June 20, 1914.
I have just received your letter--the last, you say, that you can send
before you sail away again for "The Land of the Free and the Home of the
Brave," where you still seem to feel that it is my duty to return to
die. I vow I will not discuss that with you again. Poverty is an
unpretty thing, and poverty plus old age simply horrid in the wonderful
land which saw my birth, and to which I take off my sun-bonnet in
reverent admiration, in much the same spirit that the peasants still
uncover before a shrine. But it is the land of the young, the
energetic, and the ambitious, the ideal home of the very rich and the
laboring classes. I am none of those--hence here I stay. I turn my
eyes to the west often with a queer sort of amazed pride. If I were a
foreigner--of any race but French--I 'd work my passage out there in an
emigrant ship. As it is, I did forty-five years of hard labor there,
and I consider that I earned the freedom to die where I please.
I can see in "my mind's eye" the glitter in yours as you wrote--and
underscored--I'll wager you spend half your days in writing letters back
to the land you have willfully deserted. As well have stayed among us
and talked--and you talk so much better than you write. "Tut! tut! That
is nasty." Of course I do not deny that I shall miss the inspiration of
your contradictions--or do you call it repartee? I scorn your arguments,
and I hereby swear that you shall not worry another remonstrance from
me.
You ask me how it happens that I wandered in this direction, into a part
of the country about which you do not remember to have ever heard me
talk, when there were so many places that would have seemed to you to be
more interesting. Well, this is more interesting than you think. You
must not fancy that a place is not interesting because you can't find it
in Hare, and because Henry James never talked about it. That was
James's misfortune and not his fault.
The truth is I did look in many more familiar directions before
fortunate accident led me here. I had an idea that I wanted to live on
the heights of Montmorency, in the Jean Jacques Rousseau country. But
it was terribly expensive--too near to Enghien and its Casino and
baccarat tables. Then I came near to taking a house near Viroflay,
within walking distance of Versailles. But at the very mention of that
all my French friends simply howled. "It was too near to Paris"; "it
was the chosen route of the Apaches"; and so on and so forth. I did not
so much care for the situation. It was too familiar, and it was not
really country, it was only suburbs. But the house attracted me. It
was old and quaint, and the garden was pretty, and it was high. Still
it was too expensive. After that I found a house well within my means
at Poigny, about an hour, by diligence, from Rambouillet. That did
attract me. It was real country, but it had no view and the house was
very small. Still I had got so tired of hunting that I was actually on
the point of taking it when one of my friends accidentally found this
place. If it had been made to order it could not have suited me
better--situation, age, price, all just to my taste. I put over a year
and a half into the search. Did I keep it to myself well?
Besides, the country here had a certain novelty to me. I know the
country on the other side of the Petit Morin, but all this is new to me
except Meaux. At first the house did not look habitable to me. It was
easily made so, however, and it has great possibilities, which will keep
me busy for years.
Although you do not know this part of the country, it has, for me, every
sort of attraction--historical as well as picturesque. Its historical
interest is rather for the student than the tourist, and I love it none
the less for that.
If ever you relent and come to see me, I can take you for some lovely
walks. I can, on a Sunday afternoon, in good weather, even take you to
the theater--what is more, to the theater to see the players of the
Comedie Francaise. It is only half an hour's walk from my house to
Pont-aux-Dames, where Coquelin set up his maison de retraite for aged
actors, and where he died and is buried. In the old park, where the du
Barry used to walk in the days when Louis XVI clapped her in prison on a
warrant wrung from the dying old king, her royal lover, there is an
open-air theater, and there, on Sundays, the actors of the Theatre
Francais play, within sight of the tomb of the founder of the retreat,
under the very trees--and they are stately and noble--where the du Barry
walked.
Of course I shall only take you there if you insist. I have outgrown
the playhouse. I fancy that I am much more likely to sit out on the
lawn and preach to you on how the theater has missed its mission than I
am--unless you insist--to take you down to the hill to listen to Moliere
or Racine.
If, however, that bores you,--it would me,--you can sit under the trees
and close your eyes while I give you a Stoddard lecture without the
slides. I shall tell you about the little walled town of Crecy, still
surrounded by its moat, where the tiny little houses stand in gardens
with their backs on the moat, each with its tiny footbridge, that pulls
up, just to remind you that it was once a royal city, with drawbridge
and portcullis, a city in which kings used to stay, and in which Jeanne
d'Arc slept one night on her way back from crowning her king at Rheims:
a city that once boasted ninety-nine towers. Half a dozen of these
towers still stand. Their thick walls are now pierced with windows, in
which muslin curtains blow in the wind, to say that to-day they are the
humble homes of simple people, and to remind you of what warfare was in
the days when such towers were a defense. Why, the very garden in which
you will be sitting when I tell you this was once a part of the royal
estate, and the last Lord of the Land was the Duke de Penthievre. I
thought that fact rather amusing when I found it out, considering that
the house I came so near to taking at Poigny was on the Rambouillet
estate where his father, the Duke de Toulouse, one of Louis XIV's
illegitimate sons, died, where the Duke de Penthievre was born, and
where he buried his naughty son, the Duke de Lamballe.
Of course, while I am telling you things like this you will have to
bring your imagination into play, as very few vestiges of the old days
remain. I still get just as much fun out of Il y avait une fois, even
when the "once on a time" can only be conjured up with closed eyes.
Still, I can show you some dear little old chapels, and while I am
telling you about it you will probably hear the far-off, sad tolling of
a bell, and I shall say to you "Ca sonne a Bouleurs." It will be the
church bells at Bouleurs, a tiny, tree-shaded hamlet, on another
hilltop, from which, owing to its situation, the bells, which rarely
ring save for a funeral, can be heard at a great distance, as they have
rung over the valley for years. They sound so sad in the still air that
the expression, Ca sonne a Bouleurs, has come to mean bad luck. In all
the towns where the bell can be heard, a man who is having bad luck at
cards, or has made a bad bargain, or has been tricked in any way,
invariably remarks, "Ca sonne a Bouleurs."
I could show you something more modern in the way of historical
association. For example, from the road at the south side of my hill I
can show you the Chateau de la Haute Maison, with its mansard and Louis
XVI pavilions, where Bismarck and Favre had their first unsuccessful
meeting, when this hill was occupied by the Germans in 1870 during the
siege of Paris. And fifteen minutes' walk from here is the pretty
Chateau de Conde, which was then the home of Casimir-Perier, and if you
do not remember him as the President of the Republic who resigned rather
than face the Dreyfus case, you may remember him as the father-in-law of
Madame Simone, who unsuccessfully stormed the American theater, two
years ago.
You ask me how isolated I am. Well, I am, and I am not. My house
stands in the middle of my garden. That is a certain sort of isolation.
There is a house on the opposite side of the road, much nearer than I
wish it were. Luckily it is rarely occupied. Still, when it is, it is
over-occupied. At the foot of the hill--perhaps five hundred yards
away--are the tiny hamlet of Joncheroy and the little village of
Voisins. Just above me is the hamlet of Huiry--half a dozen houses.
You see that is not sad. So cheer up. So far as I know the commune has
no criminal record, and I am not on the route of tramps. Remember,
please, that, in those last winters in Paris, I did not prove immune to
contagions. There is nothing for me to catch up here--unless it be the
gayety with which the air is saturated.
You ask me also how it happens that I am living again "near by Quincy?"
As true as you live, I never thought of the coincidence. If you please,
we pronounce it "Kansee." When I read your question I laughed. I
remembered that Abelard, when he was first condemned, retired to the
Hermitage of Quincy, but when I took down Larousse to look it up, what
do you think I found? Simply this and nothing more: "Quincy: Ville des
Etats-Unis (Massachusetts), 28,000 habitants."
Isn't that droll? However, I know that there was a Sire de Quincy
centuries ago, so I will look him up and let you know what I find.
The morning paper--always late here--brings the startling news of the
assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria. What an unlucky family
that has been! Franz Josef must be a tough old gentleman to have stood
up against so many shocks. I used to feel so sorry for him when Fate
dealt him another blow that would have been a "knock-out" for most
people. But he has stood so many, and outlived happier people, that I
begin to believe that if the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, the
hides, or the hearts, of some people are toughened to stand the gales of
Fate.
Well, I imagine that Austria will not grieve much--though she may be
mad--over the loss of a none too popular crown prince, whose morganatic
wife could never be crowned, whose children cannot inherit, and who
could only have kept the throne warm for a while for the man who now
steps into line a little sooner than he would have had this not
happened. If a man will be a crown prince in these times he must take
the consequences. We do get hard-hearted, and no mistake, when it is
not in our family that the lightning strikes. The "Paths of Glory lead
but to the grave," so what matters it, really, out by what door one
goes?
This will reach you soon after you arrive in the great city of tall
buildings. More will follow, and I expect they will be so gay that you
will rejoice to have even a postal tie with La Belle France, to which,
if you are a real good American, you will come back when you die--if you
do not before.