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CHATEAU AND COUNTRY LIFE IN FRANCE
by
MARY KING WADDINGTON
Author of Letters Of A Diplomat's Wife and Italian Letters of a Diplomat's Wife
Illustrated
1909
[Illustration: A country wedding]
CONTENTS
I. CHÂTEAU LIFE II. COUNTRY VISITS III. THE HOME OF LAFAYETTE IV. WINTER AT THE CHÂTEAU V. CEREMONIES AND FESTIVALS VI. CHRISTMAS IN THE VALOIS VII. A RACINE CELEBRATION VIII. A CORNER OF NORMANDY IX. A NORMAN TOWN X. NORMAN CHÂTEAUX XI. BOULOGNE-SUR-MER
ILLUSTRATIONS
A COUNTRY WEDDING A FINE OLD CHÂTEAU I LOVED TO HEAR HER PLAY BEETHOVEN AND HANDEL THERE WERE ALL SORTS AND KINDS FERDINAND "MERCI, JE VAIS BIEN" LONG PAUSES WHEN NOBODY SEEMED TO HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY THEN HE LIGHTED A FIRE I SUGGESTED THAT THE WHOLE CHASSE SHOULD ADJOURN TO THE CHÂTEAU SOME RED-COATED, SOME GREEN, ALL WITH BREECHES AND HIGH MUDDY BOOTS PEASANT WOMEN A VISIT AT THE CHÂTEAU SOLDIERS AT THE CHÂTEAU THE MAYOR AND A NICE, RED-CHEEKED, WRINKLED OLD WOMAN WERE WAITING FOR US THERE WAS ONE HANDSOME BIT OF OLD LACE ON A WHITE NAPPE FOR THE ALTAR THEY WERE ALL STREAMING UP THE SLIPPERY HILL-SIDE ALL THE CHILDREN IN PROCESSION PASSED THERE WAS ONE POOR OLD WOMAN STILL GAZING SPELL-BOUND L'ETABLISSEMENT, BAGNOLES DE L'ORNE IN DOMFRONT SOME OF THE OLD TOWERS ARE CONVERTED INTO MODERN DWELLINGS CHÂTEAU DE LASSAY ENTRANCE TO HÔTEL OF THE COMTE DE FLORIAN MARKET WOMEN, VALOGNES OLD GATE-WAY, VALOGNES
[Illustration: A fine old château.]
I
CHATEAU LIFE
My first experience of country life in France, about thirty years ago, was in a fine old château standing high in pretty, undulating, wooded country close to the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and overlooking the great plains of the Oise—big green fields stretching away to the sky-line, broken occasionally by little clumps of wood, with steeples rising out of the green, marking the villages and hamlets which, at intervals, are scattered over the plains, and in the distance the blue line of the forest. The château was a long, perfectly simple, white stone building. When I first saw it, one bright November afternoon, I said to my husband as we drove up, "What a charming old wooden house!" which remark so astonished him that he could hardly explain that it was all stone, and that no big houses (nor small, either) in France were built of wood. I, having been born in a large white wooden house in America, couldn't understand why he was so horrified at my ignorance of French architecture. It was a fine old house, high in the centre, with a lower wing on each side. There were three drawing-rooms, a library, billiard-room, and dining-room on the ground floor. The large drawing-room, where we always sat, ran straight through the house, with glass doors opening out on the lawn on the entrance side and on the other into a long gallery which ran almost the whole length of the house. It was always filled with plants and flowers, open in summer, with awnings to keep out the sun; shut in winter with glass windows, and warmed by one of the three calorifères of the house. In front of the gallery the lawn sloped down to the wall, which separated the place from the highroad. A belt of fine trees marked the path along the wall and shut out the road completely, except in certain places where an opening had been made for the view.
We were a small party for such a big house: only the proprietor and his wife (old people), my husband and myself. The life was very simple, almost austere. The old people lived in the centre of the château, W.[1] and I in one of the wings. It had been all fitted up for us, and was a charming little house. W. had the ground-floor—a bedroom, dressing-room, cabinet de travail, dining-room, and a small room, half reception-room, half library, where he had a large bookcase filled with books, which he gave away as prizes or to school libraries. The choice of the books always interested me. They were principally translations, English and American—Walter Scott, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, etc. The bedroom and cabinet de travail had glass doors opening on the park. I had the same rooms upstairs, giving one to my maid, for I was nervous at being so far away from anyone. M. and Mme. A. and all the servants were at the other end of the house, and there were no bells in our wing (nor anywhere else in the house except in the dining-room). When I wanted a work-woman who was sewing in the lingerie I had to go up a steep little winding staircase, which connected our wing with the main building, and walk the whole length of the gallery to the lingerie, which was at the extreme end of the other wing. I was very fond of my rooms. The bedroom and sitting-room opened on a balcony with a lovely view over wood and park. When I sat there in the morning with my petit déjeuner—cup of tea and roll—I could see all that went on in the place. First the keeper would appear, a tall, handsome man, rather the northern type, with fair hair and blue eyes, his gun always over his shoulder, sacoche at his side, swinging along with the free, vigorous step of a man accustomed to walk all day. Then Hubert, the coachman, would come for orders, two little fox-terriers always accompanying him, playing and barking, and rolling about on the grass. Then the farmer's wife, driving herself in her gig, and bringing cheese, butter, milk, and sometimes chickens when our bassecour was getting low. A little later another lot would appear, people from the village or canton, wanting to see their deputy and have all manner of grievances redressed. It was curious sometimes to make out, at the end of a long story, told in peasant dialect, with many digressions, what particular service notre député was expected to render. I was present sometimes at some of the conversations, and was astounded at W.'s patience and comprehension of what was wanted—I never understood half.
[1] W. here and throughout this volume refers to Mme. Waddington's husband, M. William Waddington.
We generally had our day to ourselves. We rode almost every morning—long, delicious gallops in the woods, the horses going easily and lightly over the grass roads; and the days W. was away and couldn't ride, I used to walk about the park and gardens. The kitchen garden was enormous—almost a park in itself—and in the season I eat pounds of white grapes, which ripened to a fine gold color on the walls in the sun. We rarely saw M. and Mme. A. until twelve-o'clock breakfast.
[Illustration: I loved to hear her play Beethoven and Handel.]
Sometimes when it was fine we would take a walk with the old people after breakfast, but we generally spent our days apart. M. and Mme. A. were charming people, intelligent, cultivated, reading everything and keeping quite in touch with all the literary and Protestant world, but they had lived for years entirely in the country, seeing few people, and living for each other. The first evenings at the château made a great impression upon me. We dined at 7:30, and always sat after dinner in the big drawing-room. There was one lamp on a round table in the middle of the room (all the corners shrouded in darkness). M. and Mme. A. sat in two arm-chairs opposite to each other, Mme. A. with a green shade in front of her. Her eyes were very bad; she could neither read nor work. She had been a beautiful musician, and still played occasionally, by heart, the classics. I loved to hear her play Beethoven and Handel, such a delicate, old-fashioned touch. Music was at once a bond of union. I often sang for her, and she liked everything I sang—Italian stornelli, old-fashioned American negro songs, and even the very light modern French chansonnette, when there was any melody in them. There were two other arm-chairs at the table, destined for W. and me. I will say W. never occupied his. He would sit for about half an hour with M. A. and talk politics or local matters with him, but after that he departed to his own quarters, and I remained with the old people. I felt very strange at first, it was so unlike anything I had ever seen, so different from my home life, where we were a happy, noisy family, always one of the party, generally two, at the piano, everybody laughing, talking, and enjoying life, and always a troop of visitors, cousins innumerable and friends.
It was a curious atmosphere. I can't say dull exactly, for both M. and Mme. A. were clever, and the discussions over books, politics, and life generally, were interesting, but it was serious, no vitality, nothing gay, no power of enjoyment. They had had a great grief in their lives in the loss of an only daughter,[2] which had left permanent traces. They were very kind and did their best to make me feel at home, and after the first few evenings I didn't mind. M. A. had always been in the habit of reading aloud to his wife for an hour every evening after dinner—the paper, an article in one of the reviews, anything she liked. I liked that, too, and as I felt more at home used to discuss everything with M. A. He was quite horrified one evening when I said I didn't like Molière, didn't believe anybody did (particularly foreigners), unless they had been brought up to it.
[2] W.'s first wife.
It really rather worried him. He proposed to read aloud part of the principal plays, which he chose very carefully, and ended by making a regular cours de Molière. He read charmingly, with much spirit, bringing out every touch of humour and fancy, and I was obliged to say I found it most interesting. We read all sorts of things besides Molière—Lundis de Ste.-Beuve, Chateaubriand, some splendid pages on the French Revolution, Taine, Guizot, Mme. de Staël, Lamartine, etc., and sometimes rather light memoirs of the Régence and the light ladies of the eighteenth century, who apparently mixed up politics, religion, literature, and lovers in the most simple style. These last readings he always prepared beforehand, and I was often surprised at sudden transitions and unfinished conversations which meant that he had suppressed certain passages which he judged too improper for general reading.
He read, one evening, a charming feuilleton of George Sand. It began: "Le Baron avait causé politique toute la soirée," which conversation apparently so exasperated the baronne and a young cousin that they wandered out into the village, which they immediately set by the ears. The cousin was an excellent mimic of all animals' noises. He barked so loud and so viciously that he started all the dogs in the village, who went nearly mad with excitement, and frightened the inhabitants out of their wits. Every window was opened, the curé, the garde champêtre, the school-master, all peering out anxiously into the night, and asking what was happening. Was it tramps, or a travelling circus, or a bear escaped from his showman, or perhaps a wolf? I have wished sometimes since, when I have heard various barons talking politics, that I, too, could wander out into the night and seek distraction outside.
It was a serious life in the big château. There was no railway anywhere near, and very little traffic on the highroad. After nightfall a mantle of silence seemed to settle on the house and park that absolute silence of great spaces where you almost hear your own heart beat. W. went to Paris occasionally, and usually came back by the last train, getting to the château at midnight. I always waited for him upstairs in my little salon, and the silence was so oppressive that the most ordinary noise—a branch blowing across a window-pane, or a piece of charred wood falling on the hearth—sounded like a cannon shot echoing through the long corridor. It was a relief when I heard the trot of his big mare at the top of the hill, quite fifteen minutes before he turned into the park gates. He has often told me how long and still the evenings and nights were during the Franco-Prussian War. He remained at the château all through the war with the old people. After Sedan almost the whole Prussian army passed the château on their way to Versailles and Paris. The big white house was seen from a long distance, so, as soon as it was dark, all the wooden shutters on the side of the highroad were shut, heavy curtains drawn, and strict orders given to have as little light as possible. He was sitting in his library one evening about dusk, waiting for the man to bring his lamp and shut the shutters, having had a trying day with the peasants, who were all frightened and nervous at the approach of the Germans. He was quite absorbed in rather melancholy reflections when he suddenly felt that someone was looking in at the window (the library was on the ground-floor, with doors and windows opening on the park). He rose quickly, going to the window, as he thought one of the village people wanted to speak to him, and was confronted by a Pickelhaube and a round German face flattened against the window-pane. He opened the window at once, and the man poured forth a torrent of German, which W. fortunately understood. While he was talking W. saw forms, their muskets and helmets showing out quite distinctly in the half-light, crossing the lawn and coming up some of the broad paths. It was a disagreeable sight, which he was destined to see many times.
It was wonderful what exact information the Germans had. They knew all the roads, all the villages and little hamlets, the big châteaux, and most of the small mills and farms. There were still traces of the German occupation when I went to that part of the country; on some of the walls and houses marks in red paint—"4 Pferde, 12 Männer." They generally wanted food and lodging, which they usually (not always) paid for. Wherever they found horses they took them, but M. A. and W. had sent all theirs away except one saddle-horse, which lived in a stable in the woods near the house. In Normandy, near Rouen, at my brother-in-law's place, they had German officers and soldiers quartered for a long time. They instantly took possession of horses and carriages, and my sister-in-law, toiling up a steep hill, would be passed by her own carriage and horses filled with German officers. However, on the whole, W. said, the Germans, as a victorious invading army, behaved well, the officers always perfectly polite, and keeping their men in good order. They had all sorts and kinds at the château. They rarely remained long—used to appear at the gate in small bands of four or five, with a sous-officier, who always asked to see either the proprietor or someone in authority. He said how many men and horses he wanted lodged and fed, and announced the arrival, a little later, of several officers to dine and sleep. They were always received by M. A. or W., and the same conversation took place every time. They were told the servant would show them their rooms, and their dinner would be served at any hour they wished. They replied that they would have the honour of waiting upon the ladies of the family as soon as they had made a little toilette and removed the dust of the route, and that they would be very happy to dine with the family at their habitual hour. They were then told that the ladies didn't receive, and that the family dined alone. They were always annoyed at that answer. As a rule they behaved well, but occasionally there would be some rough specimens among the officers.
W. was coming home one day from his usual round just before nightfall, when he heard loud voices and a great commotion in the hall—M. A. and one or two German officers. The old man very quiet and dignified, the Germans most insulting, with threats of taking him off to prison. W. interfered at once, and learned from the irate officers what was the cause of the quarrel. They had asked for champagne (with the usual idea of foreigners that champagne flowed through all French châteaux), and M. A. had said there was none in the house. They knew better, as some of their men had seen champagne bottles in the cellar. W. said there was certainly a mistake—there was none in the house. They again became most insolent and threatening—said they would take them both to prison. W. suggested, wouldn't it be better to go down the cellar with him? Then they could see for themselves there was none. Accordingly they all adjourned to the cellar and W. saw at once what had misled them—a quantity of bottles of eau de Seidlitz, rather like champagne bottles in shape. They pointed triumphantly to these and asked what he meant by saying there was no champagne, and told their men to carry off the bottles. W. said again it was not champagne—he didn't believe they would like it. They were quite sure they had found a prize, and all took copious draughts of the water—with disastrous results, as they heard afterward from the servants.
Later, during the armistice and Prussian occupation, there were soldiers quartered all around the château, and, of course, there were many distressing scenes. All our little village of Louvry, near our farm, had taken itself off to the woods. They were quite safe there, as the Prussians never came into the woods on account of the sharpshooters. W. said their camp was comfortable enough—they had all their household utensils, beds, blankets, donkeys, and goats, and could make fires in the clearing in the middle of the woods. They were mostly women and children, only a very few old men and young boys left. The poor things were terrified by the Germans and Bismarck, of whom they had made themselves an extraordinary picture. "Monsieur sait que Bismarck tue tous les enfants pour qu'il n'y ait plus de Français." (Monsieur knows that Bismarck kills all the children so that there shall be no more French.) The boys kept W. in a fever. They had got some old guns, and were always hovering about on the edge of the wood, trying to have a shot at a German. He was very uncomfortable himself at one time during the armistice, for he was sending off parties of recruits to join one of the big corps d'armée in the neighbourhood, and they all passed at the château to get their money and feuille de route, which was signed by him. He sent them off in small bands of four or five, always through the woods, with a line to various keepers and farmers along the route, who could be trusted, and would help them to get on and find their way. Of course, if anyone of them had been taken with W.'s signature and recommendation on him, the Germans would have made short work of W., which he was quite aware of; so every night for weeks his big black Irish horse Paddy was saddled and tied to a certain tree in one of the narrow alleys of the big park—the branches so thick and low that it was difficult to pass in broad daylight, and at night impossible, except for him who knew every inch of the ground. With five minutes' start, if the alarm had been given, he could have got away into his own woods, where he knew no one would follow him.
Hubert, the old coachman, used often to talk to me about all that troubled time. When the weather was dark and stormy he used to stay himself half the night, starting at every sound, and there are so many sounds in the woods at night, all sorts of wild birds and little animals that one never hears in the daytime—sometimes a rabbit would dart out of a hole and whisk round a corner; sometimes a big buse (sort of eagle) would fly out of a tree with great flapping of wings; occasionally a wild-cat with bright-green eyes would come stealthily along and then make a flying leap over the bushes. His nerves were so unstrung that every noise seemed a danger, and he had visions of Germans lying in ambush in the woods, waiting to pounce upon W. if he should appear. He said Paddy was so wise, seemed to know that he must be perfectly quiet, never kicked nor snorted.
It was impossible to realise those dreadful days when we were riding and walking in the woods, so enchanting in the early summer, with thousands of lilies of the valley and periwinkles growing wild, and a beautiful blue flower, a sort of orchid. We used to turn all the village children into the woods, and they picked enormous bunches of lilies, which stood all over the château in china bowls. I loved the wood life at all seasons. I often made the round with W. and his keepers in the autumn when he was preparing a battue. The men were very keen about the game, knew the tracks of all the animals, showing me the long narrow rabbit tracks, running a long distance toward the quarries, which were full of rabbit holes, and the little delicate hoof-marks of the chevreuil (roe-deer) just where he had jumped across the road. The wild boar was easy to trace—little twigs broken, and ferns and leaves quite crushed, where he had passed. The wild boars and stags never stayed very long in our woods—went through merely to the forest of Villers-Cotterets—so it was most important to know the exact moment of their passage, and there was great pride and excitement when one was taken.
Another interesting moment was when the coupe de l'année was being made. Parts of the woods were cut down regularly every year, certain squares marked off. The first day's work was the marking of the big trees along the alleys which were to remain—a broad red ring around the trunks being very conspicuous. Then came the thinning of the trees, cutting off the top branches, and that was really a curious sight. The men climbed high into the tree, and then hung on to the trunk with iron clamps on their feet, with points which stuck into the bark, and apparently gave them a perfectly secure hold, but it looked dangerous to see them swinging off from the trunk with a sort of axe in their hands, cutting off the branches with a swift, sharp stroke. When they finally attacked the big trees that were to come down it was a much longer affair, and they made slow progress. They knew their work well, the exact moment when the last blow had been given, and they must spring aside to get out of the way when the tree fell with a great crash.
There were usually two or three big battues in November for the neighbouring farmers and small proprietors. The breakfast always took place at the keeper's house. We had arranged one room as a dining-room, and the keeper's wife was a very good cook; her omelette au lard and civet de lièvre, classic dishes for a shooting breakfast, were excellent. The repast always ended with a galette aux amandes made by the chef of the château. I generally went down to the kennels at the end of the day, and it was a pretty sight when the party emerged from the woods, first the shooters, then a regiment of beaters (men who track the game), the game cart with a donkey bringing up the rear—the big game, chevreuil or boar, at the bottom of the cart, the hares and rabbits hanging from the sides. The sportsmen all came back to the keeper's lodge to have a drink before starting off on their long drive home, and there was always a great discussion over the entries in the game book and the number of pièces each man had killed. It was a very difficult account to make, as every man counted many more rabbits than the trackers had found, so they were obliged to make an average of the game that had been brought in. When all the guests had departed it was killing to hear the old keeper's criticisms.
[Illustration: There were all sorts and kinds.]
Another important function was a large breakfast to all the mayors, conseillers d'arrondissement, and rich farmers of W.'s canton. That always took place at the château, and Mme. A. and I appeared at table. There were all sorts and kinds—some men in dress coats and white gloves, some very rough specimens in corduroys and thick-nailed shoes, having begun life as garçons de ferme (ploughboys). They were all intelligent, well up in politics, and expressed themselves very well, but I think, on the whole, they were pleased when Mme. A. and I withdrew and they went into the gallery for their coffee and cigars. Mme. A. was extraordinarily easy—talked to them all. They came in exactly the same sort of equipage, a light, high, two-wheeled trap with a hood, except the Mayor of La Ferté, our big town, who came in his victoria.
I went often with W. to some of the big farms to see the sheep-shearing and the dairies, and cheese made. The farmer's wife in France is a very capable, hard-working woman—up early, seeing to everything herself, and ruling all her carters and ploughboys with a heavy hand. Once a week, on market day, she takes her cheeses to the market town, driving herself in her high gig, and several times I have seen some of them coming home with a cow tied to their wagon behind, which they had bought at the market. They were always pleased to see us, delighted to show anything we wanted to see, offered us refreshment—bread and cheese, milk and wine—but never came to see me at the château. I made the round of all the châteaux with Mme. A. to make acquaintance with the neighbours. They were all rather far off, but I loved the long drives, almost always through the forest, which was quite beautiful in all seasons, changing like the sea. It was delightful in midsummer, the branches of the big trees almost meeting over our heads, making a perfect shade, and the long, straight, green alleys stretching away before us, as far as we could see. When the wood was a little less thick, the afternoon sun would make long zigzags of light through the trees and trace curious patterns upon the hard white road when we emerged occasionally for a few minutes from the depths of the forest at a cross-road. It was perfectly still, but summer stillness, when one hears the buzzing and fluttering wings of small birds and insects, and is conscious of life around one.
The most beautiful time for the forest is, of course, in the autumn. October and November are lovely months, with the changing foliage, the red and yellow almost as vivid as in America, and always a foreground of moss and brown ferns, which grow very thick and high all through the forest. We used to drive sometimes over a thick carpet of red and yellow leaves, hardly hearing the horses' hoofs or the noise of the wheels, and when we turned our faces homeward toward the sunset there was really a glory of colour in wood and sky. It was always curiously lonely—we rarely met anything or anyone, occasionally a group of wood-cutters or boys exercising dogs and horses from the hunting-stables of Villers-Cotterets. At long intervals we would come to a keeper's lodge, standing quite alone in the middle of the forest, generally near a carrefour where several roads met. There was always a small clearing—garden and kennels, and a perfectly comfortable house, but it must be a lonely life for the women when their husbands are off all day on their rounds. I asked one of them once, a pretty, smiling young woman who always came out when the carriage passed, with three or four children hanging to her skirts, if she was never afraid, being alone with small children and no possibility of help, if any drunkards or evilly disposed men came along. She said no—that tramps and vagabonds never came into the heart of the forest, and always kept clear of the keeper's house, as they never knew where he and his gun might be. She said she had had one awful night with a sick child. She was alone in the house with two other small children, almost babies, while her husband had to walk several miles to get a doctor. The long wait was terrible. I got to know all the keepers' wives on our side of the forest quite well, and it was always a great interest to them when we passed on horseback, so few women rode in that part of France in those days.
Sometimes, when we were in the heart of the forest, a stag with wide-spreading antlers would bound across the road; sometimes a pretty roebuck would come to the edge of the wood and gallop quickly back as we got near.
We had a nice couple at the lodge, an old cavalry soldier who had been for years coachman at the château and who had married a Scotchwoman, nurse of one of the children. It was curious to see the tall, gaunt figure of the Scotchwoman, always dressed in a short linsey skirt, loose jacket, and white cap, in the midst of the chattering, excitable women of the village. She looked so unlike them. Our peasant women wear, too, a short; thick skirt, loose jacket, and worsted or knit stockings, but they all wear sabots and on their heads a turban made of bright-coloured cotton; the older women, of course—the girls wear nothing on their heads. They become bent and wrinkled very soon—old women before their time—having worked always in the fields and carried heavy burdens on their backs. The Scotchwoman kept much to herself and rarely left the park. But all the women came to her with their troubles. Nearly always the same story—the men spending their earnings on drink and the poor mothers toiling and striving from dawn till dark to give the little ones enough to eat. She was a strict Protestant, very taciturn and reserved, quite the type of the old Calvinist race who fought so hard against the "Scarlet Woman" when the beautiful and unhappy Mary Stuart was reigning in Scotland and trying to rule her wild subjects. I often went to see her and she would tell me of her first days at the château, where everything was so different from what she was accustomed to.
She didn't tell me what Mme. A. did—that she was a very handsome girl and all the men of the establishment fell in love with her. There were dramas of jealousy when she finally decided to marry the coachman. Our chef had learned how to make various English cakes in London, and whenever he made buns or a plum-pudding we used to take some to her. She was a great reader, and we always kept the Times for her, and she and I sympathised with each other—two Anglo-Saxons married in France.
Some of the traditions of the château were quite charming. I was sitting in the lodge one day talking to Mme. Antoine, when the baker appeared with what seemed to me an extraordinary provision of bread. I said, "Does he leave the bread for the whole village with you?" "It is not for me, madame, it is for the traînards (tramps) who pass on the road," and she explained that all the châteaux gave a piece of bread and two sous to any wayfarer who asked for food. She cut the bread into good thick slices, and showed me a wooden bowl on the chimney, filled with two-sous pieces. While I was there two men appeared at the big gates, which were always open in the day. They were strong young fellows carrying their bundles, and a sort of pitchfork slung over their shoulders. They looked weary and footsore, their shoes worn in holes. They asked for something to drink and some tobacco, didn't care very much for the water, which was all that Mme. Antoine had to give them, but thanked her civilly enough for the bread and sous.
The park wall was a good vantage-ground to see all (and that wasn't much) that went on on the highroad. The diligence to Meaux passed twice a day, with a fine rattle of old wheels and chains, and cracking of whips. It went down the steep hill well enough, but coming up was quite another affair. All the passengers and the driver got out always, and even then it was difficult to get the heavy, cumbersome vehicle up the hill, in winter particularly, when the roads were muddy and slippery. The driver knew us all well, and was much interested in all that went on at the château. He often brought parcels, and occasionally people from the village who wanted to see W.—sometimes a blind piano-tuner who came from Villers-Cotterets. He was very kind to the poor blind man, helped him down most carefully from the diligence, and always brought him through the park gates to the lodge, where he delivered him over to Antoine. It was curious to see the blind man at work. Once he had been led through the rooms, he was quite at home, found the pianos, fussed over the keys and the strings, exactly as if he saw everything. He tuned all the pianos in the country, and was much pleased to put his hands on one that wasn't fifty years old. I had brought down my new Erard.
Sometimes a country wedding passed, and that was always a pretty sight. A marriage is always an important affair in France in every class of life. There are long discussions with all the members of the two families. The curé, the notary, the patron (if the young man is a workman), are all consulted, and there are as many negotiations and agreements in the most humble families as in the grand monde of the Faubourg St. Germain. Almost all French parents give a dot of some kind to their children, and whatever the sum is, either five hundred francs or two thousand, it is always scrupulously paid over to the notary. The wedding-day is a long one. After the religious ceremony in the church, all the wedding party—members of the two families and a certain number of friends—adjourn to the hotel of the little town for a breakfast, which is long and most abundant. Then comes the crowning glory of the day—a country walk along the dusty highroad to some wood or meadow where they can spend the whole afternoon. It is pretty to see the little procession trudging along—the bride in all her wedding garments, white dress, white shoes, wreath, and veil; the groom in a dress coat, top-hat, white cravat and waistcoat, with a white ribbon bow on his sleeve. Almost all the girls and young women are dressed in white or light colours; the mothers and grandmothers (the whole family turns out) in black with flowers in their bonnets. There is usually a fiddler walking ahead making most remarkable sounds on his old cracked instrument, and the younger members of the party take an occasional gallop along the road. They are generally very gay; there is much laughing, and from time to time a burst of song. It is always a mystery to me how the bride keeps her dress and petticoat so clean, but she does, with that extraordinary knack all Frenchwomen seem to have of holding up their skirts. They passed often under the wall of the château, for a favourite resting-place was in our woods at the entrance of the allée verte, where it widens out a little; the moss makes a beautiful soft carpet, and the big trees give perfect shade. We heard sounds of merriment one day when we were passing and we stopped to look on, from behind the bushes, where we couldn't be seen. There was quite a party assembled. The fiddler was playing some sort of country-dance and all the company, except the very old people, were dancing and singing, some of the men indulging in most wonderful steps and capers. The children were playing and running under the trees. One stout man was asleep, stretched out full length on the side of the road. I fancy his piquette, as they call the ordinary white wine of the country, had been too much for him. The bride and groom were strolling about a little apart from the others, quite happy and lover-like, his arm around her waist, she blushing and giggling.
The gendarmes passed also very regularly. They always stopped and talked, had a drink with Antoine, and gave all the local news—how many braconniers (poachers) had been caught, how long they were to stay in prison, how some of the farmers' sheep had disappeared, no one knew how exactly—there were no more robbers. One day two of them passed, dragging a man between them who had evidently been struggling and fighting. His blouse was torn, and there was a great gash on his face. We were wildly excited, of course. They told us he was an old sinner, a poacher who had been in prison various times, but these last days, not contented with setting traps for the rabbits, he had set fire to some of the hay-stacks, and they had been hunting for him for some time. He looked a rough customer, had an ugly scowl on his face. One of the little hamlets near the château, on the canal, was a perfect nest of poachers, and I had continual struggles with the keepers when I gave clothes or blankets to the women and children. They said some of the women were as bad as the men, and that I ought not to encourage them to come up to the house and beg for food and clothing; that they sold all the little jackets and petticoats we gave them to the canal hands (also a bad lot) for brandy. I believe it was true in some cases, but in the middle of winter, with snow on the ground (we were hardly warm in the house with big fires everywhere), I couldn't send away women with four or five children, all insufficiently clothed and fed, most of them in cotton frocks with an old worn knit shawl around their shoulders, legs and arms bare and chapped, half frozen. Some of them lived in caverns or great holes in the rocks, really like beasts. On the road to La Ferté there was a big hole (there is no other word for it) in the bank where a whole family lived. The man was always in prison for something, and his wife, a tall, gaunt figure, with wild hair and eyes, spent most of her time in the woods teaching her boys to set traps for the game. The curé told us that one of the children was ill, and that there was literally nothing in the house, so I took one of my cousins with me, and we climbed up the bank, leaving the carriage with Hubert, the coachman, expostulating seriously below. We came to a rickety old door which practically consisted of two rotten planks nailed together. It was ajar; clouds of black smoke poured out as we opened it, and it was some time before we could see anything. We finally made out a heap of filthy rags in one corner near a sort of fire made of charred pieces of black peat. Two children, one a boy about twelve years old, was lying on the heap of rags, coughing his heart out. He hardly raised his head when we came in. Another child, a girl, some two years younger, was lying beside him, both of them frightfully thin and white; one saw nothing but great dark eyes in their faces. The mother was crouched on the floor close to the children. She hardly moved at first, and was really a terrifying object when she got up; half savage, scarcely clothed—a short petticoat in holes and a ragged bodice gaping open over her bare skin, no shoes or stockings; big black eyes set deep in her head, and a quantity of unkempt black hair. She looked enormous when she stood up, her head nearly touching the roof. I didn't feel very comfortable, but we were two, and the carriage and Hubert within call. The woman was civil enough when she saw I had not come empty-handed. We took her some soup, bread, and milk. The children pounced upon the bread like little wild animals. The mother didn't touch anything while we were there—said she was glad to have the milk for the boy. I never saw human beings living in such utter filth and poverty. A crofter's cottage in Scotland, or an Irish hovel with the pigs and children all living together, was a palace compared to that awful hole. I remonstrated vigorously with W. and the Mayor of La Ferté for allowing people to live in that way, like beasts, upon the highroad, close to a perfectly prosperous country town. However, they were vagrants, couldn't live anywhere, for when we passed again, some days later, there was no one in the hole. The door had fallen down, there was no smoke coming out, and the neighbours told us the family had suddenly disappeared. The authorities then took up the matter—the holes were filled up, and no one was allowed to live in them. It really was too awful—like the dwellers in caves of primeval days.
We didn't have many visits at the château, though we were so near Paris (only about an hour and a half by the express), but the old people had got accustomed to their quiet life, and visitors would have worried them. Sometimes a Protestant pasteur would come down for two days. We had a nice visit once from M. de Pressensé, father of the present deputy, one of the most charming, cultivated men one could imagine. He talked easily and naturally, using beautiful language. He was most interesting when he told us about the Commune, and all the horrors of that time in Paris. He was in the Tuileries when the mob sacked and burned the palace; saw the femmes de la halle sitting on the brocade and satin sofas, saying, "C'est nous les princesses maintenant"; saw the entrance of the troops from Versailles, and the quantity of innocent people shot who were merely standing looking on at the barricades, having never had a gun in their hands. The only thing I didn't like was his long extempore (to me familiar) prayers at night. I believe it is a habit in some old-fashioned French Protestant families to pray for each member of the family by name. I thought it was bad enough when he prayed for the new ménage just beginning their married life (that was us), that they might be spiritually guided to do their best for each other and their respective families; but when he proceeded to name some others of the family who had strayed a little from the straight and narrow path, hoping they would be brought to see, by Divine grace, the error of their ways, I was horrified, and could hardly refrain from expressing my opinion to the old people. However, I was learning prudence, and when my opinion and judgment were diametrically opposed to those of my new family (which happened often) I kept them to myself. Sunday was strictly kept. There was no Protestant church anywhere near. We had a service in the morning in M. A.'s library. He read prayers and a short sermon, all the household appearing, as most of the servants were Swiss and Protestants. In the afternoon Mme. A. had all the village children at the château. She had a small organ in one of the rooms in the wing of the dining-room, taught them hymns and read them simple little stories. The curé was rather anxious at first, having his little flock under such a dangerous heretic influence, but he very soon realized what an excellent thing it was for the children, and both he and the mothers were much disappointed when anything happened to put off the lesson. They didn't see much of the curé. He would pay one formal visit in the course of the year, but there was never any intimacy.
We lived much for ourselves, and for a few months in the year it was a rest and change from Paris, and the busy, agitated life, social and political, that one always led there. I liked the space, too, the great high, empty rooms, with no frivolous little tables and screens or stuff on the walls, no photograph stands nor fancy vases for flowers, no bibelot of any kind—large, heavy pieces of furniture which were always found every morning in exactly the same place. Once or twice, in later years, I tried to make a few changes, but it was absolutely useless to contend with a wonderful old servant called Ferdinand, who was over sixty years old, and had been brought up at the château, had always remained there with the various owners, and who knew every nook and corner of the house and everything that was in it. It was years before I succeeded in talking to him. I used to meet him sometimes on the stairs and corridors, always running, and carrying two or three pails and brooms. If he could, he dived into any open door when he saw me coming, and apparently never heard me when I spoke, for he never answered. He was a marvellous servant, cleaned the whole house, opened and shut all the windows night and morning (almost work enough for one man), lit the calorifères, scrubbed and swept and polished floors from early dawn until ten o'clock, when we left the salon. He never lived with the other servants, cooked his own food at his own hours in his room, and his only companion was a large black cat, which always followed him about. He did W.'s service, and W. said that they used to talk about all sorts of things, but I fancy master and servant were equally reticent and understood each other without many words.
I slipped one day on the very slippery wooden steps leading from W.'s little study to the passage. Baby did the same, and got a nasty fall on the stone flags, so I asked W. if he would ask Ferdinand to put a strip of carpet on the steps (there were only four). W. gave the order, but no carpet appeared. He repeated it rather curtly. The old Ferdinand made no answer, but grumbled to himself over his broom that it was perfectly foolish and useless to put down a piece of carpet, that for sixty years people and children, and babies, had walked down those steps and no one had ever thought of asking for carpets. W. had really rather to apologize and explain that his wife was nervous and unused to such highly polished floors. However, we became great friends afterward, Ferdinand and I, and when he understood how fond I was of the château, he didn't mind my deranging the furniture a little. Two grand pianos were a great trial to him. I think he would have liked to put one on top of the other.
[Illustration: Ferdinand.]
The library, quite at one end of the house, separated from the drawing-room we always sat in by a second large salon, was a delightful, quiet resort when any one wanted to read or write. There were quantities of books, French, English, and German—the classics in all three languages, and a fine collection of historical memoirs.
II
COUNTRY VISITS
We didn't pay many visits; but sometimes, when the weather was fine and there was no hunting, and W. gone upon an expedition to some outlying village, Mme. A. and I would start off for one of the neighbouring châteaux. We went one day to the château de C, where there was a large family party assembled, four generations—the old grandmother, her son and daughter, both married, the daughter's daughter, also married, and her children. It was a pretty drive, about an hour all through the forest. The house is quite modern, not at all pretty, a square white building, with very few trees near it, the lawn and one or two flower-beds not particularly well kept. The grounds ran straight down to the Villers-Cotterets forest, where M. M. has good shooting. The gates were open, the concierge said the ladies were there. (They didn't have to be summoned by a bell. That is one of the habits of this part of the country. There is almost always a large bell at the stable or "communs," and when visitors arrive and the family are out in the grounds, not too far off, they are summoned by the bell. I was quite surprised one day at Bourneville, when we were in the woods at some little distance from the château, when we heard the bell, and my companion, a niece of Mme. A., instantly turned back, saying, "That means there are visits; we must go back.") We found all the ladies sitting working in a corner salon with big windows opening on the park. The old grandmother was knitting, but she was so straight and slight, with bright black eyes, that it wouldn't have seemed at all strange to see her bending over an embroidery frame like all the others. The other three ladies were each seated at an embroidery frame in the embrasures of the windows. I was much impressed, particularly with the large pieces of work that they were undertaking, a portière, covers for the billiard-table, bed, etc. It quite recalled what one had always read of feudal France, when the seigneur would be off with his retainers hunting or fighting, and the châtelaine, left alone in the château, spent her time in her "bower" surrounded by her maidens, all working at the wonderful tapestries one sees still in some of the old churches and convents. I was never much given to work, but I made a mental resolve that I, too, would set up a frame in one of the drawing-rooms at home, and had visions of yards of pale-blue satin, all covered with wonderful flowers and animals, unrolling themselves under my skilful fingers—but I must confess that it remained a vision. I never got further than little crochet petticoats, which clothed every child in the village. To make the picture complete there should have been a page in velvet cap and doublet, stretched on the floor at the feet of his mistress, trying to distract her with songs and ballads. The master of the house, M. M., was there, having come in from shooting. He had been reading aloud to the ladies—Alfred de Musset, I think. That part of the picture I could never realize, as there is nothing W. loathes like reading aloud except, perhaps, being read to.
They were very friendly and easy, showed us the downstairs part of the house, and gave us goûter, not tea, wine and cake. The house looked comfortable enough, nothing picturesque; a large square hall with horns, whips, foxes' brushes, antlers, and all sorts of trophies of the chase on the walls. They are sporting people; all ride. The dining-room, a large bright room, was panelled with life-size portraits of the family: M. and Mme. M. in hunting dress, green coats, tricorne hats, on their horses; the daughter of the house and one of her brothers, rowing in a boat on a small lake; the eldest son in shooting dress, corduroys, his gun slung over his shoulder, his dog by his side. They were all very like.
[Illustration: "Merci, je vais bien.">[
We strolled about the garden a little, and saw lots of pheasants walking peacefully about at the edge of the woods. They made me promise to come back one day with W., he to shoot and I to walk about with the ladies. We saw the children of the fourth generation, and left with the impression of a happy, simple family party. M. M. was a conseiller général of the Aisne and a colleague of W.'s. They always stayed at the same hotel (de la Hure) in Laon at the time of the conseil général, and M. M. was much amused at first with W.'s baggage: a large bath-tub, towels (for in small French provincial hotels towels were microscopic and few in number), and a package of tea, which was almost an unknown commodity in those days. None of our visitors ever took any, and always excused themselves with the same phrase, "Merci, je vais bien," evidently looking upon it as some strange and hurtful medicine. That has all changed, like everything else. Now one finds tea not only at all the châteaux, with brioches and toast, but even in all the hotels, but I wouldn't guarantee what we get there as ever having seen China or Ceylon, and it is still wiser to take chocolate or coffee, which is almost always good. We had a lovely drive back. The forest was beautiful in the waning light. As usual, we didn't meet any vehicle of any kind, and were quite excited when we saw a carriage approaching in the distance—however, it proved to be W. in his dog-cart. We passed through one or two little villages quite lost in the forest—always the same thing, one long, straggling street, with nobody in it, a large farm at one end and very often the church at the other. As it was late, the farm gates were all open, the cattle inside, teams of white oxen drinking out of a large trough.
In a large farm near Boursonne there was much animation and conversation. All the beasts were in, oxen, cows, horses, chickens, and in one corner, a flock of geese. The poor little "goose girl," a child about ten years old with bright-blue eyes and a pig-tail like straw hanging down her back, was being scolded violently by the farmer's wife, who was presiding in person over the rentrée of the animals, for having brought her geese home on a run. They wouldn't eat, and would certainly all be ill, and probably die before morning. There is a pretty little old château at Boursonne; the park, however, so shut in by high walls that one sees nothing in passing. W. had shot there once or twice in former years, but it has changed hands very often.
[Illustration: Long pauses when nobody seemed to have anything to say.]
Sometimes we paid more humble visits, not to châteaux, but to the principal people of the little country town near, from which we had all our provisions. We went to see the doctor's wife, the notary's wife, the mayor's wife, and the two schools—the asile or infant school, and the more important school for bigger girls. The old doctor was quite a character, had been for years in the country, knew everybody and everybody's private history. He was the doctor of the château, by the year, attended to everybody, masters and servants, and received a regular salary, like a secretary. He didn't come very often for us in his medical capacity, but he often dropped in at the end of the day to have a talk with W. The first time I saw him W. presented him to me, as un bon ami de la famille. I naturally put out my hand, which so astonished and disconcerted him (he barely touched the tips of my fingers) that I was rather bewildered. W. explained after he had gone that in that class of life in France they never shook hands with a lady, and that the poor man was very much embarrassed. He was very useful to W. as a political agent, as he was kind to the poor people and took small (or no) fees. They all loved him, and talked to him quite freely. His women-kind were very shy and provincial. I think our visits were a great trial to them. They always returned them most punctiliously, and came in all their best clothes. When we went to see them we generally found them in short black skirts, and when they were no longer very young, with black caps, but they always had handsome silk dresses, velvet cloaks, and hats with flowers and feathers when they came to see us. Some of them took the cup of tea we offered, but they didn't know what to do with it, and sat on the edge of their chairs, looking quite miserable until we relieved them of the burden of the tea-cup. Mme. A. was rather against the tea-table; she preferred the old-fashioned tray handed around with wine and cakes, but I persuaded her to try, and after a little while she acknowledged that it was better to have the tea-table brought in. It made a diversion; I got up to make the tea. Someone gave me a chair, someone else handed the cups. It made a little movement, and was not so stiff as when we all sat for over an hour on the same chairs making conversation. It is terrible to have to make conversation, and extraordinary how little one finds to say. We had always talked easily enough at home, but then things came more naturally, and even the violent family discussions were amusing, but my recollection of these French provincial visits is something awful. Everybody so polite, so stiff, and the long pauses when nobody seemed to have anything to say. I of course was a novelty and a foreign element—they didn't quite know what to do with me. Even to Mme. A., and I grew very fond of her, and she was invariably charming to me, I was something different. We had many talks on every possible subject during our long drives, and also in the winter afternoons. At first I had my tea always upstairs in my own little salon, which I loved with the curtains drawn, a bright wood-fire burning, and all my books about; but when I found that she sat alone in the big drawing-room, not able to occupy herself in any way, I asked her if I might order my tea there, and there were very few afternoons that I didn't sit with her when I was at home. She talked often about her early married life—winters in Cannes and in Paris, where they received a great deal, principally Protestants, and I fancy she sometimes regretted the interchange of ideas and the brilliant conversation she had been accustomed to, but she never said it. She was never tired of hearing about my early days in America—our family life—the extraordinary liberty of the young people, etc. We often talked over the religious question, and though we were both Protestants, we were as far apart almost as if one was a pagan. Protestantism in France always has seemed to me such a rigid form of worship, so little calculated to influence young people or draw them to church. The plain, bare churches with white-washed walls, the long sermons and extempore prayers, speaking so much of the anger of God and the terrible punishments awaiting the sinner, the trials and sorrows that must come to all. I often think of a sermon I heard preached in one Protestant church, to the boys and girls who were making their first communion—all little things, the girls in their white frocks and long white veils, the boys with white waistcoats and white ribbons on their arms, making such a pretty group as they sat on the front benches listening hard to all the preacher said. I wondered that the young, earnest faces didn't suggest something to him besides the horrors of eternal punishment, the wickedness and temptations of the world they were going to face, but his only idea seemed to be that he must warn them of all the snares and temptations that were going to beset their paths. Mme. A. couldn't understand my ideas when I said I loved the Episcopal service—the prayers and litany I had always heard, the Easter and Christmas hymns I had always sung, the carols, the anthems, the great organ, the flowers at Easter, the greens at Christmas. All that seemed to her to be a false sentiment appealing to the senses and imagination. "But if it brings people to church, and the beautiful music elevates them and raises their thoughts to higher things—" "That is not religion; real religion means the prayer of St. Chrysostom, 'Where two or three are gathered together in My name I will grant their requests.'" "That is very well for really religious, strong people who think out their religion and don't care for any outward expression of it, but for weaker souls who want to be helped, and who are helped by the beautiful music and the familiar prayers, surely it is better to give them something that brings them to church and makes them better men and women than to frighten them away with such strict, uncompromising doctrines—" "No, that is only sentiment, not real religious feeling." I don't think we ever understood each other any better on that subject, and we discussed it so often.
* * * * *
Mme. A., with whom I made my round of calls at the neighbouring châteaux, was a charming companion. She had lived a great deal in Paris, in the Protestant coterie, which was very intellectual and cultivated. The salons of the Duchesse de Broglie, Mmes. de Staël, d'Haussonvìlle, Guizot, were most interesting and recherchés, very exclusive and very serious, but a centre for all political and literary talk. I have often heard my husband say some of the best talkers in society s'étaient formés dans ces salons, where, as young men, they listened modestly to all the brilliant conversation going on around them.
It was an exception when we found anyone at home when we called in the neighbourhood, and when we did, it was evident that afternoon visits were a rarity. We did get in one cold November afternoon, and our visit was a sample of many others that we paid.
The door was opened by a footman struggling into his coat, with a handful of faggots in his arms. He ushered us through several bare, stiff, cold rooms (proportions handsome enough) to a smaller salon, which the family usually occupied. Then he lighted a fire (which consisted principally of smoke) and went to summon his mistress. The living-room was just as bare and stiff as the others, no trace of anything that looked like habitation or what we should consider comfort—no books nor work nor flowers (that, however, is comparatively recent in France). I remember quite well Mme. Casimir-Périer telling me that when she went with her husband to St. Petersburg about fifty years ago, one of the things that struck her most in the Russian salons, was the quantity of green plants and cut flowers—she had never seen them in France. There were often fine pictures, tapestries, and furniture, all the chairs in a row against the wall.
[Illustration: Then he lighted a fire.]
Our visits were always long, as most of the châteaux were at a certain distance, and we were obliged to stay an hour and a half, sometimes longer, to rest the horses. It was before the days of five-o'clock tea. A tray was brought in with sweet wine (Malaga or Vin de Chypre) and cakes (ladies'-fingers) which evidently had figured often before on similar occasions. Conversation languished sometimes, though Mme. A. was wonderful, talking so easily about everything. In the smaller places, when people rarely went to Paris, it ran always in the same grooves—the woods, the hunting (very good in the Villers-Cotterets forest), the schoolmaster (so difficult to get proper books for the children to read), the curé, and all local gossip, and as much about the iniquities of the republic as could be said before the wife of a republican senator. Wherever we went, even to the largest châteaux, where the family went to Paris for the season, the talk was almost entirely confined to France and French interests. Books, politics, music, people, nothing existed apparently au-delà des frontières. America was an unknown quantity. It was strange to see intelligent people living in the world so curiously indifferent as to what went on in other countries. At first I used to talk a little about America and Rome, where I had lived many years and at such an interesting time—the last days of Pio Nono and the transformation of the old superstitious papal Rome to the capital of young Italy—but I soon realized that it didn't interest any one, and by degrees I learned to talk like all the rest.
I often think of one visit to a charming little Louis XV château standing quite on the edge of the forest—just room enough for the house, and the little hamlet at the gates; a magnificent view of the forest, quite close to the lawn behind the château, and then sweeping off, a dark-blue mass, as far as one could see. We were shown into a large, high room, no carpet, no fire, some fine portraits, very little furniture, all close against the wall, a round table in the middle with something on it, I couldn't make out what at first. Neither books, reviews, nor even a photographic album—the supreme resource of provincial salons. When we got up to take leave I managed to get near the table, and the ornament was a large white plate with a piece of fly-paper on it. The mistress of the house was shy and uncomfortable; sent at once for her husband, and withdrew from the conversation as soon as he appeared, leaving him to make all the "frais." We walked a little around the park before leaving. It was really a lovely little place, with its background of forest and the quiet, sleepy little village in front; very lonely and far from everything, but with a certain charm of its own. Two or three dogs were playing in the court-yard, and one curious little animal who made a rush at the strangers. I was rather taken aback, particularly when the master of the house told me not to be afraid, it was only a marcassin (small wild boar), who had been born on the place, and was as quiet as a kitten. I did not think the great tusks and square, shaggy head looked very pleasant, but the little thing was quiet enough, came and rubbed itself against its master's legs and played quite happily with the dogs. We heard afterward that they were obliged to kill it. It grew fierce and unmanageable, and no one would come near the place.
* * * * *
I took Henrietta with me sometimes when I had a distant visit to pay; an hour and a half's drive alone on a country road where you never meet anything was rather dull. We went one cold December afternoon to call upon Mme. B., the widow of an old friend and colleague of W.'s. We were in the open carriage, well wrapped up, and enjoyed the drive immensely. The country looked beautiful in the bright winter sunshine, the distant forest always in a blue mist, the trees with their branches white with "givre" (hoarfrost), and patches of snow and ice all over the fields.
For a wonder we didn't go through the forest—drove straight away from it and had charming effects of colour upon some of the thatched cottages in the villages we passed through; one or two had been mended recently and the mixture of old brown, bright red and glistening white was quite lovely.
We went almost entirely along the great plains, occasionally small bits of wood and very fair hills as we got near our destination. The villages always very scattered and almost deserted—when it is cold everybody stays indoors—and of course there is no work to be done on the farms when the ground is hard frozen. It is a difficult question to know what to do with the men of all the small hamlets when the real winter sets in; the big farms turn off many of their labourers, and as it is a purely agricultural country all around us there is literally nothing to do. My husband and several of the owners of large estates gave work to many with their regular "coupe" of wood, but that only lasts a short time, and the men who are willing to work but can find nothing drift naturally into cafés and billiard saloons, where they read cheap bad papers and talk politics of the wildest description.
We found our château very well situated on the top of a hill, a good avenue leading up to the gate, a pretty little park with fine trees at the back, the tower of the village church just visible through the trees at the end of the central alley. It was hardly a château—half manor, half farm. We drove into a large courtyard, or rather farmyard, quite deserted; no one visible anywhere; the door of the house was open, but there was no bell nor apparently any means of communicating with any one. Hubert cracked his whip noisily several times without any result—and we were just wondering what we should do (perhaps put our cards under a stone on the steps) when a man appeared, said Mme. B. was at home, but she was in the stable looking after a sick cow—he would go and tell her we were there. In a few minutes she appeared attired in a short, rusty-black skirt, sabots on her feet, and a black woollen shawl over her head and shoulders. She seemed quite pleased to see us—was not at all put out at being caught in such very simple attire—begged us to come in and ushered us through a long, narrow hall and several cold, comfortless rooms, the shutters not open and no fire anywhere, into her bedroom. All the furniture—chairs, tables and bed—was covered with linen. She explained that it was her "lessive" (general wash) she had just made, that all the linen was dry, but she had not had time to put it away. She called a maid and they cleared off two chairs—she sat on the bed.
It was frightfully cold—we were thankful we had kept our wraps on. She said she supposed we would like a fire after our long, cold drive, and rang for a man to bring some wood. He (in his shirt sleeves) appeared with two or three logs of wood and was preparing to make a fire with them all, but she stopped him, said one log was enough, the ladies were not going to stay long—so, naturally, we had no fire and clouds of smoke. She was very talkative, never stopped—told us all about her servants, her husband's political campaigns and how W. would never have been named to the Conseil Général if M.B. hadn't done all his work for him. She asked a great many questions, answering them all herself; then said, "I don't offer you any tea, as I know you always go back to have your tea at home, and I am quite sure you don't want any wine."
There was such an evident reluctance to give us anything that I didn't like to insist, and said we must really be going as we had a long drive before us, though I should have liked something hot; tea, of course, she knew nothing about, but even a glass of ordinary hot wine, which they make very well in France, would have been acceptable. Henrietta was furious; she was shivering with cold, her eyes smarting with the smoke, and not at all interested in M.B.'s political career, or Madame's servants, and said she would have been thankful to have even a glass of vin de Chypre.
It was unfortunate, perhaps, that we had arrived during the "lessive"; that is always a most important function in France. In almost all the big houses in the country (small ones, too) that is the way they do their washing; once a month or once every three months, according to the size of the establishment, the whole washing of the household is done; all the linen: master's, servants', guests'; house is turned out; the linen closets cleaned and aired! Every one looks busy and energetic. It is quite a long affair—lasts three or four days. I often went to see the performance when we made our "lessive" at the château every month.
It always interested our English and American friends, as the washing is never done in that way in either of their countries. It was very convenient at our place as we had plenty of room. The "lavoir" stood at the top of the steps leading into the kitchen gardens; there was a large, square tank sunk in the ground, so that the women could kneel to their work, then a little higher another of beautiful clear water, all under cover. Just across the path there was a small house with a blazing wood fire; in the middle an enormous tub where all the linen was passed through wood ashes. There were four "lessiveuses" (washerwomen), sturdy peasant women with very short skirts, sabots, and turbans (made of blue and white checked calico) on their heads, their strong red arms bared above the elbow. The Mère Michon, the eldest of the four, directed everything and kept them well at work, allowed very little talking; they generally chatter when they are washing and very often quarrel. When they are washing at the public "lavoir" in the village one hears their shrill voices from a great distance. Our "lingère," Mme. Hubert, superintended the whole operation; she was very keen about it and remonstrated vigorously when they slapped the linen too hard sometimes with the little flat sticks, like spades, they use. The linen all came out beautifully white and smooth, hadn't the yellow look that all city-washed clothes have.
I think Mme. B. was very glad to get rid of us, and to begin folding her linen and putting it back in the big wooden wardrobes, that one sees everywhere in France. Some of the old Norman wardrobes, with handsome brass locks and beautifully carved doors, are real works of art—very difficult to get and very expensive. Fifty years ago the peasant did not understand the value of such a "meuble" and parted with it easily—but now, with railways everywhere and strangers and bric-à-brac people always on the lookout for a really old piece of furniture, they understand quite well that they possess a treasure and exact its full value.
Our drive back was rather shorter, downhill almost all the way, the horses going along at a good steady trot, knowing they were going home.
When we drew up at our own door Hubert remarked respectfully that he thought it was the first time that Madame and Mademoiselle had ever been received by a lady in sabots.
We wondered afterward if she had personally attended to the cow—in the way of poulticing or rubbing it. She certainly didn't wash her hands afterward, and it rather reminded me of one of Charles de Bunsen's stories when he was Secretary of Legation at Turin. In the summer they took a villa in the country just out of the town and had frequent visitors to lunch or dinner. One day two of their friends, Italians, had spent the whole day with them; had walked in the garden, picked fruit and flowers, played with the child and the dogs and the pony, and as they were coming back to the house for dinner, Charles suggested that they might like to come up to his dressing-room and wash their hands before dinner—to which one of them replied, "Grazie, non mi sporco facilmente" (literal translation, "Thanks, I don't dirty myself easily"), and declined the offer of soap and water.
* * * * *
We paid two or three visits one year to the neighbouring châteaux, and had one very pleasant afternoon at the Château de Pinon, belonging to the Courval family. W. had known the late proprietor, the Vicomte de Courval, very well. They had been colleagues of the Conseil Général of the Aisne, were both very fond of the country and country life, and used to have long talks in the evening, when the work of the day was over, about plantation, cutting down trees, preservation of game, etc. Without these talks, I think W. would have found the evenings at the primitive little Hôtel de la Hure, at Laon, rather tedious.
The château is not very old and has no historic interest. It was built by a Monsieur du Bois, Vicomte de Courval, at the end of the seventeenth century. He lived at first in the old feudal château of which nothing now remains. Already times were changing—the thick walls, massive towers, high, narrow windows, almost slits, and deep moat, which were necessary in the old troubled days, when all isolated châteaux might be called upon, at any time, to defend themselves from sudden attack, had given way to the larger and more spacious residences of which Mansard, the famous architect of Louis XIV, has left so many chefs d'oeuvre. It was to Mansard that M. de Courval confided the task of building the château as it now stands, while the no less famous Le Notre was charged to lay out the park and gardens.
It was an easy journey from B——ville to Pinon. An hour's drive through our beautiful forest of Villers-Cotterets and another hour in the train. We stopped at the little station of Anizy just outside the gates of the park; a brougham was waiting for us and a very short drive through a stately avenue brought us to the drawbridge and the iron gates of the "Cour d'honneur." The house looked imposing; I had an impression of a very high and very long façade with two towers stretching out into the court-yard, which is very large, with fine old trees and broad parterres of bright-coloured flowers on either side of the steps. There was a wide moat of running water, the banks covered with shrubs and flowers—the flowers were principally salvias and chrysanthemums, as it was late in the season, but they made a warm bit of colour. The house stands low, as do all houses surrounded by a moat, but the park rises a little directly behind it and there is a fine background of wood.
We drew up at a flight of broad, shallow steps; the doors were open. There were three or four footmen in the ante-room. While we were taking off our wraps Mme. de Courval appeared; she was short, stout, dressed in black, with that terrible black cap which all widows wear in France—so different from the white cap and soft white muslin collar and cuffs we are accustomed to. She had a charming, easy manner and looked very intelligent and capable. It seems she managed the property extremely well, made the tour of the house, woods and garden every day with her "régisseur." W. had the highest opinion of her business capacity—said she knew the exact market value of everything on the place—from an old tree that must be cut down for timber to the cheeses the farmer's wife made and sold at the Soissons market.
She suggested that I should come upstairs to leave my heavy coat. We went up a broad stone staircase, the walls covered with pictures and engravings; one beautiful portrait of her daughter, the Marquise de Chaponay, on horseback. There were handsome carved chests and china vases on the landing, which opened on a splendid long gallery, very high and light—bedrooms on one side, on the other big windows (ten or twelve, I should think) looking over the park and gardens. She took me to a large, comfortable room, bright wood fire blazing, and a pretty little dressing-room opening out of it, furnished in a gay, old-fashioned pattern of chintz. She said breakfast would be ready in ten minutes—supposed I could find my way down, and left me to my own devices.
I found the family assembled in the drawing-room; four women: Mme. de Courval and her daughter, the Marquise de Chaponay, a tall handsome woman, and two other ladies of a certain age; I did not catch their names, but they looked like all the old ladies one always sees in a country house in France. I should think they were cousins or habituées of the château, as they each had their embroidery frame and one a little dog. I am haunted by the embroidery frames—I am sure I shall end my days in a black cap, bending over a frame making portières or a piano-cover.
We breakfasted in a large square dining-room running straight through the house, windows on each side. The room was all in wood panelling—light gray—the sun streaming in through the windows. Mme. de Courval put W. on her right, me on her other side. We had an excellent breakfast, which we appreciated after our early start. There was handsome old silver on the table and sideboard, which is a rare thing in France, as almost all the silver was melted during the Revolution. Both Mme. de Courval and her daughter were very easy and animated. The Marquise de Chaponay told me she had known W. for years, that in the old days before he became such a busy man and so engrossed in politics he used to read Alfred de Musset to her, in her atelier, while she painted. She supposed he read now to me—which he certainly never did—as he always told me he hated reading aloud. They talked politics, of course, but their opinions were the classic Faubourg St. Germain opinions: "A Republic totally unfitted for France and the French"—"none of the gentlemen in France really Republican at heart" (with evidently a few exceptions)—W.'s English blood and education having, of course, influenced him.
As soon as breakfast was over one of the windows on the side of the moat was opened and we all gave bread to the carp, handed to us by the butler—small square pieces of bread in a straw basket. It was funny to see the fish appear as soon as the window was opened—some of them were enormous and very old. It seems they live to a great age; a guardian of the Palace at Fontainebleau always shows one to tourists, who is supposed to have been fed by the Emperor Napoleon. Those of Pinon knew all about it, lifting their brown heads out of the water and never missing their piece of bread.
We went back to the drawing-room for coffee, passing through the billiard room, where there are some good pictures. A fine life-size portrait of General Moreau (father of Mme. de Courval) in uniform, by Gerard—near it a trophy of four flags—Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, and Hungarian—taken by the General; over the trophy three or four "lames d'honneur" (presentation swords) with name and inscription. There are also some pretty women's portraits in pastel—very delicate colours in old-fashioned oval frames—quite charming.
The drawing-room was a very handsome room also panelled in light gray carved wood; the furniture rather heavy and massive, curtains and coverings of thick, bright flowered velvet, but it looked suitable in that high old-fashioned room—light modern furniture would have been out of place.
As soon as we had finished our coffee we went for a walk—not the two old ladies, who settled down at once to their embroidery frames; one of them showed me her work—really quite beautiful—a church ornament of some kind, a painted Madonna on a ground of white satin; she was covering the whole ground with heavy gold embroidery, so thick it looked like mosaic.
The park is splendid, a real domain, all the paths and alleys beautifully kept and every description of tree—M. de Courval was always trying experiments with foreign trees and shrubs and apparently most successfully. I think the park would have been charming in its natural state, as there was a pretty little river running through the grounds and some tangles of bushes and rocks that looked quite wild—it might have been in the middle of the forest but everything had been done to assist nature. There were a "pièce d'eau," cascades, little bridges thrown over the river in picturesque spots, and on the highest point a tower (donjon), which was most effective, looked quite the old feudal towers of which so few remain now. They were used as watch towers, as a sentinel posted on the top could see a great distance over the plains and give warning of the approach of the enemy. As the day was fine—no mist—we had a beautiful view from the top, seeing plainly the great round tower of Coucy, the finest ruin in France—the others made out quite well the towers of the Laon Cathedral, but those I couldn't distinguish, seeing merely a dark spot on the horizon which might have been a passing cloud.
Coming back we crossed the "Allée des Soupirs," which has its legend like so many others in this country: It was called the "Allée des Soupirs" on account of the tragedy that took place there. The owner of the château at that time—a Comte de Lamothe—discovered his wife on too intimate terms with his great friend and her cousin; they fought in the Allée, and the Comte de Lamothe was killed by his friend. The widow tried to brave it out and lived on for some time at the château; but she was accursed and an evil spell on the place—everything went wrong and the château finally burnt down. The place was then sold to the de Courval family.
At the end of an hour the Marquise had had enough; I should not think she was much of a walker; she was struggling along in high-heeled shoes and proposed that she and I should return to the house and she would show me her atelier. W. and Mme. de Courval continued their tour of inspection which was to finish at the Home Farm, where she wanted to show him some small Breton cows which had just arrived. The atelier was a charming room; panelled like all the others in a light grey wood. One hardly saw the walls, for they were covered with pictures, engravings and a profusion of mirrors in gilt oval frames. It was evidently a favourite haunt of the Marquise's: books, papers and painting materials scattered about; the piano open and quantities of music on the music-stand; miniatures, snuff-boxes and little old-fashioned bibelots on all the tables, and an embroidery frame, of course, in one of the windows, near it a basket filled with bright coloured silks. The miniatures were, almost all, portraits of de Courvals of every age and in every possible costume: shepherdesses, court ladies of the time of Louis XV, La Belle Ferronnière with the jewel on her forehead, men in armour with fine, strongly marked faces; they must have been a handsome race. It is a pity there is no son to carry on the name. One daughter-in-law had no children; the other one, born an American, Mary Ray of New York, had only one daughter, the present Princesse de Poix, to whom Pinon now belongs.
We played a little; four hands—the classics, of course. All French women of that generation who played at all were brought up on strictly classical music. She had a pretty, delicate, old-fashioned touch; her playing reminded me of Madame A.'s.
When it was too dark to see any more we sat by the fire and talked till the others came in. She asked a great deal about my new life in Paris—feared I would find it stiff and dull after the easy happy family life I had been accustomed to. I said it was very different, of course, but there was much that was interesting, only I did not know the people well enough yet to appreciate the stories they were always telling about each other, also that I had made several "gaffes" quite innocently. I told her one which amused her very much, though she could not imagine how I ever could have said it. It was the first year of my marriage; we were dining in an Orleanist house, almost all the company Royalists and intimate friends of the Orléans Princes, and three or four moderate, very moderate Republicans like us. It was the 20th of January and the women were all talking about a ball they were going to the next night, 21st of January (anniversary of the death of Louis XVI). They supposed they must wear mourning—such a bore. Still, on account of the Comtesse de Paris and the Orléans family generally, they thought they must do it—upon which I asked, really very much astonished: "On account of the Orléans family? but did not the Duc d'Orléans vote the King's execution?" There was an awful silence and then M. Leon Say, one of the cleverest and most delightful men of his time, remarked, with a twinkle in his eye: "Ma foi; je crois que Mme. Waddington a raison." There was a sort of nervous laugh and the conversation was changed. W. was much annoyed with me, "a foreigner so recently married, throwing down the gauntlet in that way." I assured him I had no purpose of any kind—I merely said what I thought, which is evidently unwise.
Mme. de Chaponay said she was afraid I would find it very difficult sometimes. French people—in society at least—were so excited against the Republic, anti-religious feeling, etc. "It must be very painful for you." "I don't think so; you see I am American, Republican and a Protestant; my point of view must be very different from that of a Frenchwoman and a Catholic." She was very charming, however; intelligent, cultivated, speaking beautiful French with a pretty carefully trained voice—English just as well; we spoke the two languages going from one to the other without knowing why. I was quite sorry when we were summoned to tea. The room looked so pretty in the twilight, the light from the fire danced all over the pictures and gilt frames of the mirrors, leaving the corners quite in shadow. The curtains were not drawn and we saw the darkness creeping up over the lawn; quite at the edge of the wood the band of white mist was rising, which we love to see in our part of the country, as it always means a fine day for the morrow.
We had a cheery tea. W. and Mme. de Courval had made a long "tournée," and W. quite approved of all the changes and new acquisitions she had made, particularly the little Breton cows. We left rather hurriedly as we had just time to catch our train.
Our last glimpse of the château as we looked back from the turn in the avenue was charming; there were lights in almost all the windows, which were reflected in the moat; the moon was rising over the woods at the back, and every tower and cornice of the enormous pile stood out sharply in the cold clear light.
* * * * *
We didn't move often once we were settled in the château for the autumn. It was very difficult to get W. away from his books and coins and his woods; but occasionally a shooting party tempted him. We went sometimes, about the Toussaint when the leaves were nearly fallen, to stay with friends who had a fine château and estate about three hours by rail from Paris, in the midst of the great plains of the Aube. The first time we went, soon after my marriage, I was rather doubtful as to how I should like it. I had never stayed in a French country house and imagined it would be very stiff and formal; however, the invitation was for three days—two days of shooting and one of rest—and I thought that I could get through without being too homesick.
We arrived about 4.30 for tea; the journey from Paris was through just the same uninteresting country one always sees when leaving by the Gare de l'Est. I think it is the ugliest sortie of all Paris. As we got near the château the Seine appeared, winding in and out of the meadows in very leisurely fashion. We just saw the house from the train, standing rather low. The station is at the park gates—in fact, the railway and the canal run through the property. Two carriages were waiting (we were not the only guests), and a covered cart for the maids and baggage. A short drive through a fine avenue of big trees skirting broad lawns brought us to the house, which looked very imposing with its long façade and rows of lighted windows. We drove through arcades covered with ivy into a very large court-yard, the château stables and communs taking three sides. There was a pièce d'eau at one end, a colombier at the other. There was no perron or stately entrance; in one corner a covered porch, rather like what one sees in England, shut in with glass door and windows and filled with plants, a good many chrysanthemums, which made a great mass of colour. The hall doors were wide open as the carriage drove up, Monsieur A. and his wife waiting for us just inside, Mme. A. his mother, the mistress of the château, at the door of the salon. We went into a large, high hall, well lighted, a bright fire burning, plenty of servants. It looked most cheerful and comfortable on a dark November afternoon. We left our wraps in the hall, and went straight into the drawing-room. I have been there so often since that I hardly remember my first impression. It was a corner room, high ceiling, big windows, and fine tapestries on the walls; some of them with a pink ground (very unusual), and much envied and admired by all art collectors. Mme. A. told me she found them all rolled up in a bundle in the garret when she married. A tea-table was standing before the sofa, and various people working and having their tea. We were not a large party—Comte and Comtesse de B. (she a daughter of the house) and three or four men, deputies and senators, all political. They counted eight guns. We sat there about half an hour, then there was a general move, and young Mme. A. showed us our rooms, which were most comfortable, fires burning, lamps lighted. She told us dinner was at 7.30; the first bell would ring at seven. I was the only lady besides the family. I told my maid to ask some of the others what their mistresses were going to wear. She said ordinary evening dress, with natural flowers in their hair, and that I would receive a small bouquet, which I did, only as I never wear anything in my hair, I put them on my corsage, which did just as well.
The dinner was pleasant, the dining-room a fine, large hall (had been stables) with a fireplace at each end, and big windows giving on the court-yard. It was so large that the dinner table (we were fourteen) seemed lost in space. The talk was almost exclusively political and amusing enough. All the men were, or had been, deputies, and every possible question was discussed. Mme. A. was charming, very intelligent, and animated, having lived all her life with clever people, and having taken part in all the changes that France has gone through in the last fifty years. She had been a widow for about two years when I first stayed there, and it was pretty to see her children with her. Her two sons, one married, the other a young officer, were so respectful and fond of their mother, and her daughter perfectly devoted to her.
The men all went off to smoke after coffee, and we women were left to ourselves for quite a long time. The three ladies all had work—knitting or crochet—and were making little garments, brassieres, and petticoats for all the village children. They were quite surprised that I had nothing and said they would teach me to crochet. The evening was not very long after the men came back. Some remained in the billiard-room, which opens out of the salon, and played cochonnet, a favourite French game. We heard violent discussions as to the placing of the balls, and some one asked for a yard measure, to be quite sure the count was correct. Before we broke up M. A. announced the programme for the next day. Breakfast for all the men at eight o'clock in the dining-room, and an immediate start for the woods; luncheon at the Pavilion d'Hiver at twelve in the woods, the ladies invited to join the shooters and follow one or two battues afterward. It was a clear, cold night, and there seemed every prospect of a beautiful day for the battues.
The next morning was lovely. I went to my maid's room, just across the corridor to see the motors start. All our rooms looked out on the park, and on the other side of the corridor was a succession of small rooms giving on the court-yard, which were always kept for the maids and valets of the guests. It was an excellent arrangement, for in some of the big châteaux, where the servants were at the top of the house, or far off in another wing, communications were difficult. There were two carriages and a sort of tapissière following with guns, servants, and cartridges. I had a message from Mme. A. asking if I had slept well, and sending me the paper; and a visit from Comtesse de B. who, I think, was rather anxious about my garments. She had told me the night before that the ploughed fields were something awful, and hoped I had brought short skirts and thick boots. I think the sight of my short Scotch homespun skirt and high boots reassured her. We started about 11.30 in an open carriage with plenty of furs and wraps. It wasn't really very cold—just a nice nip in the air, and no wind. We drove straight into the woods from the park. There is a beautiful green alley which faces one just going out of the gate, but it was too steep to mount in a carriage. The woods are very extensive, the roads not too bad—considering the season, extremely well kept. Every now and then through an opening in the trees we had a pretty view over the plains. As we got near the pavilion we heard shots not very far off—evidently the shooters were getting hungry and coming our way. It was a pretty rustic scene as we arrived. The pavilion, a log house, standing in a clearing, alleys branching off in every direction, a horse and cart which had brought the provisions from the château tied to one of the trees. It was shut in on three sides, wide open in front, a bright fire burning and a most appetizing table spread. Just outside another big fire was burning, the cook waiting for the first sportsman to appear to begin his classic dishes, omelette au lard and ragoât de mouton. I was rather hungry and asked for a piece of the pain de ménage they had for the traqueurs (beaters). I like the brown country bread so much better than the little rolls and crisp loaves most people ask for in France. Besides our own breakfast there was an enormous pot on the fire with what looked like an excellent substantial soup for the men. In a few minutes the party arrived; first the shooters, each man carrying his gun; then the game cart, which looked very well garnished, an army of beaters bringing up the rear. They made quite a picturesque group, all dressed in white. There have been so many accidents in some of the big shoots, people imprudently firing at something moving in the bushes, which proved to be a man and not a roebuck, that M. A. dresses all his men in white. The gentlemen were very cheerful, said they had had capital sport, and were quite ready for their breakfast. We didn't linger very long at table, as the days were shortening fast, and we wanted to follow some of the battues. The beaters had their breakfast while we were having ours—were all seated on the ground around a big kettle of soup, with huge hunks of brown bread on their tin plates.
We started off with the shooters. Some walking, some driving, and had one pretty battue of rabbits; after that two of pheasants, which were most amusing. There were plenty of birds, and they came rocketing over our heads in fine style. I found that Comtesse de B. was quite right about the necessity for short skirts and thick boots. We stood on the edge of a ploughed field, which we had to cross afterward on our way home, and I didn't think it was possible to have such cakes of mud as we had on our boots. We scraped off some with sticks, but our boots were so heavy with what remained that the walk home was tiring.
Mme. A. was standing at the hall-door when we arrived, and requested us not to come into the hall, but to go in by the lingerie entrance and up the back stairs, so I fancy we hadn't got much dirt off. I had a nice rest until 4.30, when I went down to the salon for tea. We had all changed our outdoor garments and got into rather smart day dresses (none of those ladies wore tea-gowns). The men appeared about five; some of them came into the salon notwithstanding their muddy boots, and then came the livre de chasse and the recapitulation of the game, which is always most amusing. Everyman counted more pieces than his beater had found.
The dinner and evening were pleasant, the guests changing a little. Two of the original party went off before dinner, two others arrived, one of them a Cabinet minister (Finances). He was very clever and defended himself well when his policy was freely criticised. While we women were alone after dinner, Mme. A. showed me how to make crochet petticoats. She gave me a crochet-needle and some wool and had wonderful patience, for it seemed a most arduous undertaking to me, and all my rows were always crooked; however, I did learn, and have made hundreds since. All the children in our village pull up their little frocks and show me their crochet petticoats whenever we meet them. They are delighted to have them, for those we make are of good wool (not laine de bienfaisance, which is stiff and coarse), and last much longer than those one buys.
The second day was quite different. There was no shooting. We were left to our own devices until twelve o'clock breakfast. W. and I went for a short stroll in the park. We met M. A., who took us over the farm, all so well ordered and prosperous. After breakfast we had about an hour of salon before starting for the regular tournée de propriétaire through park and gardens. The three ladies—Mme. A., her daughter, and daughter-in-law—had beautiful work. Mme. A. was making portières for her daughter's room, a most elaborate pattern, reeds and high plants, a very large piece of work; the other two had also very complicated work—one a table-cover, velvet, heavily embroidered, the other a church ornament (almost all the Frenchwomen of a certain monde turn their wedding dresses, usually of white satin, into a priest's vêtement). The Catholic priests have all sorts of vestments which they wear on different occasions; purple in Lent, red on any martyr's fête, white for all the fêtes of the Virgin. Some of the churches are very rich with chasubles and altar-cloths trimmed with fine old lace, which have been given to them. It looks funny sometimes to see a very ordinary country curé, a farmer's son, with a heavy peasant face, wearing one of those delicate white-satin chasubles.
Before starting to join the shooters at breakfast Mme. A. took me all over the house. It is really a beautiful establishment, very large, and most comfortable. Quantities of pictures and engravings, and beautiful Empire furniture. There is quite a large chapel at the end of the corridor on the ground-floor, where they have mass every Sunday. The young couple have a charming installation, really a small house, in one of the wings—bedrooms, dressing-rooms, boudoir, cabinet de travail, and a separate entrance—so that M. A. can receive any one who comes to see him on business without having them pass through the château. Mme. A. has her rooms on the ground-floor at the other end of the house. Her sitting-room with glass door opens into a winter garden filled with plants, which gives on the park; her bedroom is on the other side, looking on the court-yard; a large library next it, light and space everywhere, plenty of servants, everything admirably arranged.
The evening mail goes out at 7.30, and every evening at seven exactly the letter-carrier came down the corridor knocking at all the doors and asking for letters. He had stamps, too, at least French stamps. I could never get a foreign stamp (twenty-five centimes)—had to put one of fifteen and two of five when I had a foreign letter. I don't really think there were any in the country. I don't believe they had a foreign correspondent of any description. It was a thoroughly French establishment of the best kind.
We walked about the small park and gardens in the afternoon. The gardens are enormous; one can drive through them. Mme. A. drove in her pony carriage. They still had some lovely late roses which filled me with envy—ours were quite finished.
The next day was not quite so fine, gray and misty, but a good shooting day, no wind. We joined the gentlemen for lunch in another pavilion farther away and rather more open than the one of the other day. However, we were warm enough with our coats on, a good fire burning, and hot bricks for our feet. The battues (aux échelles) that day were quite a new experience for me. I had never seen anything like it. The shooters were placed in a semicircle, not very far apart. Each man was provided with a high double ladder. The men stood on the top (the women seated themselves on the rungs of the ladders and hung on as well as they could). I went the first time with W., and he made me so many recommendations that I was quite nervous. I mustn't sit too high up or I would gêner him, as he was obliged to shoot down for the rabbits; and I mustn't sit too near the ground, or I might get a shot in the ankles from one of the other men. I can't say it was an absolute pleasure. The seat (if seat it could be called) was anything but comfortable, and the detonation of the gun just over my head was decidedly trying; still it was a novelty, and if the other women could stand it I could.
For the second battue I went with Comte de B. That was rather worse, for he shot much oftener than W., and I was quite distracted with the noise of the gun. We were nearer the other shooters, too, and I fancied their aim was very near my ankles. It was a pretty view from the top of the ladder. I climbed up when the battues were over. We looked over the park and through the trees, quite bare and stripped of their leaves, on the great plains, with hardly a break of wood or hills, stretching away to the horizon. The ground was thickly carpeted with red and yellow leaves, little columns of smoke rising at intervals where people were burning weeds or rotten wood in the fields; and just enough purple mist to poetize everything. B. is a very careful shot. I was with him the first day at a rabbit battue where we were placed rather near each other, and every man was asked to keep quite to his own place and to shoot straight before him. After one or two shots B. stepped back and gave his gun to his servant. I asked what was the matter. He showed me the man next, evidently not used to shooting, who was walking up and down, shooting in every direction, and as fast as he could cram the cartridges into his gun. So he stepped back into the alley and waited until the battue was over.
The party was much smaller that night at dinner. Every one went away but W. and me. The talk was most interesting—all about the war, the first days of the Assemblée Nationale at Bordeaux, and the famous visit of the Comte de Chambord to Versailles, when the Maréchal de MacMahon, President of the Republic, refused to see him. I told them of my first evening visit to Mme. Thiers, the year I was married. Mme. Thiers lived in a big gloomy house in the Place St. Georges, and received every evening. M. Thiers, who was a great worker all his life and a very early riser, always took a nap at the end of the day. The ladies (Mlle. Dosne, a sister of Mme. Thiers, lived with them) unfortunately had not that good habit. They took their little sleep after dinner. We arrived there (it was a long way from us, we lived near the Arc de l'Étoile) one evening a little before ten. There were already four or five men, no ladies. We were shown into a large drawing-room, M. Thiers standing with his back to the fireplace, the centre of a group of black coats. He was very amiable, said I would find Mme. Thiers in a small salon just at the end of the big one; told W. to join their group, he had something to say to him, and I passed on. I did find Mme. Thiers and Mlle. Dosne in the small salon at the other end, both asleep, each in an arm-chair. I was really embarrassed. They didn't hear me coming in, and were sleeping quite happily and comfortably. I didn't like to go back to the other salon, where there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, then came up to me, called me by name, and introduced herself, Mme. A. the wife of an admiral whom I often met afterward. She told me not to mind, there wasn't the slightest intention of rudeness, that both ladies would wake up in a few minutes quite unconscious of having really slept. We talked about ten minutes, not lowering our voices particularly. Suddenly Mme. Thiers opened her eyes, was wide awake at once—how quietly we must have come in; she had only just closed her eyes for a moment, the lights tired her, etc. Mlle. Dosne said the same thing, and then we went on talking easily enough. Several more ladies came in, but only two or three men. They all remained in the farther room talking, or rather listening, to M. Thiers. He was already a very old man, and when he began to talk no one interrupted him; it was almost a monologue. I went back several times to the Place St. Georges, but took good care to go later, so that the ladies should have their nap over. One of the young diplomat's wives had the same experience, rather worse, for when the ladies woke up they didn't know her. She was very shy, spent a wretched ten minutes before they woke, and was too nervous to name herself. She was half crying when her husband came to the rescue.
We left the next morning early, as W. had people coming to him in the afternoon. I enjoyed my visit thoroughly, and told them afterward of my misgivings and doubts as to how I should get along with strangers for two or three days. I think they had rather the same feeling. They were very old friends of my husband's, and though they received me charmingly from the first, it brought a foreign and new element into their circle.
* * * * *
Another interesting old château, most picturesque, with towers, moat, and drawbridge, is Lorrey-le-Bocage, belonging to the Comte de S. It stands very well, in a broad moat—the water clear and rippling and finishing in a pretty little stream that runs off through the meadows. The place is beautifully kept—gardens, lawns, courts, in perfect order. It has no particular historic interest for the family, having been bought by the parents of the present owner.
I was there, the first time, in very hot weather, the 14th of July (the French National fête commemorating the fall of the Bastille). I went for a stroll in the park the morning after I arrived, but I collapsed under a big tree at once—hadn't the energy to move. Everything looked so hot and not a breath of air anywhere. The moat looked glazed—so absolutely still under the bright summer sun—big flies were buzzing and skimming over the surface, and the flowers and plants were drooping in their beds.
Inside it was delightful, the walls so thick that neither heat nor cold could penetrate. The house is charming. The big drawing-room—where we always sat—was a large, bright room with windows on each side and lovely views over park and gardens; and all sorts of family portraits and souvenirs dating from Louis XV to the Comte de Paris. The men of the family—all ardent Royalists—have been, for generations, distinguished as soldiers and statesmen.
One of them—a son of the famous Maréchal de S, brought up in the last years of the reign of Louis XV—carried his youthful ardour and dreams of liberty to America and took part, as did so many of the young French nobles, in the great struggle for independence that was being fought out on the other side of the Atlantic. Soon after his return to France he was named Ambassador to Russia to the court of Catherine II, and was supposed to have been very much in the good graces of that very pleasure-loving sovereign. He accompanied her on her famous trip to the Crimea, arranged for her by her minister and favourite, Potemkin—when fairy villages, with happy populations singing and dancing, sprang up in the road wherever she passed as if by magic—quite dispelling her ideas of the poverty and oppression of some of her subjects.
Among the portraits there is a miniature of the Empress Catherine. It is a fine, strongly marked face. She wears a high fur cap—a sort of military pelisse with lace jabots and diamond star. The son of the Maréchal, also soldier and courtier, was aide-de-camp to Napoleon and made almost all his campaigns with him. His description of the Russian campaign and the retreat of the "Grande Armée" from Moscow is one of the most graphic and interesting that has ever been written of those awful days. His memoirs are quite charming. Childhood and early youth passed in the country in all the agonies of the Terror—simply and severely brought up in an atmosphere absolutely hostile to any national or popular movement.
The young student, dreaming of a future and regeneration for France, arrived one day in Paris, where an unwonted stir denoted that something was going on. He heard and saw the young Republican General Bonaparte addressing some regiments. He marked the proud bearing of the men—even the recruits—and in an explosion of patriotism his vocation was decided. He enlisted at once in the Republican ranks. It was a terrible decision to confide to his family, and particularly to his grandfather, the old Maréchal de S. a glorious veteran of many campaigns and an ardent Royalist. His father approved, although it was a terrible falling off from all the lessons and examples of his family—but it was a difficult confession to make to the Maréchal. I will give the scene in his own words (translated, of course—the original is in French).
"I was obliged to return to Châlenoy to relate my 'coup-de-tête' to my grandfather. I arrived early in the morning and approached his bed in the most humble attitude. He said to me, very sharply, 'You have been unfaithful to all the traditions of your ancestors—but it is done. Remember that you have enlisted voluntarily in the Republican army; serve it frankly and loyally, for your decision is made, you cannot now go back on it.' Then seeing the tears running down my cheeks (he too was moved), and taking my hand with the only one he had left, he drew me to him and pressed me on his heart. Then giving me seventy louis (it was all he had), he added, 'This will help you to complete your equipment—go, and at least carry bravely and faithfully, under the flag it has pleased you to choose, the name you bear and the honour of your family.'"
The present Count, too, has played a part in politics in these troublous times, when decisions were almost as hard to take, and one was torn between the desire to do something for one's country and the difficulty of detaching oneself from old traditions and memories. People whose grandfathers have died on the scaffold can hardly be expected to be enthusiastic about the Republic and the Marseillaise. Yet if the nation wants the Republic, and every election accentuates that opinion, it is very difficult to fight against the current.
When I first married, just after the Franco-Prussian War, there seemed some chance of the moderate men, on both sides, joining in a common effort against the radical movement, putting themselves at the head of it and in that way directing and controlling—but very soon the different sections in parliament defined themselves so sharply that any sort of compromise was difficult. My host was named deputy, immediately after the war, and though by instinct, training, and association a Royalist and a personal friend of the Orléans family, he was one of a small group of liberal-patriotic deputies who might have supported loyally a moderate Republic had the other Republicans not made their position untenable. There was an instinctive, unreasonable distrust of any of the old families whose names and antecedents had kept them apart from any republican movement.
We had pleasant afternoons in the big drawing-room. In the morning we did what we liked. The Maîtresse de Maison never appeared in the drawing-room till the twelve o'clock breakfast. I used to see her from my window, coming and going—sometimes walking, when she was making the round of the farm and garden, oftener in her little pony carriage and occasionally in the automobile of her niece, who was staying in the house. She occupied herself very much with all the village—old people and children, everybody. After breakfast we used to sit sometimes in the drawing-room—the two ladies working, the Comte de S. reading his paper and telling us anything interesting he found there. Both ladies had most artistic work—Mme. de S. a church ornament, white satin ground with raised flowers and garlands, stretched, of course, on the large embroidery frames they all use. Her niece, Duchesse d'E., had quite another "installation" in one of the windows—a table with all sorts of delicate little instruments. She was book-binding—doing quite lovely things in imitation of the old French binding. It was a work that required most delicate manipulation, but she seemed to do it quite easily. I was rather humiliated with my little knit petticoats—very hot work it is on a blazing July day.
III
THE HOME OF LAFAYETTE
La Grange was looking its loveliest when I arrived the other day. It was a bright, beautiful October afternoon and the first glimpse of the château was most picturesque. It was all the more striking as the run down from Paris was so ugly and commonplace. The suburbs of Paris around the Gare de l'Est—the Plain of St. Denis and all the small villages, with kitchen gardens, rows of green vegetables under glass "cloches"—are anything but interesting. It was not until we got near Gréty and alongside of Ferrières, the big Rothschild place, that we seemed to be in the country. The broad green alleys of the park, with the trees just changing a little, were quite charming. Our station was Verneuil l'Etang, a quiet little country station dumped down in the middle of the fields, and a drive of about fifty minutes brought us to the château. The country is not at all pretty, always the same thing—great cultivated fields stretching off on each side of the road—every now and then a little wood or clump of trees. One does not see the château from the high road.
We turned off sharply to the left and at the end of a long avenue saw the house, half hidden by the trees. The entrance through a low archway, flanked on each side by high round towers covered with ivy, is most picturesque. The château is built around three sides of a square court-yard, the other side looking straight over broad green meadows ending in a background of wood. A moat runs almost all around the house—a border of salvias making a belt of colour which is most effective. We found the family—Marquis and Marquise de Lasteyrie and their two sons—waiting at the hall door. The Marquis, great-grandson of the General Marquis de Lafayette, is a type of the well-born, courteous French gentleman (one of the most attractive types, to my mind, that one can meet anywhere). There is something in perfectly well-bred French people of a certain class that one never sees in any other nationality. Such refinement and charm of manner—a great desire to put every one at their ease and to please the person with whom they are thrown for the moment. That, after all, is all one cares for in the casual acquaintances one makes in society. From friends, of course, we want something deeper and more lasting, but life is too short to find out the depth and sterling qualities of the world in general.
The Marquise is an Englishwoman, a cousin of her husband, their common ancestor being the Duke of Leinster; clever, cultivated, hospitable, and very large minded, which has helped her very much in her married life in France during our troubled epoch, when religious questions and political discussions do so much to embitter personal relations. The two sons are young and gay, doing the honours of their home simply and with no pose of any kind. There were two English couples staying in the house.
We had tea in the dining-room downstairs—a large room with panels and chimney-piece of dark carved wood. Two portraits of men in armour stand out well from the dark background. There is such a wealth of pictures, engravings, and tapestries all over the house that one cannot take it all in at first. The two drawing-rooms on the first floor are large and comfortable, running straight through the house; the end room in the tower—a round room with windows on all sides—quite charming. The contrast between the modern—English—comforts (low, wide chairs, writing-table, rugs, cushions, and centre-table covered with books in all languages, a very rare thing in a French château, picture papers, photographs, etc.) and the straight-backed, spindle-legged old furniture and stiff, old-fashioned ladies and gentlemen, looking down from their heavy gold frames, is very attractive. There is none of the formality and look of not being lived in which one sees in so many French salons, and yet it is not at all modern. One never loses for a moment the feeling of being in an old château-fort.
It was so pretty looking out of my bedroom window this morning. It was a bright, beautiful autumn day, the grass still quite green. Some of the trees changing a little, the yellow leaves quite golden in the sun. There are many American trees in the park—a splendid Virginia Creeper, and a Gloire de Dijon rose-bush, still full of bloom, were sprawling over the old gray walls. Animals of all kinds were walking about the court-yard; some swans and a lame duck, which had wandered up from the moat, standing on the edge and looking about with much interest; a lively little fox-terrier, making frantic dashes at nothing; one of the sons starting for a shoot with gaiters and game-bag, and his gun over his shoulder, his dog at his heels expectant and eager. Some of the guests were strolling about and from almost all the windows—wide open to let in the warm morning sun—there came cheerful greetings.
I went for a walk around the house before breakfast. There are five large round towers covered with ivy—the walls extraordinarily thick—the narrow little slits for shooting with arrows and the round holes for cannon balls tell their own story of rough feudal life. On one side of the castle there is a large hole in the wall, made by a cannon ball sent by Turenne. He was passing one day and asked to whom the château belonged. On hearing that the owner was the Maréchal de la Feuillade, one of his political adversaries, he sent a cannon ball as a souvenir of his passage, and the gap has never been filled up.
I went all over the house later with the Marquis de Lasteyrie. Of course, what interested me most was Lafayette's private apartments—bedroom and library—the latter left precisely as it was during Lafayette's lifetime; bookcases filled with his books in their old-fashioned bindings, running straight around the walls and a collection of manuscripts and autograph letters from kings and queens of France and most of the celebrities of the days of the Valois—among them several letters from Catherine de Medicis, Henry IV, and la Reine Margot. One curious one from Queen Margot in which she explains to the Vicomte de Chabot (ancestor of my host) that she was very much preoccupied in looking out for a wife for him with a fine dot, but that it was always difficult to find a rich heiress for a poor seigneur.
There are also autographs of more modern days, among which is a letter from an English prince to the Vicomte de Chabot (grandfather of the Marquis de Lasteyrie), saying that he loses no time in telling him of the birth of a very fine little girl. He certainly never realized when he wrote that letter what would be the future of his baby daughter. The writer was the Duke of Kent—the fine little girl, Queen Victoria.
In a deep window-seat in one corner, overlooking the farm, is the writing-table of Lafayette. In the drawers are preserved several books of accounts, many of the items being in his handwriting. Also his leather arm-chair (which was exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair), and a horn or speaking-trumpet through which he gave his orders to the farm hands from the window. The library opened into his bedroom—now the boudoir of the Marquise de Lasteyrie—with a fine view over moat and meadow. In this room there have been many changes, but the old doors of carved oak still remain.
There are many interesting family portraits—one of the father of Lafayette, killed at Minden, leaving his young son to be brought up by two aunts, whose portraits are on either side of the fireplace.
It is curious to see the two portraits of the same epoch so absolutely unlike. Mme. de Chavagnac, an old lady, very simply dressed, almost Puritanical, with a white muslin fichu over her plain black silk dress—the other, Mademoiselle de Lafayette, in the court dress of the time of Louis XVI, pearls and roses in the high, powdered coiffure and a bunch of orange flowers on one shoulder, to indicate that she was not a married woman.
There were pictures and souvenirs of all the Orléans family—the Lasteyries having been always faithful and devoted friends of those unfortunate princes; a charming engraving of the Comte de Paris, a noble looking boy in all the bravery of white satin and feathers—the original picture is in the possession of the Duc de Chartres. It was sad to realize when one looked at the little prince with his bright eyes and proud bearing, that the end of his life would be so melancholy—exile and death in a foreign land.
There are all sorts of interesting pictures and engravings scattered about the house in the numberless corridors and anterooms. One most interesting and very rare print represents a review at Potsdam held by Frederick the Great. Two conspicuous figures are the young Marquis de Lafayette in powdered wig and black silk ribbon, and the English General Lord Cornwallis, destined to meet as adversaries many years later during the American Revolution. There are many family pictures on the great stone staircase, both French and English, the Marquis de Lasteyrie, on the maternal side, being a great-grandson of the Duke of Leinster. Some of the English portraits are very charming, quite different from the French pictures.
In the centre panel is the well-known portrait of Lafayette by Ary Scheffer—not in uniform—no trace of the dashing young soldier; a middle-aged man in a long fur coat, hat and stick in his hand; looking, as one can imagine he did when he settled down, after his brilliant and eventful career, to the simple patriarchal life at La Grange, surrounded by devoted children, grandchildren, and friends.
We were interrupted long before I had seen all the interesting part of the house and its contents, as it was time to start for La Houssaye, where all the party were expected at tea. We went off in three carriages—quite like a "noce," as the Marquise remarked. The drive (about an hour) was not particularly interesting. We were in the heart of the great agricultural district and drove through kilometres of planted fields—no hills and few woods.
We came rather suddenly on the château, which stands low, like all châteaux surrounded by moats, turning directly from the little village into the park, which is beautifully laid out with fine old trees. We had glimpses of a lovely garden as we drove up to the house, and of two old towers—one round and one square. The château stands well—a very broad moat, almost a river, running straight around the house and gardens. We crossed the drawbridge, which always gives me a sensation of old feudal times and recalls the days of my childhood when I used to sit under the sickle-pear tree at "Cherry Lawn" reading Scott's "Marmion"—"Up drawbridge, grooms—what, Warder, ho! Let the portcullis fall!" wondering what a "portcullis" was, and if I should ever see one or even a château-fort.
La Houssaye is an old castle built in the eleventh century, but has passed through many vicissitudes. All that remains of the original building are the towers and the foundations. It was restored in the sixteenth century and has since remained unchanged. During the French Revolution the family of the actual proprietor installed themselves in one of the towers and lived there many long weary weeks, never daring to venture out, show any lights, or give any sign of life—in daily terror of being discovered and dragged to Paris before the dreaded revolutionary tribunals. Later it was given, by Napoleon, to the Marshall Augereau, who died there. It has since been in the family of the present proprietor, Monsieur de Mimont, who married an American, Miss Forbes.
The rain, which had been threatening all the afternoon, came down in torrents just as we crossed the drawbridge, much to the disappointment of our host and hostess, who were anxious to show us their garden, which is famous in all the countryside. However, in spite of the driving rain, we caught glimpses through the windows of splendid parterres of salvias and cannas, making great spots of colour in a beautiful bit of smooth green lawn. In old days the château was much bigger, stretching out to the towers. Each successive proprietor has diminished the buildings, and the present château, at the back, stands some little distance from the moat, the vacant space being now transformed into their beautiful gardens.
We only saw the ground-floor of the house, which is most comfortable. We left our wraps in the large square hall and passed through one drawing-room and a small library into another, which is charming—a corner room looking on the gardens—the walls, panels of light gray wood, prettily carved with wreaths and flowers.
We had tea in the dining-room on the other side of the hall; a curious room, rather, with red brick walls and two old narrow doors of carved oak. The tea—most abundant—was very acceptable after our long damp drive. One dish was rather a surprise—American waffles—not often to be found, I imagine, in an old French feudal castle, but Madame de Mimont's nationality explained it. I was very sorry not to see the park which is beautifully laid out, but the rain was falling straight down as hard as it could—almost making waves in the moat, and a curtain of mist cut off the end of the park.
Our dinner and evening at La Grange were delightful. The dining-room is particularly charming at night. The flowers on the table, this evening, were red, and the lights from the handsome silver candélabres made a brilliant spot of warmth and colour against the dark panelled walls—just shining on the armour of the fine Ormond portraits hanging on each side of the fireplace. The talk was always easy and pleasant.
One of the guests, the naval attache to the British Embassy to France, had been "en mission" at Madrid at the time of the Spanish Royal marriage. The balcony of the English Embassy overlooked the spot where the bomb was thrown. In eighty-five seconds from the time they heard the detonation (in the first second they thought it was a salute), the Ambassador, followed by his suite, was at the door of the royal carriage. He said the young sovereigns looked very pale but calm; the king, perhaps, more agitated than the Queen.
We finished the evening with music and dumb crambo—that particularly English form of amusement, which I have never seen well done except by English people. It always fills me with astonishment whenever I see it. It is so at variance with the English character. They are usually so very shy and self-conscious. One would never believe they could throw themselves into this really childish game with so much entrain. The performance is simple enough. Some of the company retire from the drawing-room; those who remain choose a word—chair, hat, cat, etc. This evening the word was "mat." We told the two actors—Mrs. P. and the son of the house—they must act (nothing spoken) a word which rhymed with hat. I will say they found it very quickly, but some of their attempts were funny enough—really very cleverly done. It amused me perfectly, though I must frankly confess I should have been incapable of either acting or guessing the word. The only one I made out was fat, when they both came in so stuffed out with pillows and bolsters as to be almost unrecognizable. The two dogs—a beautiful little fox-terrier and a fine collie—went nearly mad, barking and yapping every time the couple appeared—their excitement reaching a climax when the actors came in and stretched themselves out on each side of the door, having finally divined the word mat. The dogs made such frantic dashes at them that M. and Mme. de Lasteyrie had to carry them off bodily.
The next morning I went for a walk with M. de Lasteyrie. We strolled up and down the "Allée des Soupirs," so called in remembrance of one of the early chatelaines who trailed her mourning robes and widow's veil over the fallen leaves, bemoaning her solitude until a favoured suitor appeared on the scene and carried her away to his distant home—but the Allée still retains its name.
The park is small, but very well laid out. Many of the memoirs of the time speak of walks and talks with Lafayette under the beautiful trees.
During the last years of Lafayette's life, La Grange was a cosmopolitan centre. Distinguished people from all countries came there, anxious to see the great champion of liberty; among them many Americans, who always found a gracious, cordial welcome; one silent guest—a most curious episode which I will give in the words of the Marquis de Lasteyrie:
"One American, however, in Lafayette's own time, came on a lonely pilgrimage to La Grange; he was greeted with respect, but of that greeting he took no heed. He was a silent guest, nor has he left any record of his impressions; in fact, he was dead before starting on his journey. He arrived quite simply one fine autumn morning, in his coffin, accompanied by a letter which said: 'William Summerville, having the greatest admiration for the General Lafayette, begs he will bury him in his land at La Grange.' This, being against the law, could not be done, but Lafayette bought the whole of the small cemetery of the neighbouring village and laid the traveller from over the sea to rest in his ground indeed, though not under one of the many American trees at La Grange itself, of which the enthusiastic wanderer had probably dreamed."
They told me many interesting things, too long to write, about the last years of Lafayette's life spent principally at La Grange. A charming account of that time and the lavish hospitality of the château is given by Lady Morgan, in her well-known "Diary." Some of her descriptions are most amusing; the arrival, for instance, of Lady Holland at the home of the Republican General. "She is always preceded by a fourgon from London containing her own favourite meubles of Holland House—her bed, fauteuil, carpet, etc., and divers other articles too numerous to mention, but which enter into her Ladyship's superfluchoses très nécessaires, at least to a grande dame one of her female attendants and a groom of the chambers precede her to make all ready for her reception. However, her original manner, though it startles the French ladies, amuses them."
Her Irish ladyship (Lady Morgan) seems to have been troubled by no shyness in asking questions of the General. She writes: "Is it true, General, I asked, that you once went to a bal masque at the opera with the Queen of France—Marie Antoinette—leaning on your arm, the King knowing nothing of the matter till her return? I am afraid so, said he. She was so indiscreet, and I can conscientiously add—so innocent. However, the Comte d'Artois was also of the party, and we were all young, enterprising, and pleasure-loving. But what is most absurd in the adventure was that, when I pointed out Mme. du Barry to her—whose figure and favourite domino I knew—the Queen expressed the most anxious desire to hear her speak and bade me intriguer her. She answered me flippantly, and I am sure if I had offered her my other arm, the Queen would not have objected to it. Such was the esprit d'aventure at that time in the court of Versailles and in the head of the haughty daughter of Austria."
I remember quite well the parents of my host. The Marquise, a type of the grande dame, with blue eyes and snow white hair survived her husband many years. During the war of 1870 they, like many other châtelains, had Prussian soldiers in their house. The following characteristic anecdote of the Marquise was told to me by her son:
"There are still to be seen at La Grange two little cannon which had been given to Lafayette by the Garde Nationale. One December morning, in 1870, when the house was full of German troops, Madame de Lasteyrie was awakened by a noise under the archway, and looking out of her window saw, in the dim light, the two guns being carried off by the German soldiers. In an instant, her bare feet hastily thrust into slippers, her hair like a long white mane hanging down her back, with a dressing gown thrown over her shoulders, she started in pursuit. She followed them about three miles and at last came upon them at the top of a hill. After much persuasion and after spiking the guns (in no case could they have done great damage), the soldiers were induced to give them up, and departed, leaving her alone in the frost and starlight waiting for the morning. She sat bare-footed (for she had lost her shoes) but triumphant on her small cannon in the deep snow till the day came and the farm people stole out and dragged them all—the old lady and the two guns—back to the house."
I was sorry to go—the old château, with its walls and towers soft and grey in the sunlight, seems to belong absolutely to another century. I felt as if I had been transported a hundred years back and had lived a little of the simple patriarchal life that made such a beautiful end to Lafayette's long and eventful career. The present owner keeps up the traditions of his grandfather. I was thinking last night what a cosmopolitan group we were. Three or four different nationalities, speaking alternately the two languages—French and English—many of the party having travelled all over the world and all interested in politics, literature, and music; in a different way, perhaps, but quite as much as the "belles dames et beaux esprits" of a hundred years ago. Everything changes as time goes on (I don't know if I would say that everything improves), but I carried away the same impression of a warm welcome and large hospitable life that every one speaks of who saw La Grange during Lafayette's life.
IV
WINTER AT THE CHATEAU
We had a very cold winter one year—a great deal of snow, which froze as it fell and lay a long time on the hard ground. We woke up one morning in a perfectly still white world. It had snowed heavily during the night, and the house was surrounded by a glistening white carpet which stretched away to the "sapinette" at the top of the lawn without a speck or flaw. There was no trace of path or road, or little low shrubs, and even the branches of the big lime-trees were heavy with snow. It was a bright, beautiful day—blue sky and a not too pale winter sun. Not a vehicle of any kind had ventured out. In the middle of the road were footprints deep in the snow where evidently the keepers and some workmen had passed. Nothing and no one had arrived from outside, neither postman, butcher, nor baker. The chef was in a wild state; but I assured him we could get on with eggs and game, of which there was always a provision for one day at any rate.
About eleven, Pauline and I started out. We thought we would go as far as the lodge and see what was going on on the highroad. We put on thick boots, gaiters and very short skirts, and had imagined we could walk in the footsteps of the keepers; but, of course, we couldn't take their long stride, and we floundered about in the snow. In some places where it had drifted we went in over our knees.
There was nothing visible on the road—not a creature, absolute stillness; a line of footprints in the middle where some labourer had passed, and the long stretch of white fields, broken by lines of black poplars running straight away to the forest.
While we were standing at the gate talking to old Antoine, who was all muffled up with a woollen comforter tied over his cap, and socks over his shoes, we saw a small moving object in the distance. As it came nearer we made out it was the postman, also so muffled up as to be hardly recognizable. He too had woollen socks over his shoes, and said the going was something awful, the "Montagne de Marolles" a sheet of ice; he had fallen twice, in spite of his socks and pointed stick. He said neither butcher nor baker would come—that no horse could get up the hill.
We sent him into the kitchen to thaw, and have his breakfast. That was one also of the traditions of the château; the postman always breakfasted. On Sundays, when there was no second delivery, he brought his little girl and an accordion, and remained all the afternoon. He often got a lift back to La Ferté, when the carriage was going in to the station, or the chef to market in the donkey-cart. Now many of the postmen have bicycles.
We had a curious feeling of being quite cut off from the outside world. The children, Francis and Alice, were having a fine time in the stable-yard, where the men had made them two snow figures—man and woman (giants)—and they were pelting them with snowballs and tumbling headlong into the heaps of snow on each side of the gate, where a passage had been cleared for the horses.
We thought it would be a good opportunity to do a little coasting and inaugurate a sled we had had made with great difficulty the year before. It was rather a long operation. The wheelwright at Marolles had never seen anything of the kind, had no idea what we wanted. Fortunately Francis had a little sled which one of his cousins had sent him from America; and with that as a model, and many explanations, the wheelwright and the blacksmith produced really a very creditable sled—quite large, a seat for two in front, and one behind for the person who steered. Only when the sled was finished the snow had disappeared! It rarely lasts long in France.
We had the sled brought out—the runners needed a little repairing—and the next day made our first attempt. There was not much danger of meeting anything. A sort of passage had been cleared, and gravel sprinkled in the middle of the road; but very few vehicles had passed, and the snow was as hard as ice. All the establishment "assisted" at the first trial, and the stable-boy accompanied us with the donkey who was to pull the sled up the hill.
We had some little difficulty in starting, Pauline and I in front, Francis behind; but as soon as we got fairly on the slope the thing flew. Pauline was frightened to death, screaming, and wanted to get off; but I held her tight, and we landed in the ditch near the foot of the hill. Half-way down (the hill is steep but straight, one sees a great distance) Francis saw the diligence arriving; and as he was not quite sure of his steering-gear, he thought it was better to take no risks, and steered us straight into the ditch as hard as we could go. The sled upset; we all rolled off into the deep soft snow, lost our hats, and emerged quite white from head to foot.
The diligence had stopped at the foot of the hill. There were only two men in it besides the driver, the old Père Jacques, who was dumbfounded when he recognized Madame Waddington. It seems they couldn't think what had happened. As they got to the foot of the hill, they saw a good many people at the gate of the château; then suddenly something detached itself from the group and rushed wildly down the hill. They thought it was an accident, some part of a carriage broken, and before they had time to collect their senses the whole thing collapsed in the ditch. The poor old man was quite disturbed—couldn't think we were not hurt, and begged us to get into the diligence and not trust ourselves again to such a dangerous vehicle. However we reassured him, and all walked up the hill together, the donkey pulling the sled, which was tied to him with a very primitive arrangement of ropes, the sled constantly swinging round and hitting him on the legs, which he naturally resented and kicked viciously.
We amused ourselves very much as long as the snow lasted, about ten days—coasted often, and made excursions to the neighbouring villages with the sled and the donkey. We wanted to skate, but that was not easy to arrange, as the ponds and "tourbières" near us were very deep, and I was afraid to venture with the children. I told Hubert, the coachman, who knew the country well, to see what he could find. He said there was a very good pond in the park of the château of La Ferté, and he was sure the proprietor, an old man who lived there by himself, would be quite pleased to let us come there.
The old gentleman was most amiable—begged we would come as often as we liked—merely making one condition, that we should have a man on the bank (the pond was only about a foot deep) with a rope in case of accidents…. We went there nearly every afternoon, and made quite a comfortable "installation" on the bank: a fire, rugs, chairs and a very good little goûter, the grocer's daughter bringing us hot wine and biscuits from the town.
It was a perfect sight for La Ferté. The whole town came to look at us, and the carters stopped their teams on the road to look on—one day particularly when one of our cousins, Maurice de Bunsen,[3] was staying with us. He skated beautifully, doing all sorts of figures, and his double eights and initials astounded the simple country folk. For some time after they spoke of "l'Anglais" who did such wonderful things on the ice.
[3] To-day British Embassador at Madrid.
They were bad days for the poor. We used to meet all the children coming back from school when we went home. The poor little things toiled up the steep, slippery hill, with often a cold wind that must have gone through the thin worn-out jackets and shawls they had for all covering, carrying their satchels and remnants of dinner. Those that came from a distance always brought their dinner with them, generally a good hunk of bread and a piece of chocolate, the poorer ones bread alone, very often only a stale hard crust that couldn't have been very nourishing. They were a very poor lot at our little village, St. Quentin, and we did all we could in the way of warm stockings and garments; but the pale, pinched faces rather haunted me, and Henrietta and I thought we would try and arrange with the school mistress who was wife of one of the keepers, to give them a hot plate of soup every day during the winter months. W., who knew his people well, rather discouraged us—said they all had a certain sort of pride, notwithstanding their poverty, and might perhaps be offended at being treated like tramps or beggars; but we could try if we liked.
We got a big kettle at La Ferté, and the good Mère Cécile of the Asile lent us the tin bowls, also telling us we wouldn't be able to carry out our plan. She had tried at the Asile, but it didn't go; the children didn't care about the soup—liked the bread and chocolate better. It was really a curious experience. I am still astonished when I think of it. The soup was made at the head-keeper's cottage, standing on the edge of the woods.
We went over the first day about eleven o'clock—a cold, clear day, a biting wind blowing down the valley. The children were all assembled, waiting impatiently for us to come. The soup was smoking in a big pot hung high over the fire. We, of course, tasted it, borrowing two bowls from the children and asking Madame Labbey to cut us two pieces of bread, the children all giggling and rather shy. The soup was very good, and we were quite pleased to think that the poor little things should have something warm in their stomachs. The first depressing remark was made by our own coachman on the way home. His little daughter was living at the keeper's. I said to him, "I did not see Celine with the other children." "Oh, no, Madame; she wasn't there. We pay for the food at Labbey's; she doesn't need charity."
The next day, equally cold, about half the children came (there were only twenty-seven in the school); the third, five or six, rather shamefaced; the fourth, not one; and at the end of the week the keeper's wife begged us to stop the distribution; all the parents were hurt at the idea of their children receiving public charity from Madame Waddington. She had thought some of the very old people of the village might like what was left; but no one came except some tramps and rough-looking men who had heard there was food to be had, and they made her very nervous prowling around the house when she was alone, her husband away all day in the woods.
W. was amused—not at all surprised—said he was quite sure we shouldn't succeed, but it was just as well to make our own experience. We took our bowls back sadly to the Asile, where the good sister shook her head, saying, "Madame verra comme c'est difficile de faire du bien dans ce paysci; on ne pense qu'à s'amuser." And yet we saw the miserable little crusts of hard bread, and some of the boys in linen jackets over their skin, no shirt, and looking as if they had never had a good square meal in their lives.
I had one other curious experience, and after that I gave up trying anything that was a novelty or that they hadn't seen all their lives. The French peasant is really conservative; and if left to himself, with no cheap political papers or socialist orators haranguing in the cafes on the eternal topic of the rich and the poor, he would be quite content to go on leading the life he and his fathers have always led—would never want to destroy or change anything.
I was staying one year with Lady Derby at Knowsley, in Christmas week, and I was present one afternoon when she was making her annual distribution of clothes to the village children. I was much pleased with some ulsters and some red cloaks she had for the girls. They were so pleased, too—broad smiles on their faces when they were called up and the cloaks put on their shoulders. They looked so warm and comfortable, when the little band trudged home across the snow. I had instantly visions of my school children attired in these cloaks, climbing our steep hills in the dark winter days.
I had a long consultation with Lady Margaret Cecil, Lady Derby's daughter—a perfect saint, who spent all her life helping other people—and she gave me the catalogue of "Price Jones," a well-known Welsh shop whose "spécialité" was all sorts of clothes for country people, schools, workmen's families, etc. I ordered a large collection of red cloaks, ulsters, and flannel shirts at a very reasonable price, and they promised to send them in the late summer, so that we should find them when we went back to France.
We found two large cases when we got home, and were quite pleased at all the nice warm cloaks we had in store for the winter.
As soon as the first real cold days began, about the end of November, the women used to appear at the château asking for warm clothes for the children. The first one to come was the wife of the "garde de Borny"—a slight, pale woman, the mother of nine small children (several of them were members of the school at St. Quentin, who had declined our soup, and I rather had their little pinched, bloodless faces in my mind when I first thought about it). She had three with her—a baby in her arms, a boy and a girl of six and seven, both bare-legged, the boy in an old worn-out jersey pulled over his chest, the girl in a ragged blue and white apron, a knitted shawl over her head and shoulders. The baby had a cloak. I don't believe there was much on underneath, and the mother was literally a bundle of rags, her skirt so patched one could hardly make out the original colour, and a wonderful cloak all frayed at the ends and with holes in every direction. However, they were all clean.
The baby and the boy were soon provided for. The boy was much pleased with his flannel shirt. Then we produced the red cloak for the girl. The woman's face fell: "Oh, no, Madame, I couldn't take that; my little girl couldn't wear it." I, astounded: "But you don't see what it is—a good, thick cloak that will cover her all up and keep her warm." "Oh, no, Madame, she couldn't wear that; all the people on the road would laugh at her! Cela ne se porte pas dans notre pays" (that is not worn in our country).
I explained that I had several, and that she would see all the other little girls with the same cloaks; but I got only the same answer, adding that Madame would see—no child would wear such a cloak. I was much disgusted—thought the woman was capricious; but she was perfectly right; not a single mother, and Heaven knows they were poor enough, would take a red cloak, and they all had to be transformed into red flannel petticoats. Every woman made me the same answer: "Every one on the road would laugh at them."
I was not much luckier with the ulsters. What I had ordered for big girls of nine and ten would just go on girls of six and seven. Either French children are much stouter than English, or they wear thicker things underneath. Here again there was work to do—all the sleeves were much too long; my maids had to alter and shorten them, which they did with rather a bad grace.
A most interesting operation that very cold year was taking ice out of the big pond at the foot of the hill. The ice was several inches thick, and beautifully clear in the middle of the pond; toward the edges the reeds and long grass had all got frozen into it, and it was rather difficult to get the big blocks out. We had one of the farm carts with a pair of strong horses, and three or four men with axes and a long pointed stick. It was so solid that we all stood on the pond while the men were cutting their first square hole in the middle. It was funny to see the fish swimming about under the ice.
The whole village of course looked on, and the children were much excited, and wanted to come and slide on the ice, but I got nervous as the hole got bigger and the ice at the edges thinner, so we all adjourned to the road and watched operations from there.
There were plenty of fish in the pond, and once a year it was thoroughly drained and cleaned—the water drawn off, and the bottom of the pond, which got choked up with mud and weeds, cleared out. They made a fine haul of fish on those occasions from the small pools that were left on each side while the cleaning was going on.
Our ice-house was a godsend to all the countryside. Whenever any one was ill, and ice was wanted, they always came to the château. Our good old doctor was not at all in the movement as regarded fresh air and cold water, but ice he often wanted. He was a rough, kindly old man, quite the type of the country practitioner—a type that is also disappearing, like everything else. Everybody knew his cabriolet (with a box at the back where he kept his medicine chest and instruments), with a strong brown horse that trotted all day and all night up and down the steep hills in all weathers. A very small boy was always with him to hold the horse while he made his visits.
Our doctor was very kind to the poor, and never refused to go out at night. It was funny to see him arrive on a cold day, enveloped in so many cloaks and woollen comforters that it took him some time to get out of his wraps. He had a gruff voice, and heavy black overhanging eyebrows which frightened people at first, but they soon found out what a kind heart there was beneath such a rough exterior, and the children loved him. He had always a box of liquorice lozenges in his waistcoat pocket which he distributed freely to the small ones.
The country doctors about us now are a very different type—much younger men, many foreigners. There are two Russians and a Greek in some of the small villages near us. I believe they are very good. I met the Greek one day at the keeper's cottage. He was looking after the keeper's wife, who was very ill. It seemed funny to see a Greek, with one of those long Greek names ending in "popolo," in a poor little French village almost lost in the woods; but he made a very good impression on me—was very quiet, didn't give too much medicine (apothecaries' bills are always such a terror to the poor), and spoke kindly to the woman. He comes still in a cabriolet, but his Russian colleague has an automobile—indeed so have now many of the young French doctors. I think there is a little rivalry between the Frenchmen and the foreigners, but the latter certainly make their way.
What is very serious now is the open warfare between the curé and the school-master. When I first married, the school-masters and mistresses took their children to church, always sat with them and kept them in order. The school-mistress sometimes played the organ. Now they not only don't go to church themselves, but they try to prevent the children from going. The result is that half the children don't go either to the church or to the catechism.
I had a really annoying instance of this state of things one year when we wanted to make a Christmas tree and distribution of warm clothes at Montigny, a lonely little village not far from us. We talked it over with the curé and the school-master. They gave us the names and ages of all the children, and were both much pleased to have a fête in their quiet little corner. I didn't suggest a service in the church, as I thought that might perhaps be a difficulty for the school-master.
Two days before the fête I had a visit from the curé of Montigny, who looked embarrassed and awkward; had evidently something on his mind, and finally blurted out that he was very sorry he couldn't be present at the Christmas tree, as he was obliged to go to Reims that day. I, much surprised and decidedly put out: "You are going to Reims the one day in the year when we come and make a fête in your village? It is most extraordinary, and surprises me extremely. The date has been fixed for weeks, and I hold very much to your being there."
He still persisted, looking very miserable and uncomfortable, and finally said he was going away on purpose, so as not to be at the school-house. He liked the school-master very much, got on with him perfectly; he was intelligent and taught the children very well; but all school-masters who had anything to do with the Church or the curé were "malnotés." The mayor of Montigny was a violent radical; and surely if he heard that the curé was present at our fête in the school-house, the school-master would be dismissed the next day. The man was over thirty, with wife and children; it would be difficult for him to find any other employment; and he himself would regret him, as his successor might be much worse and fill the children's heads with impossible ideas.
I was really very much vexed, and told him I would talk it over with my son and see what we could do. The poor little curé was much disappointed, but begged me not to insist upon his presence.
A little later the school-master arrived, also very much embarrassed, saying practically the same thing—that he liked the curé very much. He never talked politics, nor interfered in any way with his parishioners. Whenever any one was ill or in trouble, he was always the first person to come forward and nurse and help. But he saw him very little. If I held to the curé being present at the Christmas tree, of course he could say nothing; but he would certainly be dismissed the next day. He was married—had nothing but his salary; it would be a terrible blow to him.
I was very much perplexed, particularly as the time was short and I couldn't get hold of the mayor. So we called a family council—Henrietta and Francis were both at home—and decided that we must let our fête take place without the curé. The school-master was very grateful, and said he would take my letter to the post-office. I had to write to the curé to tell him what we had decided, and that he might go to Reims.
One of our great amusements in the winter was the hunting. We knew very well the two gentlemen, Comtes de B. and de L., who hunted the Villers-Cotterets forest, and often rode with them. It was beautiful riding country—stretches of grass alongside the hard highroad, where one could have a capital canter, the only difficulty being the quantity of broad, low ditches made for the water to run off. Once the horses knew them they took them quite easily in their stride, but they were a little awkward to manage at first. The riding was very different from the Roman Campagna, which was my only experience. There was very little to jump; long straight alleys, with sometimes a big tree across the road, occasionally ditches; nothing like the very stiff fences and stone walls one meets in the Campagna, or the slippery bits of earth (tufa) where the horses used to slide sometimes in the most uncomfortable way. One could gallop for miles in the Villers-Cotterets forest with a loose rein. It was disagreeable sometimes when we left the broad alleys and took little paths in and out of the trees. When the wood was thick and the branches low, I was always afraid one would knock me off the saddle or come into my eyes. Some of the meets were most picturesque; sometimes in the heart of the forest at a great carrefour, alleys stretching off in every direction, hemmed in by long straight lines of winter trees on each side, with a thick, high undergrowth of ferns, and a broad-leaved plant I didn't know, which remained green almost all winter. It was pretty to see the people arriving from all sides, in every description of vehicle—breaks, dog-carts, victorias, farmer's gigs—grooms with led horses, hunting men in green or red coats, making warm bits of colour in the rather severe landscape. The pack of hounds, white with brown spots, big, powerful animals, gave the valets de chiens plenty to do. Apparently they knew all their names, as we heard frequent admonitions to Comtesse, Diane (a very favourite name for hunting dogs in France), La Grise, etc., to keep quiet, and not make little excursions into the woods. As the words were usually accompanied by a cut of the whip, the dogs understood quite well, and remained a compact mass on the side of the road. There was the usual following of boys, tramps, and stray bûcherons (woodmen), and when the day was fine, and the meet not too far, a few people would come from the neighbouring villages, or one or two carriages from the livery stables of Villers-Cotterets, filled with strangers who had been attracted by the show and the prospect of spending an afternoon in the forest. A favourite meet was at the pretty little village of Ivors, standing just on the edge of the forest not far from us. It consisted of one long street, a church, and a château at one end. The château had been a fine one, but was fast going to ruin, uninhabited, paint and plaster falling off, roof and walls remaining, and showing splendid proportions, but had an air of decay and neglect that was sad to see in such a fine place. The owner never lived there; had several other places. An agent came down occasionally, and looked after the farm and woods. There was a fine double court-yard and enormous "communs," a large field only separating the kitchen garden from the forest. A high wall in fairly good condition surrounded the garden and small park. On a hunting morning the little place quite waked up, and it was pretty to see the dogs and horses grouped under the walls of the old château, and the hunting men in their bright coats moving about among the peasants and carters in their dark-blue smocks.
The start was very pretty—one rode straight into the forest, the riders spreading in all directions. The field was never very large—about thirty—I the only lady. The cor de chasse was a delightful novelty to me, and I soon learned all the calls—the débouché, the vue and the hallali, when the poor beast is at the last gasp. The first time I saw the stag taken I was quite miserable. We had had a splendid gallop. I was piloted by one of the old stagers, who knew every inch of the forest, and who promised I should be in at the death, if I would follow him, "mais il faut me suivre partout, avez-vous peur?" As he was very stout, and not particularly well mounted, and I had a capital English mare, I was quite sure I could pass wherever he could. He took me through all sorts of queer little paths, the branches sometimes so low that it didn't seem possible to get through, but we managed it. Sometimes we lost sight of the hunt entirely, but he always guided himself by the sound of the horns, which one hears at a great distance. Once a stag bounded across the road just in front of us, making our horses shy violently, but he said that was not the one we were after. I wondered how he knew, but didn't ask any questions. Once or twice we stopped in the thick of the woods, having apparently lost ourselves entirely, not hearing a sound, and then in the distance there would be the faint sound of the horn, enough for him to distinguish the vue, which meant that they were still running. Suddenly, very near, we heard the great burst of the hallali—horses, dogs, riders, all joining in; and pushing through the brushwood we found ourselves on the edge of a big pond, almost a lake. The stag, a fine one, was swimming about, nearly finished, his eyes starting out of his head, and his breast shaken with great sobs. The whole pack of dogs was swimming after him, the hunters all swarming down to the edge, sounding their horns, and the master of hounds following in a small flatboat, waiting to give the coup de grâce with his carbine when the poor beast should attempt to get up the bank. It was a sickening sight. I couldn't stand it, and retreated (we had all dismounted) back into the woods, much to the surprise and disgust of my companion, who was very proud and pleased at having brought me in at the death among the very first. Of course, one gets hardened, and a stag at bay is a fine sight. In the forest they usually make their last stand against a big tree, and sell their lives dearly. The dogs sometimes get an ugly blow. I was really very glad always when the stag got away. I had all the pleasure and excitement of the hunt without having my feelings lacerated at the end of the day. The sound of the horns and the unwonted stir in the country had brought out all the neighbourhood, and the inhabitants of the little village, including the curé and the châtelaine of the small château near, soon appeared upon the scene. The curé, a nice, kindly faced old man, with white hair and florid complexion, was much interested in all the details of the hunt. It seems the stag is often taken in these ponds, les étangs de la ramée, which are quite a feature in the country, and one of the sights of the Villers-Cotterets forest, where strangers are always brought. They are very picturesque; the trees slope down to the edge of the ponds, and when the bright autumn foliage is reflected in the water the effect is quite charming.
Mme. de M., the châtelaine, was the type of the grande dame Française, fine, clear-cut features, black eyes, and perfectly white hair, very well arranged. She was no longer young, but walked with a quick, light step, a cane in her hand. She, too, was much interested, such an influx of people, horses, dogs, and carriages (for in some mysterious way the various vehicles always seemed to find their way to the finish). It was an event in the quiet little village. She admired my mare very much, which instantly won my affections. She asked us to come back with her to the château—it was only about a quarter of an hour's walk—to have some refreshment after our long day; so I held up my skirt as well as I could, and we walked along together. The château is not very large, standing close to the road in a small park, really more of a manor house than a château. She took us into the drawing-room just as stiff and bare as all the others I had seen, a polished parquet floor, straight-backed, hard chairs against the wall (the old lady herself looked as if she had sat up straight on a hard chair all her life). In the middle of the room was an enormous palm-tree going straight up to the ceiling. She said it had been there for years and always remained when she went to Paris in the spring. She was a widow, lived alone in the château with the old servants. Her daughter and grandchildren came occasionally to stay with her. She gave us wine and cake, and was most agreeable. I saw her often afterward, both in the country and Paris, and loved to hear her talk. She had remained absolutely ancien régime, couldn't understand modern life and ways at all. One of the things that shocked her beyond words was to see her granddaughters and their young friends playing tennis with young men in flannels. In her day a young man in bras de chemise would have been ashamed to appear before ladies in such attire. We didn't stay very long that day, as we were far from home, and the afternoon was shortening fast. The retraite was sometimes long when we had miles of hard road before us, until we arrived at the farm or village where the carriage was waiting. When we could walk our horses it was bearable, but sometimes when they broke into a jog-trot, which nothing apparently could make them change, it was very fatiguing after a long day.
Sometimes, when we had people staying with us, we followed the hunt in the carriage. We put one of the keepers of the Villers-Cotterets forest on the box, and it was wonderful how much we could see. The meet was always amusing, but when once the hunt had moved off, and the last stragglers disappeared in the forest, it didn't seem as if there was any possibility of catching them; and sometimes we would drive in a perfectly opposite direction, but the old keeper knew all about the stags and their haunts when they would break out and cross the road, and when they would double and go back into the woods. We were waiting one day in the heart of the forest, at one of the carrefours, miles away apparently from everything, and an absolute stillness around us. Suddenly there came a rush and noise of galloping horses, baying hounds and horns, and a flash of red and green coats dashed by, disappearing in an instant in the thick woods before we had time to realize what it was. It was over in a moment—seemed an hallucination. We saw and heard nothing more, and the same intense stillness surrounded us. We had the same sight, the stag taken in the water, some years later, when we were alone at the château. Mme. A. was dead, and her husband had gone to Paris to live. We were sitting in the gallery one day after breakfast, finishing our coffee, and making plans for the day, when suddenly we saw red spots and moving figures in the distance, on the hills opposite, across the canal. Before we had time to get glasses and see what was happening, the children came rushing in to say the hunt was in the woods opposite, the horns sounding the hallali, and the stag probably in the canal. With the glasses we made out the riders quite distinctly, and soon heard faint echoes of the horn. We all made a rush for hats and coats, and started off to the canal. We had to go down a steep, slippery path which was always muddy in all weathers, and across a rather rickety narrow plank, also very slippery. As we got nearer, we heard the horns very well, and the dogs yelping. By the time we got to the bridge, which was open to let a barge go through, everything had disappeared—horses, dogs, followers, and not a sound of horn or hoof. One solitary horseman only, who had evidently lost the hunt and didn't know which way to go. We lingered a little, much disgusted, but still hoping we might see something, when suddenly we heard again distant sounds of horns and yelping dogs. The man on the other side waved his cap wildly, pointed to the woods, and started off full gallop. In a few minutes the hill slope was alive with hunters coming up from all sides. We were nearly mad with impatience, but couldn't swim across the canal, the bridge was still open, the barge lumbering through. The children with their Fräulein and some of the party crossed a little lower down on a crazy little plank, which I certainly shouldn't have dared attempt, and at last the bargeman took pity on us and put us across. We raced along the bank as fast as we could, but the canal turns a great deal, and a bend prevented our seeing the stag, with the hounds at his heels, galloping down the slope and finally jumping into the canal, just where it widens out and makes a sort of lake between our hamlet of Bourneville and Marolles. It was a pretty sight, all the hunters dismounted, walking along the edge of the water, sounding their hallali, the entire population of Bourneville and Marolles and all our household arriving in hot haste, and groups of led horses and valets de chiens in their green coats half-way up the slope. The stag, a very fine one, was swimming round and round, every now and then making an effort to get up the bank, and falling back heavily—he was nearly done, half his body sinking in the water, and his great eyes looking around to see if any one would help him. I went back to the barge (they had stayed, too, to see the sight), and the woman, a nice, clean, motherly body with two babies clinging to her, was much excited over the cruelty of the thing.
[Illustration: I suggested that the whole chasse should adjourn to the château.]
"Madame trouve que c'est bien de tourmenter une pauvre bête qui ne fait de mal à personne, pour s'amuser?" Madame found that rather difficult to answer, and turned the conversation to her life on the barge. The minute little cabin looked clean, with several pots of red geraniums, clean muslin curtains, a canary bird, and a nondescript sort of dog, who, she told me, was very useful, taking care of the children and keeping them from falling into the water when she was obliged to leave them on the boat while she went on shore to get her provisions. I asked: "How does he keep them from falling into the water—does he take hold of their clothes?" "No, I leave them in the cabin, when I am obliged to go ashore, and he stands at the door and barks and won't let them come out." While I was talking to her I heard a shot, and realised that the poor stag had been finished at last. It was early in the afternoon—three o'clock, and I suggested that the whole chasse should adjourn to the château for goûter. This they promptly accepted, and started off to find their horses. Then I had some misgivings as to what I could give them for goûter. We were a small party, mostly women and children. W. was away, and I thought that probably the chef, who was a sportsman as well as a cook, was shooting (he had hired a small chasse not far from us); I had told him there was nothing until dinner. I had visions of twenty or thirty hungry men and an ordinary tea-table, with some thin bread and butter, a pot of damson jam, and some sables, so I sent off Francis's tutor, the stable-boy, and the gardener's boy to the château as fast as their legs could carry them, to find somebody, anybody, to prepare us as much food as they could, and to sacrifice the dinner at once, to make sandwiches—tea and chocolate, of course, were easily provided.
We all started back to the house up the steep, muddy path, some of the men with us leading their horses, some riding round by Marolles to give orders to the breaks and various carriages to come to the château. The big gates were open, Hubert there to arrange at once for the accommodation of so many horses and equipages, and the billiard and dining-rooms, with great wood-fires, looking most comfortable. The chasseurs begged not to come into the drawing-room, as they were covered with mud, so they brushed off what they could in the hall, and we went at once to the goûter. It was funny to see our quiet dining-room invaded by such a crowd of men, some red-coated, some green, all with breeches and high muddy boots. The master of hounds, M. Menier, proposed to make the curée on the lawn after tea, which I was delighted to accept. We had an English cousin staying with us who knew all about hunting in her own country, but had never seen a French chasse à courre, and she was most keen about it. The goûter was very creditable. It seems that they had just caught the chef, who had been attracted by the unusual sounds and bustle on the hillside, and who had also come down to see the show. He promptly grasped the situation, hurried back to the house, and produced beef and mayonnaise sandwiches, and a splendid savarin with whipped cream in the middle (so we naturally didn't have any dessert—but nobody minded), tea, chocolate, and whiskey, of course. As soon as it began to get dark we all adjourned to the lawn. All the carriages, the big breaks with four horses, various lighter vehicles, grooms and led horses were massed at the top of the lawn, just where it rises slightly to meet the woods. A little lower down was Hubert, the huntsman (a cousin of our coachman, Hubert, who was very pleased to do the honours of his stable-yard), with one or two valets de chiens, the pack of dogs, and a great whip, which was very necessary to keep the pack back until he allowed them to spring upon the carcass of the stag. He managed them beautifully. Two men held up the stag—the head had already been taken off; it was a fine one, with broad, high antlers, a dix cors. Twice Hubert led his pack up, all yelping and their eyes starting out of their heads, and twice drove them back, but the third time he let them spring on the carcass. It was an ugly sight, the compact mass of dogs, all snarling and struggling, noses down and tails up. In a few minutes nothing was left of the poor beast but bones, and not many of them. Violet had les honneurs du pied (the hoof of one of the hind legs of the stag), which is equivalent to the "brush" one gives in fox-hunting. She thanked M. M., the master of hounds, very prettily and said she would have it arranged and hang it up in the hall of her English home, in remembrance of a lovely winter afternoon, and her first experience of what still remains of the old French vénerie. The horns sounded again the curée and the depart, and the whole company gradually dispersed, making quite a cortège as they moved down the avenue, horses and riders disappearing in the gray mist that was creeping up from the canal, and the noise of wheels and hoofs dying away in the distance.
[Illustration: Some red-coated, some green, all with breeches and high muddy boots.]
* * * * *
We were pottering about in our woods one day, waiting for Labbez (the keeper) to come and decide about some trees that must be cut down, when a most miserable group emerged from one of the side alleys and slipped by so quickly and quietly that we couldn't speak to them. A woman past middle age, lame, unclothed really—neither shoes nor stockings, not even a chemise—two sacks of coarse stuff, one tied around her waist half covering her bare legs, one over her shoulders; two children with her, a big overgrown girl of about twelve, equally without clothing, an old black bodice gaping open over her bare skin, held together by one button, a short skirt so dirty and torn that one wondered what kept it on, no shoes nor stockings, black hair falling straight down over her forehead and eyes; the boy, about six, in a dirty apron, also over his bare skin. I was horrified, tried to make them turn and speak to me, but they disappeared under the brushwood as quickly as they could, "evidently up to no good," said W. In a few moments the keeper appeared, red and breathless, having been running after poachers—a woman the worst of the lot. We described the party we had just seen, and he was wildly excited, wanted to start again in pursuit, said they were just the ones he was looking for. The woman belonged to a band of poachers and vagabonds they could not get hold of. They could trace her progress sometimes by the blood on the grass where the thorns and sharp stones had torn her feet. It seems they were quite a band, living anywhere in the woods, in old charcoal-burners' huts or under the trees, never staying two nights in the same place. There are women, and children, and babies, who appear and disappear, in the most extraordinary manner. Many of them have been condemned, and have had two weeks or a month of prison. One family is employed by one of the small farmers near, who lets them live in a tumbledown hut in the midst of his woods, and that is their centre. We passed by there two or three days later, when we were riding across the fields, and anything so miserable I never saw; the house half falling to pieces, no panes of glass, dirty rags stuffed in the windows, no door at all, bundles of dirty straw inside, a pond of filthy water at one side of the house, two or three dirty children playing in it, and inside at the opening, where the door should have been, the same lame woman in her two sacks. She glowered at us, standing defiantly at the opening to prevent our going in, in case we had any such intention. I suppose she had various rabbits and hares hung up inside she couldn't have accounted for. There was no other habitation anywhere near; no cart or vehicle of any kind could have got there. We followed a narrow path, hardly visible in the long grass, and the horses had to pick their way—one couldn't imagine a more convenient trysting-place for vagabonds and tramps. It seems incredible that such things should go on at our doors, so to speak, but it is very difficult to get at them. Our keepers and M. de M., whose property touches ours, have had various members of the gang arrested, but they always begin again. The promiscuity of living is something awful, girls and young men squatting and sleeping in the same room on heaps of dirty rags. There have been some arrests for infanticide, when a baby's appearance and disappearance was too flagrant, but the girls don't care. They do their time of prison, come out quite untamed by prison discipline, and begin again their wild, free life. One doesn't quite understand the farmer who gives any shelter to such a bad lot, but I fancy there is a tacit understanding that his hares and rabbits must be left unmolested.
It is amusing to see the keepers when they suspect poachers are in their woods. When the leaves are off they can see at a great distance, and with their keen, trained eyes make out quite well when a moving object is a hare, or a roebuck, or a person on all fours, creeping stealthily along. They have powerful glasses, too, which help them very much. They, too, have their various tricks, like the poachers. As the gun-barrel is seen at a great distance when the sun strikes it, they cover it with a green stuff that takes the general tint of the leaves and the woods, and post themselves, half hidden in the bushes, near some of the quarries, where the poachers generally come. Then they give a gun to an under-strapper, telling him to stand in some prominent part of the woods, his gun well in sight. That, of course, the poachers see at once, so they make straight for the other side, and often fall upon the keepers who are lying in wait for them. As a general rule, they don't make much resistance, as they know the keepers will shoot—not to kill them, but a shot in the ankle or leg that will disable them for some time. I had rather a weakness for one poaching family. The man was young, good-looking, and I don't really believe a bad lot, but he had been unfortunate, had naturally a high temper, and couldn't stand being howled at and sworn at when things didn't go exactly as the patron wanted; consequently he never stayed in any place, tried to get some other work, but was only fit for the woods, where he knew every tree and root and the habits and haunts of all the animals. He had a pretty young wife and two children, who had also lived in the woods all their lives, and could do nothing else. The wife came to see me one day to ask for some clothes for herself and the children, which I gave, of course, and then tried mildly to speak to her about her husband, who spent half his time in prison, and was so sullen and scowling when he came out that everybody gave him a wide berth. The poor thing burst into a passion of tears and incoherent defence of her husband. Everybody had been so hard with him. When he had done his best, been up all night looking after the game, and then was rated and sworn at by his master before every one because un des Parisiens didn't know what to do with a gun when he had one in his hand, and couldn't shoot a hare that came and sat down in front of him, it was impossible not to answer un peu vivement peut-être, and it was hard to be discharged at once without a chance of finding anything else, etc., and at last winding up with the admission that he did take hares and rabbits occasionally; but when there was nothing to eat in the house and the children were crying with hunger, what was he to do? Madame would never have known or missed the rabbits, and after all, le Bon Dieu made them for everybody. I tried to persuade W. to take him as a workman in the woods, with the hope of getting back as under-keeper, but he would not hear of it, said the man was perfectly unruly and violent-tempered, and would demoralize all the rest. They remained some time in the country, and the woman came sometimes to see me, but she had grown hard, evidently thought I could have done something for her husband, and couldn't understand that as long as he went on snaring game no one would have anything to do with him—always repeating the same thing, that a Bon Dieu had made the animals pour tout le monde. Of course it must be an awful temptation for a man who has starving children at home, and who knows that he has only to walk a few yards in the woods to find rabbits in plenty; and one can understand the feeling that le Bon Dieu provided food for all his children, and didn't mean some to starve, while others lived on the fat of the land.
It was a long time before I could get accustomed to seeing women work in the fields (which I had never seen in America). In the cold autumn days, when they were picking the betterave (a big beet root) that is used to make sugar in France, it made me quite miserable to see them. Bending all day over the long rows of beets, which required quite an effort to pull out of the hard earth, their hands red and chapped, sometimes a cold wind whistling over the fields that no warm garment could keep out, and they never had any really warm garment. We met an old woman one day quite far from any habitation, who was toiling home, dragging her feet, in wretched, half-worn shoes, over the muddy country roads, who stopped and asked us if we hadn't a warm petticoat to give her. She knew me, called me by name, and said she lived in the little hamlet near the château. She looked miserably cold and tired. I asked where she came from, and what she had been doing all day. "Scaring the crows in M. A.'s fields," was the answer. "What does your work consist of?" I asked. "Oh, I just sit there and make a noise—beat the top of an old tin kettle with sticks and shake a bit of red stuff in the air." Poor old woman, she looked half paralyzed with cold and fatigue, and I was really almost ashamed to be seated so warmly and comfortably in the carriage, well wrapped up in furs and rugs, and should have quite understood if she had poured out a torrent of abuse. It must rouse such bitter and angry feeling when these poor creatures, half frozen and half starved, see carriages rolling past with every appliance of wealth and luxury. I suppose what saves us is that they are so accustomed to their lives, the long days of hard work, the wretched, sordid homes, the insufficient meals, the quantities of children clamouring for food and warmth. Their parents and grandparents have lived the same lives, and anything else would seem as unattainable as the moon, or some fairy tale. There has been one enormous change in all the little cottages—the petroleum lamp. All have got one—petroleum is cheap and gives much more light and heat than the old-fashioned oil lamp. In the long winter afternoons, when one must have light for work of any kind, the petroleum lamp is a godsend. We often noticed the difference coming home late. The smallest hamlets looked quite cheerful with the bright lights shining through the cracks and windows. I can't speak much from personal experience of the inside of the cottages—I was never much given to visiting among the poor. I suppose I did not take it in the right spirit, but I could never see the poetry, the beautiful, patient lives, the resignation to their humble lot. I only saw the dirt, and smelt all the bad smells, and heard how bad most of the young ones were to all the poor old people. "Cela mange comme quatre, et cela n'est plus bon à rien," I heard one woman remark casually to her poor old father sitting huddled up in a heap near the fire. I don't know, either, whether they liked to have us come. What suited them best was to send the children to the château. They always got a meal and a warm jacket and petticoat.
[Illustration: Peasant women.]
V
CEREMONIES AND FESTIVALS
We were very particular about attending all important ceremonies at La Ferté, as we rarely went to church there except on great occasions. We had our service regularly at the château every Sunday morning. All the servants, except ours, were Protestants, Swiss generally, and very respectable they looked—all the women in black dresses and white caps—when they assembled in M. A.'s library, sitting on cane chairs near the door.
Some, in fact most, Protestants in France attach enormous importance to having all their household Protestant. A friend of mine, a Protestant, having tea with me one day in Paris was rather pleased with the bread or little "croissants," and asked me where they came from. I said I didn't know, but would ask the butler. That rather surprised her. Then she said, "Your baker of course is a Protestant." That I didn't know either, and, what was much worse in her eyes, I didn't care. She was quite distressed, gave me the address of an excellent Swiss Protestant baker and begged me to sever all connection with the Catholic at once. I asked her if she really thought dangerous papist ideas were kneaded in with the bread, but she would not listen to my mild "persiflage," and went away rather anxious about my spiritual welfare.
We went always to the church at La Ferté for the fête of St. Cécile, as the Fanfare played in the church on that day. The Fanfare was a very important body. Nearly all the prominent citizens of La Ferté, who had any idea of music, were members—the butcher, the baker, the coiffeur, etc. The Mayor was president and walked at the head of the procession when they filed into the church. I was "Présidente d'Honneur" and always wore my badge pinned conspicuously on my coat. It was a great day for the little town. Weeks before the fête we used to hear all about it from the coiffeur when he came to the château to shave the gentlemen. He played the big drum and thought the success of the whole thing depended on his performance. He proposed to bring his instrument one morning and play his part for us. We were very careful to be well dressed on that day and discarded the short serge skirts we generally wore. All the La Ferté ladies, particularly the wives and sisters of the performers, put on their best clothes, and their feelings would have been hurt if we had not done the same.
In fact it was a little difficult to dress up to the occasion. The older women all had jet and lace on their dresses, with long trailing skirts, and the younger ones, even children, had wonderful hats with feathers—one or two long white ones.
It was a pretty, animated sight as we arrived. All along the road we had met bands of people hurrying on to the town—the children with clean faces and pinafores, the men with white shirts, and even the old grandmothers—their shawls on their shoulders and their turbans starched stiff—were hobbling along with their sticks, anxious to arrive. We heard sounds of music as we got to the church—the procession was evidently approaching. The big doors were wide open, a great many people already inside. We looked straight down the nave to the far end where the high altar, all flowers and candles, made a bright spot of colour. Red draperies and banners were hanging from the columns—vases and wreaths of flowers at the foot of the statues of the saints; chairs and music-stands in the chancel. We went at once to our places. The curé, with his choir boys in their little short white soutanes, red petticoats and red shoes, was just coming out of the sacristy and the procession was appearing at the bottom of the church. First came the Mayor in a dress coat and white cravat—the "Adjoint" and one of the municipal council just behind, then the banner—rather a heavy one, four men carried it. After that the "pompiers," all in uniform, each man carrying his instrument; they didn't play as they came up the aisle, stopped their music at the door; but when they did begin—I don't know exactly at what moment of the mass—it was something appalling. The first piece was a military march, executed with all the artistic conviction and patriotic ardour of their young lungs (they were mostly young men). We were at the top of the church, very near the performers, and the first bursts of trumpets and bugles made one jump. They played several times. It didn't sound too badly at the "Elevation" when they had chosen rather a soft (comparatively) simple melody. The curé preached a very pretty, short sermon, telling them about Saint Cécile, the delicately nurtured young Roman who was not afraid to face martyrdom and death for the sake of her religion. The men listened most attentively and seemed much interested when he told them how he had seen in Rome the church of St. Cécile built over the ruin of the saint's house—the sacristy just over her bath-room. I asked him how he could reconcile it to his conscience to speak of the melodious sounds that accompanied the prayers of the faithful, but he said one must look sometimes at the intention more than at the result.
There was a certain harmony among the men when they were practising and preparing their music for the church, and as long as they held to coming and gave up their evenings to practising, instead of spending them in the wine shops, we must do all we could to encourage them.
The procession went out in the same order—halted at the church door and then W. made them a nice little speech, saying he was pleased to see how numerous they were and how much improved—they would certainly take an honourable place in the concours de fanfares of the department. They escorted the Mayor back to his house playing their march and wound up with a copious déjeuner at the "Sauvage." Either the Mayor or the "Adjoint" always went to the banquet. W. gave the champagne, but abstained from the feast.
They really did improve as they went on. They were able to get better instruments and were stimulated by rival fanfares in the neighbourhood. They were very anxious to come and play at the château, and we promised they should whenever a fitting occasion should present itself.
We had a visit from the Staals one year. The Baron de Staal was Russian Ambassador in England, and we had been colleagues there for many years. We asked the Fanfare to come one Sunday afternoon while they were there. We had a little difficulty over the Russian National Hymn, which they, naturally, wanted to play. The Chef de Fanfare came to see me one day and we looked over the music together. I had it only for the piano, but I explained the tempo and repetitions to him and he arranged it very well for his men. They made quite an imposing entrance. Half the population of La Ferté escorted them (all much excited by the idea of seeing the Russian Ambassador), and they were reinforced by the two villages they passed through. We waited for them in the gallery—doors and windows open. They played the spirited French march "Sambre et Meuse" as they came up the avenue. It sounded quite fine in the open air. They halted and saluted quite in military style as soon as they came in front of the gallery—stopped their march and began immediately the Russian Hymn, playing it very well.
They were much applauded, we in the gallery giving the signal and their friends on the lawn joining in enthusiastically. They were a motley crowd—over a hundred I should think—ranging from the municipal councillor of La Ferté, in his high hat and black cloth Sunday coat, to the humpbacked daughter of the village carpenter and the idiot boy who lived in a cave on the road and frightened the children out of their wits by running out and making faces at them whenever they passed. They played three or four times, then W. called up one or two of the principal performers and presented them to the Staals. Mme. de Staal spoke to them very prettily, thanked them for playing the Russian Hymn and said she would like to hear the "Sambre et Meuse" again. That, of course, delighted them and they marched off to the strains of their favourite tune. About half-way down the avenue we heard a few cries of "Vive la Russie," and then came a burst of cheers.
Our dinner was rather pleasant that evening. We had the Préfet, M. Sebline; Senator of the Aisne, Jusserand, present Ambassador to Washington; Mme. Thénard, of the Comédie Française, and several young people. Jusserand is always a brilliant talker—so easy—no pose of any kind, and Sebline was interesting, telling about all sorts of old customs in the country.
Though we were so near Paris, hardly two hours by the express, the people had remained extraordinarily primitive. There were no manufacturing towns anywhere near us, nothing but big farms, forests and small far-apart villages. The modern socialist-radical ideas were penetrating very slowly into the heads of the people—they were quite content to be humble tillers of the soil, as their fathers had been before them. The men had worked all their lives on the farms, the women too; beginning quite young, taking care of cows and geese, picking beet-root, etc.
What absolutely changed the men was the three years military service. After knocking about in garrison towns, living with a great many people always, having all sorts of amusements easily at hand and a certain independence, once the service of the day was over, they found the dull regular routine of the farm very irksome. In the summer it was well enough—harvest time was gay, everyone in the fields, but in the short, cold winter days, with the frozen ground making all the work doubly hard, just enough food and no distraction of any kind but a pipe in the kitchen after supper, the young men grew terribly restive and discontented. Very few of them remain, and the old traditions handed down from father to son for three or four generations are disappearing. After dinner we had music and some charming recitations by Mme. Thénard. Her first one was a comic monologue which always had the wildest success in London, "Je suis veuve," beginning it with a ringing peal of laughter which was curiously contagious—everyone in the room joined in. I like her better in some of her serious things. When she said "le bon gite" and "le petit clairon," by Paul Déroulède, in her beautiful deep voice, I had a decided choke in my throat.
We often had music at the château. Many of our artist friends came down—glad to have two or three days rest in the quiet old house. We had an amusing experience once with the young organist from La Ferté—almost turned his hair gray. He had taught himself entirely and managed his old organ very well. He had heard vaguely of Wagner and we had always promised him we would try and play some of his music with two pianos—eight hands. Four hands are really not enough for such complicated music. Mlle. Dubois, premier prix du conservatoire—a beautiful musician—was staying with us one year and we arranged a concert for one evening, asking the organist to come to dinner. The poor man was rather terrified at dining at the château—had evidently taken great pains with his dress (a bright pink satin cravat was rather striking) and thanked the butler most gratefully every time he handed him a dish—"Je vous remercie beaucoup, Monsieur." We had our two grand pianos and were going to play the overture of Tannhäuser, one of the simplest and most melodious of Wagner's compositions. The performers were Francis and I, Mlle. Dubois and the organist. It was a little difficult to arrange who he should play with. He was very nervous at the idea of playing with Mlle. Dubois—rather frightened of me and in absolute terror at the idea of playing before W. Finally it was decided that he and I should take the second piano—he playing the bass. It was really funny to see him; his eyes were fixed on the music and he counted audibly and breathlessly all the time, and I heard him muttering occasionally to himself, "Non ce n'est pas possible," "Non ce n'est pas cela."
I must say that the Walpurgis Night for a person playing at sight and unaccustomed to Wagner's music is an ordeal—however, he acquitted himself extremely well and we got through our performance triumphantly, but great drops of perspiration were on his forehead. W. was very nice to him and Mlle. Dubois quite charming, encouraging him very much. Still I don't think his evening at the château was one of unmixed pleasure, and I am sure he was glad to have that overture behind him.
We saw our neighbours very rarely; occasionally some men came to breakfast. The sous-préfet, one or two of the big farmers or some local swells who wanted to talk politics to W. One frequent visitor was an architect from Château-Thierry, who had built W.'s farm. He was an enormous man, very stout and red, always attired in shiny black broadcloth. He was a very shrewd specimen, very well up in all that went on in the country and very useful to W. He had a fine appetite, always tucking his napkin carefully under his chin when he sat down to table. He talked a great deal one day about his son, who had a good tenor voice and had just got an engagement at the Opéra Comique. Said he would like us to hear him sing—might he bring him some day to breakfast?
He came back two or three weeks later with the young man, who was a great improvement upon his father. The Paris boulevards and the coulisses of the opera had quite modified the young provincial. He talked a good deal at table, was naturally much pleased to have got into the Opéra Comique. As it is a "théâtre subventionné" (government theatre), he considered himself a sort of official functionary. After breakfast he asked us if we would like to hear him sing—sat down to the piano, accompanying himself very simply and easily and sang extremely well. I was much astonished and Mme. A. was delighted, especially when he sang some old-fashioned songs from the "Dame Blanche" and the "Domino Noir." The old father was enchanted, a broad smile on his face. He confided to W. that he had hoped his son would walk in his footsteps and content himself with a modest position as architect in the country, but after six months in Paris where he had sent him to learn his profession his ideas had completely changed and he would not hear of vegetating in the country.
[Illustration: A visit at the château.]
We had, too, sometimes a doctor from one of the neighbouring villages. He had married an Englishwoman. They had a nice house and garden and he often had English boys over in the summer to learn French. He brought them occasionally to us for tea and tennis, begging us not to speak English to them. But that was rather difficult, with the English terms at tennis—horses and dogs always spoken to in English. One could not speak French to a fox-terrier bred in Oxfordshire.
* * * * *
Another pretty, simple fête was the Blessing of the Flag given by Francis to the Pompiers of Montigny, our little village in the woods just above the château. My husband had always promised them a flag, but he died before their society was formed. Three years after his death, when we were living in the small place which now belongs to my son, a deputation arrived from Montigny one Sunday afternoon to ask if Francis would give the flag his father had promised. This of course he was delighted to do. He knew all the men and they all knew him—had seen him since he was a baby—all of them had worked in his father's woods, and two or three of the older ones had taken care of him and his gun when he first began to shoot.
His father gave him a gun when he was twelve years old—had it made at Purdy's in London, a reduced model of his own. No one is allowed to shoot in France till he is sixteen years old and then must have his "permis de chasse" duly signed by the Mayor. So it was rather difficult to get Francis and his gun into the woods—once there they were safe. Nothing would have induced him to let any of the men carry it. He walked beside the keeper with his gun over his shoulder just like him; they did meet two gendarmes one day and quickly the gun was given to some one else. I think the gendarmes quite realised the situation (Labbey, the keeper, said they knew all about it), but they were friends of the family, W.'s appointment, probably, and asked no questions.
It was necessary of course to consult the local authorities before deciding such an important question as the presentation of a flag to the Pompiers. Francis went over two or three days later and interviewed the curé, the Mayor and the school-master, found out where the flag must be ordered in Paris and decided the day a fortnight later, a Sunday, of course. The function was to consist of a service and sermon at the church and a "vin d'honneur" offered by the Pompiers at the Mairie, which they hoped Madame Waddington would grace by her presence.
The flag was duly ordered, sent direct to Montigny and everything was ready on the appointed day. We had fine weather, a bright, cold November afternoon; the country looked beautiful, all the trees red and yellow, a black line of pines in the middle of the woods. The long straggling village street, ending at the church on the top of the hill, was full of people; all the children in the middle of the road, their mothers dashing after them when they heard the horn of the auto.
We were quite a large party, as the house was full, and we brought all our guests with us, including an American cousin, who was much interested in the local festivities. The Pompiers were drawn up in the court-yard of the Mairie, their beautiful new flag well to the front. Almost all were in uniform, and those who had not yet been able to get one wore a clean white shirt and the Pompier's red belt. There was a cheer and a broad smile on all their faces when we drove up. Francis got out, as he was to head the procession with the Mayor and the curé. We went on to the church and stationed ourselves on the steps of the Infant School to see the cortège arrive.
It was quite a pretty sight as it wound up the hill: first the banner of blue silk with gold cords, which was held proudly aloft by two tall young fellows, then Francis walking between the curé and the Mayor, the Pompiers immediately behind them, then the Municipal Council, the usual escort of children that always turns out on such occasions bringing up the rear. We let the procession pass into the church and then took our places; a front pew was reserved for the family, but Francis and I sat on two arm-chairs inside the chancel, just behind the Pompiers.
The fine old church, which is rather large for such a small village, was crowded; they told me many people had come from the neighbouring hamlets. The Montigny people had done their best to beautify their church; there were a few plants and flowers and some banners and draperies—church property, which always figured upon any great occasion. They told us with pride that the school-master had arranged the music. I suppose the poor man did what he could with the material he had, but the result was something awful. The chorister, a very old man, a hundred I should think, played the harmonium, which was as old as he was. It groaned and wheezed and at times stopped altogether. He started the cantique with a thin quavering voice which was then taken up by the school-children, particularly the boys who roared with juvenile patriotism and energy each time they repeated the last line, "pour notre drapeau, pour notre patrie."
The sermon was very good—short and simple. It was preached by the Doyen of Neuilly—a tall, strong, broad-shouldered man who would have seemed more at home in a dragoon's uniform than in the soutane. But he knew his business well, had a fine voice and very good delivery; his peroration and appeal to the men to "remember always that the flag was the symbol of obedience, of loyalty, of devotion, to their country and their God," was really very fine. I almost expected to hear cheers. The French are very emotional, and respond instantly to any allusion to country or flag. The uniform (even the Pompier's) has an enormous prestige. Then came the benediction, the flag held high over the kneeling congregation, and the ceremony was ended.
We stopped a few moments after the service to let the procession pass out and also to thank the preacher and one or two curés who had assisted on the occasion; they did not come to the "vin d'honneur."
We walked down to the Mairie, where the Mayor and his Adjoint were waiting for us; they conducted us to a large room upstairs where there was a table with champagne bottles, glasses and a big brioche. As soon as we had taken our places at the top of the room, the Pompiers and Municipal Council trouped in and Francis made quite a pretty little speech. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak in public; he did it very well, was not at all shy. Then there was a pause—the Mayor filled a glass of champagne, handed it to me, took one himself and we "trinqué'd" solemnly. Still there seemed a little hitch, no one else took any and there was an air of expectancy. I made a sign to the school-master, who was also the Adjoint, and he explained to me in a low voice that he thought it would give great pleasure if I would shake hands and trinquer with all the Pompiers. So I asked to have all the glasses filled and made the round, shaking hands with every one.
Some of them were very shy, could hardly make up their minds to put out their big, rough hands; some of the old ones were very talkative: "C'est moi qui suis Jacques, Madame, j'ai nettoyé le premier fusil de M. Francis." Another in a great hurry to get to me: "C'est moi qui ai remassé le premier lièvre de M. Francis," etc. I remember the "premier lièvre" quite well; Francis carried it home himself and dashed into his father's study swinging the poor beast by its long ears, the blood dripping from a hole in its neck. It was difficult to scold, the child was so enchanted, even old Ferdinand did not grumble but came to the rescue at once with brushes and "savon noir."
The wine had loosened the tongues and made every one more at ease. I asked that Hubert (our coachman who had been in W.'s service for thirty-one years) should be invited to come up and have a glass of champagne. He knew everybody, having driven W. about in his dog-cart all over the country. He was delighted to take part in the fête and made his little speech, saying he had seen Monsieur Francis when he was only a few hours old, and that he had grown since—which joke was received with great applause.
Then some of the young men went off with Francis to look at the automobile, a great novelty at that time. We went out and talked to the women who were waiting in the street. Every one looked smiling and pleased to see us; the men all formed again in procession and escorted us to the end of the street, the whole village naturally following. They stopped at the foot of the hill, giving us a ringing cheer as we left.
* * * * *
I never but once saw the whole neighbourhood assembled—when the only son of the Baron de L. married. The Baron and his wife were very good specimens of provincial noblesse. He was a tall, heavily-built man, square-shouldered, with the weather-beaten complexion of a man who spent all his days riding about his fields and woods; a pleasant, jovial manner, quite the type of the country gentleman.
They lived in a charming old Louis XV. château almost in the forest of Villers-Cotterets—their park touching the line of wood. They went rarely to Paris; lived almost all the year in the country and were devoted to their place. One just saw the pointed red roof of the château in the trees as one passed on the road. It stood high, a very steep road leading up to it. At the foot of the hill were market gardens, which made a very curious effect from a distance—the long rows of glass "cloches" making huge white spots. The vegetables always looked very tempting as we passed in the early summer. They were all "primeurs"—the gardens lying in full sun and were sent off to the Paris market. Half-way up the slope was a pretty little church almost hidden in the trees, and a tiny village struggled up the hill and along the road.
The bride, dressed in white—a slight girlish figure—was standing near her mother-in-law and had a pretty smile of welcome for all the guests. It was rather an ordeal for her, as she was a stranger in the country (she came from the south of France) and every one was looking at the newcomer.
It was in the first year of my marriage, my first appearance in the country, and I was rather puzzled about my dress for the occasion. We were asked to dinner at seven o'clock. My first idea was to wear full dress—light-blue satin and diamonds—but a niece of Mme. A.'s, who was staying with us and who had been to some entertainments in that part of the country, advised me strongly to dress more simply. "They would not understand that sort of toilette and I would be overdressed and probably uncomfortable." So I compromised with a high white dress, no diamonds and one string of pearls.
We had a short hour's drive. It was a clear, cold night and we saw the château from a great distance. It was brilliantly lighted. The lights twinkling through the trees looked like huge fireflies. As we drove into the rather small court-yard there was quite a stir of carriages arriving and backing out. The hall doors were wide open; a flood of light streaming out over the steps—Baron de L. and his son at the door. There was a hum of voices in the drawing-room and there seemed to be a great many people. The rooms were handsome—plenty of light, the old tapestry furniture looked very well, standing straight and stiff against the wall, and the number of people took away the bare unused look they generally had.
All the châteaux of the neighbourhood were represented: The Comte de Lubersac and his sister had come over from their fine place, Maucreux. He was a very handsome young man—a great hunter and master of hounds of the stag hunting in the forest of Villers-Cotterets; his sister, Mlle. de Lubersac, most attractive, with the face of a saint. She was very simply dressed in a high black dress. She lived almost the life of a Sister of Charity—going about all day among the sick and poor, but she had promised her father, who was a great invalid, almost crippled with gout, to remain with him as long as he lived. It was only after his death that she took the vows and entered one of the strictest orders (Carmelites) in France.
There were also the châtelaines of Thury en Valois—a fine château and estate, not very far from us in the other direction. They had splendid gardens and their fruit and vegetables were famous all over the country. Mme. de Thury was a compatriot—the daughter of an American general; the young Comte de Melun from Brumetz—very delicate looking, with a refined student's face. His father was a great friend of the Maréchal MacMahon and one of the leaders of the Catholic clerical party, and the young man was very religious. Their woods touched ours and once or twice when we were riding late, we saw him kneeling at a little old shrine, "the White Lady," which was almost hidden under the big trees—so little left that the ordinary passer-by would have seen nothing. There were also the owners of Colinance—rather an ugly square house standing low, surrounded by a marsh, but a good property—and three or four men I did not know—the bride's brother and one or two of her relations.
There was hardly time to introduce every one, as dinner was announced almost immediately. We were a large party, about twenty. All the women, except the bride and me, were dressed in black, high or a very little open—no lace, nor jewels. Henriette was right. I would have looked absurd if I had worn a low dress. The dinner was very good, very abundant and very long. The men said the wines were excellent. The talk was animated enough—it was principally the men who talked. I didn't think the women said much. I listened only, as I was too new in the country to be at all up in local topics.
After coffee the men went off to smoke and we women remained alone for some time. I wasn't sorry, as one had so few opportunities of seeing the neighbours, particularly the women, who rarely went out of their own places. One met the men hunting, or in the train, or at the notary's.
The notary is a most important person in all small country towns in France. Everybody consults him, from the big landowner when he has discussions with his neighbour over right of way, to the peasant who buys a few metres of land as soon as he has any surplus funds. We were constantly having rows with one of our neighbours over a little strip of wood that ran up into ours. Whenever he was angry with us, which happened quite often (we never knew why), he had a deep, ugly ditch made just across the road which we always took when we were riding around the property. The woods were so thick and low, with plenty of thorns, that we could not get along by keeping on one side and were obliged to go back and make quite a long détour. The notary did his best to buy it for us, but the man would never sell—rather enjoyed, I think, having the power to annoy us.
Mme. de Thury and I fraternised a little and I should have liked to see more of her, but soon after that evening they had great trouble. They had a great deal of illness and lost a son. I never saw Thury till after both of them were dead. The château had been sold, most of the furniture taken away and the whole place had a deserted, neglected look that made one feel quite miserable. The big drawing-room was piled up with straw, over the doors were still two charming dessus-de-porte, the colours quite fresh—not at all faded—chickens were walking about in another room, and upstairs in a pretty corner room, with a lovely view over woods and park, was a collection of photographs, engravings (one the mother of the late owner), a piece of unfinished tapestry, samplers, china vases, books, papers, two or three knots of faded ribbon, all tossed in a corner like a heap of rubbish. The things had evidently been forgotten in the big move, but it looked melancholy.
The château must have been charming when it was furnished and lived in. Quantities of rooms, a long gallery with small rooms on one side, the "garçonnière" or bachelors' quarters, led directly into the church, where many Thurys are sleeping their last sleep. The park was beautiful and there was capital shooting. W. had often shot there in the old days when their shooting parties were famous.
We ended our evening with music, the bride playing extremely well. Mme. de Thury also sang very well. She had learnt in Italy and sang in quite bravura style. The evening didn't last very long after the men came in. Everybody was anxious to get the long, cold drive over.
I enjoyed myself very much. It was my first experience of a French country entertainment and it was very different from what I had expected. Not at all stiff and a most cordial welcome. I thought—rather naïvely perhaps—that it was the beginning of many entertainments of the same kind, but I never dined out again in the country. It is only fair to say that we never asked any one to dine either. It was not the habit of the house, and I naturally fell into their ways. Luncheon was what people liked best, so as not to be too late on the road or to cross the forest after nightfall, when the darkness was sometimes impenetrable. Some of the châtelaines received once a week. On that day a handsome and plentiful luncheon was provided and people came from the neighbouring châteaux, and even from Paris, when the distance was not too great and the trains suited.
* * * * *
We had quite an excitement one day at the château. Francis was riding with the groom one morning about the end of August, and had hardly got out of the gates, when he came racing back to tell us that the manoeuvres were to take place very near us, small detachments of troops already arriving; and the village people had told him that quite a large contingent, men and horses, were to be quartered at the château. W. sent him straight off again to the mayor of Marolles—our big village—to know if his information was correct, and how many people we must provide for. Francis met the mayor on the road on his way to us, very busy and bustled with so many people to settle. He was billeting men and horses in the little hamlet, and at all the farms. He told us we were to have thirty men and horses—six officers, twenty-four men; and they would arrive at sundown, in time to cook their dinner. Hubert, the coachman, was quite bewildered at first how to provide for so many, but fortunately the stables and dependencies were very large, and it was quite extraordinary how quickly and comfortably everything was arranged. Men from the farm brought in large bundles of straw, and everybody lent a willing hand—they love soldiers in France, and are always proud and happy to receive them.
About 4.30, when we had just moved out to the tennis ground for tea, we saw an officer with his orderly riding up the avenue. He dismounted as soon as he caught sight of us sitting on the lawn, and introduced himself, said he was sent on ahead to see about lodging for himself, his brother-officers, and his men. They were part of a cavalry regiment, chasseurs, stationed at a small town in the neighbourhood. He asked W. if he might see the soldiers' quarters, said they brought their own food and would cook their dinner; asked if there was a room in the château where the sous-officiers could dine, as they never eat with their men. He, with W. and Francis, went off to inspect the arrangements and give the necessary orders. We had already seen to the officers' rooms, but hadn't thought of a separate dining-room for the sous-officiers; however, it was easily managed. We gave them the children's dining-room, in the wing near the kitchen and offices.
When W. came in he told us the whole party had arrived, and we started off to the communs to see what was going on. The stable-yard, which is very large, with some fine trees and outbuildings all around it, was filled with blue-coated soldiers and small chestnut horses—some were drinking out of the troughs; some, tied to the trees, and rings on the wall, were being rubbed down—the men walking about with the officers' valises and their own kits, undoing blankets, tin plates, and cups; and I should think every man and boy on our place and in the small hamlet standing about anxious to do something. Our little fox-terriers were mad with excitement; even the donkey seemed to feel there was something different in the air. He brayed noisily, and gave little vicious kicks occasionally when some of the horses passed too near. A group of officers was standing at the door of the stables talking to Hubert, who had managed very well, putting all the officers' horses into a second stable, which was always kept for guests, and the others in the various sheds and outhouses, all under cover.
[Illustration: Soldiers at the château.]
W. introduced the officers—a nice-looking lot, chasseurs, in the light-blue uniform, which is so smart. He had asked permission for the men to dine at the château. They had their own meat and bread, but our chef was most anxious to cook it for them, and make them another substantial dish; so it was agreed that they should dine at six in the servants' hall. They all marched up in procession, headed by their sergeants; the blue tunics and red trousers looked very pretty as they came along the big avenue. The commandant asked W. if he would go and say a few words to them when they were having their coffee. They were very quiet; one hardly heard anything, though all the windows were open. W. said it was quite interesting to see all the young faces smiling and listening hard when he made his little speech. He asked them if they had had a good dinner; he hoped his man knew how to cook for soldiers. They all nodded and smiled at the chef, who was standing at the door looking very hot and very pleased. He had produced a sweet dish—I don't know what with, as he didn't habitually have thirty extra people to dinner—but I have always seen that when people want to do anything it is usually accomplished.
Our dinner was very pleasant. We were ten at table—W. and I, Henrietta, and a niece. The men talked easily, some of them Parisians, knowing every one. They knew that W. had remained at the château all during the Franco-German War, and were much interested in all he told them of the Prussian occupation. Only one of them had, as a very young fellow, served in 1870. All the rest were too young, and, like all young soldiers who have not been through a war and seen the horrors of it, were rather anxious to have their chance, and not spend all the best years of their lives in a small, dull garrison town.
We discussed the plans for the next day. They were going to have a sham fight over all the big fields in our neighbourhood, and advised us to come and see it. They said the best time would be about ten in the morning, when they were to monter à l'assaut of a large farm with moat and drawbridge near Dammarie. They were to make a very early start (four o'clock), and said they would be very pleased to have some hot coffee before mounting, if it could be had at that unearthly hour. They were very anxious about choosing a horse out of their squadron for the general, who was an infantryman, very stout, very rheumatic, and a very bad rider. The horse must be sure-footed, an easy mouth, easy canter, no tricks, accustomed to drum and bugle, to say nothing of the musket-shots, etc.
Henrietta and I rather amused ourselves after dinner teaching the commandant and another officer halma, which was just then at the height of its popularity. We had brought it over from London, where the whole society was mad over it. We were staying in a country house one year where there were seven tables of halma in the long gallery. The gentlemen rather disdained it at first, but as the game went on and they began to realise that there was really some science in it, and that our men were placing themselves very comfortably in their little squares, while theirs were wandering aimlessly about the centre of the board, they warmed to their task, and were quite vexed when they were badly beaten. They wanted their revanche. W. came in and gave a word of advice every now and then. The others finished their billiards, came to look on, each one suggesting a different move, which, of course, only complicated matters, and they lost again. Then some of the others tried with the same result. I think we played five or six games. They were so much pleased with the game that they asked us to write down the name and where to get it, and one of them afterward told my nephew, also a cavalry officer, that they introduced it at their mess and played every night instead of cards or dominoes. It was really funny to see how annoyed they were when their scientific combinations failed. The next morning was beautiful—a splendid August day, not too hot, little white clouds scurrying over the bright blue sky, veiling the sun. We started about nine, W., Francis, and I riding, the others driving. There were a good many people about in the fields and cross-roads, a few farmers riding, and everybody wildly interested telling us which way to go. Janet, my American niece, who was staying in the country in France for the first time, was horrified to see women working in the fields, couldn't believe that her uncle would allow it on his farm, and made quite an appeal to him when we all got home, to put an end to such cruel proceedings. It seems women never work in the fields in America, except negresses on some of the Southern plantations. I have been so long away that I had forgotten that they didn't, and I remember quite well my horror the first time we were in Germany, when we saw a woman and an ox harnessed together.
We separated from the carriage at the top of the hill, as we could get a nice canter and shorter road across the fields. We soon came in sight of the farmhouse, standing low, with moat and drawbridge, in rather an isolated position in the middle of the fields, very few trees around it. There was no longer any water in the moat. It was merely a deep, wide, damp ditch with long, straggling vines and weeds filling it up, and a slippery, steep bank. Soldiers were advancing in all directions, the small infantrymen moving along with a light, quick step; the cavalry apparently had been on the ground some time, as they were all dismounted and their horses picketed. We didn't go very near, as W. wasn't quite sure how the horses would stand the bugle and firing. They were already pulling hard, and getting a little nervous. It was pretty to see the soldiers all mount when the bugle rang out, and in a moment the whole body was in motion. The rush of the soldiers over the wide plains and the drawbridge looked irresistible—the men swarmed down the bank and over the ditch—one saw a confused mass of red trousers and kepis. The cavalry came along very leisurely, guarding the rear. I looked for the general. He was standing with some of his staff on a small hill directing operations. He did look stout and very red and warm; however, it was the last day, so his troubles were over for the present.
One of the officers saw us and came up to pay his respects; said they wouldn't be back at the château until about five; perhaps the ladies would come to the stable-yard and see the pansage. It was quite interesting; all the horses ranged in a semi-circle, men scrubbing and combing hard, the sous-officiers superintending, the officers standing about smoking and seeing that everything was being packed and ready for an early start the next morning. I was astonished to see how small the horses were. My English horse, also a chestnut, was not particularly big, but he looked a giant among the others. They admired him very much, and one of the officers asked Hubert if he thought I would like to sell him.
Our dinner was again very pleasant, and we had more halma in the evening. W. played once or twice, and as he was a fairly good player, the adversaries had no chance. We broke up early, as they were to start again at some unearthly hour the next morning. It seems they were very lively in the stables after dinner—we heard sounds of merriment, singing, and choruses, and, I fancy, dancing. However, it made quite a pleasant break in our summer, and the big place seemed quieter and lonelier than ever after such unusual animation. W. said the war talk was much keener than the first day when they were smoking in the gallery; all the young ones so eager to earn their stripes, and so confident that the army had profited by its bitter experience during the Franco-German War.
* * * * *
Election day is always a very important day in France. The village farmers and labourers put on their best clothes—usually a black coat, silk hat and white shirt—and take themselves solemnly to the Mairie where the voting takes place. For weeks beforehand agents and lecturers come from Paris and bamboozle the simple village people with newspapers, money and wonderful promises. It is astounding how easily the French peasant believes all that the political agents tell him and all that he reads in the cheap papers, for, as a rule—taken en masse—they are very intelligent and at the same time suspicious (méfiants), manage their own little affairs very well and are rarely taken in; but there is something in the popular orator that carries them away and they really believe that a golden epoch is coming—when there will be no rich and no poor and plenty and equality for all. They don't care a bit what form of government they live under as long as their crops are good, and they can have regular work and no war. The political agitators understand that very well. They never lay any stress on Royalist or Bonapartist, or even a military candidate. The "People's Candidate" is always their cry—one of themselves who understands them and will give them all they want. They are disappointed always. The ministers and deputies change, but their lives don't, and run on in the same groove; but they are just as sanguine each time there is an election, convinced that, at last, the promised days of high pay and little work are coming.
I tried to reason with a nice, respectable man one day, the village mason—one of the most fiery orators at the café, over his dominoes, but in everyday life a sober, hard-working man, with a sickly wife and several children, who are all clothed and generally looked after by us. His favourite theme was the owners of châteaux and big houses who lived in luxury and thought nothing of the poor.
I said to him, "Why do you listen to all those foolish speeches that are made in the cafés? You know it isn't true half they say. Whenever you come and ask for anything for your wife and your children, it is always given to you. You know quite well whenever any one is ill in the village, they always come here for wine, old linen, or bouillon."
"Oh, oui, Madame is good, but Madame does not understand."
"But it is you, mon ami, who don't understand. Once the election is over, and they have got your vote, no one will think about you any more."
"Oh, yes, Madame, everything will be divided—there will be no more big houses, every one will have a garden and rabbits—not all for the rich. It is not right; Madame knows it is not right." It was quite useless talking to him.
Women in France never take the active part in elections that they do in England. It interested me so much when we were living in England to see many of the great ladies doing all they could for their candidate, driving all over the country, with his colours on servants and horses, a big bill in the windows of their carriages with "Vote for A." on it. In the drawing-room windows of a well-known society leader there were two large bills—"VOTE FOR A." I asked W. one day, when he was standing for the Senate, if he would like me to drive all about the country with his colours and "VOTE FOR WADDINGTON" on placards in the windows of the carriage; but he utterly declined any such intervention on my part, thought a few breakfasts at the château and a quiet talk over coffee and cigars would be more to the purpose. He never took much trouble over his elections the last years—meetings and speeches in all the small towns and "banquets de pompiers" were things of the past. He said the people had seen him "à l'oeuvre" and that no speeches would change a vote.
The only year that we gave ourselves any trouble was during the Boulanger craze. W. went about a great deal and I often went with him. The weather was beautiful and we rode all over the country. We were astounded at the progress "Boulangism" had made in our quiet villages. Wherever we went—in the cafés, in the auberges, in the grocer's shop—there was a picture of Boulanger prancing on his black horse.
We stopped one day at a miserable little cottage, not far from our place, where a workman had had a horrible accident—been caught in the machine of one of the sugar mills. Almost all the men in the village worked in W.'s woods and had always voted—as one man—for him or his friends. When we went into the poor little dark room, with literally nothing in it but the bed, a table, and some chairs, the first thing we saw was the well-known picture of Boulanger, on the mantelpiece. We talked a little to the man and his wife (the poor fellow was suffering terribly), and then W. said, "I am surprised to see that picture. Do you know General Boulanger? Have you ever seen him?" The man's face quite lighted up as he looked at the picture, and he answered: "Non, Monsieur, je ne l'ai jamais vu—mais il est crâne celui-là," and that was all that he could ever get out of him—"il est crâne." I don't know exactly what he meant. I don't think he knew himself, but he was quite excited when he spoke of the hero.
Boulanger's campaign was very cleverly done. His agents distributed papers, pictures and money most liberally. One of the curious features of that episode was the quantity of money that was given. Gold flowed freely in to the General's coffers from all parts of France; great names, grandes dames, giving largely and openly to the cause—a great deal sent anonymously and a great deal in very small sums.
Boulanger lived in our street, and I was astounded one day when I met him (I did not know him) riding—always with a man on each side of him. Almost every one took off his hat to him, and there were a few faint cries of "Vive Boulanger," proceeding chiefly from the painters and masons who were building a house just opposite ours.
Certainly for a short time he had the game in his hands—could, I think, have carried the country, but when the moment to act arrived, his nerve failed him. It is difficult to understand what made his great popularity. Politics had not been satisfactory. The President—Grévy—had resigned under unfortunate circumstances. There had been a succession of weak and inefficient cabinets, and there was a vague feeling of unrest in the country. Boulanger seemed to promise something better. He was a soldier (which always appeals to the French), young and dashing, surrounded by clever unscrupulous people of all classes. Almost all the young element of both parties, Radical and Conservative (few of the moderate Republicans), had rallied to his programme—"Révision et Dissolution." His friends were much too intelligent to let him issue a long "manifesto" (circular), promising all sorts of reforms and changes he never could have carried out, while his two catch words gave hopes to everybody. A revision of the constitution might mean a monarchy, empire, or military dictatorship. Each party thought its turn had come, and dissolving the chambers would of course bring a new one, where again each party hoped to have the majority.
The Paris election by an overwhelming majority was his great triumph. The Government did all they could to prevent it, but nothing could stop the wave of popularity. The night of the election Boulanger and his État-major were assembled at Durand's, the well-known café on the corner of the Boulevard and the rue Royale. As the evening went on and the returns came in—far exceeding anything they had hoped for—there was but one thought in every one's mind—"A l'Élysée." Hundreds of people were waiting outside and he would have been carried in triumph to the Palace. He could not make up his mind. At midnight he still wavered. His great friend, the poet Déroulède, then took out his watch—waited, in perfect silence, until it was five minutes past twelve, and then said, "Général, depuis cinq minutes votre auréole baisse." Boulanger went out by a side door, leaving his friends—disappointed and furious—to announce to the waiting crowd that the General had gone home. He could certainly have got to the Elysée that night. How long he would have stayed, and whom he would have put there, we shall never know.
MAREUIL, October 31st.
It has been a beautiful, warm, bright autumn day and, for a wonder, we have had no frost yet, not even a white one, so that the garden is still full of flowers, and all day the village children have been coming—begging for some to decorate the graves for to-morrow. I went in to the churchyard this afternoon, which was filled with women and children—looking after their dead. It is not very pretty—our little churchyard—part of a field enclosed on the slope of the hill, not many trees, a few tall poplars and a laurel hedge—but there is a fine open view over the great fields and woods—always the dark blue line of the forest in the distance. They are mostly humble graves—small farmers and peasants—but I fancy they must sleep very peacefully in the fields they have worked in all their lives—full of poppies and cornflowers in summer and a soft gold brown in the autumn, when the last crops are cut and the hares run wild over the hills.
I think these two days—the "Toussaint" and the "Jour des Morts"—are the two I like best in the Catholic Church, and certainly they are the only ones, in our part of the world, when the churches are full. I walked about some little time looking at all the preparations. Every grave had some flowers (sometimes only a faded bunch of the last field flowers) except one, where there were no flowers, but a little border of moss all around and a slip of pasteboard on a stick stuck into the ground with "à ma Mere" written on it. All the graves are very simple, generally a plain white cross with headstone and name. One or two of the rich farmers had something rather more important—a slab of marble, or a broken column when it was a child's grave, and were more ambitious in the way of flowers and green plants, but no show of any kind—none of the terrible bead wreaths one sees in large cities.
There was a poor old woman, nearly bent double, leaning on a stick, standing at one of the very modest graves; a child about six years old with her, with a bunch of flowers in a broken cup she was trying to arrange at the foot of the grave. I suppose my face was expressive, for the old woman answered my unspoken thought. "Ah, yes, Madame, it is I who ought to be lying there instead of my children. All gone before me except this one grandchild, and I a helpless, useless burden upon the charity of the parish."
On my way home I met all the village children carrying flowers. We had given our best chrysanthemums for the "pain bénit," which we offer to-morrow to the church. Three or four times a year, at the great fêtes, the most important families of the village offer the "pain bénit," which is then a brioche. We gave our boulanger "carte blanche," and he evidently was very proud of his performance, as he offered to bring it to us before it was sent to the church, but we told him we would see it there. I am writing late. We have all come upstairs. It is so mild that my window is open; there is not a sound except the sighing of the wind in the pines and the church bells that are ringing for the vigil of All Saints. Besides our own bells, we hear others, faintly, in the distance, from the little village of Neufchelles, about two miles off. It is a bad sign when we hear Neufchelles too well. Means rain. I should be so sorry if it rained to-morrow, just as all the fresh flowers have been put on the graves.
November 2nd. "Jour des Morts."
We had a beautiful day yesterday and a nice service in our little church. Our "pain bénit" was a thing of beauty and quite distracted the school children. It was a most imposing edifice—two large, round brioches, four smaller ones on top, they went up in a pyramid. The four small ones go to the notabilities of the village—the curé, two of the principal farmers and the miller; the whole thing very well arranged, with red and white flowers and lighted tapers. It was carried by two "enfants de choeur," preceded by the beadle with his cocked hat and staff and followed by two small girls with lighted tapers. The "enfants de choeur" were not in their festal attire of red soutanes and red shoes—only in plain black. Since the inventories ordered by the government in all the churches, most of the people have taken away their gifts in the way of vestments, soutanes, vases, etc., and the red soutanes, shoes and caps, with a handsome white satin embroidered vestment that C. gave the church when she was married, are carefully folded and put away in a safe place out of the church until better times should come.
After luncheon we went over to Soissons in the auto—the most enchanting drive through the forest of Villers-Cotterets—the poplar trees a line of gold and all the others taking the most lovely colours of red and brown. Soissons is a fine old cathedral town with broad squares, planted with stiff trees like all the provincial towns in France; many large old-fashioned hotels, entre cour et jardin, and a number of convents and abbeys, now turned into schools, barracks, government offices of all kinds, but the fine proportions and beautiful lines are always there.