MESS LETHIERRY
I
A TROUBLED LIFE, BUT A QUIET CONSCIENCE
Mess Lethierry, a conspicuous man in St. Sampson, was a redoubtable
sailor. He had voyaged a great deal. He had been a cabin-boy, seaman,
topmast-man, second mate, mate, pilot, and captain. He was at this
period a ship-owner. There was not a man to compare with him for general
knowledge of the sea. He was brave in putting off to ships in distress.
In foul weather he would take his way along the beach, scanning the
horizon. "What have we yonder?" he would say; "some craft in trouble?"
Whether it were an interloping Weymouth fisherman, a cutter from
Aurigny, a bisquine from Courseulle, the yacht of some nobleman, an
English craft or a French one--poor or rich, mattered little. He jumped
into a boat, called together two or three strong fellows, or did without
them, as the case might be, pushed out to sea, rose and sank, and rose
again on rolling waves, plunged into the storm, and encountered the
danger face to face. Then afar off, amid the rain and lightning, and
drenched with water, he was sometimes seen upright in his boat like a
lion with a foaming mane. Often he would pass whole days in danger
amidst the waves, the hail, and the wind, making his way to the sides of
foundering vessels during the tempest, and rescuing men and merchandise.
At night, after feats like these, he would return home, and pass his
time in knitting stockings.
For fifty years he led this kind of life--from ten years of age to
sixty--so long did he feel himself still young. At sixty, he began to
discover that he could no longer lift with one hand the great anvil at
the forge of Varclin. This anvil weighed three hundredweight. At length
rheumatic pains compelled him to be a prisoner; he was forced to give up
his old struggle with the sea, to pass from the heroic into the
patriarchal stage, to sink into the condition of a harmless, worthy old
fellow.
Happily his rheumatism attacks happened at the period when he had
secured a comfortable competency. These two consequences of labour are
natural companions. At the moment when men become rich, how often comes
paralysis--the sorrowful crowning of a laborious life!
Old and weary men say among themselves, "Let us rest and enjoy life."
The population of islands like Guernsey is composed of men who have
passed their lives in going about their little fields or in sailing
round the world. These are the two classes of the labouring people; the
labourers on the land, and the toilers of the sea. Mess Lethierry was of
the latter class; he had had a life of hard work. He had been upon the
continent; was for some time a ship carpenter at Rochefort, and
afterwards at Cette. We have just spoken of sailing round the world; he
had made the circuit of all France, getting work as a journeyman
carpenter; and had been employed at the great salt works of
Franche-Comte. Though a humble man, he had led a life of adventure. In
France he had learned to read, to think, to have a will of his own. He
had had a hand in many things, and in all he had done had kept a
character for probity. At bottom, however, he was simply a sailor. The
water was his element; he used to say that he lived with the fish when
really at home. In short, his whole existence, except two or three
years, had been devoted to the ocean. Flung into the water, as he said,
he had navigated the great oceans both of the Atlantic and the Pacific,
but he preferred the Channel. He used to exclaim enthusiastically, "That
is the sea for a rough time of it!" He was born at sea, and at sea would
have preferred to end his days. After sailing several times round the
world, and seeing most countries, he had returned to Guernsey, and never
permanently left the island again. Henceforth his great voyages were to
Granville and St. Malo.
Mess Lethierry was a Guernsey man--that peculiar amalgamation of
Frenchman and Norman, or rather English. He had within himself this
quadruple extraction, merged and almost lost in that far wider country,
the ocean. Throughout his life and wheresoever he went, he had preserved
the habits of a Norman fisherman.
All this, however, did not prevent his looking now and then into some
old book; of taking pleasure in reading, in knowing the names of
philosophers and poets, and in talking a little now and then in all
languages.
II
A CERTAIN PREDILECTION
Gilliatt was a child of Nature. Mess Lethierry was the same.
Lethierry's uncultivated nature, however, was not without certain
refinements.
He was fastidious upon the subject of women's hands. In his early years,
while still a lad, passing from the stage of cabin-boy to that of
sailor, he had heard the Admiral de Suffren say, "There goes a pretty
girl; but what horrible great red hands." An observation from an admiral
on any subject is a command, a law, an authority far above that of an
oracle. The exclamation of Admiral de Suffren had rendered Lethierry
fastidious and exacting in the matter of small and white hands. His own
hand, a large club fist of the colour of mahogany, was like a mallet or
a pair of pincers for a friendly grasp, and, tightly closed, would
almost break a paving-stone.
He had never married; he had either no inclination for matrimony, or had
never found a suitable match. That, perhaps, was due to his being a
stickler for hands like those of a duchess. Such hands are, indeed,
somewhat rare among the fishermen's daughters at Portbail.
It was whispered, however, that at Rochefort, on the Charente, he had,
once upon a time, made the acquaintance of a certain grisette, realising
his ideal. She was a pretty girl with graceful hands; but she was a
vixen, and had also a habit of scratching. Woe betide any one who
attacked her! yet her nails, though capable at a pinch of being turned
into claws, were of a cleanliness which left nothing to be desired. It
was these peculiarly bewitching nails which had first enchanted and then
disturbed the peace of Lethierry, who, fearing that he might one day
become no longer master of his mistress, had decided not to conduct that
young lady to the nuptial altar.
Another time he met at Aurigny a country girl who pleased him. He
thought of marriage, when one of the inhabitants of the place said to
him, "I congratulate you; you will have for your wife a good fuel
maker." Lethierry asked the meaning of this. It appeared that the
country people at Aurigny have a certain custom of collecting manure
from their cow-houses, which they throw against a wall, where it is left
to dry and fall to the ground. Cakes of dried manure of this kind are
used for fuel, and are called _coipiaux_. A country girl of Aurigny has
no chance of getting a husband if she is not a good fuel maker; but the
young lady's especial talent only inspired disgust in Lethierry.
Besides, he had in his love matters a kind of rough country folks'
philosophy, a sailor-like sort of habit of mind. Always smitten but
never enslaved, he boasted of having been in his youth easily conquered
by a petticoat, or rather a _cotillon_; for what is now-a-days called a
crinoline, was in his time called a _cotillon_; a term which, in his use
of it, signifies both something more and something less than a wife.
These rude seafaring men of the Norman Archipelago, have a certain
amount of shrewdness. Almost all can read and write. On Sundays, little
cabin-boys may be seen in those parts, seated upon a coil of ropes,
reading, with book in hand. From all time these Norman sailors have had
a peculiar satirical vein, and have been famous for clever sayings. It
was one of these men, the bold pilot Quéripel, who said to Montgomery,
when he sought refuge in Jersey after the unfortunate accident in
killing Henry II. at a tournament, with a blow of his lance, "_Tête
folle a cassé tête vide_." Another one, Touzeau, a sea-captain at St.
Brélade, was the author of that philosophical pun, erroneously
attributed to Camus, "_Après la mort, les papes deviennent papillons, et
les sires deviennent cirons_."
III
THE OLD SEA LANGUAGE
The mariners of the Channel are the true ancient Gauls. The islands,
which in these days become rapidly more and more English--preserved for
many ages their old French character. The peasant in Sark speaks the
language of Louis XIV. Forty years ago, the old classical nautical
language was to be found in the mouths of the sailors of Jersey and
Aurigny. When amongst them, it was possible to imagine oneself carried
back to the sea life of the seventeenth century. From that speaking
trumpet which terrified Admiral Hidde, a philologist might have learnt
the ancient technicalities of manoeuvring and giving orders at sea, in
the very words which were roared out to his sailors by Jean Bart. The
old French maritime vocabulary is now almost entirely changed, but was
still in use in Jersey in 1820. A ship that was a good plyer was _bon
boulinier_; one that carried a weather-helm in spite of her foresails
and rudder was _un vaisseau ardent_; to get under way was _prendre
aire_; to lie to in a storm, _capeyer_; to make fast running rigging was
_faire dormant_; to get to windward, _faire chapelle_; to keep the cable
tight, _faire teste_; to be out of trim, _être en pantenne_; to keep the
sails full, _porter plain_. These expressions have fallen out of use.
To-day we say _louvoyer_ for to beat to windward, they said _leauvoyer_;
for _naviguer_, sail, they said _naviger_; for _virer vent devant_, to
tack, _donner vent devant_; for _aller de l'avant_, to make headway,
_tailler de l'avant_; for _tirez d'accord_, haul together, _halez
d'accord_; for _dérapez_, to weigh anchor, _deplantez_; for _embraquez_,
to haul tight, _abraquez_; for _taquets_, cleats, _bittons_; for
_burins_, toggles, _tappes_; for _balancine_, fore-lift, main-lift,
etc., _valancine_; for _tribord_, starboard, _stribord_; for _les hommes
de quart à bâbord_, men of the larboard watch, _les basbourdis_.
Tourville wrote to Hocquincourt: _nous avons singlét_ (sailed), for
_cinglé_. Instead of _la rafale_, squall, _le raffal_; instead of
_bossoir_, cat-head, _boussoir_; instead of _drosse_, truss, _drousse_;
instead of _loffer_, to luff, _faire une olofée_; instead of _elonger_,
to lay alongside, _alonger_; instead of _forte brise_, stiff breeze,
_survent_; instead of _jouail_, stock of an anchor, _jas_; instead of
_soute_, store-room, _fosse_.
Such, at the beginning of this century, was the maritime dialect of the
Channel Islands. Ango would have been startled had he heard the speech
of a Jersey pilot. Whilst everywhere else the sails _faseyaient_
(shivered), in these islands they _barbeyaient_. A _saute de vent_,
sudden shift of wind, was a _folle-vente_. The old methods of mooring
known as _la valture_ and _la portugaise_ were alone used, and such
commands as _jour-et-chaque!_ and _bosse et vilte!_ might still be
heard. While a sailor of Granville was already employing the word _clan_
for sheave-hold, one of St. Aubin or of St. Sampson still stuck to his
_canal de pouliot_. What was called _bout d'alonge_ (upper fultock) at
St. Malo, was _oreille d'âne_ at St. Helier. Mess Lethierry, as did the
Duke de Vibonne, called the sheer of the decks _la tonture_, and the
caulker's chisel _la patarasse_.
It was with this uncouth sea dialect in his mouth that Duquesne beat De
Ruyter, that Duguay Trouin defeated Wasnaer, and that Tourville, in
1681, poured a broadside into the first galley which bombarded Algiers.
It is now a dead language. The idiom of the sea is altogether different.
Duperré would not be able to understand Suffren.
The language of French naval signals is not less transformed; there is a
long distance between the four pennants, red, white, yellow, and blue,
of Labourdonnaye, and the eighteen flags of these days, which, hoisted
two and two, three and three, or four and four, furnish, for distant
communication, sixty-six thousand combinations, are never deficient,
and, so to speak, foresee the unforeseen.
IV
ONE IS VULNERABLE WHERE ONE LOVES
Mess Lethierry's heart and hand were always ready--a large heart and a
large hand. His failing was that admirable one, self-confidence. He had
a certain fashion of his own of undertaking to do a thing. It was a
solemn fashion. He said, "I give my word of honour to do it, with God's
help." That said, he went through with his duty. He put his faith in
God--nothing more. His rare churchgoing was merely formal. At sea he was
superstitious.
Nevertheless, the storm had never yet arisen which could daunt him. One
reason of this was his impatience of opposition. He could tolerate it
neither from the ocean nor anything else. He meant to have his way; so
much the worse for the sea if it thwarted him. It might try, if it
would, but Mess Lethierry would not give in. A refractory wave could no
more stop him than an angry neighbour. What he had said was said; what
he planned out was done. He bent neither before an objection nor before
the tempest. The word "no" had no existence for him, whether it was in
the mouth of a man or in the angry muttering of a thunder-cloud. In the
teeth of all he went on in his way. He would take no refusals. Hence his
obstinacy in life, and his intrepidity on the ocean.
He seasoned his simple meal of fish soup for himself, knowing the
quantities of pepper, salt, and herbs which it required, and was as well
pleased with the cooking as with the meal. To complete the sketch of
Lethierry's peculiarities, the reader must conjure a being to whom the
putting on of a surtout would amount to a transfiguration; whom a
landsman's greatcoat would convert into a strange animal; one who,
standing with his locks blown about by the wind, might have represented
old Jean Bart, but who, in the landsman's round hat, would have looked
an idiot; awkward in cities, wild and redoubtable at sea; a man with
broad shoulders, fit for a porter; one who indulged in no oaths, was
rarely in anger, whose voice had a soft accent, which became like
thunder in a speaking-trumpet; a peasant who had read something of the
philosophy of Diderot and D'Alembert; a Guernsey man who had seen the
great Revolution; a learned ignoramus, free from bigotry, but indulging
in visions, with more faith in the White Lady than in the Holy Virgin;
possessing the strength of Polyphemus, the perseverance of Columbus,
with a little of the bull in his nature, and a little of the child. Add
to these physical and mental peculiarities a somewhat flat nose, large
cheeks, a set of teeth still perfect, a face filled with wrinkles, and
which seemed to have been buffeted by the waves and subjected to the
beating of the winds of forty years, a brow in which the storm and
tempest were plainly written--an incarnation of a rock in the open sea.
Add to this, too, a good-tempered smile always ready to light up his
weather-beaten countenance, and you have before you Mess Lethierry.
Mess Lethierry had two special objects of affection only. Their names
were Durande and Déruchette.