my own encampment.
The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went by upon the
road; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed myself, for all the
world like a hunted Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut
trunk; for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of
jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw that I must be early
awake; for these chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no
further gone than on the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped
branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was propped
against a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants
use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. I picked a meal
in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide myself from the road; and
I daresay I was as much concerned as if I had been a scout from Joani's
band above upon the Lozère, or from Salomon's across the Tarn, in the
old times of psalm-singing and blood. Or indeed, perhaps more; for the
Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into
my memory of how the Count of Gévaudan, riding with a party of dragoons
and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the
country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and
his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned
with box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the
stream. Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date Antony Watteau
would be painting similar subjects.
This was a very different camp from that of the night before in the cool
and silent pine-woods. It was warm and even stifling in the valley. The
shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in
it, rang up from the riverside before the sun was down. In the growing
dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro among the fallen leaves;
from time to time a faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my
ear; and from time to time I thought I could see the movement of
something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of
large ants swarmed upon the ground; bats whisked by, and mosquitoes
droned overhead. The long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung
against the sky like garlands; and those immediately above and around me
had somewhat the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked and
half overthrown in a gale of wind.
Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids; and just as I was beginning to
feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settling densely on my mind, a
noise at my head startled me broad awake again, and, I will frankly
confess it, brought my heart into my mouth. It was such a noise as a
person would make scratching loudly with a finger-nail; it came from
under the knapsack which served me for a pillow, and it was thrice
repeated before I had time to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be
seen, nothing more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious
rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and
the frogs. I learned next day that the chestnut gardens are infested by
rats; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these;
but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and I had to compose
myself for sleep as best I could, in wondering uncertainty about my
neighbours.
I was wakened in the grey of the morning (Monday, 30th September) by the
sound of footsteps not far off upon the stones, and, opening my eyes, I
beheld a peasant going by among the chestnuts by a footpath that I had
not hitherto observed. He turned his head neither to the right nor to
the left, and disappeared in a few strides among the foliage. Here was
an escape! But it was plainly more than time to be moving. The peasantry
were abroad; scarce less terrible to me in my nondescript position than
the soldiers of Captain Poul to an undaunted Camisard. I fed Modestine
with what haste I could; but as I was returning to my sack, I saw a man
and a boy come down the hillside in a direction crossing mine. They
unintelligibly hailed me, and I replied with inarticulate but cheerful
sounds, and hurried forward to get into my gaiters.
The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up to the
plateau, and stood close beside me for some time in silence. The bed was
open, and I saw with regret my revolver lying patently disclosed on the
blue wool. At last, after they had looked me all over, and the silence
had grown laughably embarrassing, the man demanded in what seemed
unfriendly tones:--
"You have slept here?"
"Yes," said I. "As you see."
"Why?" he asked.
"My faith," I answered lightly, "I was tired."
He next inquired where I was going, and what I had had for dinner; and
then, without the least transition, "_C'est bien,"_ he added, "come
along." And he and his son, without another word, turned oil to the next
chestnut-tree but one, which they set to pruning. The thing had passed
off more simply than I hoped. He was a grave, respectable man; and his
unfriendly voice did not imply that he thought he was speaking to a
criminal, but merely to an inferior.
I was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of chocolate and seriously
occupied with a case of conscience. Was I to pay for my night's lodging?
I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in the shape of ants, there
was no water in the room, the very dawn had neglected to call me in the
morning. I might have missed a train, had there been any in the
neighbourhood to catch. Clearly, I was dissatisfied with my
entertainment; and I decided I should not pay unless I met a beggar.
The valley looked even lovelier by morning; and soon the road descended
to the level of the river. Here, in a place where many straight and
prosperous chestnuts stood together, making an aisle upon a swarded
terrace, I made my morning toilette in the water of the Tarn. It was
marvelously clear, thrillingly cool; the soap-suds disappeared as if by
magic in the swift current, and the white boulders gave one a model for
cleanliness. 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. To dabble
among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body; but the
imagination takes no share in such a cleansing. I went on with a light
and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced.
Suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank demanded alms.
"Good," thought I; "here comes the waiter with the bill."
And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. Take it how you please,
but this was the first and the last beggar that I met with during all my
tour.
A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a brown nightcap,
clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint excited smile. A little girl
followed him, driving two sheep and a goat; but she kept in our wake,
while the old man walked beside me and talked about the morning and the
valley. It was not much past six; and for healthy people who have slept
enough that is an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk.
"_Connaissez-vous le Seigneur?_" he said at length.
I asked him what Seigneur he meant; but he only repeated the question
with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denoting hope and interest.
"Ah," said I, pointing upwards, "I understand you now. Yes, I know Him;
He is the best of acquaintances."
The old man said he was delighted. "Hold," he added, striking his bosom;
"it makes me happy here." There were a few who knew the Lord in these
valleys, he went on to tell me; not many, but a few. "Many are called,"
he quoted, "and few chosen."
"My father," said I, "it is not easy to say who know the Lord; and it
is none of our business. Protestants and Catholics, and even those who
worship stones, may know Him and be known by Him; for He has made all."
I did not know I was so good a preacher.
The old man assured me he thought as I did, and repeated his expressions
of pleasure at meeting me. "We are so few," he said. "They call us
Moravians here; but down in the Department of Gard, where there are also
a good number, they are called Derbists, after an English pastor."
I began to understand that I was figuring, in questionable taste, as a
member of some sect to me unknown; but I was more pleased with the
pleasure of my companion than embarrassed by my own equivocal position.
Indeed, I can see no dishonesty in not avowing a difference; and
especially in these high matters, where we have all a sufficient
assurance that, whoever may be in the wrong, we ourselves are not
completely in the right. The truth is much talked about; but this old
man in a brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet and friendly,
that I am not unwilling to profess myself his convert. He was, as a
matter of fact, a Plymouth Brother. Of what that involves in the way of
doctrine I have no idea nor the time to inform myself; but I know right
well that we are all embarked upon a troublesome world, the children of
one Father, striving in many essential points to do and to become the
same. And although it was somewhat in a mistake that he shook hands with
me so often and showed himself so ready to receive my words, that was a
mistake of the truth-finding sort. For charity begins blindfold; and
only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at length into a
settled principle of love and patience, and a firm belief in all our
fellow-men. If I deceived this good old man, in the like manner I would
willingly go on to deceive others. And if ever at length, out of our
separate and sad ways, we should all come together into one common
house, I have a hope, to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth
Brother will hasten to shake hands with me again.
Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I came down
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 stone-breaker on the road, and his sister, a
pretty and engaging girl. The village schoolmaster dropped in to speak
with the stranger. And these were all Protestants--a fact which pleased
me more than I should have expected; and, what pleased me still more,
they seemed all upright and simple people. The Plymouth Brother hung
round me with a sort of yearning interest, and returned at least thrice
to make sure I was enjoying my meal. His behaviour touched me deeply at
the time, and even now moves me in recollection. He feared to intrude,
but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society; and he
seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand.
When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, I sat for near
half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who talked pleasantly
over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the beauties of the Tarn, and
old family affections, broken up when young folk go from home, yet still
subsisting. Hers, I am sure, was a sweet nature, with a country
plainness and much delicacy underneath; and he who takes her to his
heart will doubtless be a fortunate young man.
The valley below La Vernède pleased me more and more as I went forward.
Now the hills approached from either hand, naked and crumbling, and
walled in the river between cliffs; and now the valley widened and
became green. The road led me past the old castle of Miral on a steep;
past a battlemented monastery, long since broken up and turned into a
church and parsonage; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of
Cocurès, sitting among vineyards and meadows and orchards thick with red
apples, and where, along the highway, they were knocking down walnuts
from the roadside trees, and gathering them in sacks and baskets. The
hills, however much the vale might open, were still tall and bare, with
cliffy battlements and here and there a pointed summit; and the Tarn
still rattled through the stones with a mountain noise. I had been led,
by bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a horrific country
after the heart of Byron; but to my Scottish eyes it seemed smiling and
plentiful, as the weather still gave an impression of high summer to my
Scottish body; although the chestnuts were already picked out by the
autumn, and the poplars, that here began to mingle with them, had turned
into pale gold against the approach of winter.
There was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, that
explained to me the spirit of the Southern Covenanters. Those who took
to the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had all gloomy and
bedevilled thoughts; for once that they received God's comfort they
would be twice engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and
supporting visions. They dealt much more in blood, both given and taken;
yet I find no obsession of the Evil One in their records. 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.
"We flew," says one old Camisard, "when we heard the sound of
psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings. We felt within us an animating
ardour, a transporting desire. The feeling cannot be expressed in words.
It is a thing that must have been experienced to be understood. However
weary we might be, we thought no more of our weariness, and grew light
so soon as the psalms fell upon our ears."
The valley of the Tarn and the people whom I met at La Vernède not only
explain to me this passage, but the twenty years of suffering which
those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves
to war, endured with the meekness of children and the constancy of
saints and peasants.
FLORAC
On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac, the seat of a sub-prefecture with
an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a
live fountain welling from the hill. It is notable, besides, for
handsome women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other,
of the country of the Camisards.
The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an adjoining
café, where I, or rather my journey, became the topic of the afternoon.
Every one had some suggestion for my guidance; and the sub-prefectorial
map was fetched from the sub-prefecture itself, and much thumbed among
coffee-cups and glasses of liqueur. Most of these kind advisers were
Protestant, though I observed that Protestant and Catholic intermingled
in a very easy manner; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory
still subsisted of the religious war. Among the hills of the south-west,
by Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse,
serious Presbyterian people still recall the days of the great
persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are still piously regarded.
But in towns and among the so-called better classes, I fear that these
old doings have become an idle tale. If you met a mixed company in the
King's Arms at Wigtown, it is not likely that the talk would run on
Covenanters. Nay, at Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had
not so much as heard of Prophet Peden. But these Cévenols were proud of
their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their chosen topic;
its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where a man or a
race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and
pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country was still
full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard from them about Cavalier's
descendants--not direct descendants, be it understood, but only cousins
or nephews--who were still prosperous people in the scene of the
boy-general's exploits; and one farmer had seen the bones of old
combatants dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth
century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the
great-grandchildren were peaceably ditching.
Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so good as to visit
me: a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom I passed an hour or
two in talk. Florac, he told me, is part Protestant, part Catholic; and
the difference in religion is usually doubled by a difference in
politics. You may judge of my surprise, coming as I did from such a
babbling purgatorial Poland of a place as Monastier, when I learned that
the population lived together on very quiet terms; and there was even an
exchange of hospitalities between households thus doubly separated.
Black Camisard and White Camisard, militiaman and Miquelet and dragoon,
Protestant prophet and Catholic cadet of the White Cross, they had all
been sabring and shooting, burning, pillaging, and murdering, their
hearts hot with indignant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy
years, Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in
mutual toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man, like that
indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its own;
the years and seasons bring various harvests; the sun returns after the
rain; and mankind outlives secular animosities, as a single man awakens
from the passions of a day. We judge our ancestors from a more divine
position; and the dust being a little laid with several centuries, we
can see both sides adorned with human virtues and fighting with a show
of right.
I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even harder
than I thought. I own I met these Protestants with delight and a sense
of coming home. I was accustomed to speak their language, in another and
deeper sense of the word than that which distinguishes between French
and English; for the true Babel is a divergence upon morals. And hence I
could hold more free communication with the Protestants, and judge them
more justly, than the Catholics. Father Apollinaris may pair off with my
mountain Plymouth Brother as two guileless and devout old men; yet I ask
myself if I had as ready a feeling for the virtues of the Trappist; or,
had I been a Catholic, if I should have felt so warmly to the dissenter
of La Vernède. With the first I was on terms of mere forbearance; but
with the other, although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on
selected points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange
some honest thoughts. In this world of imperfection we gladly welcome
even partial intimacies. And if we find but one to whom we can speak out
of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and simplicity
without dissimulation, we have no ground of quarrel with the world or
God.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE
On Tuesday, 1st October, we left Florac late in the afternoon, a tired
donkey and tired donkey-driver. A little way up the Tarnon, a covered
bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the Mimente. Steep rocky
red mountains overhung the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon
the slopes or in stony terraces; here and there was a red field of
millet or a few apple trees studded with red apples; and the road passed
hard by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please the
heart of the tourist.
It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encampment. Even
under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not only a very rapid slope,
but was heaped with loose stones; and where there was no timber the
hills descended to the stream in a red precipice tufted with heather.
The sun had left the highest peak in front of me, and the valley was
full of the lowing sound of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks
into the stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some way below the
roadway in an angle of the river. Thither I descended, and, tying
Modestine provisionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the
neighbourhood. 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. I approached a
great oak which grew in the meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to
my disgust the voices of children fell upon my ear, and I beheld a house
round the angle on the other bank. I had half a mind to pack and be gone
again, but the growing darkness moved me to remain. I had only to make
no noise until the night was fairly come, and trust to the dawn to call
me early in the morning. But it was hard to be annoyed by neighbours in
such a great hotel.
A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed Modestine and
arranged my sack, three stars were already brightly shining, and the
others were beginning dimly to appear. I slipped down to the river,
which looked very black among its rocks, to fill my can; and dined with
a good appetite in the dark, for I scrupled to light a lantern while so
near a house. The moon, which I had seen a pallid crescent all
afternoon, faintly illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray
fell into the bottom of the glen where I was lying. The oak rose before
me like a pillar of darkness; and overhead the heartsome stars were set
in the face of the night. No one knows the stars who has not slept, as
the French happily put it, _à la belle étoile_. He may know all their
names and distances and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone
concerns mankind,--their serene and gladsome influence on the mind. The
greater part of poetry is about the stars; and very justly, for they are
themselves the most classical of poets. These same far-away worlds,
sprinkled like tapers or shaken together like a diamond dust upon the
sky, had looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in the words
of the latter, they had "no other tent but the sky, and no other bed
than my mother earth."
All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns fell
pattering over me from the oak. Yet on this first night of October, the
air was as mild as May, and I slept with the fur thrown back.
I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear more
than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver, and is besides supported by the
sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet with encouragement and
praise; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the
domestic affections come clamouring round you for redress. At the end
of a fagging day, the sharp, cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a
keen annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary
and respectable world in its most hostile form. There is something of
the clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and it he were
not amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from travelling
afoot. I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway,
or sleeping afield, I both detest and fear them.
I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, October 2nd) by the same dog--for
I knew his bark--making a charge down the bank, and then, seeing me sit
up, retreating again with great alacrity. The stars were not yet quite
extinguished. The heaven was of that enchanting mild grey-blue of the
early morn. A still clear light began to fall, and the trees on the
hillside were outlined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more
to the north, and no longer reached me in the glen; but as I was going
on with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very swiftly over the
hill-top; and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with
gold. In these high regions of the air the sun was already shining as at
noon. If only the clouds travelled high enough, we should see the same
thing all night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space.
As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out of
the seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to run overhead
in an almost contrary direction. A few steps farther, and I saw a whole
hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, between two
peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared floating in the sky, and
I was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the
kernel of our system.
I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military-looking
wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark that
seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or
Catholic--
"Oh," said he, "I make no shame of my religion. I am a Catholic."
He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for
it is the language of one in a minority. I thought with a smile of
Bâvile and his dragoons, and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion
for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction.
Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. It is not a
basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of
horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. Outdoor
rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy
plants, and thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a
long while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at
night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, has,
in the end, a sense of communion with the powers of the universe, and
amicable relations towards his God. Like my mountain Plymouth Brother,
he knows the Lord. His religion does not repose upon a choice of logic;
it is the poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the history
of his life. God, like a great power, like a great shining sun, has
appeared to this simple fellow in the course of years, and become the
ground and essence of his least reflections; and you may change creeds
and dogma by authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of
trumpets, if you will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and
will stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He is a Catholic, a
Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same indefeasible sense that a
man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his
faith, unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a
strict and not a conventional meaning, change his mind.
THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY
I was now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the
hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon
in the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road along the Mimente is yet
new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first
cart arrived at Cassagnas. But although it lay thus apart from the
current of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the
history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the
five arsenals of the Camisards; where they laid up clothes and corn and
arms against necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves
gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. To the
same caves, amid this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were
brought up to heal; and there they were visited by the two surgeons,
Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women of the neighbourhood.
Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it was the
oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by Cassagnas. This
was the band of Spirit Séguier; men who had joined their voices with his
in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the
Cevennes. Séguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc,
whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole
army of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart,
who admitted people to the sacrament, or refused them, by "intentively
viewing every man" between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures
off by rote. And this was surely happy; since in a surprise in August
1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only
strange that they were not surprised more often and more effectually;
for this legion of Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war,
and camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the God
for whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but of
the trackless country where they harboured. M. de Caladon, taking a
stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he
might have walked into "a flock of sheep in a plain," and found some
asleep and some awake and psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no
recommendation to insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond "his
faculty of singing psalms"; and even the prophet Salomon "took him into
a particular friendship." Thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic
troop subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but
sacraments and ecstasies.
People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been
saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy
than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of
Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, "convinced by the
uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than
sympathy," granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was
still Protestant; and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed,
one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is
that of a Catholic _curé_ in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a
schoolmistress. And his conduct, it is worth noting, is disapproved by
the Protestant villagers.
"It is a bad idea for a man," said one, "to go back from his
engagements."
The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countrified fashion,
and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a Protestant myself, I
was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me
further respect. For we had something not unlike a religious
controversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with whom I dined being
both strangers to the place, and Catholics. The young men of the house
stood round and supported me; and the whole discussion was tolerantly
conducted, and surprised a man brought up among the infinitesimal and
contentious differences of Scotland. The merchant, indeed, grew a little
warm, and was far less pleased than some others with my historical
acquirements. But the gendarme was mighty easy over it all.
"It's a bad idea for a man to change," said he; and the remark was
generally applauded.
That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at Our Lady of the
Snows. But this is a different race; and perhaps the same
great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ
in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage; but where a faith has
been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow population. The true
work of Bruce and Wallace was the union of the nations; not that they
should stand apart a while longer, skirmishing upon their borders; but
that, when the time came, they might unite with self-respect.
The merchant was much interested in my journey, and thought it dangerous
to sleep afield.
"There are the wolves," said he; "and then it is known you are an
Englishman. The English have always long purses, and it might very well
enter into some one's head to deal you an ill blow some night."
I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate
judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in the
arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a far too risky
business as a whole to make each additional particular of danger worth
regard. "Something," said I, "might burst in your inside any day of the
week, and there would be an end of you, if you were locked in your room
with three turns of the key."
"_Cependant_," said he, "_coucher dehors_!"
"God," said I, "is everywhere."
"_Cependant, coucher dehors!_" he repeated, and his voice was eloquent
of terror.
He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything hardy in so
simple a proceeding; although many considered it superfluous. Only one,
on the other hand, professed much delight in the idea; and that was my
Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I told him I sometimes preferred
sleeping under the stars to a close and noisy alehouse, "Now I see that
you know the Lord!"
The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, for he said
I should be something to talk of in the future, and desired me to make a
note of his request and reason; a desire with which I have thus
complied.
A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a rugged path
southward up a hillside covered with loose stones and tufts of heather.
At the top, as is the habit of the country, the path disappeared; and I
left my she-ass munching heather, and went forward alone to seek a road.
I was now on the separation of two vast watersheds; behind me all the
streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western Ocean; before me was
the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from the Lozère, you can see in clear
weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and perhaps from here the
soldiers of Salomon may have watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley
Shovel, and the long-promised aid from England. You may take this ridge
as lying in the heart of the country of the Camisards; four of the five
legions camped all round it and almost within view--Salomon and Joani to
the north, Castanet and Roland to the south; and when Julien had
finished his famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which
lasted all through October and November, 1703, and during which four
hundred and sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe,
utterly subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked
forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's
activity have now repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more roofed
and sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and
leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when the day's work is
done, to his children and bright hearth. And still it was perhaps the
wildest view of all my journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon chain of
hills ran surging southward, channeled and sculptured by the winter
streams, feathered from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there
breaking out into a coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from
setting, sent a drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the
valleys were already plunged in a profound and quiet shadow.
A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing a black
cap of liberty, as if in honour of his nearness to the grave, directed
me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was something solemn
in the isolation of this infirm and ancient creature. Where he dwelt,
how he got upon this high ridge, or how he proposed to get down again,
were more than I could fancy. Not far off upon my right was the famous
Plan de Font Morte, where Poul with his Armenian sabre slashed down the
Camisards of Séguier. This, methought, might be some Rip van Winkle of
the war, who had lost his comrades, fleeing before Poul, and wandered
ever since upon the mountains. It might be news to him that Cavalier had
surrendered, or Roland had fallen fighting with his back against an
olive. And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him hailing in
broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with one of his two
sticks. I had already got some way past him; but, leaving Modestine once
more, retraced my steps.
Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman had forgot to
ask the pedlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this neglect.
I told him sternly, "Nothing."
"Nothing?" cried he.
I repeated "Nothing," and made off.
It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable to the
old man as he had been to me.
The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or two below me
in the vale, and many lone houses of the chestnut farmers, it was a very
solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began early underneath the
trees. But I heard the voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless
ballad not far off. It seemed to be about love and a _bel amoureux_, her
handsome sweetheart; and I wished I could have taken up the strain and
answered her, as I went on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like
Pippa in the poem, my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told
her? Little enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives
and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again
into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet which
makes the world a garden; and "hope, which comes to all," outwears the
accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and
death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's mercy, both easy and
grateful to believe!
We struck at last into a wide white high-road carpeted with noiseless
dust. The night had come; the moon had been shining for a long while
upon the opposite mountain; when on turning a corner my donkey and I
issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out my brandy at Florac,
for I could bear the stuff no longer, and replaced it with some generous
and scented Volnay; and now I drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon
the road. It was but a couple of mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth
unconscious of my limbs, and my blood flowed with luxury. Even Modestine
was inspired by this purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her
little hoofs as to a livelier measure. The road wound and descended
swiftly among masses of chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and
flowed away. Our two shadows--mine deformed with the knapsack, hers
comically bestridden by the pack--now lay before us clearly outlined on
the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the ghostly
distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. From time to time a
warm wind rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling
their bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled with whispering
music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next moment the breeze had
gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet.
On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain
were faintly designed in the moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone
house, there burned one lighted window, one square spark of red in the
huge field of sad nocturnal colouring.
At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute angles, the
moon disappeared behind the hill; and I pursued my way in great
darkness, until another turning shot me without preparation into St.
Germain de Calberte. The place was asleep and silent, and buried in
opaque night. Only from a single open door, some lamplight escaped upon
the road to show me that I was come among men's habitations. The two
last gossips of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me
to the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was
already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an
hour later, and I must have gone supperless to roost.
THE LAST DAY
When I awoke (Thursday, 2nd October), and, hearing a great flourishing
of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me to the window of the
clean and comfortable room where I had slept the night, I looked forth
on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut gardens. It was still
early, and the cockcrows, and the slanting lights, and the long shadows,
encouraged me to be out and look round me.
St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about. At
the period of the wars, and immediately before the devastation, it was
inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine
were Catholic; and it took the _curé_ seventeen September days to go
from house to house on horseback for a census. But the place itself,
although capital of a canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies
terraced across a steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The
Protestant chapel stands below upon a shoulder; in the midst of the town
is the quaint old Catholic church.
It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept his library
and held a court of missionaries; here he had built his tomb, thinking
to lie among a grateful population whom he had redeemed from error; and
hither on the morrow of his death they brought the body, pierced with
two-and-fifty wounds, to be interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was
laid out in state in the church. The _curé_, taking his text from Second
Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, "And Amasa wallowed in his
blood in the highway," preached a rousing sermon, and exhorted his
brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and illustrious
superior. In the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that
Spirit Séguier was near at hand; and behold! all the assembly took to
their horses' heels, some east, some west, and the _curé_ himself as far
as Alais.
Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a
thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. On the
one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas; on the
other, it was cut off from assistance by the legion of Roland at Mialet.
The _curé_, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic at the arch-priest's
funeral, and so hurriedly decamped to Alais, stood well by his isolated
pulpit, and thence uttered fulminations against the crimes of the
Protestants. Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but
was beaten back. The militiamen, on guard before the _curé's_ door,
could be heard, in the black hours, singing Protestant psalms and
holding friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morning, although
not a shot had been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their
flasks. Where was it gone? All handed over to the Camisards for a
consideration. Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest!
That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de Calberte,
the imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so quiet, the pulse
of human life now beats so low and still in this hamlet of the
mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of
lion-hunters; and people turned round to have a second look, or came out
of their houses, as I went by. My passage was the first event, you would
have fancied, since the Camisards. There was nothing rude or forward in
this observation; it was but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that
of oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove
me from the street.
I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with
sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of
the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a
little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light
and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall of
great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of
an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up,
I could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already
gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill,
sunlit and green with leaves.
I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an atmosphere
of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. But perhaps it was
not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was
thinking of me in another country; or perhaps some thought of my own had
come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which
sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan
their features; as though a god, travelling by our green highways,
should but ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go
again for ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings?
Who shall say? But we go the lighter about our business, and feel peace
and pleasure in our hearts.
I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation of a
young man, a Catholic, who had married a Protestant girl and gone over
to the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they could understand and
respect: indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman,
who told me that same day there was no difference between the two sects,
save that "wrong was more wrong for the Catholic," who had more light
and guidance; but this of a man's desertion filled them with contempt.
"It's a bad idea for a man to change," said one.
It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued me; and
for myself, I believe it is the current philosophy in these parts. I
have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's not only a great flight
of confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of his family for
heaven's sake; but the odds are--nay, and the hope is--that, with all
this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a
hairbreadth to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for the
wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, whether of strength or
weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a
sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who
can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of the mind. And I think I
should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for other
words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and
find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions.
The phylloxera was in the neighbourhood; and instead of wine we drank at
dinner a more economical juice of the grape--La Parisienne, they call
it. It is made by putting the fruit whole into a cask with water; one by
one the berries ferment and burst; what is drunk during the day is
supplied at night in water; so, with ever another pitcher from the well,
and ever another grape exploding and giving out its strength, one cask
of Parisienne may last a family till spring. It is, as the reader will
anticipate, a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste.
What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before I left St.
Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon of Mialet, a great
glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St. Etienne de Vallée
Française, or Val Francesque, as they used to call it; and towards
evening began to ascend the hill of St. Pierre. It was a long and steep
ascent. Behind me an empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept
hard upon my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. The driver, like
the rest of the world, was sure I was a pedlar; but, unlike others, he
was sure of what I had to sell. He had noticed the blue wool which hung
out of my pack at either end; and from this he had decided, beyond my
power to alter his decision, that I dealt in blue wool collars, such as
decorate the neck of the French draught-horse.
I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for I dearly desired
to see the view upon the other side before the day had faded. But it was
night when I reached the summit; the moon was riding high and clear; and
only a few grey streaks of twilight lingered in the west. A yawning
valley, gulfed in blackness, lay like a hole in created nature at my
feet; but the outline of the hills was sharp against the sky. There was
Mount Aigoal, the stronghold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as an
active undertaking leader, deserves some mention among Camisards; for
there is a spray of rose among his laurel; and he showed how, even in a
public tragedy, love will have its way. In the high tide of war he
married, in his mountain citadel, a young and pretty lass called
Mariette. There were great rejoicings; and the bridegroom released
five-and-twenty prisoners in honour of the glad event. Seven months
afterwards, Mariette, the Princess of the Cevennes, as they called her
in derision, fell into the hands of the authorities, where it was like
to have gone hard with her. But Castanet was a man of execution, and
loved his wife. He fell on Valleraugue, and got a lady there for a
hostage; and for the first and last time in that war there was an
exchange of prisoners. Their daughter, pledge of some starry night upon
Mount Aigoal, has left descendants to this day.
Modestine and I--it was our last meal together--had a snack upon the top
of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, she standing by me in the
moonlight and decorously eating bread out of my hand. The poor brute
would eat more heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of affection
for me, which I was soon to betray.
It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Gard, and we met no one but a
carter, visible afar off by the glint of the moon on his extinguished
lantern.
Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper; fifteen miles and a
stiff hill in little beyond six hours!
FAREWELL, MODESTINE!
On examination, on the morning of October 3rd, Modestine was pronounced
unfit for travel. She would need at least two days' repose, according to
the ostler; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters; and,
being in a civilized country of stage-coaches, I determined to sell my
lady friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's
march, with the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long
hill of St. Pierre, spread a favourable notion of my donkey's
capabilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an unrivaled
opportunity. Before ten I had an offer of twenty-five francs; and before
noon, after a desperate engagement, I sold her, saddle and all, for
five-and-thirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but I had bought
freedom into the bargain.
St. Jean du Gard is a large place, and largely Protestant. The maire, a
Protestant, asked me to help him in a small matter which is itself
characteristic of the country. The young women of the Cevennes profit by
the common religion and the difference of the language to go largely as
governesses into England; and here was one, a native of Mialet,
struggling with English circulars from two different agencies in London.
I gave what help I could; and volunteered some advice, which struck me
as being excellent.
One thing more I note. The phylloxera has ravaged the vineyards in this
neighbourhood; and in the early morning, under some chestnuts by the
river, I found a party of men working with a cider-press. I could not at
first make out what they were after, and asked one fellow to explain.
"Making cider," he said. "_Oui, c'est comme ça. Comme dans le nord!_"
There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice: the country was going to the
devil.
It was not until I was fairly seated by the driver, and rattling through
a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I became aware of my bereavement.
I had lost Modestine. Up to that moment I had thought I hated her; but
now she was gone,
"And O!
The difference to me!"
For twelve days we had been fast companions; 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 a
stage-driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to
yield to my emotion.
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE
A FRAGMENT
1879
_Originally intended to serve as the opening chapter of
"Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes"_
Le Monastier is the chief place of a hilly canton in Haute Loire, the
ancient Velay. As the name betokens, the town is of monastic origin; and
it still contains a towered bulk of monastery and a church of some
architectural pretensions, the seat of an archpriest and several vicars.
It stands on the side of a hill above the river Gazeille, about fifteen
miles from Le Puy, up a steep road where the wolves sometimes pursue the
diligence in winter. The road, which is bound for Vivarais, passes
through the town from end to end in a single narrow street; there you
may see the fountain where women fill their pitchers; there also some
old houses with carved doors and pediments and ornamental work in iron.
For Monastier, like Maybole in Ayrshire, was a sort of country capital,
where the local aristocracy had their town mansions for the winter; and
there is a certain baron still alive and, I am told, extremely penitent,
who found means to ruin himself by high living in this village on the
hills. He certainly has claims to be considered the most remarkable
spendthrift on record. How he set about it, in a place where there are
no luxuries for sale, and where the board at the best inn comes to
little more than a shilling a day, is a problem for the wise. His son,
ruined as the family was, went as far as Paris to sow his wild oats; and
so the cases of father and son mark an epoch in the history of
centralization in France. Not until the latter had got into the train
was the work of Richelieu complete.
It is a people of lace-makers. The women sit in the streets by groups of
five or six; and the noise of the bobbins is audible from one group to
another. Now and then you will hear one woman clattering off prayers for
the edification of the others at their work. They wear gaudy shawls,
white caps with a gay ribbon about the head, and sometimes a black felt
brigand hat above the cap; and so they give the street colour and
brightness and a foreign air. A while ago, when England largely supplied
herself from this district with the lace called _torchon_, it was not
unusual to earn five francs a day; and five francs in Monastier is worth
a pound in London. Now, from a change in the market, it takes a clever
and industrious workwoman to earn from three to four in the week, or
less than an eighth of what she made easily a few years ago. The tide of
prosperity came and went, as with our northern pitmen, and left nobody
the richer. The women bravely squandered their gains, kept the men in
idleness, and gave themselves up, as I was told, to sweethearting and a
merry life. From week's end to week's end it was one continuous gala in
Monastier; people spent the day in the wine-shops, and the drum or the
bagpipes led on the _bourrées_ up to ten at night. Now these dancing
days are over. "_Il n'y a plus de jeunesse,_" said Victor the garçon. I
hear of no great advance in what are thought the essentials of morality;
but the _bourrée_, with its rambling, sweet, interminable music, and
alert and rustic figures, has fallen into disuse, and is mostly
remembered as a custom of the past. Only on the occasion of the fair
shall you hear a drum discreetly rattling in a wine-shop or perhaps one
of the company singing the measure while the others dance. I am sorry at
the change, and marvel once more at the complicated scheme of things
upon this earth, and how a turn of fashion in England can silence so
much mountain merriment in France. The lace-makers themselves have not
entirely forgiven our countrywomen; and I think they take a special
pleasure in the legend of the northern quarter of the town, called
L'Anglade, because there the English free-lances were arrested and
driven back by the potency of a little Virgin Mary on the wall.
From time to time a market is held, and the town has a season of
revival; cattle and pigs are stabled in the streets; and pickpockets
have been known to come all the way from Lyons for the occasion. Every
Sunday the country folk throng in with daylight to buy apples, to attend
mass, and to visit one of the wine-shops, of which there are no fewer
than fifty in this little town. Sunday wear for the men is a green
tail-coat of some coarse sort of drugget, and usually a complete suit to
match. I have never set eyes on such degrading raiment. Here it clings,
there bulges; and the human body, with its agreeable and lively lines,
is turned into a mockery and laughing-stock. Another piece of Sunday
business with the peasants is to take their ailments to the chemist for
advice. It is as much a matter for Sunday as church-going. I have seen a
woman who had been unable to speak since the Monday before, wheezing,
catching her breath, endlessly and painfully coughing; and yet she had
waited upwards of a hundred hours before coming to seek help, and had
the week been twice as long, she would have waited still. There was a
canonical day for consultation; such was the ancestral habit, to which a
respectable lady must study to conform.
Two conveyances go daily to Le Puy, but they rival each other in polite
concessions rather than in speed. Each will wait an hour or two hours
cheerfully while an old lady does her marketing or a gentleman finishes
the papers in a café. The _Courrier_(such is the name of one) should
leave Le Puy by two in the afternoon on the return voyage, and arrive at
Monastier in good time for a six o'clock dinner. But the driver dares
not disoblige his customers. He will postpone his departure again and
again, hour after hour; and I have known the sun to go down on his
delay. These purely personal favours, this consideration of men's
fancies, rather than the hands of a mechanical clock, as marking the
advance of the abstraction, time, makes a more humorous business of
stage-coaching than we are used to see it.
As far as the eye can reach, one swelling line of hill-top rises and
falls behind another; and if you climb an eminence, it is only to see
new and farther ranges behind these. Many little rivers run from all
sides in cliffy valleys; and one of them, a few miles from Monastier,
bears the great name of Loire. The mean level of the country is a little
more than three thousand feet above the sea, which makes the atmosphere
proportionally brisk and wholesome. There is little timber except pines,
and the greater part of the country lies in moorland pasture. The
country is wild and tumbled rather than commanding; an upland rather
than a mountain district; and the most striking as well as the most
agreeable scenery lies low beside the rivers. There, indeed, you will
find many corners that take the fancy; such as made the English noble
choose his grave by a Swiss streamlet, where Nature is at her freshest,
and looks as young as on the seventh morning. Such a place is the course
of the Gazeille, where it waters the common of Monastier and thence
downward till it joins the Loire; a place to hear birds singing; a place
for lovers to frequent. The name of the river was perhaps suggested by
the sound of its passage over the stones; for it is a great warbler, and
at night, after I was in bed in Monastier, I could hear it go singing
down the valley till I fell asleep.
On the whole, this is a Scottish landscape, although not so noble as the
best in Scotland; and by an odd coincidence the population is, in its
way, as Scottish as the country. They have abrupt, uncouth, Fifeshire
manners, and accost you, as if you were trespassing, with an "_Où'st-ce
que vous allez?_" only translatable into the Lowland "Whau'r ye gaun?"
They keep the Scottish Sabbath. There is no labour done on that day but
to drive in and out the various pigs and sheep and cattle that make so
pleasant a tinkling in the meadows. The lace-makers have disappeared
from the street. Not to attend mass would involve social degradation;
and you may find people reading Sunday books, in particular a sort of
Catholic _Monthly Visitor_ on the doings of Our Lady of Lourdes. I
remember one Sunday, when I was walking in the country, that I fell on a
hamlet and found all the inhabitants, from the patriarch to the baby,
gathered in the shadow of a gable at prayer. One strapping lass stood
with her back to the wall and did the solo part, the rest chiming in
devoutly. Not far off, a lad lay flat on his face asleep among some
straw, to represent the worldly element.
Again, this people is eager to proselytize; and the postmaster's
daughter used to argue with me by the half-hour about my heresy, until
she grew quite flushed. I have heard the reverse process going on
between a Scots-woman and a French girl; and the arguments in the two
cases were identical. Each apostle based her claim on the superior
virtue and attainments of her clergy, and clinched the business with a
threat of hell-fire. "_Pas bong prêtres ici_," said the Presbyterian,
"_bong prêtres en Écosse_." And the postmaster's daughter, taking up the
same weapon, plied me, so to speak, with the butt of it instead of the
bayonet. We are a hopeful race, it seems, and easily persuaded for our
good. One cheerful circumstance I note in these guerrilla missions, that
each side relies on hell, and Protestant and Catholic alike address
themselves to a supposed misgiving in their adversary's heart. And I
call it cheerful, for faith is a more supporting quality than
imagination.
Here, as in Scotland, many peasant families boast a son in holy orders.
And here also, the young men have a tendency to emigrate. It is
certainly not poverty that drives them to the great cities or across the
seas, for many peasant families, I was told, have a fortune of at least
40,000 francs. The lads go forth pricked with the spirit of adventure
and the desire to rise in life, and leave their homespun elders
grumbling and wondering over the event. Once, at a village called
Laussonne, I met one of these disappointed parents: a drake who had
fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing and disappear. The wild swan
in question was now an apothecary in Brazil. He had flown by way of
Bordeaux, and first landed in America, bare-headed and barefoot, and
with a single halfpenny in his pocket. And now he was an apothecary!
Such a wonderful thing is an adventurous life! I thought he might as
well have stayed at home; but you never can tell wherein a man's life
consists, nor in what he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to
marry, a third to write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in
public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an apothecary in Brazil. As
for his old father, he could conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour.
"I had always bread for him," he said; "he ran away to annoy me. He
loved to annoy me. He had no gratitude." But at heart he was swelling
with pride over his travelled offspring, and he produced a letter out of
his pocket, where, as he said, it was rotting, a mere lump of paper
rags, and waved it gloriously in the air. "This comes from America," he
cried, "six thousand leagues away!" And the wine-shop audience looked
upon it with a certain thrill.
I soon became a popular figure, and was known for miles in the country.
_Où'st-ce que vous allez?_ was changed for me into _Quoi, vous rentrez
au Monastier ce soir?_ and in the town itself every urchin seemed to
know my name, although no living creature could pronounce it. There was
one particular group of lace-makers who brought out a chair for me
whenever I went by, and detained me from my walk to gossip. They were
filled with curiosity about England, its language, its religion, the
dress of the women, and were never weary of seeing the Queen's head on
English postage-stamps, or seeking for French words in English Journals.
The language, in particular, filled them with surprise.
"Do they speak _patois_ in England?" I was once asked; and when I told
them not, "Ah, then, French?" said they.
"No, no," I said, "not French."
"Then," they concluded, "they speak _patois_."
You must obviously either speak French or _patois_. Talk of the force of
logic--here it was in all its weakness. I gave up the point, but
proceeding to give illustrations of ray native jargon, I was met with a
new mortification. Of all _patois_ they declared that mine was the most
preposterous and the most jocose in sound. At each new word there was a
new explosion of laughter, and some of the younger ones were glad to
rise from their chairs and stamp about the street in ecstasy; and I
looked on upon their mirth in a faint and slightly disagreeable
bewilderment. "Bread," which sounds a commonplace, plain-sailing
monosyllable in England, was the word that most delighted these good
ladies of Monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page
of Pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I
presume, for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with every sort
of accent and inflection, but I seem to lack the sense of humour.
They were of all ages: children at their first web of lace, a stripling
girl with a bashful but encouraging play of eyes, solid married women,
and grandmothers, some on the top of their age and some falling towards
decrepitude. One and all were pleasant and natural, ready to laugh and
ready with a certain quiet solemnity when that was called for by the
subject of our talk. Life, since the fall in wages, had begun to appear
to them with a more serious air. The stripling girl would sometimes
laugh at me in a provocative and not unadmiring manner, if I judge
aright; and one of the grandmothers, who was my great friend of the
party, gave me many a sharp word of judgment on my sketches, my heresy,
or even my arguments, and gave them with a wry mouth and a humorous
twinkle in her eye that were eminently Scottish. But the rest used me
with a certain reverence, as something come from afar and not entirely
human. Nothing would put them at their ease but the irresistible gaiety
of my native tongue. Between the old lady and myself I think there was a
real attachment. She was never weary of sitting to me for her portrait,
in her best cap and brigand hat, and with all her wrinkles tidily
composed, and though she never failed to repudiate the result, she would
always insist upon another trial. It was as good as a play to see her
sitting in judgment over the last. "No, no," she would say, "that is not
it. I am old, to be sure, but I am better-looking than that. We must try
again." When I was about to leave she bade me good-bye for this life in
a somewhat touching manner. We should not meet again, she said; it was a
long farewell, and she was sorry. But life is so full of crooks, old
lady, that who knows? I have said good-bye to people for greater
distances and times, and, please God, I mean to see them yet again.
One thing was notable about these women, from the youngest to the
oldest, and with hardly an exception. In spite of their piety, they
could twang off an oath with Sir Toby Belch in person. There was nothing
so high or so low, in heaven or earth or in the human body, but a woman
of this neighbourhood would whip out the name of it, fair and square, by
way of conversational adornment. My landlady, who was pretty and young,
dressed like a lady and avoided _patois_ like a weakness, commonly
addressed her child in the language of a drunken bully. And of all the
swearers that I ever heard, commend me to an old lady in Gondet, a
village of the Loire. I was making a sketch, and her curse was not yet
ended when I had finished it and took my departure. It is true she had
a right to be angry; for here was her son, a hulking fellow, visibly the
worse for drink before the day was well begun. But it was strange to
hear her unwearying flow of oaths and obscenities, endless like a river,
and now and then rising to a passionate shrillness, in the clear and
silent air of the morning. In city slums, the thing might have passed
unnoticed; but in a country valley, and from a plain and honest
countrywoman, this beastliness of speech surprised the ear.
The _Conductor_, as he is called, _of Roads and Bridges_ was my
principal companion. He was generally intelligent, and could have spoken
more or less falsetto on any of the trite topics; but it was his
specialty to have a generous taste in eating. This was what was most
indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; and I found in his
company what I had long suspected, that enthusiasm and special knowledge
are the great social qualities, and what they are about, whether white
sauce or Shakespeare's plays, an altogether secondary question.
I used to accompany the _Conductor_ on his professional rounds, and grew
to believe myself an expert in the business. I thought I could make an
entry in a stone-breaker's time-book, or order manure off the wayside
with any living engineer in France. Gondet was one of the places we
visited together; and Laussonne, where I met the apothecary's father,
was another. There, at Laussonne, George Sand spent a day while she was
gathering materials for the "Marquis de Villemer"; and I have spoken
with an old man, who was then a child running about the inn kitchen, and
who still remembers her with a sort of reverence. It appears that he
spoke French imperfectly; for this reason George Sand chose him for
companion, and whenever he let slip a broad and picturesque phrase in
_patois_, she would make him repeat it again and again till it was
graven in her memory. The word for a frog particularly pleased her
fancy; and it would be curious to know if she afterwards employed it in
her works. The peasants, who knew nothing of letters and had never so
much as heard of local colour, could not explain her chattering with
this backward child; and to them she seemed a very homely lady and far
from beautiful: the most famous man-killer of the age appealed so little
to Velaisian swine-herds!
On my first engineering excursion, which lay up by Crouzials towards
Mount Mézenc and the borders of Ardèche, I began an improving
acquaintance with the foreman road-mender. He was in great glee at
having me with him, passed me off among his subalterns as the
supervising engineer, and insisted on what he called "the gallantry" of
paying for my breakfast in a roadside wine-shop. On the whole, he was a
man of great weather-wisdom, some spirits, and a social temper. But I am
afraid he was superstitious. When he was nine years old, he had seen one
night a company of _bourgeois et dames qui faisaient la manège avec des
chaises_, and concluded that he was in the presence of a witches'
Sabbath. I suppose, but venture with timidity on the suggestion, that
this may have been a romantic and nocturnal picnic party. Again, coming
from Pradelles with his brother, they saw a great empty cart drawn by
six enormous horses before them on the road. The driver cried aloud and
filled the mountains with the cracking of his whip. He never seemed to
go faster than a walk, yet it was impossible to overtake him; and at
length, at the corner of a hill, the whole equipage disappeared bodily
into the night. At the time, people said it was the devil _qui s'amusait
à faire ça_.
I suggested there was nothing more likely, as he must have some
amusement.
The foreman said it was odd, but there was less of that sort of thing
than formerly. "_C'est difficile_," he added, "_à expliquer_."
When we were well up on the moors and the _Conductor_ was trying some
road-metal with the gauge--
"Hark!" said the foreman, "do you hear nothing?"
We listened, and the wind, which was blowing chilly out of the east,
brought a faint, tangled jangling to our ears.
"It is the flocks of Vivarais," said he.
For every summer, the flocks out of all Ardèche are brought up to
pasture on these grassy plateaux.
Here and there a little private flock was being tended by a girl, one
spinning with a distaff, another seated on a wall and intently making
lace. This last, when we addressed her, leaped up in a panic and put out
her arms, like a person swimming, to keep us at a distance, and it was
some seconds before we could persuade her of the honesty of our
intentions.
The _Conductor_ told me of another herdswoman from whom he had once
asked his road while he was yet new to the country, and who fled from
him, driving her beasts before her, until he had given up the
information in despair. A tale of old lawlessness may yet be read in
these uncouth timidities.
The winter in these uplands is a dangerous and melancholy time. Houses
are snowed up, and wayfarers lost in a flurry within hail of their own
fireside. No man ventures abroad without meat and a bottle of wine,
which he replenishes at every wine-shop; and even thus equipped he takes
the road with terror. All day the family sits about the fire in a foul
and airless hovel, and equally without work or diversion. The father may
carve a rude piece of furniture, but that is all that will be done until
the spring sets in again, and along with it the labours of the field. It
is not for nothing that you find a clock in the meanest of these
mountain habitations. A clock and an almanack, you would fancy, were
indispensable in such a life....
EDINBURGH
PICTURESQUE NOTES
EDINBURGH
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits overlooking a windy
estuary from the slope and summit of three hills. No situation could be
more commanding for the head city of a kingdom; none better chosen for
noble prospects. From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks
far and wide on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you may catch
at sunset the spark of the May lighthouse, where the Firth expands into
the German Ocean; and away to the west, over all the carse of Stirling,
you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi.
But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest
climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds
that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out
of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward
from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and boisterous in winter,
shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory
in the spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak
winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their
fate. For all who love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate
dark weather and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely
be found a more unhomely and harassing place of residence. Many such
aspire angrily after that Somewhere else of the imagination, where all
troubles are supposed to end. They lean over the great bridge which
joins the New Town with the Old--that windiest spot, or high altar, in
this northern temple of the winds--and watch the trains smoking out from
under them and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies.
Happy the passengers who shake off the dust of Edinburgh, and have heard
for the last time the cry of the east wind among her chimney-tops! And
yet the place establishes an interest in people's hearts; go where they
will, they find no city of the same distinction; go where they will,
they take a pride in their old home.
Venice, it has been said, differs from all other cities in the sentiment
which she inspires. The rest may have admirers; she only, a famous fair
one, counts lovers in her train. And indeed, even by her kindest
friends, Edinburgh is not considered in a similar sense. These like her
for many reasons, not any one of which is satisfactory in itself. They
like her whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a virtuoso dotes upon
his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic in the narrowest meaning of the
term. Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting.
She is pre-eminently Gothic, and all the more so since she has set
herself off with some Greek airs, and erected classic temples on her
crags. In a word, and above all, she is a curiosity. The Palace of
Holyrood has been left aside in the growth of Edinburgh, and stands grey
and silent in a workman's quarter, and among breweries and gas works. It
is a house of many memories. Great people of yore, kings and queens,
buffoons, and grave ambassadors, played their stately farce for
centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing has lasted deep
into the night, murder has been done in its chambers. There Prince
Charlie held his phantom levées, and in a very gallant manner
represented a fallen dynasty for some hours. Now, all these things of
clay are mingled with the dust, the king's crown itself is shown for
sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone palace has outlived these changes.
For fifty weeks together, it is no more than a show for tourists and a
museum of old furniture; but on the fifty-first, behold the palace
reawakened and mimicking its past. The Lord Commissioner, a kind of
stage sovereign, sits among stage courtiers; a coach and six and
clattering escort come and go before the gate; at night, the windows are
lighted up, and its near neighbours, the workmen, may dance in their own
houses to the palace music. And in this the palace is typical. There is
a spark among the embers; from time to time the old volcano smokes.
Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still wears, in parody, her
metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and half a country town, the
whole city leads a double existence; it has long trances of the one and
flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles, it is half alive
and half a monumental marble. There are armed men and cannon in the
citadel overhead; you may see the troops Marshalled on the high parade;
and at night after the early winter evenfall, and in the morning before
the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the
sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once
the scene of imperial deliberations. Close by in the High Street perhaps
the trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of
citizens in tawdry masquerade; tabard above, heather-mixture trouser
below, and the men themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic
bystanders. The grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with
a better presence. And yet these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of
Scotland, who are about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom
before two score boys, and thieves, and hackney-coachmen. Meanwhile
every hour the bell of the University rings out over the hum of the
streets, and every hour a double tide of students, coming and going,
fills the deep archways. And lastly, one night in the spring-time--or
say one morning rather, at the peep of day--late folk may hear the
voices of many men singing a psalm in unison from a church on one side
of the old High Street, and a little after, or perhaps a little before,
the sound of many men singing a psalm in unison from another church on
the opposite side of the way. There will be something in the words about
the dew of Hermon, and how goodly it is to see brethren dwelling
together in unity. And the late folk will tell themselves that all this
singing denotes the conclusion of two yearly ecclesiastical
parliaments--the parliaments of Churches which are brothers in many
admirable virtues, but not specially like brothers in this particular of
a tolerant and peaceful life.
Again, meditative people will find a charm in a certain consonancy
between the aspect of the city and its odd and stirring history. Few
places, if any, offer a more barbaric display of contrasts to the eye.
In the very midst stands one of the most satisfactory crags in nature--a
Bass Rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden, shaken by passing trains,
carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its warlike
shadow over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the new town.
From their smoky beehives, ten stories high, the unwashed look down upon
the open squares and gardens of the wealthy; and gay people sunning
themselves along Princes Street, with its mile of commercial palaces all
beflagged upon some great occasion, see, across a gardened valley set
with statues, where the washings of the old town flutter in the breeze
at its high windows. And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of
architecture! In this one valley, where the life of the town goes most
busily forward, there may be seen, shown one above and behind another by
the accidents of the ground, buildings in almost every style upon the
globe. Egyptian and Greek temples, Venetian palaces and Gothic spires,
are huddled one over another in a most admired disorder; while, above
all, the brute mass of the Castle and the summit of Arthur's Seat look
down upon these imitations with a becoming dignity, as the works of
Nature may look down upon the monuments of Art. But Nature is a more
indiscriminate patroness than we imagine, and in no way frightened of a
strong effect. The birds roost as willingly among the Corinthian
capitals as in the crannies of the crag; the same atmosphere and
daylight close the eternal rock and yesterday's imitation portico; and
as the soft northern sunshine throws out everything into a glorified
distinctness--or easterly mists, coming up with the blue evening, fuse
all these incongruous features into one, and the lamps begin to glitter
along the street, and faint lights to burn in the high windows across
the valley--the feeling grows upon you that this also is a piece of
nature in the most intimate sense; that this profusion of
eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock, is not a
drop-scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day reality,
connected by railway and telegraph-wire with all the capitals of Europe,
and inhabited by citizens of the familiar type, who keep ledgers, and
attend church, and have sold their immortal portion to a daily paper. By
all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half deserted and
leaning towards decay; birds we might admit in profusion, the play of
the sun and winds, and a few gypsies encamped in the chief thoroughfare;
but these citizens, with their cabs and tramways, their trains and
posters, are altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free
with historic localities, and rear their young among the most
picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging
by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a
little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least
striking feature of the place.[1]
And the story of the town is as eccentric as its appearance. For
centuries it was a capital thatched with heather, and more than once, in
the evil days of English invasion, it has gone up in flame to heaven, a
beacon to ships at sea. It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles,
not only on Greenside or by the King's Stables, where set tournaments
were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the
royal presence, but in every alley where there was room to cross swords,
and in the main street, where popular tumult under the Blue Blanket
alternated with the brawls of outlandish clansmen and retainers. Down in
the Palace John Knox reproved his queen in the accents of modern
democracy. In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so
many swallows' nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that
familiar autocrat, James VI., would gladly share a bottle of wine with
George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly
look down on the Castle with the city lying in waves around it, those
mad and dismal fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure
on the moors, sat day and night with "tearful psalms" to see Edinburgh
consumed with fire from heaven, like another Sodom or Gomorrah. There,
in the Grassmarket, stiff-necked, covenanting heroes offered up the
often unnecessary, but not less honourable, sacrifice of their lives,
and bade eloquent farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly
friendships, or died silent to the roll of drums. Down by yon outlet
rode Grahame of Claverhouse and his thirty dragoons, with the town
beating to arms behind their horses' tails--a sorry handful thus riding
for their lives, but with a man at the head who was to return in a
different temper, make a dash that staggered Scotland to the heart, and
die happily in the thick of fight. There Aikenhead was hanged for a
piece of boyish incredulity; there, a few years afterwards, David Hume
ruined Philosophy and Faith, an undisturbed and well-reputed citizen;
and thither, in yet a few years more, Burns came from the plough-tail,
as to an academy of gilt unbelief and artificial letters. There, when
the great exodus was made across the valley, and the new town began to
spread abroad its draughty parallelograms and rear its long frontage on
the opposing hill, there was such a flitting, such a change of domicile
and dweller, as was never excelled in the history of cities: the cobbler
succeeded the earl; the beggar ensconced himself by the judge's chimney;
what had been a palace was used as a pauper refuge; and great mansions
were so parceled out among the least and lowest in society, that the
hearth-stone of the old proprietor was thought large enough to be
partitioned off into a bedroom by the new.
[1] These sentences have, I hear, given offence in my native town; and a
proportionable pleasure to our rivals of Glasgow. I confess the news
caused me both pain and merriment. May I remark, as a balm for wounded
fellow-townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my accusations? Small
blame to them if they keep ledgers: 'tis an excellent business habit.
Church-going is not, that ever I heard, a subject of reproach; decency
of linen is a mark of prosperous affairs, and conscious moral rectitude
one of the tokens of good living. It is not their fault if the city
calls for something more specious by the way of inhabitants. A man in a
frock-coat looks out of place upon an Alp or Pyramid, although he has
the virtues of a Peabody and the talents of a Bentham. And let them
console themselves--they do as well as anybody else; the population of
(let us say) Chicago would cut quite as rueful a figure on the same
romantic stage. To the Glasgow people I would say only one word, but
that is of gold: _I have not yet written a book about Glasgow._
CHAPTER II
OLD TOWN: THE LANDS
The Old Town, it is pretended, is the chief characteristic, and, from a
picturesque point of view, the liver-wing of Edinburgh. It is one of the
most common forms of depreciation to throw cold water on the whole by
adroit over-commendation of a part, since everything worth judging,
whether it be a man, a work of art, or only a fine city, must be judged
upon its merits as a whole. The Old Town depends for much of its effect
on the new quarters that lie around it, on the sufficiency of its
situation, and on the hills that back it up. If you were to set it
somewhere else by itself, it would look remarkably like Stirling in a
bolder and loftier edition. The point is to see this embellished
Stirling planted in the midst of a large, active, and fantastic modern
city; for there the two react in a picturesque sense, and the one is
the making of the other.
The Old Town occupies a sloping ridge or tail of diluvial matter,
protected, in some subsidence of the waters, by the Castle cliffs which
fortify it to the west. On the one side of it and the other the new
towns of the south and of the north occupy their lower, broader, and
more gentle hill-tops. Thus, the quarter of the Castle overtops the
whole city and keeps an open view to sea and land. It dominates for
miles on every side; and people on the decks of ships, or ploughing in
quiet country places over in Fife, can see the banner on the Castle
battlements, and the smoke of the Old Town blowing abroad over the
subjacent country. A city that is set upon a hill. It was, I suppose,
from this distant aspect that she got her nickname of _Auld Reekie_.
Perhaps it was given her by people who had never crossed her doors: day
after day, from their various rustic Pisgahs, they had seen the pile of
building on the hill-top, and the long plume of smoke over the plain; so
it appeared to them; so it had appeared to their fathers tilling the
same field; and as that was all they knew of the place, it could be all
expressed in these two words.
Indeed, even on a nearer view, the Old Town is properly smoked; and
though it is well washed with rain all the year round, it has a grim and
sooty aspect among its younger suburbs. It grew, under the law that
regulates the growth of walled cities in precarious situations: not in
extent, but in height and density. Public buildings were forced,
wherever there was room for them, into the midst of thoroughfares;
thoroughfares were diminished into lanes; houses sprang up story after
story, neighbour mounting upon neighbour's shoulder, as in some Black
Hole of Calcutta, until the population slept fourteen or fifteen deep in
a vertical direction. The tallest of these lands, as they are locally
termed, have long since been burnt out; but to this day it is not
uncommon to see eight or ten windows at a flight; and the cliff of
building which hangs imminent over Waverley Bridge would still put many
natural precipices to shame. The cellars are already high above the
gazer's head, planted on the steep hillside; as for the garret, all the
furniture may be in the pawnshop, but it commands a famous prospect to
the Highland hills. The poor man may roost up there in the centre of
Edinburgh, and yet have a peep of the green country from his window; he
shall see the quarters of the well-to-do fathoms underneath, with their
broad squares and gardens; he shall have nothing overhead but a few
spires, the stone top-gallants of the city; and perhaps the wind may
reach him with a rustic pureness, and bring a smack of the sea, or of
flowering lilacs in the spring.
It is almost the correct literary sentiment to deplore the revolutionary
improvements of Mr. Chambers and his following. It is easy to be a
conservator of the discomforts of others; indeed, it is only our good
qualities we find it irksome to, conserve. Assuredly, in driving streets
through the black labyrinth, a few curious old corners have been swept
away, and some associations turned out of house and home. But what
slices of sunlight, what breaths of clean air, have been let in! And
what a picturesque world remains untouched! You go under dark arches,
and down dark stairs and alleys. The way is so narrow that you can lay a
hand on either wall; so steep that, in greasy winter weather, the
pavement is almost as treacherous as ice. Washing dangles above washing
from the windows; the houses bulge outwards upon flimsy brackets; you
see a bit of sculpture in a dark corner; at the top of all, a gable and
a few crowsteps are printed on the sky. Here, you come into a court
where the children are at play and the grown people sit upon their
doorsteps, and perhaps a church spire shows itself above the roofs.
Here, in the narrowest of the entry, you find a great old mansion still
erect, with some insignia of its former state--some scutcheon, some holy
or courageous motto, on the lintel. The local antiquary points out where
famous and well-born people had their lodging; and as you look up, out
pops the head of a slatternly woman from the countess's window. The
Bedouins camp within Pharaoh's palace walls, and the old war-ship is
given over to the rats. We are already a far way from the days when
powdered heads were plentiful in these alleys, with jolly, port-wine
faces underneath. Even in the chief thoroughfares Irish washings flutter
at the windows, and the pavements are encumbered with loiterers.
These loiterers are a true character of the scene. Some shrewd Scotch
workmen may have paused on their way to a job, debating Church affairs
and politics with their tools upon their arm. But the most part are of a
different order--skulking jail-birds; unkempt, barefoot children;
big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of uniform of striped flannel
petticoat and short tartan shawl: among these, a few supervising
constables and a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and broken men from
higher ranks in society, with some mark of better days upon them, like a
brand. In a place no larger than Edinburgh, and where the traffic is
mostly centred in five or six chief streets, the same face comes often
under the notice of an idle stroller. In fact, from this point of view,
Edinburgh is not so much a small city as the largest of small towns. It
is scarce possible to avoid observing your neighbours; and I never yet
heard of any one who tried. It has been my fortune, in this anonymous
accidental way, to watch more than one of these downward travellers for
some stages on the road to ruin. One man must have been upwards of sixty
before I first observed him, and he made then a decent, personable
figure in broadcloth of the best. For three years he kept
falling--grease coming and buttons going from the square-skirted coat,
the face puffing and pimpling, the shoulders growing bowed, the hair
falling scant and grey upon his head; and the last that ever I saw of
him, he was standing at the mouth of an entry with several men in
moleskin, three parts drunk, and his old black raiment daubed with mud.
I fancy that I still can hear him laugh. There was something
heart-breaking in this gradual declension at so advanced an age; you
would have thought a man of sixty out of the reach of these calamities;
you would have thought that he was niched by that time into a safe place
in life, whence he could pass quietly and honourably into the grave.
One of the earliest marks of these _dégringolades_ is, that the victim
begins to disappear from the New Town thoroughfares, and takes to the
High Street, like a wounded animal to the woods. And such an one is the
type of the quarter. It also has fallen socially. A scutcheon over the
door somewhat jars in sentiment where there is a washing at every
window. The old man, when I saw him last, wore the coat in which he had
played the gentleman three years before; and that was just what gave
him so pre-eminent an air of wretchedness.
It is true that the over-population was at least as dense in the epoch
of lords and ladies, and that nowadays some customs which made
Edinburgh notorious of yore have been fortunately pretermitted. But an
aggregation of comfort is not distasteful like an aggregation of the
reverse. Nobody cares how many lords and ladies, and divines and
lawyers, may have been crowded into these houses in the past--perhaps
the more the merrier. The glasses clink around the china punch-bowl,
some one touches the virginals, there are peacocks' feathers on the
chimney, and the tapers burn clear and pale in the red firelight. That
is not an ugly picture in itself, nor will it become ugly upon
repetition. All the better if the like were going on in every second
room; the _land_ would only look the more inviting. Times are changed.
In one house, perhaps, twoscore families herd together; and, perhaps,
not one of them is wholly out of the reach of want. The great hotel is
given over to discomfort from the foundation to the chimney-tops;
everywhere a pinching, narrow habit, scanty meals, and an air of
sluttishness and dirt. In the first room there is a birth, in another a
death, in a third a sordid drinking-bout, and the detective and the
Bible-reader cross upon the stairs. High words are audible from dwelling
to dwelling, and children have a strange experience from the first; only
a robust soul, you would think, could grow up in such conditions without
hurt. And even if God tempers His dispensations to the young, and all
the ill does not arise that our apprehensions may forecast, the sight of
such a way of living is disquieting to people who are more happily
circumstanced. Social inequality is nowhere more ostentatious than at
Edinburgh. I have mentioned already how, to the stroller along Princes
Street, the High Street callously exhibits its back garrets. It is true,
there is a garden between. And although nothing could be more glaring by
way of contrast, sometimes the opposition is more immediate; sometimes
the thing lies in a nutshell, and there is not so much as a blade of
grass between the rich and poor. To look over the South Bridge and see
the Cowgate below full of crying hawkers, is to view one rank of society
from another in the twinkling of an eye.
One night I went along the Cowgate after every one was abed but the
policeman, and stopped by hazard before a tall _land_. The moon touched
upon its chimneys, and shone blankly on the upper windows; there was no
light anywhere in the great bulk of building; but as I stood there it
seemed to me that I could hear quite a body of quiet sounds from the
interior; doubtless there were many clocks ticking, and people snoring
on their backs. And thus, as I fancied, the dense life within made
itself faintly audible in my ears, family after family contributing its
quota to the general hum, and the whole pile beating in tune to its
time-pieces, like a great disordered heart. Perhaps it was little more
than a fancy altogether, but it was strangely impressive at the time,
and gave me an imaginative measure of the disproportion between the
quantity of living flesh and the trifling walls that separated and
contained it.
There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every circumstance of terror
and reality, in the fall of the _land_ in the High Street. The building
had grown rotten to the core; the entry underneath had suddenly closed
up so that the scavenger's barrow could not pass; cracks and
reverberations sounded through the house at night; the inhabitants of
the huge old human bee-hive discussed their peril when they encountered
on the stair; some had even left their dwellings in a panic of fear, and
returned to them again in a fit of economy or self-respect; when, in the
black hours of a Sunday morning, the whole structure ran together with a
hideous uproar and tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical
shock was felt far and near; and the moral shock travelled with the
morning milkmaid into all the suburbs. The church-bells never sounded
more dismally over Edinburgh than that grey forenoon. Death had made a
brave harvest; and, like Samson, by pulling down one roof destroyed many
a home. None who saw it can have forgotten the aspect of the gable: here
it was plastered, there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle
still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap picture of the
Queen was pasted over the chimney, So, by this disaster, you had a
glimpse into the life of thirty families, all suddenly cut off from the
revolving years. The _land_ had fallen; and with the _land_ how much!
Far in the country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the sun
looked through between the chimneys in an unwonted place. And all over
the world, in London, in Canada, in New Zealand, fancy what a multitude
of people could exclaim with truth: "The house that I was born in fell
last night!"
CHAPTER III
THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE
Time has wrought its changes most notably around the precinct of St.
Giles's Church. The church itself, if it were not for the spire, would
be unrecognizable; the _Krames_ are all gone, not a shop is left to
shelter in its buttresses; and zealous magistrates and a misguided
architect have shorn the design of manhood, and left it poor, naked, and
pitifully pretentious. As St. Giles's must have had in former days a
rich and quaint appearance now forgotten, so the neighbourhood was
bustling, sunless, and romantic. It was here that the town was most
overbuilt; but the overbuilding has been all rooted out, and not only a
free fairway left along the High Street with an open space on either
side of the church, but a great porthole, knocked in the main line of
the _lands_, gives an outlook to the north and the New Town.
There is a silly story of a subterranean passage between the Castle and
Holyrood, and a bold Highland piper who volunteered to explore its
windings. He made his entrance by the upper end, playing a strathspey;
the curious footed it after him down the street, following his descent
by the sound of the chanter from below; until all of a sudden, about the
level of St. Giles's, the music came abruptly to an end, and the people
in the street stood at fault with hands uplifted. Whether he was choked
with gases, or perished in a quag, or was removed bodily by the Evil
One, remains a point of doubt; but the piper has never again been seen
or heard of from that day to this. Perhaps he wandered down into the
land of Thomas the Rhymer, and some day, when it is least expected, may
take a thought to revisit the sunlit upper world. That will be a
strange moment for the cabmen on the stance beside St. Giles's, when
they hear the drone of his pipes reascending from the bowels of the
earth below their horses' feet.
But it is not only pipers who have vanished, many a solid bulk of
masonry has been likewise spirited into the air. Here, for example, is
the shape of a heart let into the causeway. This was the site of the
Tolbooth, the Heart of Midlothian, a place old in story and name-father
to a noble book. The walls are now down in the dust; there is no more
_squalor carceris_ for merry debtors, no more cage for the old,
acknowledged prison-breaker; but the sun and the wind play freely over
the foundations of the jail. Nor is this the only memorial that the
pavement keeps of former days. The ancient burying-ground of Edinburgh
lay behind St. Giles's Church, running downhill to the Cowgate and
covering the site of the present Parliament House. It has disappeared as
utterly as the prison or the Luckenbooths; and for those ignorant of its
history, I know only one token that remains. In the Parliament Close,
trodden daily underfoot by advocates, two letters and a date mark the
resting-place of the man who made Scotland over again in his own image,
the indefatigable, undissuadable John Knox. He sleeps within call of the
church that so often echoed to his preaching.
Hard by the reformer, a bandy-legged and garlanded Charles Second, made
of lead, bestrides a tun-bellied charger. The King has his back turned,
and, as you look, seems to be trotting clumsily away from such a
dangerous neighbour. Often, for hours together, these two will be alone
in the close, for it lies out of the way of all but legal traffic. On
one side the south wall of the church, on the other the arcades of the
Parliament House, inclose this irregular bight of causeway and describe
their shadows on it in the sun. At either end, from round St. Giles's
buttresses, you command a look into the High Street with its motley
passengers; but the stream goes by east and west, and leaves the
Parliament Close to Charles the Second and the birds. Once in a while, a
patient crowd may be seen loitering there all day, some eating fruit,
some reading a newspaper; and to judge by their quiet demeanour, you
would think they were waiting for a distribution of soup-tickets. The
fact is far otherwise; within in the Justiciary Court a man is upon
trial for his life, and these are some of the curious for whom the
gallery was found too narrow. Towards afternoon, if the prisoner is
unpopular, there will be a round of hisses when he is brought forth.
Once in a while, too, an advocate in wig and gown, hand upon mouth, full
of pregnant nods, sweeps to and fro in the arcade listening to an agent;
and at certain regular hours a whole tide of lawyers hurries across the
space.
The Parliament Close has been the scene of marking incidents in Scottish
history. Thus, when the Bishops were ejected from the Convention in
1688, "all fourteen of them gathered together with pale faces and stood
in a cloud in the Parliament Close": poor episcopal personages who were
done with fair weather for life! Some of the west-country Societarians
standing by, who would have "rejoiced more than in great sums" to be at
their hanging, hustled them so rudely that they knocked their heads
together. It was not magnanimous behaviour to dethroned enemies; but
one, at least, of the Societarians had groaned in the _boots_, and they
had all seen their dear friends upon the scaffold. Again, at the "woeful
Union," it was here that people crowded to escort their favourite from
the last of Scottish parliaments: people flushed with nationality, as
Boswell would have said, ready for riotous acts, and fresh from throwing
stones at the author of "Robinson Crusoe" as he looked out of window.
One of the pious in the seventeenth century, going to pass his _trials_
(examinations as we now say) for the Scottish Bar, beheld the Parliament
Close open and had a vision of the mouth of Hell. This, and small
wonder, was the means of his conversion. Nor was the vision unsuitable
to the locality; for after an hospital, what uglier piece is there in
civilization than a court of law? Hither come envy, malice, and all
uncharitableness to wrestle it out in public tourney; crimes, broken
fortunes, severed households, the knave and his victim, gravitate to
this low building with the arcade. To how many has not St. Giles's bell
told the first hour after ruin? I think I see them pause to count the
strokes, and wander on again into the moving High Street, stunned and
sick at heart.
A pair of swing doors gives admittance to a hall with a carved roof,
hung with legal portraits, adorned with legal statuary, lighted by
windows of painted glass, and warmed by three vast fires. This the
_Salle des pas perdus_ of the Scottish Bar. Here, by a ferocious custom,
idle youths must promenade from ten till two. From end to end, singly or
in pairs or trios, the gowns and wigs go back and forward. Through a hum
of talk and footfalls, the piping tones of a Macer announce a fresh
cause and call upon the names of those concerned. Intelligent men have
been walking here daily for ten or twenty years without a rag of
business or a shilling of reward. In process of time, they may perhaps
be made the Sheriff-Substitute and Fountain of Justice at Lerwick or
Tobermory. There is nothing required, you would say, but a little
patience and a taste for exercise and bad air. To breathe dust and
bombazine, to feed the mind on cackling gossip, to hear three parts of a
case and drink a glass of sherry, to long with indescribable longings
for the hour when a man may slip out of his travesty and devote himself
to golf for the rest of the afternoon, and to do this day by day and
year after year, may seem so small a thing to the inexperienced! But
those who have made the experiment are of a different way of thinking,
and count it the most arduous form of idleness.
More swing doors open into pigeon-holes where Judges of the First
Appeal sit singly, and halls of audience where the supreme Lords sit by
three or four. Here, you may see Scott's place within the bar, where he
wrote many a page of Waverley novels to the drone of judicial
proceeding. You will hear a good deal of shrewdness, and, as their
Lordships do not altogether disdain pleasantry, a fair proportion of dry
fun. The broadest of broad Scotch is now banished from the bench; but
the courts still retain a certain national flavour. We have a solemn
enjoyable way of lingering on a case. We treat law as a fine art, and
relish and digest a good distinction. There is no hurry: point after
point must be rightly examined and reduced to principle; judge after
judge must utter forth his _obiter dicta_ to delighted brethren.
Besides the courts, there are installed under the same roof no less than
three libraries: two of no mean order; confused and semi-subterranean,
full of stairs and galleries; where you may see the most
studious-looking wigs fishing out novels by lantern light, in the very
place where the old Privy Council tortured Covenanters. As the
Parliament House is built upon a slope, although it presents only one
story to the north, it measures half-a-dozen at least upon the south;
and range after range of vaults extend below the libraries. Few places
are more characteristic of this hilly capital. You descend one stone
stair after another, and wander, by the flicker of a match, in a
labyrinth of stone cellars. Now, you pass below the Outer Hall and hear
overhead, brisk but ghostly, the interminable pattering of legal feet.
Now, you come upon a strong door with a wicket: on the other side are
the cells of the police office and the trap-stair that gives admittance
to the dock in the Justiciary Court. Many a foot that has gone up there
lightly enough, has been dead-heavy in the descent. Many a man's life
has been argued away from him during long hours in the court above. But
just now that tragic stage is empty and silent like a church on a
week-day, with the bench all sheeted up and nothing moving but the
sunbeams on the wall. A little farther and you strike upon a room, not
empty like the rest, but crowded with _productions_ from bygone criminal
cases: a grim lumber: lethal weapons, poisoned organs in a jar, a door
with a shot hole through the panel, behind which a man fell dead. I
cannot fancy why they should preserve them, unless it were against the
Judgment Day. At length, as you continue to descend, you see a peep of
yellow gaslight and hear a jostling, whispering noise ahead; next moment
you turn a corner, and there, in a whitewashed passage, is a machinery
belt industriously turning on its wheels. You would think the engine had
grown there of its own accord, like a cellar fungus, and would soon spin
itself out and fill the vaults from end to end with its mysterious
labours. In truth, it is only some gear of the steam ventilator; and you
will find the engineers at hand, and may step out of their door into the
sunlight. For all this while, you have not been descending towards the
earth's centre, but only to the bottom of the hill and the foundations
of the Parliament House; low down, to be sure, but still under the open
heaven and in a field of grass. The daylight shines garishly on the back
windows of the Irish quarter; on broken shutters, wry gables, old
palsied houses on the brink of ruin, a crumbling human pig-sty fit for
human pigs. There are few signs of life, besides a scanty washing or a
face at a window: the dwellers are abroad, but they will return at night
and stagger to their pallets.
CHAPTER IV
LEGENDS
The character of a place is often most perfectly expressed in its
associations. An event strikes root and grows into a legend, when it has
happened amongst congenial surroundings. Ugly actions, above all in ugly
places, have the true romantic quality, and become an undying property
of their scene. To a man like Scott, the different appearances of nature
seemed each to contain its own legend ready made, which it was his to
call forth: in such or such a place, only such or such events ought with
propriety to happen; and in this spirit he made the "Lady of the Lake"
for Ben Venue, the "Heart of Midlothian" for Edinburgh, and the
"Pirate," so indifferently written but so romantically conceived, for
the desolate islands and roaring tideways of the North. The common run
of mankind have, from generation to generation, an instinct almost as
delicate as that of Scott; but where he created new things, they only
forget what is unsuitable among the old; and by survival of the fittest,
a body of tradition becomes a work of art. So, in the low dens and
high-flying garrets of Edinburgh, people may go back upon dark passages
in the town's adventures, and chill their marrow with winter's tales
about the fire: tales that are singularly apposite and characteristic,
not only of the old life, but of the very constitution of built nature
in that part, and singularly well qualified to add horror to horror,
when the wind pipes around the tall _lands_, and hoots adown arched
passages, and the far-spread wilderness of city lamps keeps quavering
and flaring in the gusts.
Here, it is the tale of Begbie the bank-porter, stricken to the heart at
a blow and left in his blood within a step or two of the crowded High
Street. There, people hush their voices over Burke and Hare; over drugs
and violated graves, and the resurrection-men smothering their victims
with their knees. Here, again, the fame of Deacon Brodie is kept piously
fresh. A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in good society,
crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who could sing a song
with taste. Many a citizen was proud to welcome the Deacon to supper,
and dismissed him with regret at a timeous hour, who would have been
vastly disconcerted had he known how soon, and in what guise, his
visitor returned. Many stories are told of this redoubtable Edinburgh
burglar, but the one I have in my mind most vividly gives the key of all
the rest. A friend of Brodie's, nested some way towards heaven in one of
these great _lands_, had told him of a projected visit to the country,
and afterwards, detained by some affairs, put it off and stayed the
night in town. The good man had lain some time awake; it was far on in
the small hours by the Tron bell; when suddenly there came a creak, a
jar, a faint light. Softly he clambered out of bed and up to a false
window which looked upon another room, and there, by the glimmer of a
thieves' lantern, was his good friend the Deacon in a mask. It is
characteristic of the town and the town's manners that this little
episode should have been quietly tided over, and quite a good time
elapsed before a great robbery, an escape, a Bow Street runner, a
cock-fight, an apprehension in a cupboard in Amsterdam, and a last step
into the air off his own greatly improved gallows drop, brought the
career of Deacon William Brodie to an end. But still, by the mind's eye,
he may be seen, a man harassed below a mountain of duplicity, slinking
from a magistrate's supper-room to a thieves' ken, and pickeering among
the closes by the flicker of a dark lamp.
Or where the Deacon is out of favour, perhaps some memory lingers of the
great plagues, and of fatal houses still unsafe to enter within the
memory of man. For in time of pestilence the discipline had been sharp
and sudden, and what we now call "stamping out contagion" was carried on
with deadly rigour. The officials, in their gowns of grey, with a white
St. Andrew's cross on back and breast, and white cloth carried before
them on a staff, perambulated the city, adding the terror of man's
justice to the fear of God's visitation. The dead they buried on the
Borough Muir; the living who had concealed the sickness were drowned, if
they were women, in the Quarry Holes, and if they were men, were hanged
and gibbeted at their own doors; and wherever the evil had passed,
furniture was destroyed and houses closed. And the most bogeyish part of
the story is about such houses. Two generations back they still stood
dark and empty; people avoided them as they passed by; the boldest
schoolboy only shouted through the key-hole and made off; for within, it
was supposed, the plague lay ambushed like a basilisk, ready to flow
forth and spread blain and pustule through the city. What a terrible
next-door neighbour for superstitious citizens! A rat scampering within
would send a shudder through the stoutest heart. Here, if you like, was
a sanitary parable, addressed by our uncleanly forefathers to their own
neglect.
And then we have Major Weir; for although even his house is now
demolished, old Edinburgh cannot clear herself of his unholy memory. He
and his sister lived together in an odour of sour piety. She was a
marvelous spinster; he had a rare gift of supplication, and was known
among devout admirers by the name of Angelical Thomas. "He was a tall,
black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim countenance,
and a big nose. His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he
never went without his staff." How it came about that Angelical Thomas
was burned in company with his staff, and his sister in gentler manner
hanged, and whether these two were simply religious maniacs of the more
furious order, or had real as well as imaginary sins upon their
old-world shoulders, are points happily beyond the reach of our
intention. At least, it is suitable enough that out of this
superstitious city some such example should have been put forth: the
outcome and fine flower of dark and vehement religion. And at least the
facts struck the public fancy and brought forth a remarkable family of
myths. It would appear that the Major's staff went upon his errands, and
even ran before him with a lantern on dark nights. Gigantic females,
"stentoriously laughing and gaping with tehees of laughter" at
unseasonable hours of night and morning, haunted the purlieus of his
abode. His house fell under such a load of infamy that no one dared to
sleep in it, until municipal improvement leveled the structure with the
ground. And my father has often been told in the nursery how the devil's
coach, drawn by six coal-black horses with fiery eyes, would drive at
night into the West Bow, and belated people might see the dead Major
through the glasses.
Another legend is that of the two maiden sisters. A legend I am afraid
it may be, in the most discreditable meaning of the term; or perhaps
something worse--a mere yesterday's fiction. But it is a story of some
vitality, and is worthy of a place in the Edinburgh kalendar. This pair
inhabited a single room; from the facts, it must have been
double-bedded; and it may have been of some dimensions; but when all is
said, it was a single room. Here our two spinsters fell out--on some
point of controversial divinity belike: but fell out so bitterly that
there was never a word spoken between them, black or white, from that
day forward. You would have thought they would separate: but no; whether
from lack of means, or the Scottish fear of scandal, they continued to
keep house together where they were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor
separated their two domains; it bisected the doorway and the fireplace,
so that each could go out and in, and do her cooking, without violating
the territory of the other. So, for years, they co-existed in a hateful
silence; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly visitors, exposed
to an unfriendly scrutiny; and at night, in the dark watches, each could
hear the breathing of her enemy. Never did four walls look down upon an
uglier spectacle than these sisters rivaling in unsisterliness. Here is
a canvas for Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture--he had a
Puritanic vein, which would have fitted him to treat this Puritanic
horror; he could have shown them to us in their sicknesses and at their
hideous twin devotions, thumbing a pair of great Bibles, or praying
aloud for each other's penitence with marrowy emphasis; now each, with
kilted petticoat, at her own corner of the fire on some tempestuous
evening; now sitting each at her window, looking out upon the summer
landscape sloping far below them towards the firth, and the field-paths
where they had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity grew upon
them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands began to tremble and
their heads to nod involuntarily, growing only the more steeled in
enmity with years; until one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit, or
the approach of death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary be
overstepped for ever.
Alas! to those who know the ecclesiastical history of the race--the most
perverse and melancholy in man's annals--this will seem only a figure of
much that is typical of Scotland and her high-seated capital above the
Forth--a figure so grimly realistic that it may pass with strangers for
a caricature. We are wonderful patient haters for conscience' sake up
here in the North. I spoke, in the first of these papers, of the
Parliaments of the Established and Free Churches, and how they can hear
each other singing psalms across the street. There is but a street
between them in space, but a shadow between them in principle; and yet
there they sit, enchanted, and in damnatory accents pray for each
other's growth in grace. It would be well if there were no more than
two; but the sects in Scotland form a large family of sisters, and the
chalk lines are thickly drawn, and run through the midst of many private
homes. Edinburgh is a city of churches, as though it were a place of
pilgrimage. You will see four within a stone-cast at the head of the
West Bow. Some are crowded to the doors; some are empty like monuments;
and yet you will ever find new ones in the building. Hence that
surprising clamour of church bells that suddenly breaks out upon the
Sabbath morning, from Trinity and the sea-skirts to Morningside on the
borders of the hills. I have heard the chimes of Oxford playing their
symphony in a golden autumn morning, and beautiful it was to hear. But
in Edinburgh all manner of loud bells join, or rather disjoin, in one
swelling, brutal babblement of noise. Now one overtakes another, and now
lags behind it; now five or six all strike on the pained tympanum at the
same punctual instant of time, and make together a dismal chord of
discord; and now for a second all seem to have conspired to hold their
peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars in this world more dismal than
that of the Sabbath bells in Edinburgh: a harsh ecclesiastical tocsin;
the outcry of incongruous orthodoxies, calling on every separate
conventicler to put up a protest, each in his own synagogue, against
"right-hand extremes and left-hand defections." And surely there are few
worse extremes than this extremity of zeal; and few more deplorable
defections than this disloyalty to Christian love. Shakespeare wrote a
comedy of "Much Ado about Nothing." The Scottish nation made a fantastic
tragedy on the same subject. And it is for the success of this
remarkable piece that these bells are sounded every Sabbath morning on
the hills above the Forth. How many of them might rest silent in the
steeple, how many of these ugly churches might be demolished and turned
once more into useful building material, if people who think almost
exactly the same thoughts about religion would condescend to worship God
under the same roof! But there are the chalk lines. And which is to
pocket pride, and speak the foremost word?
CHAPTER V
GREYFRIARS
It was Queen Mary who threw open the gardens of the Grey Friars: a new
and semi-rural cemetery in those days, although it has grown an
antiquity in its turn and been superseded by half-a-dozen others. The
Friars must have had a pleasant time on summer evenings; for their
gardens were situated to a wish, with the tall Castle and the tallest of
the Castle crags in front. Even now, it is one of our famous Edinburgh
points of view; and strangers are led thither to see, by yet another
instance, how strangely the city lies upon her hills. The enclosure is
of an irregular shape; the double church of Old and New Greyfriars
stands on the level at the top; a few thorns are dotted here and there,
and the ground falls by terrace and steep slope towards the north. The
open shows many slabs and table tombstones; and all round the margin,
the place is girt by an array of aristocratic mausoleums appallingly
adorned. Setting aside the tombs of Roubilliac, which belong to the
heroic order of graveyard art, we Scotch stand, to my fancy, highest
among nations in the matter of grimly illustrating death. We seem to
love for their own sake the emblems of time and the great change; and
even around country churches you will find a wonderful exhibition of
skulls, and crossbones, and noseless angels, and trumpets pealing for
the Judgment Day. Every mason was a pedestrian Holbein: he had a deep
consciousness of death, and loved to put its terrors pithily before the
churchyard loiterer; he was brimful of rough hints upon mortality, and
any dead farmer was seized upon to be a text. The classical examples of
this art are in Greyfriars. In their time, these were doubtless costly
monuments, and reckoned of a very elegant proportion by contemporaries;
and now, when the elegance is not so apparent, the significance remains.
You may perhaps look with a smile on the profusion of Latin
mottoes--some crawling endwise up the shaft of a pillar, some issuing on
a scroll from angels' trumpets--on the emblematic horrors, the figures
rising headless from the grave, and all the traditional ingenuities in
which it pleased our fathers to set forth their sorrow for the dead and
their sense of earthly mutability. But it is not a hearty sort of mirth.
Each ornament may have been executed by the merriest apprentice,
whistling as he plied the mallet; but the original meaning of each, and
the combined effect of so many of them in this quiet enclosure, is
serious to the point of melancholy.
Round a great part of the circuit, houses of a low class present their
backs to the churchyard. Only a few inches separate the living from the
dead. Here, a window is partly blocked up by the pediment of a tomb;
there, where the street falls far below the level of the graves, a
chimney has been trained up the back of a monument, and a red pot looks
vulgarly over from behind. A damp smell of the graveyard finds its way
into houses where workmen sit at meat. Domestic life on a small scale
goes forward visibly at the windows. The very solitude and stillness of
the enclosure, which lies apart from the town's traffic, serves to
accentuate the contrast. As you walk upon the graves, you see children
scattering crumbs to feed the sparrows; you hear people singing or
washing dishes, or the sound of tears and castigation; the linen on a
clothes-pole flaps against funereal sculpture; or perhaps the cat slips
over the lintel and descends on a memorial urn. And as there is nothing
else astir, these incongruous sights and noises take hold on the
attention and exaggerate the sadness of the place.
Greyfriars is continually overrun by cats. I have seen one afternoon, as
many as thirteen of them seated on the grass beside old Milne, the
Master Builder, all sleek and fat, and complacently blinking, as if they
had fed upon strange meats. Old Milne was chanting with the saints, as
we may hope, and cared little for the company about his grave; but I
confess the spectacle had an ugly side for me; and I was glad to step
forward and raise my eyes to where the Castle and the roofs of the Old
Town, and the spire of the Assembly Hall, stood deployed against the sky
with the colourless precision of engraving. An open outlook is to be
desired from a churchyard, and a sight of the sky and some of the
world's beauty relieves a mind from morbid thoughts.
I shall never forget one visit. It was a grey, dropping day; the grass
was strung with rain-drops; and the people in the houses kept hanging
out their shirts and petticoats and angrily taking them in again, as the
weather turned from wet to fair and back again. A gravedigger, and a
friend of his, a gardener from the country, accompanied me into one
after another of the cells and little courtyards in which it gratified
the wealthy of old days to enclose their old bones from neighbourhood.
In one, under a sort of shrine, we found a forlorn human effigy, very
realistically executed down to the detail of his ribbed stockings, and
holding in his hand a ticket with the date of his demise. He looked most
pitiful and ridiculous, shut up by himself in his aristocratic precinct,
like a bad old boy or an inferior forgotten deity under a new
dispensation; the burdocks grew familiarly about his feet, the rain
dripped all round him; and the world maintained the most entire
indifference as to who he was or whither he had gone. In another, a
vaulted tomb, handsome externally but horrible inside with damp and
cobwebs, there were three mounds of black earth and an uncovered
thigh-bone. This was the place of interment, it appeared, of a family
with whom the gardener had been long in service. He was among old
acquaintances. "This'll be Miss Marg'et's," said he, giving the bone a
friendly kick. "The auld ---- !" I have always an uncomfortable feeling in
a graveyard, at sight of so many tombs to perpetuate memories best
forgotten; but I never had the impression so strongly as that day.
People had been at some expense in both these cases: to provoke a
melancholy feeling of derision in the one, and an insulting epithet in
the other. The proper inscription for the most part of mankind, I began
to think, is the cynical jeer, _cras tibi_. That, if anything, will stop
the mouth of a carper; since it both admits the worst and carries the
war triumphantly into the enemy's camp.
Greyfriars is a place of many associations. There was one window in a
house at the lower end, now demolished, which was pointed out to me by
the gravedigger as a spot of legendary interest. Burke, the
resurrection-man, infamous for so many murders at five shillings a head,
used to sit thereat, with pipe and nightcap, to watch burials going
forward on the green. In a tomb higher up, which must then have been but
newly finished, John Knox, according to the same informant, had taken
refuge in a turmoil of the Reformation. Behind the church is the haunted
mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie: Bloody Mackenzie, Lord Advocate in
the Covenanting troubles and author of some pleasing sentiments on
toleration. Here, in the last century, an old Heriot's Hospital boy once
harboured from the pursuit of the police. The Hospital is next door to
Greyfriars--a courtly building among lawns, where, on Founder's Day, you
may see a multitude of children playing Kiss-in-the-Ring and Round the
Mulberry-bush. Thus, when the fugitive had managed to conceal himself in
the tomb, his old schoolmates had a hundred opportunities to bring him
food; and there he lay in safety till a ship was found to smuggle him
abroad. But his must have been indeed a heart of brass, to lie all day
and night alone with the dead persecutor; and other lads were far from
emulating him in courage. When a man's soul is certainly in hell, his
body will scarce lie quiet in a tomb, however costly; some time or other
the door must open, and the reprobate come forth in the abhorred
garments of the grave. It was thought a high piece of prowess to knock
at the Lord Advocate's mausoleum and challenge him to appear. "Bluidy
Mackenzie, come oot if ye daur!" sang the foolhardy urchins. But Sir
George had other affairs on hand; and the author of an essay on
toleration continues to sleep peacefully among the many whom he so
intolerantly helped to slay.
For this _infelix campus_, as it is dubbed in one of its own
inscriptions--an inscription over which Dr. Johnson passed a critical
eye--is in many ways sacred to the memory of the men whom Mackenzie
persecuted. It was here, on the flat tombstones, that the Covenant was
signed by an enthusiastic people. In the long arm of the churchyard that
extends to Lauriston, the prisoners from Bothwell Bridge--fed on bread
and water, and guarded, life for life, by vigilant marksmen--lay five
months looking for the scaffold or the plantations. And while the good
work was going forward in the Grassmarket, idlers in Greyfriars might
have heard the throb of the military drums that drowned the voices of
the martyrs. Nor is this all: for down in the corner farthest from Sir
George, there stands a monument, dedicated, in uncouth Covenanting
verse, to all who lost their lives in that contention. There is no
moorsman shot in a snow shower beside Irongray or Co'monell; there is
not one of the two hundred who were drowned off the Orkneys; nor so much
as a poor, over-driven, Covenanting slave in the American plantations;
but can lay claim to a share in that memorial, and, if such things
interest just men among the shades, can boast he has a monument on earth
as well as Julius Caesar or the Pharaohs. Where they may all lie, I know
not. Far-scattered bones, indeed! But if the reader cares to learn how
some of them--or some part of some of them--found their way at length to
such honourable sepulture, let him listen to the words of one who was
their comrade in life and their apologist when they were dead. Some of
the insane controversial matter I omit, as well as some digressions,
but leave the rest in Patrick Walker's language and orthography:--
"The never to be forgotten Mr. _James Renwlck_ told me, that he was
Witness to their Public Murder at the _Gallowlee_, between _Leith_
and _Edinburgh_, when he saw the Hangman hash and hagg off all their
Five heads, with _Patrick Foreman's_ Right Hand: Their Bodies were
all buried at the Gallows Foot: their Heads, with _Patrick's_ Hand,
were brought and put upon five Pikes on the _Pleasaunce-Port_....
Mr. _Renwick_ told me that it was the first public Action that his
Hand was at, to conveen Friends, and lift their murthered Bodies,
and carried them to the West Churchyard of _Edinburgh_,"--not
Greyfriars, this time,--"and buried them there. Then they came about
the City ... and took down these Five Heads and that Hand; and Day
being come, they went quickly up the _Pleasaunce_; and when they
came to _Lauristoun_ Yards, upon the South-side of the City, they
durst not venture, being so light, to go and bury their Heads with
their Bodies, which they designed; it being present death, if any of
them had been found. _Alexander Tweedie_, a Friend, being with them,
who at that Time was Gardner in these Yards, concluded to bury them
in his Yard, being in a Box (wrapped in Linen), where they lay 45
Years except 3 Days, being executed upon the 10th of _October_ 1681,
and found the 7th Day of _October_ 1726. That Piece of Ground lay
for some years unlaboured; and trenching it, the Gardner found them,
which affrighted him; the Box was consumed. Mr. _Schaw_, the Owner
of these Yards, caused lift them, and lay them upon a Table in his
Summer-house: Mr. _Schaw's_ mother was so kind, as to cut out a
Linen-cloth and cover them. They lay Twelve Days there, where all
had Access to see them. _Alexander Tweedie_, the foresaid Gardner,
said, when dying, There was a Treasure hid in his Yard, but neither
Gold nor Silver. _Daniel Tweedie_, his Son, came along with me to
that Yard, and told me that his Father planted a white Rose-bush
above them, and farther down the Yard a red Rose-bush, which were
more fruitful than any other Bush in the Yard.... Many came"--to see
the heads--"out of Curiosity; yet I rejoiced to see so many
concerned grave Men and Women favouring the Dust of our Martyrs.
There were Six of us concluded to bury them upon the Nineteenth Day
of _October_ 1726, and every one of us to acquaint Friends of the
Day and Hour, being _Wednesday_, the Day of the Week on which most
of them were executed, and at 4 of the Clock at Night, being the
Hour that most of them went to their resting Graves. We caused make
a compleat Coffin for them in Black, with four Yards of fine Linen,
the way that our Martyrs Corps were managed.... Accordingly we kept
the aforesaid Day and Hour, and doubled the Linen, and laid the Half
of it below them, their nether Jaws being parted from their Heads;
but being young Men, their Teeth remained. All were Witness to the
Holes in each of their Heads, which the Hangman broke with his
Hammer; and according to the Bigness of their Sculls, we laid the
Jaws to them, and drew the other Half of the Linen above them, and
stufft the Coffin with Shavings. Some prest hard to go thorow the
chief Parts of the City as was done at the Revolution; but this we
refused, considering that it looked airy and frothy, to make such
Show of them, and inconsistent with the solid serious Observing of
such an affecting, surprizing unheard-of Dispensation: But took the
ordinary Way of other Burials from that Place, to wit, we went east
the Back of the Wall, and in at _Bristo-Port_, and down the Way to
the Head of the _Cowgate_, and turned up to the Churchyard, where
they were interred closs to the Martyrs Tomb, with the greatest
Multitude of People Old and Young, Men and Women, Ministers and
others, that ever I saw together."
And so there they were at last, in "their resting graves." So long as
men do their duty, even if it be greatly in a misapprehension, they will
be leading pattern lives; and whether or not they come to lie beside a
martyrs' monument, we may be sure they will find a safe haven somewhere
in the providence of God. It is not well to think of death, unless we
temper the thought with that of heroes who despised it. Upon what
ground, is of small account; if it be only the bishop who was burned for
his faith in the antipodes, his memory lightens the heart and makes us
walk undisturbed among graves. And so the martyrs' monument is a
wholesome heartsome spot in the field of the dead; and as we look upon
it, a brave influence comes to us from the land of those who have won
their discharge and, in another phrase of Patrick Walker's, got "cleanly
off the stage."
CHAPTER VI
NEW TOWN: TOWN AND COUNTRY
It is as much a matter of course to decry the New Town as to exalt the
Old; and the most celebrated authorities have picked out this quarter as
the very emblem of what is condemnable in architecture. Much may be
said, much indeed has been said, upon the text; but to the
unsophisticated, who call anything pleasing if it only pleases them, the
New Town of Edinburgh seems, in itself, not only gay and airy, but
highly picturesque. An old skipper, invincibly ignorant of all theories
of the sublime and beautiful, once propounded as his most radiant notion
for Paradise: "The new town of Edinburgh, with the wind the matter of a
point free." He has now gone to that sphere where all good tars are
promised pleasant weather in the song, and perhaps his thoughts fly
somewhat higher. But there are bright and temperate days--with soft air
coming from the inland hills, military music sounding bravely from the
hollow of the gardens, the flags all waving on the palaces of Princes
Street--when I have seen the town through a sort of glory, and shaken
hands in sentiment with the old sailor. And indeed, for a man who has
been much tumbled round Orcadian skerries, what scene could be more
agreeable to witness? On such a day, the valley wears a surprising air
of festival. It seems (I do not know how else to put my meaning) as if
it were a trifle too good to be true. It is what Paris ought to be. It
has the scenic quality that would best set off a life of unthinking,
open-air diversion. It was meant by nature for the realization of the
society of comic operas. And you can imagine, if the climate were but
towardly, how all the world and his wife would flock into these gardens
in the cool of the evening, to hear cheerful music, to sip pleasant
drinks, to see the moon rise from behind Arthur's Seat and shine upon
the spires and monuments and the green tree-tops in the valley. Alas!
and the next morning the rain is splashing on the window, and the
passengers flee along Princes Street before the galloping squalls.
It cannot be denied that the original design was faulty and
short-sighted, and did not fully profit by the capabilities of the
situation. The architect was essentially a town bird, and he laid out
the modern city with a view to street scenery, and to street scenery
alone. The country did not enter into his plan; he had never lifted his
eyes to the hills. If he had so chosen, every street upon the northern
slope might have been a noble terrace and commanded an extensive and
beautiful view. But the space has been too closely built; many of the
houses front the wrong way, intent, like the Man with the Muck-Rake, on
what is not worth observation, and standing discourteously back-foremost
in the ranks; and in a word, it is too often only from attic windows, or
here and there at a crossing, that you can get a look beyond the city
upon its diversified surroundings. But perhaps it is all the more
surprising, to come suddenly on a corner, and see a perspective of a
mile or more of falling street, and beyond that woods and villas, and a
blue arm of sea, and the hills upon the farther side.
Fergusson, our Edinburgh poet, Burns's model, once saw a butterfly at
the Town Cross; and the sight inspired him with a worthless little ode.
This painted countryman, the dandy of the rose garden, looked far abroad
in such a humming neighbourhood; and you can fancy what moral
considerations a youthful poet would supply. But the incident, in a
fanciful sort of way, is characteristic of the place. Into no other city
does the sight of the country enter so far; if you do not meet a
butterfly, you shall certainly catch a glimpse of far-away trees upon
your walk; and the place is full of theatre tricks in the way of
scenery. You peep under an arch, you descend stairs that look as if
they would land you in a cellar, you turn to the back window of a grimy
tenement in a lane:--and behold! you are face-to-face with distant and
bright prospects. You turn a corner, and there is the sun going down
into the Highland hills. You look down an alley, and see ships tacking
for the Baltic.
For the country people to see Edinburgh on her hill-tops is one thing;
it is another for the citizen, from the thick of his affairs, to
overlook the country. It should be a genial and ameliorating influence
in life; it should prompt good thoughts and remind him of Nature's
unconcern: that he can watch from day to day, as he trots officeward,
how the Spring green brightens in the wood or the field grows black
under a moving ploughshare. I have been tempted, in this connection, to
deplore the slender faculties of the human race, with its penny-whistle
of a voice, its dull ears, and its narrow range of sight. If you could
see as people are to see in heaven, if you had eyes such as you can
fancy for a superior race, if you could take clear note of the objects
of vision, not only a few yards, but a few miles from where you
stand:--think how agreeably your sight would be entertained, how
pleasantly your thoughts would be diversified, as you walked the
Edinburgh streets! For you might pause, in some business perplexity, in
the midst of the city traffic, and perhaps catch the eye of a shepherd
as he sat down to breathe upon a heathery shoulder of the Pentlands; or
perhaps some urchin, clambering in a country elm, would put aside the
leaves and show you his flushed and rustic visage; or a fisher racing
seawards, with the tiller under his elbow, and the sail sounding in the
wind, would fling you a salutation from between Anst'er and the May.
To be old is not the same thing as to be picturesque; nor because the
Old Town bears a strange physiognomy, does it at all follow that the New
Town shall look commonplace. Indeed, apart from antique houses, it is
curious how much description would apply commonly to either. The same
sudden accidents of ground, a similar dominating site above the plain,
and the same superposition of one rank of society over another, are to
be observed in both. Thus, the broad and comely approach to Princes
Street from the east, lined with hotels and public offices, makes a leap
over the gorge of the Low Calton; if you cast a glance over the parapet,
you look direct into that sunless and disreputable confluent of Leith
Street; and the same tall houses open upon both thoroughfares. This is
only the New Town passing overhead above its own cellars; walking, so to
speak, over its own children, as is the way of cities and the human
race. But at the Dean Bridge, you may behold a spectacle of a more novel
order. The river runs at the bottom of a deep valley, among rocks and
between gardens; the crest of either bank is occupied by some of the
most commodious streets and crescents in the modern city; and a handsome
bridge unites the two summits. Over this, every afternoon, private
carriages go spinning by, and ladies with card cases pass to and fro
about the duties of society. And yet down below, you may still see, with
its mills and foaming weir, the little rural village of Dean. Modern
improvement has gone overhead on its high-level viaduct; and the
extended city has cleanly overleapt, and left unaltered, what was once
the summer retreat of its comfortable citizens. Every town embraces
hamlets in its growth; Edinburgh herself has embraced a good few; but it
is strange to see one still surviving--and to see it some hundreds of
feet below your path. Is it Torre del Greco that is built above buried
Herculaneum? Herculaneum was dead at least; but the sun still shines
upon the roofs of Dean; the smoke still rises thriftily from its
chimneys; the dusty miller comes to his door, looks at the gurgling
water, hearkens to the turning wheel and the birds about the shed, and
perhaps whistles an air of his own to enrich the symphony--for all the
world as if Edinburgh were still the old Edinburgh on the Castle Hill,
and Dean were still the quietest of hamlets buried a mile or so in the
green country.
It is not so long ago since magisterial David Hume lent the authority of
his example to the exodus from the Old Town, and took up his new abode
in a street which is still (so oddly may a jest become perpetuated)
known as Saint David Street. Nor is the town so large but a holiday
schoolboy may harry a bird's nest within half a mile of his own door.
There are places that still smell of the plough in memory's nostrils.
Here, one had heard a blackbird on a hawthorn; there, another was taken
on summer evenings to eat strawberries and cream; and you have seen a
waving wheatfield on the site of your present residence. The memories of
an Edinburgh boy are but partly memories of the town. I look back with
delight on many an escalade of garden walls; many a ramble among lilacs
full of piping birds; many an exploration in obscure quarters that were
neither town nor country; and I think that both for my companions and
myself, there was a special interest, a point of romance, and a
sentiment as of foreign travel, when we hit in our excursions on the
butt-end of some former hamlet, and found a few rustic cottages embedded
among streets and squares. The tunnel to the Scotland Street Station,
the sight of the trains shooting out of its dark maw with the two guards
upon the brake, the thought of its length and the many ponderous
edifices and open thoroughfares above, were certainly things of
paramount impressiveness to a young mind. It was a subterranean passage,
although of a larger bore than we were accustomed to in Ainsworth's
novels; and these two words, "subterranean passage," were in themselves
an irresistible attraction, and seemed to bring us nearer in spirit to
the heroes we loved and the black rascals we secretly aspired to
imitate. To scale the Castle Rock from West Princes Street Gardens, and
lay a triumphal hand against the rampart itself, was to taste a high
order of romantic pleasure. And there are other sights and exploits
which crowd back upon my mind under a very strong illumination of
remembered pleasure. But the effect of not one of them all will compare
with the discoverer's joy, and the sense of old Time and his slow
changes on the face of this earth, with which I explored such corners as
Cannon-mills or Water Lane, or the nugget of cottages at Broughton
Market. They were more rural than the open country, and gave a greater
impression of antiquity than the oldest _land_ upon the High Street.
They too, like Fergusson's butterfly, had a quaint air of having
wandered far from their own place; they looked abashed and homely, with
their gables and their creeping plants, their outside stairs and running
null-streams; there were corners that smelt like the end of the country
garden where I spent my Aprils; and the people stood to gossip at their
doors, as they might have done in Colinton or Cramond.
In a great measure we may, and shall, eradicate this haunting flavour of
the country. The last elm is dead in Elm Row; and the villas and the
workmen's quarters spread apace on all the borders of the city. We can
cut down the trees; we can bury the grass under dead paving-stones; we
can drive brisk streets through all our sleepy quarters; and we may
forget the stories and the play-grounds of our boyhood. But we have some
possessions that not even the infuriate zeal of builders can utterly
abolish and destroy. Nothing can abolish the hills, unless it be a
cataclysm of nature, which shall subvert Edinburgh Castle itself and lay
all her florid structures in the dust. And as long as we have the hills
and the Firth, we have a famous heritage to leave our children. Our
windows, at no expense to us, are mostly artfully stained to represent a
landscape. And when the Spring comes round, and the hawthorn begins to
flower, and the meadows to smell of young grass, even in the thickest of
our streets, the country hill-tops find out a young man's eyes, and set
his heart beating for travel and pure air.
CHAPTER VII
THE VILLA QUARTERS
Mr. Ruskin's denunciation of the New Town of Edinburgh includes, as I
have heard it repeated, nearly all the stone and lime we have to show.
Many, however, find a grand air and something settled and imposing in
the better parts; and upon many, as I have said, the confusion of styles
induces an agreeable stimulation of the mind. But upon the subject of
our recent villa architecture, I am frankly ready to mingle my tears
with Mr. Ruskin's, and it is a subject which makes one envious of his
large declamatory and controversial eloquence.
Day by day, one new villa, one new object of offence, is added to
another; all around Newington and Morningside, the dismalest structures
keep springing up like mushrooms; the pleasant hills are loaded with
them, each impudently squatted in its garden, each roofed and carrying
chimneys like a house. And yet a glance of an eye discovers their true
character. They are not houses; for they were not designed with a view
to human habitation, and the internal arrangements are, as they tell me,
fantastically unsuited to the needs of man. They are not buildings; for
you can scarcely say a thing is built where every measurement is in
clamant disproportion with its neighbour. They belong to no style to
art, only to a form of business much to be regretted.
Why should it be cheaper to erect a structure where the size of the
windows bears no rational relation to the size of the front? Is there
any profit in a misplaced chimney-stalk? Does a hard-working, greedy
builder gain more on a monstrosity than on a decent cottage of equal
plainness? Frankly, we should say, No. Bricks may be omitted, and green
timber employed, in the construction of even a very elegant design; and
there is no reason why a chimney should be made to vent, because it is
so situated as to look comely from without. On the other hand, there is
a noble way of being ugly: a high-aspiring fiasco like the fall of
Lucifer. There are daring and gaudy buildings that manage to be
offensive, without being contemptible; and we know that "fools rush in
where angels fear to tread." But to aim at making a commonplace villa,
and to make it insufferably ugly in each particular; to attempt the
homeliest achievement and to attain the bottom of derided failure; not
to have any theory but profit, and yet, at an equal expense, to outstrip
all competitors in the art of conceiving and rendering permanent
deformity; and to do this in what is, by nature, one of the most
agreeable neighbourhoods in Britain:--what are we to say, but that this
also is a distinction, hard to earn although not greatly worshipful?
Indifferent buildings give pain to the sensitive; but these things
offend the plainest taste. It is a danger which threatens the amenity of
the town; and as this eruption keeps spreading on our borders, we have
ever the farther to walk among unpleasant sights, before we gain the
country air. If the population of Edinburgh were a living, autonomous
body, it would arise like one man and make night hideous with arson; the
builders and their accomplices would be driven to work, like the Jews of
yore, with the trowel in one hand and the defensive cutlass in the
other; and as soon as one of these masonic wonders had been consummated,
right-minded iconoclasts should fall thereon and make an end of it at
once.
Possibly these words may meet the eye of a builder or two. It is no use
asking them to employ an architect; for that would be to touch them in a
delicate quarter, and its use would largely depend on what architect
they were minded to call in. But let them get any architect in the world
to point out any reasonably well-proportioned villa not his own design;
and let them reproduce that model to satiety.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CALTON HILL
The east of New Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy hill, of no great
elevation, which the town embraces. The old London road runs on one side
of it; while the New Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes
the circuit. You mount by stairs in a cutting of the rock to find
yourself in a field of monuments. Dugald Stewart has the honours of
situation and architecture; Burns is memorialized lower down upon a
spur; Lord Nelson, as befits a sailor, gives his name to the top-gallant
of the Calton Hill. This latter erection has been differently and yet,
in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and a butterchurn;
comparisons apart, it ranks among the vilest of men's handiworks. But
the chief feature is an unfinished range of columns, "the Modern Ruin"
as it has been called, an imposing object from far and near, and giving
Edinburgh, even from the sea, that false air of a modern Athens which
has earned for her so many slighting speeches. It was meant to be a
National Monument; and its present state is a very suitable monument to
certain national characteristics. The old Observatory--a quaint brown
building on the edge of the steep--and the New Observatory--a classical
edifice with a dome--occupy the central portion of the summit. All these
are scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some sheep.
The scene suggests reflections on fame and on man's injustice to the
dead. You see Dugald Stewart rather more handsomely commemorated than
Burns. Immediately below, in the Canongate churchyard, lies Robert
Fergusson, Burns's master in his art, who died insane while yet a
stripling; and if Dugald Stewart has been somewhat too boisterously
acclaimed, the Edinburgh poet, on the other hand, is most unrighteously
forgotten. The votaries of Burns, a crew too common in all ranks in
Scotland, and more remarkable for number than discretion, eagerly
suppress all mention of the lad who handed to him the poetic impulse,
and, up to the time when he grew famous, continued to influence him in
his manner and the choice of subjects. Burns himself not only
acknowledged his debt in a fragment of autobiography, but erected a tomb
over the grave in Canongate churchyard. This was worthy of an artist,
but it was done in vain; and although I think I have read nearly all the
biographies of Burns, I cannot remember one in which the modesty of
nature was not violated, or where Fergusson was not sacrificed to the
credit of his follower's originality. There is a kind of gaping
admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have
a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author
without disparaging all others. They are indeed mistaken if they think
to please the great originals; and whoever puts Fergusson right with
fame cannot do better than dedicate his labours to the memory of Burns,
who will be the best delighted of the dead.
Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is perhaps the best; since
you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle, and Arthur's
Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat. It is the place to stroll
on one of those days of sunshine and east wind which are so common in
our more than temperate summer. The breeze comes off the sea, with a
little of the freshness, and that touch of chill, peculiar to the
quarter, which is delightful to certain very ruddy organizations and
greatly the reverse to the majority of mankind. It brings with it a
faint, floating haze, a cunning decolouriser, although not thick enough
to obscure outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more thickly to
windward at the far end of Musselburgh Bay; and over the Links of
Aberlady and Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Rock it assumes the
aspect of a bank of thin sea fog.
Immediately underneath upon the south, you command the yards of the High
School, and the towers and courts of the new Jail--a large place,
castellated to the extent of folly, standing by itself on the edge of a
steep cliff, and often joyfully hailed by tourists as the Castle. In the
one, you may perhaps see female prisoners taking exercise like a string
of nuns; in the other, schoolboys running at play and their shadows
keeping step with them. From the bottom of the valley, a gigantic
chimney rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller and a shapelier
edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a little farther, and there is
Holyrood Palace, with its Gothic frontal and ruined abbey, and the red
sentry pacing smartly to and fro before the door like a mechanical
figure in a panorama. By way of an outpost, you can single out the
little peak-roofed lodge, over which Rizzio's murderers made their
escape, and where Queen Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed in
white wine to entertain her loveliness. Behind and overhead, lie the
Queen's Park, from Muschat's Cairn to Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret's Loch,
and the long wall of Salisbury Crags; and thence, by knoll and rocky
bulwark and precipitous slope, the eye rises to the top of Arthur's
Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design.
This upon your left. Upon the right, the roofs and spires of the Old
Town climb one above another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk
and jagged crown of bastions on the western sky.--Perhaps it is now one
in the afternoon; and at the same instant of time, a ball rises to the
summit of Nelson's flagstaff close at hand, and, far away, a puff of
smoke followed by a report bursts from the half-moon battery at the
Castle. This is the time-gun by which people set their watches, as far
as the sea coast or in hill farms upon the Pentlands.--To complete the
view, the eye enfilades Princes Street, black with traffic, and has a
broad look over the valley between the Old Town and the New: here, full
of railway trains and stepped over by the high North Bridge upon its
many columns, and there, green with trees and gardens.
On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in itself nor has it
so exceptional an outlook; and yet even here it commands a striking
prospect. A gully separates it from the New Town. This is Greenside,
where witches were burned and tournaments held in former days. Down that
almost precipitous bank, Bothwell launched his horse, and so first, as
they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary. It is now tessellated with
sheets and blankets out to dry, and the sound of people beating carpets
is rarely absent. Beyond all this, the suburbs run out to Leith; Leith
camps on the seaside with her forest of masts; Leith roads are full of
ships at anchor; the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inchkeith
Island: the Firth extends on either hand from the Ferry to the May; the
towns of Fifeshire sit, each in its bank of blowing smoke, along the
opposite coast; and the hills inclose the view, except to the farthest
east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. There lies
the road to Norway: a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots
Lords; and yonder smoke on the hither side of Largo Law is Aberdour,
from whence they sailed to seek a queen for Scotland.
"O lang, lang, may the ladies sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand,
Or e'er they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the land!"
The sight of the sea, even from a city, will bring thoughts of storm and
sea disaster. The sailors' wives of Leith and the fisherwomen of
Cockenzie, not sitting languorously with fans, but crowding to the tail
of the harbour with a shawl about their ears, may still look vainly for
brave Scotsmen who will return no more, or boats that have gone on their
last fishing. Since Sir Patrick sailed from Aberdour, what a multitude
have gone down in the North Sea! Yonder is Auldhame, where the London
smack went ashore and wreckers cut the rings from ladies' fingers; and a
few miles round Fife Ness is the fatal Inchcape, now a star of guidance;
and the lee shore to the east of the Inchcape is that Forfarshire coast
where Mucklebackit sorrowed for his son.
These are the main features of the scene roughly sketched. How they are
all tilted by the inclination of the ground, how each stands out in
delicate relief against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of sun
and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person
on the spot, and turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind
together in one comprehensive look. It is the character of such a
prospect, to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity
embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow
absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow
a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children,
dwarfed by distance into pygmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you
have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you
note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind
another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one
of the innumerable windows, you watch a figure moving; on one of the
multitude of roofs, you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes
a run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint and
loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a bird goes dipping evenly over the
housetops, like a gull across the waves. And here you are in the
meantime, on this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and looked
upon by monumental buildings.
Return thither on some clear, dark, moonless night, with a ring of frost
in the air, and only a star or two set sparsely in the vault of heaven;
and you will find a sight as stimulating as the hoariest summit of the
Alps. The solitude seems perfect; the patient astronomer, flat on his
back under the Observatory dome and spying heaven's secrets, is your
only neighbour; and yet from all round you there come up the dull hum of
the city, the tramp of countless people marching out of time, the rattle
of carriages and the continuous jingle of the tramway bells. An hour or
so before, the gas was turned on; lamplighters scoured the city; in
every house, from kitchen to attic, the windows kindled and gleamed
forth into the dusk. And so now, although the town lies blue and
darkling on her hills, innumerable spots of the bright element shine far
and near along the pavements and upon the high façades. Moving lights of
the railway pass and re-pass below the stationary lights upon the
bridge. Lights burn in the Jail. Lights burn high up in the tall _lands_
and on the Castle turrets; they burn low down in Greenside or along the
Park. They run out one beyond the other into the dark country. They walk
in a procession down to Leith, and shine singly far along Leith Pier.
Thus, the plan of the city and her suburbs is mapped out upon the ground
of blackness, as when a child pricks a drawing full of pinholes and
exposes it before a candle; not the darkest night of winter can conceal
her high station and fanciful design; every evening in the year she
proceeds to illuminate herself in honour of her own beauty; and as if to
complete the scheme--or rather as if some prodigal Pharaoh were
beginning to extend to the adjacent sea and country--half-way over to
Fife, there is an outpost of light upon Inchkeith, and far to seaward,
yet another on the May.
And while you are looking, across upon the Castle Hill, the drums and
bugles begin to recall the scattered garrison; the air thrills with the
sound; the bugles sing aloud; and the last rising flourish mounts and
melts into the darkness like a star: a martial swan-song, fitly rounding
in the labours of the day.
CHAPTER IX
WINTER AND NEW YEAR
The Scots dialect is singularly rich in terms of reproach against the
winter wind. _Snell_, _blae_, _nirly_, and _scowthering_, are four of
these significant vocables; they are all words that carry a shiver with
them; and for my part as I see them aligned before me on the page, I am
persuaded that a big wind comes tearing over the Firth from Burntisland
and the northern hills; I think I can hear it howl in the chimney, and
as I set my face northwards, feel its smarting kisses on my cheek. Even
in the names of places there is often a desolate, inhospitable sound;
and I remember two from the near neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Cauldhame
and Blaw-weary, that would promise but starving comfort to their
inhabitants. The inclemency of heaven, which has thus endowed the
language of Scotland with words, has also largely modified the spirit of
its poetry. Both poverty and a northern climate teach men the love of
the hearth and the sentiment of the family; and the latter, in its own
right, inclines a poet to the praise of strong waters. In Scotland, all
our singers have a stave or two for blazing fires and stout
potations:--to get indoors out of the wind and to swallow something hot
to the stomach, are benefits so easily appreciated where they dwelt!
And this is not only so in country districts where the shepherd must
wade in the snow all day after his flock, but in Edinburgh itself, and
nowhere more apparently stated than in the works of our Edinburgh poet,
Fergusson. He was a delicate youth, I take it, and willingly slunk from
the robustious winter to an inn fireside. Love was absent from his
life, or only present, if you prefer, in such a form that even the least
serious of Burns's amourettes was ennobling by comparison; and so there
is nothing to temper the sentiment of indoor revelry which pervades the
poor boy's verses. Although it is characteristic of his native town, and
the manners of its youth to the present day, this spirit has perhaps
done something to restrict his popularity. He recalls a supper-party
pleasantry with something akin to tenderness; and sounds the praises of
the act of drinking as if it were virtuous, or at least witty, in
itself. The kindly jar, the warm atmosphere of tavern parlours, and the
revelry of lawyers' clerks, do not offer by themselves the materials of
rich existence. It was not choice, so much as an external fate, that
kept Fergusson in this round of sordid pleasures. A Scot of poetic
temperament, and without religious exaltation, drops as if by nature
into the public-house. The picture may not be pleasing; but what else is
a man to do in this dog's weather?
To none but those who have themselves suffered the thing in the body,
can the gloom and depression of our Edinburgh winters be brought home.
For some constitutions there is something almost physically disgusting
in the bleak ugliness of easterly weather; the wind wearies, the sickly
sky depresses them; and they turn back from their walk to avoid the
aspect of the unrefulgent sun going down among perturbed and pallid
mists. The days are so short that a man does much of his business, and
certainly all his pleasure, by the haggard glare of gas lamps. The roads
are as heavy as a fallow. People go by, so drenched and draggle-tailed
that I have often wondered how they found the heart to undress. And
meantime the wind whistles through the town as if it were an open
meadow; and if you lie awake all night, you hear it shrieking and raving
overhead with a noise of shipwrecks and of falling houses. In a word,
life is so unsightly that there are times when the heart turns sick in
a man's inside; and the look of a tavern, or the thought of the warm,
firelit study, is like the touch of land to one who has been long
struggling with the seas.
As the weather hardens towards frost, the world begins to improve for
Edinburgh people. We enjoy superb, sub-arctic sunsets, with the profile
of the city stamped in indigo upon a sky of luminous green. The wind may
still be cold, but there is a briskness in the air that stirs good
blood. People do not all look equally sour and downcast. They fall into
two divisions: one, the knight of the blue face and hollow paunch, whom
Winter has gotten by the vitals; the other well lined with New-year's
fare, conscious of the touch of cold on his periphery, but stepping
through it by the glow of his internal fires. Such an one I remember,
triply cased in grease, whom no extremity of temperature could vanquish.
"Well," would be his jovial salutation, "here's a sneezer!" And the look
of these warm fellows is tonic, and upholds their drooping
fellow-townsmen. There is yet another class who do not depend on
corporal advantages, but support the winter in virtue of a brave and
merry heart. One shivering evening, cold enough for frost but with too
high a wind, and a little past sundown, when the lamps were beginning to
enlarge their circles in the growing dusk, a brace of barefoot lassies
were seen coming eastward in the teeth of the wind. If the one was as
much as nine, the other was certainly not more than seven. They were
miserably clad; and the pavement was so cold, you would have thought no
one could lay a naked foot on it unflinching. Yet they came along
waltzing, if you please, while the elder sang a tune to give them music.
The person who saw this, and whose heart was full of bitterness at the
moment, pocketed a reproof which has been of use to him ever since, and
which he now hands on, with his good wishes, to the reader.
At length, Edinburgh, with her satellite hills and all the sloping
country, is sheeted up in white. If it has happened in the dark hours,
nurses pluck their children out of bed and run with them to some
commanding window, whence they may see the change that has been worked
upon earth's face. "A' the hills are covered wi' snaw," they sing, "and
Winter's noo come fairly!" And the children, marveling at the silence
and the white landscape, find a spell appropriate to the season in the
words. The reverberation of the snow increases the pale daylight, and
brings all objects nearer the eye. The Pentlands are smooth and
glittering, with here and there the black ribbon of a dry-stone dyke,
and here and there, if there be wind, a cloud of blowing snow upon a
shoulder. The Firth seems a leaden creek, that a man might almost jump
across, between well-powdered Lothian and well-powdered Fife. And the
effect is not, as in other cities, a thing of half a day; the streets
are soon trodden black, but the country keeps its virgin white; and you
have only to lift your eyes and look over miles of country snow. An
indescribable cheerfulness breathes about the city; and the well-fed
heart sits lightly and beats gaily in the bosom. It is New-year's
weather.
New-year's Day, the great national festival, is a time of family
expansions and of deep carousal. Sometimes, by a sore stroke of fate for
this Calvinistic people, the year's anniversary falls upon a Sunday,
when the public-houses are inexorably closed, when singing and even
whistling is banished from our homes and highways, and the oldest toper
feels called upon to go to church. Thus pulled about, as if between two
loyalties, the Scots have to decide many nice cases of conscience, and
ride the marches narrowly between the weekly and the annual observance.
A party of convivial musicians, next door to a friend of mine, hung
suspended in this manner on the brink of their diversions. From ten
o'clock on Sunday night, my friend heard them tuning their instruments;
and as the hour of liberty drew near, each must have had his music open,
his bow in readiness across the fiddle, his foot already raised to mark
the time, and his nerves braced for execution; for hardly had the
twelfth stroke sounded from the earliest steeple, before they had
launched forth into a secular bravura.
Currant-loaf is now popular eating in all households. For weeks before
the great morning, confectioners display stacks of Scots bun--a dense,
black substance, inimical to life--and full moons of shortbread adorned
with mottoes of peel or sugar-plum, in honour of the season and the
family affections. "Frae Auld Reekie," "A guid New Year to ye a'," "For
the Auld Folk at Hame," are among the most favoured of these devices.
Can you not see the carrier, after half-a-day's journey on pinching
hill-roads, draw up before a cottage in Teviotdale, or perhaps in Manor
Glen among the rowans, and the old people receiving the parcel with
moist eyes and a prayer for Jock or Jean in the city? For at this
season, on the threshold of another year of calamity and stubborn
conflict, men feel a need to draw closer the links that unite them; they
reckon the number of their friends, like allies before a war; and the
prayers grow longer in the morning as the absent are recommended by name
into God's keeping.
On the day itself, the shops are all shut as on a Sunday; only taverns,
toyshops, and other holiday magazines, keep open doors. Everyone looks
for his handsel. The postmen and the lamplighters have left, at every
house in their districts, a copy of vernacular verses, asking and
thanking in a breath; and it is characteristic of Scotland that these
verses may have sometimes a touch of reality in detail of sentiment and
a measure of strength in the handling. All over the town, you may see
comforter'd schoolboys hastening to squander their half-crowns. There
are an infinity of visits to be paid; all the world is in the street,
except the daintier classes; the sacramental greeting is heard upon all
sides; Auld Lang Syne is much in people's mouths; and whisky and
shortbread are staple articles of consumption. From an early hour a
stranger will be impressed by the number of drunken men; and by
afternoon drunkenness has spread to the women. With some classes of
society, it is as much a matter of duty to drink hard on New-year's Day
as to go to church on Sunday. Some have been saving their wages for
perhaps a month to do the season honour. Many carry a whisky-bottle in
their pocket, which they will press with embarrassing effusion on a
perfect stranger. It is not expedient to risk one's body in a cab, or
not, at least, until after a prolonged study of the driver. The streets,
which are thronged from end to end, become a place for delicate
pilotage. Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others noisy and
quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go meandering in and out and
cannoning one against another; and now and again, one falls, and lies as
he has fallen. Before night, so many have gone to bed or the police
office, that the streets seem almost clearer. And as _guisards_ and
_first-footers_ are now not much seen except in country places, when
once the New Year has been rung in and proclaimed at the Tron railings,
the festivities begin to find their way indoors and something like quiet
returns upon the town. But think, in these piled _lands_, of all the
senseless snorers, all the broken heads and empty pockets!
Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic snowballing; and
one riot obtained the epic honours of military intervention. But the
great generation, I am afraid, is at an end; and even during my own
college days, the spirit appreciably declined. Skating and sliding, on
the other hand, are honoured more and more; and curling, being a
creature of the national genius, is little likely to be disregarded. The
patriotism that leads a man to eat Scots bun will scarcely desert him at
the curling pond. Edinburgh, with its long, steep pavements, is the
proper home of sliders; many a happy urchin can slide the whole way to
school; and the profession of errand-boy is transformed into a holiday
amusement. As for skating, there is scarce any city so handsomely
provided. Duddingston Loch lies under the abrupt southern side of
Arthur's Seat; in summer, a shield of blue, with swans sailing from the
reeds; in winter, a field of ringing ice. The village church sits above
it on a green promontory; and the village smoke rises from among goodly
trees. At the church gates is the historical _jougs_, a place of penance
for the neck of detected sinners, and the historical _louping-on stane_,
from which Dutch-built lairds and farmers climbed into the saddle. Here
Prince Charlie slept before the battle of Prestonpans; and here Deacon
Brodie, or one of his gang, stole a plough coulter before the burglary
in Chessel's Court. On the opposite side of the loch, the ground rises
to Craigmillar Castle, a place friendly to Stuart Mariolaters. It is
worth a climb, even in summer, to look down upon the loch from Arthur's
Seat; but it is tenfold more so on a day of skating. The surface is
thick with people moving easily and swiftly and leaning over at a
thousand graceful inclinations; the crowd opens and closes, and keeps
moving through itself like water; and the ice rings to half a mile away,
with the flying steel. As night draws on, the single figures melt into
the dusk, until only an obscure stir and coming and going of black
clusters is visible upon the loch. A little longer, and the first torch
is kindled and begins to flit rapidly across the ice in a ring of yellow
reflection, and this is followed by another and another, until the whole
field is full of skimming lights.
CHAPTER X
TO THE PENTLAND HILLS
On three sides of Edinburgh, the country slopes downward from the city,
here to the sea, there to the fat farms of Haddington, there to the
mineral fields of Linlithgow. On the south alone, it keeps rising, until
it not only out-tops the Castle, but looks down on Arthur's Seat. The
character of the neighbourhood is pretty strongly marked by a scarcity
of hedges; by many stone walls of varying height; by a fair amount of
timber, some of it well grown, but apt to be of a bushy, northern
profile and poor in foliage; by here and there a little river, Esk or
Leith or Almond, busily journeying in the bottom of its glen; and from
almost every point, by a peep of the sea or the hills. There is no lack
of variety, and yet most of the elements are common to all parts; and
the southern district is alone distinguished by considerable summits and
a wide view.
From Boroughmuirhead, where the Scottish army encamped before Flodden,
the road descends a long hill, at the bottom of which, and just as it is
preparing to mount up on the other side, it passes a toll-bar and issues
at once into the open country. Even as I write these words, they are
becoming antiquated in the progress of events, and the chisels are
tinkling on a new row of houses. The builders have at length adventured
beyond the toll which held them in respect so long, and proceed to
career in these fresh pastures like a herd of colts turned loose. As
Lord Beaconsfield proposed to hang an architect by way of stimulation, a
man, looking on these doomed meads, imagines a similar example to deter
the builders; for it seems as if it must come to an open fight at last
to preserve a corner of green country unbedevilled. And here,
appropriately enough, there stood in old days a crow-haunted gibbet,
with two bodies hanged in chains. I used to be shown, when a child, a
flat stone in the roadway to which the gibbet had been fixed. People of
a willing fancy were persuaded, and sought to persuade others, that this
stone was never dry. And no wonder, they would add, for the two men had
only stolen fourpence between them.
For about two miles the road climbs upwards, a long hot walk in summer
time. You reach the summit at a place where four ways meet, beside the
toll of Fairmilehead. The spot is breezy and agreeable both in name and
aspect. The hills are close by across a valley: Kirk Yetton, with its
long, upright scars visible as far as Fife, and Allermuir the tallest on
this side: with wood and tilled field running high up on their borders,
and haunches all moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and
variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly and sweetly off
the hills, pure from the elevation, and rustically scented by the upland
plants; and even at the toll, you may hear the curlew calling on its
mate. At certain seasons, when the gulls desert their surfy forelands,
the birds of sea and mountain hunt and scream together in the same field
by Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things intermix their wheelings, the
sea-birds skim the tree-tops and fish among the furrows of the plough.
These little craft of air are at home in all the world, so long as they
cruise in their own element; and like sailors, ask but food and water
from the shores they coast.
Below, over a stream, the road passes Bow Bridge, now a dairy-farm, but
once a distillery of whisky. It chanced, some time in the past century,
that the distiller was on terms of good-fellowship with the visiting
officer of excise. The latter was of an easy, friendly disposition, and
a master of convivial arts. Now and again, he had to walk out of
Edinburgh to measure the distiller's stock; and although it was
agreeable to find his business lead him in a friend's direction, it was
unfortunate that the friend should be a loser by his visits.
Accordingly, when he got about the level of Fairmilehead, the gauger
would take his flute, without which he never travelled, from his pocket,
fit it together, and set manfully to playing, as if for his own
delectation and inspired by the beauty of the scene. His favourite air,
it seems, was "Over the Hills and Far Away." At the first note, the
distiller pricked his ears. A flute at Fairmilehead? and playing, "Over
the Hills and Far Away"? This must be his friendly enemy, the gauger.
Instantly, horses were harnessed, and sundry barrels of whisky were got
upon a cart, driven at a gallop round Hill End, and buried in the mossy
glen behind Kirk Yetton. In the same breath, you may be sure, a fat fowl
was put to the fire, and the whitest napery prepared for the back
parlour. A little after, the gauger, having had his fill of music for
the moment, came strolling down with the most innocent air imaginable,
and found the good people at Bow Bridge taken entirely unawares by his
arrival, but none the less glad to see him. The distiller's liquor and
the gauger's flute would combine to speed the moments of digestion; and
when both were somewhat mellow, they would wind up the evening with
"Over the Hills and Far Away," to an accompaniment of knowing glances.
And at least there is a smuggling story, with original and half-idyllic
features.
A little farther, the road to the right passes an upright stone in a
field. The country people call it General Kay's monument. According to
them, an officer of that name had perished there in battle at some
indistinct period before the beginning of history. The date is
reassuring; for I think cautious writers are silent on the General's
exploits. But the stone is connected with one of those remarkable
tenures of land which linger on into the modern world from Feudalism.
Whenever the reigning sovereign passes by, a certain landed proprietor
is held bound to climb on to the top, trumpet in hand, and sound a
flourish according to the measure of his knowledge in that art. Happily
for a respectable family, crowned heads have no great business in the
Pentland Hills. But the story lends a character of comicality to the
stone; and the passer-by will sometimes chuckle to himself.
The district is dear to the superstitious. Hard by, at the back-gate of
Comiston, a belated carter beheld a lady in white, "with the most
beautiful, clear shoes upon her feet," who looked upon him in a very
ghastly manner, and then vanished; and just in front is the Hunters'
Tryst, once a roadside inn, and not so long ago haunted by the devil in
person. Satan led the inhabitants a pitiful existence. He shook the four
corners of the building with lamentable outcries, beat at the doors and
windows, over-threw crockery in the dead hours of the morning, and
danced unholy dances on the roof. Every kind of spiritual disinfectant
was put in requisition; chosen ministers were summoned out of Edinburgh
and prayed by the hour; pious neighbours sat up all night making a noise
of psalmody; but Satan minded them no more than the wind about the
hill-tops; and it was only after years of persecution, that he left the
Hunters' Tryst in peace to occupy himself with the remainder of mankind.
What with General Kay, and the white lady, and this singular visitation,
the neighbourhood offers great facilities to the makers of sun-myths;
and without exactly casting in one's lot with that disenchanting school
of writers, one cannot help hearing a good deal of the winter wind in
the last story. "That nicht," says Burns, in one of his happiest
moments,--
"That nicht a child might understand
The deil had business on his hand."
And if people sit up all night in lone places on the hills, with Bibles
and tremulous psalms, they will be apt to hear some of the most
fiendish noises in the world: the wind will beat on doors and dance upon
roofs for them, and make the hills howl around their cottage with a
clamour like the Judgment Day.
The road goes down through another valley, and then finally begins to
scale the main slope of the Pentlands. A bouquet of old trees stands
round a white farmhouse; and from a neighbouring dell, you can see smoke
rising and leaves ruffling in the breeze. Straight above, the hills
climb a thousand feet into the air. The neighbourhood, about the time of
lambs, is clamorous with the bleating of flocks; and you will be
awakened, in the grey of early summer mornings, by the barking of a dog
or the voice of a shepherd shouting to the echoes. This, with the hamlet
lying behind unseen, is Swanston.
The place in the dell is immediately connected with the city. Long ago,
this sheltered field was purchased by the Edinburgh magistrates for the
sake of the springs that rise or gather there. After they had built
their water-house and laid their pipes, it occurred to them that the
place was suitable for junketing. Once entertained, with jovial
magistrates and public funds, the idea led speedily to accomplishment;
and Edinburgh could soon boast of a municipal Pleasure House. The dell
was turned into a garden; and on the knoll that shelters it from the
plain and the sea winds, they built a cottage looking to the hills. They
brought crockets and gargoyles from old St. Giles's, which they were
then restoring, and disposed them on the gables and over the door and
about the garden; and the quarry which had supplied them with building
material, they draped with clematis and carpeted with beds of roses. So
much for the pleasure of the eye; for creature comfort, they made a
capacious cellar in the hillside and fitted it with bins of the hewn
stone. In process of time, the trees grew higher and gave shade to the
cottage, and the evergreens sprang up and turned the dell into a
thicket. There, purple magistrates relaxed themselves from the pursuit
of municipal ambition; cocked hats paraded soberly about the garden and
in and out among the hollies; authoritative canes drew ciphering upon
the path; and at night, from high up on the hills, a shepherd saw
lighted windows through the foliage and heard the voice of city
dignitaries raised in song.
The farm is older. It was first a grange of Whitekirk Abbey, tilled and
inhabited by rosy friars. Thence, after the Reformation, it passed into
the hands of a true-blue Protestant family. During the Covenanting
troubles, when a night conventicle was held upon the Pentlands, the farm
doors stood hospitably open till the morning; the dresser was laden with
cheese and bannocks, milk and brandy; and the worshipers kept lipping
down from the hill between two exercises, as couples visit the
supper-room between two dances of a modern ball. In the Forty-Five, some
foraging Highlanders from Prince Charlie's army fell upon Swanston in
the dawn. The great-grandfather of the late farmer was then a little
child; him they awakened by plucking the blankets from his bed, and he
remembered, when he was an old man, their truculent looks and uncouth
speech. The churn stood full of cream in the dairy, and with this they
made their brose in high delight. "It was braw brose," said one of them.
At last they made off, laden like camels with their booty; and Swanston
Farm has lain out of the way of history from that time forward. I do not
know what may be yet in store for it. On dark days, when the mist runs
low upon the hill, the house has a gloomy air as if suitable for private
tragedy. But in hot July, you can fancy nothing more perfect than the
garden, laid out in alleys and arbours and bright, old-fashioned
flower-plots, and ending in a miniature ravine, all trellis-work and
moss and tinkling waterfall, and housed from the sun under fathoms of
broad foliage.
The hamlet behind is one of the least considerable of hamlets, and
consists of a few cottages on a green beside a burn. Some of them (a
strange thing in Scotland) are models of internal neatness; the beds
adorned with patchwork, the shelves arrayed with willow-pattern plates,
the floors and tables bright with scrubbing or pipeclay, and the very
kettle polished like silver. It is the sign of a contented old age in
country places, where there is little matter for gossip and no street
sights. Housework becomes an art; and at evening, when the cottage
interior shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the housewife
folds her hands and contemplates her finished picture; the snow and the
wind may do their worst, she has made herself a pleasant corner in the
world. The city might be a thousand miles away: and yet it was close by
that Mr. Bough painted the distant view of Edinburgh which has been
engraved for this collection:[2] and you have only to look at the cut,
to see how near it is at hand. But hills and hill people are not easily
sophisticated; and if you walk out here on a summer Sunday, it is as
like as not the shepherd may set his dogs upon you. But keep an unmoved
countenance; they look formidable at the charge, but their hearts are in
the right place; and they will only bark and sprawl about you on the
grass, unmindful of their master's excitations.
Kirk Yetton forms the north-eastern angle of the range; thence, the
Pentlands trend off to south and west. From the summit you look over a
great expanse of champaign sloping to the sea and behold a large variety
of distant hills. There are the hills of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the
Lammermoors, and the Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more
or less blue with distance. Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field
of wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; and to that
side the view is as desolate as if you were looking into Galloway or
Applecross. To turn to the other, is like a piece of travel. Far out in
the lowlands Edinburgh shows herself, making a great smoke on clear
days and spreading her suburbs about her for miles; the Castle rises
darkly in the midst; and close by, Arthur's Seat makes a bold figure in
the landscape. All around, cultivated fields, and woods, and smoking
villages, and white country roads, diversify the uneven surface of the
land. Trains crawl slowly abroad upon the railway lines; little ships
are tacking in the Firth; the shadow of a mountainous cloud, as large as
a parish, travels before the wind; the wind itself ruffles the wood and
standing corn, and sends pulses of varying colour across the landscape.
So you sit, like Jupiter on Olympus, and look down from afar upon men's
life. The city is as silent as a city of the dead: from all its humming
thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill.
The sea surf, the cries of ploughmen, the streams and the mill-wheels,
the birds and the wind, keep up an animated concert through the plain;
from farm to farm, dogs and crowing cocks contend together in defiance;
and yet from this Olympian station, except for the whispering rumour of
a train, the world has fallen into a dead silence and the business of
town and country grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the
bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem not so much to
interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness; but to the spiritual ear, the
whole scene makes a music at once human and rural, and discourses
pleasant reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable city,
ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and the straight
highways, tell visibly of man's active and comfortable ways; and you may
be never so laggard and never so unimpressionable, but there is
something in the view that spirits up your blood and puts you in the
vein for cheerful labour.
Immediately below is Fairmilehead, a spot of roof and a smoking chimney,
where two roads, no thicker than packthread, intersect beside a hanging
wood. If you are fanciful, you will be reminded of the gauger in the
story. And the thought of this old exciseman, who once lipped and
fingered on his pipe and uttered clear notes from it in the mountain
air, and the words of the song he affected, carry your mind "Over the
hills and far away" to distant countries; and you have a vision of
Edinburgh not, as you see her, in the midst of a little neighbourhood,
but as a boss upon the round world with all Europe and the deep sea for
her surroundings. For every place is a centre to the earth, whence
highways radiate or ships set sail for foreign ports; the limit of a
parish is not more imaginary than the frontier of an empire; and as a
man sitting at home in his cabinet and swiftly writing books, so a city
sends abroad an influence and a portrait of herself. There is no
Edinburgh emigrant, far or near, from China to Peru, but he or she
carries some lively pictures of the mind, some sunset behind the Castle
cliffs, some snow scene, some maze of city lamps, indelible in the
memory and delightful to study in the intervals of toil. For any such,
if this book fall in their way, here are a few more home pictures. It
would be pleasant if they should recognise a house where they had dwelt,
or a walk that they had taken.
[2] Reference to an etching in original edition.
END OF VOL. I.
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