PRANCE is fortunate in being the adopted country of Madame
Mary Duclaux. To the study of French life and scenery she brings the eye and touch of an artist, the mind of a poet and philosopher. About two-thirds of this charming little book is concerned with modern, the rest with mediaeval France ; and
the earlier pages are in some ways a revelation, even to those who think they know something of the subject and are fairly familiar with French country life in the present day. But that life is many-sided, as varied as the "fields of France" themselves, and may be known and studied from many different points of view. Also, the eye sees what it brings the power of seeing. Madame Duclaux may find critics, not the first of their kind, who will accuse her of judging her favourite scenes and characters through rose-coloured spec- tacles. For ourselves, we are not among those critics, and would indeed be inclined to set them down as persons of defective mental vision. To judge fairly such subjects as those of the first two papers in this volume, "A Farm in the Canted" and "A. Manor in Touraine," requires a touch of that gilding imagination which makes the artist. We might be given a book of dry farming statistics and technicalities, or a Zolaesque study of manners. Both might be true, and yet not the whole truth. Madame Duclaux would not despise or ignore either ; but her method gives a truer impression. And there are no fancies here indulged in ignorance. Madame Duclaux has the knowledge of an historian, as well as that rare sense of proportion which entails a true feeling for beauty, wherever to be found. Fanaticism and prejudice find no place in her studies of France. Whatever her personal opinions may be, she is never narrow or unjust ; she knows too well how the past may explain the present. This spirit makes her book delightful reading. Sometimes it comes frankly to the surface, but it is always to be felt in the background. For instance, she is writing of a cottage-hospital at Behan, in Touraine :— " Sometimes, in that little hospital, I see a vision of social peace which still seems too far removed from this lovely, humane, courteous, beneficent, and yet, in so far as politics are concerned (and here religion is a branch of politics), this most choleric and disputatious land of France. Built and endowed by a Jewess, visited and approved by the Archbishop of Tours, its white dormitories show the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Socialist doctor standing hand-in-hand round the bedside of the sick. Ah me !' say I, might I live to see the day when the whole of France should imitate this manor in Touraine ' ! But history tells me that (in France, at least) the lion will never lie down with the lamb—for at heart the lion is always afraid lest its neighbour take an unfair advantage of the situation."
Yes: and therefore, we fear, "the friendly Sisters in their white cornettes" will not long be found at the bedsides of the sick in France. And we feel sure that Madame Duclaux will not be among the last to regret them.
Her charming touch and singularly fine descriptive power are chiefly evident in the earlier papers, but it is the study called "The French Peasant, Before and Since the Revolu- tion," which shows especially that clear-sighted fairness not
always to be found in conjunction with poetry. Beginning with the twelfth century and Aueassin et Nicolette, this interesting paper follows the peasant, his daily life, his thoughts and ambitions, his well-being, his suffering, even down to the present day. It shows how in the Middle Ages, (1) The Fields of France : Little Essays so Descriptive Sociology. By Madame Mary Duelaux (A. Mary F. Robinson). London: Chapman and Hall. [5s. net.] —(2) Romance of the Bourbon Clutteau.s. By Elizabeth W. Charapney. Illustrated. London G. P. Putnam's Sons. 115s. nett) who then lived on their estates like Montaigne, were interested in farming, redressed wrongs, settled quarrels, kept order,
provided soup in winter, punished evil-doers, and helped the worthy poor. All this changed with the beginnings of an absolute Monarchy and a Regular Army. Richelieu and Mazarin made it their business to crush the nobles, to centralise France, to make the Court the source of all favour and advancement. So the country gentlemen, not unnaturally, left their estates to the care of an agent, and lost their personal interest in the land and the people. Richelieu's theories bore much fruit, but they were the ruin of rural France. Some peasants saved and prospered, as Moliere shows us ; but there followed also the misery painted by La Bruyere. Such laws as that of the corv4e, originally welcomed by the peasant as making his personal service a substitute for rent in money, became abuses as the eighteenth century advanced and brought on the Revolution.
Most people know all this : bat Madame Duclaux gives information as to the life of the French peasant since the Revolution which will be new to many of us. The Revolu- tion did not do, has not yet done, all that was expected from it. "Sordid misery" was still the lot of the peasant in 1815, when the landlords of the old time had almost ceased to be. And now, at the beginning of another century, we find that even the corvee itself is not a thing of the past :—
" The corvie is supposed to be extinct, but the smaller country roads are still mended by prestation,' that is to say, by the personal labour of the farmer or his men, and he must find both the material and the means of transport. The feudal banaiites were solemnly declared defunct in 1789—that is to say, the peasant no longer could be forced to grind his corn, or to press his wine, olives, and walnuts in the seigneurial mills. Yet, to take one contemporary instance among many : the farmers of the Isle of Bouin in Vendee are compelled by contract to bring their sheaves to the thrashing machines of their landlord ; the only difference being that this landlord is no longer a noble, but a great agricultural syndicate—the Societe des Polders. In the same commune, the same society exacts the feudal rights of terrage—that is to say, it requires a sum of money, a yearly premium, paid in addition to the annual rent in kind—and it also levies a tax on the wine-press, just as if the Revolution had never taken place. 4C'est l'Ancien Regime a peine modifie,' writes M. Leon Dubreuil."
Madame Duclaux goes on to describe the quit-rents, the corvees, the old rights exacted under new names, to which
the peasantry have to submit in the Cantal, where she lives. The picture is altogether a curious and suggestive one. On the whole, owing to hard work and extreme saving—a necessity bad for body and soul—the French peasant-pro. prietor struggles on his 'way; but it cannot be said, ap- parently, that agriculture pays well in France. The small farmer is not, indeed, so prosperous now as he was twenty years ago.
The pages of Mrs. Champney's Romance .of the Bourbon Chdteaux are also gilded by imagination, but it is of a different kind. She takes those ancient castles and splendid country houses, the glory of France—which in these modern times, as Madame Duclaux truly says, "appear to own the power of ennobling their possessors "—and draws largely on her fancy, as it seems to us, for at least part of the stories she tells about them. These stories are agreeably told, but several of them contain a pound of fiction to an ounce of fact, and the mixture is to us unattractive and misleading. For instance, the whole history of Mlle. de Montpensier, in bare fact, is exceedingly interesting. Her château of Saint-Fargeau, where she spent her years of disgrace at Court, is very little known, and we welcome a good description of it. But the story of her life, there and elsewhere, is told in her own Memoirs with the fullest detail ; and the romantic adventure of hiding Charles II., of which Mrs. Champney makes Saint-Fargeau the scene, most probably never happened at all, one good reason being that Mademoiselle never was in love with him, declined to marry him, and had no real affection for any man till, for her misfortune, she fell in love with Lauzun.
The marvellous stories told of the Château d'O and the Château du Lude—which latter, by the by, has an older legend than that of La Grande Chasseresse—also owe a good deal to Mrs. Champney's power of invention. We very much prefer the interesting and less romantic accounts she gives of the famous Fonquet and his wonderful house and gardens at The illustrations, from excellent photographs of the various chateaux—some of which, such as Saint-Fargeau and Le Lude, are hardly known to tourists—and from portraits painted or engraved, add much to the attractiveness of this handsome book. One of the portraits, however, seems to have stepped into its place on false pretences. In a paper on Les Rochens and the Chateau de Bussy Rabutin, the notorious Buss), himself, with his handsome face and curled wig, appears on the same page with a pretty, mild-looking young woman, whose portrait is labelled "Madame de Sevigne." The first glance is startling ; this is not, surely, the Madame de Sevigne we know,—the immortal letter-writer, Bussy's generous cousin, the chdtelaine of Les Rochers. A nearer view shows an inscription on the portrait itself: "Jeanne Marguerite de Brehant de Mauron, Marquise de Sevig,ne, née Is St. Bihy en 1668, morte A. Paris en 1737." This was the wife of Charles de Sevig,ne, the daughter-in-law of our beloved Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne, who was born in 1626, and died at Grignan in 1696. Jeanne- Marguerite was a charming little person, whom her mother- in-law wished to wrap in cotton-wool ; but why should she mislead Mrs. Champney's less instructed readers by appearing here as the one "Madame de Sevigne" half the world knows, and whose own cheerful portrait might so easily have taken the usurped place next to her lifelong friend and enemy !
Previous page
