A NORMAN INTERLUDE
After a winter in London I went to Paris for a part of the spring,
stopping on the way a day in Rochester (I had the Dickens fever then),
and another day in Canterbury for the Cathedral's sake. A night boat,
the ancient Wave, or the antediluvian Foam, took me to Calais, and
through some delay on the line there was a wait of hours. But the
night was fine, and I spent it roaming through and beyond the old town,
getting forty winks afterward in the station, and a breakfast of hot
chocolate and bread at a place facing the harbour where I watched the
fishing boats put out on a convenient tide. In Paris I knew only one
person, an American friend who was studying art, taking his lessons at
Julian's, and slowly, yet certainly, learning that art was not for him.
He introduced me to a lot of men who knew their way about, and soon I
knew my way about as well as they did, possibly, in some directions, a
little better, for, with one or two exceptions, I cannot remember any
who were gifted with a faculty for anything but good-fellowship and for
spending their allowances from home. They knew the jargon of the
studios, but as Paris seemed full {19} of men who could paint as well
as they and were threatening to do it, the charming group dissolved in
a year or two, one after another, returning to their homes in various
parts of the world. Not one that I know of is living now, and nearly
all whom I could trace in later years had gone into trade, and
flourished there.
But my acquaintance with Paris had begun. It was to be extended in
subsequent years. What chiefly remains in my recollection concerning
those early days is that for the first time I had the consciousness of
being in a foreign country. I never had that in England, no, not for a
minute, and no one, then or since, ever tried to make me feel it there.
Of course, part of the difference was due to language, but not all the
difference. There were subtle differences in France, and some plain,
outstanding ones. The English are kindly people, hospitable, and, if I
must say so--and I think I must, having lived through three years of
the great war with them, to say nothing of many preceding years--they
are naive. The Englishman, if he liked you, took you to his home, but
he said that the Frenchman did not. But he did, I found. And I found
that the Frenchman, if less kindly, was more polite. The Frenchman had
either clearer ideas or none at all about other nationalities; the
Englishman--but really, these reflections do not belong in this book,
but in another, if anywhere. I will not prolong them here, but say
only that I was in Paris fairly often after that first visit and that I
liked it the more the more I knew it.
{20}
But I am forgetting my friend Monsieur Raoul de St. Ange. I would not
willingly forget my friend St. Ange. In fact, I could not forget him.
He was a delightful man of fifty or thereabouts, a dear and gracious
person. I had met him in London where he was giving lessons in French,
and trying to make a French weekly paper pay its way and earn him
something over. He was of Norman birth, and had lived fairly well in
Paris up to the time of the Commune, when he had been ruined. He
emigrated to London. He had a wife and two small sons. The boys were
about ten and twelve respectively. This little family lived in a
little house at Shepherd's Bush. The house was very simple, but it was
as neat as wax. I used to help St. Ange a little with the English
section of his paper, and in return he gave me lessons in French.
One day he said to me: "I must go to Normandy; a week there. It will
give me the greatest pleasure if you come." And so I arranged to meet
him at Amiens on my return from Paris. He had some family affairs to
settle, something to do with the children, and a bit of property that
had been left in trust for them. In Normandy we would see some of his
people, a bit of France from the inside not the outside. I jumped at
the chance. We met at Amiens, and explored the Cathedral before doing
anything else. He knew somebody there, or somebody knew of him, and we
were taken all over the wonderful Cathedral, from roof to crypt. We
were so long at this that we concluded to spend the night in Amiens,
and push on, next morning, by train to {21} a village some thirty miles
or more away, which was one of the objectives of his visit.
The name of that village I have clean forgotten. It has passed like
many other names that were supposed to be fixed there. But forgotten
it is, although the place itself is associated with memories of rustic
hospitality more generous than anything that has ever come my way.
Well, we arrived at the village of the forgotten name, and we put up at
the house of the station master, in the station building itself. There
was no inn. The station master was somehow, somewhere, within St.
Ange's circle of friends. He took charge of our kits and showed me to
what I am sure was the best bedroom. I had a guilty feeling that the
occupants must have turned out for my benefit; but one can only defer
to the custom of the country.
Presently Monsieur Station Master, and Madame Station Master, and
little Station Master _fils_ appeared, each in best bib and tucker, and
led the way across the fields, to a little thatched farmhouse two miles
distant. The railway contingent evidently were making holiday. All
the way we walked through fields of grain, in a wide path which came,
by and by, to a little bridge over a chattering stream, and then to a
road, and around a bend in the road to the farmhouse, thatched, moss
and flowers growing in the thatch, and a family growing in the door,
for the doorway was filled with humans of ages from eight to eighty, in
rows and tiers. As we drew near there was such a display of waving
handkerchiefs and joyous shouts as would have {22} gratified William
the Conqueror himself had he been passing.
St. Ange was smothered in embraces, and I was bidden in, not to the
embraces, but to a seat in the fireside, after salutations all round.
St. Ange had not been in these parts for twenty years. He was trustee
for some of these younkers, and had now come to be relieved of his
trust, as the younkers were of age in the eyes of the law. You would
have thought that I was a benefactor, so generous were their
attentions. Food and wine were pressed upon me. What the good folk
were saying did not enter my comprehension; the twists of the Norman
tongue were beyond me. But smiles are translatable in any language and
so are hearty courtesies. Presently what appeared to be the whole
population of the neighbouring countryside streamed in, and St. Ange
and his American friend had to meet them all. We met like old friends.
Then St. Ange took me to call upon some old folk in a cottage not far
away. We must have been a couple of hours calling about. When we
returned to the first place a dinner was ready for us, and we for it.
The fat of the land was before us. There was every kind of good thing
that grew in Normandy. And there was wine of the country, and plenty
of it. The triumph of the occasion was duck,--duck such as I never ate
before, and have not eaten since, not even in Paris, where they have a
subtle skill in cooking these things. I could write rhapsodies about
that duck. When, even nowadays, I am seeking to whet appetite, I think
of the ducks I ate in Norman {23} cottages. No one has eaten duck who
has not eaten it in Normandy where every housewife seemed to me a
marvel of a cook. I was in Normandy a week, lunched and dined and
supped in a different house each day--they were chiefly the homes of
cottage folk--and, for abundance and good feeding, I still regard it as
a land of miracle.
How I praised the duck at that first dinner, and extolled Madame's
skill in cookery! Madame was pleased. Have I conveyed the impression
that these were wealthy folk? It was not my intention to do so. They
were Normandy peasants, which may mean anything or little as far as
well-being goes. The room in which we ate was the living room,
cooking-washing-eating-room. I daresay that behind a panel, or a
curtain, there was an alcove with a bed. Anyhow, there was one in an
adjoining room. And over the dining table was a loft to which you
mounted by a ladder which was slung against the ceiling, when not
wanted, by rope and pulley. The dining-room floor was of earth, hard
packed, hard as nails, clean as the proverbial whistle. Everything
shone with cleanliness--windows, napery, brass, pewter, plates,
kettles--if all the belongings of the room had whistled there would
have been a bellow as if the siren of a big liner had blown. Such
cleanliness and such cooking I have not found in all the years that
followed in the many English cottages I have known, but I met the
combination three or four times a day for six or seven days, each time
beneath a different roof.
St. Ange and I walked back across the fields by {24} moonlight,
Monsieur, Madame, and Toddlekins Station Master, and two from our
feasting house, accompanying us. That night I slept like a top. At
noon what was my surprise and joy to find another duck, duly prepared
and cooked by our hostess of the preceding day, waiting for me on the
station master's table. It had been brought by one of her small fry
with the lady's compliments. There was a compliment fit for a prince!
Have I mentioned the wine that graced the basket, and the miraculous
green peas that were to melt in the mouth? Ah, well, it was long ago,
and it was hospitality.
In that way did Normandy receive us at every halt, whether we called at
farm, or cottage, or chateau. Was there ever such a country for eating
and drinking, I wondered. At last we arrived at Rouen. We had driven
in from the country, and somewhat wearied and dusty with the journey,
we were hurried by a stout and jolly man, a gigantic person who was in
waiting on the road, to a delightful dwelling in the town where three
generations of St. Ange's relatives welcomed us and would have haled us
forthwith to the seats of honour, but that we pleaded for a wash and a
change.
It was twelve o'clock when we gathered at table. It was four when we
rose. And when we rose, something else was served in the next room.
And I was told that we must dine at another house, at seven; I think
seven was the hour. And we were to sup at a third party at eleven!
But I had become accustomed to this splendour of generosity. St. Ange
had warned me at Amiens that it was inevitable, {25} and could n't be
shirked. And so, after the first heroic occasion, the memorable affair
of duck at the cottage, I made a great show of eating and drinking, so
that these valiant Norman trenchermen would not think me rude and
neglectful, and speedily I learned how to keep up the appearance of
feasting and of still having a wee-bit appetite at the end. That was
doing pretty well, I think, for a novice. And it required some skill
in calculation, for at each table there was everything, and abundance
of everything, that gourmets or gourmands could desire to eat and
drink. In seven days there were twenty-one such feasts!
When we reached London, on our homeward journey, I called for sausage
and mashed, and a tankard of bitter, by way of return to the simple
life.
But the kindness of it all, the generous hospitality; the opening of
hearts to a stranger who comes with an old friend or relative,--in
forty years I have seen nothing to equal it. The gentleman who killed
the fatted calf offered but a Barmecide feast in comparison with the
provender of my Norman friends.
A few days after the return from France a telegram came to me from St.
Ange, saying that his boy was seriously ill, and asking me to come at
once. In the evening I went as quickly as I could to Shepherd's Bush.
The little chap had taken a chill, pneumonia had supervened. The
doctor was in the house when I arrived. "Can't live through the
night," he said. The parents were with the little fellow. I dozed
below in an armchair, knowing that there was need {26} of sleep if I
were to see these good people through the crest of their trouble. An
hour after midnight the mother came and said: "It is finished! Yes,
dead. I am anxious for _mon mari_. He will not move, or speak. He
sits staring--_comme ca_. Please go to him."
I aroused St. Ange and made him come with me. All night till dawn I
walked him, through Shepherd's Bush, through Hammersmith, across the
Bridge, across Barnes Common, through Mortlake and Richmond, and back
again, making him talk and tiring him out. That was the object, to
counter his nervous excitement by physical fatigue and to divert his
mind. I brought him home at sunrise, limp, exhausted. He slept for
ten hours.
I had to make him see that the world had not come to a standstill, that
there was no "copy" for his paper, and so on. I saw his printers, his
publishers, and some other people he knew who turned out "copy."
Between them all they saw him through the worst of his problems. This
brought me in a practical way into connection with the outer fringes of
Fleet Street and London journalism, and in my odd hours I learned how
"copy" was prepared for the compositors, how proofs were corrected, how
"forms" were made up, and before long was able to assist some of my new
acquaintances when they were pressed for time at these games.
It was natural enough that in following these lines as a joyous amateur
I should drift into journalism. I never intended to stay in it, I
preferred to write books; but in those days that seemed a mad {27}
thing to do,--to write books and expect to earn money by them. In
journalism, if one got his "stuff" printed, he got paid, and, if one
knew the ropes, he had n't to wait forever for the payment. There was
a certain attractiveness about being paid for work one liked to do, and
I liked writing better than anything else. And I liked the rush and
pressure of journalism as I saw these things manifested in the
experience of my friends. They had adventures too; I also would have
them. It seemed possible to know everybody, go everywhere, see
everything, and, if one worked the ropes with skill, he might remain
his own master. One saw it all through rose-coloured glasses. How
else should youth see anything?
Even to-day I see St. Ange through the rose-coloured glasses of memory.
It is the only way possible, for except in memory I have not seen him
in all these years since we returned from Normandy and his boy died.
Within a month from the funeral Raoul St. Ange and his wife vanished.
They had returned to France, 't was said, but no one knew. His pupils
did not know, his printers did not know, his paper was dying. I
suppose he had n't the heart to face the obsequies. He merely
vanished. No inquiry revealed him. Never a letter, never a wire,
never a trace of any kind in forty years.
{28}