old Norman town of Rouen, where everybody goes who goes to Paris, but
where few stop for a look at what in many respects is most curious to
see in all France? The broad, active quays, and the elegant modern
buildings upon them, and the bridges, and the river with its barges and
steamers, are, it is true, worth the seeing, and exposed to the eye of
every passer, and give one the idea of a new and enterprising city. But
back from this is another city--the old city--infinitely more worthy of
attention.
Out of its midst rises the corkscrew iron tower of the Cathedral, under
which sleeps Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy; and if one have the
courage to mount to the dizzy summit of that corkscrew winding tower of
iron, he will see such a labyrinth of ways, shut in by such confusion
of gables, and such steep, sharp roofs, glittering with so many colored
tiles, as that he will seem to dream a dream of the olden time.
And if he have an agricultural eye, it will wander delightedly over
the broad, rich plains that there border the Seine, rich in all manner
of corn-land and in orchards. And if he have an historic eye, it
will single out an old castle or two that show themselves upon the
neighboring hills; and the ruins, and the Seine, and the valley, and
the town will group together in his imagination, and he will bear away
the picture in his mind to his Western home in the wilderness; and it
shall serve him as an illustration--a living illustration--to the old
chronicles of wars, whether of Monstrelet, or Turner, or Anquetil, or
Michelet, down through all the time of his thinking life. So, when he
readeth of Norman plain blasted with battle, and knightly helmets
glittering in the crash of war, he shall have a scene,--a scene lying
clear as mid-day under the eye of steady memory,--in the which he may
plant his visions of Joan of Arc, or of stout Henry V., or of drivelling
Charles VI., or of _Jean sans peur_; for these--all of them, he
knows--have trodden the valley of Rouen.
Whoever may have seen English Worcester or Gloucester will have a
foretaste of what comes under the eye at Rouen; but to one fresh from
the new, straight thoroughfares of America nothing surely can seem
stranger than the dark, crowded ways of the capital of Normandy.
How narrow, how dirty, how cool! for even in summer the sun cannot come
down in them--for the projecting balconies and the tallness of the
houses; and between the fountains in the occasional open places and the
incessant washings it is never dry. There is no pavement for the
foot-goer but the sharp, round stones sticking up from side to side,
and sloping down to the sluice-way in the middle. Donkeys with loads of
cabbages, that nearly fill up the way, women with baskets on their
heads, and staring strangers, and _gendarmerie_ in their cocked hats,
marching two by two, and soldiers, and school-boys (not common in
France), and anxious-faced merchants (still rarer out of the North), all
troop together under gables, that would seem to totter were they not of
huge oak beams, whose blackened heads peep out from the brick walls like
faces of an age gone by.
What quaint carving! what heavy old tiles, when you catch a glimpse of
the peaked roofs! what windings and twists! There are well-filled and
sometimes elegant shops below, with story on story reeling above them.
Away through an opening, that is only a streak of light at the end,
appears the ugly brown statue of the Maid of Orleans. There she was
burned, poor girl!--and the valet, if you have the little English boy of
the Hotel de Rouen, will tell you how, and when, and why they burned
her; and he will ring the bell at the gate of a strange, old house close
by, and beckon you into the court, where you will see around the walls
the bas-reliefs of the Cloth of Gold. St. Owens too, which, after
Strasburg Cathedral, is the noblest Gothic church in France, is in some
corner of the never-ending curious streets. And on a fete day, what
store of costume on its pavement! What big, white muslin caps,--flaring
to left and right! What show of red petticoats, and steeple-crowned
hats, and clumping sabots, and short-waisted boys, and little, brown men
of Brittany!...
Many--many dull diligence--days lie between Rouen and the sunny southern
town of Nismes; yet with the wishing we were there at once.
Where was born Guizot,--where are Protestant people,--where are almost
quiet Sundays,--where there is a Roman Coliseum, dropped in the centre
of the town,--there are we. On a December day, when I was there, it was
as warm and summer-like,--the sunny side of that old ruin,--and the
green things peeped out from the wall as fresh and blossoming, as if
Merrie May had commenced her time of flowers. And the birds were
chattering out of all the corridors, and the brown stone looked as
mellow as a russet apple in the glow of that rich southern atmosphere.
The trees along the Boulevard--running here through the town--wore a
spring-like air (there must have been olives or evergreen oaks among
them), and though I cannot say if the peach-trees were in bloom, yet I
know I picked a bright red rose in the garden by the fountain,--the
great Roman fountain which supplies the whole town with water,--and it
lies pressed for a witness in my journal yet. And there were a hundred
other roses in bloom all around,--and a little girl was passing through
the garden at the time, with one in her hair, and was playing with
another in her hand. And the old soldier who limps, and lives in the
little cottage at the gate of the garden, as patrol, was sunning himself
on the bench by the door; and a canary-bird that hung over it was
singing as blithely in his cage as the sparrows had been singing in the
ruin.
And what was there in that charming garden spot of Nismes, with its wide
walks and shade of trees, and fresh with the sound of running water and
the music of birds? There was an old temple of Diana, and fountain of
the Nymphs. Both were embowered in trees at the foot of the hill which
lords it over the town.
The fountain rises almost a river, and alone supplies a city of forty
thousand inhabitants. The guide-books will tell one that it is some
fifty or sixty feet in depth, and surrounded with walls of masonry,--now
green with moss and clinging herbs; and from this, its source, it
passes in a gushing flood over the marble floors of old Roman baths, as
smooth and exact now as the day on which they were laid. The old soldier
will conduct you down and open the door-way, so that you may tread upon
the smooth marble where trod the little feet of the unknown Roman girls.
For none know when the baths were built, or when this temple of Diana
was founded. Not even of the great arena, remarkable in many respects as
the Roman Coliseum, is there the slightest classic record. Nothing but
its own gigantic masonry tells of its origin.
Upon the top of the hill, from whose foot flows the fountain, is still
another ruin,--a high, cumbrous tower. And as I wandered under it, full
of classic fervor, and looked up,--with ancient Rome in my eye, and the
gold AEgis, and the banner of triumph,--behold, an old woman with a red
handkerchief tied round her head was spreading a blue petticoat over the
edge of the tower to dry.
But from the ground beneath was a rich view over the town and valley.
The hill and the garden at its base were cloaked with the deep black
green of pines and firs; beyond was the town, just veiled in the light
smoke of the morning fires; here peeped through a steeple, there a
heavy old tower, and looming with its hundred arches and circumference
of broken rocks--bigger than them all--was the amphitheatre of the
Latin people, whose language and monuments alone remain. Beside the
city--through an atmosphere clear as a morning on the valley of the
Connecticut--were the stiff velvety tops of the olive-orchards and the
long brown lines of vineyards;--away the meadows swept, with here and
there over the level reach an old gray town, with tall presiding castle,
or a glittering strip of the bright branches of the Rhone.
But not only is there pleasant December sun and sunny landscape in and
about the Provencal town of Nismes, there are also pleasant streets and
walks; there is a beautiful Roman temple,--_La Maison Carree_,--than
which there is scarce a more perfect one through all Italy, among the
neat white houses of the city. Within it are abundance of curiosities,
for such as are curious about dates and inscriptions that cannot be made
out; and there are Roman portals still left in the vestiges of the Roman
walls....
There is the Grand Theatre for such as wish a stall for a month; and
there is the grander theatre of the old Roman Arene. True, the manager
is dead, and the actors are but bats and lizards, with now and then a
grum old owl for prompter. But what scenes the arched openings blackened
by the fires of barbarians, and the stunted trees growing where Roman
ladies sat, paint to the eye of fancy! What an orchestra the birds make
at twilight, and the recollections make always!
It was better than Norma, it was richer than Robert le Diable, to sit
down on one of the fragments in front of where was the great entrance
and look through the iron grating, and follow the perspective of
corridors opening into the central arena, where the moonlight shone
on a still December night,--glimmering over the ranges of the seats and
upon the shaking leaves. And there was a rustle, a gentle sighing of
the night wind among the crevices, that one could easily believe was the
echo of a distant chorus behind the scenes:--and so it was,--a chorus of
Great Dead Ones,--mournful and slow,--listened to by no flesh ear, but
by the delicate ear of Memory.
There are rides about Nismes. There is Avignon with its brown ramparts
and its gigantic Papal towers bundling up from the banks of the Rhone,
only a half-day's ride away; and half a day more will put one down at
the fountain of Vaucluse; where, if it be summer-time,--and it is
summer-time there three-quarters of the year,--you may sit down under
the shade of a fig-tree, or a fir, and read--undisturbed save by the
dashing of the water under the cliff--the fourteenth Canzonet of
Petrarch....
Coming back at nightfall, [the traveller] will have a mind to hunt
through the narrow, dim-lighted streets of Avignon in search of the tomb
of Laura, and he will find it embowered with laurels and shut up by a
thorn hedge and wicket; and to get within this, he will ring the bell of
the heavy, sombre-looking mansion close by, when a shuffling old man
with keys will come out and do the honors of the tomb. He will take a
franc,--not absolutely disdainfully, but with a world of _sang-froid_,
since it is not for himself (he says) but for the poor children within
the mansion, which is a foundling hospital. He puts the money in his red
waistcoat-pocket, suiting to the action a sigh, "_Mes pauvres enfans!_"
Perhaps you will add in the overflowing of your heart, "Poor children!"
As you go out of the garden, a box at the gate, which had escaped your
notice, solicits offerings in behalf of the institution from strangers
visiting the tomb. The box has a lock and key; the old man does not keep
the key. You have a sudden suspicion of his red waistcoat-pocket, and
sigh as you go out, _Les pauvres enfans!_
_Pont du Gard_ is the finest existing remain of a Roman aqueduct, and
spans a quite deep stream, good for either fishing or bathing. Profusion
of wild flowers grow about and over it, and fig-trees and brambles make
a thicket together on the slope that goes down to the water.
One may walk over the top of the ruin--two yards wide, without parapet
or rail--and look over into the depth three hundred feet below. The
nerves must be strong to endure it, then the enjoyment is full. Less
than half a day's ride will bring one from the Pont du Gard to the
Hotel du Luxembourg of Nismes.
Montpellier is in Provence, the city of summer-like winters, and upon
the river is Arles, with its Arena, larger even than that of Nismes, but
far less perfect; and its pretty women--famous all over France--wear a
mischievous look about them, and the tie of their red turbans, as if
coquetry were one of their charms.
It is a strange, mixed-up town, that of Arles,--ruins and dirt and
narrowness and grandeur, an old church in whose yard they dig up Roman
coffins, and a rolling bridge of boats. Not anywhere in France are there
dirtier and more crooked streets, not anywhere such motley array of
shops amid the filth, red turbans and meat, bread and blocks, old coins
and silks. Within the museum itself are collected more odd scraps of
antiquity than can be found elsewhere together; there are lead pipes
and stone fountains, old inscriptions and iron spikes, and the noblest
monument of all is a female head that has no nose; but the manager very
ingeniously supplies with his hand the missing feature.
Opposite the doors of this museum stands an obelisk of granite, which
was fished out of the Rhone, and boasts a high antiquity, and upon its
top is a brilliant sun with staring eyes. To complete the extraordinary
grouping, upon another side of the same square is a church with the
strangest bas-relief over its central door-way that surely madcap fancy
ever devised. It is a representation of the Last Judgment; on the right,
the angels are leading away the blessed in pairs, and on the left a
grinning devil with horns, and with a stout rope passed over his
shoulder and clinched in his teeth, is tugging away at legions of
condemned souls.
There is rare Gothic sculpture within some old cloisters adjoining, and
a marble bas-relief within the church, with a Virgin and Child in glory,
was--I say it on the authority of an ingenious _valet de place_--of
undoubtedly Roman origin.
Ancient sarcophagi may be seen here and there in the streets, serving as
reservoirs at the fountains; and many a peasant of the adjoining country
makes the coffin of a Roman noble his water-trough.
There belongs another antiquity to Provence besides that of Roman
date,--it is that of the gay, chivalrous times of William IX., Count of
Poitou, and all the gallant Troubadours who came after him. Then helmets
glittered over the Provencal plains, and ladies wove silken pennants in
princely halls. Then the tournament drew its throngs, and knights
contended not only with their lances for martial fame but with their
songs for the ears of love. Even monarchs--Barbarossa and Coeur de
Lion--vied with Troubadours, and the seat of the Provencal court was the
great centre of Southern chivalry. Arles had its court of love, more
splendid than now, and its _arret d'amour_ was more binding than the
charms of the brightest eyes that shine in Provence to-day.
Little remains of the luxurious tastes of the old livers at Arles. The
cafe, dirty and dim, assembles the chivalry of the city, and a stranger
Western knight, in place of baronial hall, is entertained at the Hotel
du Forum, where, with excess of cheatery, they give him for St. Peray a
weak, carbonated Moselle.
Let no one judge of the flat sand surface of Provence by the rich
descriptions of the Mysteries of Udolfo, nor let the lover of ballad
poetry reckon upon the peasant _patois_ as having the sweet flow of
Raymond or Bertrand de Born.
A FRENCH FARMER'S PARADISE.
M. BETHAM-EDWARDS.
[So many woful stories are told us of the penury and strife for
bare existence of the agriculturists of Europe that it is
pleasant to read of happier scenes and more plentiful larders.
M. Betham-Edwards, than whom few are better able to speak of the
conditions of life in rural France, has drawn for us, in her
"Holidays in Eastern France," a cheerful picture of such a
scene, which we take pleasure in reproducing. We are here taken
out of the beaten track of ordinary travel into "fresh scenes
and pastures new."]
How delicious to escape from the fever, heat, and turmoil of Paris
during the Exhibition to the green banks and sheltered ways of the
gently undulating Marne! With what delight we wake up in the morning to
the noise--if noise it can be called--of the mower's scythe, the rustle
of acacia-leaves, and the notes of the stock-dove, looking back as upon
a nightmare to the horn of the tramway conductor and the perpetual grind
of the stonemason's saw! Yes, to quit Paris at a time of tropic heat,
and nestle down in some country resort, is, indeed, like exchanging
Dante's lower circle for Paradise. The heat has followed us here; but
with a screen of luxuriant foliage ever between us and the burning blue
sky, and with a breeze rippling the leaves always, no one need complain.
With the cocks and the hens, and the birds and the bees, we are all up
and stirring betimes; there are dozens of cool nooks and corners, if we
like to spend the morning out of doors, and do not feel enterprising
enough to set out on an exploring expedition by diligence or rail. After
the mid-day meal every one takes a siesta, as a matter of course, waking
up between four and five o'clock for a ramble. Wherever we go we find
lovely prospects. Quiet little rivers and canals, winding in between
lofty lines of poplars, undulating pastures, and amber cornfields;
picturesque villages, crowned by a church spire here and there; wide
sweeps of highly cultivated land, interspersed with rich woods,
vineyards, orchards, and gardens; all these make up the scenery
familiarized to us by some of the most characteristic of French
painters.
Just such tranquil rural pictures have been portrayed over and over
again by Millet, Corot, Daubigny; and in this very simplicity often lies
their charm. No costume or grandiose outline is here, as in Brittany; no
picturesque poverty, no poetic archaisms; all is rustic and pastoral,
but with the rusticity and pastoralness of every day.
We are in the midst of one of the wealthiest and best cultivated regions
of France, moreover, and, when we penetrate beneath the surface, we find
that in manner and customs, as well as dress and outward appearance, the
peasant and agricultural population generally differ no little from
their remote country-people, the Bretons. In this famous cheese-making
country, the "Fromage de Brie" being the specialty of these rich
dairy-farms, there is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and
little that can be called poetic. The people are wealthy, laborious, and
progressive. The farmers' wives, however hard they may work at home,
wear the smartest of Parisian bonnets and gowns when paying visits. I
was going to say, when at church, but nobody does go there!
It is a significant fact that in the fairly well-to-do educated
district, where newspapers are read by the poorest, where well-being is
the rule, poverty the exception, the church is empty on Sunday, and the
priest's authority is _nil_. The priests may preach against abstinence
from church in the pulpits, and may lecture their congregation in
private; no effect is thereby produced. Church-going has become out of
date among the manufacturers of Brie cheese. They amuse themselves on
Sundays by taking walks with their children, the _pater-familias_ bathes
in the river, the ladies put on their gala dresses and pay visits, but
they omit their devotions.
Some of these tenant-farmers--many of the farms being hired on lease,
possessors of small farms hiring more land--are very rich, and one of
our neighbors whose wealth has been made by the manufacture of Brie
cheese lately gave his daughter one hundred thousand francs as a dowry.
The wedding-breakfast took place at the Grand Hotel, Paris, and a
hundred guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous collation. But in
spite of fine clothes and large dowries, farmers' wives and daughters
still attend to the dairies, and when they cease to do so doubtless
farming in Seine et Marne will no longer be the prosperous business we
find it. It is delightful to witness the wide-spread well-being of this
highly-farmed region.
"There is no poverty here," my host tells me, "and this is why life is
so pleasant."
True enough, wherever you go you find well-dressed, contented-looking
people; no rags, no squalor, no pinched want. Poverty is an accident of
rare occurrence, and not a normal condition, every one being able to get
plenty of work and good pay. The habitual look of content written upon
every face is very striking. It seems as if in this land of Goshen life
were no burden, but matter of satisfaction only, if not of thankfulness.
Class distinction can hardly be said to exist; there are employers and
employed, masters and servants, of course, but the line of demarcation
is lightly drawn, and we find an easy familiarity wholly free from
impoliteness, much less vulgarity, existing between them.
The automatic demureness characterizing English servants in the presence
of their employers is wholly unknown here. There are households with us
where the servants might all be mutes for any signs of animation they
give, but here they take part in what is going on, and exchange a word
and smile with every member of the household, never dreaming that it
should be otherwise. One is struck, too, here by the good looks,
intelligence, and trim appearance of the children, who, it is plain,
are well cared for. The houses have vines and sweet peas on the walls,
flowers in the windows, and altogether a look of comfort and ease found
nowhere in Western France. The Breton villages are composed of mere
hovels, where pigs, cows, and poultry live in close proximity to their
owners, a dung-hill stands before every front door, and, to get in-doors
and out, you have always to cross a pool of liquid manure. Here order
and cleanliness prevail, with a diffusion of well-being hardly, I should
say, to be matched out of America.
Travellers who visit France again and again, as much out of sympathy
with its people's institutions as from a desire to see its monuments and
outward features, will find ample to reward them in Seine et Marne. On
every side we have evidence of the tremendous natural resources and
indefatigable laboriousness of the people. There is one point here, as
elsewhere in France, which strikes an agriculturist with astonishment,
and that is the abundance of trees standing amid cornfields and
miscellaneous crops, also the interminable plantation of poplars that
can be seen on every side, apparently without any object. But the truth
is, the planting of apple- and pear-trees in fields is no extravagance,
rather an economy, the fruit they produce exceeding in value the corn
they damage, whilst the puzzling line of poplars growing beside canals
and rivers is the work of the government, every spare bit of ground
belonging to the state being planted with them for the sake of the
timber. The crops are splendid, partly owing to the soil, and partly to
the advanced system of agriculture. You may see exposed for sale, in
little towns, the newest American agricultural implements, while the
great diversity of products speaks volumes for the enterprise of the
farmers.
As you stroll along, now climbing, now descending this pleasantly
undulated country, you may see growing in less than an acre, a patch of
potatoes here, a vineyard there, on one side a bit of wheat, oats, rye,
and barley, with fruit-trees casting abundant shadow over all; on the
other Indian-corn, clover, and mangel-wurzel in the green state,
recently planted for autumn fodder; farther on a poppy-field, three
weeks ago in full flower, now having full pods ready for gathering,--the
opium poppy being cultivated for commerce here. All those and many more
are found close together, and near them many a lovely little glen,
copse, and ravine, recalling Scotland and Wales, while the open
hill-sides show broad belts of pasture, corn, and vineyard. You may walk
for miles through what seems one vast orchard, only, instead of turf,
rich crops are growing under the trees. This is indeed the orchard of
France, on which we English folk largely depend for our summer fruits. A
few days ago the black-currant-trees were being stripped for the benefit
of Parisian lovers of _cassis_, a liqueur in high repute.