At Arcachon there is an old _Chapelle miraculeuse de Notre Dame_,
adjoining the newer church, founded about 1520 by Thomas Illyricus. It
contains many of the fishermen's votive offerings, such as life-belts,
stilts, pieces of rope, and boats and wreaths. I noticed, too, a
barrel, on which were the words "_Echappé dans le golfe du Méxique,
1842_." These offerings are hung up near the chancel, and give a
distinct character to it.
As we came into the little church, a child's funeral was just leaving
it, the coffin borne by children. We waited by the door till the sad
little procession had gone by, and before me, as I write, there rises
in my memory the expression on the father's face. It had something in
it that was absolutely unforgettable.
Illustration: ARCACHON, MIRACULOUS CHAPEL, 1722.
[_Page 40._
As we passed down the village street, we passed another little
procession; two acolytes in blue cassocks and caps, bearing in their
hands the vessels of sacred oil, a priest following them in biretta,
surplice and cassock, and by his side a server. I noticed that each
man's cap was instantly lifted reverently, as it passed him. As they
turned in at a cottage, the whole street down which they had passed
seemed full of the lingering fragrance of the incense carried by the
acolytes.
Arcachon, at one time, must have been exceedingly quaint and
picturesque, but since then an alien influence has been introduced
which has--for all artistic purposes--spoilt it. Facing the chief
street--dominating it, as it were--is the Casino; an ugly, flashy,
vulgar building, out of keeping structurally with everything near it.
It resembles an Indian pagoda, and when we were there in November its
huge, bleary eyes were shut as it took its yearly slumber, deserted
by Fashion. It was like an enormous pimple on the quiet, picturesque,
unpretending countenance of this village of the Landes which had been
subjected to its obsession, and that of the two hotels in immediate
attendance.
The people, however, appear unspoilt and unsophisticated. At each
cottage door sit the women knitting; and, as one passes, they pass the
time of day, or make some remark or other, with a pleasant smile.
When we were at Arcachon telegraph poles were being put up. The method
of setting up these eminences was distinctly curious, to the English
eye. There was an immense amount of propping up, and many anxious
glances bestowed on the poles before anything could be accomplished.
The men on whom this tremendous labour devolves have to wear curious
iron clasps strapped on to their boots, so that they should be able to
dig into the bark as they swarm up the poles for the poles are just
trunks of pine trees stripped of their branches, and many of them look
very crooked.
* * * * *
In many of the gardens poinsettias were flowering, and hanging
clusters of a vivid red flower which our hotel proprietress called
"Songe de Cardinal." It was the same tint of scarlet as the berries
called "Archutus" or "Arbousses," which grow here in abundance by the
side of the road on bushes, and are like a large variety of raspberry,
a cross between that and a strawberry. It has a very pleasant flavour
when eaten with cream: this our waiter confided to me, and, after
tasting the mixture, I quite agreed with him, although the proprietress
had treated the idea with scorn.
In November the roads, in places, are red with the fallen fruit of this
plant. There are also curious long brown seed cases which had dropped
from trees something like acacias, but which have a smaller leaf than
our English variety. The tint of the pods is a warm reddish brown; they
are about the length of one's forearm, the inner edges all sticky with
resin.
In the village street the inevitable little stream, which is encouraged
in most French towns, runs beside the roadside, and is fed by all
the pailfuls of dirty water that are flung from time to time into its
midst. The _plage_ at Arcachon is not attractive in autumn, and it is
difficult to understand how it can be a magnet at a warmer time of the
year to the hundreds that frequent it. An arm of land stretches all
round the little inland pool--for it is not much more than a pool--in
which in summer time the bathers disport themselves. In November, of
course, it requires an enormous effort of imagination to picture it
full of sailing ships and pleasure boats.
Murray mentions a particular kind of boat, long, pointed, narrow and
shallow, which was much to the fore in 1867, and which he imagined to
be indigenous to the soil, so to speak. But, apparently, they have
changed all that. I only saw one that was built as he describes, and
this was green and black in colour. He also mentions stilts being worn
by the peasants at Arcachon and the neighbourhood near the village,
but of these we saw few traces. There were pictures of them in an old
print of the _chapelle_ built in 1722, and in a photo of the shepherds
of the plains. The photos, indeed, are numerous in the whole country of
the Gironde of _anciens costumes_, but when one sets oneself to try and
find their counterparts in real life, evidences are practically nil.
All that remains of them in these matter-of-fact, levelling days, in
which so much that is quaint, characteristic and peculiar is whittled
down to one ordinary dead level of alikeness, are the stiff white
caps, varied in shape and size, according to the district, and the
sabots. Some of the peasants here often go about the streets in woollen
bed-slippers, but most of them use wooden sabots--pointed, and with
leathern straps over the foot.
One gets quite used to the sight of two sabots standing lonely without
their inmates in the entrance to some shop, their toes pointing
inwards, just as they have been left (as if they were some conveyance
or other--in a sense, of course, they are--which is left outside to
await the owner's return). Continually the women leave them like this,
and proceed to the interior of the shop in their stockinged feet.
Sometimes the countrywomen go about without any covering at all to
their heads, and it is quite usual to see them thus in church as well
as in the streets. The men wear a little round cap, fitting tightly
over the head like a bathing cap, and very full, baggy trousers,
close at the ankles, dark brown or dark blue as to colour, and very
frequently velveteen as to material.
At La Teste, a village close to Arcachon, the women much affect the
high-crowned black straw hat, blue aprons and blue knickerbockers.
At most of the cottage doors were groups of them, knitting and
chatting; and, as we passed, the old grandmother of the party would
be irresistibly impelled to step out into the road to catch a further
glimpse of the strangers within their borders--clad in quite as unusual
garments as their own appeared to ours.
There are no lack of variety of occupations open to the feminine
persuasion: the women light the street lamps; they arrange and pack
oysters; fish, and sell the fish when caught. They work in the fields;
they tend the homely cow, as well as the three occupations which some
folk will persist in regarding as the only ones to which women--never
mind what their talents or capabilities--can expect to be admitted,
viz: the care of children and needlework and cooking! I saw one quite
old woman white-washing the front of her cottage with a low-handled,
mop-like broom, very energetically, while her husband sat by and
watched the process, at his ease.
La Teste stands out in my memory as a village of musical streets,
though of course in the Gironde it is the exception when one does not
hear little melodious sentences set to some street call or other. As we
passed up the village street, a woman was coming down carrying a basket
of rogans, a little silvery fish with dazzling, gleaming sides, and
crying, "_Derrr ... verai!_" "_Derrr ... verai!_" with long sustained
accent on the final high note. "_Marchandise!_" was another call which
sounded continually, and its variation, "_Marchan-dis ... e!_"
Passing through Bordeaux, I remember a very curiously sounding
street-hawk note: it did not end at all as one expected it to end. I
could not distinguish the words, and was not near enough to see the
ware.
* * * * *
But the human voice was not the only street music, for as we sat on
one of the benches that are so thoughtfully placed under the lee of
many of the cottages at La Teste, there fell on our ears a sound from a
distance which somehow suggested the approach of a Chinese procession:
"Pom-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom!" mixed with the sharp "ting-ting" of brass,
and the duller, flatter tone of wood, sweet because of the suggestion
of the trickling of water which it conveys.
A procession of cows turned the corner of the long street and moved
sedately towards us, their bells keeping time with their footsteps,
their conductor, as seems the custom in these parts, leading the
detachment. It was followed by a little cart drawn by two dogs, in
which sat a countrywoman, much too heavy a weight for the poor animals
to drag.
La Teste itself is a picturesque little village, and larger than it
looks at first sight. Each cottage has its own well, arched over. Up
each frontage, lined with outside shutters, is trained the home vine,
while little plantations of vines abound everywhere. The women travel
by train with their heads loosely covered with shawls, when not wearing
the stiff caps or hats, and it is very usual for them to carry, as
a hold-all, a sort of little waistcoat buttoning over a parcel; a
waistcoat embroidered with some device or other.
Illustration: THE GIRONDE SHEPHERDS.
[_Page 51._
Coming back to Arcachon, we met a typical old peasant woman, with
two huge straw baskets--one white and one black, a big stick, and
a black handkerchief tied over her head, and a most characteristic
face, crumpled, seamed and lined with all the different hand-writings
over it that the pencil of Fate had drawn during a long lifetime.
When young, the peasant women of the Landes are not striking. The
peculiar characteristics of the face are unvarying; you meet with them
everywhere all about the Gironde and Bordeaux. The faces are sallow,
low-browed, with dark hair and eyes. They are brisk-looking, but just
escape being either pretty or noticeable. Most of the women, too, that
we saw, were of small stature and insignificant looking. It is when
they are old that the beauty to which they are heir, is developed.
The women of the Landes are evening primroses: the striking quality
of their faces comes out after the heyday of life is over. It seems
that the face of the Gironde woman needs many seasons of sun and heat
to bring out the sap of the character. The autumn tints are beautiful
in faces, as in trees. Theirs is the beauty that Experience--that
Teacher of the Thing-as-it-is--brings; and it is in the clash of
the meeting of the peculiar personality with the experience from
outside, that character springs to the birth. You see--if you can read
it--their life, in the eyes of the dweller by the countryside. In a
more civilised class one can but read too often, what has been put
on with intention, as a mask. Civilisation and convention eliminate
individuality, as far as possible, and they recommend dissimulation,
and we, oftener than not, take their recommendation.
So in all countries, and in all ages, Jean François Millet's idea is
the right one--that to find life at its plainest, at its fullest, one
should study it, _au fond_, in the lives of the sons and daughters
of the soil. Their open-air life prints deep on their faces the
divine impress of Nature, obtainable, in quite the same measure, in
no other way; they have become intimate with Nature, and have lived
their everyday life close to her heart-beats. What she gives is
incommunicable to others: it can only be given by direct contact, and
can never be passed on, for only by direct contact can the creases of
the mind, caused by the life of towns and great cities, be smoothed
out, and a calm, strong, new breadth of outlook given.
I remember a typical face of this kind. We had been out for a day's
excursion from Arcachon, and, coming home, at the station where we
took train, there got into our carriage, a mother and daughter. After
getting into conversation with them--a thing they were quite willing to
do, with ready natural courtesy of manner,--we learned that the mother
was eighty-one years old and had worked as a _parcheuse_ in her young
days. She had a fine old face, wrinkled and lined with a thousand life
stories. Kindly, pathetic, had been their influence upon her, for her
eyes and expression were just like a sunset over a beautiful country:
it was the beauty that is only reached when one has well drunk at the
goblets of life--some of us to the bitter dregs--and set them down,
thankful that at last it is growing near the time when one need lift
them to one's lips no more.
The mother told me that the women _parcheuses_ could not earn so much
as the men, three francs a day--perhaps only thirty centimes--being
their ordinary wage. She turned to me once, so tragically, with such a
sudden world of sorrow rising in her eyes. "I have worked all my life
in the fields, and at fishing, and now, one by one, all whom I love
have left me, and I am so lonely left behind."
"Ah, _c'est malheureux_!" exclaimed the daughter, turning
sympathetically to her.
We parted at Arcachon station, but how often since, have I not seen the
face of the old mother looking sadly out of our carriage window, the
tears gathering slowly in her eyes as she remembered those with whom
she had started life, and whom death had distanced from her now, so
far.
There are two distinguishing characteristics of the villages of the
Landes as we saw them, and these are the absence of beggars and of
drunkenness--I didn't see a single drunken man. As one knows, it is
somewhat rare to meet with them in other parts of France, and one
remembers the story of the English barrister who was taken up by the
police and thought to be drunk (so seldom had they been enabled to
diagnose drunkenness), and taken off to the lock-up! It turned out that
he was only suffering from an over-emphasised Anglicised pronunciation
of the French language, studied (without exterior aid) at home, before
travelling abroad.
Thrift and sobriety are two virtues which generally go in company--they
are very much in evidence in the country of the Gironde to-day. Happy
the land where this is the case! Unfortunately it is not the case in
England now, nor has been indeed for many a long year. Think of the
difference too there is in manner between the countrymen of our own
England and that of France. One cannot travel in this part of France
without meeting everywhere that simple, native courtesy which is so
spontaneously ready on all occasions. It is a perfect picture of what
the intercourse of strangers should be.
As a nation, we are apt to be stiff and awkward in our initial
conversation with a stranger. We require so long a time before we thaw
and are our natural selves; our introductory chapters are so long and
tiresome.
But to the Frenchman, _you are there!_ that is all that matters. You do
not require to be labelled conventionally to be accepted; there is such
a thing, in his eyes, as an intimate strangership, and it is this very
immediateness of friendliness and smile, that makes the charm of those
unforgettable day-fellowships of intercourse which are so possible
in France and--so difficult in England. How many such little cordial
acts of _camaraderie_ come back to my mind, perhaps some of them only
ten minutes in duration, perhaps even less than that, and consisting
solely in some spontaneous sympathy during travelling incidents; in the
kindly, ready recognition of a difficulty, in the quick appreciation
maybe of the humour of some idyll of the road. Whatever it is, you are
at home and in touch at once for a happy moment, even if nothing more
is to come of the brief encounter.
In a garden near the post-office at Arcachon we came upon this
startling notice: "Beware of the wild boar!" Then there followed an
injunction to the wild boar himself: "Beware of the snare," in the
same sort of way as "Mind the step" is sometimes written up! Making
inquiries later at the hotel, I found that there were plenty of wild
boars in the forest of Arcachon, and that in winter time they often
ventured into the town. Hunting parties, for the purpose of limiting
family developments, are organised from time to time throughout the
winter.
Illustration: SHEPHERD AND WOODSMEN, ARCACHON.
[_Page 57._
As regards the forest of Arcachon, we were struck specially by the
fungi of all sorts and colours, that grow at the foot of the trees,
and on the vivid green branching, long-stalked moss that envelops
the surface of the ground: deep violet, orange, soft blue, brilliant
yellow, scarlet and black spotted, dingy ink-black were some of the
colours that I noted. Indeed, I did more than "note" them, for I picked
a fair-sized basket full, took them back to the hotel, did them up
carefully and despatched them to the post-office, where they refused to
send them to England, saying that, owing to recent stipulations, they
were not allowed to send such commodities by parcel post any longer.
Crestfallen and disappointed, I had to unpack that gorgeous paint-box
of colours again, and left them on my window ledge to enjoy them myself
before they deliquesced.
In the forest here is no sound of birds. Too many have been shot for
that to be possible any longer, and consequently a strange, eerie
silence prevails over everything. Alas! I saw no birds at all, except
a few long-tailed tits. The sunlight lay roughly gleaming on the
red-brown needles below the dark pine trees, and grey and soft on the
white, silvery sand. No other colour broke the sombre, olive green of
the foliage overhead, but here and there flecks of vivid yellow, from
the heather growing sparsely in clumps, spattered like a flung egg upon
the banks. The stems of the pines are a rich red-brown, flaked and
covered in places with soft, green lichen.
The hotel was not a place where one got much change in the matter of
guests, but people came in for lunch now and again _en route_ for
somewhere else; and I shall never forget one such party. It consisted
of a father, mother and two small infants of about one and a half and
two and a half years of age. The children fed as did the parents.
I watched with interest the courses which were packed into these
children's mouths. Radishes, roast rabbit, egg omelet, _vin ordinaire_
and milk, mixed (or one after the other, I really forget which!) From
time to time they were attacked by spasms of whooping-cough, which
rendered the process of digestion even more difficult than it would
otherwise have been. One of the children had a cherubic face, and each
time a doubtful morsel was crammed into his mouth he turned up his
eyes seraphically to heaven as he admitted it, but--if he disliked its
taste--only for time enough to turn it over once in his mouth previous
to ejecting it! The parents never seemed to be in the least deterred
from pressing these morsels on him, however often they returned.
The _concierge_ at our hotel, (he who knew four words of English),
was a distinct character. He would often come up to our room after
_table d'hôte_ for a chat, on the pretence of making up our already
glowing log fire. But whenever a bell rang he would instantly stop
talking and cock his ears to hear if it were two peals or one, for
two peals were _his_ summons, and one only the chambermaid's. Before
we left we added to his stock of English, and it was a performance
during the hearing of which no one could have kept grave. "_Ah, c'est
difficile_," he exclaimed after trying ineffectually to achieve a
correct pronunciation: "_Pad-dool you-r-y-owe carnoo!_"
He told us that, as a rule, a _concierge_ was paid only fifty francs,
but sometimes he got as much as 250 francs a month in _pourboires_ from
the guests in the hotel. A _femme de chambre_ would make twenty-five
francs a month at a hotel. Neither _concierge_ nor _femme de chambre_
would be given more than eight days' notice if sent away. At this hotel
he had no room to himself, no seat even (we often found him sitting on
the stairs in the evening) and up most nights until half-past twelve,
and yet he had to rise up and be at work, each morning by half-past
five.
In the summer months it seemed the custom to go further south to some
hotel or other, guests spending half the year at one place, and half at
another.
Illustration: GUJAN-MESTRAS,
Huts of the Fishermen, and "Parcheurs" (Oyster Catchers).
[_Page 61._