Recollections of My Youth Part 3

So far from encouraging these antique forms of popular wors.h.i.+p, the clergy only just tolerate them, and would suppress them altogether if they could, feeling that they are the survivals of another and a much less orthodox age. They consent to say ma.s.s once a year in these chapels, as the saints to whom they are dedicated have too great a hold in the country to be dislodged, but they say nothing about them in the parish church. The clergy let the people visit these little sanctuaries of the antique rite, to seek in them the cure for certain complaints, and to wors.h.i.+p there after their own way; they pretend to be blind to all this. Where, then, it may be asked, lies concealed the treasure of all these old stories? Why, in the memory of the people?

Go from chapel to chapel, get the good people who attend them into conversation, and if they think they can trust you they will tell you with a mixture of seriousness and pleasantry wonderful stories, from which comparative mythology and history will one day reap a rich harvest.[1]

These stories had from the first a very great influence upon my imagination. The chapels which I have spoken of are always solitary, and stand by themselves amid the desolate moors or barren rocks. The wind whistling amid the heather and the stunted vegetation thrilled me with terror, and I often used to take to my heels, thinking that the spirits of the past were pursuing me. At other times I would look through the half ruined door of the chapel at the stained gla.s.s or the statuettes of painted wood which stood on the altar. These plunged me in endless reveries. The strange and terrible physiognomy of these saints, more Druid than Christian, savage and vindictive, pursued me like a nightmare. Saints though they were, they were none the less subject to very strange weaknesses. Gregory, of Tours, has told us the story of a certain Winnoch, who pa.s.sed through Tours on his way to Jerusalem, his only covering being some sheep skins with their wool taken off. He seemed so pious that they kept him there and made a priest of him. He made wild herbs his sole food, and raised the wine flagon to his lips in such a way that it seemed as if he scarcely moistened his lips. But as the liberality of the devout provided him with large quant.i.ties of it he got into the habit of drinking, and was several times observed to be overcome by his potations. The devil gained such a hold over him that, armed with knives, sticks, stones, and whatever else he could get hold of, he ran after the people in the streets. It was found necessary to chain him up in his cell. None the less was he a saint. St. Cadoc, St. Iltud, St. Conery, St. Renan (or Ronan), appeared to me as giants. In after years, when I had come to know India, I saw that my saints were true _Richis_, and that through them I had became familiarised with the most primitive features of our Aryan world, with the idea of solitary masters of nature, a.s.serting their power over it by asceticism and the force of the will.

The last of the saints whom I have mentioned naturally attracted my attention more than any of the others, as his name was the same as that by which I was known.[2] There is not a more original figure among all the saints of Brittany. The story of his life has been told to me two or three times, and each time with more extraordinary details. He lived in Cornwall, near the little town which bears his name (St. Renan). He was more a spirit of the earth than a saint, and his power over the elements was illimitable. He was of a violent and rather erratic temperament, and there was no telling beforehand as to what he would do. He was much respected, but his stubborn resolve to take in all things his own course caused him to be regarded with no little fear, and when he was found one day lying dead on the floor of his hut there was a feeling of consternation in the country. The first person who, when looking in at the window as he went by, saw him in this position, took to his heels. He had been so self-willed and peculiar in his lifetime that no one ventured to guess as to how he might wish to have his body disposed of. It was feared that if his wishes were incorrectly interpreted, he would punish them by sending the plague, or having the town swallowed up by an earthquake, or by converting the country around into a marsh. Nor would it be wise to take his body to the parish church, as he had sometimes shown an aversion to it.

He might, perhaps, create a scandal. All the princ.i.p.al inhabitants were a.s.sembled in the cell, with his stark black corpse in their midst, when one of them made the following sensible suggestion: "We never could understand him when he was alive; it was easier to trace the flight of the swallow than to guess at his thoughts. Now that he is dead, let him still follow his own fancy. We will cut down a few trees, make a waggon of them and harness four oxen to it. Then he can let them take him to the place where he wishes to be buried." This was done, and the body of the saint deposited on the vehicle. The oxen, guided by the invisible hand of Ronan, went in a straight line into the thick of the forest, the trees bent or broke beneath their steps with an awful crackling sound. The waggon stopped in the centre of the forest, just where the largest of the oaks reared their head. The hint was taken and the saint was buried there and a church erected to his memory.

Tales of this kind inspired me early in life with a love of mythology.

The simplicity of spirit with which they were accepted carried one back to the early ages of the world. Take for instance the way in which, as I was taught to believe, my father was cured of fever when a child. Before daybreak he was taken to the chapel of the saint who exercised the healing power. A blacksmith arrived at the same time with his forge, nails, and tongs. He lighted his fire, made his tongs red hot, and held them before the face of the saint, threatening to shoe him as he would a horse unless he cured the child of his fever. The threat took immediate effect, and my father was cured.

Wood-carving has long been in great favour in Brittany. The statues of these saints are extraordinarily life-like, and in the eyes of people of vivid imagination they may well seem to be actually alive. I remember in particular one good man, who was not more daft than the rest, who always made off to the churches in the evening when he got the chance. The next morning, he was invariably found in the building, half dead with fatigue. He had spent the whole night in detaching the figures of Christ from the crosses and drawing the arrows out of the bodies of St. Sebastian.

My mother, who was a Gascon on one side (her father was a native of Bordeaux), told these anecdotes with much wit and tact, pa.s.sing deftly between what was real and what was fanciful, so as to leave the impression that these things were only true from an ideal point of view. She clung to these fables as a Breton; as a Gascon she was inclined to laugh at them, and this was the secret of the sprightliness and gaiety of her life. This state of things has been the means of giving me what little talent I may have for historical studies. I have derived from it a kind of habit of looking below the surface and hearing sounds which other ears do not catch. The essence of criticism is to be able to realise conditions different from those under which we are now living. I have been in actual contact with the primitive ages. The most remote past was still in existence in Brittany up to 1830. The world of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries pa.s.sed daily before the eyes of those who lived in the towns. The epoch of the Welsh emigration (the fifth and the sixth centuries) was plainly visible in the country to the practised eye.

Paganism was still to be detected beneath a layer, often so thin as to be transparent, of Christianity, and with the former were mixed up traces of a still more ancient world which I afterwards came upon again among the Laplanders. When visiting in 1870, with Prince Napoleon, the huts of a Laplander encampment near Tromsoe, I felt some of my earliest recollections live again in the features of several women and children and in certain customs and traits of character. It occurred to me that in ancient times there might have been admixtures between the lost branches of the Celtic race and races like the Laplanders which covered the soil upon their arrival. My ethnical position would in this case be: "A Celt crossed with Gascon with a slight infusion of Laplander blood." Such a condition of things ought, if I am not mistaken, according to the theories of the anthropologists, to represent the maximum of idiocy and imbecility; but the decrees of anthropology are only relative: what it treats as stupidity among the ancient races of men is often neither more nor less than an extraordinary force of enthusiasm and intuition.

[Footnote 1: A conscientious and painstaking student, M. Luzel, will, I hope, be the Pausanias of these little local chapels, and will commit to writing the whole of this magnificent legend, which is upon the point of being lost.]

[Footnote 2: The ancient form of the word is Ronan, which is still to be found in the names of places, _Loc Ronan_, the well of St. Ronan (Wales).]

MY UNCLE PIERRE.

Everything, therefore, predisposed me towards romanticism, not in form, for I was not long in understanding that this is a mistake, that though there may be two modes of feeling and thinking there can be but one form of expressing these feelings and thoughts--but towards romanticism of the mind and imagination, towards the pure ideal. I was an offshoot from the old idealist race of the most genuine growth.

There is in the district of Goelo or of Avangour, on the Trieux, a place called the Ledano, because it is there that the Trieux opens out and forms a lagoon before running into the sea. Upon the sh.o.r.e of the Ledano there is a large farm called Keranbelec or Meskanbelec. This was the head quarters of the Renans, who came there from Cardigan about the year 480, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Fragan. They led there for thirteen hundred years an obscure existence, storing up sensations and thoughts the capital of which has devolved upon me I can feel that I think for them and that they live again in me. Not one of them attempted to h.o.a.rd, and the consequence was that they all remained poor. My absolute inability to be resentful or to appear so is inherited from them. The only two kinds of occupation which they knew anything of were to till the land or to steer a boat on the estuaries and archipelagos of rocks which the Trieux forms at its mouth. A short time previous to the Revolution, three of them rigged out a bark, and settled at Lezardrieux. They lived together on the bark, which was for the best part of her time laid up in a creek of the Ledano, and they sailed her when the fit took them. They could not be cla.s.sed as bourgeois, for they were not jealous of the n.o.bles: they were well-to-do sailors, independent of every one. My grandfather, one of the three, took another step towards town life; he came to live at Treguier. When the Revolution broke out, he showed himself to be a sincere but honourable patriot. He had some little money, but, unlike all others in the same position as himself, he would not buy any of the national property, holding that this property had been ill-gotten.

He did not think it honourable to make large profits without labour.

The events of 1814-15 drove him half mad.

Hegel had not as yet discovered that might implies right, and in any event he would have found it difficult to believe that France had been victorious at Waterloo. The privilege of these charming theories, of which by the way I have had rather too much, were reserved for me. On the evening of March 19th, 1815, he came to see my mother and told her to get up early the next morning and look at the tower. And surely enough he and several other patriots had during the night, upon the refusal of the clerk to give them the keys, clambered up the outside of the steeple at the risk of breaking their necks a dozen times over and hoisted the national flag. A few months later, when the opposite cause was triumphant, he literally lost his senses. He would go about in the street with an enormous tricolour c.o.c.kade, exclaiming: "I should like to see any one come and take this away from me," and as he was a general favourite people used to answer: "Why, no one, Captain."

My father shared the same sentiments. Taken by the English while serving under Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, he pa.s.sed several years on the pontoons. His great delight was to go each year, when the conscription was drawn, and humiliate the recruits by relating his experiences as a volunteer. Regarding with contempt those who were drawing lots, he would add: "We used not to act in this way," and he would shrug his shoulders over the degeneracy of the age.

It is from what I have seen of these excellent sailors, and from what I have read and heard about the peasants of Lithuania, and even of Poland, that I have derived my ideas as to the innate goodness of our races when they are organised after the type of the primitive clan. It is impossible to give an idea of how much goodness and even politeness and gentle manners there is in these ancient Celts. I saw the last traces of it some thirty years ago in the beautiful little island of Brehat, with its patriarchal ways which carried one back to the time of the Pheacians. The unselfishness and the practical incapacity of these good people were beyond conception. One proof of their n.o.bility was that whenever they attempted to engage in any commercial business they were defrauded. Never in the world's history did people ruin themselves with a lighter or more careless heart, keeping up a running fire of paradox and quips. Never in the world were the laws of common sense and sound economy more joyously trodden under foot. I asked my mother, towards the close of her life, whether it was really the case that all the members of our family whom she had known were upon as bad terms with fortune as those whom I could remember.

"All as poor as Job," she answered me. "How could it be different?

None of them were born rich, and none of them pillaged their neighbours. In those days the only rich people were the clergy and the n.o.bles. There is, however, one exception, I mean A----, who became a millionaire. Oh! he is a very respectable person, very nearly a member of parliament, and quite likely to become one."

"How did A---- contrive to make such a large fortune while all his neighbours remained poor?"

"I cannot tell you that.... There are some people who are born to be rich, while there are others who never would be so. The former have claws, and do not scruple to help themselves first. That is just what we have never been able to do. When it comes to taking the best piece out of the dish which is handed round our natural politeness stands in our way. None of your ancestors could make money. They took nothing from the general ma.s.s, and would not impoverish their neighbours. Your grandfather would not buy any of the national property, as others did.

Your father was like all other sailors, and the proof that he was born to be a sailor and to fight was that he had no head for business. When you were born we were in such a bad way that I took you on my knees and cried bitterly. You see that sailors are not like the rest of the world. I have known many who entered upon a term of service with a good round sum of money in their possession. They would heat the silver pieces in a frying-pan and throw them into the street, splitting their sides with laughter at the crowd which scrambled for them. This was meant to show that it was not for mercenary motives that they were ready to risk their lives, and that honour and duty cannot be posted in a ledger. And then there was your poor uncle Peter. I cannot tell you what trouble he used to give me."

"Tell me about him," I said, "for somehow or other I like him very much."

"You saw him once; he met us near the bridge, and he lifted his hat to you, but you were too much respected in the neighbourhood for him to venture to speak to you, though I did not like to tell you so. He was one of the best-natured creatures in existence, but he could never be got to apply himself to work. He was always lounging about, pa.s.sing the best part of the day and night in taverns. He was honest and good-hearted withal, but there was no getting him to follow any trade. You have no idea how agreeable he was until the life he led had exhausted him. He was a universal favourite, and with his inexhaustible stock of tales, proverbs, and funny stories, he was welcome everywhere. He was very well read, too, and by no means devoid of learning. He was the oracle of the taverns, and was the life and soul of any party at which he might be present. He effected a regular literary revolution. Heretofore the only books which people cared for were the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_ and _Renaud de Montauban_. All these ancient characters were familiar to us, and each of us had his or her favourite hero, but Peter taught us more modern tales which he took from books, but which he remodelled to suit the local taste.

"We had at that time a pretty good library. When the mission fathers came to Treguier, during the reign of Charles X., the preacher delivered such an eloquent sermon against dangerous books that we all of us burnt any such volumes as we had. The missionary had told us that it was better to burn too many than too few, and that, for the matter of that, all books might under certain conditions be dangerous.

I did like the rest of the people, but your father put several upon the top of the large wardrobe, saying that they were too handsome to be burnt; they were _Don Quixotte, Gil Bias_, and the _Diable Boiteux_. Peter found them there, and would read them to the common people and to the men employed in the port. And so the whole of our library disappeared. In this way he spent the modest little fortune which he possessed, and became a regular vagabond, though in spite of this he remained kind and generous, incapable of harming a worm."

"But," I rejoined, "why did not his friends send him to sea? that would have made him more regular in his ways."

"That could never have been, for he was so popular that all his friends would have run after him and fetched him back. You have no idea how full of fun he was. Poor Peter! with all his faults I could not help liking him, for he was charming at times. He could set you off into a fit of laughter with a word. He had a knack of his own for springing a joke upon you in the most unexpected way. I shall never forget the evening when they came to tell me that he had been found dead on the road to Langoat. I went and had him properly laid out. He was buried, and the priest spoke in consoling terms about the death of these poor waifs whose heart is not always so far from G.o.d as some people may imagine."

Poor Uncle Pierre! I have often thought of him. This tardy esteem will be his sole recompense. The metaphysical paradise would be no place for him. His lively imagination, his high spirits, and his keen sense of enjoyment const.i.tuted him for a distinct individualism in his own sphere. My father's character was just the opposite, for he was inclined to be sentimental and melancholy. It was when he was advanced in years and upon his return from a long voyage that he gave me birth.

In the early dawn of my existence I felt, the cold sea mist, s.h.i.+vered under the cutting morning blast and pa.s.sed my bitter and gloomy watch on the quarter-deck.

GOOD MASTER SYSTeME.

PART I.

I was related on my maternal grandmother's side to a much more prim cla.s.s of people. My grandmother was a very good specimen of the middle-cla.s.ses of former days. She had been excessively pretty. I can remember her towards the close of her life, and she was always dressed in the fas.h.i.+on which prevailed at the time of her being left a widow.

She was very particular about her cla.s.s, never altered her head-dress, and would not allow herself to be addressed except as "Mademoiselle."

The ladies of n.o.ble birth had a great respect for her. When they met my sister Henrietta they used to kiss her and say, "My dear, your grandmother was a very respectable person, we were very fond of her.

Try to be like her." And as it happened my sister did like her very much and took her as a pattern, but my mother, always laughing and full of wit, differed from her very much. Mother and daughter were in all respects a marked contrast.

The worthy burghers of Lannion and their families were models of simplicity, honour, and respectability. Several of my aunts never married, but they were very light-spirited and cheerful, thanks to the innocence of their hearts. Families dwelt together in unity, animated by the same simple faith. My aunts' sole amus.e.m.e.nt on Sundays after ma.s.s was to send a feather up into the air, each blowing at it in turn to prevent it from falling to the ground. This afforded them amus.e.m.e.nt enough to last until the following Sunday. The piety of my grandmother, her urbanity, her regard for the established order of things are graven in my heart as the best pictures of that old-fas.h.i.+oned society based upon G.o.d and the king--two props for which it may not be easy to find subst.i.tutes.

When the Revolution broke out my grandmother was horror-struck, and she took the lead with so many other pious persons in hiding the priests who had refused to take the oath of fidelity to the Const.i.tution. Ma.s.s was celebrated in her drawing-room, and as the ladies of the n.o.bility had emigrated she thought it her duty to take their place. Most of my uncles, on the other hand were ardent patriots. When any public misfortune occurred, such, for instance, as the treason of Dumouriez, my uncles allowed their beards to grow and went about with long faces, flowing cravats, and untidy garments. My grandmother would at these times indulge in delicate but rather risky satire. "My dear Tanneguy, what is the matter with you? Has any trouble befallen us? Has anything happened to Cousin Amelie? Is my Aunt Augustine's asthma worse?"--"No, cousin, the Republic is in danger."--"Oh, is that all, my dear Tanneguy? I am so glad to hear you say so. You quite relieve me." Thus she sported for two years with the guillotine, and it is a wonder that she escaped it. A lady named Taupin, pious like herself, was a.s.sociated with her in these good works. The priests were sheltered by turns in her house and in that of Madame Taupin. My uncle Y----, a very st.u.r.dy Revolutionist, but a good-hearted man at bottom, often said to her: "My cousin, if it came to my knowledge that there were priests or aristocrats concealed in your house, I should be obliged to denounce you." She always used to reply that her only acquaintances were true friends of the Republic and no mistake about it.

So it was that Madame Taupin was the one to be guillotined. My mother never related this incident to me without being very deeply moved. She showed me when I was a child the spot where the tragedy was enacted.

Upon the day of the execution, my grandmother went, with all her family, out of Lannion, so as not to partic.i.p.ate in the crime which was about to be committed. She went before daybreak to a chapel, situated rather more than a mile from the town in a retired spot and dedicated to St. Roch. Several pious persons had arranged to meet there, and a signal was to let them know just when the knife was about to drop so that they might all be in prayer when the soul of the martyr was, brought by the angels before the throne of the Most High.

All this bound people together more closely than we can form any idea of. My grandmother loved the priests and believed in their courage and devotion to duty. She was destined to meet with a very cool reception from one of them. When during the Consulate religious wors.h.i.+p was re-established, the priest whom she had sheltered at the risk of her life was appointed inc.u.mbent of a parish near Lannion. She took my mother, then quite a child, with her, and they walked the five miles under a scorching sun. The thought of meeting again one whom she had seen keeping the night watch at her house under such tragical circ.u.mstances made her heart beat fast. The priest, whether from sacerdotal pride or from a feeling of duty, behaved in a very strange manner. He scarcely seemed to recognise her, never asked her to be seated, and dismissed her with a few short remarks. Not a word of thanks or an allusion to the past. He did not even offer her a gla.s.s of water. My grandmother could scarcely keep from fainting; and she returned to Lannion in tears, whether because she reproached herself for some feminine error of the heart or because she was hurt by so much pride. My mother never knew whether in after years she looked back to this incident with the more of injured pride or of admiration.

Perhaps, she came at last to recognise the infinite wisdom of the priest, who seemed to say to her, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" and who would not admit that he had any reason to be grateful to her. It is difficult for women to comprehend this abstract feeling.

Their work, whatever it may be, has always a personal object in view, and it would be hard to make them believe it natural that people should fight shoulder to shoulder without knowing and liking one another.

My mother, with her frank, cheerful, and inquisitive ways, was rather partial to the Revolution than the reverse. Unknown to my grandmother she used to go and hear the patriotic songs. The _Chant du Depart_ made a great impression upon her, and when she repeated the stirring line put in the mouth of the mothers,

"De nos yeux maternels ne craignez point de larmes,"

her voice was always broken. These stirring and terrible scenes had imprinted themselves for ever upon her mind. When she began to go back over these recollections, indissolubly bound up with the days of her girlhood, when she remembered how enthusiasm and wild delight alternated with scenes of terror, her whole life seemed to rise up before her I learnt from her to be so proud of the Revolution that I have liked it since, in spite of my reason and of all that I have said against it. I do not withdraw anything that I have already said; but when I see the inveterate persistency of foreign writers to try and prove that the French Revolution was one long story of folly and shame, and that it is but an unimportant factor in the world's history, I begin to think that it is perhaps the greatest of all our achievements, inasmuch as other people are so jealous of it.

GOOD MASTER SYSTeME.

PART II.

Among those whom I have to thank for being more a son of the Revolution than of the Crusaders was a singular character who was long a puzzle to us. He was an elderly man, whose mode of life, ideas, and habits were in striking contrast with those of the country at large.

I used to see him every day, with his threadbare cloak, going to buy a pennyworth of milk which the girl who sold it poured into the tin he brought with him. He was poor without being literally in want. He never spoke to any one, but he had a very gentle look about the eyes, and those who had happened to be brought into contact with him spoke in very eulogistic terms of his amiability and good sense. I never knew his name, and I do not believe that any one else did. He did not belong to our part of the country, and he had no relations. He was allowed to go his own way, and his singular mode of life excited no other feeling than one of surprise; but it had not always been so.

He had pa.s.sed through many vicissitudes. At one time he had been in communication with the people of the place and had imparted some of his ideas to them; but no one understood what he meant. The word _system_ which he used several times tickled their fancy, and this nickname was at once applied to him. If he had gone on imparting his ideas he would have got himself into trouble, and the children would have pelted him. Like a wise man he kept his tongue between his teeth, and no one attempted to molest him. He came out every day to make his modest purchases, and of an evening he would take a walk in some unfrequented spot. He was of a serious but not melancholy cast of countenance, and with more of an amiable than morose expression. Later in life when I read Colerus's _Life of Spinoza_, I at once saw that as a child I had had before my eyes the very image of the holy man of Amsterdam. He was left to follow his own courses, and was even treated with respect. His resigned and affable airs seemed like a glimpse from another world. People did not understand him, but they felt that he possessed higher qualities to which they paid implicit homage.