valeriodistefano.com - The Mirrored Project Gutenberg eBook of An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson (#23 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson) Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: An Inland Voyage Author: Robert Louis Stevenson Release Date: May, 1996 [EBook #534] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 19, 1996] [Most recently updated: August 27, 2002] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII
Transcribed from 1904 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk Second proof by Margaret Price
AN INLAND VOYAGE
Contents:
Preface
Antwerp to Boom
On the Willebroek Canal
The Royal Sport Nautique
At Maubeuge
On the Sambre Canalised: to Quartes
Pont-sur-Sambre:
We are Pedlars
The Travelling Merchant
On the Sambre Canalised: to Landrecies
At Landrecies
Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal boats
The Oise in Flood
Origny Sainte-Benoîte
A By-day
The Company at Table
Down the Oise: to Moy
La Fère of Cursed Memory
Down the Oise: Through the Golden Valley
Noyon Cathedral
Down the Oise: to Compiègne
At Compiègne
Changed Times
Down the Oise: Church interiors
Précy and the Marionnettes
Back to the world
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin
against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist,
for it is the reward of his labours. When the foundation stone
is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour
before the public eye. So with the writer in his preface: he may
have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the
portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour.
It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of
manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been written
by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was
good. But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that
perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments
towards a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to invite
him in with country cordiality.
To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in proof,
than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. It occurred
to me that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but the
last as well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of
country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in my steps.
The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste
grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which
is no more than an advertisement for readers.
What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua brought back from
Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught
so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people
prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.
I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the negative
point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp.
Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains
not a single reference to the imbecility of God’s universe, nor
so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself.
- I really do not know where my head can have been. I seem to
have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be man. - ’Tis an
omission that renders the book philosophically unimportant; but I am
in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles.
To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed I
wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards him
an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my
reader: - if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine.
R.L.S.
ANTWERP TO BOOM
We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and a lot of
dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the slip.
A crowd of children followed cheering. The Cigarette went
off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. Next moment
the Arethusa was after her. A steamer was coming down,
men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his
porters were bawling from the quay. But in a stroke or two the
canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers,
and stevedores, and other ‘long-shore vanities were left behind.
The sun shone brightly; the tide was making - four jolly miles an hour;
the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For my part,
I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my first experiment
out in the middle of this big river was not made without some trepidation.
What would happen when the wind first caught my little canvas?
I suppose it was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the
unknown as to publish a first book, or to marry. But my doubts
were not of long duration; and in five minutes you will not be surprised
to learn that I had tied my sheet.
I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course,
in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet
in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe,
and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow
the same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views
of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the
sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of
tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable
pipe. It is a commonplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves
before we have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection,
and surely more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal
braver and better than we thought. I believe this is every one’s
experience: but an apprehension that they may belie themselves in the
future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad.
I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had
been some one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger;
to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how
the good in a man’s spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid,
and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are
all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man
among us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums.
It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past laden
with hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and
grey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the embankment.
Here and there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy shipping-yard;
here and there a villa in a lawn. The wind served us well up the
Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and we were running pretty free
when we began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long way
on the right bank of the river. The left bank was still green
and pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here and
there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a
woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff
and silver spectacles. But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier
and shabbier with every minute; until a great church with a clock, and
a wooden bridge over the river, indicated the central quarters of the
town.
Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that
the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that they can
speak English, which is not justified by fact. This gave a kind
of haziness to our intercourse. As for the Hôtel de la Navigation,
I think it is the worst feature of the place. It boasts of a sanded
parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on the street; and another sanded
parlour, darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tricolour
subscription box by way of sole adornment, where we made shift to dine
in the company of three uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent
bagman. The food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional
character; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the nature
of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with
viands all day long in an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly
German, and somehow falling between the two.
The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the old
piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold
its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.
The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed
to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked
us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome
lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.
There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out
of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts
of curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified. She
spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as to
the manners of the present day in England, and obligingly corrected
us when we attempted to answer. But as we were dealing with a
woman, perhaps our information was not so much thrown away as it appeared.
The sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority.
It is good policy, and almost necessary in the circumstances.
If a man finds a woman admire him, were it only for his acquaintance
with geography, he will begin at once to build upon the admiration.
It is only by unintermittent snubbing that the pretty ones can keep
us in our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have
said, ‘are such encroachers.’ For my part,
I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-married couple,
there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine
huntress. It is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know
him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time
of it by all accounts. But there is this about some women, which
overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that they suffice to themselves,
and can walk in a high and cold zone without the countenance of any
trousered being. I declare, although the reverse of a professed
ascetic, I am more obliged to women for this ideal than I should be
to the majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous
kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency.
And when I think of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all
night to the note of Diana’s horn; moving among the old oaks,
as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched
by the commotion of man’s hot and turbid life - although there
are plenty other ideals that I should prefer - I find my heart beat
at the thought of this one. ’Tis to fail in life, but to
fail with what a grace! That is not lost which is not regretted.
And where - here slips out the male - where would be much of the glory
of inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome?
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL
Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain began
heavy and chill. The water of the canal stood at about the drinking
temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was covered
with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion
of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through
this misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun
came out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home
humours. A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees
that bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the
light in tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and
ear; but down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and
desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to steer by. Progress
was intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular person, of marine
antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with a ‘C’est
vite, mais c’est long.’
The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or overtook
a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a
window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot
in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about
the day’s dinner, and a handful of children. These barges
were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the number of
twenty-five or thirty; and the line was headed and kept in motion by
a steamer of strange construction. It had neither paddle-wheel
nor screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical
mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which lay along
the bottom of the canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged
itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded skows.
Until one had found out the key to the enigma, there was something solemn
and uncomfortable in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved
gently along the water with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy
alongside dying away into the wake.
Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is by far
the most delightful to consider. It may spread its sails, and
then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing
on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque
of things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace
as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man
dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long.
It is a mystery how things ever get to their destination at this rate;
and to see the barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson
of how easily the world may be taken. There should be many contented
spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.
The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the canal
slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge floats
by great forests and through great cities with their public buildings
and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating home,
‘travelling abed,’ it is merely as if he were listening
to another man’s story or turning the leaves of a picture-book
in which he had no concern. He may take his afternoon walk in
some foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then come home to
dinner at his own fireside.
There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of
health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy
people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, has a
quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier.
I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under
heaven that required attendance at an office. There are few callings,
I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for
regular meals. The bargee is on shipboard - he is master in his
own ship - he can land whenever he will - he can never be kept beating
off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as
iron; and so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly still with
him as is compatible with the return of bed-time or the dinner-hour.
It is not easy to see why a bargee should ever die.
Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful reach of
canal like a squire’s avenue, we went ashore to lunch. There
were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the Arethusa;
and two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the Cigarette.
The master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course
of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked
à la papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in its covering
of Flemish newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine weather; but
we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half
a gale, and the rain began to patter on our shoulders. We sat
as close about the Etna as we could. The spirits burned with great
ostentation; the grass caught flame every minute or two, and had to
be trodden out; and before long, there were several burnt fingers of
the party. But the solid quantity of cookery accomplished was
out of proportion with so much display; and when we desisted, after
two applications of the fire, the sound egg was little more than loo-warm;
and as for à la papier, it was a cold and sordid fricassée
of printer’s ink and broken egg-shell. We made shift to
roast the other two, by putting them close to the burning spirits; and
that with better success. And then we uncorked the bottle of wine,
and sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees.
It rained smartly. Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable
and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous
business; and people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are
in a good vein for laughter. From this point of view, even egg
à la papier offered by way of food may pass muster as
a sort of accessory to the fun. But this manner of jest, although
it may be taken in good part, does not invite repetition; and from that
time forward, the Etna voyaged like a gentleman in the locker of the
Cigarette.
It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and
we got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away.
The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to
the unfavouring air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then
a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly
trees.
It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-lane,
going on from village to village. Things had a settled look, as
in places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from
the bridges as we went below, with a true conservative feeling.
But even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats,
who let us go by without one glance. They perched upon sterlings
and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied.
They were indifferent, like pieces of dead nature. They did not
move any more than if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print.
The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they continued in one stay
like so many churches established by law. You might have trepanned
every one of their innocent heads, and found no more than so much coiled
fishing-line below their skulls. I do not care for your stalwart
fellows in india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with
a salmon rod; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful
art, for ever and a day, by still and depopulated waters.
At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress
who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple
of leagues from Brussels. At the same place, the rain began again.
It fell in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was
thrown up into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There
were no beds to be had in the neighbourhood. Nothing for it but
to lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the
rain.
Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered windows,
and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich and sombre
aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of the canal.
I seem to have seen something of the same effect in engravings: opulent
landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage of storm. And
throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily
along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform distance in our wake.
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE
The rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the
air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of
us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the Allée
Verte, and on the very threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by
a serious difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal boats
waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere was there any convenient
landing-place; nowhere so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes
in for the night. We scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet
where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord. The
landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no coach-house or stable-yard,
nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no mind to drink, he
did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us. One of the sorry
fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the corner of the basin
there was a slip, he informed us, and something else besides, not very
clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by his hearers.
Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at the
top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The Arethusa
addressed himself to these. One of them said there would be no
difficulty about a night’s lodging for our boats; and the other,
taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by Searle
and Son. The name was quite an introduction. Half-a-dozen
other young men came out of a boat-house bearing the superscription
ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and joined in the talk. They were all very
polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their discourse was interlarded
with English boating terms, and the names of English boat-builders and
English clubs. I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native
land where I should have been so warmly received by the same number
of people. We were English boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men
fell upon our necks. I wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially
greeted by English Protestants when they came across the Channel out
of great tribulation. But after all, what religion knits people
so closely as a common sport?
The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were washed down for
us by the Club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything
made as snug and tidy as a picture. And in the meanwhile we were
led upstairs by our new-found brethren, for so more than one of them
stated the relationship, and made free of their lavatory. This
one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third and fourth helped us to
undo our bags. And all the time such questions, such assurances
of respect and sympathy! I declare I never knew what glory was
before.
‘Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is the oldest club
in Belgium.’
‘We number two hundred.’
‘We’ - this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract
of many speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great deal
of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems
to me to be - ‘We have gained all races, except those where we
were cheated by the French.’
‘You must leave all your wet things to be dried.’
‘O! entre frères! In any boat-house in England
we should find the same.’ (I cordially hope they might.)
‘En Angleterre, vous employez des sliding-seats, n’est-ce
pas?’
‘We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening,
voyez-vous, nous sommes sérieux.’
These were the words. They were all employed over the frivolous
mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in the evening they
found some hours for the serious concerns of life. I may have
a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark.
People connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their days
in getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards. It
is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking,
to recover their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really
and originally like, from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce.
And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite legible
in their hearts. They had still those clean perceptions of what
is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which envious
old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The nightmare illusion of
middle age, the bear’s hug of custom gradually squeezing the life
out of a man’s soul, had not yet begun for these happy-starred
young Belgians. They still knew that the interest they took in
their business was a trifling affair compared to their spontaneous,
long-suffering affection for nautical sports. To know what you
prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you
ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. Such a man may
be generous; he may be honest in something more than the commercial
sense; he may love his friends with an elective, personal sympathy,
and not accept them as an adjunct of the station to which he has been
called. He may be a man, in short, acting on his own instincts,
keeping in his own shape that God made him in; and not a mere crank
in the social engine-house, welded on principles that he does not understand,
and for purposes that he does not care for.
For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining
than fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never
seen an office, who says so. And for certain the one is a great
deal better for the health. There should be nothing so much a
man’s business as his amusements. Nothing but money-grubbing
can be put forward to the contrary; no one but
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven,
durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that would
represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling
for mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their
transactions; for the man is more important than his services.
And when my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his
hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but
his ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow,
and whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched
Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk.
When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to
the Club’s prosperity, one of their number escorted us to an hotel.
He would not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass
of wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand
why prophets were unpopular in Judaea, where they were best known.
For three stricken hours did this excellent young man sit beside us
to dilate on boats and boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough
to order our bedroom candles.
We endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the diversion
did not last a moment: the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied,
answered the question, and then breasted once more into the swelling
tide of his subject. I call it his subject; but I think it was
he who was subjected. The Arethusa, who holds all racing
as a creature of the devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma.
He durst not own his ignorance for the honour of Old England, and spoke
away about English clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had never before
come to his ears. Several times, and, once above all, on the question
of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of exposure. As for the
Cigarette, who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but
now disowns these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more
desperate; for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should take an oar
in one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the English with the
Belgian stroke. I could see my friend perspiring in his chair
whenever that particular topic came up. And there was yet another
proposal which had the same effect on both of us. It appeared
that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as most other champions)
was a Royal Nautical Sportsman. And if we would only wait until
the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be so condescending as to accompany
us on our next stage. Neither of us had the least desire to drive
the coursers of the sun against Apollo.
When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and ordered
some brandy and water. The great billows had gone over our head.
The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a man would
wish to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought too nautical
for us. We began to see that we were old and cynical; we liked
ease and the agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and the
other subject; we did not want to disgrace our native land by messing
an eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist.
In short, we had recourse to flight. It seemed ungrateful, but
we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere compliments.
And indeed it was no time for scruples; we seemed to feel the hot breath
of the champion on our necks.
AT MAUBEUGE
Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal Nauticals,
partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks
between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by
train across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks in
a day’s journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole
distance on foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment
to the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking
children.
To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for the
Arethusa. He is somehow or other a marked man for the official
eye. Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered together.
Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls
sit throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters
on all the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly clergymen,
school-mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and
rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, Murray in hand,
over the railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa
is taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing.
If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about
the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he is
suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated
by a general incredulity. He is a born British subject, yet he
has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality.
He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken
for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable
means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of official
or popular distrust. . . .
For the life of me I cannot understand it. I too have been knolled
to church, and sat at good men’s feasts; but I bear no mark of
it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles.
I might come from any part of the globe, it seems, except from where
I do. My ancestors have laboured in vain, and the glorious Constitution
cannot protect me in my walks abroad. It is a great thing, believe
me, to present a good normal type of the nation you belong to.
Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; but I was;
and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at last between accepting
the humiliation and being left behind by the train. I was sorry
to give way; but I wanted to get to Maubeuge.
Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the Grand Cerf.
It seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen; at least,
these were all that we saw, except the hotel servants. We had
to stay there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us,
and at last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back
to liberate them. There was nothing to do, nothing to see.
We had good meals, which was a great matter; but that was all.
The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the
fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. And
besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the other’s
fortified places already, these precautions are of the nature of shutting
the stable door after the steed is away. But I have no doubt they
help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great thing if
you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in
a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even the Freemasons,
who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of pride; and not
a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may
feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home from one of their coenacula
with a portentous significance for himself.
It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can live
in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think the spectacle
of a whole life in which you have no part paralyses personal desire.
You are content to become a mere spectator. The baker stands in
his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by to the café
at night; the troops drum and trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold
as so many lions. It would task language to say how placidly you
behold all this. In a place where you have taken some root, you
are provoked out of your indifference; you have a hand in the game;
your friends are fighting with the army. But in a strange town,
not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so large as to have
laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far apart from the business,
that you positively forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have
so little human interest around you, that you do not remember yourself
to be a man. Perhaps, in a very short time, you would be one no
longer. Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all nature seething
around them, with romance on every side; it would be much more to the
purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country town, where they
should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from desiring more,
and only the stale externals of man’s life. These externals
are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead language
in our eyes and ears. They have no more meaning than an oath or
a salutation. We are so much accustomed to see married couples
going to church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent;
and novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they
wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to
live for each other.
One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his outside.
That was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough looking little
man, as well as I can remember; but with a spark of something human
in his soul. He had heard of our little journey, and came to me
at once in envious sympathy. How he longed to travel! he told
me. How he longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world
before he went into the grave! ‘Here I am,’ said he.
‘I drive to the station. Well. And then I drive back
again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the week round.
My God, is that life?’ I could not say I thought it was
- for him. He pressed me to tell him where I had been, and where
I hoped to go; and as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed.
Might not this have been a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies
after Drake? But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among
men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is
who has the wealth and glory.
I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the Grand Cerf?
Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny
when we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined him for good.
Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and
pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the
sunset every day above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that
it is a respectable position to drive an omnibus? Very well.
What right has he who likes it not, to keep those who would like it
dearly out of this respectable position? Suppose a dish were not
to my taste, and you told me that it was a favourite amongst the rest
of the company, what should I conclude from that? Not to finish
the dish against my stomach, I suppose.
Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise
superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture
to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far
as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary,
and superfluously useless, although it were as respectable as the Church
of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and
all concerned.
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED
TO QUARTES
About three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the Grand
Cerf accompanied us to the water’s edge. The man of
the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. Poor cage-bird!
Do I not remember the time when I myself haunted the station, to watch
train after train carry its complement of freemen into the night, and
read the names of distant places on the time-bills with indescribable
longings?
We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began.
The wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects
of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky. For we
passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with
brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys.
We landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a
pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the wind blew so hard, we
could get little else to smoke. There were no natural objects
in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. A group of children
headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a little distance all
the time we stayed. I heartily wonder what they thought of us.
At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place being
steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. Near a dozen
grimy workmen lent us a hand. They refused any reward; and, what
is much better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of
insult. ‘It is a way we have in our countryside,’
said they. And a very becoming way it is. In Scotland, where
also you will get services for nothing, the good people reject your
money as if you had been trying to corrupt a voter. When people
take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little
more, and allow the dignity to be common to all concerned. But
in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten
in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial,
we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost offensively; and
make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war against the wrong.
After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and
a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a delectable
land. The river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun
was at our backs, and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river
before us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On either hand,
meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers,
upon the river. The hedges were of great height, woven about the
trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were often very small,
looked like a series of bowers along the stream. There was never
any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look over the
nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky; but that
was all. The heaven was bare of clouds. The atmosphere,
after the rain, was of enchanting purity. The river doubled among
the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles
set the flowers shaking along the brink.
In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically marked.
One beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black,
came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me
as I went by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play.
A moment after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the
clergyman struggling to shore. The bank had given way under his
feet.
Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and a
great many fishermen. These sat along the edges of the meadows,
sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score.
They seemed stupefied with contentment; and when we induced them to
exchange a few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded
quiet and far away. There was a strange diversity of opinion among
them as to the kind of fish for which they set their lures; although
they were all agreed in this, that the river was abundantly supplied.
Where it was plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind
of fish, we could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them
had ever caught a fish at all. I hope, since the afternoon was
so lovely, that they were one and all rewarded; and that a silver booty
went home in every basket for the pot. Some of my friends would
cry shame on me for this; but I prefer a man, were he only an angler,
to the bravest pair of gills in all God’s waters. I do not
affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an angler is an important
piece of river scenery, and hence deserves some recognition among canoeists.
He can always tell you where you are after a mild fashion; and his quiet
presence serves to accentuate the solitude and stillness, and remind
you of the glittering citizens below your boat.
The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills,
that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes.
There were some children on the tow-path, with whom the Cigarette
fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. It was
in vain that I warned him. In vain I told him, in English, that
boys were the most dangerous creatures; and if once you began with them,
it was safe to end in a shower of stones. For my own part, whenever
anything was addressed to me, I smiled gently and shook my head as though
I were an inoffensive person inadequately acquainted with French.
For indeed I have had such experience at home, that I would sooner meet
many wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins.
But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters.
When the Cigarette went off to make inquiries, I got out upon
the bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once
the centre of much amiable curiosity. The children had been joined
by this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and
this gave me more security. When I let slip my first word or so
in French, a little girl nodded her head with a comical grown-up air.
‘Ah, you see,’ she said, ‘he understands well enough
now; he was just making believe.’ And the little group laughed
together very good-naturedly.
They were much impressed when they heard we came from England; and the
little girl proffered the information that England was an island ‘and
a far way from here - bien loin d’ici.’
‘Ay, you may say that, a far way from here,’ said the lad
with one arm.
I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they seemed to make
it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first saw the
day. They admired the canoes very much. And I observed one
piece of delicacy in these children, which is worthy of record.
They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with petitions
for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune next morning when
we came to start; but then, when the canoes were lying empty, there
was no word of any such petition. Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of
fear for the water in so crank a vessel? I hate cynicism a great
deal worse than I do the devil; unless perhaps the two were the same
thing? And yet ’tis a good tonic; the cold tub and bath-towel
of the sentiments; and positively necessary to life in cases of advanced
sensibility.
From the boats they turned to my costume. They could not make
enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe.
‘They make them like that in England,’ said the boy with
one arm. I was glad he did not know how badly we make them in
England now-a-days. ‘They are for people who go away to
sea,’ he added, ‘and to defend one’s life against
great fish.’
I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little
group at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even my pipe,
although it was an ordinary French clay pretty well ‘trousered,’
as they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming
from so far away. And if my feathers were not very fine in themselves,
they were all from over seas. One thing in my outfit, however,
tickled them out of all politeness; and that was the bemired condition
of my canvas shoes. I suppose they were sure the mud at any rate
was a home product. The little girl (who was the genius of the
party) displayed her own sabots in competition; and I wish you could
have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it.
The young woman’s milk-can, a great amphora of hammered brass,
stood some way off upon the sward. I was glad of an opportunity
to divert public attention from myself, and return some of the compliments
I had received. So I admired it cordially both for form and colour,
telling them, and very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold.
They were not surprised. The things were plainly the boast of
the countryside. And the children expatiated on the costliness
of these amphorae, which sell sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece;
told me how they were carried on donkeys, one on either side of the
saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; and how they were to be seen
all over the district, and at the larger farms in great number and of
great size.
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
WE ARE PEDLARS
The Cigarette returned with good news. There were beds
to be had some ten minutes’ walk from where we were, at a place
called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked among
the children for a guide. The circle at once widened round us,
and our offers of reward were received in dispiriting silence.
We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children; they might speak
to us in public places, and where they had the advantage of numbers;
but it was another thing to venture off alone with two uncouth and legendary
characters, who had dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet
afternoon, sashed and be-knived, and with a flavour of great voyages.
The owner of the granary came to our assistance, singled out one little
fellow and threatened him with corporalities; or I suspect we should
have had to find the way for ourselves. As it was, he was more
frightened at the granary man than the strangers, having perhaps had
some experience of the former. But I fancy his little heart must
have been going at a fine rate; for he kept trotting at a respectful
distance in front, and looking back at us with scared eyes. Not
otherwise may the children of the young world have guided Jove or one
of his Olympian compeers on an adventure.
A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering windmill.
The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields. A brisk little
woman passed us by. She was seated across a donkey between a pair
of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with
her heels upon the donkey’s side, and scattered shrill remarks
among the wayfarers. It was notable that none of the tired men
took the trouble to reply. Our conductor soon led us out of the
lane and across country. The sun had gone down, but the west in
front of us was one lake of level gold. The path wandered a while
in the open, and then passed under a trellis like a bower indefinitely
prolonged. On either hand were shadowy orchards; cottages lay
low among the leaves, and sent their smoke to heaven; every here and
there, in an opening, appeared the great gold face of the west.
I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic frame of mind.
He waxed positively lyrical in praise of country scenes. I was
little less exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows,
the rich lights and the silence, made a symphonious accompaniment about
our walk; and we both determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep
in hamlets.
At last the path went between two houses, and turned the party out into
a wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach on either
hand, by an unsightly village. The houses stood well back, leaving
a ribbon of waste land on either side of the road, where there were
stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish-heaps, and a little doubtful
grass. Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of
the street. What it had been in past ages, I know not: probably
a hold in time of war; but now-a-days it bore an illegible dial-plate
in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron letter-box.
The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was full, or else
the landlady did not like our looks. I ought to say, that with
our long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a doubtful type
of civilisation: like rag-and-bone men, the Cigarette imagined.
‘These gentlemen are pedlars? - Ces messieurs sont des marchands?’
- asked the landlady. And then, without waiting for an answer,
which I suppose she thought superfluous in so plain a case, recommended
us to a butcher who lived hard by the tower, and took in travellers
to lodge.
Thither went we. But the butcher was flitting, and all his beds
were taken down. Or else he didn’t like our look.
As a parting shot, we had ‘These gentlemen are pedlars?’
It began to grow dark in earnest. We could no longer distinguish
the faces of the people who passed us by with an inarticulate good-evening.
And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with their oil;
for we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village.
I believe it is the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our
predicament every pace counted three times over. We were much
cast down when we came to the last auberge; and looking in at the dark
door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the night. A female
voice assented in no very friendly tones. We clapped the bags
down and found our way to chairs.
The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and ventilators
of the stove. But now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new guests;
I suppose the darkness was what saved us another expulsion; for I cannot
say she looked gratified at our appearance. We were in a large
bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of Music and Painting,
and a copy of the law against public drunkenness. On one side,
there was a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles. Two
labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking
lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two; and the landlady began
to derange the pots upon the stove, and set some beefsteak to grill.
‘These gentlemen are pedlars?’ she asked sharply.
And that was all the conversation forthcoming. We began to think
we might be pedlars after all. I never knew a population with
so narrow a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre.
But manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes.
You have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your accomplished
airs will go for nothing. These Hainaulters could see no difference
between us and the average pedlar. Indeed we had some grounds
for reflection while the steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly
they accepted us at their own valuation, and how our best politeness
and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably with
the character of packmen. At least it seemed a good account of
the profession in France, that even before such judges we could not
beat them at our own weapons.
At last we were called to table. The two hinds (and one of them
looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with over-work
and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of bread-berry,
some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with
sugar-candy, and one tumbler of swipes. The landlady, her son,
and the lass aforesaid, took the same. Our meal was quite a banquet
by comparison. We had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might
have been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the
swipes, and white sugar in our coffee.
You see what it is to be a gentleman - I beg your pardon, what it is
to be a pedlar. It had not before occurred to me that a pedlar
was a great man in a labourer’s ale-house; but now that I had
to enact the part for an evening, I found that so it was. He has
in his hedge quarters somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man who
takes a private parlour in an hotel. The more you look into it,
the more infinite are the class distinctions among men; and possibly,
by a happy dispensation, there is no one at all at the bottom of the
scale; no one but can find some superiority over somebody else, to keep
up his pride withal.
We were displeased enough with our fare. Particularly the Cigarette,
for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the adventure, tough
beefsteak and all. According to the Lucretian maxim, our steak
should have been flavoured by the look of the other people’s bread-berry.
But we did not find it so in practice. You may have a head-knowledge
that other people live more poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable
- I was going to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe -
to sit at the same table and pick your own superior diet from among
their crusts. I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy
boy at school with his birthday cake. It was odious enough to
witness, I could remember; and I had never thought to play the part
myself. But there again you see what it is to be a pedlar.
There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much more
charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. And I fancy
it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the
easy and the not so easy in these ranks. A workman or a pedlar
cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbours.
If he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the face of a dozen
who cannot. And what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts?
. . . Thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, and
knows that every mouthful he puts in his belly has been wrenched out
of the fingers of the hungry.
But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate
person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward
hidden from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies,
all in admirable order, and positively as good as new. He finds
himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of
Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the
skylarks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks
so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined at one
table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT
Like the lackeys in Molière’s farce, when the true nobleman
broke in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted
with a real pedlar. To make the lesson still more poignant for
fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration
than the sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for: like a lion among
mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon two cock-boats. Indeed,
he did not deserve the name of pedlar at all: he was a travelling merchant.
I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur Hector
Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a tilt cart
drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He was
a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of
an actor, and something the look of a horse-jockey. He had evidently
prospered without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with
stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening
passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture.
With him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair tied in a
yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse
and military képi. It was notable that the child
was many degrees better dressed than either of the parents. We
were informed he was already at a boarding-school; but the holidays
having just commenced, he was off to spend them with his parents on
a cruise. An enchanting holiday occupation, was it not? to travel
all day with father and mother in the tilt cart full of countless treasures;
the green country rattling by on either side, and the children in all
the villages contemplating him with envy and wonder? It is better
fun, during the holidays, to be the son of a travelling merchant, than
son and heir to the greatest cotton-spinner in creation. And as
for being a reigning prince - indeed I never saw one if it was not Master
Gilliard!
While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the donkey,
and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed
up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices,
and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that
day, and was peevish and dazzled by the light. He was no sooner
awake than he began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette,
unripe pears, and cold potatoes - with, so far as I could judge, positive
benefit to his appetite.
The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little girl;
and the two children were confronted. Master Gilliard looked at
her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection in
a mirror before he turns away. He was at that time absorbed in
the galette. His mother seemed crestfallen that he should display
so little inclination towards the other sex; and expressed her disappointment
with some candour and a very proper reference to the influence of years.
Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us hope she will
like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But it is odd enough;
the very women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem
to find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded in
their own sons.
The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably because
she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and accustomed to
strange sights. And besides there was no galette in the case with
her.
All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young lord.
The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child. Monsieur
kept insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the children at school
by name; and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious
and exact to a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would sit and
think - and think, and if he did not know it, ‘my faith, he wouldn’t
tell you at all - foi, il ne vous le dira pas’:
which is certainly a very high degree of caution. At intervals,
M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full of beefsteak,
as to the little fellow’s age at such or such a time when he had
said or done something memorable; and I noticed that Madame usually
pooh-poohed these inquiries. She herself was not boastful in her
vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the child; and she seemed
to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate in his
little existence. No schoolboy could have talked more of the holidays
which were just beginning and less of the black school-time which must
inevitably follow after. She showed, with a pride perhaps partly
mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen with tops and
whistles and string. When she called at a house in the way of
business, it appeared he kept her company; and whenever a sale was made,
received a sou out of the profit. Indeed they spoiled him vastly,
these two good people. But they had an eye to his manners for
all that, and reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which
occurred from time to time during supper.
On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar.
I might think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes
in French belonged to a different order; but it was plain that these
distinctions would be thrown away upon the landlady and the two labourers.
In all essential things we and the Gilliards cut very much the same
figure in the ale-house kitchen. M. Hector was more at home, indeed,
and took a higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the
ground of his driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot.
I daresay, the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, though
in no ill sense, to be as far up in the profession as the new arrival.
And of one thing I am sure: that every one thawed and became more humanised
and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon the scene.
I would not very readily trust the travelling merchant with any extravagant
sum of money; but I am sure his heart was in the right place.
In this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places in a
man - above all, if you should find a whole family living together on
such pleasant terms - you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest
for granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind
that you can do perfectly well without the rest; and that ten thousand
bad traits cannot make a single good one any the less good.
It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off
to his cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded
to divest himself of the better part of his raiment, and play gymnastics
on his mother’s lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment
of laughter.
‘Are you going to sleep alone?’ asked the servant lass.
‘There’s little fear of that,’ says Master Gilliard.
‘You sleep alone at school,’ objected his mother.
‘Come, come, you must be a man.’
But he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays;
that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the discussion with
kisses: his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she.
There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should
sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio. We, on our
part, had firmly protested against one man’s accommodation for
two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished,
beside the beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one table. There
was not so much as a glass of water. But the window would open,
by good fortune.
Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty
snoring: the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people of the inn,
all at it, I suppose, with one consent. The young moon outside
shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the ale-house
where all we pedlars were abed.
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED
TO LANDRECIES
In the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out to
us two pails of water behind the street-door. ‘Voilà
de l’eau pour vous débarbouiller,’ says
she. And so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame
Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector,
whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day’s campaign
in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of his baggage.
Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor.
I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in France; perhaps
Austerlitz crackers. There is a great deal in the point of view.
Do you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of Southampton,
was put down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge?
He had a mind to go home again, it seems.
Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes’ walk
from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water.
We left our bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet
orchards unencumbered. Some of the children were there to see
us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night before.
A departure is much less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the
golden evening. Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost’s
first appearance, we should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity.
The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags,
were overcome with marvelling. At sight of these two dainty little
boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining
from the sponge, they began to perceive that they had entertained angels
unawares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting
she had charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the
neighbours to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd
of wrapt observers. These gentlemen pedlars, indeed! Now
you see their quality too late.
The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps. We
were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked
once more. But there were some calm intervals, and one notably,
when we were skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear,
but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn
along the river-side, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling
them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city
of nature’s own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where
there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens
themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing
so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people,
swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison.
And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the
sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pistolling sort
of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with
it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a
forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by
many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, the smell of the
sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful;
it varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in character;
and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood
to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere.
Usually the resin of the fir predominates. But some woods are
more coquettish in their habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal,
as it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with
nothing less delicate than sweetbrier.
I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most
civil society. An old oak that has been growing where he stands
since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately
than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to
sicknesses and death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking
lesson in history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs
contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart
younglings pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and
beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what
is this but the most imposing piece in nature’s repertory?
Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande.
I should not be satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together
like a banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap-root of the whole;
my parts should circulate from oak to oak; and my consciousness should
be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to that
assembly of green spires, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness
and dignity. I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping from
bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily
coursing over its uneven, leafy surface.
Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it was
but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries. And the
rest of the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in squalls,
until one’s heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding weather.
It was odd how the showers began when we had to carry the boats over
a lock, and must expose our legs. They always did. This
is a sort of thing that readily begets a personal feeling against nature.
There seems no reason why the shower should not come five minutes before
or five minutes after, unless you suppose an intention to affront you.
The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him more or less above
these contrarieties. But I had to bear the brunt uncovered.
I began to remember that nature was a woman. My companion, in
a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and
ironically concurred. He instanced, as a cognate matter, the action
of the tides, ‘which,’ said he, ‘was altogether designed
for the confusion of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated
to minister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon.’
At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused to go
any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, to
have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I take to have
been the devil, drew near and questioned me about our journey.
In the fulness of my heart, I laid bare our plans before him.
He said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of.
Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks,
locks, the whole way? not to mention that, at this season of the year,
we should find the Oise quite dry? ‘Get into a train, my
little young man,’ said he, I and go you away home to your parents.’
I was so astounded at the man’s malice, that I could only stare
at him in silence. A tree would never have spoken to me like this.
At last I got out with some words. We had come from Antwerp already,
I told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest in
spite of him. Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would
do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not. The
pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to
my canoe, and marched of, waggling his head.
I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows, who
imagined I was the Cigarette’s servant, on a comparison,
I suppose, of my bare jersey with the other’s mackintosh, and
asked me many questions about my place and my master’s character.
I said he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the
head. ‘O no, no,’ said one, ‘you must not say
that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him.’ I
believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again.
It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man’s insinuations,
as if they were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman,
and have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young
men.
When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, ‘They must
have a curious idea of how English servants behave,’ says he dryly,
‘for you treated me like a brute beast at the lock.’
I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a fact.
AT LANDRECIES
At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we found
a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-jugs with
real water in them, and dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real
wine. After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for
the elements during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances
fell on my heart like sunshine. There was an English fruiterer
at dinner, travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the
café, we watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money
at corks; and I don’t know why, but this pleased us.
It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected; for
the weather next day was simply bedlamite. It is not the place
one would have chosen for a day’s rest; for it consists almost
entirely of fortifications. Within the ramparts, a few blocks
of houses, a long row of barracks, and a church, figure, with what countenance
they may, as the town. There seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper
from whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so much affected
that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the bargain.
The only public buildings that had any interest for us were the hotel
and the café. But we visited the church. There
lies Marshal Clarke. But as neither of us had ever heard of that
military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude.
In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and réveilles, and
such like, make a fine romantic interlude in civic business. Bugles,
and drums, and fifes, are of themselves most excellent things in nature;
and when they carry the mind to marching armies, and the picturesque
vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in the heart.
But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little else moving,
these points of war made a proportionate commotion. Indeed, they
were the only things to remember. It was just the place to hear
the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of
men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. It
reminded you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring
system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with
cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns.
The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological
effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone
among the instruments of noise. And if it be true, as I have heard
it said, that drums are covered with asses’ skin, what a picturesque
irony is there in that! As if this long-suffering animal’s
hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during life, now by Lyonnese
costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped
from his poor hinder quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and
beaten night after night round the streets of every garrison town in
Europe. And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever
death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon
the cannons, there also must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face
over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins
of peaceable donkeys.
Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at
this trick of bastinadoing asses’ hide. We know what effect
it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.
But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the
hollow skin reverberates to the drummer’s wrist, and each dub-a-dub
goes direct to a man’s heart, and puts madness there, and that
disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking, nickname
Heroism:- is there not something in the nature of a revenge upon the
donkey’s persecutors? Of old, he might say, you drubbed
me up hill and down dale, and I must endure; but now that I am dead,
those dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in country lanes, have
become stirring music in front of the brigade; and for every blow that
you lay on my old greatcoat, you will see a comrade stumble and fall.
Not long after the drums had passed the café, the Cigarette
and the Arethusa began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel,
which was only a door or two away. But although we had been somewhat
indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us.
All day, we learned, people had been running out between the squalls
to visit our two boats. Hundreds of persons, so said report, although
it fitted ill with our idea of the town - hundreds of persons had inspected
them where they lay in a coal-shed. We were becoming lions in
Landrecies, who had been only pedlars the night before in Pont.
And now, when we left the café, we were pursued and overtaken
at the hotel door by no less a person than the Juge de Paix:
a functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots
Sheriff-Substitute. He gave us his card and invited us to sup
with him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can
do these things. It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he;
and although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place,
we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so politely
introduced.
The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed bachelor’s
establishment, with a curious collection of old brass warming-pans upon
the walls. Some of these were most elaborately carved. It
seemed a picturesque idea for a collector. You could not help
thinking how many night-caps had wagged over these warming-pans in past
generations; what jests may have been made, and kisses taken, while
they were in service; and how often they had been uselessly paraded
in the bed of death. If they could only speak, at what absurd,
indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not been present!
The wine was excellent. When we made the Judge our compliments
upon a bottle, ‘I do not give it you as my worst,’ said
he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces.
They are worth learning; they set off life, and make ordinary moments
ornamental.
There were two other Landrecienses present. One was the collector
of something or other, I forget what; the other, we were told, was the
principal notary of the place. So it happened that we all five
more or less followed the law. At this rate, the talk was pretty
certain to become technical. The Cigarette expounded the
Poor Laws very magisterially. And a little later I found myself
laying down the Scots Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say
I know nothing. The collector and the notary, who were both married
men, accused the Judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the subject.
He deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all
the men I have ever seen, be they French or English. How strange
that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather like to be thought
a bit of a rogue with the women!
As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits
proved better than the wine; the company was genial. This was
the highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise.
After all, being in a Judge’s house, was there not something semi-official
in the tribute? And so, remembering what a great country France
is, we did full justice to our entertainment. Landrecies had been
a long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and the sentries
on the ramparts were already looking for daybreak.
SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL
CANAL BOATS
Next day we made a late start in the rain. The Judge politely
escorted us to the end of the lock under an umbrella. We had now
brought ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather, not
often attained except in the Scottish Highlands. A rag of blue
sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain
was not heavy, we counted the day almost fair.
Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal; many of
them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their jerkin of Archangel
tar picked out with white and green. Some carried gay iron railings,
and quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children played on the decks,
as heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron
side; men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women
did their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of
watch-dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside
until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word
to the dog aboard the next. We must have seen something like a
hundred of these embarkations in the course of that day’s paddle,
ranged one after another like the houses in a street; and from not one
of them were we disappointed of this accompaniment. It was like
visiting a menagerie, the Cigarette remarked.
These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the
mind. They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys,
their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene; and
yet if only the canal below were to open, one junk after another would
hoist sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of France;
and the impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four
winds. The children who played together to-day by the Sambre and
Oise Canal, each at his own father’s threshold, when and where
might they next meet?
For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal of
our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of Europe.
It was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a swift river
at the tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses for days together on
some inconsiderable junction. We should be seen pottering on deck
in all the dignity of years, our white beards falling into our laps.
We were ever to be busied among paint-pots; so that there should be
no white fresher, and no green more emerald than ours, in all the navy
of the canals. There should be books in the cabin, and tobacco-jars,
and some old Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as
a violet in April. There should be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette,
with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps,
laying that aside, upraise his voice - somewhat thinner than of yore,
and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note -
in rich and solemn psalmody.
All this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard one of these
ideal houses of lounging. I had plenty to choose from, as I coasted
one after another, and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. At
last I saw a nice old man and his wife looking at me with some interest,
so I gave them good-day and pulled up alongside. I began with
a remark upon their dog, which had somewhat the look of a pointer; thence
I slid into a compliment on Madame’s flowers, and thence into
a word in praise of their way of life.
If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get a slap
in the face at once. The life would be shown to be a vile one,
not without a side shot at your better fortune. Now, what I like
so much in France is the clear unflinching recognition by everybody
of his own luck. They all know on which side their bread is buttered,
and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which is surely the better
part of religion. And they scorn to make a poor mouth over their
poverty, which I take to be the better part of manliness. I have
heard a woman in quite a better position at home, with a good bit of
money in hand, refer to her own child with a horrid whine as ‘a
poor man’s child.’ I would not say such a thing to
the Duke of Westminster. And the French are full of this spirit
of independence. Perhaps it is the result of republican institutions,
as they call them. Much more likely it is because there are so
few people really poor, that the whiners are not enough to keep each
other in countenance.
The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired their
state. They understood perfectly well, they told me, how Monsieur
envied them. Without doubt Monsieur was rich; and in that case
he might make a canal boat as pretty as a villa - joli comme
un château. And with that they invited me on board their
own water villa. They apologised for their cabin; they had not
been rich enough to make it as it ought to be.
‘The fire should have been here, at this side.’ explained
the husband. ‘Then one might have a writing-table in the
middle - books - and’ (comprehensively) ‘all. It would
be quite coquettish - ça serait tout-à-fait coquet.’
And he looked about him as though the improvements were already made.
It was plainly not the first time that he had thus beautified his cabin
in imagination; and when next he makes a bit, I should expect to see
the writing-table in the middle.
Madame had three birds in a cage. They were no great thing, she
explained. Fine birds were so dear. They had sought to get
a Hollandais last winter in Rouen (Rouen? thought I; and is this
whole mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chimneys, so far
a traveller as that? and as homely an object among the cliffs and orchards
of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?) - they had sought to
get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen; but these cost fifteen
francs apiece - picture it - fifteen francs!
‘Pour un tout petit oiseau - For quite a little bird,’
added the husband.
As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good people
began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in life, as
if they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies. It was, in
the Scots phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour with the
world. If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear
a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I believe
they would do it more freely and with a better grace.
They began to ask about our voyage. You should have seen how they
sympathised. They seemed half ready to give up their barge and
follow us. But these canaletti are only gypsies semi-domesticated.
The semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form. Suddenly
Madam’s brow darkened. ‘Cependant,’ she
began, and then stopped; and then began again by asking me if I were
single?
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘And your friend who went by just now?’
He also was unmarried.
O then - all was well. She could not have wives left alone at
home; but since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the
best we could.
‘To see about one in the world,’ said the husband, ‘il
n’y a que ça - there is nothing else worth while.
A man, look you, who sticks in his own village like a bear,’ he
went on, ‘ - very well, he sees nothing. And then death
is the end of all. And he has seen nothing.’
Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this canal
in a steamer.
‘Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene,’ I suggested.
‘That’s it,’ assented the husband. ‘He
had his wife and family with him, and servants. He came ashore
at all the locks and asked the name of the villages, whether from boatmen
or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down. Oh, he wrote
enormously! I suppose it was a wager.’
A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but it
seemed an original reason for taking notes.
THE OISE IN FLOOD
Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light country
cart at Étreux: and we were soon following them along the side
of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars. Agreeable
villages lay here and there on the slope of the hill; notably, Tupigny,
with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the very street, and the
houses clustered with grapes. There was a faint enthusiasm on
our passage; weavers put their heads to the windows; children cried
out in ecstasy at sight of the two ‘boaties’ - barguettes:
and bloused pedestrians, who were acquainted with our charioteer, jested
with him on the nature of his freight.
We had a shower or two, but light and flying. The air was clean
and sweet among all these green fields and green things growing.
There was not a touch of autumn in the weather. And when, at Vadencourt,
we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth
and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise.
The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt all
the way to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart
at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea. The
water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among half-submerged
willows, and made an angry clatter along stony shores. The course
kept turning and turning in a narrow and well-timbered valley.
Now the river would approach the side, and run griding along the chalky
base of the hill, and show us a few open colza-fields among the trees.
Now it would skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch
a glimpse through a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the chequered
sunlight. Again, the foliage closed so thickly in front, that
there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of willows, overtopped by
elms and poplars, under which the river ran flush and fleet, and where
a kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue sky. On these
different manifestations the sun poured its clear and catholic looks.
The shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the
stable meadows. The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar
leaves, and brought the hills into communion with our eyes. And
all the while the river never stopped running or took breath; and the
reeds along the whole valley stood shivering from top to toe.
There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on
the shivering of the reeds. There are not many things in nature
more striking to man’s eye. It is such an eloquent pantomime
of terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary
in every nook along the shore, is enough to infect a silly human with
alarm. Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist-deep
in the stream. Or perhaps they have never got accustomed to the
speed and fury of the river’s flux, or the miracle of its continuous
body. Pan once played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands
of his river, he still plays upon these later generations down all the
valley of the Oise; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to
tell us of the beauty and the terror of the world.
The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took it up and shook
it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a nymph.
To keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying
of the paddle. The river was in such a hurry for the sea!
Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened
crowd. But what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded?
All the objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced
with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs
screwed so tight, that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument;
and the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways
and byways of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as
if circulation were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of
threescore years and ten. The reeds might nod their heads in warning,
and with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was
strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the willows.
But the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who stand still
are always timid advisers. As for us, we could have shouted aloud.
If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death’s
contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with
us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring points
against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream.
I have rarely had better profit of my life.
For I think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat
in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed
upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and
look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves.
And above all, where instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable
investment for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss.
So every bit of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is
just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall
have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries
stand and deliver. A swift stream is a favourite artifice of his,
and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he
and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these
hours upon the upper Oise.
Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the exhilaration
of the pace. We could no longer contain ourselves and our content.
The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and stretch ourselves
on shore. And so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on the
grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world excellent.
It was the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme
complacency.
On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the hill,
a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular intervals.
At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds against the sky:
for all the world (as the Cigarette declared) like a toy Burns
who should have just ploughed up the Mountain Daisy. He was the
only living thing within view, unless we are to count the river.
On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed
among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon
musical on a chime of bells. There was something very sweet and
taking in the air he played; and we thought we had never heard bells
speak so intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as these. It must
have been to some such measure that the spinners and the young maids
sang, ‘Come away, Death,’ in the Shakespearian Illyria.
There is so often a threatening note, something blatant and metallic,
in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than pleasure
from hearing them; but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now
low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the burthen
of a popular song, were always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall
in with the spirit of still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall
or the babble of a rookery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer
for his blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently
to the time of his meditations. I could have blessed the priest
or the heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France,
who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not
held meetings, and made collections, and had their names repeatedly
printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted
substitutes, who should bombard their sides to the provocation of a
brand-new bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with terror
and riot.
At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew.
The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of
the Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people
who have sat out a noble performance and returned to work. The
river was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more
sudden and violent. All the way down we had had our fill of difficulties.
Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow
and full of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from the water and
carry them round. But the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence
of the late high winds. Every two or three hundred yards a tree
had fallen across the river, and usually involved more than another
in its fall.
Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the
leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the twigs.
Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank, there was room,
by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes
it was necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats
across; and sometimes, when the stream was too impetuous for this, there
was nothing for it but to land and ‘carry over.’ This
made a fine series of accidents in the day’s career, and kept
us aware of ourselves.
Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long way,
and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the sun, the
swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of its leonine
pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another fallen tree within
a stone-cast. I had my backboard down in a trice, and aimed for
a place where the trunk seemed high enough above the water, and the
branches not too thick to let me slip below. When a man has just
vowed eternal brotherhood with the universe, he is not in a temper to
take great determinations coolly, and this, which might have been a
very important determination for me, had not been taken under a happy
star. The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet
struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the
matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat. The Arethusa
swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still
remained on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted,
and went merrily away down stream.
I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which
I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about. My
thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung
to my paddle. The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could
pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water
of the Oise in my trousers-pockets. You can never know, till you
try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man. Death himself
had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now
join personally in the fray. And still I held to my paddle.
At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there
a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and injustice.
A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with
his team. But there was the paddle in my hand. On my tomb,
if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: ‘He clung
to his paddle.’
The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the
moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side.
He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already
on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant
Arethusa. The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with
one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So I crawled along the
trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.
I was so cold that my heart was sore. I had now an idea of my
own why the reeds so bitterly shivered. I could have given any
of them a lesson. The Cigarette remarked facetiously that
he thought I was ‘taking exercise’ as I drew near, until
he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.
I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber
bag. But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage.
I had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body.
The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I
was a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the universe
had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a running
stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had
heard some of the hollow notes of Pan’s music. Would the
wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful
all the time? Nature’s good-humour was only skin-deep after
all.
There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the stream,
and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in Origny Sainte-Benoîte,
when we arrived.
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOÎTE
A BY-DAY
The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest; indeed,
I do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice of services
as were here offered to the devout. And while the bells made merry
in the sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the
beets and colza.
In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a foot-pace,
singing to a very slow, lamentable music ‘O France, mes amours.’
It brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady called in the
man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. She was
not the first nor the second who had been taken with the song.
There is something very pathetic in the love of the French people, since
the war, for dismal patriotic music-making. I have watched a forester
from Alsace while some one was singing ‘Les malheurs de la
France,’ at a baptismal party in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau.
He arose from the table and took his son aside, close by where I was
standing. ‘Listen, listen,’ he said, bearing on the
boy’s shoulder, ‘and remember this, my son.’
A little after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear
him sobbing in the darkness.
The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made
a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts
are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire.
In what other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the
world into the street? But affliction heightens love; and we shall
never know we are Englishmen until we have lost India. Independent
America is still the cross of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer
George without abhorrence; and I never feel more warmly to my own land
than when I see the Stars and Stripes, and remember what our empire
might have been.
The hawker’s little book, which I purchased, was a curious mixture.
Side by side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the Paris music-halls,
there were many pastoral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I thought,
and instinct with the brave independence of the poorer class in France.
There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried in his axe, and the
gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade. It was not very well
written, this poetry of labour, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed
what was weak or wordy in the expression. The martial and the
patriotic pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish productions
one and all. The poet had passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang
for an army visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed;
and sang not of victory, but of death. There was a number in the
hawker’s collection called ‘Conscrits Français,’
which may rank among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on record.
It would not be possible to fight at all in such a spirit. The
bravest conscript would turn pale if such a ditty were struck up beside
him on the morning of battle; and whole regiments would pile their arms
to its tune.
If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the influence of national
songs, you would say France was come to a poor pass. But the thing
will work its own cure, and a sound-hearted and courageous people weary
at length of snivelling over their disasters. Already Paul Déroulède
has written some manly military verses. There is not much of the
trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir a man’s heart in his bosom;
they lack the lyrical elation, and move slowly; but they are written
in a grave, honourable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers
far in a good cause. One feels as if one would like to trust Déroulède
with something. It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his
fellow-countrymen that they may be trusted with their own future.
And in the meantime, here is an antidote to ‘French Conscripts’
and much other doleful versification.
We had left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we shall
call Carnival. I did not properly catch his name, and perhaps
that was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position to hand
him down with honour to posterity. To this person’s premises
we strolled in the course of the day, and found quite a little deputation
inspecting the canoes. There was a stout gentleman with a knowledge
of the river, which he seemed eager to impart. There was a very
elegant young gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of English,
who led the talk at once to the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.
And then there were three handsome girls from fifteen to twenty; and
an old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a strong
country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, I should suppose.
The Cigarette had some mysteries to perform with his rigging
in the coach-house; so I was left to do the parade single-handed.
I found myself very much of a hero whether I would or not. The
girls were full of little shudderings over the dangers of our journey.
And I thought it would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies.
My mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep sensation.
It was Othello over again, with no less than three Desdemonas and a
sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the background. Never were
the canoes more flattered, or flattered more adroitly.
‘It is like a violin,’ cried one of the girls in an ecstasy.
‘I thank you for the word, mademoiselle,’ said I.
‘All the more since there are people who call out to me that it
is like a coffin.’
‘Oh! but it is really like a violin. It is finished like
a violin,’ she went on.
‘And polished like a violin,’ added a senator.
‘One has only to stretch the cords,’ concluded another,
‘and then tum-tumty-tum’ - he imitated the result with spirit.
Was not this a graceful little ovation? Where this people finds
the secret of its pretty speeches, I cannot imagine; unless the secret
should be no other than a sincere desire to please? But then no disgrace
is attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas in England,
to talk like a book is to give in one’s resignation to society.
The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach-house, and somewhat
irrelevantly informed the Cigarette that he was the father of
the three girls and four more: quite an exploit for a Frenchman.
‘You are very fortunate,’ answered the Cigarette
politely.
And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, stole away
again.
We all got very friendly together. The girls proposed to start
with us on the morrow, if you please! And, jesting apart, every
one was anxious to know the hour of our departure. Now, when you
are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however
friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them not before twelve, and
mentally determined to be off by ten at latest.
Towards evening, we went abroad again to post some letters. It
was cool and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for
one or two urchins who followed us as they might have followed a menagerie;
the hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides through the clear
air; and the bells were chiming for yet another service.
Suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth sister,
in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. We had
been very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure. But
what was the etiquette of Origny? Had it been a country road,
of course we should have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of
all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow? I consulted
the Cigarette.
‘Look,’ said he.
I looked. There were the four girls on the same spot; but now
four backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious. Corporal
Modesty had given the word of command, and the well-disciplined picket
had gone right-about-face like a single person. They maintained
this formation all the while we were in sight; but we heard them tittering
among themselves, and the girl whom we had not met laughed with open
mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at the enemy. I wonder
was it altogether modesty after all? or in part a sort of country provocation?
As we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating in the
ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees
that grow along their summit. It was too high up, too large, and
too steady for a kite; and as it was dark, it could not be a star.
For although a star were as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut,
so amply does the sun bathe heaven with radiance, that it would sparkle
like a point of light for us. The village was dotted with people
with their heads in air; and the children were in a bustle all along
the street and far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where
we could still see them running in loose knots. It was a balloon,
we learned, which had left Saint Quentin at half-past five that evening.
Mighty composedly the majority of the grown people took it. But
we were English, and were soon running up the hill with the best.
Being travellers ourselves in a small way, we would fain have seen these
other travellers alight.
The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill.
All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared.
Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or come safely
to land somewhere in that blue uneven distance, into which the roadway
dipped and melted before our eyes? Probably the aeronauts were
already warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold
in these unhomely regions of the air. The night fell swiftly.
Roadside trees and disappointed sightseers, returning through the meadows,
stood out in black against a margin of low red sunset. It was
cheerfuller to face the other way, and so down the hill we went, with
a full moon, the colour of a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley,
and the white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk
kilns.
The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in Origny Sainte-Benoîte
by the river.
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOÎTE
THE COMPANY AT TABLE
Although we came late for dinner, the company at table treated us to
sparkling wine. ‘That is how we are in France,’ said
one. ‘Those who sit down with us are our friends.’
And the rest applauded.
They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday with.
Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north.
One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and
beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small,
not even a lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its
capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like
Samson’s, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast
of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion
in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts.
The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and sad,
with something the look of a Dane: ‘Tristes têtes de
Danois!’ as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.
I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good
fellows now gone down into the dust. We shall never again see
Gaston in his forest costume - he was Gaston with all the world, in
affection, not in disrespect - nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau
with the woodland horn. Never again shall his kind smile put peace
among all races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in
France. Never more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent
at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his industrious pencil.
He died too early, at the very moment when he was beginning to put forth
fresh sprouts, and blossom into something worthy of himself; and yet
none who knew him will think he lived in vain. I never knew a
man so little, for whom yet I had so much affection; and I find it a
good test of others, how much they had learned to understand and value
him. His was indeed a good influence in life while he was still
among us; he had a fresh laugh, it did you good to see him; and however
sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance,
and took fortune’s worst as it were the showers of spring.
But now his mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where
he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth.
Many of his pictures found their way across the Channel: besides those
which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in London
with two English pence, and perhaps twice as many words of English.
If any one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the
manner of Jacques, with this fine creature’s signature, let him
tell himself that one of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand
to decorate his lodging. There may be better pictures in the National
Gallery; but not a painter among the generations had a better heart.
Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is
the death of his saints. It had need to be precious; for it is
very costly, when by the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the
peace-maker, and peace-looker, of a whole society is laid in
the ground with Caesar and the Twelve Apostles.
There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; and when
the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the door for a figure
that is gone.
The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the
landlady’s husband: not properly the landlord, since he worked
himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at evening
as a guest: a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with
baldish head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. On Saturday,
describing some paltry adventure at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into
a score of fragments. Whenever he made a remark, he would look
all round the table with his chin raised, and a spark of green light
in either eye, seeking approval. His wife appeared now and again
in the doorway of the room, where she was superintending dinner, with
a ‘Henri, you forget yourself,’ or a ‘Henri, you can
surely talk without making such a noise.’ Indeed, that was
what the honest fellow could not do. On the most trifling matter
his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice rolled abroad
in changeful thunder. I never saw such a petard of a man; I think
the devil was in him. He had two favourite expressions: ‘it
is logical,’ or illogical, as the case might be: and this other,
thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, at
the beginning of many a long and sonorous story: ‘I am a proletarian,
you see.’ Indeed, we saw it very well. God forbid
that ever I should find him handling a gun in Paris streets! That
will not be a good moment for the general public.
I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and evil of
his class, and to some extent of his country. It is a strong thing
to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although it be in
doubtful taste to repeat the statement too often in one evening.
I should not admire it in a duke, of course; but as times go, the trait
is honourable in a workman. On the other hand, it is not at all
a strong thing to put one’s reliance upon logic; and our own logic
particularly, for it is generally wrong. We never know where we
are to end, if once we begin following words or doctors. There
is an upright stock in a man’s own heart, that is trustier than
any syllogism; and the eyes, and the sympathies and appetites, know
a thing or two that have never yet been stated in controversy.
Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they
serve impartially with all sides. Doctrines do not stand or fall
by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly
put. An able controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates
the justice of his cause. But France is all gone wandering after
one or two big words; it will take some time before they can be satisfied
that they are no more than words, however big; and when once that is
done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting.
The conversation opened with details of the day’s shooting.
When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory
pro indiviso, it is plain that many questions of etiquette and
priority must arise.
‘Here now,’ cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, ‘here
is a field of beet-root. Well. Here am I then. I advance,
do I not? Eh bien! sacristi,’ and the statement,
waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker
glaring about for sympathy, and everybody nodding his head to him in
the name of peace.
The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in keeping order:
notably one of a Marquis.
‘Marquis,’ I said, ‘if you take another step I fire
upon you. You have committed a dirtiness, Marquis.’
Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and withdrew.
The landlord applauded noisily. ‘It was well done,’
he said. ‘He did all that he could. He admitted he
was wrong.’ And then oath upon oath. He was no marquis-lover
either, but he had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian host
of ours.
From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general comparison
of Paris and the country. The proletarian beat the table like
a drum in praise of Paris. ‘What is Paris? Paris is
the cream of France. There are no Parisians: it is you and I and
everybody who are Parisians. A man has eighty chances per cent.
to get on in the world in Paris.’ And he drew a vivid sketch
of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles
that were to go all over the world. ‘Eh bien, quoi, c’est
magnifique, ca!’ cried he.
The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant’s life; he
thought Paris bad for men and women; ‘centralisation,’
said he -
But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. It was all logical,
he showed him; and all magnificent. ‘What a spectacle!
What a glance for an eye!’ And the dishes reeled upon the
table under a cannonade of blows.
Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the liberty of
opinion in France. I could hardly have shot more amiss.
There was an instant silence, and a great wagging of significant heads.
They did not fancy the subject, it was plain; but they gave me to understand
that the sad Northman was a martyr on account of his views. ‘Ask
him a bit,’ said they. ‘Just ask him.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said he in his quiet way, answering me, although
I had not spoken, ‘I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion
in France than you may imagine.’ And with that he dropped
his eyes, and seemed to consider the subject at an end.
Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or why, or when,
was this lymphatic bagman martyred? We concluded at once it was
on some religious question, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition,
which were principally drawn from Poe’s horrid story, and the
sermon in Tristram Shandy, I believe.
On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the question;
for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathising deputation at our
departure, we found the hero up before us. He was breaking his
fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character
of martyr, I conclude. We had a long conversation, and made out
what we wanted in spite of his reserve. But here was a truly curious
circumstance. It seems possible for two Scotsmen and a Frenchman
to discuss during a long half-hour, and each nationality have a different
idea in view throughout. It was not till the very end that we
discovered his heresy had been political, or that he suspected our mistake.
The terms and spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were,
in our eyes, suited to religious beliefs. And vice versâ.
Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries.
Politics are the religion of France; as Nanty Ewart would have said,
‘A d-d bad religion’; while we, at home, keep most of our
bitterness for little differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew word
which perhaps neither of the parties can translate. And perhaps
the misconception is typical of many others that may never be cl