A HABITANT VILLAGE AND ITS NOTAIRE
'Il trotte bien.'
The second time I made use of this simple compliment I was again
being driven by a French Canadian, and again it was on an
extraordinarily bad road. But the vehicle was a sulky, and the road
was a country road--about halfway between Quebec and Montreal. I had
been already two days in the Habitant country which the ordinary
Englishman misses. Tourists in particular will go through French
Canada too fast. Their first stop after Quebec is Montreal, and the
guide-books help them to believe that they have lost nothing. It may
be that they do lose nothing in the way of spectacular views or big
hotels, but on the other hand they have undoubtedly lost the peaceful
charm of many a Laurentian village, and they have seen nothing at all
of the life of the French-Canadian farmer. That is a pity for the
English tourist, because they too, {57} the Habitants, belong to the
Empire, and we ought to know them for what they are apart from their
politics--courteous, solid, essentially prudent folk, often well to
do, but with no disposition to make a show of themselves.
I had spent my two days at the villa of a most hospitable French
lady, in one of the older villages on the St. Lawrence. It was not
exactly a beautiful village--rather ramshackle in fact--but
remarkably peaceful, and the great smooth river running by must give
it a perennial charm, such as comes from having the sea near. I had
missed my train going from that village, and had passed the time by
taking lunch at a little inn near the station. It was Friday, and
the landlord gave me pike and eggs for lunch. I had seen my pike and
several others lying in a sandy ditch near, passing a sort of
amphibious life in it, until Friday and a guest should make it
necessary for one of them to go into the frying pan. The landlord
came and chatted with me while I had lunch, and was grieved to find
that I was not a Catholic. I was English, but not Catholic? I said
that was so, and he shook his head sorrowfully. But there were
Catholics in England, he asked a little later. I said, Oh yes,
certainly. Many? I said that there {58} must be a good many, but I
could not tell him the exact numbers. Would a tenth of the English
at least be Catholics, he next demanded? I said I thought at least
that number, but I left him, I fear, a disappointed man. He had
hoped more from England than that, and even my strenuous praise of
the fried pike did not draw a smile from him.
My compliment about the horse drawing the sulky--to go back to that
drive, obtained a better response. The driver replied in the French
tongue: 'Monsieur, he trots very well, particularly in considering
that he has the age of twenty-eight years.'
I said that this was wonderful, and the driver replied that it was,
but that in French Canada such wonders did happen. He was intensely
patriotic, and this made the drive more interesting. He was all for
French-Canadian things, excepting, I think, the roads, which were
indeed nothing but ruts, some of the ruts being less deep than the
others, and being selected accordingly for the greater convenience of
our ancient steed. I liked his patriotism. It was at once so
genuine and so complete. For example, when I said that I had not
seen any Jersey cows on the farms we had passed, the driver said:
'No. The {59} cow of Jersey is a good cow and gives much milk. But
the Canadian cow is a better cow and gives still more milk.' I was
unable to make out what the prevailing milch-cow was in that part.
Canada has, I believe, begun to swear by the Holstein, but this can
hardly as yet be claimed as the Canadian cow. Still it passed the
time very pleasantly to have my driver so enthusiastic, and of what
should a man speak well, if not of his own country? He articulated
his French very slowly and distinctly, so that I was able to
understand him more easily than I should have understood a European
Frenchman. I was surprised at this, because one is usually told that
French Canadians talk so queerly that they are very hard to follow.
Perhaps my obvious inferiority in the language caused those Habitants
I met to adapt themselves to my necessity. I can only say that from
a few days' experience of conversation with all sorts and conditions,
I carried away the impression that French-Canadian was a very clear
and easy language. As for the country, I should call it serene and
spacious in aspect rather than fine. The farmhouses are pleasant
enough and comfortable within, but their immediate surroundings are
apt to be untidy. Very seldom of course {60} does one see a flower
garden, and vegetables do not make amends for the lack of flowers.
On the other hand, the tobacco patch that is so frequently to be seen
in the neighbourhood of the small farms is pleasant to look at,
especially for one who thinks much of smoke. There is not much
satisfaction to the eye in the small wired fields, nor would either
the farming or the soil startle an English farmer. I think that the
maple woods are the one thing that he would regard with real envy.
Nevertheless, no one would have denied that it was a really pretty
village, to which my driver brought me at last in the sulky. It was
built all round an old church in a sort of dell, behind which the
land rose steeply to a wood of maples. I had been given an
introduction to the curé, and we drove to his house by the church,
only to be told by the sexton (I think it was the sexton) that
Monsieur le Curé had, much to his regret, been called to Quebec, but
had begged that I would go over to the notaire, who would be pleased
to show me everything that was to be seen. We went to the notaire.
I think he was the postmaster too--at any rate he lived in the post
office, and a very kindly old gentleman he was. I do not know one I
have liked more {61} on so short an acquaintance, though he did start
by giving me Canadian wine to drink. It was a sort of port or
sherry--or both mixed--and was made, I think he said, in Montreal.
It had the genuine oily taste, but also a smack of vinegar. That in
itself would not have mattered so much, if the notaire had not said
it was best drunk with a little water, and provided me with water
from a saline spring which had its source in his backyard. These
saline springs seem not uncommon in Canada, and must be considered as
a distinct asset. But not mixed with port. Some local tobacco which
was very good, as indeed much of the tobacco grown in Quebec province
seems to be, took the taste away, and after that the notaire proposed
that he should take me out to see one of the huts where they boil
down the maple water in the early spring. He told me that my own
horse and driver should rest, and that we should go on the carriage
of Monsieur Blanc which was, it appeared, already in waiting,
together with Monsieur Blanc himself. Monsieur Blanc was the local
miller, and solely for the purpose of showing the village to a
stranger from England he had put himself to all this trouble. After
we had all bowed to one another and exchanged {62} compliments, we
started for the maple wood, and all the way the notaire explained to
me the economy of the village. It appeared that the farms round
averaged eighty acres of arable land, and a man and his son would
work one of that size. Each farmer would also have rights of grazing
on pasture land which was held in common--not to mention his piece of
maple wood. All the farmers belonged to a co-operative farmers'
society, which saved much when purchasing seeds, implements, and so
forth. The notaire himself was secretary of this society. I believe
he was also secretary of pretty well everything that mattered, and
might be regarded as the business uncle of the parish in which the
curé was spiritual father. As we drove along, avoiding roads as much
as possible, because the fields were so much more level, he greeted
everybody and everybody greeted him, stopping their field work for
the purpose. Jules left hay-making to show us the shortest cut to
the nearest hut; Antoine fetched the key. It was a tiny wooden
shack, the one we inspected--standing in the middle of the
trees--with just room in it for the heating apparatus and the boilers
to boil the maple water in. The cups which are attached to the trees
in the early spring, when {63} the sap begins to run--the tapping is
done high up--hung along the wooden walls. The notaire explained the
whole process to me. In the spring, when all is sleet and slush and
nothing can be done on the farm, the farmer and perhaps his wife come
up into the wood, and tap the trees and boil the water up until the
syrup is formed. It takes them days, very cold days, and they camp
out in the hut, though it hardly seemed possible that there should be
room for them. But it is all very healthy and pleasant, and they
drink so much of the syrup, while they are working, that they usually
go back to their farms very 'fat and salubrious.' So the notaire
said, and he also assured me that seven years before another English
visitor who spoke French very badly (he put it much more politely
than that though) had come to the village in the spring, and slept in
one of the huts for days, and helped make the sugar and enjoyed
himself thoroughly. I told the notaire I could quite believe it and
wished I had come in the spring too. I am not sure that I shall not
go back in the spring some day, for the simplicity of the place was
fascinating, even though the railway had come closer, and land had
doubled in value, and the farmers were more scientific than they used
to {64} be and made more money, though even so--as the notaire
earnestly declared--they would would never spend it on show. I
remarked that the notaire, even while he was recounting these modern
innovations, such as wealth, was not carried away by the glory of
them as a Westerner would be. He took a simple pride in the fact
that the village marched forward, but he was prouder still that it
remained modest. And when we got back to the post office, he told me
that what he liked best was the simplicity of it all. People used to
ask him sometimes why he who spoke English and Latin and Greek, for
he had been five years at college, qualifying to become a notaire,
should be content to live in such a small out-of-the-way place,
instead of setting up in Quebec or Montreal. They could not
understand that to be one's own master, and not to be rushed hither
and thither at the beck of clients, contented him, especially in a
place where the farmers looked upon him as their friend, and he could
play the organ in the village church. He made me understand it very
well, even though his English was rusty (for I think the syrup-making
Englishman had been the last he had talked with), and he had a
scholarly dislike to using any but the {65} right word, and he would
sometimes bring up a dozen wrong ones and reject them, before our
united efforts found the only one that conveyed his precise meaning.
I think I understood, and many times on the way back, seated behind
the twenty-eight year-old horse, I said to myself, that altogether
the notaire was a very fine old gentleman, and if there were many
such to be found in the French Canadian villages, I hoped they would
not change too soon. To make the money circulate--after the fashion
of the Toronto drummer--is a virtue no doubt; but courtesy and
simplicity and prudence are also virtues that not the greatest
country that is yet to come will find itself able to dispense with.
{66}