OUR EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURS
Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON. 12ᵒ. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20. By
mail, $1.30
_NOW READY_
=French Life in Town and Country.= BY HANNAH LYNCH.
=German Life in Town and Country.= BY W. H. DAWSON, author of
“Germany and the Germans,” etc.
=Russian Life in Town and Country.= By FRANCIS H. E. PALMER,
sometime Secretary to H. M. Prince Droutskop-Loubetsky (Equerry
to H. M. the Emperor of Russia).
=Dutch Life in Town and Country.= By P. M. HOUGH.
=Swiss Life in Town and Country.= By ALFRED T. STORY.
_IN PREPARATION_
=Spanish Life in Town and Country.= By L. HIGGIN.
=Italian Life in Town and Country.= By LUIGI VILLARI.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
OUR EUROPEAN
NEIGHBOURS
EDITED BY
WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON
FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY
[Illustration: THE PEASANT AT HOME—THE CANDIDATE
_Michelena_]
FRENCH LIFE
IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY
BY HANNAH LYNCH
ILLUSTRATED
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1901
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Set up and electrotyped March, 1901
Reprinted August, 1901; January, 1902
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
FRENCH RURAL AND PROVINCIAL LIFE 1
CHAPTER II
PARIS AND PARISIANISM 28
CHAPTER III
SOCIAL DIVERSIONS AND DISTINCTIONS 58
CHAPTER IV
THE ARMY AND THE NATION 87
CHAPTER V
SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 112
CHAPTER VI
NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 147
CHAPTER VII
HOME-LIFE IN FRANCE 173
CHAPTER VIII
PEASANT AND ARTISAN 202
CHAPTER IX
THE PRESS AND THE PEOPLE’S COLLEGES 229
CHAPTER X
THE PARISIAN LECTURE AND SALON 250
CHAPTER XI
THE “LITTLE PEOPLE” OF PARIS 264
CHAPTER XII
ORGANISED PHILANTHROPY AND PUBLIC ASSISTANCE 283
INDEX 307
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE PEASANT AT HOME—THE CANDIDATE _Frontispiece_
_Michelena._
BLESSING THE WHEAT 16
_J. A. Breton._
THE PARDON OF SAINT ANNE (BRITTANY) 42
_Guillou._
A REVIEW AT LONGCHAMP 88
CONSECRATED BREAD 114
_Dagnan-Bouveret._
THE REFECTORY 120
_A. Bouvin._
THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 130
THE FRENCH ACADEMY 148
THE FOYER OF THE OPERA-HOUSE 170
A SEASIDE SERVICE 190
_Edelfelt._
AN OUTDOOR MEAL 206
_Zimenez._
GLEANERS 262
_J. A. Breton._
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
FRENCH RURAL AND PROVINCIAL LIFE
Among the nations of the earth there exists no more striking contrast
than that between the people of Paris and the people of France. While
the capital is a political furnace, where all sorts of conflicting ideas
and opinions are continually boiling with such a rage of effervescence
that the inhabitants, unaccustomed to the sense of calm and security,
work, dance, and rest on the brink of an ever-menacing revolution; in
the provinces town life drags through its monotonous days, absorbed in
dull provincial interests, and rural life knows no other changes or
menaces than those of the seasons. We distribute to each race certain
broad characteristics, and trace out for them in all circumstances
an ideal of conduct from which, if they will be true to their blood,
they must not deviate. And so we are all decided upon the general
French characteristic, excitability, forgetting the immense provincial
differences that are to be found in the people of France as well as
elsewhere. The heavy Flemish natives of Picardy, large eaters, deep
drinkers, hard workers, slow of speech, somewhat coarse and unperverted,
are as French as the natives of Latin Provence, garrulous, sober, alert,
and exuberant. They are not less French than the wily, hard-bargaining
Norman, who eats and drinks as much, but brings a clearer brain into
business, and may always be relied upon to get the better of his
neighbour in all transactions; or the dreamy Celt of the Breton coast,
the thriftless slave of superstition, with brains to spare as well as
prejudices, but not intended by nature as a pillar of the Temple of
Wisdom. Not less French the rich green midlands than the white and
sunburnt south, the champagne vineyards eastward, and the rocky Cévennes
rolling southward. Could anybody differ, more from the morose and
inhospitable Lyonese, in whose eyes every outsider is the enemy against
whom he sedulously barricades his doors, in whose esteem the pick of
humanity is the prosperous silk-merchant, than the pushing, loud-mannered
Marseillais, with what he would fain have us take for his heart so
aggressively upon his sleeve, emotion so transparently transient ever on
the surface, subtly disguising self-interest and calculation?
For every diversity of character equal diversity of scenery—from the
Alpine grandeur of the Dauphiny land to the beautiful lagoons of the
Marais; the Vendean plain washed by the long blue roll of the Atlantic;
Provence, land of salt lagoons and dead old cities of Greece and Rome;
the central provinces, with their lovely rivers and chestnut woods;
Celtic Brittany, half English; Normandy, with its glorious capital, one
of the fairest of France; the radiant cities of the Loire, French river
of romance; the bright and witching little kingdom of Béarn, exquisite
Roussillon, with its old hum of wars and troubadour songs, its delicate
sweetness of herb and leaf and bloom, its quaint old towns breathing
of Spain, and its high air of legend; the east, with its mountains and
dense pine forests, up to sunnier Ardennes. And the _patois_ of these so
different districts are not less distinct than the scenery, the note of
town and province, and the characteristics of each race. Shelley most
seriously wrote that there was nothing worth seeing in France. Even the
tourist will find more to delight his eye in going from one department
to another than he will find place to record in the most voluminous
note-book. Let him only content himself with such a province as Touraine,
with its rich and pleasant landscape, its castles of undying interest,
its river of thrilling associations. Or let him wander in summer amid the
cherry orchards of the Jura country, with the rampart of mountains above
the pine-tops and the touch of Swiss beauty around; or dream away the
present in musing upon forgotten Mediterranean glories among the ruins of
dead Provençal cities between the grey-green silver of the olive and the
sapphire waters beyond the broad grey river bends.
It is true that the townsman all over the land is largely governed by
a need for excitement, and having, as a rule, no personal initiative
to enable him to minister to it, he contents himself with looking
toward the capital with envy, and devours the newspapers from Paris in
eager expectation of the “something” he is in daily hope of happening.
But whatever does happen in Paris rarely makes itself felt in the
intellectually sleepy, industrious provinces; thanks to which wide-spread
spirit of commercial and bucolic denseness to the inflammatory influences
of the capital, France thrives now as she throve before the war, when at
a word she could produce funds to pay off an enormous indemnity, without
flinching or hesitating.
When you travel in the country or through small French towns, you are
struck with the gaiety, intelligence, and good-will of the people and
of the little shopkeepers, and with a certain unintelligent stiffness,
pretension, and moroseness of the middle class, whose ambition it is to
pass for the aristocracy, or at least for _des gens de bonne famille_.
As these pretensions are rarely in keeping with their actual fortunes,
these ambitious provincials, the victims of the political follies born
of hostility to the Third Republic, think fit to garb themselves in
the unbecoming vices of ill-humour, rancour, and idle pride. These
they conceive to be the adjuncts of noble birth. If the fathers have
refrained, the sons are certain to announce themselves, sooner or later,
by titles of their own choosing. The general preference runs to count and
viscount, though baron is not despised. I have known of a respectable
middle-class family in the provinces, where the eldest son, a lawyer,
is content to remain a republican, and the second son, an officer, a
gentleman of aristocratic instincts, eager to profit by the present
enthusiasm for the army in anti-governmental circles, calls himself a
count. The humorous part of the situation lies in the fact that the wife
of the plain Monsieur is not satisfied with her lot, since destiny, ruled
by her brother-in-law’s will, has given the latter a title; and so at the
recent marriage of that military worthy, the newspapers spoke of M. le
Comte giving his arm to his sister-in-law, Madame la Comtesse, while the
disgusted republican elder brother stayed in the country, indifferent to
the self-appointed glories of his relatives.
Within late years, tennis parties are beginning to introduce a little
stir in certain select circles of small provincial towns, where these
entertainments are still regarded as novel; but, speaking generally,
the dulness of such centres in France cannot be surpassed anywhere.
Social life is at as low a level as intellectual life. Few books are
read, fewer still are discussed. The very aspect of the streets—with
their sealed doors, shut persiennes, sullen absence of neighbourly trust
and geniality, high-walled gardens—is morose and incommunicative. They
wear, however, as compensation, a look of distinction, not infrequently
accompanied by a picturesque charm. Should a river roll in view, or a
little street slope down to a busy quay, where the washerwomen kneel and
lend mirth and colour to the scene, while above, an old historic castle,
high against the sky, on a dusty square, or the grey of Gothic stone
and delicate spire add a hieratic note to the quaint picture you forget
the unfriendly reserve of those barred and blinded houses, you forget
the somewhat aggressive coldness and inhospitality of their front, in
recognition of the tempered brilliance, the graceful and distinguished
effects around you. Mingle then with the market-folk, and listen to
their speech—pleasant vocables, rendered pleasanter still by vivacity of
gesture and vividness of gaze; neat peasant women, in spotless caps and
sabots, who look all the merrier because they are so hard-worked; tanned,
wrinkled faces, that smile as they did in youth, hard-set, but not
unkindly, in the rapacity of commerce; responsive to a joke, unflinching
in the teeth of trouble, not destitute of a promise of comfort in life’s
softer hours—though softness is the very last quality they betray. A
genial hardness is, perhaps, the dominating character of the French
peasant woman’s expression: it would never be safe to trust in the hope
of finding her head napping and her heart too wide awake. But if she is
not soft to others, she is implacably hard to herself. Her industry is
amazing, and only less amazing is her resourcefulness. A more competent
woman does not exist anywhere. Nothing of a dreamer, she is contented
with her lot, provided only there is neither thriftlessness, waste, nor
idleness about her. She will willingly work for four, if the men will
honestly work for one. And while the men loiter and squander substance
and health in the wineshops, this gallant creature continues to labour
and save and scold, to deprive herself of small comforts in favour of
others—a son, a daughter, as the case may be; and, thanks to her, the
country ever prospers.
Country life is, of course, far less dull than provincial town life; less
unneighbourly, and less destitute of all the charities of existence.
For one thing, nature is the eternal friend, benefactor, and instructor
of man. The thousand vulgarities of towns are forgotten in the midst of
her bounties. A man who lives in bucolic silence, watching the seasons
and counting new-born things, dreaming of oats, of crops, of fruit,
is essentially the superior of his fellows who dwell amid the sordid
details of small towns, commerce, and rivalries, the gossip and drivel
which make a spurious animation in the circles of the provinces. There
are diversities among the type _hobereau_ (a kind of French squire), as
among all other types in France and elsewhere. Many years ago I travelled
through a charming south-western province, furnished amply with letters
of introduction. I well remember the extraordinary contrast between two
families of _hobereaux_ I once visited. A relative of the small squire,
who lived in a dull, quaint little town, drove me out to see her bucolic
son-in-law and his bucolic parents. The family was described to me as
“exceedingly rich.” We entered a brilliant bit of park and avenue on
a hot afternoon in July, drenched with the dews of heat, athirst from
the dust of the broad, long white road. On the _perron_ stood the young
couple and their parents to receive us. The bride was gaudily and
hideously attired in yellow and brown satin and silk; the groom in grey,
with straw hat and leggings, more appropriately adorned the landscape.
He was a heavy-eyed, high-complexioned, silent youth, who seemed at
ease and happy only in the society of his most beautiful dogs. To them
alone did he sometimes discourse in heavy undertones, while he surveyed
me furtively under his lashes in unmistakable awe, but addressed me no
word. His father-in-law looked like a farmer or a yeoman, and cracked
small jokes. He quizzed his son, who blushed the hues of fire, and his
son’s mother-in-law, who ingeniously strove to make me believe that she
did not understand him, and he nudged his daughter-in-law in a way she
must have resented. Without exaggeration, I have never met a more peasant
type of country gentleman in my life. His wife was a simple, ill-mannered
person, who talked chiefly about the weather. The grounds were lovely,
the orchard a splendid dream, but the floors of the “château,” as every
country-house in France is pretentiously called, were mere unvarnished
planks; not a rug anywhere, not a hint of beeswax, and even the
drawing-room was disfigured with ugly presses. When liquid refreshment
was called for—chartreuse and iced water—we were served in coarse
glasses, and the iced water was brought in in a kitchen jug. There
was not even a flower in a vase, not a pretty window curtain, and the
drawing-room chairs were of horsehair. Whatever occult advantages their
wealth may have procured them, it cannot be said that beauty, comfort,
the joy of living, were amongst them, for a more undecorated interior and
duller persons I have never met, and yet, with so much comfortlessness,
there was not a touch of vulgarity. The squireen was a rough son of the
soil, but you accepted him as the animals of the field; you felt he
belonged to the land, and, as such, claimed indulgence. You would not
elect to pass your days in his society, any more than you would care to
have a bear prancing about your drawing-room, but you instinctively felt
his superiority to the town fop, who thinks himself a very fine fellow,
with a little tailoring and a vast amount of pretension.
The second _hobereau_ dwelt in the same department, but I visited him
with very different results. I was invited to lunch, and my host drove me
seven miles in a pony-cart. Here, also, were an imposing park and avenue,
and an immense manor, which seemed all windows. There was among the
guests a magistrate from Poictiers, who was witty as only a Frenchman can
be witty. Our host was a charming, bright-eyed, lean little old man, full
of vivacity, of charm, and intellectual alertness. He was voluble, and
avid for information, and walked me up and down a delightful _berceau_ to
obtain my views of the woman’s question and the relative positions of the
young French and English girl. He even pressed me to contrast the French
and English novel, and said he greatly preferred Scott to Zola—an opinion
I endorsed with fervour. People drove over from neighbouring places,
and we were quite a large party at lunch. The talk was capital—local,
but interesting; no cheap gossip, but plenty of genial wit, anecdote,
and repartee. The women were dowdily dressed, as provincial Frenchwomen
frequently are. I judged them as dense, impervious to ideas, utterly
uncultivated, never, in all probability, having read anything except the
thin religious literature on which the virtuous ladies of France nourish
their minds; but they could well hold their own in conversation, could
cap a phrase with elegant neatness, and the hostess deserved well of her
kind for the evidence she furnished of a perfectly ordered household.
It would, however, be a mistake to credit them with grace because they
are Frenchwomen. Nothing comes with such a shock upon the traveller in
France, used to the feminine grace and charm and witchery of dress in
Paris, as the dowdiness and want of ease, the total lack of taste in
dress, the heavy figures and unexpressive faces of many of the women
of the provinces. They dress shabbily, will even wear cotton gloves
and badly cut boots when they consider themselves extremely exclusive,
and carry off these defects of costume with a singular and unmistakable
air of distinction. The commoner kind prefer to shine in fashions and
colours unfamiliar to the eye of Paris; and, as a rule, look clumsy and
obtrusive in their fine feathers. The same applies to the men. These,
when they prefer to be shabby and roughly arrayed, look far better than
the pretentious gallants who, by means of obvious tailoring, offer
destruction to the susceptible dames around them. There can be no doubt
that an elegant male costume is out of place and a vulgar blot along a
sleepy little street where men in blouses pass and bonneted girls and
women wheel barrows before them.
The farmer’s life has undoubtedly a larger share of natural interests
than that of the _hobereau_. It is more purely animal, without any
attachments to a world unconnected with the land. Ask a farmer what he
thinks of politics, and he will tell you that he has nothing on earth to
do with idiots or tricksters. He who must warily watch the humours of
the seasons cannot trouble himself with the humours of electors and the
ravings of voluble deputies. He walks his dew-washed meadows at dawn in
wide-leafed felt; and, as he surveys the produce of his labour, his long
hours of sweating travail, can he feel other than contempt of the highly
remunerative and windy profession of the politician? The superiority
of the lord of the soil to whom he pays tribute, he will readily
acknowledge, but none other. In the west he will speak of his family
as “my sons and the creatures,” meaning his daughters. In the land of
the Cévennes, his children are _les drôles_, and the same unquestioning
obedience is expected from both sexes by this rough and silent tyrant
of the soil. Outside his farm he has little esteem to waste upon his
fellows; within, is far from prodigal of tenderness to his women-folk.
These he expects to stand at meals in a corner of the kitchen, while he
and his sons sit to eat. He governs haughtily, with few words; but in his
rude heart he knows that the real, the silent, and unobtrusive government
lies in the hands of his wife, who, with the tact and watchfulness of
affection, corrects the errors of his harsh temper, and smooths out the
asperities of home-life. It would be difficult to find a people to whom
modern feminism is more repugnant than the French, and hard to name one
that owes more to the intelligence, good-will, and incessant labour of
women. Frenchmen object to women in the liberal professions, and make a
desperate hue and cry the day a talented lady seeks leave to wear the
lawyer’s toque and gown. Yet the fields are tended by women; flags are
waved at railway gates by them; in the lower ranks they bravely do all
the rougher work of men, and nobody lifts a voice in protest. Woman may
leave her home to make money in the humbler walks of labour, and cause
no flutter in male bosoms; but let her elect to do so in paths where
ambition lures and pay is higher, and instantly a howl of dismay runs
through the ranks of her oppressors and slaves. And yet, if common sense
and logic were general instead of rare virtues, even in France, it would
be understood that the abandonment of the homes by peasant women is of
much more serious consequence to a nation than the infrequent flight into
legal and medical circles. The woman lawyer will always be the exception,
and if she makes a good thing of her venture nobody is a penny the worse.
But examine the home where the wife and mother spends her day in a
factory, in the field, whose occupation requires no talent or ambition,
and their physical and moral effects are of a very different nature from
those that follow the winning of diplomas. The woman works as hard and
as long as her husband, and is paid less. They return home to a cold
hearth, an uncooked dinner. The man, never an angel where his stomach
is concerned, swears and threatens, then sulks and goes off to the
wine-shop. There is no compensation for the missing comfort in the few
miserable francs earned. No women are more admirably adapted for making
the home happy than Frenchwomen. Their general competence is matched only
by their industry; and it is a pity to see these fine domestic qualities
wasted on outdoor work. Of course, in the case of widows nothing can be
said. When the bread-winner is taken away, the woman must perforce shut
the house door, and go abroad in quest of the right to live. Girls are
in their proper sphere, too, in working manfully on their father’s farm
until their marriage, and fatherless girls, without that most useful of
national institutions, the _dot_, must needs find bread wherever they
can. But the outside labour of the wife and mother can never be too
deeply deplored, above all in the case of the best of wives or mothers,
such as Frenchwomen, taking them as an average, usually are.
[Illustration: BLESSING THE WHEAT
_J. A. Breton_]
Connected with rural and provincial life are some quaint and pretty
religious ceremonies. I need not refer to the _Fête-Dieu_, familiar
to all travellers in Catholic countries. The sight of this well-known
procession will please or repel you according as it appeals to your
head or your imagination. But a far more picturesque procession, and
one containing an element of poetry not at all discoverable in the
_Fête-Dieu_, is the blessing of the fields and orchards between dawn and
sunrise. What a novel and peaceful treat I used to find this ceremony in
my far-off French schooldays, whereas the Corpus Christi procession was
but a scorching misery! To rise in the blue crepuscular light, with the
early birds just stirring in their nests and heard behind the unshuttered
windows, and emerge from the deep convent porch into the dew-washed
country, following and followed by all the town, walking in two long
lines, widely apart, behind the priests in their stoles and surplices,
and chanting solemn Latin hymns! It was a rich Norman land we wandered
along, now by glittering rills, with the smell of violets in the air, by
narrow green paths through the newly ploughed earth, while the mounting
sun cast joy into our faces, warming the chill spring wind, and provoking
the birds to rival our hymns with their clearer and sweeter notes; then
through continents of apple bloom, whole lakes above of pink-white
blossoms on either side, with rivulets of upper blue seen through the
tracery of foamy waves. Who, watching that solemn procession of amiable
enthusiasts, chanting hymns to God and beseeching Him with confidence
and fervour to bless the earth and all its produce,—wheat, wine, fruit,
and flower, the water we drink, and the grass we tread upon,—could smile
or carp at the sprinkling of the ground, of trees, of river-bed with
holy water? There was something deeply impressive in the hymns sung at
that early hour, while the towns still slept and the woods were scarce
awake. As a superstition it seemed to carry us back to the great primal
superstitions that have run through the earlier religions. It remains
ever upon memory as a large and noble and beautiful form of belief, where
Pagan and Christian of all time meet in their fear of inclement nature.
Religion has ever associated itself with the rural dread of disaster.
Priests say masses for sick cattle, and if the cattle do not benefit by
this harmless custom, the peasants are thereby greatly comforted; they
have the satisfaction of knowing, at any rate, that should the cattle so
prayed for die, it was in the design of Providence, against which even
the prayer of devout man was inefficacious. If religion never made more
injurious concessions than these to ignorance, the wildest freethinker
that ever unsheathed a sword against it must be shamed into laughter at
his bellicose attitude. Indeed, it is not only the Catholics of France
who expect their ministers to stand between them and rural misfortunes
by prayer and holy water; in the Protestant Cévennes a pastor of the
Reformed Church has been known to exorcise a field of evil spirits, or
tackle by prayers the devils in a poor beast, and even in an entire herd
of cattle; and the peasants dread even more than the devil a mysterious
god called the _Aversier_.[1] An apologist for these peculiar customs
maintains that since Christianity cannot prevent superstition it is wise
in directing it,—sending it thus into a right and beneficial channel.
This is surely debatable ground. Superstition is by no means the appanage
of ignorance only, and we must be grateful when we find it inoffensive
and poetical.
[1] The maker of rains.
In Paris to-day, you will meet educated Frenchwomen who are convinced
that St. Anthony of Padua went to heaven and was canonised in the
exclusive interest of their lost property. A friend of mine, witty,
cultivated, a wide reader and traveller, accompanying me on a walk,
dropped one of her gloves just outside the avenue door. She perceived her
loss when we had gone a few paces ahead. “Oh, dear good St. Anthony,” she
exclaimed fervently, “make me find my glove, and I will light a candle
in your honour. And now I am reminded, dear St. Anthony, that I owe you
already a candle for my note-book which I lost and found last week; I
will pay both on the recovery of my glove.” I listened to the prayer in
stupefaction. We turned on our heel, and there at the _porte-cochère_
lay her glove. She pounced upon it, and cried, “Thanks, thanks, good St.
Anthony, you will have your two candles this afternoon.” Now, this was
not a peasant, a servant, an ignorant little bourgeoise. She was a woman
of liberal education, a frequenter of the noble Faubourg, the friend,
guide, and philosopher of several authentic counts and countesses and
marchionesses and diplomats, a woman who had travelled in Russia, Poland,
Germany, and England, and admired all these races; in fact, a charming
old lady, a mass of pride and prejudice, yearning to-day for another St.
Bartholomew, and yet devoted to several Protestants and to at least one
freethinker; who professes an _ancien-régime_ hatred and scorn of the
lower classes, and treats her servant, her portress, her _frotteur_, the
woman who sells her milk, and the woman who sells her vegetables as her
dearest friends, from sheer largeness of heart and generosity of nature.
She is not the first person of whom I can truthfully say, “Her virtues
are all her own, her vices belong to her religion.”
In Brittany it is the custom to bless houses, and this ceremony is not
always accomplished without some bluster; above all, if the spirit of the
dead should be attached to it. When a Breton suspects his house to be
under ghostly domination, he sends for a powerful fellow in sacerdotal
raiment to dislodge the devil. The priest comes, clad in surplice, and,
holding his stole in hand, takes off his boots, so that he “shall be
a priest to the very ground.” We are told that the staircase and the
floors are inevitably covered with sand as evidence of the traces of the
ill-intentioned dead. The priest must follow those sandy traces as far
as the chamber where they stop. There he shuts himself up, bursts into
fervent prayer, and has a hand-to-hand fight with the evil spirit. His
triumph is asserted as soon as he succeeds in casting his stole over
the neck of the dead, who has taken the shape of an animal, usually a
black dog. The beadle and the sacristan are told off to carry away the
possessed animal. They lead it to a sterile marsh, or a forsaken quarry,
or a meadow hollow, and the priest cries, “Here shalt thou henceforth
dwell,” and lets the evil spirit go free; saying this, he makes a wide
circle, and departs.[2]
[2] “Satanism” by Jules Bois.
Coming from a feverish centre like Paris, where, as a rule, lives are too
crowded with interests, one wonders at the limited interests of rural
and provincial life. Sometimes you will meet a country gentleman who
dabbles in literature, writes a local guide or an historical essay on
some personage or fact connected with his own particular town or village,
and then you may count yourself fortunate. Depend upon his natural wit to
make the place interesting to you. Such a pleasant squire once imparted
a sort of glow and charm for me to Taillebourg, and that dullest of
little towns, St. Jean d’Angély. He peopled the neighbourhood with great
names, and the very pavements instantly grew sacred. His erudition went
so far as to revive Blue Beard, an ancestral neighbour, and show me the
Marquis of Carabas, with his immortal feline friend, getting married in
the reign of Francis I., from the castle at which I was a guest; and
though the life at that summer castle was frightfully monotonous, one
forgot the monotony in romantic associations. But this is an infrequent
blessing. Unless you form one of a hunting party, I know nothing that
palls more quickly upon the outsider than the kind of existence led in
French châteaux. There are no day or evening amusements. Ladies between
meals sit under trees and talk. If they always talked brilliantly upon
general topics, this would be pleasant enough, but as all roads lead
to Rome, so do all topics to-day in France lead directly or indirectly
to politics, and this is fatal. Literature is only a tepid discussion
on the latest novel: and this does not carry one far. Then there is a
solemn walk with your hostess about the grounds, or a drive outside,
and in the evening after dinner a game of bezique with somebody, or the
pleasure of watching somebody else play “patience,” and conversation of
a not too thrilling kind. Should your hostess or any other visitor be
exceptional, delight and pleasure can be extracted from notable talk;
but in the case of ordinary men and women, it is very trying to meet
together for the dismal satisfaction of being bored simultaneously. The
proprietors naturally do not realise this. They have the excitement
of receiving guests, whose arrival must be a change in the burthen of
inalterable routine. But I have never left a French château without
a feeling of sincere gratitude for not possessing one. The sensation
of imprisonment, of futile chains, is oppressive. Here, as elsewhere,
individuality is effaced by inexorable common law. To be original is to
be amusing, no doubt; but, still more, unseemly and mad. You may be a
little wild in speech, provided you walk the respectable step of your
fellows without the slightest deviation. Your wit, if you happen to have
any, will never be more appreciated, for on that ground the French are
exquisite judges; but if you cross your knees, or pick blackberries, or
dance a hornpipe, or climb a tree, or smoke a pipe, or whistle a tune
(I mix up the offences of both sexes against French propriety), you are
safe to go forth with a blighted reputation. Many years ago, before I
knew these things, I shocked an amiable country gentleman and his son, a
correct young officer down from St. Cyr, by breaking away from them to
gather and eat lovely blackberries along our path. They told me it was
considered extremely improper in France. They mentioned, upon pressure,
so many other things that are regarded in rural esteem as improper,
that I suggested writing, with their aid, the things a man and a woman
(especially a woman) cannot do in France, but on consideration found it
would make too large a volume. Here is exhibited the lasting charm of the
French character. Had I said such a thing to an Englishman, imbued with
a sense of his own correctness, he would have resented it as a foreign
impertinence. My French host was charmed with a criticism which he
understood to be meant good-naturedly, and added, “I have ever wondered
at the reputation we give the English in France for excessive formality,
for, personally, I have always found them to be a great deal more genial
and easy than ourselves, and I readily recognise that we are much more
formal.” When you read French and English newspapers, and see these two
great races, the greatest of the world, showing their teeth like angry
dogs, you might believe both nations incapable of a just or generous word
of each other. Well, I, who am neither French nor English, can testify to
the magnanimous recognition of national virtues of both to each other. A
feeling of rivalry, of jealousy, of bitterness, may exist on either side,
but I know none who have expressed more cordial admiration of British
qualities than the French, none who have returned the compliment to them
so generously as the English. I still remember the words of a gallant
French officer to me one evening after dinner: “It is an unfortunate
misunderstanding, exploited by infamous journalists of both countries,
between two races made to sympathise with and admire each other. English
and French, we complete one another, and as friends would hold the
world.” And how true this is! There are faults on both sides, as there
always are in a misunderstanding. The English are admirable, the French
are lovable, and both have the defects of these qualities.
Even now, as I write these lines, feeling runs high in both countries,
one against the other; higher and more aggressive in France, I admit,
than in England, and yet I should fill a volume were I to attempt to
repeat the splendid and noble things I have lately heard said of England
in France, the proofs of regret for this lamentable and, I trust,
fugitive state of affairs which I have received from various sources,
beginning with cultured men of letters and science, then from Catholic
women of the world, who see no reason to hate England because their
newspapers tell them to do so; and lastly from workmen, women of the
people, from my washerwoman, who once wisely said to me, “If we listen
to the newspapers, French or English, we shall all become as stupid and
degraded as the Boxers of China.”
What one first remarks about the French peasantry is the clean and
comfortable aspect they present: tidy blue blouses, sabots, strong shoes,
neatly patched trousers, and their air of natural breeding. Among the
mountains they are of rougher build and manners; but in the plains of
Berry, in the flat, green department of the Loiret, where the landscape
looks like a little bit of Holland on the edge of the still and sedgy
Loire where it ceases to be navigable, the very labourers more resemble
well-to-do and well-bred farmers than the class to which they belong.
Their breeding and neatness, if you come upon them in the wild solitude
of the fields, are in keeping with the gracious silence of shepherd life,
instead of being a blot upon it, and their civilised speech does not jar
upon the banks of grey, flowing water, or among the warm, sunlit meadows.
Farther south-west the manners are less commendable. Mistrust of the
foreigner is more visible; and if you ask your way, you risk falling
upon the practical joker, who deliberately sends you wrong out of
gaiety of heart. Landscape is decided by region, and local character is
decided by religion. Volubility and Catholicism seem to go hand in hand;
rigidity and sternness with Protestantism. La Rochelle and Rochefort are
Protestant towns on the coast; the Cévennes territory is Protestant,
also the towns of Nîmes and Montpellier in Provence. Speaking broadly,
I should say the French Protestants are more intelligent, the Catholics
brighter; the Protestants deeper in brains and sentiments, the Catholics
more winningly vivacious. You esteem the Protestants, you like the
Catholics; and your sympathy for each will be prompted by temperament,
intellect, and instinct. Catholics will always regard Du Chayla, the
Christian persecutor of the Cévennes, as a martyr; Protestants, more
justly, will pronounce him a hateful persecutor. Religious persecutors,
the world over, find their fervent apologists, and it may be said that
a large proportion of the French race approve to-day of their St.
Bartholomew, and yearn for a repetition of it; just as the good Catholics
of the Spanish race find little to condemn in the horrors of the
Inquisition. If there should break out a second Revolution in France (we
have been living so long on the brink of it that I am constantly reminded
of the story of the boy and the wolf, and ask myself in dismay, How long
have we to run before meeting with the famous moral of the story?),
be sure this time that religion will prove the provocation. I cannot
predict on which side it will burst, but assuredly the red flag will be
“anti-Semitism.” In the provinces this sentiment runs in a feebler, less
aggressive channel, and the rural atmosphere seems to cleanse the air of
it entirely. Here religious feeling is either stagnant because of the
absence of religious rivalry, or it is a dull assertion of hostility in
abeyance, only waiting for the occasion to break out in a torrential
downpour. In provincial circles known as clerical, bicycling is regarded
as improper, because it has been pronounced unfashionable. At Orleans
you will see women and young girls punting as you wander out beyond the
suburbs towards the source of the Loiret, in the charming demesne of the
Polignacs, but you will not encounter a woman on a bicycle, for Orleans
is a clerical town, and, consequently, all that is most fashionable and
pretentious. France is aware of the ills which clericalism has brought
upon Spain; yet, for the moment, she is deliberately walking backward,
through the strenuous efforts of the snobs and of a defunct aristocracy.
These reactionary influences are the work of a coterie of intriguing
women and ambitious priests in Paris, and now even material and private
interests are menaced by conspiring malcontents.
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