East of Paris
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Matilda Betham Edwards >> East of Paris
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There is no more graceful foliage than that of this plant, and
gratefully the eye rests upon these waves of delicate green under a
blazing, grape-ripening sky. Making gold-green lines between are vines,
a succession of asparagus beds and vineyards separating our village from
its better known and more populous neighbour, Marlotte. In the opposite
direction we see brown-roofed, white-walled houses surmounted by a
pretty little spire. This is Bourron. To reach it we pass a double row
of homesteads, rustic interiors of small farmer or market gardener, the
one, as our French neighbours say, more picturesque than the other.
Each, no matter how ill kept, is set off by an ornamental border,
zinnias, begonias, roses and petunias as obviously showing signs of care
and science. Oddly enough the finest display of flowers often adorns the
least tidy premises. And oddly enough, rather perhaps as we should
expect it, in not one, but in every respect, this French village is the
exact opposite of its English counterpart. In England every tenant of a
cottage pays rent, there, not an inhabitant, however poor, but sits
under his own vine and his own fig-tree. In England the farm-house faces
the road and the premises lie behind. Here manure-heap, granary and pig
styes open on the highway, the dwellings being at the back. In England a
man's home, called his castle, is no more defended than the Bedouin's
tent. Here at nightfall the small peasant proprietor is as securely
entrenched within walls as a feudal baron in his moated chateau. In
England ninety-nine householders out of a hundred are perpetually
changing their domicile. Here folks live and die under the paternal roof
that has sheltered generations. Nor does diversity end with
circumstances and surroundings. As will be seen in another chapter,
habits of life, modes of thought and standards of duty show contrasts
equally marked.
Bourron possesses twelve hundred and odd souls, most of whom are
peasants who make a living out of their small patrimony. Destined
perhaps one day to rival its neighbour Marlotte in popularity--even to
become a second Barbizon--it is as yet the sleepiest, most rustic
retreat imaginable. The climate would appear to be not only
anti-asthmatic but anti-everything in the shape of malady. Anyhow, if
folks fall ill they have to send elsewhere for a doctor. Minor
complaints--cuts, bruises and snake bites--are attended to by a
Fontainebleau chemist. Every day we hear the horn of his messenger who
cycles through the village calling for prescriptions and leaving drugs
and draughts.
A post office, of course, Bourron possesses, but let no one imagine that
a post office in out of the way country places implies a supply of
postage stamps. English people are the greatest scribblers by post in
the world, whilst our wiser French neighbours appear to be the laziest.
An amusing dilemma had occurred here just before my arrival. One day my
friends applied to the post office for stamps, but none were to be had
for love or money. Off somebody cycled to Marlotte, which possesses not
only a post and telegraph, but a money order office as well--same reply,
next the adjoining village of Grez was visited and with no better
result--"Supplies have not yet reached us from headquarters," said the
third postmistress.
Perhaps instead of smiling contemptuously we should take a moral to
heart. The amount of time, money, eyesight and handcraft expended among
ourselves on letter writing so-called is simply appalling. Was it not
Napoleon who said that all letters if left unanswered for a month
answered themselves? Too many Englishwomen spend the greater portion of
the day in what is no longer a delicate art, but mere time-killing,
after the manner of patience, games of cards and similar pastimes.
Bourron is a most orderly village; within its precincts liberty is not
allowed to degenerate into licence. As in summer-time folks are fond of
spending their evenings abroad, a municipal law has enforced quiet after
ten o'clock. Thus precisely on the stroke of ten, alike cafe, garden,
private summer-house or doorstep are deserted, everyone betakes himself
indoors, leaving his neighbours to enjoy unbroken repose. A most
salutary by-law! Would it were put in force throughout the length and
breadth of France! At Chatouroux I have been kept awake all night by the
gossip of a _sergeant de ville_ and a lounger close to my window. At
Tours, La Chatre and Bourges my fellow-traveller and myself could get no
sleep on account of street revellers, whilst at how many other places
have not holiday trips been spoiled by unquiet nights? All honour then
to the aediles of dear little Bourron!
CHAPTER IV.
BOURRON--_continued_.
Forty thousand acres of woodland at one's doors would seem a fact
sufficiently suggestive; to particularize the attractions of Bourron
after this statement were surely supererogation. Yet, for my own
pleasure as much as for the use of my readers, I must jot down one or
two especially persistent memories, impressions of solemnity, beauty and
repose never to be effaced.
Of course it is only the cyclist who can realise such an immensity as
the Fontainebleau forest. From end to end these vast sweeps are now
intersected by splendid roads and by-roads. Old-fashioned folks, for
whom the horseless vehicle came too late, can but envy wheelmen and
wheelwomen as they skim through vista after vista, outstripping one's
horse and carriage as a greyhound outstrips a decrepit poodle. On the
other hand only inveterate loiterers, the Lazy Lawrences of travel, can
appreciate the subtler beauties of this woodland world. There are
certain sights and sounds not to be caught by hurried observers,
evanescent aspects of cloud-land and tree-land, rock and undergrowth,
passing notes of bird and insect, varied melodies, if we may so express
it, of summer breeze and autumn wind--in fine, a dozen experiences
enjoyed one day, not repeated on the next. The music of the forest is a
quiet music and has to be listened for, hardly on the cyclist's ear
falls the song or rather accompaniment of the grasshopper, "the Muse of
the wayside," a French poet has so exquisitely apostrophized.
One's forest companion should be of a taciturn and contemplative turn.
Only thus can we drink in the sense of such solitude and immensity;
realizing to the full what indeed these words may mean, he may wander
for hours without encountering a soul, very few birds are heard by the
way, but the hum of the insect world, that dreamy go-between, hardly
silence, hardly to be called noise, keeps us perpetual company, and our
eyes must ever be open for beautiful little living things. Now a green
and gold lizard flashes across a bit of grey rock, now a dragon-fly
disports its sapphire wings amid the yellowing ferns or purple ling,
butterflies, white, blue, and black and orange, flit hither and thither,
whilst little beetles, blue as enamel beads, enliven the mossy
undergrowth.
One pre-eminent charm indeed of the Fontainebleau forest is this wealth
of undergrowth, bushes, brambles and ferns making a second lesser
thicket on all sides. In sociable moods delightful it is to go
a-blackberrying here. I am almost tempted to say that if you want to
realise the lusciousness of a hedgerow dessert you must cater for
yourself in these forty thousand acres of blackberry orchard.
But the foremost, the crowning excellence of Fontainebleau forest
consists in its variety. France itself, the "splendid hexagon," with its
mountains, rivers and plains, is hardly more varied than this vast area
of rock and woodland. We can choose between sites, savage or idyllic,
pastoral or grandiose, here finding a sunny glade, the very spot for a
picnic, there break-neck declivities and gloomy chasms. The magnificent
ruggedness of Alpine scenery is before our eyes, without the awfulness
of snow-clad peaks or the blinding dazzle of glacier. In more than one
place we could almost fancy that some mountain has been upheaved and
split asunder, the clefts formed by these gigantic fragments being now
filled with veteran trees.
The formation of the forest has puzzled geologists, to this day the
origin of its rocky substratum remaining undetermined.
Within half an hour's stroll of Bourron lies the so-called "Mare aux
Fees" or Fairies' Mere, as sweet a spot to boil one's kettle in as
holiday makers can desire, at the same time affording the best possible
illustration of what I have just insisted upon. For this favourite
resort is in a certain sense microcosmic, giving in miniature those
characteristics for which the forest is remarkable. Smooth and sunny as
a garden plot is the open glade wherein we now halt for tea, and while
the kettle boils we have time for a most suggestive bird's eye view. It
is a little world that we survey from the borders of this rock-hemmed,
forest-girt lake, one perspective after another with varying gradations
of colour making us realize the many-featured, chequered area spread
before us. From this coign of vantage are discerned alike the sterner
and the more smiling beauties of the forest, rocky defiles, gloomy
passes, sunlit lawns and mossy dells, scenery varied in itself and yet
varying again with the passing hour and changing month. And such
suggestion of almost infinite variety is not gained only from the
Fairies' Mere. From a dozen points, not the same view but the same kind
of view may be obtained, each differing from the other, except in charm
and immensity. Within a walk of home also stands one of the numerous
monuments scattered throughout the forest. The Croix de Saint Herem, now
a useful landmark for cyclists, has a curious history. It was erected in
1666 by a certain Marquis de Saint-Herem, celebrated for his ugliness,
and centuries later was the scene of the most extraordinary rendezvous
on record. Here, in 1804, every detail having been theatrically arranged
beforehand, took place the so-called chance meeting of Napoleon and Pope
Pius VII. The Emperor had arranged a grand hunt for that day, and in
hunting dress, his dogs at his heels, awaited the pontiff by the cross
of Saint Herem. As the pair lovingly embraced each other the Imperial
horses ran away; this apparent escapade formed part of the programme,
and Napoleon stepped into the Pope's carriage, seating himself on his
visitor's, rather his prisoner's, right. A few years later another
rencontre not without historic irony took place here. In 1816, Louis
XVIII. received on this spot the future mother, so it was hoped, of
French Kings, the adventurous Caroline of Naples, afterwards Duchesse de
Berri.
The crosses monuments of the forest are usefully catalogued in local
guide-books, and many have historic associations. The most interesting
of these--readers will excuse the Irish bull--is a monument that may be
said never to have existed!
The great Polish patriot Kosciusko spent the last fifteen years of his
life in a hamlet near Nemours, and on his death the inhabitants of that
and neighbouring villages projected a double memorial, in other words, a
tiny chapel, the ruins of which are still seen near Episy, and a mound
to be added to every year and to be called "La Montagne de Kosciusko,"
or Kosciusko's mountain. Particulars of this generous and romantic
scheme are preserved in the archives of Montigny. The inauguration of
the mound took place on the ninth of October 1836. To the sound of
martial music, drums and cannon, the first layers of earth were
deposited, men, women and children taking part in the proceedings. A
year later no less than ten thousand French friends of Poland with
mattock and spade added several feet to Kosciusko's mountain. But the
celebration got noised abroad. Afraid of anti-Russian manifestations the
government of Louis Philippe prohibited any further Polish fetes. Thus
it came about that, as I have said, the most interesting monument in the
forest remains an idea. And all things considered, neither French nor
English admirers of the exiled hero could to-day very well carve on the
adjoining rock,
"And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell."
Some time or other the Russian Imperial pair may visit Fontainebleau,
whilst an English tourist with _The Daily Mail_ in his pocket would
naturally and sheepishly look the other way.
Another half hour's stroll and we find ourselves in an atmosphere of
art, fashion and sociability. Only a mile either of woodland, field path
or high road separates Bourron from its more populous and highly popular
neighbour, Marlotte. Here every house has an artist's north window, the
road is alive with motor cars, you can even buy a newspaper! Marlotte
possesses a big, I should say comfortable, hotel, is very cosmopolitan
and very pretty. Anglo-French households here, as at Bourron, favour
Anglo-French relations. In Marlotte drawing-rooms we are in France, but
always with a pleasant reminder of England and of true English
hospitality.
CHAPTER V.
BOURRON--_continued._
I will now say something about my numerous acquaintances at Bourron.
After three summer holidays spent in this friendly little spot I can
boast of a pretty large visiting list, the kind of list requiring no
cards or ceremonious procedure. My hostess, a Frenchwoman, and myself
used to drop in for a chat with this neighbour and that whenever we
passed their way, always being cheerily welcomed and always pressed to
stay a little longer.
The French peasant is the most laborious, at the same time the most
leisurely, individual in the world. Urgent indeed must be those farming
operations that prevent him from enjoying a talk. Conversation,
interchange of ideas, give and take by word of mouth, are as necessary
to the Frenchman's well-being as oxygen to his lungs.
"Man," writes Montesquieu, "is described as a sociable animal." From
this point of view it appears to me that the Frenchman may be called
more of a man than others; he is first and foremost a man, since he
seems especially made for society.
Elsewhere the same great writer adds:--"You may see in Paris individuals
who have enough to live upon for the rest of their days, yet they labour
so arduously as to shorten their days, in order, as they say, to assure
themselves of a livelihood." These two marked characteristics are as
true of the French peasant now-a-days as of the polite society described
in the "Lettres Persanes." In the eighteenth century cultivated people
did little else but talk. Morning, noon and night, their epigrammatic
tongues were busy. Conversation in historic salons became a fine art.
There are no such literary coteries in our time. What with one
excitement and another, the Parisian world chats but has no time for
real conversation. Perhaps for _Gauloiseries_, true Gallic salt, we must
now go to the unlettered, the sons of the soil, whose ancestors were
boors when wit sparkled among their social superiors.
Here are one or two types illustrating both characteristics, excellent
types in their way of the small peasant proprietor hereabouts, a class
having no counterpart or approximation to a counterpart in England.
The first visit I describe was paid one evening to an old gardener whom
I will call the Pere A--. Bent partly with toil, partly with age, you
would have at once supposed that his working days were well over,
especially on learning his circumstances, for sole owner he was of the
little domain to which he had now retired for the day. Of benevolent
aspect, shrewd, every inch alive despite infirmities, he received his
neighbour and her English guest with rustic but cordial urbanity, at
once entering into conversation. With evident pride and pleasure he
watched my glances at premises and garden, house and outbuildings
ramshackle enough, even poverty-stricken to look at, here not an
indication of comfortable circumstances much less of independent means;
the bit of land half farm, half garden, however, was fairly well kept
and of course productive.
"Yes, this dwelling is mine and the two hectares (four acres four
hundred and odd feet), aye," he added self-complacently, "and I have a
little money besides."
"Yet you live here all by yourself and still work for wages?" I asked.
His reply was eminently characteristic. "I work for my children." These
children he told me were two grown up sons, one of them being like
himself a gardener, both having work. Thus in order to hoard up a little
more for two able-bodied young men, here was a bent, aged man living
penuriously and alone, his only companion being a beautiful and
evidently much petted donkey. I ventured to express an English view of
the matter, namely, the undesirability of encouraging idleness and
self-indulgence in one's children by toiling and moiling for them in old
age.
He nodded his head.
"You are right, all that you say is true, but so it is with me. I must
work for my children."
And thus blindly are brought about the parricidal tragedies that Zola,
Guy de Maupassant and other novelists have utilized in fiction, and with
which we are familiarized in French criminal reports--parents and
grandparents got rid of for the sake of their coveted hoardings.
Thus also are generated in the rich and leisured classes that intense
selfishness of the rising generation so movingly portrayed in M.
Hervieu's play, "La Course du Flambeau." No one who has witnessed Mme.
Rejane's presentment of the adoring, disillusioned mother can ever
forget it.
On leaving, the Pere A---- presented us with grapes and pears, carefully
selecting the finest for his English visitor.
At the gate I threw a Parthian dart.
"Don't work too hard," I said, whereupon came the burden of his song:
"One must work for one's children."
This good neighbour could neither read nor write, a quite exceptional
case in these days. Our second visit was made to a person similarly
situated, but belonging to a different order.
Madame B----, a widow, was also advanced in years and also lived by
herself on her little property, consisting of walled-in cottage and
outhouses, with straggling garden or rather orchard, garden and field in
one.
This good woman is what country folks in these parts call rich. I have
no doubt that an English farmeress in her circumstances would have the
neatest little parlour, a tidy maid to wait upon her, and most likely
take afternoon tea in a black silk gown. Our hostess here wore the dress
of a poor but respectable working woman. Her interior was almost as bare
and primitive as that of the Boer farmhouse in the Paris Exhibition.
Although between six and seven o'clock, there was no sign whatever of
preparation for an evening meal. Indeed on every side things looked
poverty-stricken. Not a penny had evidently been spent upon kitchen or
bedrooms for years and years, the brick floor of both being bare, the
furniture having done duty for generations.
This "rentiere," or person living upon independent means, did not match
her sordid surroundings. Although toil-worn, tanned and wrinkled, her
face "brown as the ribbed sea-sand," there was a certain refinement
about look, speech and manner, distinguishing her from the good man her
neighbour. After a little conversation I soon found out that she had
literary tastes.
"Living alone and finding the winter evenings long I hire books from a
lending library at Fontainebleau," she said.
I opened my eyes in amazement. Seldom indeed had I heard of a peasant
proprietor in France caring for books, much less spending money upon
them.
"And what do you read?" I asked.
"Anything I can get," was the reply. "Madame's husband," here she looked
at my friend, "has kindly lent me several."
Among these I afterwards found had been Zola's "Rome" and "Le Desastre"
by the brothers Margueritte.
Like the Pere A---- she had married children and entertained precisely the
same notion of parental duty. The few sous spent upon such beguilement
of long winter nights were most likely economized by some little
deprivation. There is something extremely pathetic in this patriarchal
spirit, this uncompromising, ineradicable resolve to hand down a little
patrimony not only intact but enlarged.
"Our peasants live too sordidly," observed a Frenchman to me a day or
two later. "They carry thrift to the pitch of avarice and vice. Zola's
'La Terre' is not without foundation on fact."
And excellent as is the principle of forethought, invaluable as is the
habit of laying by for a rainy day, I have at last come to the
conclusion that of the two national weaknesses, French avarice and
English lavishness and love of spending, the latter is more in
accordance with progress and the spirit of the age.
In another part of the village we called upon a hale old body of
seventy-seven, who not only lived alone and did everything for herself
indoors but the entire work of a market garden, every inch of the two
and a half acres being, of course, her own. Piled against an inner wall
we saw a dozen or so faggots each weighing, we were told, half a
hundredweight. Will it be believed that this old woman had picked up and
carried from the forest on her back every one of these faggots? The
poor, or rather those who will, are allowed to glean firewood in all the
State forests of France. Let no tourist bestow a few sous upon aged men
and women bearing home such treasure-trove! Quite possibly the dole may
affront some owner of houses and lands.
As we inspected her garden, walls covered with fine grapes, tomatoes and
melons, of splendid quality, to say nothing of vegetables in profusion,
it seemed all the more difficult to reconcile facts so incongruous. Here
was a market gardener on her own account, mistress of all she surveyed,
glad as a gipsy to pick up sticks for winter use. But the burden of her
story was the same:
"Il faut travailler pour ses enfants" (one must work for one's
children), she said.
All these little farm-houses are so many homely fortresses, cottage and
outhouses being securely walled in, a precaution necessary with aged,
moneyed folks living absolutely alone.
A fourth visit was paid to a charming old Philemon and Baucis, the best
possible specimens of their class. The husband lay in bed, ill of an
incurable malady, and spotlessly white were his tasselled nightcap,
shirt and bedclothes. Very clean and neat too was the bedroom opening on
to the little front yard, beneath each window of the one-storeyed
dwelling being a brilliant border of asters. The housewife also was a
picture of tidiness, her cotton gown carefully patched and scrupulously
clean. This worthy couple are said to be worth fifty thousand francs.
The wife, a sexagenarian, does all the work of the house besides waiting
on her good man, to whom she is devoted, but a married son and
daughter-in-law share her duties at night. Here was no touch of
sordidness or suggestion of "La Terre," instead a delightful picture of
rustic dignity and ease. The housewife sold us half a bushel of pears,
these two like their neighbours living by the produce of their small
farm and garden.
I often dropped in upon Madame B---- to whom even morning calls were
acceptable.
On the occasion of my farewell visit she had something pretty to say
about one of my own novels, a French translation of which I had
presented her.
"I suppose," I said, "that you have some books of your own?"
"Here they are," she said, depositing an armful on the table. "But I
have never read much, and mostly _bibelots_" (trifles.)
Her poor little library consisted of _bibelots_ indeed, a history of
Jeanne d'Arc for children, and half a dozen other works, mostly school
prizes of the kind awarded before school prizes in France were worth the
paper on which they were printed.
CHAPTER VI.
LARCHANT.
There is a certain stimulating quality of elasticity and crispness in
the French atmosphere which our own does not possess. France, moreover,
with its seven climates--for the description of these, see Reclus'
Geography--does undoubtedly offer longer, less broken, spells of hot
summer weather than the United Kingdom. But let me for once and for all
dispel a widespread illusion. The late Lord Lytton, when Ambassador in
Paris, used to say that in the French capital you could procure any
climate you pleased. And experience proves that without budging an inch
you may in France get as many and as rapid climatic changes as anywhere
else under the sun. At noon in mid-May last I was breakfasting with
friends on the Champs Elysees, when my hostess put a match to the fire
and my host jumped up and lighted six wax candles. So dense had become
the heavens that we could no longer see to handle knives and forks!
Hail, wind, darkness and temperature recalled a November squall at home.
Yet the day before I had enjoyed perfect summer weather in the Jardin
d'Acclimitation. Invariableness is no more an attribute of the French
climate than our own. Wherever we go we must take a change of dress, for
all the world as if we were bound for the other side of the Tweed.
My first Sunday at Bourron, on this third visit, was of perfect
stillness, unclouded brilliance and southern languor, heralding, so we
fondly imagined, the very morrow for an excursion.
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