ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES 1875 1899 M. BETHAM-EDWARDS AUTHOR OF "KITTY," "DR. JACOB," "FRANCE OF TO-DAY," ETC. ETC. LONDON : CHAPMAN & HALL, LD. 1900 ( -111 rights r timid) RICHARD CLAY Si SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNOAY. CONTENTS CHAPTER I MY YEAR'S HOSTESS PAOK A tragedy in a nutshell A Breton Nice The cat's device A moral inventor Clerical intolerance . . 1 CHAPTER II A PORTRAIT GALLERY French savants at play " Chaste coinme Diane "- " Emmeline, Emmeline ! " Feminine intrepidity A re- miniscence of the siege . . . . .13 CHAPTER III A PORTRAIT GALLERY (continued) " My husband has changed all that ! " " The religion of Voltaire'' Mr. John Morley at Nantes Feminine types . 22 CHAPTER IV SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE The nuns and the Bishop " Nous recevons toujours, nous ne donnons jamais " " Oh, chastity, Avhat crimes are committed in thy name ! " . * . . .37 CHAPTER V SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE (continued) The cloister psychologically considered Conventual " sweating " A hqwus liiiywt A romance of the con- vent . . . . . . . .46 CHAPTER VI AN INUNDATION OF THE LOIRE " Quel torrent revolutionnaire !" A transformed per- spective The tocsin The hurricane " Les couvreurs, les couvreurs ! " " Save my pig ! " . . .56 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER VII THE SCARE PAOE A good word for President Grevy Half- penny literature How Jacques Bonhomine became Republican " Vous etes ni homme ni femme ! " The ante-Ferry school-master Two elections and the moral thereof . . .67 CHAPTER VIII STORY-TELLING The Commune En route for Satory " My father ! Save my father ! " An ex-priest's story . . . .79 CHAPTER IX STORY- TELLING (continued) An aftermath of horrors A timid ring at the bell " Dost thou not know me, Guepin ? " " Le delire de la mort" A travesty M. Jules Simon's mission . . 91 CHAPTER X A REPUBLICAN OP '30 Oculist, philanthropist, and politician A Jesuitical man- ccuvre The story of a statue A grand lying in-state " Aux plus deslu'rites le plus d'amour " . . .103 CHAPTER XI A STORY OF HIDDEN TREASURE The lady of two statues Rustic hospitality Self-sufficing housewifery A death-bed revelation Mushroom relations A device . . . . . . .114 CHAPTER XII ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL Gambetta and the ladies' round robin The raid on the pastry-cooks " Notre botiillant eveque " Quacks in petti- coats A kidnapped turkey . . . . .125 CHAPTER XIII GAMBETTA At the Theatre des Gobelins The sleeping lion Prospero to the rescue " L'armee, c'est le patriotisme " The shrine at Ville D'Avray . . . . . .138 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER XIV VICTOR HUGO AND FATHER HYACINTH PAGE A poet's guerdon Authors at play Victor Hugo's greet- ing to Europe Father Hyacinth No rid media in theology A nine days' wonder The cloud no bigger than a man's hand . . . . . . . .153 CHAPTER XV PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYER, AND FRANC-TIREUH A franc-tireurs legacy Early struggles A devote of .Saint Hubert The cost of greatness A cure rebuked The novice of Flavigny Odd notions about England . 163 CHAPTER XVI AN OUTDOOR FRIEND Woodland colloquies The instinct of birds Jays and their heroism Wild cherry trees Bookbinding and mus- tardThe nuns and the panther-slayer . . .176 CHAPTER XVII SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR The priqe of a head A Barmecide's feast The straggler The two spies " La guerre, c'est la guerre " . .188 CHAPTER XVIII SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR (continued) The surprise The packing-cases A modern Jeanne Hachette The march into Dijon -The Prussian general and his lieutenant Ideal government .... 199 CHAPTER XIX THE RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE Joint-stock panther-hunting Un beau parleur Dis- illusions -"The sunshine of the place " Farewell . . 210 CHAPTER XX A RENEGADE VILLAGE " Do Protestants believe in God 1 " How la religion was enforced A common-sense priest French and English lads compared . . . . . .221 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER XXI SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE PAGE My "miracle" Petits inconvenient* of barrack life Manoeuvres " Passed like a dream " The return of the conscripts Outdoor recreation of a lyce'en . . . 235 CHAPTER XXII SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE (continued) Caught in the manoeuvres Supping with conscripts The march out " Filles des Regiments" Conscription in Alsace and Lorraine .... . 24G CHAPTER XXIII REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS An Anglo-French record Bookless garrisons Soldiers at work and at play Contrasts A calligraphic marvel The Archbishop and the Wesleyan manufacturer . . 258 CHAPTER XXIV MR. HAMERTON AT AUTUN The Pre Charmoy A brave life Ideals International relations Gibbon and Mr. Hamerton Last words . . . 270 CHAPTER XXV AN AFTERNOON WITH RQSA BONHECR " Exceptionnellement " Recognitions An unfinished masterpiece Compliments The pet lioness . .281 CHAPTER XXVI VICTOR CHERBULIEZ The music of Rousseau Walter Scott's journals An author on himself M. Paul Sebatierand his Saint Madame de Stael . . . . . . .292 CHAPTER XXVII ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS Retrospective Contradictions Anglo-philia and the re- verse Theological and political questions Hints for both sides The adopted countries of the future . . . 302 ANGLO-FBENCH EEMINISCENCES CHAPTER I MY YEAR'S HOSTESS A tragedy in a nutshell A Breton Nice The cat's device A moral inventor Clerical intolerance. EARLY in August 1875 I started with a small portmanteau for Nantes, intending to stay twelve days ; the flying visit was turned into a sojourn 'of as many months. Just a year later I took the same route homeward, and, strange to say, I have never revisited a city endeared by so many associations. Since that far-off period a close study of French rural life necessitated journeys in every direction, but my great Nantais friend had removed to Paris, the circle of which I once formed a member was broken up, no longer 2 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES any tie bound me to the capital of the Loire Inferieure. It was a season of more than usual heat and splendour. The immortal journey of Zola's pilgrims to Lourdes reminds me of that third- class jogging through Brittany in torrid glare. But something else impressed the experience on my memory, one of those tragedies in a nut- shell that come under the observance of every traveller. On the steamer from Southampton to St. Malo was a young French governess returning home for the holidays. She seemed a well-educated, agreeable girl, and as she was taking the same route as myself begged permission to travel with me. After breakfast and a stroll through the town we took our places in the third-class com- partment of a " train omnibus," or what at that time in England was called a "parliamentary." At first all promised well ; our fellow-travellers, with one exception, were peasant folk, the mob-capped, blue-bloused, pictorial marketers now so familiar to tourists. Most of them were laden with huge bundles and baskets, and as the third-class French railway was worse, MY YEAR'S HOSTESS 3 if possible, than it is now, we suffered a good deal from want of air and elbow-room. Ap- parently unconscious of drawbacks our fellow- travellers fraternized with ourselves and each other, my companion, however, soon becoming oblivious of everything but romance or rather adventure. Just as the train was about to move a young man had flung himself into our compartment, unfortunately showing a vacant place. The new- comer carried a large portfolio, and there was no need for a syllable by way of self-introduction ! Three things were plain. He was an ill-bred American, he was an artist by profession, and his social medium was Bohemia. Good-naturedly enough he at once opened his portfolio for the benefit of the company in general, and his more than sympathetic vis-ti-vis, the little governess, in particular. Whilst the country people with mouths agape uttered artless compliments, the pair of lovers, for they had become that at first sight, interchanged sug- gestive words and glances. As we journeyed on I thought it high time to fulfil the obligations of seniority. By every 4 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES means in my power I endeavoured to lead this chance-found acquaintance from the precipice towards which she was speeding with smile so radiant, heart so light ! In an undertone I told her what she ought to do, namely, at Rennes leave this hanger-on and accompany me to another carriage. As well try the effect of reasoning on a moth whirling round lighted candle ! No sooner did our train come to a stand than the pair nimbly stepped out. Fondly and unceremoniously as betrothed lovers, the girl not so much as vouchsafing a look at her former companion and would-be protectress, they vanished, who can doubt it, into the limbo of shame and poverty ? Not one of the least rememberable experiences of travel is such tragedy in a nutshell, the life-story thus read as we run. These reminiscences are of men and women, not of sites and scenes ; they form a record of social intercourse, no collection of travellers' tales. I will, therefore, only preface each section by a few descriptive lines, framing the picture, giving a background to my series of portraits. Every French town has its distinctive physi- MY YEAR'S HOSTESS 5 ognomy, and Nantes offers a singular front to the stranger. As the train steams through the city a suggestive coup d'ceil bursts upon the vision. Triform of aspect, the tripartite import- ance of Nantes, seaport, industrial centre, and brilliant capital, is at once realized. To our left are quays crowded with shipping of all nations, alongside runs our railway, that great line connecting Paris with Brest, over against these rise the old Nantes and the new ; the gloomy old mansions facing the railway and river now abandoned for new splendid quarters farther back, here white villas gleaming amid foliage, there a cluster of factory chimneys suggesting the rest. All Nantes is focussed for us at a glance. Yet not quite all. The great geographer, M. Reclus, tells us that France possesses seven distinct climates ; that of the Breton to my thinking, and I have tried each, bears the palm. But our train as it glides into the station gives no hint of this characteristic. Oleanders and pomegranate trees in tubs adorn every cafe throughout France. Here they are at home. At Nantes camellias and other tropical plants 6 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES bloom out of doors all the year round, and the Jardin des Plantes possesses the finest avenue of magnolias in Europe. Wintry weather con- sists of wind and rain, and summer is tempered by cool grey days. Whilst we could boil an egg or grill a chop in the sun at Rouen or Clermont Ferrand, the Nantais perhaps enjoy clouds and an umbrella. Another feature revealed on further acquaint- ance puts us in mind of Venice. The city plays hide-and-seek with five rivers, and ought to be called the City of Bridges ; you cross a bridge at every turn, and when an inundation of the Loire happens, which is pretty often, the streets become alive with boats. Folks pursue their business or pleasure after Venetian method. One good letter of introduction like the cat's expedient in La Fontaine's fable, is sufficient. Dozens could not further serve us. Thus was it with me now. I had brought credentials to the widow of a man whose name is still adored throughout the length and breadth of Brittany. Half-a-dozen words to Madame G-uepin from a fellow-Breton, fellow-student, and close friend of MY YEAR'S HOSTESS 7 the late Prefet of the Loire Iriferieure, opened all desirable doors. Further on I will say something of Dr. Ange Guepin, celebrated oculist, social reformer, and member of the small group known as the Republicans of '30. No less striking a person- ality, perhaps exercising stronger influence alike political, social, and intellectual, was his wife. Just ten years ago her funeral became the occa- sion of a vast Protestant demonstration, as that of her husband had showed the strength of non-sectarianism in France fifteen years before. The career of both now belongs to history. Madame Guepin was already past middle age when I made her acquaintance ; perhaps at no time of life could that grand figure have more impressed a stranger. She was tall and ad- mirably proportioned, the nightmare of her countrywomen, embonpoint, having passed her by. Equally free was she from the French sprightliness of gesture so often carried to ex- aggeration. Every movement, every attitude, every sentence, were characterized by a dignity amounting to statelinesss. Her carriage was so remarkable that passers-by turned round to look 8 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES at her in the street. She spoke her native lan- guage with the purity, precision and copiousness recorded of Madame Roland, her passion for justice and France being no less worthy of the great Girondine. Nor had domestic sorrows and impersonal anxieties subdued in her a delightful sense of humour. Brimful of human sympathy, imbued with sentiments of pity and benevolence, stricken in her affections, the tragic side of life had not dulled her to its all-saving, ineffable comedy. Instructed Frenchwomen are generally well acquainted with their own literature, but Madame Guepin's attainments were wholly out of the ordinary way. Her married life had been an education in itself. Michelet, Henri Martin, Jules Simon, Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin, Emile Souvestre, the Coquerels, of such were her husband's friends. The elite of Liberal intellect and principle rallied round the Breton savant and his wife. From the shining world of fashion and compromise the pair held aloof. The austere Republicanism and overt heterodoxy of the one, the staunch Protestantism and transparent un- worldliness of the other, stood between them MY YEAR'S HOSTESS and Court, Church, and Society so called. Dis- regarding much that is generally held as the highest earthly good, they lived their own lives, lives of splendid philanthropy and devotion to the loftiest ideals. If to Madame Guepin marriage had proved an education, the same might be said by others of her friendship. From that liberally stored mind and apt memory her English friend gained precious insight into French literature and poli- tical life. Much she had read, deeply had she pondered, above all, freely had she interchanged ideas with an intellect matching her own. Her historical knowledge was detailed and accurate, and never was she more inspiring and illustra- tive than on the subject of Breton lore and legend, ancient Gaul and its spirit, or that great drama of which Coligny was protagonist. The Iliad and Odyssey of French Protestantism, D'Aubigne's History, Duplessis-Mornay's Me- moirs, she had almost by heart. A born narrator, bringing to entire command of lan- guage, exquisite elocution and profound human sympathy, her version of historic episodes would ofttimes melt to tears. How movingly could 10 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES she tell the story of Eponine, the Gaulish wife, so passionate to love, so strong to suffer ! How would she thrill her listeners with the adven- tures of Jacqueline de Montbel, the noble Savoyarde who sacrificed life, liberty, honour, for love of the great Huguenot Admiral ! A commanding presence, a generous nature, a richly-cultivated mind, are not so rare among Frenchwomen as to entitle the possessor to a biography. But Madame Guepin was what the late Cotter Morrison would have styled a moral inventor. She struck out a new line for herself, and her work will live when her name is forgotten. In his encyclopaedic geography M. Eeclus accredits Bordeaux with the first technical school opened in France for girls. This is an error. Already the initiative had been taken by Madame Guepin and her husband. When I arrived at Nantes I found her " foole Profes- sionelle des jeunes filles " in full working order. Five years later, twenty-six similar institutions had been opened elsewhere. In 1883 the number had risen to four hundred. At the present time no town of any importance is MY YEAR'S HOSTESS 11 without its technical schools for both sexes, the classes being gratuitous, the teachers non- sectarian, and the cost being shared by State and municipality. Here it must be noted that no Catholic woman, no matter her wealth, position, or philanthropic aspirations, could thus have initi- ated a social movement, nor indeed could she dream of doing so now. Her charities, her philanthropies, her reforms, must all obtain clerical sanction. And where reason has finally asserted itself, where religious duty has become mere social gloss, the trammels are still sub- mitted to, the embargo is not shaken off. Many a Frenchwoman have I known who but for her Catholicism might play the part of an Elizabeth Fry, a Mary Carpenter, or a Mrs. Booth. Instead the Church sends her to Lourdes, thus counten- ancing pretended miracles and patronizing super- stitions not to be outdone in Darkest Africa. Madame Guepin had been educated in England, there embracing at the same time, Protestantism and democratic notions. Easy to conceive what thorn in the side of Church and Imperialism were both wife and husband ! The first, a 12 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES propagandist of spiritual freedom, and sexual equality ; the second, an openly-declared Re- publican and Socialist. But the pair were hemmed round by popular devotion, as is Tolstoi in our day by the homage of Europe. The clergy might thunder anathemas at Madame Guepin's technical school and threaten to ex- communicate the pupils. The delators and sbirri of Napoleon the Third might cast sheep's eyes on the great doctor in 1851. Not even a De Morny or a St. Arnaud dared to spot Guepin of Nantes for Cayenne ! CHAPTER II A PORTRAIT GALLERY French . savants at play "Chaste comme Diane" " Emmeline, Emmeline ! " Feminine intrepidity A re- miniscence of the siege. MY primary object in visiting Nantes had been to take part in the proceedings of the French Association for the advancement of science. In honour of the event the town was beflagged, garlanded, illuminated, made musical for an entire week. Learning and gaiety went hand in hand, regattas, horse-races, balloon ascents, fireworks, and alas ! pigeon-matches, alternating with the business of the learned. Nor must the democratic character of such a Congress in France be overlooked. The great theatre was thrown open gratuitously, thousands of workpeople enjoying ' Le Medecin malgre lui,' thus generously performed for their benefit by the company of the Odeon. 13 14 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES And all the time, whilst the nineteenth-cen- tury spirit was crowding Nantais hotels, a mediaeval revival was emptying Breton villages. During this very week an enormous pilgrimage to Lourdes passed through the town. Piquant and most pathetic contrast ! Here an artisan delighting in Moliere's masterpiece or in a resume of Polar exploration, there his neigh- bour of the field, or rather his neighbour's wife, counting on Notre Dame de la Grotte to straighten her humpbacked child or cure the family horse of glanders ! The gala over I accepted Madame Guepin's invitation to consider her home as my pied d terre in Brittany. With the exception of short tours and visits, the next twelve months were spent under her roof. Our social circle made a pleasant picture-gallery. For one member a cover was always laid in the handsome flat of the Place Cambronne. Mdlle. Huberte, thus will I designate her, was a woman after my hostess's own heart, and her second self in so far as the Technical School for Girls was concerned. Directress of this In- stitution now possessing a Government charter, A PORTRAIT GALLERY 15 and endowed by municipal liberality, Mdlle. Huberte was one of those fortunate persons who had found what the French call her assi- ette, in other words, her vocation. Deliberate in all her movements, the very impersonation of method, born to command, "Mdlle. Huberte is perfect," would say her friend and patroness, adding by way of climax, " and chaste comme Diane ! " It seemed an odd compliment to pay a well-educated lady, at least thirty-five years of age, and holding a responsible position ; but scoff as we may in our insular arrogance, nowhere is Diana more sedulously worshipped than throughout the length and breath of France. Mdlle. Huberte' s pronounced allegiance to her pet divinity sometimes provoked a smile. We kept early hours in the Place Cambronne and she lived but a stone's throw off; yet at half- past nine to the minute a giggling young maid would always fetch her mistress when she dined with us. Upon one occasion an elderly bibliophile, a common friend of Madame Grue'pin and her directress, had joined, our party. 16 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES " Can I have the honour of seeing you home, mademoiselle ? " unwarily asked the friendly and, I may add, austere sexagenarian. Mdlle. Huberte's attitude changed at once from cold affability to extreme haughtiness. She drew herself up, her dark handsome eyes shot indignant glances, her lips curled. " My maid awaits me, thank you, monsieur," was the terribly chilling reply. But it was on the sea-shore that Diana's arch-votary set an example to her sex. Coquetry reaches its acme in the bathing costume. Before starting for Pornic or Prefailles, Frenchwomen procure the smartest, daintiest caps, tunics, and trousers for their promenades en mer, or sea- bathing. Nor are their husbands, brothers, or fiances less attentive to decorum and appear- ance upon these occasions. As one group after another emerges from the dressing-cabin or tent, the beach presents a motley appearance. Without violating the rules of propriety alike old and young present a singularly undressed appearance. Not for a moment would Mdlle. Huberte give in to such fashion. Enveloped from head to foot in a waterproof she walked towards the A PORTRAIT GALLERY 17 waves, only casting off the cloak at the last moment, her maid waiting to re-adjust it when the dip was over. That elderly savant ! His memory too evokes a smile. M. D was a Vendean gentleman who had unfortunately married the wrong per- son. Husband and wife were not divorced, only judicially separated, and strange to say, con- tinued to live in the same little country town. How the rupture came about I have forgotten, most likely the lady's confessor was at the bottom of it. With the ordinary run of French- women madame was orthodox, at least in out- ward observances, and with the vast majority of Frenchmen monsieur followed what is called "la religion de Voltaire," and, as experience teaches us, an excellent religion too. Be this as it may, the estimable although perhaps crotchety bookworm now hankered after a re- conciliation. The matter was hemmed round by difficulties. Whenever he quitted Nantes recommenced the most whimsical game of hide and seek imaginable. Madame had taken refuge in one of those numerous boarding-houses kept for unprotected 18 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES women by nuns, devotion and a rattling ready- money trade going hand in hand. No lady of independent means walks out unaccompanied in provincial France, the thing is not to be thought of; hence monsieur's dilemma. The summer- house in which he pursued his bibliographical and historical researches, commanded the sub- urban high-road. No sooner did he catch a glimpse of his former love than folio and note- book were thrown aside, away he ran, not un- frequently pursuing the obdurate fair, as Georgian poets would have called her, in dressing-gown and slippers. But vainly his thin pipy pleading voice re iterated her name. " Emmeline, Emmeline ! " The lady never looked back or affected to hear ; without apparently quickening her pace, yet contriving to keep ahead, she walked on, nun or lay duenna at her side. And month after month, year after year, this parody of "the god pursuing, the maiden hid/' would be repeated. " Emmeline, Emmeline ! " folks would hear as they passed by. The uninitiated might politely A PORTRAIT GALLERY 19 acquaint madame that monsieur was calling her. To no purpose ! The prosaic figure in bonnet and shawl hurried forward, the baffled but not hopelessly discouraged bibliophile re- turned to his summer-house and his studies. M. D.'s knowledge in certain restricted fields was inexhaustible. He could tell how many editions of ' Le Songe de Polyphile ' existed, and at what price each had been purchased, could state the loss to erudition caused by Paul-Louis Courier's celebrated blot of ink in the Florentine Library, and the size, pattern and material of Robespierre's coat buttons. Twenty-five years ago he was a great authority, perhaps the greatest living, on certain biographical aspects of the Revolution. Another familiar and homelier figure at the hospitable dinner-table was Madame T , a florid, portly lady weighing fourteen stone, whose name recalls a grimly humorous side of the great siege. This devoted mother, if indeed we ought thus to particularize any Frenchwoman, had braved the terrible five months of semi-starvation during the siege for her daughter's sake, the said daughter braving the same from a feeling of wifely duty. Like as twin cherries were madame and her 20 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES darling Berthe, the only difference being that one weighed more, occupied more space, and displayed a more blooming rotundity than the other. It speaks volumes for the intrepidity and devotion of Frenchwomen that these two, of all others, could for a moment contemplate such an ordeal. What had happened at La Rochelle, what at Saragossa in our own century ? And who could foretell to what Dantesque lengths Parisian patriotism might go ? Friends and acquaintances of the pleasant, easy-going, life- loving pair trembled with dismay ; one thing seemed quite certain, they would never be seen alive again. The siege was raised at last, and enormous crowds awaited the first train due from Paris. People were greatly agitated, many were in tears, every one had brought packets and baskets, chocolate, meat-pies, bottles of warm soup, bunches of salad, all kinds of dainties and restor- atives for the living skeletons, the walking ghosts expected. But no sooner was the train brought to a standstill and the door of a compartment flung wide, than sobs ceased, hysterical cries gave way to A PORTRAIT GALLERY 21 laughter, a wave of hilarity swept over all Nantes, for all Nantes seemed there ! Out tripped two familiar figures, Madame T and her daughter Berthe, neither of them a shade less rosy, a nail's breadth less buxom, one whit less jolly in outward appearance than in palmiest days. With lightness of heart they had confronted the most dismal prospect that can stagger the imagination ; in mood as airy, not at all realizing their own heroism, they now congratulated themselves that all was now well over, fresh butter, mutton cutlets, asparagus, and strawberries were once more matters of every day ! My friends received an ovation which certainly they deserved. To have faced the great siege was something, to have come out of it unscathed was more than a mere title of honour. CHAPTER III A PORTRAIT GALLERY (continued) ' My husband has changed all that ! " " The religion of Voltaire " Mr. John Morley at Nantes Feminine types. AMONG the habitues of the Place Cambronne were M. and Madame M , both types of the upper middle- class. Here I would remark that I have never found English nationality a bar to closest friendship, much less to social intercourse, in France. I say it boldly. Most dear and stronp- have ever been V the ties of friendship at home. As dear and strong have been those made by me on the other side of the Channel. Among the friends whose affection makes the highest joy of my life, whom to lose is to be left desolate, have been Frenchmen and Frenchwomen. As time wears on, however, many a cherished and gracious figure must be lost to sight,'- 22 23 gradually drop out of one's ken, by the sheer force of circumstances. Nothing has occurred to disturb mutual harmony, there is no diminution of cordiality on either side ; chance and change have separated us, and, as Schopenhauer says, when friends no longer meet at reasonable intervals they become myths to each other. Thus it happens that both Madame M and her husband are now mere memories. Our intimacy began and ended during my twelve months' stay at Nantes. Savin e, as I will call my charming friend, represented an especial class of Frenchwomen, much rarer twenty-five years ago than to-day ; she was one of those convent-bred girls who had been rescued by marriage from a kind of glacial epoch, a condition of intellectual torpor and mental etiolation. " My husband has changed all that," she would say gaily, breaking off from early remin- iscences to actual life, contrasting the common- sense, wholesome, satisfying present with the dwarfed, morbid, unreal past. If I have entertained and elsewhere expressed repugnance at the conventual system, for which 24 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES I have felt no words too strong, it is from know- ledge at first hand, from long, close, and varied intercourse with its victims. And no emancipated Romanist did more to enlighten me than Savine M . At this time girls of the better ranks were +3 invariably confided to nuns, requiring no certificate of fitness whatever, only a lettre d' obedience, in other words a kind of " character " from the Bishop. No wonder that the young ladies entrusted to their care quitted the convent as ignorant as they entered it. In one conventual school, perhaps still as fashionable as it was a generation ago, the teaching of French history ended with the Revolution ! After '89, historic deluge ! Only by reason of divine right, fleur de Us and oriflamme, could unhappy France claim a chronicle, the shadow of a right to existence ! If many a convent-bred girl could say with Savine, "My husband has changed all that," not many possessed the same moral courage. My friend and her spiritual and intellectual emancipator were strictly logical and uncom- promisingly sincere, never for a moment seek- A PORTRAIT GALLERY 25 ing to deceive the world, or, what was of far more importance, their children. Having cast off Rome and its superstitions, they did not attempt to hoodwink Society by a show of orthodoxy, from time to time attending mass, sending their boys to the confessional, and so on. They just went their own way regardless of mun- dane consequences. In their hearts, I believe, they were Protestants of the most liberal type, but they preferred not to label themselves, in other words, to remain outside every religious system. At the period I write of, that is to say, on the morrow of the Third Empire, clerical intolerance still leavened so-called Republican institutions. Bureaucracy had not rid itself of the Ultramon- tane element. Red-tapeism and bigotry still went hand in hand. About this time my friend's elder boy, a lad of fifteen, was transferred for health's sake from the Lycee of Nantes to that of Brest. I do not remember whether or no Henri stood out against confession or other religious obligation exacted by school chaplain. In any case he was sum- moned before the authorities, and on being called upon to apologize for his scruples, blurted out 26 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES " I follow the religion of my father, namely, the religion of Voltaire ! " Pretty well this for a school-boy, but mark the moral of my story ! Henri's defiant attitude and avowal created nothing short of a local scandal. iM. M was remonstrated with, hints of expulsion were even thrown out, and ere many days had elapsed, came delicately worded over- tures from a Jesuit college " Under our own roof the religious convictions of a pupil's parents are respected," and so on. This incident aptly illustrates the Jesuitical system. Whilst General Booth, whose mar- vellous organization may compare with that of Ignatius Loyola, fishes for souls, the Jesuit fishes for consciences. Happily for himself Henri M escaped the toils. Had it been other- wise he would most assuredly at this moment belong to the infamous Rochefort-Drumont- Dulac league, having on their lips the watchword, " A second St. Bartholomew for Jews, Protest- ants, and non-Catholics ; no law but the law of the sword and the sprinkler 1 1 " In a household devoted to the rehabilitator of 1 Goupillon, or holy-water sprinkler. A PORTRAIT GALLERY 27 Calas, the defender of La Barre, it seemed natural that Mr. John Morley's name should be honoured. Yet I felt some surprise when Monsieur M put the now well-known study of Voltaire in my hands. Mr. Morley's work had not long appeared, it was costly, and perusal required a thorough knowledge of English. "You have read your countryman's work, of course ? " asked M. M . I confessed that I had not, whereupon he lent me his copy, and we afterwards discussed the book together. The French critic, whilst sympathetic, would have preferred a briefer, compacter, more epi- grammatic, nrid, perhaps, more enthusiastic treatment. This was tantamount to saying that Mr. John Morley was all very well, but what a thousand pities that he was not a Frenchman ! My friend's husband, although his early life had been spent at sea, was a scholar, yet the finding of such a book in his library is sug- gestive. We may be quite sure that no con- temporary work on the subject in French was there to keep it company. The Third Republic, Heaven knows, has been 28 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES more than once tried in the balance and found wanting. Let us not forget one incalculable service rendered to France by democratic insti- tutions. I allude to the progress of learning. The intellectual deadlock created by the alliance of Imperialism and the Ultramontane party under Napoleon III. is sufficiently indi- cated by three circumstances Victor Hugo an exile, Renan ostracized by the College de France, Littre by the Academy ! A less familiar incident throws further light on the state of affairs. The Second Empire proved more hostile to positive science than the Monarchy. So far back as 1832 Auguste Comte had proposed the foundation of an additional professorship at the College de France, namely, of the history of science. It was not till the establishment of the Third Republic that the doors of this great body were opened to the teaching of modern science. In scholarship and learning advancement within -the last thirty years has been enormous. On this subject the late Dr. Hubert Holden wrote to me as follows " The French Republic has been more favourable to a high standard of learning than any previous government. The A PORTRAIT GALLERY 29 works of erudition that now appear from French presses are superior to German editions alike in scholarship and learning." Especially has criticism reached the high- water mark in contemporary France. Mr. John Morley's valuable work on Voltaire could hardly in these days be the godsend that it was to my friend a generation ago ! Frenchwomen are without doubt the cleverest, the most gifted beings in creation. By help of an amazingly quick intelligence, perhaps I should say, by force of instinct, Savine M had contrived to overtake her husband. Ten years his junior, convent-bred, never for an instant neglecting her duties as housewife and mother, she was now his equal, mentally speaking every inch as tall. I do not mean to say that she could have passed an examination at the Ecole Polytechnique, or the Sorbonne. But what Lessing wrote of the immortals is true of her and her sisters. Genius and a Frenchwoman may pardonably ignore a thousand facts humdrum folks are bound to know. Savine possessed what no amount of cut-and- dry knowledge can give, perception, judgment, 30 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES above all, taste. There are ever two ways of performing any action, however trifling, namely, the stereotyped and the inimitable. When Savine wished for her friend's company, she did not send the sort of invitation we get every day. Instead would come a little pencilled note, perhaps as follows " Amie, les matinees parmi nos roses sont si fraiches, si belles ! Toute la maisonnee et le chocolat vous attendront demain au jardin ci huit heurcs." (Friend, the early mornings among our roses are so fresh, so lovely ! The household and chocolate await you in the garden to-morrow at eight o'clock.) M. and Madame M occupied a pretty sub- urban villa having a small garden and arbour, all without as within a picture of order and taste. Worth remembering are those out-door sociabili- ties, madame in the neatest possible morning gown gaily serving the chocolate, monsieur in alpaca coat and white trousers reading items from the ' Phare de la Loire,' the Liberal organ of Nantes ; Henri all attention to public affairs as behoved a Lyceen, little Frederic playing with his kitten. A PORTRAIT GALLERY 31 It was not among the roses and bosquets of Belle-cle-nuit that Savine and her English friend confabulated. Many and many a prolonged tete-d-tete we had during my twelve months' stay at Nantes, and many a strange story of con- vent life, or rather death in life, did she tell me. As attractive a narrator as Madame Gudpin, her themes were notedly different. Whilst the former thrilled us with tales of historic magnan- imity and endurance, the latter dealt with actual love and romance. No Jeanne D'Hennebont or Jacqueline de Moritbel fired Savine's enthusiasm. Her smiles and tears were for the heroines of yesterday, the Jeannes and Jacquelines she had frolicked with, confided in, loved. Other figures, less conspicuous yet equally agreeable to contemplate, fill up this canvas. Among the companions of my leisure and my initiators into French life and modes of thought was a group of girls, all well worthy of portraiture and all belonging to the unmarriageable, in other words, the undowered class. The first of these, Virginie C , occupied the post of sub-directress in Madame Guepin's technical school, at the same time enjoying the confidence and warm 32 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES friendship of her patroness and of Mdlle. Huberte. In so far as material things were concerned there- fore the future caused her no anxiety. And fortunately for their peace of mind, French girls are quite free from sentimentality. Alike the heiress and the portionless look at marriage from a purely practical or business point of view. Is not the very condition of wedlock expressed by the prosaic word, un menage, a household, a partnership of two ? This conception of life has many things in its favour. A French girl may regret much that marriage would naturally bring, to wit, freedom, the position of a matron, the support of a husband, the prospect of motherhood. She does not waste herself to a skeleton for loss of ideals, dreams of unstinted admiration, heated imaginings as remote from actuality as the moon from green cheese. Virginie accepted the drawbacks of her con- dition with dignity. As if disclaiming the merest suspicion of coquettishness, she aged herself by the wearing of black, openly discussed politics, a fact even more than sober garb attesting the attitude taken up, labelling herself in some A PORTRAIT GALLERY 33 such terms as follows : Here is a well-educated (and I may add, a pretty) young woman calmly confronting spinsterhood, proof against all the apples held out for frivolous modern Eves. Doubtless a few, perhaps many years of love, so- called, and luxury or ease might have been hers, for the temptations put in the way of girls thus placed are many and great. Virginie had some- thing to say here, but she generally stopped short with the words : "Ah, la mauvaise espece!" (The bad race of men.) The cultivation of the speaking voice is regarded as a fine art in France, and Virginie was a mistress of declamation. She would entertain us with recitals from the classics or Victor Hugo that re- called artistes of the Comedie Francaise. Here I add a remark by way of suggestion. If I can claim insight into French literature, it is due rather to the hearing, than the reading, of French authors. Then, as now, a leading feature of social gatherings would be the recital of some highly accomplished amateur. And let us com- pare the audition with the perusal, say of La Fontaine's masterpiece, ' The Animals sick of the Plague.' It is impossible to give any idea of the D 34 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES pathos put by a competent declaimer into the line " Us ne mourraient pas tous, mais tous 6te frappe." (Not all perished, but all were stricken.) Virginie would stand before the mantelpiece, her slender frame gradually shaken with feeling, but voice, pose and features under entire control, as she recited pieces from Victor Hugo's ' L'Anne'e Terrible.' Her rendering of "Madame Holland " l I shall never forget. A Protestant, a bread- winner, a dowerless girl, Virginie could afford to indulge in Republican sentiments, sentiments repudiated by fashionable society. Here and there of course French girls do marry although they have no dowry. My preceding remark as to their general unsentimentality is amusingly illustrated by the following anecdote. Marthe B , another school-teacher and a protegee of Madame Guepin's, formed a striking contrast to the retiring, fastidious, outwardly passionless Virginie. Florid, with restless black eyes and self-asserting, vivacious ways, Marthe did not attempt to conceal her liking for the 1 Not to be confounded with " The Queen of the Girondins." A PORTRAIT GALLERY 35 other sex. A more good-natured creature never existed, and on half-holidays she would accom- pany me in search of wild-flowers ; wide, very wide of suburban Nantes we had to go, at last discovering cornfields and meadows, glade open- ing upon glade, many a tiny stream threading flowery mead, many a coppice wood resonant with birds. For this ancient city hides her graces coyly, and an impatient traveller might go away under the impression that Nantes possessed no country resorts at all. During one of these rambles, Marthe informed me that she was engaged to a sailor cousin at that time in foreign waters, and that on his return -they were to be married. " We are devoted to each other," she said, as we sat together one afternoon, amid the corn- flowers and poppies ; " if ever there was a love match, it will be ours." Just three years later I met Marthe in Paris, now a beaming matron. But the sailor cousin was still in foreign waters. " What would you have ? " she had explained to a friend. " Pierre's return seemed as far off as ever, and M. B , now my husband, is an 36 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES excellent fellow and doing well in business. I consider myself very fortunate." Well enough should I like to portray other associates of this twelve months' stay, but the list is too long. Father Joseph, the Capucin brother, with whom I had pleasant chats, I have described elsewhere. Other figures, among these a Breton gentleman, now Dreyfusite deputy in the Cham- ber, and the late harbour-master of Nantes, Imperialist, and personal friend of Napoleon III., at least for the present I leave out. CHAPTER IV SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE The nuns and the Bishop " Nous recevons toujours, nous ne donnons jamais " " Oh, chastity, what crimes are committed in thy name ! " WISHING to see as much as possible of convent life in Brittany, I had provided myself with a letter of introduction from Cardinal Manning to the late Bishop of Nantes. For this priceless Open Sesame, so I naturally regarded it, I was indebted to a kind friend who died three years ago. Originally a pervert to Rome, thrice a recusant therefrom, and finally from my own point of view re-perverted, this gentleman had obtained for me a warm recommendation to Monseigneur of Nantes. The missive brought a reply as cordial. I soon discovered, however, that a bishop has no more authority over reverend mothers and holy abbesses than if he belonged 37 38 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES to a heretical episcopate. On showing Monseig- nenir's letter to heads of certain convents, and begging permission to see something of the interior, the invariable answer was : " Our house does not depend upon the diocese," and a curt refusal. This damping of my ardour proved a blessing in disguise. Attaining my end by means of lay folk and outsiders I felt absolutely unfettered in criticizing the conventual system. When putting impressions upon paper, prelatical patronage must have sadly hampered me ; and here let me observe that these strictures are all along based upon personal experience or information gained at first hand. Before taking leave of the Bishop let me tell the following story. My hostess, whose entire existence was taken up with philanthropy, once called upon Monseigneur with a pitiful tale. The case, for which pecuniary aid was urgently needed, ought to have appealed to him as the subjects were Catholic. " Madame," was the prelate's reply, " Nous recevons toujours, nous ne donnons jamais." (" We invariably receive, as invariably we never SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 39 give.") She did not appeal to the Eveche a second time. It is a curious fact that devout Eomanists will often express themselves on the subject of the cloister and the confessional much more severely than the most rigid Protestant going. French character is conservative and patriarchal, French intellect is revolutionary and iconoclastic. Hence the strangest conflict of routine and initiative, unsparing criticism found hand in hand with outward conformity. " Imagine my feelings," said a Catholic friend to me, member of an ancient Breton family, wedded to oriftamme and fleur de Us. " I was calling yesterday upon Madame B , my mother-in-law's friend, and found her busy with her maid upon a wedding gown, the orthodox white silk, with orange blossoms and train. " ' Then your Juliette is about to be married/ cried I. ' My warm congratulations ! ' "'Madame B shook her head as she let go the hem and advanced to meet me. " ' No, she has decided to take the veil, to become a Carmelite!' was her answer. 'It is 40 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES not perhaps what we should have wished, but circumstances ' then she stopped. " Think of it, dear mademoiselle," added the narrator, " once her wedding gown thrown aside, that poor girl will be dead to her family and the world. If she loses a parent the announcement will be made as follows: ' My sisters, one of your number has had the misfortune to lose a father, mother, brother, or sister/ as the case may be. None know, none may ask the name of the deceased, so that all hearts are wrung instead of one. In that fearful order the nuns wear no linen, only woollen garments; they never sleep in beds, reclining instead on bare boards; meat they never touch, and offences or fancied offences are punished by severities that often drive them mad. Yet/' she said after a pause, " if the vocation is felt, one can say nothing. My little daughter for instance, our only child, should never be prevented from taking the veil, suppos- ing that she set her heart upon it." "But that lady's hint at circumstances?" I asked. " Oh ! yes, circumstances have much more to do with these perpetual vows than vocation. SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 41 You see," here she smiled, " it is so much easier to dower a daughter for the cloister than for a suitable partner. Many girls of good family enter a convent simply because there is nothing else for them to do. Two aunts of my husband took the veil years ago. They hated the thought of it, as well they might, but a convent is genteeler than spinsterhood upon narrow means." These burials alive, or prises d'habit, are usually announced in the weekly religious papers, and in the case of an aristocratic novice, are accom- panied by a certain eclat. One morning having seen a notice of this kind I found myself in a fashionable crowd flocking to the Chapel of the Visitation. As I sat awaiting the service, a gentle-faced nun came up to me and whispered, " Would you like to see her ? " I gladly followed my guide to a room in the convent adjoining where about forty persons, ladies, gentlemen, and children, were gathered round a small iron grat- ing in the inner wall. After some time the curtain behind this grating was drawn back and we saw a girl in white satin dress, myrtle wreath and bridal veil, by her side standing an aged nun, the pair forming a suggestive contrast. 42 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Just such a wooden automatic figure, just such a simulacrum of natural, cheerful, serviceable womanhood would that make-believe bride become, unless Death, the kindest friend of these self-immolators, brought an early deliverance. This leave-taking was a scene of much excite- ment and painfulness. Putting her white-gloved hand through the bars, the victim for the last time clasped that of friends and acquaintances, for the last time gazed, upon familiar faces. She spoke in a forced voice and had evidently nerved herself to cheerfulness, but the whole thing was a horrible mockery. Soon a carriage drove up, and an elderly couple, both weeping, appeared. " Her parents," mur- mured the rest, and without a word all passed into the chapel. I have never ventured among savage tribes, but the ceremony of burying alive cannot be more repugnant to nineteenth-century civilization than the rite I am about to describe. Divided from the chapel by an iron screen was a second smaller one, in which the cloistered sisters sit o' Sundays, and in which to-day's ceremony was partly to take place ; the officiating SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 43 priests remaining at the high altar, now brilliantly lighted, the novice and her fellow-nuns remaining behind the screen. By and by the glas or death- bell tolls, the parents and relations of the novice take the seats assigned to them opposite the screen, as at a marriage, the men being on one side, the women on the other, the inner chapel fills with black-robed nuns, moving about with lighted tapers and chanting in low, lugubrious tones. All is tip -toe expectation as the bride advances towards an opening in the screen and there kneels, her head and shoulders being only visible; after a preliminary service a priest places him- self in front of this aperture and delivers an oration, which for unctuous flattery and gross superstition it would be hard to match. " For you, my dear sister," he said, " I have no fear; you have been reared by your parents a veritable angel of purity. We feel that you are one of the chosen, conscious of your call, assured of your vocation, henceforth to be cut off from the corruptions of the world, dedicated to heavenly contemplations. You are about, dear sister, to take upon yourself the vows of perpetual 44 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES chastity, to prove to mankind that there is such a thing as angelic purity in the world. Oh ! that rare and wonderful virtue. Think of what it is to keep your body unspotted ! " and so on and so on, the discourse transporting us to the dark ages, suggesting a condition of things happily long passed away, Treves de Dieu and other measures for the protection of youth, guilelessness and beauty. The sacrament was next administered, and the three vows were taken, tremblingly and tear- fully enough. Again the death-bell tolled, and an interval occurred during which the victim's hair was cut short, and her bridal dress exchanged for black robe and veil, symbol of life-long incarceration. Then followed a gruesome cere- mony. A bier covered with funeral pall was brought out on which she lay whilst the service for the dead was chanted, the nuns marching round, each holding a lighted taper. Little won- der that lay folks sobbed as they gazed on this spectacle, no one was unmoved but the priests, who sat by grim and calm, mechanically joining in the death chant. At last one of them approached the screen, and inclining his head SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 45 towards the apparently lifeless figure on the bier, cried in a loud voice, " Rise, my sister ! " where- upon the singing ceased, the nuns formed a procession and retired with their new-made victim through the entrance by which they had come. " Oh, chastity ! " quoth I, parodying one of the world's great epigrams, " Oh ! chastity, what crimes are committed in thy name." CHAPTER V SCENES OP CONVENT LIFE (continued) The cloister psychologically considered Conventual " sweating " A laj)Si^s linguae A romance of the Convent. AND just before that taking of the veil a learned Paris physician had thus expressed him- self at the Social Science Congress then sitting at Nantes: "It is not unusual," he said, "for a young girl entering upon a convent novi- tiate in splendid health to succumb within the space of two years to the sedentary, self-centred existence imposed upon her," and he bore out this statement by figures showing the enormous devastation of consumption in cloistered con- vents. In his admirable ' Psychology of Mind/ Dr. Maudsley also treats this subject from the scientific point of view. But Paris physicians and English psychologists only beat the winds. After this prise d'habit I saw the officiating 46 SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 47 priests interchanging courtesies with the rela- tions and friends of their victim. They were radiant, and no wonder ! Another dowry had been added to the Church; another might-be wife and mother rescued from the perils of enlightenment. And every prise d' habit is a splendid advertisement. From the sacerdotal point of view the transaction is as satisfactory as can be. The cloistered sisters injure themselves only. Here fanaticism recoils upon its votaries. Quite otherwise is it with the holy women [engaged in business. In that tremendous book, 'Lourdes/ M. Zola's Pelion piled upon Ossa, he shows how the commercial spirit discredits Romanism. But more than a quarter of a century before M. Jules Simon had drawn attention to another aspect to this question, namely, the crushing competition of conventual with lay handiwork. In his book, 'L'Ouvriere' (1862), he showed that out of every hundred dozen shirts made in Paris, eighty dozen came from the convents. The nuns help their pupils, and, for the most part, would not be seamstresses if they were living in the world and unsupported by the revenues 48 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES of the convent. Their time counts for nothing, and the rules of their order obliging them to live simply, they can lower the wages of work- women as much as they please. "For," wrote M. Jules Simon, " the seamstress must live by her earnings, and when her employers haggle about the price of her work it is in reality her existence that is in question. Every centime abated implies a new privation. Here is an example cited to me by Madame Guepin. During her husband's prefectship in 1870-1, the wives of artisans and workmen called upon to serve were literally starving whilst the soldiers wanted shirts ; the women wanted nothing so much as the making of them in other words, bread for their children. Large orders for soldiers' gar- ments were sent to the different towns, and the poor women were crying of joy at the prospect of earning money, when lo ! the convents stepped in, offering to undertake the contract at a much lower price. The Government was at its wit's end for funds, and the nuns got the work. Painful indeed is the spectacle of a bogus bride, a girl arrayed in symbolic veil and orange wreath for the most hideous fate that can befall SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 49 any woman. But even more painful is the sight of a bond fide trousseau in course of preparation at a convent orphanage." A Catholic friend took me one day with his little daughter to inspect one of these houses, and this is what we saw. Sitting on high benches without backs in a large bare room were about thirty girls of all ages, from four to twenty, each, down to the tiniest mites, plying her needle. At either end of the room presided a sister, her nun's garb being the only break in the monotonous picture ; rows upon rows of little children and growing girls bent over some piece of stitching or em- broidery, the stitching or embroidery going on all day long, no break except for mass or meals. A sister took us from one youthful needle- woman to another, and I gazed in wonder, first at the elaborate piece of needlework, and then at the white-faced, hollow-chested, apathetic worker. The toil to which these waifs and strays are condemned from the time they enter the home till they quit it at the age of twenty- one is mechanical. The same girl stitches or seams or makes button-holes all day long ; no kind of 50 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES training is given that fits her for service or domestic life, and if after so many years of microscopic needlework her eyes are good for anything, she does not know how to use them. Privations of every kind and sedentary routine undermine what little stamina these poor children may bring with them to the orphanage. They go away sickly, often consumptive or deformed, always feeble, and in utter ignorance of every- thing but needlework. Since my year's residence in Nantes things have changed. The educational revolution, so it must be called, brought about under M. Grevy's presidentship, affected every child throughout the country. French children of the State are no longer allowed to remain in ignorance of the three R's. Whilst making the round of this especial orphanage I committed a terrible blunder. Our guide was proudly showing us one piece of delicate needlework after another when she caught up what, in these days, would be called a lady's blouse. " Oh, the pretty Garibaldi ! " cried the stupid English visitor, such garments at that time SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 51 being named after the liberator of Rome and his immortal red shirt. My friend, a young Ultramontane doctor, turned very red; as to the nun, she could not have looked more aghast had I invoked my pet saint, M. de Voltaire ! French story-telling, how it clings to the memory ! Many and many an incident of con- vent life and the confessional did Savin e tell me in her own excellent way. Here is a specimen. We had listened one evening to some extra musical service of a convent chapel. As we sauntered home by the Fosse, that unique promenade combining quays, boulevards, and railway line, she began " Shall I tell you why that little chapel pos- sesses the strangest fascination for me ? Listen, then. It is just fourteen years ago, Henri had begun to feel his feet, when my heart was well- nigh broken. My old schoolfellow and bosom friend Celine B , no one knew why, took the veil, gave up family, friends, and society for the slow martyrdom of a Carmelite nun. What made the matter all the more astonishing was Celine's character. She had 52 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES never posed as a devote, was ever gayest of the gay, and, oh, so clever ! much cleverer than any of us." Here the English listener shook her head. Savine went on " Her convent was the one we have just left, and, of course, not being a relation, I could never hope to see her, I could only hear her sweet voice behind that horrible iron screen. She possessed one of those voices that would have enriched a poor girl, made, if not a prima donna, at any rate a successful vocalist of her. So Sunday after Sunday and Saint's day after Saint's day, although no longer a Catholic my husband had changed all that I use'd to go to the little chapel, weeping as I detected Celine's voice among the rest. Being an accomplished musi- cian she used to take the solos, and those solos got noised abroad, attracted strangers, brought heaps of money to the convent. " Well, exactly three years after Celine's in- carceration, a friend of my husband's, a naval officer, returned from Cochin China, and as good luck would have it, accompanied myself, my hus- band, Henri and his nurse to a May-night service. SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 53 May is the month dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and, as you will see if you stay on, we have splendid musical services then in every church. " Hardly was Celine's voice heard in the Ave Maria than Mariette, Henri's nurse, pulled my sleeve. ' The Captain ! the Captain ! ' she cried, frightened out of her wits. Every head was indeed turned, for our poor friend was behaving like one demented. His eyes had a fixed stare as if he saw ghosts. He gasped for breath, then a murmur burst from his lips, ' Celine, Celine ! ' and staggering like a drunkard, or one struck with sudden illness, he got out of the chapel. " I sent my husband after him, and as soon as I decently could, followed with little Henri and his nurse. The Captain was in a state of indescribable excitement. Celine was his, he said, and he vowed, come what would, should yet be his wife. "The pair it seems had been secretly engaged before his departure for China, and it was only to escape a much-loathed marriage that my poor dear took the veil. You are in love with our amiable qualities, dear English mademoiselle ! You have yet to make the acquaintance of our national defects. Celine's parents were, like the 54 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES rest of us, over-fond of money. When a rich, elderly, and utterly uninteresting widower I cannot say worse of him proposed to my clever, sparkling, delightful Celine, her friends were shocked, but her parents thought her next door to a maniac for refusing him. Escape seemed only possible one way, 'so she buried herself alive. " The Captain knew well enough that to rescue his beloved by fair means was absolutely out of the question, force also was not to be thought of. His only hope lay in craft. " Cloistered nuns may bury and, who knows, murder each other, no one being the wiser ; but they cannot replace chimney-pots blown off in a hurricane, repair crumbling walls, or white- wash chapel ceilings ! And the holy sisters can anything be more natural ? they are women after all like to see ein Paar Hosen i. e. a man about the place as my Alsatian nuns used to say (I was educated at Metz). No matter when you visit a convent it is sure to be under repair. And, as a rule, the masons, bricklayers, and carpenters employed are young and handsome. But pray do not suppose that I hint at impro- prieties! Oh, dear no! I only allude to feminine weakness. SCENES OF CONVENT LIFE 55 " The Captain, who by the way had now come into a good bit of money, and had retired on half-pay, soon found out the builder patronized by the Mother Superior. Under one pretence and another he got to know the especial men told off for duty at the convent, and whilst doing odd jobs for himself, tinkering at this, that, and the other, they would answer his innocently put questions. " Having obtained all the information he wanted as to interior arrangements, routine, and conduct of the house, he carefully laid his plans. By the intermediation of a gardener he got tiny missives slipped into Celine's hand; the hour, place, and method of escape were settled. One fine evening when the place had been thrown into commotion by the visit of a Cardinal Bishop, Sister Angelique was missing. High and low her gaolers searched, but to no purpose. Before they could raise the hue and cry Celine and her bridegroom were speeding across the seas to Liverpool. But," added Savine, as she finished her story, "this is nothing to some others I could tell you ! " CHAPTER VI AN INUNDATION OF THE LOIRE " Quel torrent revolutionnaire ! " A transformed per- spective The tocsin The hurricane "Les couvreurs, les couvreurs ! " " Save my pig ! " As generally happens in France, whilst we were expecting one kind of catastrophe, another occurred of quite opposite nature. From the moment of unpacking my portmanteau at Nantes to that of turning the key for departure, all was political uncertainty and suspense. No one could in the least foretell the fortunes of the morrow. Any day we might wake up to the proclamation of a Third Empire of martial law throughout the country, and wholesale deporta- tions to Cayenne. It was a critical period, rather I should say, a turning-point in the history of the Republic, that surreptitious Republic, Gambetta wittily observed, foisted upon France 56 AN INUNDATION OF THE LOIRE 57 as Leah had been foisted upon Jacob. Clerical- ism, the military spirit, the Napoleonic legend were assiduously nursed during the MacMahon Septennate, and more than one acute crisis happened between August 1875 and August 1876. But if Gambetta and his little band were a match for the political intrigues, if the tide of reaction could be stemmed, and what Goethe calls " retarding demons" could be held in check, not thus was it with the Loire. " Quel torrent revolutionnaire ! " had cried the Conventionnel nearly a hundred years before. French institu- tions and French landscapes have meanwhile changed ; untouched by time remains the character of the people and of their revolutionary river. I was now to have a stupendous ex- perience, to realize in a new and personal sense the fourth chapter of Genesis. Our handsome flat was on the fourth storey, its westward windows looking towards St. Nazaire and the Atlantic ; at all times therefore we enjoyed a vast perspective, in normal seasons, one of great cheerfulness and beauty. Breaking the surface of the river we could see wooded 58 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES islets, bosquets of green amid the blue ; we caught sight too of sail, mast, and funnel, as merchantmen, fishing-craft and steamers scudded to and fro. Very fair showed that riverside scene, villages dotting the slopes, church spires overtopping these, and beyond all, mere glittering streak, the sea ! Day by day this bird's-eye view now changed, sinister signs were on every side, gloomy the prog- nostics at head-quarters. As in times of war or financial crisis, from morning till night folks crowded round the Mairie, Prefecture, and news- paper and telegraph offices, scanning the latest figures. And very soon suspense gave way to anxiety and despair. The truth could no longer be doubted. We were on the eve of that disaster of disasters, that crowning calamity, an inundation of the Loire ! The awesome fascinates against our will, but were it otherwise the inhabitants of the Place Cambronne could not shut out the heart-breaking sight. As every morning I drew up the blind of my bedroom window, I could measure the encroachments of the river. At first there had been nothing more terrible about the scene than AN INUNDATION OF THE LOIRE 59 that of flooded lowlands at home. Coppice woods and velvety isles had gradually dis- appeared, flocks and herds were no longer to be seen, the level reaches forming one vast lake-like expanse. Every added inch of water now meant accu- mulated misfortune, the ruin of early crops, the crumbling of homesteads, the engulfing of husbandmen and cattle. Thrilling us with terror and compassion now came the noise of mingled church bells from afar, that note of warning, shrill, penetrating, unintermittent as the tocsin in times of war. All day long the knell of a hundred death-bells reached us, for death-bells they were indeed ; at table, over our books, in the dead of night, against our wills, we caught the sound, there seemed no shutting it out, long after those terrible days it haunted our ears. Looking towards St. Nazaire we soon discerned only a tall tree-top or church spire here and there, mere arrow-head probably to become invisible on the morrow. With ever-redoubled fury the river thundered on, veritable ocean dealing destruction to man and beast. Then indeed " the waters prevailed 60 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES exceedingly upon the earth, and the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered." Like a doomed city Nantes reared its stately front above the world of waters now encompass- ing its walls. Ships and steamers hitherto lining two miles' length of quay were massed together and securely moored. Cheerful little pleasure-boats no longer sped between the port and riverside stations, the invading waters nearly reached the keystone of lofty stone bridges, the solitude of seething, raging waters being only broken by rescue parties, brave men plying oar here and there at deadliest peril. Little gardens a few days before full of zinnias and chrys- anthemums had become mere ponds. Shops, warehouses, and dwellings in exposed situations were abandoned, whole quarters wearing the aspect of a plague-stricken place. Bridges had been hastily constructed for the convenience of pedestrians, these in many places supplanted by boat or canoe. And naturally the general sus- pense and anxiety increased every day. Now word was brought of drowning cattle, now of homestalls and inmates swept away, and now of valuable lives sacrificed to duty or heroism. AN INUNDATION OF THE LOIRE 61 The morbidly curious or agonized bereaved flocked to the Morgue where lay victims awaiting recognition. The pious thronged the churches, invoking Mother Mary or some favourite saint. All was gloom, disturbance, and consternation. Our own quarters being on high ground and at a considerable distance from the river were safe enough, but calamity is seldom without its twin. We were ourselves soon to be threatened with deluge from above. Just when the inun- dation had reached its height Nantes was visited with the most awful hurricane octogenarians could remember. The second visitation gave no warning. One evening we sat in the salon after dinner, Madame Guepin by the lamp reading aloud inundation news we had no appetite for any other her mother, Mdlle. Huberte, and myself listening with folded hands, for fancy needlework was not here the order of the day. It happened that night that the 'Phare de la Loire' was more hair-bristling than ever. The river was still rising. From every quarter came tidings of havoc and desolation. " Oh, the poor ruined peasants, the widows, 62 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES the orphans, no, I can read no more ! " cried our hostess, in her person embodying that pitie immense so often on Zola's pen. Suddenly we were startled by a clattering of hail on the window-panes, followed by rushing wind ; a minute later and the full fury of the hurricane was upon us. Hurricane, did I say ? Tornado were the apter word. Thunder and gust were no longer distinguishable, hailstones with the sound of artillery, splitting rafters and falling tiles adding to the uproar. Then came what seemed like an overhead Loire, inundation upon inundation, torrential rains, under such circumstances a veritable portent. Before we had time to recover ourselves, in dashed the two maids, Mariette " the Druidess," as Madame Guepin called her handsome, statu- esque Breton cook, and Eulalie, the plain little waif and stray, by training turned into an excellent housemaid. " Madame, madame ! " cried both, almost frightened out of their wits. " "We are unroofed, we are lost ! " True enough the cyclone was dislodging slates and tiles as easily as an autumn wind scatters AN INUNDATION OF THE LOIRE 63 yellow leaves. Attics and lumber-rooms were being laid bare, gentle dripping from our own storey telling of the leakage above. What a night of it we had ! Every available utensil was put in requisition, pots and pans, buckets and baths, water-cans and coal-boxes, when our own supply came to an end, others being borrowed. And, as almost invariably happens under similar conditions, calamity en- gendered neighbourly feeling. Nothing like a good rattling scare to make the whole world kin! Hitherto the various households of this hand- some block had remained strangers to each other, or at most on bowing terms. The borrowing of pots and pans, the risk of being drenched, or even drowned in our beds, changed all this in a twinkling. There was Huberte, prude of the prudish, allowing a sympathetic professor to press her hand ; there was the widow of a Radical and Agnostic Prefet accepting the loan of an Ultra- montane bedchamber, and there was her English visitor invited to sleep under half-a-dozen roofs I Where we all slept, found we sleep at all, are 64 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES matters that escape my memory. Not till long past midnight did any of us go to bed, some being housed by one new acquaintance, some by another. Never did city present a more forlorn appear- ance than Nantes after that memorable, I may say, historic hurricane. The wind had stripped it of head-covering, literally scalped it from end to end, shattered tiles, slates, obstructing loco- motion. For a moment the inundation and its dire mischief were forgotten. Folks could only think of themselves, of their dripping ceilings and jeopardized furniture. Anxious matrons and paterfamilias rushed hither and thither with the same cry on their lips : " Les couvreurs, les couvreurs ! " This word, meaning the roofers, was doubtless put to such use after similar catastrophes of former days; but the wind remained riskily high, heroic slaters and tilers willing to scale six-storeyed buildings did not offer themselves by the hundred. Few repairs could be put in hand till next day. Long after such experiences, when sorrows have been softened by time and pecuniary losses AN INUNDATION OF THE LOIRE 65 made good by benevolence or thrift, comic incidents will recur to the mind, many a whimsical tale relieving the tedium of woe. A war like that of 1870-1 takes precedence as a national calamity, following suit comes an inroad of the phylloxera, the third rank must be assigned to an inundation. If that I have just described did not represent a round sum of two hundred million sterling, 1 the ruin never- theless was on a gigantic scale. But memory no more than misfortune is perennial. When villages were made taut and trim, pastures re- animated with cattle and sheep, orchards and gardens planted afresh, even sufferers and eye- witnesses could smile over their yarn. " ' Save rny pig, never mind me, but save my pig ! ' Never shall I forget that incident," re- counted one of these. "A rescue party had reached an isolated cottage, or rather cabin, on one of the farther islands. Whether the other inmates and household goods had been got away, I do not remember, but there on the roof of the rocking tenement, a little later and it must have 1 The Prussian indemnity, and the loss of money con- sequent upon the destruction of French vines. 66 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES fallen in, was a stout old peasant clinging to a prime pig. The gallant rescuers were willing enough to save poor piggie as well as his master, but time pressed and piggie's unwieldiness pre- sented difficulties. They began to argue, to reason as well cut logic with the winds ! ' Never mind me, save my pig ! ' shouted the old man, and by hook or by crook, and intensely to the delight of both beast and master, the pair were brought safely ashore." Setting aside the French peasant's pride in his animals, we may doubtless account for such pertinacity on these grounds. " My pig can do without me, but what can I do without rny pig ? " had doubtless reasoned the old farmer. Be this as it may, he absolutely refused to quit the swaying house-top without his grunter. CHAPTER VII THE SCARE A good word for President Grevy Half -penny literature How Jacques Bonhomme became Republican " Vous etes ni homme ni f emme ! " The ante-Ferry school-master Two elections and the moral thereof. TWELVE months under such a roof could but be full of experiences. Every day brought its event, and if the expected, in other words, the overthrow of the Third Republic, did not take place, never were free institutions more ruth- lessly menaced. Verily could defenders of liberty say with the apostles, "Now do we stand in jeopardy every hour." Here let me say a good word for that splendid lawyer, true patriot and uncompromising Re- publican, the late Jules Grevy. Poor President Grevy! Not that he loved France less, but that he loved his little grand-daughters more ! With 67 68 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES him as with Victor Hugo, grandfatherhood had degenerated into senility. In acquiring "1'art d'etre grand-pere " l (the art of being a model grandfather) he unlearned that of being a patriot. The domestic slips of his later life should not, however, blind us to his immense public services, nor to his eminence as a legist, an orator, and a statesman. Neither should it be forgotten that just as the Great Carnot had protested against the coup d'etat of the first Napoleon, so Jules GraVy, then Deputy of the Jura in the Constituent Assembly of 1848-52, had protested against the dangerous enlargement of presidential powers. Had the Grevy amendment been then carried, France would have escaped Imperialism, Sedan and the loss of her Rhine provinces, and during the time I speak of, republicans at Nantes would not have gone to bed in fear and trembling. Clericalism, militarism and the Napoleonic idea were rampant during the MacMahon Sep- tennate. In those anxious days the democratic motto 1 Title of a volume by Victor Hugo, deification in verse of pinafores and poutings. THE SCARE 69 was that of Juliet's nurse : "Be wary, look about ! " Unfriendly eyes and ears were at every key-hole, press persecutions were frequent, and anything like the vigorous campaign of later years was out of the question. I well remember how easy it was to miss, yet for the initiated to discover, certain tracts and booklets circulated underhand by millions through the length and breadth of the country. I used to dawdle in a bookseller's shop kept by two friendly old ladies who could not of course parade republican literature. They would at once have lost every subscriber to the Semaine Religieuse. I soon found out that these admirable women combined the wisdom of the serpent with the gentleness of the dove. To my apparently innocent question "Have you anything new?" ever came the answer "Have a good look round; see for yourself, dear mademoiselle. Take your time." Slipped between nondescript volumes, on the topmost top, at the bottom-most bottom of every heap, were the most astounding little works ever issued at prices ranging from a half-penny to 70 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES threepence. Whilst Gambetta was thundering away in the Chamber, and Republican journalists were seconding his efforts, historians, political economists and men of science stepped in to aid the good work. By dint of perpetual prying and turning over, I amassed quite a collection of these booklets, silent yet speaking witnesses of ardent patriotism, ceaseless warfare waged on behalf of democracy. In the service of the half- penny series, called ' L'instruction republicaine/ was enlisted the historian M. Henri Martin, among his tracts being, ' Les Napoleons et les fron- tieres de la France/ and ' Hoche and Buonaparte.' The first, the price of which, on account of a map, is raised to ten centimes instead of five, is a mas- terpiece of historic condensation ; the second, a brilliant parallel with an unanswerable moral. It is difficult to realize how under a Republican Government such works could be contraband. Harder still is it to realize the cost in time, money, above all, in physical wear and tear of this campaign. The propagandists were seldom rich men, often quite the reverse, and only by dint of rigid economy and self-sacrifice could the work have been carried on. THE SCARE 71 One educator of Jacques Bonhomme himself possessed of very moderate means told me that he had spent sixteen hundred pounds on the dissemination of republican literature. Twenty-five years ago as to-day, the enemies of enlightenment and intellectual freedom were, of course, the clergy. "What comments could I not give here upon Gambetta's famous dictum, "Le clericalisme voila Tennemi ! " Hardly a day of my twelve months' stay at Nantes but confirmed that memorable utterance. One weapon of the Ultramontane cure was his Sunday sermon. Whenever any of these political tracts, H. Martin's ' Hoche and Buonaparte/ ' Ce que serait un nouvel Empire/ by H. Carnot (father of the late President), or 4 Les Police Imperiales/ by an Alsatian, had been ferreted out, fulminations from the pulpit were sure to follow. Not only was the writing but the writer attacked. Recent events have showed us that the Romish clergy stick at nothing where the cloaking of falsehood is concerned. One lie that serves their purpose is every whit as good as another. Thus was it with their predecessors a quarter of a century ago. 72 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES " So long as the cure of my parish contented himself with abusing myself and my publica- tions, I let him alone," said one of these pioneers to me ; " but when he took my wife's good name in hand, defaming her in the eyes of the congre- gation, mon Dieu! you should have seen me then ! Outside the sacristy I waited for my man, club-stick in hand, ready to do him to death. And white as a sheet he turned when he caught sight of me thus armed, for he was but a poor slip of a fellow fresh from the semin- ary. ' Wretch ! ' shouted I, brandishing my stick. * Being a priest, that is, neither man nor woman, I can't meet you in a duel, and you are not worth haling with village viragoes before a justice of the peace. But mark ! another word, a syllable about my wife in the pulpit, and you'll get home more dead than alive ! ' This gentleman, although possessed of moderate means, held an independent position, and could therefore carry things with a high hand. Very different fared it with any struggling journalist or wretchedly paid school-master who ventured to protest against the MacMahon tyranny. Fines, suspensions, imprisonment fell to their THE SCARE 73 portion. Many careers were shipwrecked, many hearts broken in the struggle, yet it went on. The village pedagogue, the ante-Ferry school- master, he it was who suffered most. Pitiful indeed was his plight under normal conditions, and no one more liable to censure or persecution ! M. Waddington's recent grant had slightly ame- liorated his pecuniary position, but even at the time I write of, 30 a year with lodging and a small capitation fee, represented average pay. The Ferry laws are not in the least likely to be revoked, and it is the Ferry laws, or, to put the matter in a clearer light, the power of the school-master that has saved the Kepublic, vic- toriously combated Boulangism and the more serious Royalist and Bonapartist conspiracies of yesterday. Whilst the Jesuit college numbers its thousands, it is by millions that the village school-master enrolls its youthful Republicans. Immense, therefore, is his influence, the weight thereby cast in the scale of free institutions and liberty of conscience. And but for the valiant spirits I here recall, unwearied combatants now at rest, unflagging pens laid aside for ever, the Ferry laws would have been impossible, repre- 74 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES sentative government in France a nine days' wonder. Sad it is that those who fought the good fight should so seldom hear the wild shouts of victory ! After the inundation and hurricane came a quiet time. Folks did their best to scare each other out of their wits, but no second Commune was proclaimed, nor did we make up to a Bourbon or Imperialist coup d'etat and state of siege. The general elections of 1876 brought plenty of excitement. Just ten years later I witnessed a similar event at Angouleme. But within a decade how had matters changed ! How had the Republic put to shame its detractors and consolidated its powers ! Whilst at Nantes in 1876 prevailed a veritable terror, in 1885 the capital of the Angoumais was not in the least disturbed. I arrived in October of the last-mentioned year, and confessed to my host that the time hardly seemed propitiate for a visit. "Nay," he said laughingly, "unless warned beforehand you would not know to-morrow that anything unusual is going on throughout France." THE SCARE 75 True enough, when next day we strolled forth the town presented its usual Sunday appearance. Nothing had been to change its appearance, no colours were flying, no favours were worn, very few placards could be seen, and nothing in the way of house decoration. Folks went to mass as usual, groups of men gathered at street corners, but without a vestige of excitement. Nor as the day wore on did affairs change. About four o'clock in the afternoon we watched voters going to the poll. A solitary police officer stood by the entrance of the Hotel de Ville, and even his pre- sence was unnecessary. As my friend observed: " One might fancy that those worthy citizens had gone inside to purchase a bit of cheese ! " And when night came what a contrast did Angouleme present to an English town under the same circumstances ! All here was quiet and orderly, no brass bands followed by tag-rag and bobtail, no noisy procession, no drunken brawlers ! Serious of the serious are Frenchmen when seriousness befits, let insular prejudice say what it will. Very differently fared we at Nantes under the MacMahon Septennate, Imperial regime 76 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES slightly watered, Ultramontane gingerbread just touched up with democratic gilding ! The period was one succession of bogus panics, preposterous episodes worthy of burlesque or comic opera. One day my friend the Capucin brother fled to his American acquaintance, begging the loan of an arm-chair and a revolver for a night or two. All the religious houses in the city, he averred, were going to be fired and gutted, and their inmates shot down or delivered to the fury of the mob a mob, by the way, existing in his own imagination only. This consular agent, although a Plymouth Brother, lived on friendliest terms with neigh- bouring vicaire and abbe. He was now besieged by clerical visitors agog for information. Sep- tember massacres, Carrier's noyades, and who knew what else loomed in the distance ? Better cross the Atlantic than confront useless martyr- dom! As to social intercourse, Home Rule among ourselves and the Dreyfus affair in France of to-day, proved no more terrible apple of discord. THE SCARE 77 My hostess received her friends on Wednesday afternoons. Upon one of those occasions she was shaking hands with the wife of her Bonapartist friend, mentioned farther back, when the wife of a leading Republican was announced. The latter beat a hasty retreat, even refusing a chair. Another day as Madame Guepin and myself were going down-stairs we encountered the heroine of the siege, the portly, good-humoured elderly matron who showed herself none the worse after five months' semi-starvation. " Mon Dieu, ma bonne amie ! " she cried, as soon as she could get breath, for she had mounted the third stair and had fourteen stone to carry. " I was coming to you for advice. Folks say we rich folks are all going to be murdered in our beds ! " Here is the explanation of these vagaries. The working-man's candidate was a Republican, and therefore in Ultramontane eyes a Communard, a Red Radical, an Atheist, and utterly devoid of moral sentiments. Strange to say his nomination had been ob- jected to by the less advanced of his own party, moderate Republicans going over to the other 78 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES side, now openly supporting a Legitimist. Yet the first candidate was not only a citizen of position but the much-respected head of a family, against whose character nothing could be hinted. Why such turning of coats ? Simply because the working-men as a body were for the only Republican who presented himself, and the work- ing classes were, forsooth, Socialists ! Reactionary journals announced a general over- throw of society. The fashionable world prepared for a second emigration. And out of this bellowing mountain crept the tiniest mouse ever ,seen ! The newly-elected Radical merely raised his voice on behalf of more equitable military service. No less subversive deputy sat in the Chamber. CHAPTER VIII STORY-TELLING The Commune En route for Satory " My father ! Save my father ! " An ex-priest's story. THAT mention of the Commune a few pages back recalls some wonderful story-telling. Never indeed had born relator more golden opportunity. We were on the morrow of three stupendous, rather should I say, cataclysmal events in con- temporary annals Sedan, the siege and the insurrection of May. Each period teemed with the marvellous, the unheard-of, each, as recalled by participant or looker-on, awakened alternate horror and admiration. Sublimely then shone forth characteristics eminently French, elasticity of temperament, superhuman powers of endur- ance, fiery patriotism. In blackest dyes showed defects common to the human race, class hatred, cruelty, the lust of revenge. 79 80 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES We were no thimble-wearing, yet no thumb- twirling little society in the Place Cambronne. Every one's day was as busy as could be, and when evening came, reading aloud or story-telling took the place of crewel work and parlour games. To the best of my remembrance I never saw huswife or workbasket in that pleasant salon dur- ing my twelve months' stay. It was evidently my hostess's opinion, as it has always been my own, that talk should be listened to, and that the burying of one's head over an embroidery frame during general conversation is the height of impoliteness. From an economic standpoint moreover she discouraged amateur fancy work or dressmaking. The needle, she would urge, is the breadwinner of our poorer sisters. As I have before mentioned, Madame Guepin was a born narrator, and not even the war or the siege moved her so much as the Commune. The history of that dire, yet perfectly intelligible movement was familiar to her in each detail. She had lived with Communards during the Thiers proscription, had sheltered many and aided more than one escape romantic as that of Lord Nithsdale. STORY-TELLING 81 Any attempt to explain this most complicated chapter of contemporary history would be wholly out of place here. I will only quote the observa- tion of a French writer in accordance with my hostess's view twenty-five years before. " Machiavelli has justly remarked/' writes M. Andre Lebon in his recent work (' Cent ans d'histoire interieure'), " that almost all the great sieges of history have been followed by popular risings ; moral and physical sufferings predispose the people to the influence of agitators ; the almost hap-hazard distribution of arms necessi- tated during a period of investment, renders an outbreak easy. Paris unfortunately did not escape the usual fate." "Ah, the poor brave people of Paris," began Mme. Guepin one evening. " They had suffered so much and had kept body and soul together, not on bread but on wine. When siege bread (you have seen what that was like !) and horse- flesh failed, wine still remained in plenty. Think of it, my friend, wine maddeniDg a half-starved populace ! Then came the crowning exasperation, Prussian helmets in Paris and proclamation of disarmament ! Let me now relate one or two 81 G 82 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES incidents of that awful period. They will show the sublime pity actuating my beloved people of Paris, the angelic impulses here and there overcoming vindictive passion. " The culminating horror had now come ; after invasion, siege, and civil war, the daily march of Communards to Satory, men, women, and oh ! God, that I, a Frenchwoman, should say it children, to be shot down by their brothers, husbands, fathers ! Nothing had been done outwardly to humanize these poor creatures, many of them innocent as myself. Bemired, be- draggled, blood-stained, their clothes almost torn from their backs, as they had entered prison, so they now left it. Nor was any effort made to impose decent behaviour on the part of the crowd and protect the victims from vilest outrage. Only care was taken that the mitrailleuse should have its full number ! And, remember, no ribald mob was this, no scum of the population as when Charlotte Corday and Madame Roland were howled to the guillotine. Elegantly dressed ladies, patronesses of charitable institutions, wives and mothers, not content to look on as at a show, not content to insult with their lips, would rush STORY-TELLING 83 forward and strike some hapless wretch with fan or parasol but, no, not a word more ! Of these things you have read enough and to spare in the newspapers, and the very mention makes me sick. Well, one morning the incident I have from an eye-witness as the train of the doomed moved on, a young poorly dressed girl stole forth to gaze. She evidently belonged to the journey- woman class, was perhaps a clear-starcher or mender in some shop close by. As she stood thus, hearkening to that awful tramp, tramp, tramp, looking in those faces dehumanized by outrage and despair, maybe also by crime, a spasm, rather a frenzy of pity thrilled her slight frame, an angelic passion of protectiveness con- quered fear. There was not so much as a second for deliberation, even had deliberation been possible to one thus suddenly evangelized, imbued with the very spirit of the One Teacher. She had no time to think of her own safety, no time as it seemed to single out any especial object of compassion. Yet something in the way of mag- netic attraction must have here occured, as some- thing must have accounted for her transport. All at once, above the sound of plodding feet and 84 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES clattering swords, rose a woman's voice, a cry out-reaching the hideous procession. " < My father ! Save my father ! ' " What followed was so unexpected that alike spectators, police, and soldiers were struck dumb. Springing forward the girl now caught one of the prisoners, a bent, white-haired old man, in her arms and pressed him to her heart wildly, repeating " ' My father ! Save my father ! ' " Had the officers in command sickened of their ghastly office ? Did they hail this oppor- tunity of showing mercy ? Or did they shrink from a hateful, a revolting struggle ? For fiercely and more fiercely still that young frail girl clung to her pretended father, determined, as all could see, either to save him or fall by his side " Here the voice of our story-teller faltered, then she smiled through her tears. " But, thank God, the age of miracles is not yet past. The crowds so brutal just before, smiled, wept, applauded ; the officers in charge shrugged their shoulders, and nodded by way of assent ; more dead than alive the old man STORY-TELLING 85 was pushed towards the pavement with his deliverer." " And did the history end there ? " asked one of us. " Then and there ! My informant, who, as I have said, witnessed the scene, could only learn that the pair were absolutely strangers to each other. Something in the prisoner's aspect perhaps had appealed to the girl, he might have recalled a relation or kind protector of her youth. I prefer to think otherwise, and that she was angelically, sublimely drawn towards the personification of despair ! " " And now," said our hostess, " let me tell you another story of the Commune, this time a romance out-romancing ' Monte Cristo ' itself, and the hero of which was well known to me. Some years since a priest, whom I will call the Abbe Petit, quitted the soutane and Kome for con- science' sake. He was a remarkable man, and indeed most of these recalcitrant priests are remarkable men ; 1 with him, as was the case with 1 Twenty-five years ago the great secessional movement now witnessed in France had not begun. An apostate from the priesthood was then no matter of every day. 86, ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES my husband, a passion of pity dominated intellec- tual force. With him he was a born apostle of humanity. I may say that he was our friend, for to us both he came in the hour of spiritual conflict. I add, too," here again the speaker's eyes glistened, " that we were proud to help him in the after and hardly less poignant struggle for bread. All would-be saviours of their kind are visionaries, illuminati, semi-lunatics, and the Abbe Petit, Monsieur Petit I will call him, formed no exception to the rule. Being now a layman and a civilian, he took to himself a wife, of course no suitable companion, no well-educated, well- brought-up, conscientious woman, who would have been a help-meet indeed. He yielded to a fatal overmastering passion. His partner, a girl of great beauty, was his partner in misfortune, like himself a pariah, an outcast; in the words of scripture, their hands were against every man and against both was every man's hand. Being an accomplished scholar, however, as well as a man of honourable repute, his new friends obtained for him a position in the United States. He was soon engaged as French master and lecturer upon French literature in a university STORY-TELLING 87 of the South. Cheerfully, in so far at least as any one whose career has been wrecked for conscience' sake could be so, he started with his wife for New Orleans. Here I come to one chapter in this most strange history which will ever remain conjecture. Half-way between Bordeaux and the American port, the Cordouan, that was the name of the ship, was wrecked ; the particulars I do not remember, I only know that few if any lives were lost, and that M. Petit, after seeing his wife safely into one of the boats, was himself rescued by means of a raft. From that moment till the events I am about to relate the pair never met. The unhappy man made every effort to obtain information about his lost wife, advertised in American and European papers, set agencies to work, but in vain. Lived she still, was she hiding from him, or had she perished on that fearful night, perished unob- served, in the agony of panic leaving no trace behind? His own opinion none ever knew. Time passed on and this uncertainty so preyed upon our friend's mind that intellectual routine and assiduity to daily tasks became impossible. He had meanwhile inherited a modicum of 88 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES fortune, the barest pittance yet sufficing for the ascetic he was, so on the eve of the war he re- turned to France, to Paris. Throughout that Arctic winter who can ever forget it ? he served as an ambulance attendant on the ramparts. Tall, spare, muscular, possessing an extraordinary, I may say, an arch-power of physical and mental resistance, no privations or labours seemed to exhaust him. Pity and perhaps indifference to life made him appear superhuman, absolutely insensible to bodily claims ; cold, hunger, naked- ness, fatigue, all these were no more to him than to the Fakirs of Indian legend. It was only natural that such a man should be drawn into the Commune, his history as sketched here makes this apparent. Sufficient for him that the cause of insurrection seemed the cause of patriotism, and of the poor, much-tried, long- suffering people ! Natural was it, too, that he should resolve to perish with his comrades, scorning alike flight and concealment. " The eve of wholesale executions had come. Alone in his cell he was stoically preparing for death, when without warning the door opened and a woman stood before him. Vice ever STORY-TELLING 89 finds a passport when virtue knocks in vain ! The courtesan enters freely when the sister of charity is frowned away. A glance told him to what class his visitor belonged. His first impulse was of horror. What had the votary of licence to do with dying men ? Then the feeling gave way to passionate pity. Was she not victim rather than culprit ? And might not a com- passionate woman's heart beat under that garish guise ? " ' Poor woman ! ' he murmured motioning her away. ' The person you seek is not here.' " The intruder shook her head, and without a word held out a paper, signed pardon with his name in full. Not to take leave then, not for a last hand- clasp or kiss had she come, but to announce deliverance ! The parchment was put back sadly, yet without real disappointment. Life had so little hold on him ! " ' There is error here ; lose not a moment in having it rectified/ he said, again pointing to the door ; but she shook her head, and a glance, a word, told the rest. " This saviour, this messenger of freedom was his long-lost wife. She had never loved him, 90 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES union with such a man had proved unbearable. Self-sought divorce meant to her lawlessness, love so called, pleasure. But such restitution as lay in her power she now made. With the price of her beauty she had ransomed his life." " And what became of the pair ? " we asked. " Can the Ethiop change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? " was the reply. " The woman went her way, the man his across the Manche. I hear from him occasionally. He is French tutor in some public institution." CHAPTER IX STORY-TELLING (continued) An aftermath of horrors A timid ring at the bell " Dost thou not know me,Guepin ?" "Le delire de la mort" A travesty M. Jules Simon's mission. " BUT horrors did not end on the plain of Satory ; we were destined to witness an after- math," resumed my friend. " Suffering upon suffering had rendered my countrymen inexorable. And, I confess it, nothing endured at the hand of the enemy afflicted me so much as the pitiless- ness of Frenchmen to Frenchmen, the vengeance wreaked by brethren upon brethren. Consider the murder of the good Archbishop of Paris and the cure" of Madeleine, the poor cure who loved life so dearly, who rebelled, as well he might, against pinchbeck martydom ! Thiers was my husband's friend. Thiers has done great things for France, but I must say it, the blood of those 91 92 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES two priests lies on his head ! Again and again the leaders of the Commune would fain have parleyed, offering to exchange the pair for Blanqui and another. Thiers in refusing sealed their fate. No, I cannot find it in my heart to forgive him. The time was ripe for mercy. Instead, those .unhappy Communards who had escaped trial were hunted down ruthlessly as Girondins by the Committee of Public Safety. " Well, let me tell you some of my own stories, incidents that happened under our very roof and during my husband's prefectship. " One evening, just as we were sitting down to dinner, there came a timid ring at the front bell. A celebrated oculist, a philanthropist, to say nothing of a prefet, is of course never ' not at home ! ' in other words, if in the house he is at everybody's beck and call, and at such times, as you will see, all the more necessary was it to admit any one, to hear what all had to say ; our household, too, was trained to the business. By this time they had become pretty good physi- ognomists, especially Mariette, my Druidess, whom you know. " ' Mon Dieu ! wife, am I never to swallow STORY-TELLING 93 my soup in peace ? ' cried my poor husband. Re- signedly all the same he threw down his napkin and rose from the table. After a few minutes the door of his consulting-room opened and I heard quickly uttered orders "'Quick, Mariette, warm water, more light, and bid madaine not wait for me an operation.' " It was then a patient, perhaps some peasant who had tramped from remotest Brittany to be couched such occurrences were of every day. Nor did his next order startle me. " ' The keys of the linen press, please, madame,' said Mariette reappearing. ' I am to make up a bed for the poor fellow in M. le Prefet's smaller consulting-room.' "Mariette, with the rest, invariably dropped 'M. le Docteur' for 'M. le Prefet.' Well, this arrangement did not at all surprise any of us. My husband often lodged his poorer patients from a distance, especially in case of very delicate opera- tions. When, however, he rejoined me half-an-hour later, I saw that something unusual had happened. Throughout his term of office he had been most severely tried. Sedan and Metz had aged him by twenty years ; the Commune and savage reprisals 94 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES of M. Tillers' goverment finished the work. He was now a broken-down man. " ' Mariette, take my patient soup and bread ; no word remember, he must remain perfectly still,' he said ; then he went on, or rather tried to go on, with his own dinner. Never during that fearful time had I seen him more disturbed. When we were alone in the drawing-room he told his story. On the threshold he had encountered a tattered, cowering figure, as he thought, some escaped gallows-bird, some outcast who had heard of one door ever open to the homeless, one hand ever outstretched to the unhappy. " ' Here, my poor fellow, and God be with you I ' had said my husband, proffering a piece of mdney ; then he heard his name uttered, not his name only, but the 'thee' and 'thou' of school- boy days. " ' Guepin,' whispered, rather sobbed the other, ' dost thou not know me ? Thy comrade, Armand of the Lycee ? ' " It was a dearly-loved school-fellow of early youth, a man only a few months before holding a high position as University professor. Like STORY-TELLING 95 the doctor he was an advanced democrat and social reformer. He had taken part, or was supposed to have taken part, in the Commune, had undergone" trial at Versailles, and was con- demned to death, the sentence being afterwards commuted to penal servitude. " How with another he contrived to escape from prison, I need not tell you ; escape he did. For days and days the pair led an existence recalling that of the proscribed Girondins, Buzot and Petion, tramping miles of country at night, from dawn till sunset hiding themselves as best they could. Their sufferings were terrible, and at length they decided to part company. Armand making for Nantes, his companion for the South. " Our ' patient ' stayed three weeks with us, his eyes bandaged as of one operated upon for cataract, his room darkened, not a soul about the place suspecting the truth. If indeed any one had suspected it, the good Dr. Guepin, thus was he ever called, had nothing to fear. His worst enemies, the worst enemies of the principles he held so dear, would never have dared to touch him there. There is a kind, rather I should say, 96 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES a pitch of goodness that hems a man round, becomes his palladium. Metaphorically speak- ing, he wears a coat of mail. Thus was it with Ange Guepin." "And the second refugee?" I asked. "Did he too find a deliverer ? " Our hostess's face, so majestic when thus moved by intensest pity, clouded over. "Do not let us talk of it," she replied. " There are some things too sad for words. Worn to a skeleton, as he said of himself, turning wolfish from hunger and unheard-of privations, the un- happy man gave himself up to the authorities, and was duly shipped for Cayenne. Ah, Cayenne, Cayenne ! How true of Frenchmen then that awful sentence of Tacitus, ' they hated each other with the hatred of brothers.' Ask me about Cayenne some other time. Now let me tell you of an escape that was really whimsical." And the narrator smiled, as she often did through her tears. Not that she was by nature lachrymose, what she called certain of her feminine acquaintances, " une saule pleureur " (a weeping willow). The recollection of her husband's magnanimity ever moved her deeply. STORY-TELLING 97 We must remember that it was here a Prefet who had put compassion before red tape, and Christian before civic duty. A rationalist in the eyes of his detractors, an atheist forsooth ! into every word and deed of his life he put the teach- ing of Jesus Christ. " Strange that any story of those awful times should awaken a smile," resumed Madame Guepin, " but the most terrible tragedy of our day had occasionally a comic side. Our next refugee was a woman, who with many another had escaped the mitrailleuse against her will. You may well look aghast, dear friend, so it was. I have not yet spoken of one mental epidemic that followed the siege, le delire de la mort, the frenzied falling in love with death. Think of the pass to which folks were brought. The mitrailleuse seemed a friend! Well, Adrienne (thus will I call my heroine) could not get over this affront ; in her case, affront it seemed. A self-styled petroleuse (don't suppose that she ever struck a match with mischievous intent), a would-be uprooter of the bourgeoisie, a Com- munarde of Communards, she had nevertheless been overlooked or deemed of no account. NGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Most likely her pronouncements were regarded in the light of mental aberration. Overcome with these indignities, Adrienne took to her pen, inditing inflammatory diatribes against M. Thiers, openly inciting the people to a second and bloodier civil war, preaching anarchy, de- struction, heaven knows what. At last the police thought it well to interpose, but by the time her arrest was decided upon, the passion for martyrdom had cooled. Adrienne became suddenly as anxious to escape the mitrailleuse or Cayenne as once she had hungered and thirsted after jail or death. " Of course she fled to us, for she was of our friends, and a better-hearted, cleverer, alas ! I must add, more wrong-headed creature never lived. We soon hit upon the neatest possible mode of escape. Mariette, our Druidess, had a sister who was lay sister, acting as dairy- maid in a poor little convent near Pontivy. This working nun always spent a few days with Mariette every year, it was her way of taking a holiday. What easier than to keep Marie-Jeanne indoors for a couple of days, and meanwhile dispatch Adrienne in conventual garb STORY-TELLING 99 to St. Brieuc, thence to Jersey 1 ? So we laid our plans, and to make sure of no miscarriage, arranged that Mariette should accompany the pseudo nun to her destination, seeing her safely aboard. " But there are some physiognomies and figures that defy disguise. Could you only have wit- nessed that dressing-up ! When black robe and wimple, rosary and girdle, were adjusted, we made fast doors and windows, and master, mis- tress, and maids laughed their fill. The get-up was so preposterous, the masquerade so apparent ! For if ever a demagogue in petticoats looked her part, it was our poor Adrienne. And she had a peppery temper. The more merriment we made, the angrier she became. At last she could bear it no longer. " ' No, no/ she cried, tearing off her lendings. ' Dress me up as a country wench, a street- walker, anything you please, but wear this garb, in my eyes symbol of mediaeval superstition and darkness, never ! The mere dangling of these beads would madden me. Better by far be haled to the hulks, rejoin my poor partners in misfortune at Cayenne, than thus travesty 100 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES myself, falsify the only claims I have upon society and my kind.' " We succeeded at last in talking her over. Big baskets, such as country women carry to market, were filled with cheap shoppings, earthen- ware, yarn, spice, and so on ; and the pair, thus laden, took the night train to St. Brieuc, no one interfering with them. "Next morning early Adrienne crossed to Jersey, where she still remains, home-sick, rather Paris-sick enough. " But that aftermath of horrors would fill a volume, a volume awful in the reading," added our story-teller. " Some time after these events, our friend Jules Simon, then minister, was deputed to Brest, his mission being an inspec- tion of the deportes, in other words, the un- happy Communards shipped for Cayenne. The nature of their sufferings may be gathered from his own. How can I put anything so horrible into decent language ? ' Eh bien, notre pauvre ami etait mange par la vermin e.' l "The Republic treated its prisoners as Napoleon the Third and his pretorians had treated the vic- 1 "Our poor friend was eaten up by vermin." STORY-TELLING 101 tims of their coup d'etat. 1 Pity, pity was that word to be banished from our dictionary ? " It was not banished from the Place Cambronne anyhow. The traditional charity of the good doctor was kept up. As a sovereign his widow now held her court, but a court of the forlorn, the troubled, the despairing ! Day after day the petitioners poured in, some wanting one thing, some another; no matter the nature of folks' troubles, they fled to her. Now it was some little waif she fitted out for sea, now some girl student she helped in her studies. Many came for advice, not a few for her good word, most, naturally enough, for money, and the crowning sadness of such a life was the necessity of saying "No." 1 Here is a sample. "Between the 1st and 26th March 1853, between two and three thousand deportes, among whom were fifty-seven ladies, were disembarked at Algerian ports, and as many more at Cayenne. On the voyage to the latter place the weather was terrific. Prisoners and gendarmes rolled together on the floor in the agonies of sea-sickness. The port-holes were closed, and the suffer- ings from thirst and want of air hideous. The food of the prisoners consisted of worm-eaten biscuits and beans, served to all in a common dish." Magen, ITiatoire du Second Empire. Paris, 1871. 102 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES If her benevolences afforded matter for surprise, still more astonishing was the thrift by which they were effected. The Guepins of the world are never rich. My hostess's entire income was very limited. Yet on the modest sum-total she had ever money for causes at heart, ever a cover for dropper-in, ever the dignified consciousness of superfluity, an over and above for the evil day, whether her own or that of another. CHAPTER X A REPUBLICAN OF '30 Oculist, philanthropist, and politician A Jesuitical manoeuvre The story of a statue A grand lying-in-state " Aux plus desherites le plus d'amour." GUEPIN of Nantes is now a historic figure. The philanthropist, the social reformer, the savant may in time be forgotten. The colleague of Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, and the little group known as " The Republicans of '30 " belongs to French history. No need for the statues raised to his memory at Nantes and at Pontivy, his birthplace, no need for the street nomenclature in both towns recalling his name. When local traditions of the good doctor have faded away, the founder of Breton democracy will retain his niche in the national Walhalla. For Dr. Guepin's first title of honour is nothing less than this, he it was who sowed the good seed in Western France, who having put his hand to the plough, 103 104 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES never once looked back. Boldly, unremittingly, at the risk of fortune, freedom, life itself, he stood up during the Monarchy of July and Second Empire, for liberty and conscience, representative government, and the supremacy of law. It is difficult for students of history now-a-days to realize the self-imposed task of such men, the terribly slow spread of their ideas. When Ange Guepin was in his prime, that is to say, on the accession of Louis Philippe, leading Republicans could be counted on the fingers. In the words of M. Lebon (' Cent ans d'histoire contemporaine ') : " If the republican idea had a few partisans among the people of Paris, hardly so much could be said of the provinces." But the little group, the " Re- publicans of '30," never lost heart. Despite the gagging of the press, and the laws against associa- tion and public speaking, they pursued their quiet way, the propaganda being slow but sure. Naturally enough Louis Napoleon had his eye upon these men from the first, and naturally enough after the events of December, his pretor- ians dragged Dr. Guepin before a council of war. But his bitterest enemies could bring absolutely nothing against him, and he was permitted to A REPUBLICAN OF '30 105 return to Nantes, there pursuing his beneficent career till broken down by Sedan and Metz. For upwards of forty years he laboured as an oculist, a social worker and writer, in each career attaining considerable eminence. He might indeed have died a millionaire, his wide- spread reputation bringing patients from remotest parts of France ; at one time so numerous were his patients that he held two consultations daily, sometimes seeing no less than forty persons. But what he received with one hand he gave away with the other, his style of living being always simple in the extreme. Two questions chiefly occupied Dr. Gue'pin as a reformer and thinker, namely, the advancement of women, and the education, moral, economic and political, of the working classes. With regard to the first question, he will be found in accordance with John Stuart Mill. In one of his works published so far back as 1835 occur the following passages, which are a keynote to the line of thought and action */ O afterwards adopted : " Whilst a youth once having entered the world leads an existence essentially active and varied, his 106 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES sister remains at home busy with her embroid- ery. She reads little, perhaps because her parents have neither the time nor the inclination to choose books for her use. Now, we hold it a crying injustice thus to leave a young girl self- centred and thrown entirely upon her own re- sources ; having no knowledge of the world, and no basis upon which to build a future except such personal experience, she conceives a wholly fanci- ful and unreal existence, living upon visions, misusing her sensibilities. This vicious system of education so-called is one of the most active agents in bringing about hysteria, nervous disease, and other maladies engendered of a sedentary, self-conscious life." (' Histoire de Nantes.') Could the truth be better, more succinctly put ? Else- where, in his most important work, ' Philosophic du XlXieme Siecle,' and in his one romance, ' Marie de Beauval/ only part of which was ever published, he enlarges upon the same theme, and anticipates the Lycee for girls, and the gradual progress in the position of Frenchwomen generally. No abuse escaped him, and in the above-mentioned romance he gives an excellent chapter upon dress ! A KEPUBLICAN OF '30 107 Dr. Guepin died too soon to see his fondest dreams realized, the consolidation of the Re- public, the revolution in female education, and above all, the career of medicine opened to Frenchwomen. For many years husband and wife had planned a winter residence in Paris, offering a home to girl students of the Sorbonne. This scheme was never carried out, but the first woman physician in France owed her position to the material help and advice of Dr. Guepin. His protegee still holds an important medical post in Paris. Strange to say, although named Prefet by the government of September in 1870, Dr. Guepin had not once been elected deputy of the Chamber. Highly illustrative is the following incident, immensely does it throw light on actual events, the Ultramontane campaign to-day carried against the bogus " Syndicat du trahison," in other words, the brave men and women clamouring for the supremacy of law ! On the occasion of the general election of 1869 the vast majority of Nantais voted for Dr. Guepin, but the Imperial candidate was returned by the agricultural voters. With Jesuitical tact 108 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES the village cures had introduced the following argument into their Sunday sermon : "Now, my brethren, let us put the matter clearly before you ; thereon, ponder well. You are called upon, ray dear brothers, to select one of two candidates to represent you in Parliament. Remember that one of these two is he who heals you when you are sick, who restores sight to the blind, who not only heals you and makes you see, but is a verit- able father to the poor, dispensing charity to all in need of it ; I ask you, who will fill his place if he goes to Paris ?" The consummate ingenuity of this reasoning makes us almost forgive the authors ! The first act of the new Prefet sets forth his character as a man. Among the doctor's fellow-students had been Billault, who afterwards abandoned liberal ideas, becoming one of the ministers and most determined supporters of Napoleon the Third. When Billault died his partisans erected his statue at Nantes, much against the better judg- ment of many. The fall of the Second Empire came, and the first cry of the Nantais populace was, " Down with Billault's statue ! " On Sep- A REPUBLICAN OF '30 109 tember 4, an exasperated multitude numbering several thousands assembled round the statue with ropes and pulleys, determined to pull it down and drag it into the Loire. Refusing any escort Dr. Gue'pin hastened to the scene unarmed and alone, confronting the infuriated crowd. " Fellow-citizens," he cried, " I forbid you to touch this statue, but I promise that in four-and- twenty hours it shall be safely handed over to Billault's family ! " The few, resolute words were enough. Not to the people's hearts and consciences had the newly- named Preset spoken, but their "good Guepin." With one accord the hitherto unmanageable masses melted away, meek as school-children. And according to promise the statue was duly removed. This incident calls up whimsical reflections. Let us suppose, or rather imagine, another Hun- dred Days, brief reign of Roi This or Emperor That. What a hauling down of statues would take place throughout the country ! How would poor little chef-lieux be shorn of their marble splendour ! And what tragi-comic encounters and scrimmages would ensue ! Without doubt 110 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES the theme will some day inspire composers of comic opera or burlesque. The wonder is, it has been neglected so long. Here I may mention a fact not generally known and which perhaps accounts for the mania of statue-raising in France. That arch-despot and littlest of mortal born, Louis Quatorze, prohibited the erection of any statue but his own. Folks might admire him in marble as much as they pleased, but none else, not even the great Moliere and others, whose shoelace the "Roi Soleil" was not worthy to untie. Revolution did away with this, as well as with many another monopoly. It was not, how- ever, till the establishment of the Third Republic that the statue became the right of every French- man, and I may add, Frenchwoman attaining eminence. Interesting it would be to have in figures the precise number of these monuments raised since September 4, 1870 ! Dr. Guepin has two, and my Angevine hostess of the next chapter is equally distinguished. Named Prefet of the Loire Inferieure after Sedan, Dr. Guepin entered zealously on his new duties, never for a moment neglecting the old. A REPUBLICAN OF '30 111 Onerous indeed was his post. The Prussians menaced Brittany, the western departments had to be protected, whilst local affairs presented anxieties without number. Hundreds of families were fleeing to the Channel Islands and England ; alike rich and poor, aristocrats and republicans sought his help and advice. But it was the fall of Metz more than herculean labours that broke him down. He died suddenly in May 1873, aged sixty-eight. The news of his death spread like lightning from end to end of Brittany, and tens of thous- ands flocked to gaze upon those well-beloved features for the last time. No lying-in-state of world-renowned hero ever drew larger, more sorrowing crowds than the simple death-chamber of "the good Guepin." Touching it was to see the train of peasant folk men, women, and children who had made long journeys afoot to bid their benefactor adieu. " Oh ! do not refuse me," urged one old peasant who arrived on the eve of the funeral ; " I have come thirty leagues to see his face and touch his hand for the last time." The following to the grave was an 'immense, 112 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES indeed an unparelleled popular demonstration. Never had such a scene been witnessed at Nantes. The service was of course purely civil. This was inevitable in the case of a man who had throughout his life abjured dogma and sacerdot- alism. But of him even rigid Protestants might say, his sins which are many are forgiven, for he loved much. On his tomb is engraved the maxim of his life ; can any calendar of saints show one more beautiful, more akin to the pure undiluted teaching of Christ ? "Aux plus de'sherites le plus d'amour." (To the most forlorn let us give the most love.) This exquisite sentence is the motto of his principal work, 'Philosophic du XlXieme Siecle.' With words no less heart-searching and lovely the book ends. " Aimer, c'est vivre ; etre aime c'est vivre encore." (To love is to live ; to be beloved is to live twice over.) In person Dr. Guepin resembled his wife, being of noble presence and proportions. Tall, hand- some, imposing, with Breton characteristics was mingled true Gallic humour. He had too what A REPUBLICAN OF '30 113 master spirit was ever without ? his whimsicali- ties. One of these was in the matter of dress. An ardent admirer of the Revolution, he affected Revolutionary dress, and for many years his " collet Robespierre," or full muslin necktie a la Robespierre, was a joke with his friends. It must be admitted that the fashion was becoming. Madame Guepin died in 1889, and her funeral also was the occasion of an immense demonstra- tion. But with a difference. Whilst the doctor's interment had been a civil ceremony as befitted an avowed rationalist, his wife was interred according to the rites of the Reformed Church. They lie side by side, his own motto, here his epitaph, being equally appropriate to herself " Aux plus desherites le plus d'amour." CHAPTER XI A STORY OF HIDDEN TREASURE The lady of two statues Rustic hospitality Self- sufficing housewifery A death-bed revelation Mushroom relations A device. LITTLE did I dream that my next hostess, Madame G L of St. Georges-des-sept- Voies in Anjou, was also destined to immortality in marble, with her friend " the good Guepin," to be honoured by two public monuments ! But France is the land of agreeable surprises and possibilities; of France we may say as of Cleopatra, " Time cannot stale her infinite variety," nor, to use a homelier simile, exhaust the contents of her lucky-bag. The elderly chatelaine who now welcomed me so cordially recalled Queen Philippa, as por- trayed in Westminster Abbey. On either cheek were great rolls of hair after the manner of the third Edward's spouse. Not without pretensions 114 A STORY OF HIDDEN TREASURE 115 to a bel esprit, Madame G L relegated domestic duties to her husband, a homely, ruddy octogenarian standing six feet in his stockings, and still straight as a poplar. Both were ardent Republicans, strongly imbued with socialist principles, and both lived with their humbler neighbours on terms of affectionate intimacy. During my somewhat lengthy visit we had little breakfast and dinner-parties of peasant farmers, we took afternoon collations in one cottage after another. Indeed to none of my French entertainers was I ever more indebted for initiation into rural life. This country house had been built on to the original farmstead, now made over to their fermier, or bailiff. It was of the simplest. Little did I dream when I lay down in my bedchamber, with its bare walls and brick floors, what treasure lay above, around, below. Little did I' dream when opening the window at sunrise, feasting my eyes on the yellow corn- fields, that a fairy wand was to turn all this homeliness and rusticity into gold ! The daily routine was old-fashioned in the extreme. At half-past ten o'clock we break- 116 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES fasted, for the verb luncher had not as yet been introduced into France. At five o'clock we dined, the essentially farmhouse fare being excellent and well-cooked. Stockingless, his bare feet thrust into sabots lined with straw, Desire, the man of all work, footman, gardener, coachman, handed round the dishes. Stockingless and in wooden shoes also, housemaid and dairy-maid clattered about the place. I must now go more fully into the domestic commissariat, apparent excess of detail being justified later on. So self- supporting seemed this Angevin farm that I really could think of nothing but coffee and perhaps lucifer matches that had to be bought. Fish, flesh and fowl of course abounded, nor do fruit and vegetables varied as in the tropics require enumeration. Home-grown too were wine, liqueurs and cordials. More of a novelty seemed home-made oil produced from the walnut, home-made vinegar from the grape, home-made methylated spirit, to say nothing of tonics, laxatives, un- guents, cough mixtures. But the crowning surprise to an English visitor was yet to come. A STORY OF HIDDEN TREASURE 117 Monsieur's shirts, Madame' s under-garments were made of home-spun linen. My host and hostess then lived with a minimum of expendi- ture. It seemed indeed easier to set it down at zero. They owned a house at Angers it is true, in which they passed the winter months, and there were taxes and servants' wages to pay the last moderate enough at this time : here outlay ended. By hundreds rather than thousands of francs must their yearly spending have been reckoned. Perhaps, thought I, no more could be afforded, although in confidence Madame G L would assert the contrary. " A Frenchwoman, dear mademoiselle," she again and again repeated to me, " never enjoys her fortune till she dies, that is to say, if married, she cannot touch a penny without her husband's permission, but if childless, alas ! like myself, she is privileged to will it away. I assure you that for years past I have plagued Monsieur G L to give me the money for a new silk gown, but I shall never get it not as long as he lives anyhow." This union of a }>d esprit and a campagnard or homely farmer had not been of the happiest. 118 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES The loss too of their only child had saddened both. The wife sought relief in a sentimental correspondence savouring of preciosity with an elderly sympathizer of the other sex. They interchanged weekly letters upon art and letters, tender little confidences relieving intellectual strain. The husband threw heart and soul into Republican propaganda, wine - making, and another hobby, a passion, as will be seen hereafter. Just ten years later I paid a second visit to Madame G L , now a widow. How had matters changed ! Instead of the lumbering old hooded vehicle of former years, a smart brougham awaited me at the station. No longer in cotton gown but in rustling silk the silk she had dreamed of half a lifetime ! my hostess embraced me on the threshold, by her side a dame de compagnie or lady companion, housekeeper and secretary. Desire*, the same invaluable man-servant, now served us in elegant footman's undress, the maids had abandoned wooden shoes and local costume for bourgeois dress. The little drawino-- O O room had been refurnished, new books and periodicals strewed the table. On every side were evidences of money-spending. The very genius of modernity reigned supreme. My friend had meanwhile changed. The old vivacity was there, but failing sight and infirmity forbade the active life of former days. Accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, she now took daily drives like any Court duenna. Balzac would have made a masterpiece out of the confidences she forthwith poured into my ear. The facts shall be related without circum- locution or embellishment. Monsieur G L with the majority of his countrymen was a rationalist, and, unlike many, he had the courage of his opinions. No priest was permitted to enter his death-chamber. He did, however, make a confession, surely the strangest that ever fell from dying lips. " My good wife," he began, when the attend- ants had been sent out of the room, "you have often accused me of parsimony in the management of our affairs, but you will now discover that all along I only acted in your interest. Henceforth, you are a rich woman. That you will make an excellent use of your 120 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES fortune I do not for a moment doubt." Dropping his voice to a whisper he then entered into minute details : under the eaves here, she would find so much scrip, walled up there, so much gold, between the lower tiles of such and such an outhouse were wedged bank-notes, in the uppermost of another, deeds and securities. The inventory of this hidden treasure he had at his tongue's end, and fortunately failing strength held out till the last item was told. High and low, right and left, without and within, the house and premises were virtually lined with money, and money's worth, not a few of the receptacles being preposterous enough, even un- namable. And alike schedule and testament were verbal. In terror of parasites and importuners, perhaps equally afraid of elegance and show, the old farmer had never committed himself to paper. Neither husband nor wife having any next of kin, a will was not of course strictly necessary ; moreover, the making of a will im- plies notary's fee, and above all, publicity. And when the funeral rites were over, like his great friend and examplar, Dr. Guepin, Monsieur G L was buried without Romish cere- A STORY OF HIDDEN TREASURE 121 monial, the general ransacking proved no dis- illusion. My hostess woke up, not only to silk gowns but to a large fortune ! She now enjoyed an income treble that of a Cardinal Archbishop, Colonial Governor, or General of Division ! I now come to scenes and episodes to which only a Balzac could do justice. Monsieur and Madame were so unfortunate or shall we say, the reverse ? as to be positively without kith or kin, neither possessing a single blood relation in the world. Here I may explain that such a circumstance is by no means abnormal, hardly indeed rare in France. The French family consisting usually of a unit, at most of two children, these two are bound alike by tradition and custom, perhaps also by necessity, to seek only sons or only daughters, i. e. heirs or heiresses, in marriage ; hence the dwindling of all descended from a common stock. What easier than to make out blood relationship or at least to claim affinity ? If it be true, moreover, that ill news travels apace, equally true is it that the chink of gold needs no telegraph wire. How the news of Madame's good fortune spread nobody knew. Spread like wildfire it did, and 122 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES ere many weeks were out she numbered as large a family as any patriarch in the Book of Chronicles. From all parts of France and remotest corners of French territory they sprang up, cousins second and third, nephews and nieces, foster- sisters and foster-brothers ; there seemed no end to the number or variety. And the claimants differed no less than the nature of their claims. Some were of high degree, some of low, now a letter bore a coronet, and now showed the work of the public scrivener. 1 One intruder, for most made personal visits, dashed up with high steppers and liveried lackeys ; the next would be a limping, out-at-elbows figure, mistaken by the serving folk for a trarnper. The carriage folk had one object in view, the trudger afoot another ; all expressed themselves overjoyed at their own windfall, the finding of a new, charming and generous kinswoman. My hostess's Gallic wit proved more than equal to the occasion. Not for a single second duped by this locust-like invasion, never for a moment losing self-mastery or apparent good-humour, 1 At Nantes in 1875-6 this notice might be seen: " Ecrivain publique, 10 centimes parlettre." A STORY OF HIDDEN TREASURE 123 she hit upon a scheme Jesuitical in its ingenuity. Not many months after that unearthing of bonds, paper-money and gold pieces, the follow- ing notice appeared in all the local papers : " We are authorized to state that the widow of our late esteemed fellow-citizen, Monsieur G L , has made over the bulk of her fortune to the town of Angers for charitable purposes, the doner constituting herself a life- annuitant of the municipality." Such indeed was the case. The matter was settled on strictly legal ground, Madame G L- making her own conditions. She was to receive a certain income for life, I believe a thousand a year, and enjoy the possession of both town and country house ; at her decease the proceeds of these and all vested funds being devoted to the foundation of a Protestant orphanage and other useful objects. Needless to say that the device succeeded. From the date of that little announce- ment relations dropped off, second and third cousins, nephews and nieces, foster-sisters and foster-brothers grew cold. Henceforth came no 124 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES rat-tat- tat of liveried lackeys, no gushing effusions on scented note-paper bearing a coronet, only the back-door ring of poor waifs and strays, or the business-like application of charity- mongers. Thus it came about that whilst Georges Sand has one monument erected to her memory, my hostess has two. The grateful municipality not only erected a pillar with portrait in bas- relief opposite her dwelling, but a second and more imposing commemorative stone in the cemetery. And on what a cobweb do human events and marble immortality hang ! Had Monsieur G L died suddenly, that farmhouse and its outlying premises might have been lined with gold and bank-notes to this day ! CHAPTER XII ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL Gambetta and the ladies' round robin The raid on the pastry-cooks " Notre bouillant eveque" Quacks in petti- coats A kidnapped turkey. I NOW go back to my first stay with Madame G L , that is to say, before her widow- hood, and before her finding of fairy gold. At this time I had not seen the young dictator whose personality for a brief period dwarfed every other in France, and who was still the hope and mainstay of the Republic. Under such a roof I naturally heard a good deal concerning Gambetta, especially as my host's house at Angers had been his head-quarters during the famous journey of two years before, that democratic progress through- out France, followed by such tooth-and-nail encounters of reaction and democracy and final Republican triumphs. 125 126 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Had lie lived, Gambetta would never have reigned at the Elysee ; his heartiest admirers acknowledged so much. As I have elsewhere remarked, nowhere is domestic austerity more venerated than in France. Refined, strictly virtuous men and women may amuse themselves with novels recalling our own drama of the Restoration ; but when it comes to the choice of a President, splendid mental gifts, rare amiabilities may be thrown into the bargain, his first, his essential qualification must be that of a paterfamilias sans peur et sans reproche. Here Gambetta was weighed in the balance and found wanting ; in all other respects how magni- ficently was he endowed ! In his person, courage, patriotism, self-devotion attained the acme. His own ideal of life was not that of a Darby and Joan ; and who knows ? a wedding-ring, a decorous fireside, and " the old man of forty," as he was called, might have been alive and in full bodily and mental vigour to-day, hurling his thunders at cowering intriguers and ministers with a second " II faut se soumettre ou se demettre " (render justice or resign). " Le plus aimable des aimables," kindest of the ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL 127 kind, was Madame G L 's characteriz- ation of her great guest. " I will now illustrate this trait of Gambetta by something that happened under my own roof," she began one day as we sat in the garden. " Of course during his short stay at Angers he was literally taken possession of by the other sex, public men, journalists and others, we poor women hardly obtaining so much as a glimpse of his coat- tails. This was more than flesh and blood could stand, so I induced a dozen or so of ladies, all like myself good Republicans, to sign a round robin inviting him to a ladies' breakfast, no other male visitor being present but my husband. In the most affable manner Gambetta accepted. I took especial pains with my menu, and I only wish, dear mademoiselle, that you had been present. Never was a banquet more successful, gayer, more animated. Gambetta was simply bewitching ; he accepted our poor little com- pliments with the utmost gallantry, I must tell you that we were all elderly or middle- aged, and exerted himself to entertain us. One of his anecdotes I will repeat, as it throws light on the history of the war. During his dictator- 128 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES ship, he told us, he ordered a general raid upon pastry-cooks throughout France. Cartridge-paper had run short, and every cracker, now worth its weight in gold, was requisitioned for the army." Another conspicuous personality of these Angevin days was the late Bishop Freppel, " notre bouillant evque," our fiery bishop, as his flock called him. Mr. Hamerton truly remarks in one of his Anglo-French volumes, that important as may be a French bishop during his lifetime, no sooner is he dead than forgotten. The " bouillant eveque " of Angers furnishes an instance in point. No French prelate contrived to make more noise whilst he lived ; whenever is his name so much as mentioned now ? Bishop Freppel lived in perpetual hot water, not only with Protestants and Republicans, but with his own flock. The overbearing spirit of our own archbishop Thomas possessed him. War to the knife he ever waged against any manifestation of progress or the scientific spirit. From the faithful he exacted the most slavish submission, the least little sign of revolt being punished after mediaeval methods. Never ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL 129 indeed was medisevalism more completely embodied than in his handsome person. " That man who believes in miracles/' wrote Hume, " is himself a miracle." Miraculous here seemed the elimination of every modern tendency, the entire, the uncompromising casting out of the reasoning faculty. " Ah ! our fiery bishop," began my hostess one day, " he is worth any money; we should indeed lead a dull life without him. Only a year or two ago Angers was thrown into a pretty state of commotion: For some reason or other just before Easter, Monseigneur excom- municated the municipal council in a body, that is to say, he prohibited them from what is called the Blessed Sacrament and Confession in his diocese. "Well, we had an old friend then member of the council, a good Eepublican, at the same time a Catholic. The poor man was in a great dilemma. " ' Mais il faut que je fasse mes Paques, moi ! ' he said. (I for one must observe my Easter devotions.) Was ever anything more incon- venient ? " So just because the bishop was out of temper 130 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES with some piece of municipal legislature, our friend had to post off to Rennes or Tours, the journey being excessively fatiguing to one of his age, and also just then a serious .interference with other arrangements. However, the thing had to be done. He must either thus put himself out of his way or give up his Pdques ! " Many another story did I hear of the fiery bishop, one and all illustrating the same spirit. The bugbear of such a mind was less insubordi- nation among the faithful than influence from without, the slow steady march of progress. Bishop Freppel had the acumen to discern where- in lay the force of effete theologies. He knew as well as Mill could tell him, a writer by the way quoted in his charges, that the salvation of society lies in the moral and intellectual elevation of both sexes ; he realized that when Frenchwomen were educated in the full sense of the word, sacerdotal- ism would have no raison d'etre. 1 Consistently enough, therefore, from his point of view, every attempt to found lay schools for girls of the upper 1 Understanding, none better, the full force of Gambetta's noble words, " Let our youths and maidens be made one in intellect before the union of hearts ! " ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL 131 ranks at Angers was opposed by clerical influence and ultimately abandoned. 1 Again and again public-spirited ladies having high diplomas tried the experiment in vain. More than one was ruined by the scheme. But the bishop had his way, and the educational monopoly of the con- vent remained intact. It is really worth while glancing at his charges ((Euvres pastorales and Oratoires) in order to realize the Ultramontane spirit. With a sledge-hammer he comes down upon " les Austin, les Grote, les Sumner Maine," when addressing a congress of Catholic lawyers. Herbert Spencer fares no better than Schopen- hauer, for, strange as it may seem, Schopenhauer finds his way into the library of an Ultramontane bishop ! And the latest Parisian toilettes ! Nothing is a greater mistake than to imagine an eveche de-feminized as a monastery. Not that Bishop Freppel's character was here assailable. But personal austerity and worldliness may well go together, and this insinuating and highly-accom- plished prelate knew his Goethe ; he had doubtless 1 I write here of 1876. Ten years later lycees for girls were opened in every cJief-lieu. 132 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES taken to heart the maxim in ' Tasso,' "Wouldst thou acquire the becoming, what best beseems ? then school thyself in the society of high-bred women." There is so much work for nimble fingers at an episcopal palace ! Monseigneur's chapel to be garlanded on fete days ; Mon- seigneur's dinner-table to be decked for banquets. And after the occasional comes the every-day. Altar-cloths and banners will fade, chasubles require new lace, copes need renewal. Can daughters of the Church find better employment ? Can womanly devotion receive higher reward ? One day an episcopal smile ; on another an episcopal compliment ; now a hand-clasp ; now perhaps a sweetly-worded, tender suggestion. When admitted to the eveclie as a tourist, the place was all a-flutter with muslin skirts, and a hum of feminine voices greeted our ears. " Monseigneur receives to-night," the man- servant informed us ; " these ladies are preparing the table decorations." " It is always so," observed G L to me as we quitted the palace. " These fine ladies (mondaines) are never happy except when buzzing round a bishop." ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL 133 Without doubt this especial one was excellent society. Not a day of this summer visit was without its good story, my hostess often reminding me that such reminiscences might prove useful at some time or other. French entertainers not only give their guests " harbour and good com- pany," they try to make them understand their new surroundings, the social atmosphere so unlike that left behind. Thus one afternoon we called upon the nuns, here homely, rough-and- ready women, amongst other professions follow- ing that of the unqualified medical practitioners. " Heavens ! madame," cried the sister who received us. " if you only knew how driven I have been of late. Every soul in the place wants purging ! " She evidently purged with a vengeance, her little parlour containing drugs enough for an apothecary's shop. I learned indeed that country folks seldom sought treatment elsewhere, and that these female quacks in conventual garb were starving out the country doctor. I use the word " quack " advisedly, whether concerning in- structors of the mind or healers of the body; a 134 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES bishop's lettre $ obedience or " character " here does duty for diploma or certificate. Reverend mothers and holy sisters need no more. I could now understand a circumstance that had greatly puzzled me a short time before. Whilst passing through Brest with my friend Savine, I had a slight attack of illness, and called in a doctor. This gentleman visited me twice, and to my immense astonishment stated that his fee was four francs, just one shilling and eight- pence for each visit. On mentioning the matter to my travelling companion, she merely said with a raising of the shoulders, " If he asked four francs, that is what he gets elsewhere. What would you have ? We are not in Paris I " But it was not only in Aiijou and Brittany that conventual competition starved the country doctors. Some years later, an old woman-servant of French friends near Dijon was savagely attacked by a dog. Instead of sending to the nearest town for a doctor, the nuns were called in ; they did their best, and as the patient was healthy, and had never been frightened by the Pasteur Institute, she was soon about her work as usual. But it seemed a strange thing that injuries so terrible ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL 135 had not been entrusted to a qualified medical practitioner, especially as her employers were rich, and the good woman had spent her best years in their service. Here I must believe that habit, rather than parsimony, induced such a course. And, likely enough, poor old Justine had much more faith in les bonnes sceurs (the sisters), their simples and counted beads, than in the first doctors of Dijon. Be this as it may, her fearful dog-bites healed up, and she lived for many a year after in good health and spirits, living text for a sermon. How are we more fastidious mortals handi- capped by nerves ! Justine's injuries would have frightened the more sensitive of us perhaps into hydrophobia, most certainly into the arms of M. Pasteur. Being innocent of bacteriology, unaffected with microbic scare, she trusted to a little home-made ointment, an extra candle er two in honour of Mother Mary, and there the matter happily ended. Although advanced Republicans and avowed non-sectarians, my hosts lived on excellent terms with the parish priest, here a worthy man belong- ing to the peasant class. We duly called at the 136 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES presbytery, and in the absence of M. le Cure, his mother received us. She wore the pretty butterfly coiffe of the province, coarse cotton gown and wooden shoes, but received us with the easy grace of French people, no matter their rank. " Ah ! " said my hostess when we came away, " there are curds and cures, and, grand Dieu ! we have had good, bad, and indifferent. But I have never told you the tale of the turkey. You must know that it is customary for parishioners to make the priest annual presents in kind a cask of wine, a fat goose, a quarter of mutton, and so on, according to everybody's means. Some years ago we had a cure' who was a bit of a gourmand as well as a wag, and always on the look-out for what he was pleased to call his perquisites. My husband loved to tease him, and even play little practical jokes, all of course being taken in good part. Well, one year it happened that we had a finer brood of turkeys than usual, and M. le Cure had made up his mind to have one for his New Year's dinner. But the broader his hints the deafer and obtuser became my husband. So it went on for weeks, ANGEVINE AND ANECDOTAL 137 each resolved to outwit the other. At last, either the cure's patience was exhausted, or a glimpse of the turkeys in the last stage of plump- ness proved too strong a temptation. As he was leaving the house on Christmas Eve the flock was driven into the yard, and quick as lightning down he pounced upon the foremost, a magnificent gobbler weighing sixteen pounds at least. The turkeys set up a gobble, gobble, gobble, the geese screeched, the ducks quacked, the dogs barked, maids and men rushed to see what the hubbub was all about ; off ran our cure, nothing daunted, the turkey gobbling, fluttering, and kicking under his arm, himself, what with his face crimson, his cassock flying, his long legs and red garters, looking like a huge turkey. Never was sight more ludicrous. My husband had to hold his sides for laughter. " And," she added, moralizing after true French fashion, " of course we treated the whole thing as a joke. A good laugh is worth so much more than a fat turkey ! " CHAPTER XIII GAMBETTA At the Theatre des Gobelins The sleeping lion Prospero to the rescue " L'armee, c'est le patriotisme " The shrine at Ville D'Avray. MY next souvenirs are of Paris during the Exhibition of 1878. One morning I happened to see the following handbill : " Sunday at half- past one o'clock, at the Theatre des Gobelins, Conference Litteraire for the benefit of the Free Library of the 13th Arroiidissement, M. Gambetta in the Chair. For tickets apply to Conseiller Muncipal, Rue Croulebarbe, No. 3." In order to be quite sure of a ticket, there was nothing to do but set off immediately for the O * Avenue des Gobelins, that is to say, traverse Paris from end to end, my own quarters being in the Avenue Wagram. The journey, performed by tramway and omnibus, took the best part of an afternoon, and the finding of the Rue Croulebarbe 138 GAMBETTA 139 proved no easy matter. After some time I dis- covered a block of small un-numbered buildings entered by a garden door. Crossing two court- yards, the one full of little girls, the other of boys at play, I found the Town Councillor, who was at the same time schoolmaster, deputed to give tickets. " Ah ! madame," he said, " you are only just in time. Folks have flocked from far and near for places. The fifty-centime and franc seats have all been taken. I can only offer you one at five francs, and almost the last of these." He looked at me dubiously, perhaps thinking the sum too large to tempt an English visitor. Just then distractions abounded, and the enter- tainment here offered was of purely patriotic kind. " Oh ! but I would give the last five francs I possessed to hear Gambetta speak," said I. The schoolmaster smiled, it was easy to see that the remark pleased him greatly. " He is a great man, ah ! a great man," he made answer. Then we chatted of public affairs, the Exhibition, lastly of myself, my love of France, and so on. 140 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES There was a great bustle around the little theatre when the great day came. Every place had been taken in advance, yet so afraid seemed ticket-holders of losing their seats that they were there a full hour too soon. Democratic indeed was this assembly. By the side of elegantly dressed ladies sat workmen in clean blue blouses, their five-franc places having doubtless entailed weeks of privation. We were closely packed and the July sun blazed fiercely, but all was affableness and delighted expectation. When at last the curtain drew up came thunders of applause, and shouts of " Long live Gambetta ! Long live the Defender of our country ! " As soon as he could make himself heard Gambetta introduced the lecturer, and the busi- ness of the afternoon began. In rhetorical style M. Quentin, a well-known and popular journalist, now gave us " The history of the book " from the beginning, of course having constantly in view the Democratic idea. The conflict was traced between despotism and freedom, mental darkness and enlightenment, as illustrated in the history GAMBETTA 141 of printing and publishing from earliest times. It is easy to imagine the telling points brought out by a skilled and practised orator when deal- ing with this theme. His audience were thrilled with horror as he related the martyrdom of Dolet, poet, printer and publisher, done to death by Francois Premier. The lecturer did not remain stationary, but moved to and fro after Mr. Spurgeon's fashion, sometimes indeed he sat down by way of a rest. All this time it was interesting to watch Gambetta, who leaned back in his arm-chair, his head slightly raised towards the lecturer, his attitude one of repose and quiet enjoyment. It was the lion at rest, but one could conceive his terribleness when fairly roused. It was indeed " the old man of forty," l his black hair and beard fast turning white, and the powerful face corrugated with care. Obesity too imparted a look of age. As the speaker went on he languid- ly nodded approval of an anti-Imperialist or anti-clerical sentiment, or if a witticism or felicitous allusion pleased him quietly clapped his white hands, immediately falling into the 1 His age that year. 142 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES same lethargy. Not to-day was I to see the one figure of modern France as he recalled the mighty Danton, the one nineteenth-century in- carnation of '89, in his revolutionary mood. Meanwhile my old acquaintance the school- master had recognized me ; I saw him stoop down as he whispered in Gambetta's ear; the other smiled and glanced at the English lady who would have given her last five francs to hear him speak. Why did I not afterwards present myself in the green room and speak for myself ? Why indeed ? It is not our little vanities that gall us as the years go on, but our foolish little humilities, the shrinking from possible misinterpretation or rebuff. Can a dozen flou tings annoy so much as the thought of one lost opportunity, one golden chance missed by false modesty for ever and ever ? When the lecturer had finished, a collection was made for the Library of the 13th Arrondisse- ment, then Gambetta spoke. He did not rise from his seat, being, as I afterwards heard, out of health at the time, and the short discourse was entirely without passion or rhetorical effect. In language of superlative excellence, language GAMBETTA 143 absolutely unimprovable, the sentences flowing evenly from his lips, he laid down the principles on which a popular library should be organized, making special reference to the technical needs of each district. " For," he added, " when we bring conviction and ardour to bear upon the education of the people, it is for the purpose of strengthening the understand- ing, fortifying the conscience, enlarging the heart. But this is far from being all. Such culture should also become an instrument of production. The working man should here find the augment- ation of his material forces ; his manual capital, doubled and sustained by his intellectual capital, must become the source of added well-being." His closing words, full of confidence and patriotism, were received with vociferous cheers for Gambetta and the Republic. That same afternoon I strolled along the Champs Elysees just as MacMahon, accompanied by the Shah of Persia, was returning from the French Derby. The cortege was magnificent, six white horses drawing the President's carriage, officers in dazzling uniforms on horseback, and brilliant equipages following. On either side of 144 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES the road were gathered gaily-dressed crowds. All Paris seemed abroad. But what a contrast was the Marshal's re- ception to that of Gambetta at the little Theatre des Gobelins ! Not a voice was raised. Not a hat was lifted or handkerchief waved as the presidential train swept by. Folks stood still to gaze. That was all. A few days later I met the historian, M. Henri Martin, at the Levallois-Parrel station by appointment on delightfulest errand. The historian had most kindly invited me to accom- pany him to Versailles on the occasion of the Hoche anniversary, Republican fete par excel- lence of the year, and at which Gambetta was to make a grand speech. After weeks of wet and gloom had come tropical heat. Well I remember that warm June afternoon, but the historian in evening dress and his English guest in cool attire, with a first-class compartment to themselves, found the journey all too short. How much had we to say to each other about our common friends the Guepins, about Carnac and Locmariaker, about the Brittany of old and of to-day ! and GAMBETTA 145 if Henri Martin the historian shows in his works little love of England, Henri Martin the archaeologist had sojourned among us and loved us well. He talked feelingly of his travels in Wales and Cornwall, and told me how he had chatted with the Celtic population in Breton, finding it perfectly intelligible. Of Gambetta he simply said " Voila un grand patriot " (there is a great patriot). On arriving at Versailles we found flags flying, bands playing, the town decorated from end to end, and all the inhabitants keeping holiday. Ladies were not admitted to the banquet, which took place in the municipal theatre ; our turn came with the liqueur and the cigars, that is to say, ticket-holders were admitted to stall and balcony at eight o'clock. By this time the banquet was supposed to be over, but in reality it lasted much longer. When we took our places the scene was one of indescribable confusion. Champagne had cir- culated freely and the banqueters were in wholly irrepressible mood. Some discussed burning questions in loud tones, others related good L 146 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES stories invoking peals of uproarious laughter. Everybody seemed bent upon making his own voice heard at all costs, and utterly unmindful of the great speech to come. Then a highly amusing episode occurred. Time was going, certain trains back to Paris had to be caught by most present, quiet became imperative. Again and again the chairman rang his little bell, again and again he implored silence. No one seemed capable of paying the slightest attention. Then one or two of the more prominent guests made an effort to calm folks down, among these Henri Martin, who of course had taken part in the banquet. Under other circumstances such intervention would have appeared ludicrous. The gentlemanly, even distinguished-looking, but wholly unimposing historian might just as well have harangued the Channel during a sou'-wester. His voice, never very strong, sounded thin and pipy as if reach- ing us through a telephone ; the hubbub grew louder and louder, the tumult more maddening. At last Gambetta, who sat apart apparently in a day-dream, was appealed to, and with a vengeance GAMBETTA 147 did he now play the Prospero. Only one word did he utter, a mere two-syllabled word, but the utterance, the thunder put into it quite hope- less were any attempts at description ! Sufficient to say, that with Gambetta's volleyed-forth " Silence " the commotion ceased, stopped in- stantaneously and completely. The whole thing recalled a transformation scene of Christmas pantomime. Just before, the din had been like nothing so much as Wagner's ride of the Valkyrie, now the stage was mute as the blind folks' wood in Maeterlinck's play. An introductory speech or two followed, then Gambetta again rose to his feet. It was plain that to-night the orator was himself, no sleeping lion as at the little Theatre des Gobelins. And what theme, what audience could have warmed him more ? The festival of Hoche was the apotheosis of the army, that army he may be said to have called into being, and which he had infused with his own spirit. To-night, too, Gambetta's bodily disadvantages were lost sight of, his ponderous person, thus reared to its full height, wore an air of majesty, 148 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES the look of premature age vanished. We saw before us a nineteenth-century tribune, worthy compeer of the mighty Danton. Had not Gambetta indeed proved the Danton of the Third Republic? With his great fore- runner could he not say in the words of the Roman, " I swear it, I have saved the State ! " In rather less than twenty minutes he delivered one of those fiery speeches that carried us back to the days of revolutionary eloquence. Vainly should I attempt to give any idea of his voice, an organ of such power and flexibility as to appear positively demonic, superhuman, oracular. Equally in vain should I attempt any description of the applause greet- ing every period applause of^a thousand voices, yet dwarfed, made pigmy by the thunders of his own. Here is the peroration, announced with up- raised arms and kindling eyes : " The army is but another name for honour, for patriotism. My faith in the army has never wavered. And in those circumscribed banquets of evil memory, on the eve of the twenty-sixth GAMBETTA 140 of March and the sixteenth of May, 1 I said to our friends The foes of the Republic count on the army ? They deceive themselves. What they ask of the army would prove a stain upon its honour, viler, more shameful, more impossible to expiate than that inflicted by the man of Brumaire and the man of December. Ah ! no. I have never despaired, I never will despair of my country. Shall not France, the splendour 2 of the world, have all my devotion ? " 3 This noble speech was the signal for an out- burst that ordinary ears could not bear often. Astonishing it seemed that a thousand or two of 1 In allusion to the clerical and monarchical attempts at a coup d'etat during the MacMahon presidency. - Dazzlement were a more fitting word but would here seem perhaps far-fetched. 3 " Quant a moi, ma conviction u'a pas variee et je le disais dans ces banquets restreints que nous faisions aux mauvais jours, au lendemain du 24 Mars, au lendemain du 16 Mai, je disais Us comptent sur 1'armee? Us ne la connaissent pas ! L'armee, c'est le patriotisms, et ce qu'on lui demande ce serait une souillure plus honteuse, plus vile, plus inexpiable que celle qu'imprimerent 1'homme de Brumaire, 1'homme de Decembre. Ah ! oui, j'etais sans inquietude ; oui, je n'ai pas desespere de mon pays. Et je n'en desespererai jamais. II fait Peblouissement du monde. Pourquoi voulez nous qu'il n'ait pas toute ma piete I " 150 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES people could make such a noise. The appear- ance of military bands on the stage and the 'Marseillaise' brought the climax. Long before the next Exhibition was opened in Paris, "the old man of forty" had fallen in his prime. Yet can any one feel sure that triumphs more signal might have awaited him in the fulness of years ? It is questionable. His very warm-heartedness, his generosity, had made him many enemies. And sad is the admission ! Ever a Nemesis seems to dodge the footsteps of pre-eminence in France. Upon mediocrity alone does popular favour wait. Above every other virtue is apparently held the commonplace. During those sight-seeing months of 1889 many of Gambetta's friends and admirers, myself among them, made the pilgrimage to Ville d'Avray, a Republican shrine. Nothing could well be sadder. The modest little villa, in his lifetime magnified by detractors into a palace of Babylonian lavish- ness and riot, was then precisely as he had left it. An old woman showed us over every part, the simply-furnished dining-room in which had taken place those circumscribed banquets GAMBETTA 151 of anxious days, the little salon, rendezvous of fiery patriots, the bed-chamber in which the dying man had bidden farewell to his friends. A large engraving hanging by the bedside represents the scene. Next to Gambetta's wonderful voice came his astonishing memory, a memory concerned with living people, and the relation in which they stood to the Republic. He could not, like Homeric Wright of former days, repeat the ' Iliad ' by heart ; nor could he, like my dear old friend the late Edward "Walford, recite the Psalms of David and the Odes of Horace l from start to finish and in due order. But mnemonic feats as astounding were averred of Gambetta. He could not certainly identify every Republican voter throughout France ; but when he had worked up any con- stituency he was said to have the name and condition of every voter therein at his fingers' ends. The very notion makes one's brain 1 This is a fact. After his re-conversion to Home Mr. Walford wrote me word that he "had burned all his heathen books." Whether or no he had contrived to unlearn Horace he did not say. 152 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES whirl ! Think of remembering and individualizing several thousands of small shopkeepers, artisans, peasants, dividing not into sections but units, the population of a large city or half a depart- ment ! Alone, unaided, this single brain could do the work of twenty electioneering agents ! CHAPTER XIV A poet's guerdon Authors at play: Victor Hugo's greeting to Europe Father Hyacinth No vid media in theology A nine days' wonder The cloud no bigger than a man's hand". ON the morrow of the Hoche festival at Ver- sailles took place another of equally unique interest. This was the reception of Victor Hugo at the final seance of the International Literary Congress. The meeting was held in the handsome Chatelet Theatre, and large numbers of invita- tions had been sent out by the French Literary Association (Societe des Gens de Lettres). For my own card I was indebted to the poet Coppee. " Poor ignoramus that I am," he had written to me some time before, " I cannot enjoy in English your charming appreciation of my verse, 1 but I place myself entirely at your 1 A propos of a notice that appeared in ' Fraser's Magazine.' 153 154 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES service, and shall be enchanted at any time to testify my gratitude." Could poetic acknowledgment take more appro- priate form ? To my little praise of Coppee I owed a sight of Victor Hugo. And, on my soul, a wonderful sight he was ! Not for piled-up guineas, not for the most dazzling pageant of court annals, would I have missed Coppee's treat. After Goethe, what figure in letters stands out so colossean, of such incomparable proportions ? Mere pigmies by comparison seem the biggest of his contemporaries. Where shall we look for a later " Hernani " ? And his lyrics, apparently so improvised yet so assiduously chiselled, 1 who has matched him or even approached him in this field ? Before the poet's turn came other speakers, among these M. Jules Simon, who was like a veritable Jack-in-the-box, every syllable accom- panied by vehement gesture and antic. Perjide 1 In his interesting volume, ' L'art d'ecrire,' M. Albalat shows how severely Victor Hugo criticized himself. Thus the MS. of ' Le Sacre de la Femme ' shows three adjectives, auguste, sainte, Jieureuse, crossed out for ardente in the line, " Une ardente lueur de paix et de bonte ! " Many other examples of the same fastidiousness are adduced. VICTOR HUGO AND FATHER HYACINTH 155 Albion, alas ! was very shabbily represented. Instead of a typical Anglo-Saxon standing six feet two in his stockings, stentorian of voice and ready of speech, a very sickly-looking and hesitating personage stood up, and in an in- audible voice rendered thanks for the welcome accorded his countrymen. It was a disappointing performance, and would have been better left out. Upon such an occasion at least the delegate ought to be able to make himself heard if not seen. Victor Hugo was now seventy-six years old, but looked full ten years more. Intellectual tours de force, fiercest political passion, the bitterness of exile, had prematurely aged him. Erect still the Olympian head, but how dim his eyes, how feeble his voice ! . Throughout his address he kept his seat, having on his right hand a score and odd of wax candles ; close to these he held his manuscript, the reading even under such circumstances being evidently very difficult. A written speech delivered with an attempt at rhetorical effect is at best unin- spiring, the tremendous personality here made up for every drawback. Enthusiastic, nay, frenzied as had been the first greeting accorded 156 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES him, each sentence was now the signal for volleys of applause. Occasionally the manuscript was dropped and a phrase or two were improvised. A pathetic allusion to his long exile changed vivats and cheers to sobs and a unanimous mur- mur of indignation. Then with a stateliness that was really majestic he turned to the representa- tives of foreign literary societies, waving his hand and saying "Poets, novelists, philosophers, men of science, France salutes you ! " l Who else so fitted to utter such words, welcoming world- wide literature in the glorious name of France ? Another conspicuous personality at this time was attracting audiences hardly less rapturous. Amid the bustle and glitter of a Whit-Sunday, unparalleled perhaps for its variety of holiday attractions, all Paris seemed flocking towards the vast Cirque d'Hiver. Father Hyacinth was to preach on Liberal Catholicism, and strange as it may seem, this announcement proved more mag- netic than the street of nations in the Champs de Mars, the famous orchestra of the Scala, then performing at the Trocadero from Milan, races at 1 " Fortes, romanciers, philosophes, hommes de science, la France vous salue ! " VICTOR HUGO AND FATHER HYACINTH 157 Chantilly, and heaven knows how many other programmes equally enticing. An hour before the doors were opened, eager crowds besieged the ticket office, and by the time the orator had taken his place the enormous hall was packed, not an empty seat of the three thousand and eight hundred ! I noticed also, that although women were present in consider- able numbers, the majority consisted of the other sex. Easy was it to see also that the audience was a picked one, made up, not of the merely curious, much less of the sightseer, but of earnest, thinking people, seekers after intellectual stimulus or spiritual truth. Father Hyacinth, or the Reverend Charles Loyson, was now in the prime of life, that is to say, had entered on his fifty- third year. The priest may cast off dogma and modes of thought, not so easy is it to secularize himself as to outward appearance. The orator before us still looked every inch the French abbe, but not the kind of abbe seen every day. Power was stamped on his regular, well-cut features, and indomitable will proclaimed itself in the firm, well-shaped mouth. Amid breathless silence he began, and amid 158 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES breathless silence, only broken by thunders of applause, was he heard to the end. Magnificent eloquence, a voice second only in volume and flexibility to Gambetta's own, a passionate ear- nestness, held his audience spell-bound. Liberalism in Christianity, rather in Catholicism, meant to Father Hyacinth at this time I presume it does still that reformation in the Church from within, that reconciliation of the Church with progress, and the revolutionary idea forming the ideal of Lamennais and Lacordaire. Not Protest- antism, not Deism, was what he aimed at, rather a purified, rationalized, elevated Romanism. " I was a Catholic, a Catholic I remain," he now said, his admirably managed voice reaching the farthermost listener. " We have seen France ill-governed for that reason do we cease to call ourselves Frenchmen ? Do we turn our backs on mother-country, forsake, forswear her? No, a thousand times no ; and no more shall we turn our backs upon the Church, forsake, forswear her because she too has been ill-governed. Catholics for all that we remain ! " This sentence proved one of those electric touches, the effect of which it is impossible to describe or exaggerate. Again VICTOR HUGO AND FATHER HYACINTH 159 when he said, " I can understand men being Republicans, I can understand Frenchmen being nothing else but Republicans," the applause was so prolonged that for a minute or two he found it impossible to proceed. Towards the close of his discourse, which had lasted an hour and a quarter, came this scathing admonition, " To you, heads of houses, fathers of families, I am about to say a harsh word. It is you who have helped to bring about Ultramontanism. When you send your wives to the confessional, when you rear your children in a religion you do not yourselves follow, it is you who aid and abet the Ultramontanes, who make Ultra- montanism what it is to-day." The words had struck home, no sentence of the magnificent discourse had won louder, more con- tinued applause. The preacher then laid his finger on the sore place, had touched the conscience of his hearers. Fifteen years later I was taking my place for Calais at the Gare du Nord, when I noticed a little group on the platform. " Yonder," whispered a countrywoman into my ear, "is Father Hyacinth, and the lady he is seeing off to London is his American wife." 160 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES In one sense time had not dealt unkindly with the apostle of Liberal Catholicism, the would-be pioneer of a theological vid media. M. Loyson looked mentally and bodily vigorous and alert as in the Cirque d'Hiver so many years before. He seemed cheerful too, having lost something of his sacerdotal look. Indeed, the great orator cer- tainly Father Hyacinth is that might just then have passed for some well-to-do bourgeois, retired notary, or small functionary, in no ill humour with life or his surroundings. But what about his mission ? How has time treated his dreams ? From this point of view the retrospect is melancholy indeed. Never was Newman's disbelief in a vid media more strikingly justified. Never was the futility of putting new wine into old bottles more con- spicuously exemplified. Instead of Liberalism leavening, no matter how sparsely, the Romish Church of France, we find its latest development in the mediaeval superstitions of Lourdes and the anti-Semitic and anti- Protestant crusade headed by the French Academy and the ' Revue des Deux Mondes.' Instead of Liberal ideas being welcomed or even tolerated by the Vatican, we find the least little manifestation of intellectual independ- VICTOR HUGO AND FATHER HYACINTH 161 euce remorselessly stamped out, . the result being an enormous exodus from Rome, a movement taking the form of a second and still more drastic Reformation. Father Hyacinth's failure was in- evitable. To talk of Liberal Catholicism is but to use a figure of speech, what grammarians call an oxymoron. No, a thousand times no ! Two aspects of Romanism there certainly are, the simulated and the sincere, the conventional fol- lowing of ritual for appearance's sake, and the nai've faith of the Breton peasant. But Romanism remains what it was and what it ever will be, namely, the implacable enemy of Liberalism in any form, 1 and so the French mind, logical mind par excellence, is finding out to its cost. We English, with our mental fogginess, our happy-go-lucky ways, our method of trusting to Providence and good luck, see no absurdity in coalition ministries, Liberal-Unionism, Ritualism, and other go-betweens. The French intellect will have nothing to do with a middle course, 1 For a confirmation of this opinion let the reader turn to two remarkable articles in the ' Contemporary Review ' of May 1899 : 'Is a Catholic University Possible?' by Yoces Catholices, and 'The Evangelical Movement among the French Clergy,' by ex-Abbe Bourrier. M 162 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES a half-and-half. " Our imagination," writes the first living French philosopher, "is an imagination that reasons, that combines ; " and elsewhere " Our intellectual impatience does not accommodate itself to compromise, to temporization." 1 Father Hyacinth's scheme proved a nine days' wonder ; ex- Abbe Bounder's heralds a revolution. Liberal Catholicism recalls the deserted standard of a stricken field. " Forth from Rome," rallying- cry of a few emancipated priests, has evoked an army, an army gathering as " that little cloud no bigger than a man's hand," and as portentous. From May to October of this year was spent by me in Paris, on the banks of the Maine, in Franche Comte and the Jura. Recollections of travel having been adequately given elsewhere I omit them here. 1 ' Psycliologie du Peuple Frangais,' by A. Eouillee, 1898. PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYER, AND FRANC- TIREUR A franc-tireur' s legacy Early struggles A devote of Saint Hubert The cost of greatness A cur^ rebuked The novice of Flavigny Odd notions about England. OH for the pen of a Borrow, a Dumas I What a second Lavengro-^what another Monte Cristo could I bestow upon the world ! How came it about that themes so gory should fall to a woman's inkhorn, inkhorn hitherto guileless of battle, murder, and sudden death, ever emptied in the cause of peace and gentilesse* Well, the task was accepted as a legacy ; with it I can but do my little best. Pedlar, lion-hunter, panther-extirpator, franc- tireur, colonist, when had any man more ad- venturesome, more chequered career? To begin life by hawking shoes and stockings in the streets of New Orleans, to clear a vast region of panthers, and become the feted guest of emperors, 163 164 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES kings, and reigning princes, to harass the Prussians with his handful of francs-tireurs more than a general of division with his army corps, to have twice a price set upon his head and baffle the enemy until the last all these exploits might well have turned the dullest into a story-teller. Was ever a Frenchman dull? And the bequeath er of such blood-stained memorials belonged to the liveliest. A native of Spoy, near Bar-sur-Aube, he possessed in large degree the inbred Champe- nois grace and irony of which Michelet speaks in his great first chapter. It was in the summer of 1879 that I made the acquaintance of Bombonnel, the once world- renowned panther-slayer. I use the adverb advisedly, for by that time he had outlived one reputation to enjoy another. His narrative of panther hunts in Algeria a generation before was still 1 to be found on every railway bookstall throughout France. The author's name was familiar to every school-boy. But the personality of the man had long since suffered eclipse, to emerge with added lustre after the events of 1870-1. His gallant leadership of a few hundred 1 And is still in print and popular favour. PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYER, ETC. 165 francs-tireurs, and the damage he inflicted on the invader, then won for him a colonel's grade, the Legion of Honour, and what, perhaps, he prized above these, a grand word from Victor Hugo. " Had we but a few more Bombonnels," wrote the poet at the time, " the enemy would soon be driven out of the country." Unfortunately Bombonnels are rare in any country. Every Frenchman is a soldier and a brave one, but the strategy requisite in guerilla warfare, the skill and address needed by a leader of free-lances, the bold confrontation of a shameful death such qualities are not of every day. The slayer of fifty and odd panthers, the terror of Prussian scouts, was now just sixty- three. Like Napoleon, Thiers, Louis Blanc, and other great men, he was small of stature, but admirably made and of extraordinary suppleness and strength ; veritable " hooks of steel," his small fingers could force a giant to his knees, making him howl for mercy. Agile as a chamois- hunter, keen-eyed and quick-eared as an Indian trapper, making child's-play of the most tre- mendous privation, enduring without a groan 166 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES the most hideous tortures, he had little or nothing in common with drawing-room acquaint- ances. The head on which a price was set by the Prussians was as small as ever man had; but let physiologists say what they will, quality rather than quantity of brain accounts for the difference between one human being and another. It must here be explained, that in his famous encounter with a panther twenty-five years before, 1 he had lost a considerable portion of his face. The fine aquiline nose with which Nature had endowed him was literally gone, the frontal bones were knocked in, teeth and jaws broken. Fortunately his learned friend Dr. Bodichon, husband of the foundress of Girton, then practis- ing as an army surgeon, " gathered up the pieces such as were left," and so skilfully put them together that Bombonnel became, if not comely, at least of very presentable appearance. Fortunately the poor panther for in these contests the trapped is as much, perhaps more, 1 See 'Bombonnel et ses Chasses,' Hachette's ' Bibliotheque Populaire,' Paris, 1 f. 25 c. PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYER, ETC. 167 to be commiserated than the trapper, 1 fortun- ately, I say, the poor panther had not finished off nose and jaw to his satisfaction when sent headlong over the precipice in the dexterous manner described. Bombonnel escaped with eyes intact, and remarkable eyes they were, piercingly bright and vivacious as those of youth. Another possession was his voice, not a musical one, not a sonorous organ after the manner of Gambetta's, but strident, far-reaching, of pheno- menal capacity. To this faculty, as he playfully boasted, was due his small worldly fortune. On the death of both parents of cholera in 1831, a relation had apprenticed him to a bookbinder ; the sedentary existence proving intolerable, he started with a few hundred francs for New Orleans, hawking shoes and stockings in the streets. So shrill and penetrating was his voice that it brought purchasers from far and near; one pack was soon emptied, and another, and 1 I was the guest of an animal-adoring old woman when, many years ago, she read from the 'Times' the account of the drunken Englishman who descended into the bears' pit at Berne. When she came to the recital of the bears' maul- ing she dropped the paper and exclaimed feelingly, " Pretty dears ! " I fully sympathized with the sentiment. 168 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES another. As pedlar he drove a thriving trade. No one was ever less indebted to adventitious circumstances than the mighty hunter. No edifier of his own fortunes was ever freer from false shame. With many another celebrated Frenchman he had risen from the people, and was proud of such ancestry. The son of a working glazier, he had early acquired habits of independence and self-restraint. "Many's the time," he would say, "when sending up my plate for more soup or galette, it was returned empty. ' Charles,' my mother would say, ' dost thou not reflect that there are thy little brothers and sisters a-hungered as thyself to think of? The day's food must be equally apportioned.' Sugar at that time (1816 1831) was very dear, and an unheard-of luxury. "We never tasted it except during sickness. My mother kept a small lump locked up in tissue paper ; when any of us were ill, she chipped off a tiny piece and put it into our milk or herb tea." Convincingly did Bombonnel illustrate Sancho's maxim not a man's ancestry, but the company PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYER, ETC. he keeps, is his passport. Wild and adventure- some had been his youthful experiences. After that spell of pedlary in the Southern States he journeyed northward, trading with Indian tribes, for a while taking up his abode with them, the magnet being romantic passion for a beautiful young savage. A return to Europe in 1841, marriage into a highly-respectable middle-class family of Dijon, winter residences in Algeria, and all the eclat that waits upon success, more than made up for early drawbacks. "Without a fault, his terse, piquant, idiomatic French ; without a solecism, his courtly, if somewhat old-fashioned, bearing. At the time I made his acquaintance the wonderful little man was a marked figure at o Dijon, indeed the most conspicuous personality of Eastern France. Bombonnel the franc-tireur had disinterred Bombonnel the panther-slayer. He was a walking palimpsest, and the super- imposed writing was more marvellous than the first. From far and wide folks travelled to see his stuffed beasts, sports of the hunt, hear his marvellous stories, above all gaze upon the hero extolled by Victor Hugo, storied by Daudet, and 170 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES possessor of a nose famous as that of Cyrano de Bergerac. Admiration, no matter the form it might take, was accepted good-naturedly. " There go Bombonnel and Monsieur B , the two ugliest men in Dijon ! " cried a street urchin one day as the pair of friends passed arm- in-arm. " Not so loud, my little friend ; let folks find it out for themselves," was all the reproach administered, the speaker being Monsieur B , but Bombonnel delighted to tell the tale. With equal complacence he accepted Daudet's descrip- tion of himself, " every inch a village notary," in * Tartarin de Tarascon.' Fame is fame after all! I need hardly say that a man who had made his fortune as a pedlar, had nearly extirpated the panther in Algeria, and given more trouble to the Prussians than all the army corps put together, was no bookworm. One volume and one only he had perused, and that from title to colophon. Of course the Bible ! every reader will say. But the Nimrod of modern times was a Catholic, and Catholics, PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYEB, ETC. 171 as we know, do not read the Bible. 1 He had heard at least I presume so of such a book, but certainly did not possess one, nor to the best of my knowledge had he ever read a line of it from Genesis to Kevelations. His one book was 'Monte Cristo.' His artless creed consisted in fear of God and reverence for St. Hubert, the patron of hunters. St. Hubert had granted the supreme wish of his life, that face-to-face encounter with a panther ending in the loss of his nose ; to St. Hubert he sent up daily prayers; into a huge earthen money- box he dropped a sou every day of his life, the said sous to be expended by his executors upon an enormous candle for St. Hubert's altar in the cathedral of Dijon. Good Catholic although he was, he took excep- tion to certain articles of faith. For instance, no Protestant could more strongly disapprove of celibacy in the priesthood, and he resolutely abstained from the confessional. "My dear Monsieur Bombonnel," again and again had said a good old bishop of Dijon to 1 I never saw a Bible in any Catholic house of the many In which I have stayed. 172 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES him, "it is high time for you to think of your soul, to confess and seek absolution." " Monseigneur," was the invariable reply, " no man can say what he may come to, but as yet I am not ripe for that." Pious as he was too, a priest in his eyes remained a man, to be treated as such. Thus, when a certain cure years before had put unjusti- fiable questions to his young wife l in the con- fessional, he waylaid the offender with a huge cudgel. "Mind what you are about, young man," he said. "Any more nonsense of that kind and " Here he shook his cudgel, the deed doing duty for further explanation. This attitude towards the priesthood one day found humorous expression in my own hearing. I had been spending some time in the house of his mother-in-law, at some distance from Dijon. As we all poured out of the village church one Sunday morning, Bombonnel fell back, a few minutes later catching us up. " I just waited to catch the cure," he said, laughing. " * My dear friend/ quoth I, 'in 1 Madame Bombonnel has now been dead many years. PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYER, ETC. 173 Heaven's name don't keep us so long these fine Sundays. Don't you know that the shooting season has begun, and whilst you are haranguing us in the pulpit we are dying to be after the quails and partridges ? Leave your long sermons for the winter.' ' Here I may add, that my own attendance at mass was strictly a matter of politeness. In this country house, mistress and the household regu- larly attended morning service, the family joint was left before the fire to cook itself, the house locked up and confided to the care of three enormous dogs. To have stayed at home would have forced the non-attendance of others. One man's meat may well prove another man's poison, but dislikes, however strong, must yield to the obligations laid upon a guest. As I have said, Sombonnel was now a much- feted personage. Had he read 'Don Quixote' he would have recalled one of poor Sancho's experiences whilst relating his own. "Whenever I am now in Algeria," he related, " a cover is always laid for me at the Governor's table. But I invariably come away hungry as when I took my place. Great folks invite me 174 AtiGLOFRENCH REMINISCENCES not to feast but to tell stories. It is 'Now, Monsieur Bombonnel, for the lion of the Corso,' or, ' Now, Monsieur Bombonnel, for the lion of Batna,' and so on, and so on, all the while. What would you have ?. Fame is not to be had for nothing." Amongst his friends were the Dominican monks of Flavigny, near Dijon, who combine scholasticism with the manufacture of comfits, the latter being renowned throughout the civilized world. " I will now tell you a curious story about Flavigny," one day he began. "I have often visited these learned men in their monas- tery, and many years ago I chanced to arrive soon after the reception of a new-comer. This novice was a celebrated doctor, who had thrown up a splendid practice in Paris in order to become a monk. ' Brother,' I asked, for I had more than one conversation with him, ' what on earth could have induced you to take such a step ? ' ' Monsieur Bombonnel,' was the reply, 'the deaths of so many men and women sacrificed to my experimental ardour became a weight on my conscience too grievous to be borne. I PEDLAR, PANTHER-SLAYER, ETC. 175 determined in so far as possible to expiate these offences by fasting, flagellation, and prayer. Such, dear sir, is my story.'" We have all our limitations, and Bombonnel, who had never visited our shores, entertained curious notions as to Anglo-Saxon manners and customs. Not the Prime Minister or Lord Chief Justice of England could have convinced him, that when dissatisfied with their wives, English- men did not offer them for sale with a rope round their necks at Smithfield Market ! Nor could the Earl Marshal or Lord Chamberlain have altered his notions as to the investiture of the Garter. It was his firm belief that upon these occasions the leg of the knight-elect received the garter from hands no less august than those of the sovereign, that he was, indeed, literally as well as titularly gartered ! Before giving these memorials of a franc-tireur entrusted to me for posthumous publication, I will say something more about the man himself,, give other sides of this strange personality. AN OUTDOOR FRIEND Woodland colloquies The instinct of birds Jays and their heroism Wild cherry trees Bookbinding and mustard The nuns and the panther-slayer. HAPPY, thrice happy the possessor of an out- door friend ! Stimulating as may be indoor acquaintance, fruitful as may be the intercourse enjoyed within four walls, truest comradeship, the essentials of intimacy, are owed to Nature. We feel so much freer, more open-minded, more truly ourselves when abroad. 1 Delightful too is the exchange of indoor for outdoor themes, man- kind and his doings laid aside for four-footed and feathered friends, high talk of books and systems giving place to the subtler if, in appear- 1 " In giochi onesti, e parlamenti lieti Dopo mangiar spesero il caldo giorno Corcati su finissimi tappeti Tra gli arbuscelli, ond'era il rio adorno." Ariosto. 176 AN OUTDOOR FRIEND 177 ance, simpler lessons of field and wood. I have known many wise and learned folks in my life. In one kind of lore, and that a rare and subtle one, the great panther-hunter was unrivalled. As I have already mentioned, he was now enjoy- ing a spell of ease with dignity, summer being spent in the home of his wife's family near Is-sur-Tille (Cote d'Or), winter in his hunt- ing lodge, Algeria. Another and yet another palimpsest was to be written over the blood- stained annals of 1870-1 ; in other words, again and yet again w r as he to figure conspicuously in the eyes of his contemporaries of these matters later. For the present he led a quiet Thoreau-like existence, his time being spent in the family woods close by, or the vast forest adjoining, haunt of roe-buck, wild boar, and wild cat. These family woods were delicious in the torrid August days. Of the seven climates of France, the Cote d'Or enjoys the so-called Rhoclanien, a pleasant climate enough, but given to sudden change and great extremes. Thus whilst in summer you may boil an egg in the sun, in winter your wine freezes on the 178 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES dinner-table and close to a blazing wood fire. During my frequent and lengthy visits at the country house just named, I often accom- panied my friend on his rounds. Indoors the flies buzzed ; the temperature made one drowsy, and the ladies had their domestic occupations. The best part of the day was not unfrequently passed by me abroad, these woodland colloquies being racy as a page of Bret Harte, brimful of instruction as a course at the Royal Institution. " Note well the behaviour of the small birds larks, finches, and the like," said my companion to me as one day we entered the wood, " you will see that the sight of myself and gun, no matter how near, does not in the least intimidate them. They flit across my path, chattering to each other as if they had the whole place to themselves. Then contrast with this unconcern the conduct of the magpies, jays, hawks, and other mischievous birds on which I ever make war. The moment I am perceived by one of them, an alarm is given to his fellows, hither and thither he goes, plain as words could make AN OUTDOOR FRIEND 179 it, his warning " Comrades, look alive. The enemy is abroad ! " True enough, as the small figure in brown velvet shooting-jacket and gaiters with gun on shoulder made his way through the wood, there was an extraordinary commotion overhead. From tree to tree flew the jays, here found in great numbers, their unmusical note being to-day more unmusical still; with evident cries of distress they flitted from bough to bough bidding their kindred " beware ! " And true enough the little hedge-row birds took no heed. My companion's gun might almost touch them where they sat ; gaily as ever they chirped, twitted, and car- olled. Linnets, robins, finches, tomtits, and the timidest remained perky and familiar as Parisian sparrows. "The jays are beautiful birds ; why so ruthlessly destroy them ? " I asked. " Nothing in plumage to my thinking surpasses the exquisite turquoise and silver-grey of their wings." " The jays," answered my companion, " are not only like the magpies, the most mischievous birds we have, but the most malignant, and of an obstinacy that defies comprehension. Do 180 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES what you will with him, you can never get a jay to betray his fellows. For instance, I bring down a jay with my gun, wounded, but not dead. I could never, by any ill-treatment, get him to cry out, thus bringing more of his kind within reach." " Therein he shows a nobleness not always shared by human beings," I put in. "How can you persecute a bird possessed of such qualities'?" " Dear friend," was the reply, " I repeat, the jays and the magpies are the most mischievous birds we have, eating other birds' eggs and destroying the young. Why should I have any more pity upon such detestable animals than the law upon burglars and cut- throats ?" " The comparison hardly holds good," I ven- tured to observe ; " burglars and cut-throats know well enough that they act as enemies of society, whilst the poor jays only follow natural instinct." It was quite useless to argue the point. The harmless hedgelings, linnets, tomtits, and the like, could not be too much pampered. The jay must be cruelly extirpated, AN OUTDOOR FRIEND 181 Birds delight in nothing so much as the fruit of the wild cherry, and for the general delectation he had planted young trees here and there, watering and tending them with the utmost assiduity. " Ah ! " he would say, as he proudly surveyed his saplings. " How my wild cherry trees will adorn the wood a few years hence, and how, ere long, the birds will feast on them, the little gourmands ! " Water was scarce in these vast tracts of wood and forest. For the benefit of his feathered friends, and, it must be admitted, enemies as well, he had with his own hands dug a deep pond, and this, during the dry season, he ever kept full of water. It was a sight to see the birds hovering about their pond on hot days. Alas ! for years it has now been left to the clouds. Many and many a thirsty bird must have sadly wondered why. A sight it was too, that flocking of small birds at their master's call. In the densest part of the wood he had hollowed out little boweries for summer use. With hands on mouth he would imitate one note after another, bringing 182 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES close to us where we sat, pert little heads and fluttering wings. But these boweries were sometimes moistened with something else besides rain and dew. Ever at the sportsman's side was his small noiselessly- firing gun. As we sat one day amid a happy congregation, robins chirping, linnets piping, tomtits peering, quick as lightning up went the carabine. Something fell like a stone at my feet. In an evil hour a magnificent hawk had showed himself overhead. Somehow the spot or two of blood on the mossy ground uncharmed that bowery for me ever after. What have these innocent creatures to do with the text, " In the midst of life we are in death " ? Life is their sole possession. Let them enjoy it ! An outdoor friend will tell you as much anent plants and trees as about birds and beasts. " Taste these red berries," said my host to me one day, picking up the red luscious-looking fruit of the service berry tree. " Whenever there is cholera about our peasants eat the service berry in large quantities. It is a sure remedy for colic." Further on, he pointed to a birch tree. AN OUTDOOR FRIEND 183 " As you know," he began, " I was apprenticed as a lad to the bookbinding trade. Well, yonder tree reminds me of something that will interest you. What is called the perfume of Russian leather does not in the least depend upon the skin itself, but upon a certain preparation from the bark of the Russian birch tree. Why our own birch tree has not that same essence I can't say, but such is the case." Another day we found ourselves on a stretch of cleared charcoal beds outside the forest. " Stop a moment," he exclaimed, " and note those mustard plants. You must know that nothing else will grow here. Young plants, green peas, potatoes, French beans and the like would be devoured by rabbits, wild boars, and other animals, who will not touch the mustard leaves. It is this especial soil that lends our celebrated Dijon mustard its piqu- ancy, but ' there is another fact to be men- tioned. When in powder the mustard is mixed with new wine, but in order to obtain the pre- cise degree of acidity, the grape must be in a certain condition of unripeness, a degree more or less makes all the difference." 184 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES This outdoor intercourse was not confined to the home-woods and the forest of Velours. Far afield we went, sometimes by diligence or in old-fashioned hooded caleche, sometimes in a donkey chaise, most often afoot. Story-telling renown dogs its possessor with the tenacity of evil report. It followed the mighty hunter wherever he went ; in stage- coach, railway carriage, tavern, or wayside cafe, he was ever recognized and mulcted with a tale. The wooded ravine of Fixin near Gevrey- Chambertin is one of the most bewitching spots near Dijon. Thither at seven o'clock one July morning we drove through the vineyards, think- ing to find the quietude of Velours itself. Great was our disenchantment on arriving. Every available spot for a picnic was already taken possession of by nuns and eighty little girls under their charge. Huge loaves, fruit, cakes, and bottles of wine were stacked around the fountain near which visitors are wont to regale. Rocks and hanging woods, glades and copses rang with merry voices. The place was as populous as Hampstead Heath on Whit-Monday. Accustomed to bivouacking under circum- AN OUTDOOR FRIEND 185 stances of far greater difficulty, my companion soon found a suitable spot for our alfresco break- fast, the shadow of a limestone crag tapestried with verdure, softest green carpet, and close by a bubbling spring clear as crystal. Here the joyous clamour of the children hardly reached us, and never was woodland repast more de- lightful. Sky of warmest blue, foliage of richest green, wood-pigeons cooing among the branches, otherwise unbroken solitude. But our visit was to be made exceptional, and would that with pencil instead of pen I could delineate the scene that followed. The nuns having found Bom- bonnel out, were fired with the laudable desire of turning his presence to account and com- bining instruction with pleasure in the day's programme. So the request was boldly made that the panther-slayer and lion-hunter and tamer would tell the school-girls some of his famous adventures. In a few minutes every straggler was collected, and by the time the story-teller began, the scene was the prettiest imaginable. Eighty girls varying in age from five to fifteen were now grouped about the natural amphitheatre, the black-robed nuns 186 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES seated here and there, whilst facing his audience stood the small animated figure of the narrator. No dire encounter, no blood-stained episodes did he now recount, but beautiful tales of " wild nature won by kindness," and comic stories of animal knowingness and cunning. He told of the lion of Batna, how it used to play in the public ways like a huge gentle dog ; how one day some Arab children teasing it with stones, he caught up the foremost and trotted off as if intent on dire vengeance, then when he had got some distance, put down the yelling urchin with a look that plainly said, "Another time, humph ! mind ! " how it used to beg for tit-bits at the family table after the manner of a pet dog, feed- ing from any one's hand ; how when badly hit by malicious varlet, it laid its poor aching head on its mistress' shoulder to be soothed by caresses. Then by way of epilogue he addressed himself to the younger children " Let me tell you, my young friends, that the little lions set you all the prettiest possible example of obedience. A mother lion for instance has feasted with her young ones on the carcase of a cow. But hungry as they all are, AN OUTDOOR FRIEND 187 enough remains for next day's meal. On the morrow she brings her children to the spot, and the gentle things bound forward, eager to begin their breakfast. The ever - prudent mother utters a gentle growl, and lo ! quiet as mice they scuttle back into the bushes. She sees at once that the remains of yesterday's feast have been disturbed, and fears for the safety of her children. "By and by, famished, impatient, the little lions run towards her, their gestures and cries saying plainly as words could possibly do, 'Mamma, do let us begin, we are so hungry ! ' But a second time the watchful mother bids them go back, the risk of a surprise not yet over, and a second time she is unmurmuringly obeyed. Hither and thither she peers, high and low she sniffs; at last, after fully reassuring herself, she utters quite a different growl. ' Come, my children,' she cries, ' to table, to table ! ' And joyfully the summons is obeyed, for, as you perhaps know, my little friends, the lion's meal is breakfast, dinner, and supper in one. Go home, and Heaven bless you all, and do not for- get the lessons taught by the little lions ! " CHAPTER XVII SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR The price of ahead A Barmecide's feast The straggler The two spies " La guerre, c'est la guerre." "WHEN I am no longer among the living, dear friend, you may make any use of these memorials you please. Were I as skilful with the pen as with the gun I should perhaps myself have put down my experiences as a franc-tireur. I leave the task to you as a legacy. Certain incidents I could never have brought myself to indite, it makes me blush, it makes me weep to recount them. Alas ! we were not all patriotic when the enemy over-ran France. You know the word of Victor Hugo in 1870-1 'A few more Bombonnels and soon not a Prussian would be left on this side of the Ehine.' But the one was not always succoured, as you will see, and these experiences may serve my countrymen as 188 SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 189 a warning. I repeat, do with my souvenirs as you will, I leave you free. " Well, you ask how it came about that myself and little band contrived to elude the invading hosts till the very last. You may well wonder, for, as you know, Messieurs les Prussiens conferred a signal honour on me. A price a thousand pounds of your money was twice put upon my head, and had I fallen into their clutches, mon Dieu, I should have been hanged on the nearest tree like a poacher in my grandfather's time ! But a hunter has all his wits about him; my men trusted me implicitly which was their salva- tion and I always kept open a good way of retreat ; of course we risked our necks, and worse, a dozen times a day. What would you have ? War is war. "Then I knew every inch of the country. Ah ! I had Messieurs les Prussiens there ! As you know, my men and I confined our operations to Burgundy and Franche-Comte, and especially to the region of the Jura. You have visited the country, you know its nature, and most of the places I name will be familiar to you. " One at least shall remain anonymous. Yes ! 190 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Never shall children's children of its inhabitants be put to shame by me, compelled to disown their ancestry. Ah ! dear friend, many a bitter tear have I shed as I recall this shameful incident. Hungry and dry, footsore and dis- pirited after a night's march, we one day reached the village of about nine o'clock in the morning. The sun was shining, and to cheer us still more, we saw that we were expected, awaited with true patriotic welcome. Along the village street, outside the shops, dwelling-houses and cafes were placed long tables bountifully spread, carafes of wine, cold meat, and cheese already cut up into portions, with bread in abundance. Our hearts leaped at the sight, for we were famished, a few moments later to sink within us, ready to burst with shame, sorrow and indigna- tion ! No sooner did we draw near, than instead of outstretched hands and invitations to partake, we met looks askance and sullen frowns. Folks rushed forth from their dwellings and placed themselves between us and the loaded table, some even pounced upon the victuals, carrying loaves and dishes indoors, only one or two even stammered excuse. SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 191 " The fatted calf had then been killed for the enemy ! Frenchmen who were risking their lives for native soil were sent by Frenchmen and Frenchwomen empty away ! To curry favour with the Prussians, perhaps to save their cattle and poultry, those villagers had thus forfeited their claim to the very name they bore ! Do you wonder, dear friend, that the war turned out as it did ! Our small bourgeoisie, our peasants, thought more of the day's hazards, the probable loss of a pig or goose, than of mother country. Is it any wonder that when we had the enemy in our power, we francs-tireurs were pitiless ? " Yes, pitiless have I been many a time, may God forgive me ! When my blood was up I thought no more of killing a Prussian than a rat. You will never pardon me for these cruelties, but I must tell you the truth. Had I lost any of my men, nobody knows what tortures would have been inflicted upon them by the enemy. For my part I was always content with a single shot you know I never miss aim 1 or with the quick work 1 Bombonnel was of course a practised marksman. Many and many a time did he offer to perform feats d, la Tell, shooting an apple from my head without injuring a hair. The offer was politely refused. 192 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES of a firing party. Let me tell you about that poor wretch of a straggler and of the two spies. " It happened one day then that I was recon- noitring outside a wood, my men being in ambush close by. I had not proceeded far on the high-road when I perceived a Prussian advancing towards me, evidently a straggler in search of his companions. He was unarmed, and quick as lightning with one hand he took off his hat and bowed almost to the ground, with the other whipped out a white handkerchief, and frantically waving it, begged for quarter. But just then my blood was up, I raised my rifle, took aim and he fell like a stone. The poor (liable could hardly have been over twenty, was blonde and very slim. Yes ! it was a cruel deed ; I have often reproached myself with it, but what would you have ? War is war. Then there were the two spies, I must tell you about them. Scouts and spies, of course to find these was our affair. We francs-tireurs could not meet the Prussians in the field, pardie, we should have been one against a thousand, but we could intercept their reconnoitring parties and hang their spies, thus SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 193 doing them more harm than if we had gained a victory. " The first spy I am going to tell you about was a mystery, and a mystery he will ever remain. We caught him not far from where we are now. He was a thorough German to look at, middle- aged, and of course unarmed. But the extra- ordinary thing about him was, that by no manner of means could we induce him so much as to open his lips. You know I am well versed in the language of birds and beasts, but of foreign jargon, German, Italian, English, no matter what, I am ignorant as the man in the moon. One of my men, however, could speak a little Prussian, so he took the prisoner in hand ; not a word did he get; there were some Italian workmen about, we hailed them, to no better purpose ; then we spoke with our fingers, wondering whether or no he might be deaf and dumb, no sign, not so much as the movement of a muscle. We tried fair means and foul, offered food and wine, promised a safe- conduct to Dijon if he revealed his errand, threatened him with a bullet through his head if he refused. He remained a stock, a stone, a lump of wood. We shook him, we searched him, o 194 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES nothing came of it; whatever the fellow's secret, he determined to carry it with him to the grave if grave he ever had ! At last my patience was exhausted. I gave the word of command. He was shot then and there. "I have often thought of that spy and of the way in which he held out. I should have done the same in his place, and for this reason I ought to have saved his life. Yes, this too was a cruel deed, and I have often reproached myself with it, mais que voulez vous, chere amie ? La guerre, c'est la guerre. "The second spy I have to tell you of was after another pattern. We are not all made of the same stuff. The poor wretch was as keen about the preservation of his life as the other had been indifferent to it. He glibly promised to do any and everything I wanted, would give me valuable indications as to the Prussian movements, and so on and so on. But even were the man to be trusted, what could we francs-tireurs do with such prisoners "? Just then, too, we were at some distance from a town, reconnoitring a mountainous region that you know. The Prus- sians swarmed in every direction. We could ill SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 195 spare a guard for the fellow, and if lie succeeded in giving us the slip we should most certainly have paid for the act with our necks and have been strung up to a man. So I told off a firing party, and he too was shot like the other. It was a cruel deed mais que voulez vous, chere amie ? La guerre, c'est la guerre. And you have heard how horribly the Prussians used any franc- tireur who fell into their hands. Some men can defy torture and death without flinching, my- self among them, but we are not all fashioned alike. That is why I reproached myself after- wards for not having let the second spy go, see- ing how he clung to life. And now you shall hear about our great capture, and the men hidden in the packing-cases." Here I interrupt this narrative with a few remarks. There is ever something uncanny about genius; no small consolation for us humdrum folks wedded to tea and buttered toast, and calling in a couple of doctors and two certificated nurses for a cold in the head. A genius in his way, Bornbonnel held what 196 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES our French neighbours call le confortable in supreme contempt. This life of a free-lance, with all its hardships and hazards, was infinitely more to his taste than a visit to his friends Napoleon III. or Victor Emmanuel. When he spoke of being able to defy torture and confront death without flinching, he made no empty boast. As we have seen, the face-to-face en- counter with an infuriated panther was the real- ization of a life-long dream, and the story of the patch ed-up face, even as naively recorded by him- self, suggests superhuman powers of endurance. Eemote from the resources of civilization, without anaesthetics, without proper nursing, he under- went an ordeal that would have killed most men. " I can in great measure restore your physi- ognomy, at any rate give you features that will be human," had said his friend Dr. Bodichon to him, " but I warn you beforehand, the suffering will be horrible." " Doctor," replied the dauntless little man, " do your best, I can answer for myself. The heart is sound." SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 197 Here is the list of the wounds inflicted by the panther of Corso : Five on the left hand, the animal's teeth having pierced it in three places, eight in the left arm, four in the head, ten in the face, four in the mouth, the nasal bone being broken, five teeth wrenched out, the left cheek below the eyelid torn to tatters. And four mouths 1 after that wonderful patching up and sewing together, Bombonnel was again at his panther hunts, joyfully courting the same perils, night after night watching for his prey in awful solitudes and alone, praying to St. Hubert, we may be sure, for a second and still more desperate encounter. Well, therefore, might he regret his pitilessness towards the silent spy, a hero for whose impassibility he must have felt sympathy, and perhaps it was only natural that he should in the first instance have felt contempt for the other, hardening his heart towards weakness he did not share. We read that when any unlucky franc-tireur 1 It must be remembered that this took place in 1853, since which time immense progress has been made in the treatment of wounds. 198 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES fell into Prussian hands during this war, he was put to death after barbarous fashion. They might have done their worst with the small spare man on whose head they had set a price. Bom- bonnel would have remained Bombonnel to the last ! CHAPTER XVIII SOUVENIRS OF A FRANOTiREUR (continued) The surprise The packing-cases A modern Jeanne Hachette The march into Dijon The Prussian general and his lieutenant Ideal government. I NOW continue myfranc-tireur's stories, giving each in his own simple straightforward language, neither adding, suppressing, nor changing a word. " It was nightfall when we came in sight of a village that you know. What was our astonishment to see it illuminated as for a fete, church and mairie lighted up, candles burning in every window. I bade my men halt for a moment whilst I reflected what was best to do, then I ordered them to move forward cautiously till we should get within hearing. "All at once, tramp, tramp, tramp, we were heard close by, and I shouted you know that I can make my voice heard from one end of Dijon to the other ' L'ennemi ! en avant, en avant, 199 200 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES cernez le village ! ' (The enemy ! Forward, for- ward, surround the village !) " It happened that we were a mere handful just then, but I knew well enough what I was about. Messieurs les Prussiens should not escape me this time. "'Cernez le village!' I shouted again and again. " Then bidding my men follow me close up, I marched at their head right into the middle of the village street. I knew where to look for the enemy. Into the one hotel of the place we forced our way and up the staircase, my men behind me, heel to heel, filling staircase and land- ing, crowding the premises below. On this first storey, as in all village inns, was a large room or hall in which banquets and dances were held. Bursting open the door, I saw a company of Prussians smoking cigars and otherwise enjoying themselves after dinner. They had rid them- selves of their arms and military accoutrements, which were stacked up in the middle of the room. There were about a hundred of them in charge of officers. " 'The village is surrounded/ I cried. 'There SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 201 are three thousand of us at hand. Give your- selves up as prisoners of war.' "The Prussians had been taken so completely by surprise that there was no time to catch up their arms. And behind me, standing as thickly as they could be packed, were my men, their bayonets making a hedge. " ' Give us an hour for deliberation,' said the officer in command. "I pulled out my watch, the gold repeater presented to me by my friend Victor Emmanuel. " ' I give you five minutes,' I answered. * If at the end of five minutes you surrender your- selves you shall be treated with the honours of prisoners of war. If not, you will all be shot down like so many rabbits, and that in quick time.' " Of course they gave themselves up. What else could they do ? Yet they were in reality at least two to our one ! My three thousand existed just then in imagination only. "And now I will tell you of an incident that happened in the same region. As you know, many villages of the Jura are little watch and clock manufactories. Folks live by making time- 202 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES pieces of every description, which are exported to all parts of the globe. " Well, one day we entered a village in search of some Prussian scouts, and of course only got noes and shakes of the head. But we had good reason to believe that the inhabitants were hiding them, and we would not be pooh-poohed. As we stood thus parleying with the chief men of the village street, I heard an old woman say to a neighbour " 'I told you how it would be ; we should get into trouble by harbouring those Prussians.' " That old woman as she spoke in an undertone did not reckon with hearing such as mine. I turned round to the men near, the mayor and others "'Do you hear what that grandame says? You have some Prussians in hiding here.' "True enough they had, but we were obliged to look for them ; high and low we searched, and where do you suppose we found the wretches at last ? In the packing-cases of a watch manufac- tory. Our blood was up, for they had led us a pretty dance, and we made quick work of them, I can tell you. Ah ! you do not know what it is SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 203 to have your country in the hand of the enemy. And to find French people, as I may say, our own flesh and blood, hiding the enemy ! Qa me donne envie de vomir meme aujourd'hui. (It makes me sick even now.) Well, we francs-tireurs did them no end of mischief, there is some consolation in that. And all country folks were not like those just named. Pardie ! The women, for instance, I could tell you a fine story or two about these. " There was that brave wench who saved the bridge, you shall hear about her. ''You know the banks of the dear friend Saone, as well as I do, you have visited Auxonne, Seurre, St. Jean de Losne and other towns situated on this river. And you have read how the first, the little town of Auxonne, where Buonaparte studied as a cadet (would we had another like him !), defied all the attempts of the Prussians in 1870 to take it. But it was not there that the deed I am about to relate took place. The enemy then had been suddenly sighted on the other side of the Saone, making for a village only approachable by a wooden bridge. Now it was most important to cut off their advance at this or any other point,, and as the country is flat 204 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES thereabouts the townsfolk had time anyhow to do their best. Either the authorities had made up their minds beforehand to keep quiet what- ever happened, or the sudden appearance of the Prussians paralyzed them, for not a soul stirred ! " This was too much for a good woman, whose name I forget, she afterwards got the Legion of o * o o Honour, and who was a wife and a mother. Forth she rushed towards the bridge armed with her husband's hatchet. " ' Do you call yourselves men ? ' she shouted as she traversed the village street. ' If the enemy march into the village it shall then be over a woman's body.' " Of course the townsfolk could not stand that, so out they poured in a body. The bridge was a rotten affair; they hacked and they hewed, up flamed barrels of pitch and tar. By the time the Prussians arrived the bridge was gone ! " And had every woman in France behaved like that one, things would have turned out very differently. We should have seen the last of Messieurs les Prussiens in quick time, and have kept Alsace and Lorraine into the bargain. SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 205 " Now I will tell you what happened after the proclamation of the armistice. We francs- tireurs were ordered to return to our homes unarmed and in civilian dress by a certain day. But I for one was not going to be humiliated by the last condition. I had been awarded a colonel's rank, in my person the uniform of a French soldier had not been dishonoured, I made up my mind to wear it to the last, in fine, to re-enter Dijon as I quitted it, in kepi and tunic, sword at my side and bayonet on my shoulder. I knew that by so doing I was running a double risk. The Prussians then occupying the city might shoot me as a contravener, the French authorities might clap me into prison, but my resolution was unshakable. I would traverse Dijon from one end to the other in broad daylight and in full colonel's uniform. As I wished myself to be seen as much as possible, in other words, to convince everybody that I well knew what I was about, I entered, not at the Porte Guillaume near my home, but at the Porte Neuve, which, as you well know, is at the other extremity of the town. " The townsfolk popped their heads out of the 206 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES windows and gaped from their shop doors in mute astonishment. I passed alike Prussian soldiers and French gendarmes. They turned round to stare, whispered to each other, shrugged their shoulders, and that was all. Every one either knew me or guessed that it was Bom- bonnel. On arriving at my lodging (I was then living en gar$on in the Hue ) I found to my disgust that a young Prussian lieutenant had taken possession. Now a little bird had whis- pered into my ear that, by virtue of a mutual agreement between the French Government and German General holding command at Djion, my premises were to be respected. " I therefore, and in somewhat abrupt terms, begged the impudent young whipper-snapper to take himself off, but he kept on nagging and nagging. At last I said to him, my patience being exhausted, ' You see that it is impossible for me to house you. I have only bachelor accommodation, not so much as a spare bed to offer any one/ " Even this did not settle the saucy young dog, he made a coarse retort, to which he got a coarser answer ; then, in order to stand no more nonsense, SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 207 I sent for the Prussian General. If I could only describe what followed ! " ' Leave the house, sir/ was all he said, but never did chastised slave at New Orleans quail before his master as did this Prussian lieutenant before his General. " With one arm holding his belongings, with the other making military salute, he crept, all but on all fours, out of the room. I have spent many years in the slave states of Southern America, as you know; never did I witness such abject sub- jection. I must say that no one could behave with greater courtesy than that General. " ' Monsieur Bombonnel/ he said, after a lengthy chat, 'you did us much harm, but you only performed your duty as a Frenchman. Rest assured that your privacy will be respected.' " So the Prussian Government did not get my head, and no one pocketed the twelve thousand five hundred francs offered for what the panther of Corso had left of it ! After the signing of the peace, the Republic named me Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, with it according the pension, two hundred and fifty francs, given to soldiers thus decorated of the regular army. I am no 208 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Republican, Heaven forbid ! but France is France whether governed by an Emperor or a band of good-for-nothings like myself, and, as the Prussian General said, I did my duty. Aye, I did my duty, thanks to St. Hubert, to whose care I have ever daily committed myself! As you know, I never lost a man, and after the war my men subscribed a testimonial an illuminated address I will show you and I am ' mon Colonel' to them all to this day. " To return to the Republic, I know of course that the Revolution of 89 was necessary, but I know also what Frenchmen are, and the govern- ment that is good for them. There was that Moor- ish baker, I will tell you about him, and you will then understand what I call government. Well, when I was first in Algeria, thirty years and more ago, the truth of the story I can vouch for there was a baker at Tangiers who system- atically defrauded the people by adulterating his bread. This came to the knowledge of the Sultan, a man of uncommon understanding and a true lover of justice. In order to convince himself that there was no mistake about the matter, he sent his servants disguised as poor SOUVENIRS OF A FRANC-TIREUR 209 artisans, and on separate occasions, for a loaf. Each time the bread was not only as bad as could be, but short of weight into the bargain. Then the Sultan, with his justiciaries and a great retinue, went to the bakery in person. The oven was cold, but ordering it to be heated to its utmost capacity, the dishonest baker was thrust inside and the door closed upon him. And from that day no bread was adulterated or of short weight in Tangiers. Now that is what / call a government, but alas ! we shall never enjoy the like in France, where Jack is as good as his master ! The only man we have worth anything is Paul de Cassagnac. There is loyalty if you like ! " CHAPTER XIX THE RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE Joint-stock panther-hunting Un beauparleur Disillusions " The sunshine of the place " Farewell. THERE is no doubt whatever that the irre- futable proof, the indelible sign of genius, is a certain pronounced whimsicality, just a touch, un soupqon, as the French say, of craziness. Men and women may possess shining parts, may rise to pre-eminence in many fields, by their saneness ye shall know them ! Write auy human being sane, and we may be sure he does not possess the god -like gift, " le feu sacre." The pedlar, panther-slayer, and franc-tireur was now to enter upon a new, yet not final, phase of his extraordinary career. A few years after the war he received still handsomer acknowledgment at the hands of the Republic. The government of M. Grevy pre- 210 THE RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE 211 sented him with a magnificent hunting ground in Algeria, several hundred acres of forest and waste remote from civilization. The great hunter had been permitted to select his spot, and natur- ally chose one in which he might reasonably look for wild beasts, and above all, for entire seclusion. In the rare correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte lately published, we read of a projected joint-stock company for the spread of Positivism. A Limited Liability Panther-hunting Company seems even more chimerical. Yet such a scheme now dawned on Bombonnel's mind. It occurred to him, rather flashed upon his mind, that he could turn this noble gift to international account, in other words, organize a grand rendezvous de cliasse on joint- stock principles. The plan was exceedingly ingenious, and at first sight plausible enough. A payment of two thousand francs would entitle the possessor to winter sojourns ad lib at the rendezvous board, lodging, and washing, with as many lions and panthers as he could get into the bargain. Above all, these preference or fully paid-up shares included the supervision of Bombonnel himself. 212 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES In the summer of 1882 a card was brought to me at my hotel in Paris, bearing these words " Monsieur D , travelling representative of M. Bombonnel's Eendezvous de Chasse." The bearer was of course admitted, and then ensued a scene to which only a Dickens or a Thackeray could have done justice. There entered an uncommonly good-looking, personable man of reassuring age. Who can entertain suspicion of a well-fed, well-dressed, exuberant man of sixty ? That any one in these terribly competitive days should attain such years without attenuation, wrinkles, and shabbi- ness is a fact speaking volumes, if not for his character, at any rate for his good luck. One circumstance, and one only, at first suggested misgiving. As we all know, no Frenchman calls upon a lady without paying some attention to his toilet, seeing that his coat is well brushed, his gloves in good con- dition, and so on. But there is a wide difference between being well dressed and newly rigged out from top to toe. My visitor's garments had a freshness and glossiness, his boats a creakiness, that attracted notice ; of a piece were immacu- THE RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE 213 late gloves, fine lawn handkerchief, and elegant little pocket-book, to which still adhered the shopman's ticket. Never, so long as I live, shall I forget those lavender-gloved fingers and that brand-new pocket-book of Russian leather. " My card will, I feel sure, excuse this little visit made in the interest of our friend, M. Bombonnel," he began ; then with delicate in- sinuation added, " Madame will, I hope, permit the observation, that in the most important business matters feminine far-sightedness and tact are of the first necessity." I was under no obligation to reply. The stranger rattled on, but no, let me not malign him in the least particular, he continued volubly, speaking excellent, even epigrammatic French, and with a considerable engagingness of manner. " You are of course familiar with the grandiose scheme of my dear master (cher mattre), that I feel sure I may count upon fullest sympathy with schemes so cosmopolitan and so much in harmony with the spirit of your countrymen. For the better furtherance of his views, M. 214 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Bombonnel has constituted me his travelling re- presentative ; after having thoroughly awakened public interest in the subject on French soil I shall visit in his name, and of course at his expense the various capitals of Europe, London, Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, and others, for the purpose of enrolling share- holders. The affair is excellent, I am convinced of its success, and you know the French proverb, madame, il faut vainore ou mourir (we must conquer or die !). In the meantime " Here the immaculately gloved fingers fumbled among the contents of the pocket-book. " In the meantime, and I shall be infinitely indebted if you will press this point upon my dear master, I must have money, I am not a moneyed man M. Bombonnel understands well enough that my journeys to the various courts and capitals of Europe must entail upon him a very considerable expense. But he does not see how fatal anything approaching to niggardliness must prove at the outset, and above all in Paris. He bids me, for instance, interview journalists on the subject ; here are the cards of a few with whom I have appointed interviews." THE RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE 215 Several cards were now produced bearing the names of newspaper correspondents. " Now I ask a lady of your experience and understanding, is it possible for me to take up the time of these gentlemen without inviting them to breakfast or dinner, and of course to invite a total stranger at fixed price is im- possible also " He repeated the words with an expression of unmeasured scorn. " I ask you, madame, if I invited a writer on the staff, say, of the ' Figaro ' or the ' Petit Journal' to dejeuner at fixed price, in what light should I appear ? As the shabbiest fellow going. No, we must do things very differently if we would float this magnificent affair." Perhaps I began to look a little unconvinced and inquiring, for now from the recesses of that elegant pocket-book came a rather long letter. " I must explain to you that I am merely in Paris on M. Bombonnel's account, staying in fact at the Hotel B in the Rue A ; my home is a rustic retreat on the banks of the Oise, and I will just read a line or two 216 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES received this very morning from my dear wife, it will give you an idea of our harmonious fireside." Accordingly he read aloud half a page of wifely counsel slightly tinctured with gush, his own composition I have no doubt. " My love," ran the missive, " anxious as I am to have your cherished society once more, I can but rejoice that you have undertaken an enter- prise so suited to your energies, and the issue of which will, I feel sure, redound to your prudence and disinterestedness." " Ah," said my visitor, turning over the page, " let me read you the postscript, your sex always delights in a postscript, often the most delicious part of a letter 'Dear Alphonse, I have just gathered three greengages from your favourite tree ; how could I eat them alone ? Pray manage your affairs so that you have your Sunday for me." He folded up the missive, and put back the pocket-book with quite a lover-like sigh. "Ah! chere amie" (here he apostrophized his wife, a wholly imaginary being I felt sure). " Ah ! chere amie, how can I repay such deli- THE RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE 217 cacy, ^rfch devotion ? But I must not venture to take up more of your time. In M. Bombonnel's interest what are my own poor little percent- ages compared to the success of his magnificent undertaking ? in the interest therefore of my cher maitre and your friend, I beg your kind support. From outsiders, that is to say, from friends and acquaintances, a true appreciation of the case will come better than from a paid representative." I heartily acquiesced in this sentiment, and after a few more neatly - turned phrases, he bowed himself out. Needless to say that alike lavender kid gloves, Russian leather pocket-book, and the rest came out of Bombonnel's pocket ; needless also to add that the tour of European courts and capitals did not take place. Regretfully, indeed sadly, the panther-slayer dismissed his pseudo agent. " I am sorry the man turned out a swindler," he said, " I was greatly taken with him. J'aime tant un beau parleur ! " (I so much like any- one who has the gift of the gab.) But disillusion did not end here. Whilst 218 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES building his lodge and framing Ins prospectuses, Bombonnel forgot one important fact. His famous raids belonged to a past generation, meantime civilization had advanced with rapid pace, the panthers, discreet animals, as quickly retreating before it. When at length some stray enthusiast Russian grand-duke, Austrian prince, or Italian count visited the Rendezvous de Chasse, they found no more chance of firing at lions or panthers than at Biarritz or Monte Carlo ; instead flocks of partridges tame as Parisian sparrows, only under the pressure of hunger the most inveterate sportsman finding it in his heart to take a shot. Another delusion awaited the projector. " A lodge in some vast wilderness " has indeed become mythical as Merlin's cave, now-a-days no less of a survival than the jousting ground. A twelve- hours' journey by a mountain road from Algiers might well have held out dreams of solitude, of a hunter's life secure from fashion and the world. But no such thing ! The routine of cosmopolitan hotels, excursions shorn of adventure end in ennui. As soon as his country folks found one day very much like another, they said, THE RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE 219 " Why on eartli should we not visit Bom- bonnel ? " And visit him they did. He still hoped for stray panthers, watching for them on moonlight nights ; but sure as ever his preparations were made, some vehicle would be descried in the distance, a coachful of ladies and gentlemen come to kill time. To shut one's doors under such circum- stances was impossible. So matters had to be made the best of, the night-watch given up, the place turned into a veritable caravan- serai, Bombonnel himself often acting as cook, and his Arab muchachos (lads) as waiters and ladies'-maids. Incredible as it may seem, so serious became these intrusions that the hunter felt more at his ease in Burgundy ; he could better enjoy privacy, he said, within a league or two of Dijon ! One tie, and one tie only, now bound him to his lodge in the wilderness. This was a mag- nificent lion that used to visit a stream running near, and there undisturbed slake its thirst. Bombonuel allowed no one to molest the noble animal, who, as he prettily said, " faisait la 220 ANGLO-FRENCH" REMINISCENCES gaiete de I'etablissement " (was the sunshine of the place). But on returning one winter he found that his lion had disappeared, fallen a prey to Arab sportsmen. Disenchantment could no further go. The place lost all charm. The loss of his huge pet preyed upon his spirits. He gave up Algeria altogether, and died at Dijon in June 1890, a colossal statue of St. Hubert now marking his grave in the new cemetery. CHAPTER XX A* RENEGADE VILLAGE " Do Protestants believe in God ] " How la religion was enforced A common-sense priest French and English lads compared. WEEKS and months, which if rolled up into one or two sum-totals would have made years, were spent by me in the Cote d'Or from 1879 to the present time. With Bombonnel's story, however, these Burgundian reminiscences end. Only one more chapter and that a brief one shall be de- voted to recollections alike mirth-provoking and of deepest melancholy. In twenty years how many ties are broken for ever, how many friends drop from living ken ! Henceforth my errands to the beautiful city of Dijon will be mortuary, for the sad garlanding of lonely and beloved graves. Before turning to other scenes, I must however mention one curious revelation of country life 221 222 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES hereabouts, a revelation of profound historic interest. The village which year after year was my summer resort, I may say my home, lay twelve miles east of Dijon, between that city and the little town of Is-sur-Tille. Here several families, all more or less connected, and all moving in the same walk of life, had their country-houses, these Dijonnais, barristers, solicitors, notaries, spending the long vacation, not after English fashion in travel, but on their own property. The little society of which I long formed a member was very patriarchal, two or even three generations sharing the same roof, a kind of Chinese wall shutting out alien influences. When, therefore, for the first time a foreigner and a Protestant was admitted into the social circle, some little reserve and distrust might be expected. But quite the contrary ! Imperialist in politics, Ultramontane in dogma, uncosmopolitan, and for the most part untravelled, these new friends yet received me with whole-hearted sympathy. Perhaps at first I was the subject of puzzlement and curiosity, certainly to the country folks I appeared outlandish. " Une Anglaise et une A RENEGADE VILLAGE 223 Protestante, grand Dieu ! " (an Englishwoman and a Protestant, good Heavens !), they would exclaim, asking many naive questions, and making many ingenious reflections. Here is a specimen. " It grieves me to think that you are a Pro- testant," said one young woman to me, a girl rather of the superior sort acting as caretaker of a ruined chateau. "Your conversation pleases me ; I should like to think that we might meet hereafter in heaven. Won't you ponder the matter ? You would see the superiority of our religion to yours." " So long as the world lasts," I rejoined, " man- kind will never be agreed upon such subjects. Do not therefore be unhappy about what no earthly power can prevent." "Ah !" she sighed, "you have no command- ments, you have no confession." " Pardon," I exclaimed, " we obey the law of Moses and confess to God. If you think of it, there is no reason why we should not meet in a better world." This seemed to set her thinking, although the 224 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES look of wistful uncertainty did not pass from her face. Most often the interrogation was of blunter kind. " Now do tell me," asked more than one rustic acquaintance, " do you Protestants believe in God?" Even among the educated strange notions existed about the reformed religion. I remember well that one day a French Pro- testant from Dijon had joined the family circle. Some question arose Apropos of which he quoted a text from the Old Testament ; I followed suit with one from the New. Never shall I forget the astonishment of my hostess, an aged lady whose affection for myself had become quite motherly. " Mon Dieu ! " she cried, dropping her knife and fork, " how well you Protestants know your Bible ! " Nonconformity no more than foreign birth stood in the way of close intercourse. Perhaps to these very circumstances I owed much amia- bility and confidence. The gist of my chapter is now to come. A RENEGADE VILLAGE 225 In these rustic spots Protestantism may be described as non-existent. Dijon itself numbers several hundred Protestants, 1 and for many years has been the seat of a consistory. The outlying villages belong exclusively to what M. Brunetiere and his followers persist in calling la religion, according to these worthies, Mariolatry and anti-Semitism alone deserving the name. Many of the country people whose acquaintance I made in my walks confessed that they had never before met a Protestant. Just seven years ago a resident of the village hereabouts most familiar to me published a little work based upon its archives. 2 These rural records are of the deepest interest to all students of French history, but I will touch upon one point only. In turning over my friend's opuscule, I discovered that the village in question, up till the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had been almost exclusively Protestant, and that the very ancestors of my Ultramontane friends and neigh- 1 A handsome Protestant church was consecrated here in November 1898. 2 ' Un village Bourguignon sous 1'ancien Regime,' par A. Huguenin, Dijon, 1893. Q 226 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES bours figured among the abjurers. For upwards of several hundred years these small estates had been handed down from father to son, apostasy here, if anywhere, being excusable. Remote from the sea-coast, hemmed round by royal dragoons, under the very walls of Dijon, their property consisting chiefly in houses and vineyards, how could small Burgundian landowners defy the arch-tyrant of modern times ? We read that out of thirty and odd families, only two or three shook the dust of France from off their feet and contrived to escape, the rest abjuring in a body. Here is an account of what actually took place, drawn textually from the communal records : " The declaration of his Majesty having been registered by the Dijon parliament," wrote the prior Guillaume, "on Monday, the 15th of October, 1685, M. de Harlet, Intendant of Bur- gundy and Bresse, accompanied by the mare- chaussee (gendarmerie) of Dijon, went to Is-sur- Tille, the temple (Protestant church) of which town was then and there razed to the ground, and the pastor of the reformed religion so called expelled from the place, his daughter, aged seven. A RENEGADE VILLAGE 227 being retained. 1 On the Friday following, being All Saints' Day, I received the abjuration of twenty-seven families at Gemeaux, making in all one hundred and three persons hitherto pro- fessing the reformed religion so called." Here then is an instance of what fanaticism can effect when backed up with brute force and unchecked by public opinion. The kidnapping of children acted as a terrorizer more powerful than torture or death. How full of awful meaning the sentence just quoted, "having expelled the pastor and retained his daughter aged seven years ! 2 But all recollections of Protestantism have not perished at Gemeaux. A road leading to Mirebeau, formerly taken by Protestants when wending their way to church, is still called le chemin des Huguenots, and their ancient cemetery is identified to this day. What struck me as curious was the extreme, the unleavened Ultramontanism of these Catholics 1 See 'Le Protestantisme au Havre,' par Amphoux, Havre, 1894, for a history of kidnapped Protestant children at this time. 2 The prior Guillaume writes : " Ayant interdit et renvoye Gunthier, ministre, et retenu sa fille, age de 7 annees." ' Tin village Bourguignon,' p. 258. 228 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES descended from Protestant stock. The boys were all sent to the Jesuit colleges, the girls to convent schools, no meat appearing on the Friday dinner- table except a slice for the Protestant guest. 1 One of my friends, a charming young woman whom I loved dearly, made the pilgrimage to Lourdes no less than three times, I need not add in vain she died of consumption soon after the third journey. Not long before the end I saw this dear friend. " Pray for me," she said as I was about to take leave. " The prayers of a Protestant ? " I replied, smiling sadly. " You ask for mine ? " " Are we not all the children of God ? " she made answer, thus showing how human nature rises above vile sacerdotal teaching. Do I not find the following in a Romanish catechism for the use of young children? 2 " Query. Who are those who remain outside the Church? 1 I always make a point of begging my Catholic hosts for this exception. Not that I care for meat, but nothing whatever would induce me to give in to priestly ordinance in any form. 2 ' Catechisme du Diocese de Coutances.' 1881. A RENEGADE VILLAGE 229 "Answer. Infidels, heretics, schismatics, apostates, and excommunicated. " Query. Is there salvation outside the Catholic Church? " Answer. No. No one can be saved without belonging to the Catholic Church." Here was one who had outreached her spiritual instructions, reason getting the better of dogma. Upon more than one occasion I found it was the priest whose good sense had overcome superstition. An old friend, a retired notary of Dijon, accompanied me one clay on a visit to some lady friends living near Seurre. The cure, as is usually the case, was invited to dejeuner, and afterwards spent some time with us in the drawing-room. I noticed that he had been in earnest convers- ation with one of the ladies, the pair apparently at friendly variance on some point, each trying to persuade the other. At last the priest, after a low-voiced, hasty retort, and a shrug of the shoulders, rose from his seat and joined the others. As we drove home my cavalier said, " Did you observe Mcllle. B - and M. le Cure ? 230 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES She is always plaguing him for an extra con- fession, pour tuer le temps (to kill time). To-day he got quite cross, and said, ' Once a month, confess once a month, mademoiselle, and you have fulfilled your obligations. But confess every week ? Why not then every day, every hour, in fact, be always at it ? ' Ah ! " added the cure to me, " quelle corvee, ces vielles de- votes ! (What an infliction these old devotees !). They have no mercy upon us poor priests ! " There is surely something to be said for the old devotees. What else but sacerdotalism has thus narrowed their mental horizon and circum- scribed their lives ? Is it any wonder that in country places confession should take the place of mundane pastime "? Before quitting Burgundy I should like to say something about French and English lads, re- garded from the social standpoint. My experience certainly favours the former. Whether brought up in Jesuit college or lycee, whether belong- ing to the upper or middle ranks, a French boy- such at least is my view has here the advantage of his English compeer, possesses more amiability, savoir vivre, and without doubt a livelier desire A RENEGADE VILLAGE 231 to please. Our public scholars are first-rate in their way, but so are French lads in theirs. Let me illustrate my meaning by personal anecdotes. Should these pages, dear Auguste, fall under your eyes, you will, I am sure, smilingly forgive me. Eighteen years have glided by since you so cheerfully packed your grandmother's trunk, and enlivened for her and me a week of downpour with piano and prelections. No inappropriate lesson for your little sons, this souvenir of their father's serviceableness and good-humour ! Auguste G , then, at the time I write of was about sixteen, and being an only child had received the usual coddling and petting of children in France. Here I will quote the saying of an Anglo-French friend on this subject. " My firm belief is," she said, " that French amiability arises from the fact of children being thoroughly spoiled and humoured, whereas in England boys and girls get morose and unsociable from perpetual interference with their wills and inclinations." I do not go so far as my friend here, although much is to be said for her argu- ment. 232 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES It happened then, that whilst staying with Auguste at an inland spa, his grandmother fell ill. She was an old lady, and as her symptoms seemed serious, the doctors ordered her immediate departure. I am sorry to say that this experience of a health resort and its medical attendants painfully recalled a scene in Balzac's wonderful ' Peau de Chagrin.' In Madame G 's condition the journey from St. Honore-les-Bains in the Morvan to Dijon ought on no account whatever to have been undertaken. But a death in the height of the season would be disastrous in the extreme, preventing fresh arrivals, and hurrying new-comers away. I add that the poor lady's malady was pneumonia and therefore non-infec- tious, a fact telling still more against the doctors. When I arrived, therefore, having promised to join the pair for a couple of weeks, I found my old friend in bed and her grandson, preparing for the hurried move, getting her things together as handily as he could. He had been searching for a certain pair of stockings, and now held them up triumphantly. " This must be the pair you mean, grandmother ? " he said, and, but for my timely arrival, would, I feel sure, have helped A RENEGADE VILLAGE 233 the invalid to dress. Very gladly I hastened to the rescue, packed the trunk, got my friend ready, and saw her and her youthful protector into the train. At the junction twenty minutes off she was met by others of the family, and, strange to say, did not die on the road. I question if an English lad would so serenely have torn himself from cricket or football on a similar errand. Upon another occasion three months of drought in Burgundy were followed by continuous rain. In our own Lake District or North Wales, tourists and holiday-makers go abroad even when " the rain, it raineth every day." In France, folks act after a more indolent and perhaps more rational fashion. They do not put their noses out of doors till the sun shines again. This country house contained a most excellent library of French classics. But the modern novel seemed more appropriate for family reading on wet days. So Auguste, who had lately purchased ' L'Abbe* Constantin,' read it aloud, without pause except for meals. And when he had got through 'L'Abbe Constantin,' as the weather did not improve, never sparing himself, 234 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES he got through another. How well I remember it ! The title was ' La Lizardiere,' by whom written I know not. It was a pretty story. It ended happily, as love stories should ; above all, this especial reading of it brought out the inestimable French virtue to which we insulars, and especially young insulars, cannot too eagerly aspire, namely, a chronic desire of gratifying others. CHAPTER XXI SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE My " miracle " Petits inconvenients of barrack life Manoeuvres " Passed like a dream " The return of the conscripts Outdoor recreation of a lyceen. MY young friend Edmund N was in his twenty-first year, when in 1891 he visited me at Hastings. Under middle height, already moustached, formed alike in body and in mind, I should no more have dreamed of seeing a cubit added to his stature than to my own. Having acquired sufficient English for business purposes, he was now about to return home, re-entering the commercial house quitted nine months before, and awaiting his tirage au sort, in other words, conscription. Just three years later I had an appointment with my young soldier in the Botanic Garden of Dijon. We were to stroll about for an hour, after- 235 236 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES wards dining with his uncle, an officer of high rank here quartered. What was my amazement when a giant of a dragoon, after making military salute, addressed me in English. It was my slim little Edmund ! Eighteen months of barrack life had worked a miracle, putting to the blush those of " our Lady of the Grotto." When bidding me adieu in England he stood five feet five or six inches in his shoes. I now beheld a strapping handsome fellow con- siderably over six feet high, broad-shouldered l to boot, indeed as fine a specimen of masculine humanity as you could find throughout Europe. The dragoon's uniform of course heightened the imposingness of his appearance, and the day being Sunday he was considerably embellished. The coquettish red tuft surmounting horse-hair tail was in itself a sign of full dress. " On my word, my little Edmund ! " quoth I, eyeing him admiringly from head to foot I had 1 What poetic Jingo indited the foolish line " An English pair of shoulders in the crowd " ? The percentage of undersized, pallid, atrophied creatures in England is as great, perhaps greater, than in France. 237 known him as a gingerbread-loving brat of nine, " on my word ! " " Yes," he replied complacently, " I am a bit taller than when I saw you at Hastings. In- deed it is now no easy matter to fit me with trousers in barracks, my legs being so much longer than the average. You see we are not o o measured for new clothes. Like prisoners, we have to be satisfied with those left behind by our predecessors. That is why conscripts are punished for a grease stain or the loss of a button." " How on earth came you to enter a cavalry regiment ? " I asked. " To the best of my know- ledge the only thing you ever rode in England was a bicycle." " You are right, but I ever loved horses, and I was determined when my turn came to be a dragoon. My parents and my uncle did their utmost to dissuade me ; it was of no use." " Hard you must find the life indeed." " Ah ! " here he laughed. " Hard is not the word. We expect that. It is the liability to punishment for trivial offences that is worst to bear. The least little infringement of rules, or 238 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES carelessness about one's clothes, and you get several days of prison. Of course some superior officers are much severer than others. For my own Colonel I have nothing but praise." " I am glad to find that you have not wholly lost your English," I continued ; " have you time for a little reading ? " " Not a moment ! We are so tired when exercise or work is over that we are only too thankful to sleep if sleep we can." " Why can't you then ? " He hesitated, then went on : " Well, there are barracks and barracks ; some are new and some are old, and in the latter there arepetits inconvenients (trifling annoyances). In fact, to be plain, fleas and worse. In one caserne the worse used to keep us awake half the night. It has since undergone thorough cleansing and repair, and I dare say no one is now disturbed. For my part, such petits inconvenients are less endurable than military duties." The season was July, and the weather of torrid sultriness. "Your dress looks very hot and uncomfortable," I said. SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 239 " Oh ! " was the reply, " we wear linen tunics and trousers at exercise. I am to-day in full uniform, but it is only the helmet I mind. When we go indoors you shall feel its weight, just upon two pounds." "It is a marvel that you don't all get brain fever." " Some of us do," he replied coolly, " not every man can stand a soldier's life. And then the manuoevres ! A good many knock up then." " Tell me about the manoeuvres." " Oh ! the work is desperately hard. During those of last year we were often in the saddle all day long and wet to the skin, for the season was rainy. There was no time to snatch a meal till night came, and next morning we had to be up and after our horses at four o'clock. In very hot weather we suffer most. Men drop from sun- stroke like flies. But we often have a first-rate time. Everything depends on the region, whether we are in a rich or poor country." " How is that ? " "Well, as you know, every mother's son in France is now obliged to serve his time. When the manoeuvres take place, the country folks, no 240 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES matter where we go, welcome us as if we all belonged to them. Some villages are rich and some are poor, so that of course we fare very differently according to circumstances. In the Cote d'Or we lived like princes, all the peasants offering us roast meat and good wine. In the Morvan we shared every one's best, but the best was bad. You would hardly believe what a difference we found there, but the good folks did their utmost. And after the manoeuvres, and we were marching home, one might have taken us for a victorious army. Pipe and tabor were brought out, the village girls put on Sunday dress, and we danced away till past midnight. Yes, the conscript is thoroughly spoiled (joliment gate) at such times." In the following year I again met my friend Edmund, now about to exchange barrack life for the counting-house. Meantime his position had immensely improved. He now enjoyed the privileges of a sous- officier ; instead of sharing a dormitory with fifty others, having the third of a comfortable room and a fairly liberal table. In appearance too he showed his altered circumstances, looking SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 241 trim and smart as any lieutenant of the regular army. This advance was due to intelligence and good conduct. " Are you glad or sorry ? " I asked, as we dined together on the eve of his departure for Paris. " It would be hard to say," was his reply. " I am very sorry to take leave of several com- rades, none of whom I am in the least likely to see again, and I do not look upon military training as a bad thing. It makes men of many youths who have been too much coddled at home. It develops our muscular strength and powers of endurance. When I entered the caserne my heart sank within me at the prospect of three years' service. But the three years that began so hardly have passed like a dream ! " During the next few days Dijon was all alive in consequence of this r entree des classes, in other words, the return of conscripts having finished their term of service. In parties of several hundred, accompanied by relations, friends, and comrades, bands playing, drums beating, flags flying, the young soldiers now marched towards the railway station, thence 242 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES to be dispersed all over France. With what joy must many have defied, most of them evidently re-assumed, civilian dress, their sacrifice to mother-country over, their lives henceforth to belong to themselves ! The station and ap- proaches were crowded, each conscript forming the centre of a little group, greeting kinsfolk come to welcome them, and taking leave of associates during the long probation. Here were young peasants returning to the plough, there youths of rank and fortune, or seminarists and candidates for the Protestant pastorate, these now, as in Germany, being compelled to pay the blood tax. As a rule the prevailing air was of exultation and relief, but there were exceptions. Not for all would the fatted calf be killed ! To the very poor, the thriftless, and the ne'er-do- weel, disbandment came unwelcomely, if not to themselves, at least to their parents. For three years they had been housed, clothed, fed at the cost of the State. The red pantalon doffed, and they were once more brought face to face with the problem of to-morrow's bread. I here speak of a class from which even rich and happy France is not free, to those whom SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 243 existence means a hand-to-mouth struggle for bare subsistence. " Ah ! " said a matron belonging to the rich middle-class, as together we watched the scene. " Many a poor mother's heart will sink within her to-day ! Many a poor lad will regret his haversack and canteen." This same lady, mother of three sons, added with regard to conscription generally, " No, as carried on in France I am not opposed to the system. For the robust and healthy such physical training is good and the discipline in- valuable. We spoil our children too much. Conscription repairs the evil." In order to round oft' this sketch I must go back a little, recalling my fifteen-year-old Edmund, then at the Lycee of Vanves near Paris. In company of his parents and little sister I had visited him one half-holiday, on Thursday afternoons pupils being permitted to receive their friends. This college, formerly a princely residence, stands in magnificent domains, upon these occasions thrown open, the boys' recreation ground being the usual walled-in space, dreary 244 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES as a prison yard. The weather was beautiful, and to-day the park presented the appearance of a vast picnic, family groups seated under the trees, around them heaped cakes, fruit, and wine. I chatted with Edmund as we strolled to and fro. " What are your outdoor amusements ? " I asked. " Oh, we haven't any at all." "What do you do then during the hours of recreation ? " " What you and I are doing now, walk and talk." This conversation had taken place fifteen years before ; great, if not radical improvements have been since made in French colleges. Very likely cricket, lawn-tennis, and football are now the order of the day at Vanves. But the little conversation just quoted is very suggestive. No wonder that three years' barrack life had added a cubit to the lyceen's stature, that outdoor oc- cupations and muscular exercise had transformed my slim stripling into a vigorous young giant ! There is something to be said on the other side. SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 245 " It is quite a mistake to suppose that military service develops patriotism," lately observed in my hearing a young conscript belonging to the upper classes. " I for one, I am sure, am not a better patriot for going through this ordeal." And he added, " Hard as I felt sure it must be, it is harder by far than I could have imagined. Think of a young fellow decently brought up sharing a dormitory with perhaps fifty more, many belonging to the lowest class of society, of filthy habits and using the vilest language. Again, the manoeuvres how can young men reared like myself for professional life be ex- pected to stand fatigues that would kill many a professional soldier ? I assure you the very thought of the manoeuvres makes me wretched." Gallic elasticity of temperament surmounts obstacles apparently insuperable, and this jeremiad was uttered in the gayest manner. CHAPTER XXII SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE (continued) Caught in the manoeuvres Supping with conscripts The march out" Filles des Regiments " Conscription in Alsace and Lorraine. Two or three years later I was myself to have some experience of the manoeuvres. Arriving at the little town of Arcis-sur-Aube, Danton's birthplace, one September evening, I found that 15,000 soldiers had just swooped down upon the 2000 inhabitants, and that the chance of procuring a night's lodging and a supper were poor indeed. The three ancient hostelries, which I dare aver have not changed since Danton's time, were crowded with officers and their wives. Every private family, alike rich and poor, had given up spare rooms to the soldiers, whilst with regard to food, the place was as bare as an Algerian village devastated by locusts. To present a letter of introduction 246 SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 247 under such circumstances was out of the ques- tion. I should but have embarrassed friends in vain, their hospitality being already taxed to the utmost. Uselessly for some time I wan- dered from house to house ; by every door hang- . ing a little tablet bearing the name and rank of the officer or officers temporarily lodged. And here let me explain that since the events of 1870-1, both officers and men whilst on the manoeuvres are gratuitously housed by private persons. After the Prussian occupation, folks asked themselves why they should not now do for love what before they had been compelled to do by brute force ; at the present time every spare bed alike in chateau, villa and cottage are placed at the disposal of the French army in September. My tramping powers were fairly exhausted when a grocer's assistant kindly gave me one or two addresses, and found a little girl to act as guide. Half-an-hour later I was supping with an intelligent, good-natured, middle-aged woman, daughter of a late communal schoolmaster. The table was spread in her kitchen opening on to 248 ANGLO FRENCH REMINISCENCES a garden full of fruit-trees and flowers ; soon other guests joined us. There were two young conscripts who the night before had rung her bell with the appeal " For five nights in succession we have slept on the ground, our only bed being a little straw. Will madame take us in ? " The answer was simply "JSntraf And straightway iny hostess had conducted them to her best bedchamber, a cheerful airy room looking on to the street. To-night the poor fellows looked dead beat, but revived somewhat after a bumper of good wine. One of the pair came from a great industrial centre of the north, and was very well educated ; we clinked glasses and toasted the French array, whereupon, bowing to me, he added " And to the health of the English army also, madame." How characteristic was this incident ! How in keeping with French sociability and readiness ! We chatted a good deal of the anti-Prussian feeling nursed in barrack and camp, then of SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 249 another subject ever near my heart, namely, Anglo-French relations. " Now," said I, " do tell me one thing. Is there any anti-English feeling in the French army ? " The young man looked up greatly astonished. " None whatever," was the reply. " Why in heaven's name should there be ? " Next we talked of the golden age to come, in other words, of general disarmament, little fore- seeing the Congress of three years later. Both conscripts regarded military service as a tre- mendous interference with civil life, an irre- parable loss of time, indeed I have never found the slightest enthusiasm among these soldiers by compulsion. The corvee is horrible, and the sooner got over, the better. By four o'clock on the morrow, the household was astir, my hostess's permanent lodgers, an artisan and his wife, rising in order to regale the visitors before starting. Coffee is served out to each man by the sutlers, but home-prepared coffee is quite another thing. The conscripts are fathered and mothered by everybody. The poorest deny themselves on these occasions with 250 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES the thought, "May our own lad fare equally well at the hands of the stranger ! " Such fellow-feeling is perhaps the pleasantest, perhaps the only pleasant aspect of conscription. On the second morning after arrival, from early dawn the troops set out for the great encounter in the plain. It was a fine martial array. From every street and side street issued one regiment after another Lancers, Cuirassiers, Hussars, Dragoons, Artillerymen, and Infantry. Here and there I noticed a horse-soldier leading his animal. Those men who have ill treated or ill cared for their horses are thus punished. The cantinieres and their equipages formed an important feature of the show. The gaily-dressed "Filles du Regiment" of former days are now replaced by sober matrons, the name of each being affixed to her heavy vehicle. This change dates from the Franco-Prussian war. Until 1870 the can- tiniere wore a semi-military uniform, and was ornamental as well as useful. Her successor is a portly bourgeoise in neat bonnet and dress of hodden grey. Each is accompanied by an equally decorous assistant of her own sex. Very 251 important- looking were Madame This and Madame That of such and such regiments, as, seated in their semi-open carriages, they acknowledged the cheers of the crowd. By noon the 15,000 soldiers, with their horses, guns, baggage, waggons, and ambulance carts, had cleared out of the place. Only one or two urchins now played around Danton's statue. I stayed several days at Arcis, making the acquaintance of the Danton family and others. As I am here, however, on the topic of con- scription, I will add another, this time a harrowing experience. If enforced military service is felt a burden by patriots, what must it be to subjects of a conqueror, to the French subjects of a Prussian autocrat ? My third and latest visit to French friends in Alsace-Lorraine, 1895, happened during the autumn manoeuvres, when I naturally heard a good deal about enforced military service and its hardships, also of the inconveniences attending these sham campaigns. We all know the Draconian standard of Prussian militarism. Nothing more shocked 252 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES French susceptibilities during the late war than the way in which officers cuffed, boxed, and kicked their men for the slightest blunder or offence. We can easily imagine the tortures endured by young Alsatians and Lorrainers at the hands of a brutal commander. Since the advent of William II. the conquered provinces have been subjected to sterner and yet sterner rule, the result being a total alienation of French feeling, and an immense influx of Germans. But Alsace and Lorraine are being gradually Germanized by sheer force. Of course the blood tax was not to be exacted without drastic measures. Under the present system, default involves not only exile, but, to the peasant and small capitalist, worldly ruin. Rich and well-to-do annexes can afford to send their sons across the frontier and pay the heavy fines imposed for defection. To the wealthy a sight of their young soldiers is an easy matter. With the less favoured of Fortune the case stands differently. A poor man cannot afford leisure or travelling expenses. If his sons quit the country and go through military service on French soil, they cannot return till they have SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 253 attained their forty-fifth year, and the fine is so high that it means, and is intended to mean, beggary. A lad, for instance, whose patrimony consists in a few hectares of land, forfeits it for ever. The small shopkeeper's son is proportionately mulcted. Can we wonder that fond, thrifty parents chose the hated Prussian nationality rather than such separation and ruin ? Another crying evil of the system must be taken into account. French conscripts in the German army are always sent as far from home as possible. If they fall ill or die, seldom indeed can kith or kin reach their bedside. Again, as French is persistently spoken in the home, German being learned under protest at school, the young Alsatian or Lorrainer enters the barracks with an imperfect knowledge of the tongue spoken there, the hardships of their position being thus immensely increased. I would not infer that a regime of especial severity is imposed upon French conscripts in the German army, we all know what that regime is under ordinary circumstances, the pitiless ferocity shown to dulness or negligence, the total sub- 254 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES servience of social, we may indeed say, human, instincts to the military spirit. During the visit here spoken of, I visited a tenant-farmer whose only son had lately died in hospital at Berlin. The poor father was telegraphed for at the eleventh hour, but arrived too late, the blow saddening for ever an honest and laborious life. He was a passionately patriotic Frenchman, but having daughters, how could he impoverish them for the sake of their brother's nationality ? And at what bitter cost is this nationality retained ! The son of my host, a Frenchman of ancient and noble family, had entered the French army, and now for the first time after fourteen years was permitted to visit his parents. During the manoeuvres, which were then taking place in the neighbourhood, this young man was virtually a prisoner, having given his word not for a moment to quit the paternal premises. And having once returned to France, he would in all probability never again be permitted to cross the frontier, such permits being accorded only by very especial favour. Here on German- ized French soil the autumn manoeuvres evoke SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 255 anything but sympathetic feeling and sociability. Alike rich and poor at such times are compelled to lodge and cook for as many soldiers as the authorities chose to impose upon them. My hostess assured me that the peasants often bid the poor worn-out, ill-fed men to their frugal board, the canteen being regulated in accordance with strictest economy. In wealthy houses German officers are invited to table, but we can well understand under what conditions. Whilst in France such wayfarers are received with open arms, acquaintance often ripening into friendship, here reserve is never broken, cordiality never for a single moment entering into enforced welcome. Let me add that on my third visit to the annexed provinces in one respect I found little change, as in 1883 and in 1893, so in 1895, the French and German population holding strictly aloof from each other. And I learn that the state of things remains unchanged ; there is no social intercourse, no intermarrying, nothing like an amalgamation of the two races ; on the other hand, official Germanization proceeds at a tre- mendous pace, bureaucracy may now be said to 256 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES have passed into Prussian hands, the humblest as well as the highest post under Government being now reserved for German subjects of the empire. But the Nemesis of annexation is making itself felt ! Here is a curious and highly suggestive fact impressed upon me by French friends in Germanized Lorraine. When the conquered provinces were handed over to Germany, they could boast of absolute solvency ; they are now burdened with debt, due among many other reasons to the high salaries received by German officials. The position of these functionaries is so unpleasant that they have to be bribed into expatriation. Thus official salaries are double what they were under French rule. Not that friction often occurs between the German authorities and French residents, indeed justice is rendered to the temperate conduct and reserve of the former, but they fully realize the distaste- fulness of their position. The perpetual state of siege moreover is a grievance daily resented. Free speech, liberty of the press, the right of public meeting do not exist in Alsace-Lorraine. Sad is the retrospect, sad the looking forward SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE 257 with which we quit French frietids beyond the frontier. And when we bid them adieu, the word has additional import, epistolary intercourse, no more than fireside talk, is sacred. CHAPTER XXIII REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS An Anglo-French record Bookless garrisons Soldiers at work and at play Contrasts A calligraphic marvel The Archbishop and the Wesleyan manufacturer. MY country-folks halt at the ancient city of Champagne by tens of thousands. How many stay long enough to acquaint themselves with one most striking characteristic ? How many realize that in this eminently ( French town for upwards of forty-six years an English citizen has unobtrusively, yet persistently, forwarded Anglo- French amenities and upheld the credit of the English name ? Would that every French town possessed its Jonathan Holden or its Philip Gilbert Hamerton, men who, whilst retaining English citizenship, remain in closest sympathy with France, her people, and her institutions 1 Ever ready to further French progress, a stead- 258 REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS 259 fast advocate of Anglo-French relations, the great manufacturer of Reims is what he has always been, a fervent Protestant, a faithful sub- ject of Queen Victoria, above all, a typical Englishman. Mr. Holden, as the French so aptly word it, is " le fils de ses ceuvres," which in plain English means a self-made man, the creator of his own fortunes. Neither the distinction conferred upon him by a foreign Government, nor the commercial and social position he now occupies have in the very least changed the character of the man. His domestic life is arranged on a liberal scale, he yet retains the innate simpli- city of early years. " The happiest hours of my life," he will often say, "were those spent by me as a boy when attending a night school at Bradford." This appreciation of early opportunities has actuated Mr. Holden in all the great generosities of his life. To no munificent Remois born and bred does his adopted city owe more than to its English resident. Among the Jubilee offerings to Queen Victoria figured one of very special interest, and to be 260 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES appropriately mentioned here. This was a hand- some illuminated vellum offered by the Municipal Council of Reims, thanking Her Majesty for the Jubilee gifts presented to their city by Mr. Jonathan Holden. These gifts are the very last that would have occurred to most foreigners. Mr. Holden went through the awful ordeal of the Franco- Prussian war. It then occurred to him that the normal existence of soldiers in garrison might be very greatly brightened and elevated by access to good books. With the consent of the military authorities he organized not only libraries for both officers and men, but small collections on the principle of Mudie's book-boxes, these being sent from fort to fort, and exchanged at intervals. The Third Empire, needless to say, had done nothing for the intellectual advance of French soldiers. The disasters following Sedan left no money for barrack luxuries. Hence garrison life might be described as bookless. The officers of course could read the papers at their cafe, and purchase books if so inclined. During recreation the men, like young Lyce'ens, must " walk and talk." REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS 261 All this was changed at Eeims through the medium of our countryman. In commemoration of the Queen's first Jubilee, Mr. Holden not only added to the original collections, but endowed a suburban quarter, building and furnishing a commodious reading-room and handsome library. The second Victorian Jubilee was celebrated by large pecuniary grants to both barracks and last- mentioned institution. Here I may mention that the donor has invariably refused all share either in the choice of books or general management. His gifts were unconditional. It is with feelings of no common gratification that any countrymen of Mr. Holden's must visit these libraries. We feel proud of English sym- pathy and acknowledgment having found such honourable expression, proud also that liberality so royal should be accompanied by reserve so delicate. To this day, however greatly he may have felt tempted to do so, Mr. Holden has never presented a single volume of his own choice to the libraries of his own founding, nor has he so much as visited those of the garrison. 1 1 " I much wished to present to each of my libraries your own work, ' France of To-Day,' " said Mr. Holden to 262 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Nothing could more strongly appeal to French sympathies than such reserve. A portrait of the founder with suitable inscrip- tion has been placed in the officers' library, and a catalogue presented to him, of which I will make special mention further on. In company of a lady I was shown over both libraries, and a most agreeable and instructive afternoon we passed at the barracks. An officer kindly acted as cicerone, first taking us to the soldiers' library and reading-room, only used by the men at certain hours. The librarian pro tern, was himself a conscript serving his time, and evidently belonging to the peasant or artisan class. " Have you read any English works in trans- lation ? " I asked. " Indeed I have," was the reply. " ' Robinson Crusoe,' some of Dickens' stories, also some of Mayne Reid's ; but you shall see what we have in our catalogue." On glancing at the list of British authors I suggested a few additions, such as ' La Foire aux me, " but in keeping with my rule of all abstention what- ever, I refrained." REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS 263 VaniteY ('Vanity Fair'), 'Adam Bede,' and a few others. These our cicerone promised to suggest to the committee. I must say that as a whole the collection seemed admirable. Travels are in high favour with the men, also illustrated periodicals, 'Le Tour du Monde' and the like. Objectionable fiction is rigidly excluded, and preponderance given to literature alike recreative and educa- tional. Works on mathematical science are greatly appreciated, much more so, I should say, than would be the case in a similar library with us. But the French mind is eminently a reasoning one. As M. Fouillee, the first living French philosopher, writes : " We reason more than we imagine, and what we best imagine is not the outer, but the inner world of thought." This mental characteristic doubtless accounts for the deep-seated, widespread rationalism in France. Certainly it explains the popularity of exact science among all classes. Both libraries contain the national classics, that of the officers having a larger proportion of mathematical and philosophic works, among these, Darwin and Herbert Spencer. I also noticed that the supply 264 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES of fiction was on a less limited scale. Guy de Maupassant, Annunzio, and followers of the same school figuring here, had not found their way into the men's collection. I think our cicerone divined my conclusion, for he observed with a smile, "As you see, we are less select here as to novels than when choosing for the men ; we try to give them only the best." " I suppose you officers consider yourselves impervious to evil influences ? " I could not help saying a good-natured sarcasm, as good- naturedly received. We were then shown over the barracks, our first visit being paid to the kitchen. Cooks and conscripts were preparing dinner, a stew of pork and vegetables. The soldier, no matter his social rank, must turn his hand to anything. Thus a young Remois of good family told us afterwards bow awkward he had found himself at potato-peeling. " I don't think I shall be set that task again," he added laughingly. " By the time I had got off the peel there was hardly anything of my potato left." We next visited the stores, room after room REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS 265 piled from floor to ceiling with soldiers' clothes and accoutrements, the wherewithal to equip thousands of men for the field in a few hours. These reserves smell strongly of naphthalene and other substances used as a preservative against moths. Every twenty years the entire stock is renewed. When we consider the dormant capital repre- sented by such supplies we can understand the economies of the French War Office, the fines imposed upon a conscript for loss of a button or grease-stain upon tunic. Painful, too, the con- trast suggested by store-rooms and library in the first, preparations for another and yet more fearful conflict than that witnessed a generation ago ; in the second, brought to bear upon a national armv, the humanizing influences of ./ ' Scott and Dickens. Complete sets of Scott's novels, I should add, are in both libraries, also in the third, presented by Mr. Holden to Reims, that annexed to the suburban reading-room mentioned above. The last I visited in company of the founder, no scruples here standing in the way of a visit. French towns are generally provided with good 266 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES libraries, but artisans no more than soldiers can fully take advantage of these, they want books ready to hand. Mr. Holden's building stands in a remote and populous suburb, and being open during the evening is of the greatest possible use to working people. The library contains the best French classics in well-bound sets, also complete sets of Walter Scott, Dickens, Feniinore Cooper, and other great English novelists. I must now describe the catalogue of the garrison libraries before-mentioned. Never w T as executed a more consummate piece of calli- graphy. Never did human hand more entirely attain the precision and symmetry of copper- plate. This exquisite volume recalls cloistered scribes and their handiwork, the marvellous penmanship now admired under glass cases in museum and national library. And unkind as seems the suggestion, surely Mr. Holden would incur universal gratitude by presenting it to the municipal museum ! Before taking leave of our countryman, I must quote one carelessly dropped saying that throws no end of light on his commercial career. REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS 267 " I have never spent anything upon myself," he once said when dwelling on past experiences. Here we have the keynote to his character, at the same time of his never-failing yet unenvied success. The hand so generous when held out to others has ever been close-shut to the voice noisiest with most of us. Another point in an industrial biography sure to be written for our grandchildren, is Mr. Holden's attachment to France, and the high position won for him in his adopted country. On the close of the late war, the Government offered the city of Reims a decoration for such citizen as might be held worthiest of the honour. The proffered Legion of Honour was unani- mously voted for Jonathan Holden, subject of Queen Victoria an award speaking as much for the adjudgers as the recipient. A Wesleyan, his orthodoxy softened by cosmopolitan influ- ences, Mr. Holden has escaped all friction with his clerical and Ultramontane surroundings. The late venerable Archbishop of Reims entertained friendliest feeling for his Noncon- formist parishioner, and there is a pretty story anent the pair. 268 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES One Sunday afternoon it seems his Eminence called at Mr. Holden's town residence, his object being a delicate act of sociability. " Monseigneur," said the old man-servant, a Frenchman, who for twenty and odd years had enjoyed his master's confidence, " Monsieur Holden receives no visitors on Sundays." A few days later, the great manufacturer visited the Archbishop to tender a polite explanation and express deep regret for the incident, as a visit from his Eminence was in perfect keeping with the sanctity of the Sabbath. " Monsieur Holden," said the good old priest, clasping his hand, "you have taught me a lesson that I shall remember till my dying day." The present Cardinal Archbishop, as a proof of his large-heartedness, sent his benediction to Mr. Holden's daughter on the occasion of her marriage. He never fails in his benign sentiments towards his family. But another lesson was set for all who cared to learn. Although Mr. Holden's horses and carriages are never under any circumstances taken out for family use on the Sabbath day, exceptions are REIMS AND ITS ENGLISH CITIZENS 269 made in favour of his Catholic household. Thus during the long vacation a year or two ago, one of the outdoor servants was going to have his first-born christened at Reims, an hour's drive from his master's summer residence. Immedi- ately a vehicle and horses were placed at the man's disposal. Whilst on the subject of horses, let me men- tion a curious fact. Since the war of 1870-1, nobody can be really called the possessor of a horse in France. Whether French born and bred, or a foreigner, his stables belong to the War Department. Every year an account is rendered of the number and quality of horses kept by any individual, either for business or pleasure, and if a war were to break out to- morrow, neither by money nor favour could equine pets or servants escape requisition. Such are the results of annexation, of a political crime without parallel in modern annals ! CHAPTER XXIV ME. HAMERTON AT AUTUN The Pre Charmoy A brave life Ideals International relations Gibbon and Mr. Hamerton Last words. To my thinking Mr. Hamerton's home at Autun always preached a moral. Never was more strikingly illustrated the gulf separating romance and matter-of-fact, day - dreams and ideals, humdrum and attainment. Most of us, alas ! are obliged to regard a house from the purely utilitarian standpoint, and most of us are limited as to area. Thrice happy those who, knowing how to choose, have before them all the world, an outspread map on which to lay the finger ! But here was an apostle of beauty if any ex- isted, housed prosily as retired shopkeeper or small functionary, and only so housed after long and loving search ! When in 1881 Mr. Hamerton called upon me at Autun, the man more than 270 MR. HAMERTON AT AUTUX 271 vindicated the author. Here was no disillusion. But as next day I visited the Pre Charmoy I certainly felt a trifle taken aback. The house would hold a good-sized family, it possessed an acre of paddock and garden, it was within half- an-hour's walk of the town ; so much could be said for the place and no more. Needless to say that if it lacked seductiveness, in equal degree was it free from vulgarity. Such a home might well satisfy most folks, that it should satisfy Mr. Hamerton seemed an enigma. The discrepancy too between one's preconceived idea and actuality, the ideal of an aesthete and the Pre Charmoy, brought home a moral. Must it not ever be so ? Does not the dreamed-of ever remain the unattainable ? Here and there one of us knows how and where to seek. But the finding, the divining rod, the capture, therein lies the miracle ! Many years after, the enigma was solved. In the touching memoir of her husband a memoir perhaps too long except for those who knew and loved its subject Mrs. Hamerton lets us into the secret of a singularly beautiful and self-forgetting life. 272 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES " Nothing daunted by this fearful blow " (the sudden death of his father-in-law, 1861), she writes, " my husband at once offered his mother- in-law a pension sufficient to enable her children to carry on their education ; this pension would gradually be diminished as the children became able to earn money for themselves and to take their share in the maintenance of their mother. The fact was that from that time he had two families to keep." Trifling were such burdens to the caterers of popular fiction, the fortunate, or unfortunate, few turning off half-a-dozen serials a year, payment so much per thousand words ! Never was the dignity of literature more respected than by the author of ' The Intellectual Life.' Seeing on what flimsy stuff and garbage reading folks feed now- a-days, the wonder is that he found, or rather created, a public at all. With all writers who have a genuine message for the world, Mr. Hamerton had to create his public. Well might George Henry Lewes write to him regarding ' Modern Frenchmen' "The book has charmed us both, but I fear you will find the deaf adder of a public deafer than usual to your charming." MR. HAMERTON AT AUTUN 273 The simple, nay, homely life of a French village satisfied its author. Not for highest earthly good would he have palmed off literary pinchbeck on the credulous, forfeited his intellec- tual birthright for a mess of pottage. From one point of view the very homeliness of the neighbourhood attracted ; spell-bound to France by a marriage perfect in all respects but the material, having adopted French modes of life and given his children a strictly French education, he yet retained, and jealously retained, his own nationality. " One reason why I settled here," he said to me in one of our long walks, " is the perpetual suggestion of English scenery around me, the level cornfields, the winding lanes with high hedges, the scattered farmsteads." At this point likeness ended. Where in Eng- land could we find an exact counterpart to this picture, the view of Autun as seen when return- ing from the Pre Charmoy by road ? I here beg permission to quote from myself, so true it is, as John Morley somewhere says, that if we say a thing twice over, we never say it in precisely the same way " Looking straight before him, the T 274 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES traveller beheld a city so dainty of outline, having a background so gracious and beautiful, that at first sight the whole seemed made to look at, nothing more. Never had artist on canvas o arranged ideal landscape and dream-city more harmoniously. The first object on which the eye rested was an exquisitely proportioned cathedral, built of greystone, and having one conspicuous lovely spire. Around it lay the town, the houses not here piled pell-mell as if folks had indecorously quarrelled for best place, rather as if, subdued by the beauty around, each early builder had raised his modest pile at a considerable distance from the church, fraternally leaving the choicest sites for others. Above city and spire rose the pleasant hills, mountains they are called in these parts, the name matters little. Nature has had it her own way, every outline being precisely what it was when the foundations of the city were laid. One fair hill rises gently above another, till the whole makes just as much of a picture as the frame will hold, and with it in entire keeping." l Then Mr. Hamerton had ever before his eyes the grand outline of Mount Beuvray, so delight- 1 ' Half-way,' a Romance. MR. HAMERTON AT AUTUN 275 fully described by him in ' The Mount ' (Seeley, 1 897) ; lie was also within easy reach of his beloved Saone. And the very homeliness around, the freedom from restraint, charmed. Anything in the shape of display, ostentation, social routine, repelled, nay, disgusted him. "A literary man," he once said to me, " ought to be well satisfied with earning five hundred a year." Put differently these words afford the key-note to Mr. Hamer ton's character. He might just as well have said, " Five hundred a year ought to satisfy the worldly needs of any intellectual being," for this was evidently his meaning. Simple in the extreme was family life at the Pre Charmoy. Between eight-o'clock breakfast and mid-day dejeuner, Mrs. Hamerton and her young daughter would help their maid or maids, peasant girls from the Morvan here trained for domestic service. With his own hands the master groomed a favourite old pony he had not the heart to part with. His sons learned manual arts, above all, habits of self-help and independence. This clinging to simplicity and unswerving adherence to a certain standard made intercourse with him so salutary. The prolonged tete-a-tete 276 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES in the pleasant book-room of Pre Charmoy little resembled usual colloguing of author and author. We talked less of books than of life, touching on gravest topics, most often on the relation of an individual to his intellectual, moral, and social medium. What struck me first about Mr. Hamerton was his transparent sincerity, next his uncompromising straightforwardness. He could not understand men and women affecting or concealing opinions from worldly motives. Living as he did in a Catholic and orthodox neighbour- hood, folks, seeing what he was, did not care to inquire what he believed. 1 His attitude was of respectful aloofness from churches and creeds. Yet no Englishman in France was ever more universally respected. Disagreeable incidents would occasionally happen, as Mrs. Hamerton tells us in her memoirs. I do not know whether the following incident' referred to these 2 or to later years. 1 That intolerable feminine prig, Rousseau's Julie, thus speaks of her husband. 2 See ' Memoirs,' pp. 465, 466. The affectionate minutise of these memoirs, perhaps fatal to the book from a com- mercial point of view, are invaluable to Mr. Hamerton's personal friends. MR. HAMERTON AT AUTUN 277 " I was once greatly touched by the conduct of a French Catholic lady," said my host, as one day we strolled along the Autun road together. " Something unpleasant had got abroad about myself. To show that she entirely disbelieved anything against my character, she quitted the ranks of a religious procession in the open street to shake hands with me. I felt such delicacy deeply." The only test of literature is duration, and Mr. Hamerton's place in English letters must be decided by other generations. In our own time perhaps his value as an Anglo-Frenchman, an intermediary between social and literary France and England, is higher than that of the art-critic and essayist. A man so unbiased in his judgment, so free from national defects and prejudices, so dignified and blameless in every relation of life, formed a perpetual object lesson, an argument on behalf of his nationality none could refute. If there was one thing that lay nearest to his brave yet tender heart, it was the strengthening of French and English ties. Years ago in a letter to myself he broached the scheme of an Anglo- French Association, formed for these ends, realized, 278 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES alas ! too late for his co-operation in the now flourishing Entente Cordiale. How far in his case did expatriation answer ? With regard to " the long conversation," as he somewhere describes marriage, we know that the answer is, yes. The essayist and art-critic maybe could not so categorically reply. Looked at from whatever point we will, the matter is clear. An author should live among the people whose language he writes. In his invaluable work on English prose, Mr. Earle alludes to a characteristic of both Gibbon and Hamerton, namely, the scholarly rather than idiomatic language they used, and he naturally attributes this fact to foreign influ- ences. Mr. Hamerton's style is excellent, and seeing under what conditions he lived, the hold he retained upon native speech was a standing marvel to me. " I think as often in French as in English, indeed I pass from one to the other unconsciously," he once said. But to think in one language and write in another is really to translate, and thus Mr. Hamerton had such a task before him whenever MR. HAMERTON AT AUTUN 279 he put pen to paper, literary effort one would surmise being thereby doubled. In common parlance the gradual loss of idiom became noticeable. Thus, when out for a walk one day, his dog was set upon by another, and he separated them with a free use of his umbrella. " I should not have interfered," he remarked when rejoining us, " but I saw that the strange dog was getting the superiority." Here a distinctly French idiom was substi- tuted for the English. On the whole readers have little reason to regret a classicism rare enough in these slipshod days. Transparence and correctness more than compensate for the easy graces of idiom. But when all is said, nothing that Philip Gilbert Hamerton bequeathed to the world was so beautiful as his life. An immense pity for the helpless was here allied with moral and physical courage, rare even in his race. A few weeks before his death, as we were walking along the Rue de Rivoli together, he denounced the horrors of vivisection in bitterest terms ; and of a piece with his literary career and 280 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES personal history were the last words of that graceful and conscientious pen, an aspiration after humaner worlds, a day-dream of justice and mercy. As we read the lines with which Mrs. Hamer- ton closes her biography we understand a sentence before quoted, namely, that an author ought to be satisfied with earning five hundred a year. Philip Gilbert Hamerton's ideals lay in another direction. CHAPTER XXV AN AFTERNOON WITH ROSA BONHEUR " Exceptionnellement ! " Recognitions An unfinished masterpiece Compliments The pet lioness. How may a little thing reveal magnanimous natures ! The following story corresponds with all we know of a great woman's character. It was not without diffidence that last September I accepted an introduction to Rosa Bonheur. The writer was an English friend v_7 long lost sight of, indeed the pair had not seen each other for forty and odd years. Almost by return of post came the following autograph letter By, Sept. 9, 1898. " MADAME, "Exceptionnellement j'aurai Fhonneur de vous recevoir apres-demain, Dimanche, & 281 282 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES 3 heures de 1'apres midi. Je vous prie d'agreer, Madame, mes sentiments les plus distingues, " R, BONHEUR. " Mes meilleurs souvenirs pour Miss Blackwell, je vous prie, Madame ; il est bien entendu que j'aurai 1'honneur de vous voir accompagnee de vos amis." l Before describing this interview, perhaps the very last accorded a stranger, let me bear out my opening reflection. A few weeks after that pleasant stay at Moret- sur-Loing, I was speaking of it to a friend at Dijon, this friend being a French lady of title and position, a most gracious personage to boot. " Ah ! " she exclaimed, " you were fortunate indeed to obtain an interview with Rosa Bonheur. When at Fontairiebleau two or three years ago, I aspired after a similar favour in vain. All my overtures were politely declined." 1 Translation " Making an exception to my rules, I shall have the honour of receiving you the day after to- morrow, Sunday, at three o'clock. "With the expression of my distinguished sentiments, R. Bonheur. My best remembrances to Miss Blackwell ; of course I shall have the honour of receiving your friends " (my host and hostess). AN AFTERNOON WITH ROSA BONHEUR Thus the great painter, at whose doors fashion and even royalty had knocked in vain, had no welcome warm enough for a friend's friend ! Half-an-hour's drive brought us to the some- what rococo chateau of By, with its walled-in courtyard and grounds. An old woman-servant having first assured herself that "Mademoiselle " thus she styled her mistress expected us, led the way to the big studio on the first floor. Here we were received by a very kind American lady, friend and companion of the artist, herself a portrait painter of no small capacity. " Mademoiselle Bonheur is very punctual ; she will be here on the stroke of three," she said. " The fact is," I explained, " we were so much afraid of being a minute too late that we are perhaps a few minutes too soon." Impatient although we were, we could well have put up with a longer interval of waiting. The studio in itself was a sight, and sketches and photographs had been got out expressly for our enjoyment. Herein Rosa Bonheur showed the considerateness of very busy people. It is 284 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES only dawdlers and triflers who never find time to think of anything ! On one easel stood Miss K 's portrait of her illustrious friend, ordered for Russia. Here the artist is represented in a gown, not working dress, the cardinal-coloured silk well setting off her wonderful face and white hair. Most pleasantly our deputy-hostess pointed to objects of interest, and chatted of Rosa Bonheur, her work, her daily routine, her relations several of these distinguished in painting and sculpture. Soon the door opened, and there entered the strangest, most striking figure I had ever seen. Voltaire himself at the same period of life could not have been stranger, more striking. It was of Voltaire's portraits and busts I thought as I gazed at that old-young, intensely intellectual, intensely vivacious physiognomy. It was a face that recalled also well-known likenesses of Michelet and Thiers. Thoroughly French were both features and play of expression, the brilliant eyes exuberant with life and feeling, immense power and determination evidenced by the mouth. Remarkable in no less degree were AN AFTERNOON WITH ROSA BONHEUR 285 her hands, the delicate taper fingers and filbert nails characteristic of Frenchwomen here com- bined with great muscular strength. She wore her usual working dress, the man's dress perhaps taking something from her stature ; on the breast of her black alpaca blouse, or rather short coat, she wore the rosette of the Legion of Honour, the ribbon of chevalier being replaced by the insignia of officer during M. Carnot's Presidency. Absorbing as had been the studio a minute before, how did the artist's presence embody and vivify ! It was as the first touch of some great musician on his own instrument. And simple with the inherent simplicity of sovereign natures, Eosa Bonheur could yet appreciate and enjoy a certain kind of praise or rather under- standing. One of her visitors was an artist, 1 and she could see that all three recognized the atmosphere they breathed. " Ah ! " she said to me, after a hearty hand- shake and cordial word to each, " I am glad to have news of Miss Blackwell ; it is forty-five 1 Mr. H. E. Detmold, whose animal and figure subjects have appeared on the walls of the Academy, the Salon, and elsewhere for many years. 286 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES years since we last met, but I remember her well. I will write to her." Unaffectedly cordial, gay, and animating, she at once entered into the spirit of our visit, first letting us see sketches for the great ' Horse Fair.' " There you have a Boulonnais ! " I observed as we contemplated the study of a fine black cart-horse, the breed thus called having become familiar to me during my agricultural rounds in Picardy. This remark gratified her. " I am glad to find a stranger so much interested in our cart-horses," she said, my companions' rejoinder by dumb-show evidently pleasing her still more ; the artist now with his hands imitated the prancing of a horse, thus showing how well he remembered the exact position of the Boulonnais in the ' Horse Fair.' We next turned to studies for the no less famous ' Labourage dans le Nivernais.' " The beautiful white oxen of the Morvan," I cried, " how well I know them ! " This remark also pleased. What topic indeed could have been more congenial to Rosa Bonheur than that of the AN AFTERNOON WITH ROSA BONHEUR 287 animal world in France ? And if in search of subjects for her canvas she had gone far and wide, hardly less lovingly and laboriously had her English visitor studied their owners. Then she kindly interested herself in my companions, questioned her fellow-artist as to his facilities at Moret, and chatted in friendliest fashion with her young countrywoman, his wife. All this while we were longing to look at an enormous picture as yet unfinished unfinished, alas ! I presume, to remain. Divining our wishes Rosa Bonheur soon turned to this canvas. " Have you ever seen such an incident in your French travels," she asked me, "the primitive method of threshing corn by horses ? " Yes, I had once come upon the Biblical scene in the department of the Aveyron, and not so many years before. This interested her. " But the custom is fast dying out every- where," she replied, with a touch of regret. Farming in France and elsewhere is indeed fast losing all poetry. Just as future genera- tions must refer to Bret Harte for the life and language of the Sierras, so will old-world French 288 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES husbandry survive only on canvases of a Bonheur or a Millet. Here the great artist had found a subject calling forth all her powers. Seated on his high stool a peasant drives six sturdy spirited horses, their swift gyrations filling the air with chaff, making us feel as if dust were blown into our eyes, the entire group full of life and movement. Not indeed in the ' Horse Fair ' was motion more powerfully expressed. Whether in the delineation of these superb cart-horses, the hand and eye of seventy- seven had lost the cunning of a generation before, art-critics must decide. Were it so, indeed, the grandiose scheme fitly closes a grandiose career. But we dared not farther trespass on time so golden. Already the best part of an hour had slipped by ; with reiterated thanks we prepared to take leave. Despite our remonstrances, it was Rosa Bonheur herself who accompanied us down- stairs, tripping along with the activity of a girl. Here an amusing little interchange of compliments took place. " I ought to apologize for receiving visitors in AN AFTERNOON WITH ROSA BONHEUR 289 working dress," said the great artist, pointing as she spoke to her masculine dress. " Madame," said my friend the painter, in French, "it is not the frame that interests us, but the picture." " Very happily expressed," replied our hostess, smiling. Then nodding final adieu, the unforgetable figure disappeared, within a few months to quit her beloved atelier and her animals for ever. On the 26th of last May loungers in the Avenue de 1'Opera beheld her portrait veiled with crape, the windows of Tedesco Freres thus rendering honour to their most eminent exhibitor. Here Rosa Bonheur's pictures were afterwards shown before being dispatched to foreign galleries. I cannot refrain from repeating one of the great woman's sayings quoted by a French biographer 2 "Who is the fool whose recent ennunciation in some journal or other, to wit, that women 1 " Madame, ce n'est pas le cadre qui nous interesse, mais le tableau." Rosa Bonheur's answer ran thus " Tr6s bien dit." 2 See ' La Revue des Revues,' June 15, 1899 : R. Bonheur, par V. Demont-Breton. u 290 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES have no imagination, made me laugh so heartily? Amusing, forsooth, such critics, who, never hav- ing achieved anything themselves, are so ready with their criticisms of others. I could repay them in kind were it worth while ! " Her leisure was spent to better purpose. Artistic biography shows no more dignified figure than the little white-haired lady of By, the delineator of animal life, the unrivalled inter- preter of animal character. For not only did Rosa Bonheur live to draw animals, but to know and love them. What a light is shed upon her own character by this utterance ! " I believe in a just God, and a Paradise of the just. But religion l does not altogether satisfy me. I hold it monstrous that animals are supposed to be without souls. My poor lioness loved me. Thus she had more soul than certain human beings who do not know what it is to love anything." A touching account of this lioness is given in the periodical just named. Some years before, Rosa Bonheur had taken it into her head to rear 1 /. e. the religion of Rome ; and we know the excuse for cruelty to animals in Catholic countries, " Us ne sont pas Chretiens ! " AN AFTERNOON WITH ROSA BONHEUR 291 two lion cubs, male and female. The first died young of spinal paralysis ; the second lived long enough to attach herself to her mistress. In time she also declined, falling a victim to the same disease. " I nursed her," narrated the artist, "as if she had been a human being, visiting her constantly during the day, doing my best to console her. One day I found her so weak, that when returning to my studio up-stairs, I said to a friend, ' My poor lioness can hardly move. She is dying.' A few minutes later I heard soft velvety steps in the entrance hall below. It was my dying lioness making a last effort to see me once more. Feeling that her end was at hand, hearing my voice, she was trying to drag herself up-stairs after me. I ran down, took her in my arms, gently caressing her to the last." With this exquisite story may well close my all too short memorials of a great woman. As has been well said, " At By, Rosa Bonheur lived, at By she died, the admiration of the world." CHAPTER XXVI VICTOR CHERBULIEZ The music of Rousseau Walter Scott's journals An author on himself M. Paul Sebatier and his Saint Madame de Stael. FOR several years a long talk with the author of 'Ladislas Bolski' was one of my annual privileges in Paris. The Academician would generally call at my hotel on Thursdays after a sitting of the Academy ; taking off his great-coat, and settling himself comfortably on a sofa, he would then talk delightfully of books, old and new. No other subjects as a rule came to the fore. We ignored alike religion, politics, science, and social economy. It was in the autumn of 1894 that M. Cher- buliez paid me his first visit. He was then in his sixty-fourth year, but looked somewhat older. The fine head was well set on his shoulders, and 292 VICTOR CHERBULIEZ 293 the grand air of the Academician heightened an imposing presence. The face itself was what readers would expect, mental alertness and the faculty of observation being conspicuous, mingled with these a betrayal of tempered sarcasm. Malicieusement spirituel, gently ironic, thus aptly was described one of his criticisms in the ' Revue des deux Mondes.' Gently ironic too was his conversation. Well versed in our language and literature, my visitor yet preferred French speech. A volume of Rousseau lay on my table and immediately caught his eye. " Ah ! there we have music indeed ! " he said, smiling. Then from Jean-Jacques' consummate style he turned to letters on this side of La Manche. It was a melancholy coming-down. " Through what a lamentable phase your lighter literature is now passing," he observed, alluding to the latest development of realistic and super-sensual fiction so called, " and in the land of Walter Scott, too ! I confess this retro- gression astonishes me. But one work at least has lately appeared which is a noteworthy addition to your wealth, and forms in my opinion 294 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES one of the most important literary acquisitions of our day. I allude of course to the two volumes of Scott's journals and letters lately brought out." The English public has not apparently been of this opinion. Has so much as a second edition of this work appeared ? What readers want is something new, something that is talked about. As was only natural, the two novelists veered round to the topic of the novel. " Le roman, le roman (the romance, the romance). Ah ! " said my visitor, " what would existence be without it ? " " Many novel-readers could not do without ' Ladislas Bolski,' that is quite certain," I re- joined. " The hair-dressing scene is unsurpass- able. But now, M. Cherbuliez, may I ask a bold question, namely, which of your own novels do you prefer ? " " ' Meta Holdenis,' " was the prompt reply. This view is evidently not shared by the author's public. I note that whilst other works have reached the thirteenth edition, the author's favourite has shared nothing like the same amount of popular favour. " Did it ever strike you," I asked, " that from VICTOR CHERBULIEZ 295 your story of ' Samuel Brohl & Co.' several novelists, both English and French, have borrowed the leading idea, one or two I could mention, with considerable success ? " I had in my mind the curious notion of duality, the man with the double self, so cleverly worked out by the late E. L. Stevenson in ' Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.' " So I have been told," was the careless answer. Soon after that first pleasant talk heavy affliction arrested M. Cherbuliez' pen. The loss of a beloved wife, ardent sympathizer in his literary labours, clouded a life eminently favoured of nature and of fortune. But as every autumn came round he visited me in the Hotel St. James, our chat always being of books and authors. Before departure he begged me to write down the names of new English works. " Of memoirs, especially," he said. " I cannot have too many of these." Fortunately of late years such works have abounded. ' Keats' Letters to Fanny Brawne,' Mr. Clement Shorter's ' Charlotte Bronte and her Circle,' the ' Letters of Maria Holroyd,' the 296 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES ' Jerningham Letters/ were all duly put down. Next came the novelists' turn. "Would novels, good novels, of English middle-class life interest you ? " I asked ; " stories of semi-genteel folks, city clerks, and others, who live in suburban London upon two or three hundred a year ; pictures somewhat sordid and pessimistic, but psychological and drawn with power ? " " Immensely," was the reply. "Then I will give you the names of one or two novels by George Gissing," I said, whereupon I recommended ' Deiizil Quarrier,' and others. I next mentioned Henry James, to whose works M. Cherbuliez was also a stranger. ' Daisy Miller' I could safely recommend to a fastidious French reader. Here I paused. The elegantly written but interminable ' Portrait of a Lady,' I dared not venture to hint at, neither subtlety of introspection nor graces of style ever excusing lengthiness (les longueurs) in French eyes. As I have mentioned, we seldom touched upon politics or social questions. I well remember, however, his pained look when I talked of a recent visit among French friends in Prussianized VICTOR CHERBULIEZ 297 Lorraine. He soon reverted to topics more genial, namely, the latest English novel or volume of memoirs. Of his French contemporaries he sel- dom spoke. I recollect one severe remark about Daudet ; this was in the novelist's lifetime, and d propos of his published remarks and projected work on England. " Quelle manque de pudeur (what a want of modesty)," he said, " to spend a few weeks in a foreign country and then pass judgment upon it ! " I asked him why, with his knowledge and appreciation of our literature, he had himself never visited our shores, adding that no French \ writer would receive warmer welcome. " During my wife's lifetime," he replied, " we always of late wintered at Hyeres, and had little opportunity of making other journeys and now I am too old." The last time we met I had just spent a day hi the company of M. Paul Sebatier at Dijon. Everything I could say about the biographer of Saint Francis interested the Academician deeply. I described our drive to the birthplace of St. Bernard at Fontaine, the old church in which we found a cat disporting itself, the way in which, 298 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES having the cat in his arms, M. Sebatier quick as lightning fastened upon any noteworthy archaeo- logical point ; lastly, I spoke of his life and experiences at Assisi; the extraordinary fascin- ation of Italian character for him, albeit no foreigner could more clearly realize its inherent defects. " And what a fascinating book, that biography of Saint Francis ! You have of course read it?" "I confess that I have not," I replied. "The work is exceedingly popular in England, but, to tell plain truth, mediaeval saints have no sort of interest for me." My visitor laughed. " Not even the one who called the sparrows his brothers and sisters ? " " The fact is," I rejoined, " I am essentially of a practical turn. The French peasant and his pig, as you know, M. Cherbuliez, l interest me more than the lately discovered portrait of Joseph's Pharaoh." 1 M. Cherbuliez, under the pseudonym of G. Valbert, had written a long and appreciative notice of my ' France of to-day.' VICTOR CHERBULIEZ 299 " That is because you understand the French peasant so well ; who better ? " he said, a compli- ment, I need hardly say, highly prized. That year too I had just visited Danton's home at Arcis-sur-Aube, making the acquaint- ance of his great-nephew, and seeing a good deal of the place. All these particulars gave pleasure. Here I make bold to controvert an assertion of Mr. Hamerton's, to the effect that Frenchmen are bad listeners (see the Autobiography). On the contrary I have ever found them the best listeners in the world. Alike gentle and simple, learned and uninstructed, ever offer a ready ear to the holder forth. Such at least is my own experience. From Danton and Arcis-sur-Aube we naturally passed to the subject of the Revolution and its historians. "It is an interesting fact, a fact especially interesting to you as a woman," observed M. Cherbuliez, " that Louis Blanc owed his inspira- tion to Madame de Stae'l. He admits that it was her work on the Revolution that suggested his own." In September 1898 I missed the usual visit; the 300 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Academician did not complain of ill-health, but I fancy that the visits to Paris from his country house on the Paris- Lyons line fatigued him. In the spring of this year I received a black- bordered announcement of his son's death. M. Cherbuliez never recovered from the blow, and died suddenly the first of July, an irreparable loss to letters and his friends. Perhaps no English critic has better summed up this writer's gifts than Mr. Saintsbury. As Chambers' excellent Encyclopaedia is not in everybody's hand, I quote a few lines " ' Le Comte Kostia ' was followed by a series of novels which, always clever and original, if some- times mannered and over-inventive, have lifted Cherbuliez into the front rank of contemporary French writers of fiction. His style is brilliant and epigrammatic, his dialogue natural and lively, while he is readable from beginning to end. . . Many of his earlier stories take the form of a narrative by the chief character, but these diffi- culties in developing a plot in such a method, which have been too great for many novelists, M. Cherbuliez has surmounted with consummate art." This genial piece of criticism I had the pleasure VICTOR CHERBULIEZ 301 of putting into M. Cherbuliez' hands. Nothing is more agreeable than thus handing on well- deserved praise. The author of ' Ladislas Bolski ' was a Pro- testant, and of Swiss origin, the family numbering many eminent savants and men of letters. It is an insular notion that Frenchmen are too lazy or conceited to learn any language but their own. Master of English, German, Italian, and Spanish, " G. Valbert " would treat in the ' Revue des deux Mondes,' now of 'Arthur Young's Autobio- graphy/ now of some new work published in Berlin, Rome, or Madrid. Sadly will these brilliant contributions be missed in a review not overdone with dash and sparkle. CHAPTER XXVII ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS Retrospective Contradictions Anglo-philia and the reverse Theological and political questions Hints for both sides The adopted countries of the future. As I bring these memoirs to an end one unwelcome reflection forces itself on my mind. In the early clays of the Third Republic, the first really representative government established in France, no overt antagonism marred English enjoyment of French hospitality. Reviewing the past twenty -five years, at least a third of which period has been spent on French soil and among French people, I am compelled to make a disagreeable admission. The stinging epigrams anent English hypocrisy, the vehement tirades against British aggressiveness, the wholesale condemnation of our political methods, more especially belong to the last two decades. I can honestly aver that during my twelve 302 ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS 303 months' sojourn under a Breton roof, 1875-6, I never heard a single harsh or unfair criticism passed either upon my country or my country- people. Within recent years antipathy has at times overcome good manners. An insular guest in a French house must now -be prepared to hear England and everything English roundly abused. Not that the feeling is by any means universal, or that it interferes in the very least with solid friendships. But social intercourse generally is thereby marred, and a good under- standing between the two nations seriously impeded. Yet never in the history of the two countries did the two nations see so much of each other. Here at first sight lies the disconcerting point of the matter. The system of associated travel, cheapened locomotion, and other causes have enormously swelled the sum-total of Anglo- French tourists. Did we not read the other day of several hundred French farmers visiting the Royal Agricultural Show at Maidstone I And lives that English curate, clerk, or shop- assistant to whom the Eiffel tower and the boulevards are now unfamiliar ? 304 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES More important by far than the come and go of holiday-makers, is the give and take of authors, artists, savants, athletes, and others. Here is a sympathy, indeed, we may go so far as to say, a fraternal spirit, wholly free from national prejudice. An English author fortunate enough to get his play produced in France receives an ovation. A scientific discoverer of the Sorbonne receives his first congratulatory telegram from London. A victorious team of English footballers is enthusiastically acclaimed in Paris. A French musical conductor is awarded the palm at an English musical festival. International courtesies, congresses, and con- tests are the order of the day. Before these pages appear the French and British Associa- tions of Science, meeting respectively at Dover and Boulogne, will have interchanged visits. And the forthcoming Exhibition will doubtless be the occasion of Anglo-French amenities with- out number and on a tremendous scale. Meanwhile literature has been turned to good uses. Mr. Hamerton's works, and I may perhaps be permitted to add, those of his friend and countrywoman, have done something ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS 305 to make English folks understand our near neighbours. The. genial Max O'Rell has performed a similar service for his own people, not idealizing John Bull and his island certainly, but at least soften- ing rugosities, making both almost amiable in French eyes. Within recent years an Anglo-French literature has sprung up on the other side of the Channel. The best book as yet written upon Wordsworth is the work of a professor at Lyons. Our educa- tional systems have been learnedly investigated by M. Max Leclerc, our Colonies by M. Leroy Beaulieu, our Trades' Unions by M. de Rousiers. And lastly, we have the now famous panegyric of M. Edmond Demolins, the moral of his volume l being an outspoken " We must in some respects imitate our Anglo-Saxon neighbours or go to the wall 1 " Less conspicuous but quite as important is the re-writing of history, especially for the young. The part played by England in French annals is now treated judiciously and not with the aim 1 ' A quoi tient la superiority des Anglo-Saxons.' Paris, Firmin-Didot. x 306 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES of inflaming national animosities. 1 Michelet and Thiers are corrected by writers less brilliant but more trustworthy. Children in the national schools now learn that the wars waged by feudal barons against each other did much more harm to France than the English invasions, that it was a conclave of French bishops who burned Jeanne d'Arc, and many other facts hitherto falsified in the interests of patriotism. In spite of so many influences working for good, in spite of our appreciation and imitativeness, what is summed up under the name of Anglomania, i. e. anti-English feeling, exists. Insular customs are followed down to the minutest particular. The midday dejeuner has long been superseded in France by the one o'clock lunch. Even in the provinces silver racks of dry toast are now placed before the visitor. But however friendly the party, an English guest will soon realize the truth of Thackeray's axiom. English friends are under- 1 I need only mention ' L'Histoire de la Civilisation Fran- ^aise,' by M. Rambaud, late Minister of Public Instruction, and ' Histoire de France,' by F. A. Aulard and A. Debidour, this last being for the use of primary schools. ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS 307 stood and cherished, but England itself, how magnificently is she hated ! As briefly as possible I will explain this apparent contradiction. First and foremost we have the Ultramontane detestation l of a Pro- testant and democratic country, next, the political jealousy of our colonial expansion. Would we gauge the height, length, depth, and breadth of the former feeling we have only to take up a number of the ' Univers,' the ' Croix,' or any other Ultramontane organ. Here is a citation from a clerical monarchical paper of recent date " Let us recognize in England the perfidious, violent, implacable enemy of France. A cordial understanding with England would be the crown- ing stupidity ! " This sort of thing, joined with the most outrageous abuse, is daily relished by society so called, in other words, the fine ladies and gentlemen who recently comported them- selves like besotted bullies and termagants at 1 Detestation not confined to French Ultramontanes ; English perverts to Rome are speedily denationalized, dis- trusting their own country for the same reason. I have heard an English pervert to Rome, an educated lady, criticize Queen Victoria in language more befitting a drunken fish-wife. 308 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES Longchamps. But, it will be urged, France was Ultramontane under the Monarchy of July and the Second Empire. Yes, the fact is not to be controverted. We must remember, how- ever, that hatred is born of fear. It is only under a Republic l that French Protestants could hope to have fair play. The result has been on the one hand, immensely increased power and authority, on the other, of systematized hatred and jealousy, the last expression of which we have seen in the Dreyfus affair. 2 Even the ' Revue des deux Mondes ' has ostentatiously ranged itself on the side of religious and political intolerance, refusing non-Catholics the very name of Frenchmen ! In terms equally shameless, clerical organs have openly clamoured for a second Revocation, in other words, a return to the St. Bartholomews and dragonnades of former days. And with a moral retrogression more 1 The late Lord Shaftesbury (see his biographies) endea- voured to modify the attitude of Napoleon III. towards his Protestant subjects. His efforts were in vain. 2 And in anti-Dreyfus literature, notably ' Le Peril Pro- testant,' par E. Renauld, llth edition. Paris. A book of ravings, the publication of which seems incredible at the close of the nineteenth centurv. ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS 309 painful still, writers like M. Jules Lemaitre and the Comte de Vogue have hoisted the San Benito, the former turning Protestantism into buffoonery for the Parisian stage, the second writing a novel in order to prove the demoralizing influence of the Reformed religion ! And every libel on the French Protestant and his faith is put to account against England. Thus M. de Mahy, that Anglophobe par excellence, not long since asserted in the Chamber that disaffection among: o the natives of Madagascar was fomented by English Methodist preachers in Auvergne. He was laughed down, but such balderdash finds credence elsewhere. The animosity displayed by the Colonial party is simply a political question, however much it may be made to wear a domestic aspect. That France can work colonizing miracles the history of Tunis tells us. 1 A den of robbers has been turned by French agencies into a highly civilized state and seduc- tive winter resort. But colonial development implies a surplus population, and unless the rising generation takes M. Zola's latest work 1 See our own Consular Blue Books, 1898. 310 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES to heart, where is a surplus population to come from ? I will here narrate an incident that came only two years ago under my own notice. A French chatelaine, whose guest I was, visited her gamekeeper's wife in order to condole with her on the loss through marriage of a dearly-loved step-daughter. The young woman, be it remarked, had married a schoolmaster living a few miles off, and the pair had just eight hundred pounds in money and land be- tween them. " Ah ! my Jeanne, so dutiful, so affectionate to me always, my happiness is quite gone," cried the step-mother, weeping bitterly. Naively enough her English visitor put in a word of consolation. " But," I urged, " think of the future ! You will become a grandmother ; in course of time you will be surrounded by little faces." The good woman lifted her hands aghast. " God in^heaven forbid ! " she cried. " One child, yes, my husband and I would say nothing to one, but several ! that means poverty, anxieties, ruin. Heaven preserve us from a houseful of grandchildren ! " ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS 311 So long as this view of family life prevails in France, M. Demolins' schemes must remain a counsel of perfection. M. de Many and his followers may anathematize us in the Chamber, but French mothers and fathers have no grudge against Anglo-Saxon expansion. They rear their only son for themselves, to be a staff in old age, to hand down name, race, and family possessions. Seeing what empire-building really means, alike to white men and their black dependents, perhaps they are right. But of what service to France immense colonies on paper ? " The French Congo is a colony on paper," lately wrote a correspondent of the 'Temps.' 1 Ultramontanism is not likely to change its attitude towards a Protestant people ; colonial questions are tolerably sure to embitter Anglo- French relations from time to time. What prospect then have we of a really cordial under- standing with our near neighbours ? How can social intercourse be rendered independent of political imbroglios ? Here we come to strictly personal considerations, indeed to individual action and arguments appealing to all. If English hosts do not take the opportunity of 1 Le Congo Beige,' par P. Mille. Paris, Colin. 1899. 312 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES mercilessly criticizing France when filling their house with French guests, we certainly show little regard for foreign susceptibilities when abroad. That the British tourist should be even tolerated on the Continent seems incredible. Here are two examples of insular misconduct that lately came under my own notice. Three years ago I was present at high mass in the church of St. Roch, Paris. Next to me sat an Englishman, and immediately before us two ladies, apparently his sisters. My neighbour held an open Baedeker which he perused during service, from time to time leaning forward, beg- ging his companions in a loud whisper to observe this object or that. To my surprise the beadle passed him by. He ought of course to have been instantaneously and ignominiously expelled. . The second instance shows the English brag- dadocio even in a more odious light. On October 10, 1898, I travelled from Paris to Boulogne by the 11 '50 express. Between Amiens and our destination the alarm bell was pulled, and to the consternation of the passengers the train slowly came to a standstill. Will it be believed that the thing was a ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS 313 practical joke, the work of a brainless and blackguardly young Englishman, anxious, I presume, to show that your true-born Briton is afraid of nothing, not even of stopping a beggarly French train ! The offender's name and address were taken, but his fellow-passengers had not the satisfaction of seeing him carried off to the station-house. Such examples might be cited by the score. The great drawback of foreign travel is English vulgarity, a vulgarity not confined to one class. In the old play we read of the fashionable lady who had taught her daughter " the rudiments of virtue." Foreigners must suppose that Brit- annia has not even emulated this not too ambitious matron, and that instead her pro- geny has " growed " like the immortal Topsy, no birch being plied in the interest of good manners. This is all the more to be regretted, especially with regard to Anglo-French relations. In the deeply interesting work of a contemporary French philosopher x occurs the following pas- sage : " As civilization advances and international 1 A. Coste, ' Principes d'une Sociologie Objective,' p. 224 Paris, Colin. 1899. 314 ANGLO-FRENCH REMINISCENCES relations increase, an adopted country will gener- ally be added to that of our birth, a country of which the language and literature, the arts and history, will be familiar to us, and with whose inhabitants we form alike commercial and social relations." To how many of us is France already this adopted country ! Let us then accept her freely offered " harbour good company," with the modesty and thankfulness of Mr. Mnason's guests, not with Falstaffs blustering "Shall I not take mine ease at mine Inn?" THE END Rlclard Clay Sf Sons, Limited, London $ Bungay. CHAPMAN AND HALL'S NEW BOOKS. NEUFELD A Prisoner of the Khaleefa > Twelve Years' Captivity at Omdurman. By CHARLES NEUFELD. With Numerous Illustrations and Portraits. 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