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 shipshape 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 apologised 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 bit, 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
sympathised. 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 Madam’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.