with Browning's equally oracular "The Statue and the Bust," fable and
poem forming a compendium.
THE FLIGHTY PURPOSE
(LE PAYSAN AND LA RIVIERE).
"I now intend to change my ways"--
Thus Juan said--"No more for me
A round on round of idle days
'Mid soul-debasing company.
I've pleasure woo'd from year to year
As by a siren onward lured,
At last of roystering, once held dear,
I'm as a man of sickness cured."
"Unto the world I bid farewell,
My mind to retrospection give,
Remote as hermit in his cell,
For wisdom and wise friends I'll live."
"Is Thursday's worldling, Friday's sage?
Too good such news," I bantering spoke.
"How oft you've vowed to turn the page,
Each promise vanishing like smoke!"
"And when the start?" "Next week--not this."
"Ah, you but play with words again."
"Nay, do not doubt me; hard it is
To break at once a life-long chain."
Came we unto the riverside,
Where motionless a rustic sate,
His gaze fixed on the flowing tide.
"Ho, mate, why thus so still and squat?"
"Good sirs, bound to yon town am I;
No bridge anear, I sit and sit
Until these waters have run dry,
So that afoot I get to it."
"A living parable behold,
My friend!" quoth I. "Upon the brim
You, too, will gaze until you're old,
But never boldly take a swim!"
As far as I know, no memorial has as yet been raised to the fabulist
either at Quissac or at Sauve, but as long as the French language lasts
successive generations will keep his memory green. Certain of his fables
every little scholar knows by heart.
Associations of other kinds are come upon by travellers bound from
Quissac to Le Vigan, that charming little centre of silkworm rearing
described by me elsewhere. A few miles from our village lies Ganges, a
name for ever famous in the annals of political economy and progress.
"From Ganges", wrote the great Suffolk farmer in July 1787, "to the
mountain of rough ground which I crossed" (in the direction of
Montdardier), "the ride has been the most interesting which I have
taken in France; the efforts of industry the most vigorous, the
animation the most lively. An activity has been here that has swept away
all difficulties before it and clothed the very rocks with verdure. It
would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause; the enjoyment of
property must have done it. _Give a man the sure possession of a bleak
rock, and he will turn it into a garden_." The italics are my own. When
will Arthur Young have his tablet in Westminster Abbey, I wonder?
The department of the Gard offers an anomaly of the greatest historic
interest. Here and here only throughout the length and breadth of France
villages are found without a Catholic church, communities that have held
fast to Protestantism and the right of private judgment from generation
to generation during hundreds of years. Elsewhere, in the Côte d'Or, for
instance, as I have described in a former work, Protestantism was
completely stamped out by the Revocation, whole villages are now
ultramontane, having abjured, the alternatives placed before them being
confiscation of property, separation of children and parents,
banishment, prison and death.
[Footnote: See _Friendly Faces_, chap. xvi.]
The supremacy of the reformed faith may be gathered from the following
facts: A few years back, of the six deputies representing this
department five were Protestant and the sixth was a Jew. The _Conseil
Général_ or provincial council numbered twenty-three Protestants as
against seventeen Catholics. The seven members of the Board of Hospitals
at Nîmes, three of the four inspectors of public health, nine of the
twelve head-mistresses of girls' schools, twenty-nine of forty rural
magistrates, were Protestants.
My host belonged to the same faith, as indeed do most of his class and
the great captains of local industry. It is not as in Michelet's
fondly-loved St. Georges de Didonne, where only the lowly and the toiler
have kept the faith aflame.
But whilst neighbours now live peacefully side by side, a gulf still
divides Catholic and Protestant. Although half a millennium has elapsed
since the greatest crime of modern history, the two bodies remain apart:
French _annexés_ of Alsace-Lorraine and Germans are not more completely
divided. Mixed marriages are of rarest occurrence, intercourse limited
to the conventional and the obligatory. There are historic curses that
defy lustration. St. Bartholomew is one of these. I must now say
something about the country-folks. Calls upon our rustic neighbours,
long chats with affable housewives, and rounds of farmery, vineyard and
field attracted me more than the magnificent panoramas to be obtained
from Corconne and other villages within an easy drive.
George Sand has ever been regarded as a poetizer of rural life, an
arch-idealist of her humbler country-folks. At Quissac I made more than
one acquaintance that might have stepped out of _La petite Fadette_ or
_La mare au Diable_.
One old woman might have been "la paisible amie," the tranquil friend,
to whom the novelist dedicated a novel. Neat, contented, active and
self-respecting, she enjoyed a life-interest in two acres and a cottage,
her live stock consisting of a goat, a pig and poultry, her invested
capital government stock representing a hundred pounds. Meagre as may
seem these resources, she was by no means to be pitied or inclined to
pity herself, earning a few francs here and there by charing, selling
her little crops, what eggs and chickens she could spare, above all
things being perfectly independent.
A charming idyll the great Sand could have found here. The owner of a
thirty-acre farm had lately died, leaving it with all he possessed to
two adopted children, a young married couple who for years had acted
respectively as steward and housekeeper. We are bound to infer that on
the one hand there had been affection and gratitude, on the other the
same qualities with conscientiousness in business matters. The
foster-father was childless and a widower, but, among the humble as well
as the rich French, ambition of posthumous remembrance often actuates
impersonal bequests. This worthy Jacques Bonhomme might have made an
heir of his native village, leaving money for a new school-house or some
other public edifice. Very frequently towns and even villages become
legatees of the childless, and the worthy man would have been quite sure
of a statue, a memorial tablet, or at least of having his name added to
a street or square.
Before taking leave of Quissac I must mention one curious fact.
The Proteus of Odyssean story or the King's daughter and the Efreet in
the "Second Royal Mendicant's Adventure," could not more easily
transform themselves than the French peasant. Husbandman to-day,
mechanic on the morrow, at one season he plies the pruning-hook, at
another he turns the lathe. This adaptability of the French mind,
strange to say, is nowhere seen to greater advantage than in
out-of-the-way regions, just where are mental torpidity and unbendable
routine. Not one of Millet's blue-bloused countrymen but masters a dozen
handicrafts.
Thus, whilst the heraldic insignia of Sauve should be a trident, those
of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the
forked branches of the _Celtis australis_ or nettle tree, _Ulmaceæ_,
afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made
yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in
agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and lends
itself to manipulation.
In Florian's birthplace folks make a good living out of old boots and
shoes! Some native genius discovered that, however well worn footgear
may be, valuable bits of leather may remain in the sole. These fragments
are preserved, and from them boot heels are made; the _débris_, boots,
shoes and slippers, no matter the material, find their way to the soil
as manure. But this subject if pursued further would lead to a lane,
metaphorically speaking, without a turning, that is to say to a treatise
on French rural economy.
VII
AN IMMORTALIZER
In Renan's exquisitely phrased preface to his _Drames Philosophiques_
occurs the following sentence which I render into English _tant bien que
mal_: "Side by side are the history of fact and the history of the
ideal, the latter materially speaking of what has never taken place, but
which, in the ideal sense, has happened a thousand times."
Who when visiting the beautiful little town of Saumur thinks of the
historic figures connected with its name? Even the grand personality of
Duplessis Morny sinks into insignificance by comparison with that of the
miser's daughter, the gentle, ill-starred Eugénie Grandet! And who when
Carcassonne first breaks upon his view thinks of aught but Nadaud's
immortal peasant and his plaint--
"I'm growing old, just three score year,
In wet and dry, in dust and mire,
I've sweated, never getting near
Fulfilment of my heart's desire.
Ah, well I see that bliss below
'Tis Heaven's will to vouchsafe none,
Harvest and vintage come and go,
I've never got to Carcassonne!"
The tragi-comic poem of six eight-lined verses ending thus--
"So sighed a peasant of Limoux,
A worthy neighbour bent and worn.
'Ho, friend,' quoth I, 'I'll go with you.
We'll sally forth to-morrow morn.'
And true enough away we hied,
But when our goal was almost won,
God rest his soul!--the good man died,
He never got to Carcassonne!"
No lover of France certainly should die without having seen Carcassonne,
foremost of what I will call the pictorial Quadrilateral, no formidable
array after the manner of their Austrian cognominal, but lovely,
dreamlike things. These four walled-in towns or citadels, perfect as
when they represented mediaeval defence, are Carcassonne, Provins in the
Brie, Semur in upper Burgundy, and the Breton Guérande, scene of
Balzac's _Béatrix_. To my thinking, and I have visited each, there is
little to choose between the first two, but exquisite as is the little
Briard acropolis, those imaginary "topless towers of Ilium" of Nadaud's
peasant bear the palm. That first view of Carcassonne as we approach it
in the railway of itself repays a long and tedious journey. A vision
rather than reality, structure of pearly clouds in mid-heaven, seems
that opaline pile lightly touched with gold. We expect it to evaporate
at evenfall! Vanish it does not, nor wholly bring disillusion, so fair
and harmonious are the vistas caught in one circuit of the citadel, mere
matter of twenty minutes.
But the place by this time has become so familiar to travellers in
France and readers of French travel, that I will here confine myself to
its glorifier, author of a song that has toured the world.
The first biography of the French Tom Moore, published last year, gives
no history of this much translated poem. Had, indeed, some worthy
vine-grower poured out such a plaint in the poet's ears? Very probably,
for one and all of Nadaud's rural poems breathe the very essence of the
fields, the inmost nature of the peasant, from first to last they reveal
Jacques Bonhomme to us, his conceptions of life, his mentality and
limitations.
[Footnote: My own rendering of this piece and many other of Nadaud's
songs and ballads are given in _French Men, Women and Books_, 1910.
American translators have admirably translated _Carcassonne_.]
Nadaud's career is uneventful, but from one point of view, far from
being noteless, he was pre-eminently the happy man. His biographer (A.
Varloy) tells us of a smooth, much relished, even an exuberant
existence. The son of an excellent bourgeois, whose ancestry,
nevertheless, like that of many another, could be traced for six hundred
years, his early surroundings were the least lyric imaginable.
He was born at Roubaix, the flourishing seat of manufacture near Lille,
which, although a mere _chef-lieu du canton_, does more business with
the Bank of France than the big cities of Toulouse, Nîmes, Montpellier
and others thrice its size. Dress fabrics, cloths and exquisite napery
are the products of Roubaix and its suburb; vainly, however, does any
uncommercial traveller endeavour to see the weavers at work. Grimy walls
and crowded factory chimneys are relieved at Roubaix by gardens public
and private, and the town is endowed with museums, libraries, art and
technical schools. But Nadaud, like Cyrano de Bergerac, if asked what
gave him most delectation, would certainly have replied--
"Lorsque j'ai fait un vers et que je l'aime,
Je me paye en me le chantant à moi-même."
Here is the boy's daily programme when a twelve-year-old student at the
Collège Rollin, Paris. The marvel is that the poetic instinct survived
such routine, marvellous also the fact that the dry-as-dust in authority
was a well-known translator of Walter Scott. If anything could have
conjured the Wizard of the North from his grave it was surely these
particulars written by Gustave Nadaud to his father on the 19th of
October, 1833--
"Five-thirty, rise; five-forty-five, studies till seven-thirty;
breakfast and recreation from seven-thirty till eight; from eight till
ten, school; from ten to a quarter past, recreation; from a quarter past
ten till half past twelve, school; then dinner and recreation from one
till two. School from two till half past four; collation from half past
four till a quarter past five; school from a quarter past five till
eight. Supper and to bed."
Poetry here was, however, a healthy plant, and in his school-days this
born song-writer would scribble verses on his copy-books and read Racine
for his own amusement. Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his
native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil
Bias's friend, _il s'est jeté dans le bel esprit_--in other words, he
betook himself to the career of a troubadour. Never, surely, did master
of song-craft write and sing so many ditties!
Quitting school with a tip-top certificate both as to conduct and
application, Gustave Nadaud quickly won fame if not fortune. Hardly of
age, he wrote somewhat Bohemian effusions that at once made the round of
Parisian music-halls.
The revolution, if it brought topsy-turvydom in politics, like its great
forerunner '89 brought the apogee of song. The popular young lyrist,
ballader and minstrel, for Nadaud accompanied himself on the piano, now
made a curious compact, agreeing to write songs for twenty years, a firm
named Heugel paying him six thousand francs yearly by way of
remuneration.
Two hundred and forty pounds a year should seem enough for a young man,
a bachelor brought up in bourgeois simplicity. But the cost of living in
Paris was apparently as high sixty years ago as now. In 1856-7 he wrote
to a friend: "How upon such an income I contrived to live and frequent
Parisian salons without ever asking a farthing of any one, only those
who have been poor can tell." The salons spoken of were not only
aristocratic but Imperial, the late Princess Mathilde being an
enthusiastic hostess and patroness. Several operettas were composed by
Nadaud for her receptions and philanthropic entertainments. Here is a
sketch of the French Tom Moore in 1868 by a witty contributor of the
_Figaro_--
"Nadaud then seated himself at the piano, and of the words he sang I
give you full measure, the impression produced by his performance I
cannot hope to convey. Quite indescribable was the concord of voice and
hands, on the music as on wings each syllable being lightly borne, yet
its meaning thereby intensified. In one's memory only can such delight
be revived and reproduced."
With other poets, artists and musicians Nadaud cast vocation to the
winds in 1870-1, working in field and other hospitals. "I did my best to
act the part of a poor little sister of charity," he wrote to a friend.
His patriotic poem, "La grande blessée," was written during that
terrible apprenticeship.
With Nadaud henceforward it was a case of roses, roses all the way.
Existence he had ever taken easily, warm friendships doing duty for a
domestic circle. And did he not write--
"I dreamed of an ideal love
And Benedick remain?"
His songs proved a mine of wealth, and the sumptuously illustrated
edition got up by friends and admirers brought him 80,000 francs, with
which he purchased a villa, christened Carcassonne, at Nice, therein
spending sunny and sunny-tempered days and dispensing large-hearted
hospitality. To luckless brethren of the lyre he held out an ungrudgeful
hand, alas! meeting with scant return. The one bitterness of his life,
indeed, was due to ingratitude. Among his papers after death was found
the following note--
"Throughout the last thirty years I have lent sums, large considering
my means, to friends, comrades and entire strangers. Never, never,
never has a single centime been repaid by a single one of these
borrowers. I now vow to myself, never under any circumstances whatever
to lend money again!"
Poor song-writers, nevertheless, he posthumously befriended. By his will
with the bulk of his property was founded "La petite Caisse des
chansonniers," a benefit society for less happy Nadauds to come. By aid
of these funds, lyrists and ballad-writers unable to find publishers
would be held on their onward path. Full of honours, Nadaud died in
1893, monuments being erected to his memory, streets named after him,
and undiminished popularity keeping his name alive.
And the honour denied to Béranger, to Victor Hugo, to Balzac, the
coveted sword and braided coat of the Forty were Nadaud's also. With the
witty Piron he could not ironically anticipate his own epitaph thus--
"Here lies Nadaud who was nothing, not even an Academician!"
Before taking leave of Carcassonne, poetic and picturesque, the most
inveterate anti-sightseer should peep into its museum. For this little
_chef-lieu_ of the Aude, with a population under thirty thousand,
possesses what, indeed, hardly a French townling lacks, namely, a
picture-gallery. If not remarkable from an artistic point of view, the
collection serves to demonstrate the persistent, self-denying and
constant devotion to culture in France. Times may be peaceful or stormy,
seasons may prove disastrous, the withered, thin and blasted ears of
corn may devour the seven ears full and golden, the ship of State may be
caught in a tornado and lurch alarmingly--all the same "the man in the
street," "the rascal many," to quote Spenser, will have a museum in
which, with wife and hopefuls, to spend their Sunday afternoons. The
local museum is no less of a necessity to Jacques Bonhomme than his
daily _pot-au-feu_, that dish of soup which, according to Michelet,
engenders the national amiability.
The splendid public library--the determinative is used in the sense of
comparison--numbers just upon a volume per head, and the art school,
school of music, and other institutions tell the same story. Culture
throughout the country seems indigenous, to spread of itself, and, above
all things, to reach all classes. Culture on French soil is gratuitous,
ever free as air! We must never overlook that primary fact.
One or two more noticeable facts about Carcassonne. Here was born that
eccentric revolutionary and poetic genius, Fabre d'Eglantine, of whom I
have written elsewhere.
[Footnote: See Literary Rambles in France, 1906]
Yet another historic note. From St. Vincent's tower during the
Convention, 1792-5, were taken those measurements, the outcome of which
was the metric system. Two mathematicians, by name Delambre and Méchain,
were charged with the necessary calculations, the _mètre_, or a
ten-millionth part of the distance between the poles and the equator
(32,808 English feet), being made the unit of length. Uniformity of
weight followed, and became law in 1799.
But to touch upon historic Carcassonne is to glance upon an almost
interminable perspective. The chronicle of this charming little city
on the bright blue Aude has been penned and re-penned in blood and
tears. In 1560 Carcassonne suffered a preliminary Saint Bartholomew, a
general massacre of Protestants announcing the evil days to follow;
days that after five hundred years have left their trace, moral as
well as material.
VIII
TOULOUSE
A zigzaggery, indeed, was this journey from Nîmes to my Pyrenean valley.
That metropolis of art and most heroic town, Montauban, I could not on
any account miss. Toulouse necessarily had to be taken on the way to
Ingres-ville, as I feel inclined to call the great painter's birthplace
and apotheosis. But why write of Toulouse? The magnificent city, its
public gardens, churches, superbly housed museums and art galleries, its
promenades, drives and panoramas are all particularized by Murray,
Joanne and Baedeker. Here, however, as elsewhere, are one or two
features which do not come within the province of a guide-book.
The only city throughout France that welcomed the Inquisition was
among the first to open a _Lycée pour jeunes filles._ In accordance
with the acts of 1880-82 public day schools for girls were opened
throughout France; that of Toulouse being fairly representative, I
will describe my visit.
The school was now closed for the long vacation, but a junior mistress
in temporary charge gave us friendliest welcome, and showed us over the
building and annexes. She evidently took immense and quite natural
pride in the little world within world of which she formed a part. Her
only regret was that we could not see the scholars at work. Here may be
noted the wide field thrown open to educated women by the above-named
acts, from under-mistresses to _Madame la directrice_, the position
being one of dignity and provision for life, pensions being the reward
of long service.
The course of study is prepared by the rector of the Toulousain Academy,
and the rules of management by the municipal council, thus the programme
of instruction bears the signature of the former, whilst the prospectus,
dealing with fees, practical details, is signed by the mayor in the name
of the latter.
We find a decree passed by the town council in 1887 to the effect that
in the case of two sisters a fourth of the sum-total of fees should be
remitted, of three, a half, of four, three-quarters, and of five, the
entire amount. Even the outfit of the boarders must be approved by the
same authority. A neat costume is obligatory, and the number and
material of undergarments is specified with the utmost minuteness.
Besides a sufficient quantity of suitable clothes, each student must
bring three pairs of boots, thirty pocket-handkerchiefs, a bonnet-box,
umbrella, parasol, and so forth.
Such regulations may at first sight look trivial and unnecessary, but
there is much to be said on the other side. From the beginning of the
term to the end, the matron, whose province is quite apart from that of
the head-mistress, is never worried about the pupils' dress, no shoes in
need of repair, no garments to be mended, no letters to be written
begging Mme. A. to send her daughter a warm petticoat, Mme. B. to
forward a hair-brush, and so on. Again, the uniform obligatory on
boarders prevents those petty jealousies and rivalries provoked by fine
clothes in girls' schools. Alike the child of the millionaire and of the
small official wear the same simple dress.
Children are admitted to the lower school between the ages of five and
twelve, the classes being in the hands of certificated mistresses. The
upper school, at which pupils are received from twelve years and
upwards, and are expected to remain five years, offers a complete course
of study, lady teachers being aided by professors of the Faculté des
Lettres and of the Lycée for youths. Students who have remained
throughout the entire period, and have satisfactorily passed final
examinations, receive a certificate entitling them to admission into the
great training college of Sèvres or to offer themselves as teachers in
schools and families.