An Inland Voyage
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
Part 1 out of 2
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-Benoite
A By-day
The Company at Table
Down the Oise: to Moy
La Fere of Cursed Memory
Down the Oise: Through the Golden Valley
Noyon Cathedral
Down the Oise: to Compiegne
At Compiegne
Changed Times
Down the Oise: Church interiors
Precy 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 Hotel 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 a 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 a la papier, it was a
cold and sordid fricassee 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 a 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 Allee 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 freres! 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 serieux.'
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 cafe 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 Moliere'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 kepi. 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. 'Voila de l'eau
pour vous debarbouiller,' 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 cafe, 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 cafe. 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 reveilles, 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 cafe, 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 cafe, 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
chateau. 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--
ca serait tout-a-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
ca--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 Etreux: 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-Benoite, when we arrived.
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE
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 Francais,' 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 Deroulede 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 Deroulede 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
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