LE ROZIER.
Next morning we woke up to a delightfully wet day, the very best piece
of good fortune that can occasionally overtake the traveller. We could
write, sketch, chat with the people of the house--above all, enjoy a
brief period of entire repose. For my own part, I hail nothing so
enthusiastically in my travels as a day of unmitigated downpour. Not
the most astounding landscape, not the most novel experience, can evoke
a warmer outburst of gratitude and welcome. I suppose there are
tourists who never feel the need of rest, who, like the Flying
Dutchman, are impelled to move on perpetually, who do not want to nurse
their impressions, if I may legitimize the expression. I, for one,
cannot understand the condition of body and mind implied in such a
temperament. Were life long enough and did circumstances and seasons
permit, I should make a six weeks' halt at least between every stage of
a journey, sipping experiences as we sip exquisitely flavoured
liqueurs, and making the whole last as long as possible.
To our intense satisfaction, we had not been anticipated by those
much-dreaded deputies of the Lozère. We had a choice of rooms, although
later in the day a large contingent of tourists arrived--two or three
French families travelling in company. The hotel at Le Rozier is a
primitive, but quite lodgeable, place--open, airy, cheerful. Bells,
bolts and bars are apparently unheard of. When we remonstrated with the
patrone on the insecurity of our doors, there being no means whatever
of fastening them, she gazed at us with the greatest possible
astonishment. 'Grand Dieu!' her face said, 'is there a country under
heaven in which folks are such ruffians that no one can sleep safely in
his bed?'
'N'ayez pas peur' (Have no fear), was the reply; such a question in her
eyes was evidently the naïvest in the world.
The primitive--I am almost tempted to say ideal--condition of things
here was more strikingly illustrated a little later.
I had begged madame to give me change for a hundred-franc note; she
immediately accompanied me back to my room, unlocked a drawer, and
displayed a heap of money--notes, gold and silver.
'Good heavens, madame!' I cried, 'do you keep your money in a room
given up to strangers?'
'Il n'y a pas de danger' (There is no danger), she replied, with almost
a contemptuous toss of the head, as she took out what she wanted and
turned the key in its loosely fastened lock. Anyone with a pocket-knife
could have wrenched it off.
We begin to understand why there should be 'white assizes' in the
Lozère!
I exchanged my bedroom containing the drawer full of money, and which
was the best in the house, for a quieter one, higher up. Nothing could
be homelier than my present quarters, an attic bare as a barn, and
almost as spacious. There was a bed in it of excellent quality, a chair
and one very rickety table furnished with jug and washbasin--no more. I
believe at night the bats, to say nothing of rats and mice, were
tolerably familiar with this part of the house. The floor sadly showed
its unacquaintance with soap and scrubbing-brush, but there were
compensating advantages. I was far away from the noise and savoury
smells of the kitchen; my window opened on to a wonderful view, and
turning the bed into a sofa, I could write or read as cosily as at home.
Nor did my companion spend less happy hours below. Her room had a more
cosmopolitan appearance. The table serving as washstand stood securely
on its four legs. She had even the luxury of a table and an arm-chair.
The rain was a veritable windfall of good luck to her as well as
myself, affording leisure to paint the floral treasures culled by the
way. How those sweet sketches brightened the bare room!
There was the golden thistle, the horned poppy, the fringed gentian,
the blue pimpernel, the rare orobanche ramosa, the yellow salvia, and
pinks in profusion.
Blessed, thrice blessed, the traveller with companions whose mind to
them a kingdom is! What disenchantment to have had the glorious
experiences of the last few days followed by a spell of boredom!
Diderot says: 'Ceux qui souffrent, font souffrir les autres' (Those who
suffer make others suffer); and certainly to be in company of the bored
is to become bored one's self.
That long wet day passed like an hour. Towards sunset the rain ceased,
and at last the three deputies of the Lozère made their appearance.
They looked drier and more cheery than could be expected, although to
have shot the rapids of the Tarn in such weather was about as
mortifying a circumstance as could befall any travellers.
They displayed the true verve Gauloise in dealing with a trying
situation, smoked cigarettes, chatted with the people of the house, and
made friends with everybody.
Le Rozier is an attractive little place, and its one inn stands airily
in the village street; on the other side of the way, a little lower
down, is its rival, the Hôtel Dieudonné, which, although within a
stone's throw, is in another village and another department. Behind us
lies the Lozère, in front the Aveyron, and perched most picturesquely
on a pyramidal green hill, crowned with a fine old church tower, rises
the little Aveyronnais village of Peyreleau. Travellers have therefore
a choice of inns and of prospects, the twin townlings being both most
advantageously placed between the three Causses, and accommodation very
fair in both.
As we sauntered about in the bright sunshine following the storm,
watching the red light on the dark flanks of the Causse Noir, on which
we can now discern the feudal tower of Capluc, gathering the fringed
gentian just outside the town, interchanging friendly talk with the
cheery peasant-folk, the thought arose: What a paradise for weary brain
workers! What a perfect summer retreat! Removed from the routine of
daily life, escaped for a time from the artificiality of ordinary
travel, how happy were the lover of nature, of pastoral existence, of
quietude in such a spot! No whistle of railway, no bustle of streets,
only the placid rippling of the Tarn and the wind gently swaying the
pine-trees.
Alas! I was soon to undergo the cruellest disillusion.
'There are now three religions in these parts,' said our host to us:
'the Catholic religion, the Protestant religion, and the religion of
the Salvation Army.'
He then added, much as if such a piece of news could but give us the
liveliest satisfaction:
'Not so very long ago Booth was here himself!'
The Salvation Army on the very Roof of France! That solitude of
solitude invaded by fife and drum; the wastes of Sauveterre echoing the
hackneyed air, 'Hold the Fort;' Hallelujah lasses in hideous
poke-bonnets parading the picturesque streets of St. Énimie; the very
rapids silenced by the stentorian exordiums of these Salvationist
orators! Could any disenchantment be more complete?
Now, whilst accrediting every member of the Salvation Army with the
best possible intentions, I quite approve of the severe measures taken
in so many English towns, and also in some places abroad, against one
of the most tremendous social nuisances that ever afflicted humanity.
Doubtless these good people, whether Protestants or Catholics of Le
Rozier and Peyreleau, follow their religion in all sincerity; for
Heaven's sake, then, let us leave our neighbours' creeds and spiritual
concerns alone. In a community in which assizes, not once only, but
often, are found to be unnecessary, there being no criminals to try,
General Booth and his noisy followers are surely out of place. In the
face of such results as these, the religion of the people must be
pronounced adequate to their needs.
Let the Salvationist chiefs occupy themselves instead with mastering
the principles of Spinoza's 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,' Colenso's
'Pentateuch,' and, thrown into the bargain, Sir G. B. Airey's essay on
'The Earlier Hebrew Scriptures.'
One piece of information, however, in no small degree consoled me for
that terrible nightmare of the Salvation Army on the banks of the Tarn.
'There are three religions in these parts, but one political belief
only,' added our host. 'Everybody in the department of Lozère is a
stanch Republican,' and a conclusion, novel to many minds, may be drawn
from this fact also. The Republic is not the demoralizing force some
would have it believed. An entire department may show a clean bill of
moral health when the assizes come round, and yet be ardently devoted
to a democratic form of government!
Whilst Le Rozier is a prosperous, well-to-do little place, its twin
village Peyreleau has a woefully forlorn and neglected appearance. If a
French Chadwick or Richardson would preach the gospel of sanitation
there, and, by force of precept and example, teach the people how to
sweeten their streets and make wholesome their dwellings, I for one
would wish God-speed to the undertaking. Perhaps over-much of devotion
has made these village-folks neglectful of health and comfort. Let us
by all means give them instead a dose of positive philosophy. Certain
amateur political economists would straightway set down the
unsightliness of this remote spot to peasant property, whereas I shall
show that the causes are to be sought elsewhere.
The detesters of peasant property, single-minded persons who love the
land so well that they cannot support the notion of a neighbour
possessing so much as an inch, remind me of certain French folks,
determined antagonists, they hardly know why, of the Republic. These
worthy people--the only thing that can be said against them is that
they have come into the world a hundred years too late--impute every
conceivable mishap or calamity, public or private, to the fact of
having a Republican form of government. They entertain but lukewarm
feelings for any other; they are adherents of neither the Bonapartist
nor Orleanist pretenders, nor do they care a straw for the charlatan
hero of the crutch and blue spectacles: their only political dogma is a
dislike to the Republic.
So, if a landslip occurs and an express train runs off the line with
disastrous results, they immediately cry, 'Is M. Carnot out of his
senses?' If there is an inundation of the Loire and the riverside
villages are under water, they lift up their hands, exclaiming: 'What
can be expected under such a Government as ours?' When cholera breaks
out at Toulon, or the phylloxera makes further inroads in the Côte
d'Or, or murrain appears among sheep, they protest that nothing in the
shape of bad news astonishes them. The only wonder is that, under a
Republic, honest folks keep their heads on their shoulders!
On a par with this is the reasoning of the would-be political
economists alluded to. If a French peasant is lazy, it is because he
has no rent to pay; if a French peasant works too hard, it is because
he owns a bit of land. If a cottage is untidy, it is because its
occupants are not farm labourers in receipt of ten shillings a week; in
fact, the possession of land--except in the hands of English
squires--is the most impoverishing, demoralizing, satanic force
imaginable, and the only way of turning modern France into a Utopia
would be to clap every peasant proprietor alive into nice comfortable,
well-conducted workhouses, after the English model.
Now, in the first place, peasant proprietors in many parts of France,
as I have shown elsewhere, enjoy not only the comforts, but also the
luxuries, of their neighbours of the towns; and in the second, the
untidiness, excessive thrift, and even squalor, occasionally found in
out-of-the-way places, are to be attributed to quite other causes than
that of having no rent to pay. Tidiness, seemliness, order, are taught,
like everything else, by example, and from one cause and another this
example has not been widely set the French peasant.
The matter is one requiring much more space than can be devoted to it
here. I would only observe that the life of French country gentlemen is
often simple to homeliness, and that their poorer neighbours have few
practical illustrations of the value of comfort and hygiene. I have
been astonished to find in the houses of rich landed proprietors in
Anjou and Berri, brick-floored bedrooms, carpetless salons, déjeûner
served on the bare table, and servants in waiting with their
unstockinged feet thrust in sabots.
This condition of things is slowly changing, but there is another and
yet more formidable obstacle to the progress of ideas in isolated rural
districts. I now allude to the celibate clergy. There are doubtless
many estimable parish priests in France, but how can these worthy men
revolutionize the homes of the peasant? Their own is often hardly more
comfortable or hygienic. If feminine influence presides over a priestly
household in the country, it is generally of the homeliest kind. The
mother, sister, housekeeper of a village abbé belongs in all
probability, like himself, to the peasant class, and, unlike himself,
gets no glimpse from time to time of a more polished society and
cosmopolitan ways. Let the clergy marry in France, laicize all schools,
alike for rich and poor, and what may be called the æsthetic side of
domestic economy, to say nothing of hygiene, would soon spread to the
remotest corners of the country. Will it be believed, at Nant, in that
conventual establishment I have before described, there was absolutely
no lavatory for the children at all? They were just taken to a fountain
in the courtyard, there to be washed after the manner of little
Bedouins.
There is also another cause which in part accounts for the ofttimes
squalid and unsanitary condition of the peasant's home. Educated
Frenchwomen as a rule have little love of the country, and convent-bred
Frenchwomen have still less sympathy with their humbler neighbours in
rural districts, whose Republican convictions are well known. Thus it
comes about that, generally speaking, the housekeeping sex of different
ranks remains apart. And as the well-to-do peasant regards domestic
service in the light of degradation, his daughters in turn may become
heads of houses without ever having once been inside a home conducted
on modern principles. One word more: ill-kept, ofttimes squalid as is
the house of the French peasant owner, he can say with Touchstone, 'Tis
a poor thing, but 'tis my own.' The son of the soil in France may want
carpets, wardrobes, clean swept hearths: he at least owns a home from
which only imprudence or thriftlessness can eject him.