CORRESPONDENCE.
MAY IN ANJOU.
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT:I
Now at last I know the answer to a question which has often troubled me, and this year quite as much as ever,—Where do the English poets find their May F The May of the poets is a tradition brought by the Plantagenets from Anjou.
In the middle of this ideal month I leave England, and leave also floods, pouring rain, and raging winds. I travel easily in two days to this country, bright and waving with its own golden broom. The trees are in full leaf, a fresh, radiant green ; the meadows glow with red clover or buttercups ; crickets sing among the rich grass. The sky is deep blue, with a long wreath of feathery cloud crossing it sometimes ; and the air is absolutely clear like crystal,—jours de crystal, they call such days here. There is a little wind stirring, which shakes the elm-tree tops and the shadows, and this wind—this air, rather —has a breath of its own which you can hardly call a scent, but which, as it softly touches you, is sweet and pure beyond any other air. Too soft, perhaps ; it has a little of the languor of the South, and you are more inclined to sit still and breathe and dream, than to get up and walk and do your duty. Still, there is nothing morbid in an air which comes from near pine- woods, and has possibly the very faintest tinge of wood-smoke from distant peasant chimneys.
And the sun is not too hot, even in the middle of the days though I willingly take my book into the avenue of the old chateau, and sit there in the shade of elms, and chestnuts, and poplars, on a lonely bench half-way down the hill. The loriot, a ball of gold feathers, whistles a deep, pretty note like his name. There is a large pond near, where the frogs croak loudly among the rushes, and lower down, nearer the white village with its spire, the avenue crosses a little river by two bridges with white balustrades. Rows of poplars with rustling silvery leaves stand on each side of the river, and of the road which runs beyond ; those belonging to the commune are cut down and sold every few years.
At the end of the avenue, in a low, white cottage with pretty brown wood-work, lives an old friend who comes out to talk to me. She has bright, clever eyes, in the most sunburnt old face that ever was seen, and she finds me blanche and asks anxiously if I am ill. I reassure her, but she is not satisfied. When I knew her first, she was the shepherdess, and spent all her days in the fields, with her rough dog and her distaff. I dare say that in the course of her life she has slept many nights in a little green bed in the corner of the cow-house. Now she is old and better-off ; her brown legs are no longer thrust bare into her sabots, but covered with thick worsted stockings ; she feels herself—but that she always did—on a friendly level with the world. All over the gable of her cottage a beautiful rose, " Janne de Fortune," grows wildly ; the blossoms themselves are a little wild, and their deep yellow is flushed with red; they have nothing in common with the stiff, correct roses of a garden.
But I must not spend the whole afternoon in the avenue. Up above, the old chateau, rebuilt in Louis XIII.'s time, stands stately on its broad perron. The great white walls of pavilions and corps de logis are baking in the sun ; nearly all the white shutters are closed ; the tall, slated roofs, with their iron parapets all twisted and curled, seem to glimmer against the blue sky. Certainly, like Du Bellay, the Angevin poet,— " Pars qae In marbre dur me plaist l'ardoiee fine."
The ladies are venturing out with large parasols into the sun- shine; they are all in black, in mourning for Madame la Comtesse de Chambord, who, however, was not much loved.
With them come their dogs, large and small, of whom the most distinguished is a white poodle of great dignity. He is not a clever poodle, but he is good and wise. His tufts and tassels, and his thick white mane, are faultless ; his shaven face, with a slightly fatuous expression, looking out below that grand, curly wig, has the oddest likeness to a portrait of some fine gentleman in Charles IL's time. After he is shaved in the spring, his soft, white curls are spun into wool, of which Madame la Marquise knits socks in the winter. Presently we walk away, through pic- turesque alleys of young trees, to the vineyards higher up the hill. The young leaves of the vines look fresh and well, but the owner is very anxious about them notwithstanding, for a horrid new disease, be mildew, has recently appeared in the country. Madame has a long consultation with her vigneron, a capital old, fellow, with the face of a handsome English labourer, honest blue eyes, and a rosy, sunburnt skin. There never was any one more industrious or more honest ; he is one of the most valued servants about the place, and makes one feel sure that though there may be many bad people in France, as they say, there are plenty of good ones too.
But in these May afternoons, a long ramble in the lanes is the most delightful thing. Many of them are deep, like Devonshire lanes, their banks tapestried with small ferns and wild flowers, —violets earlier in the year. Now the wild roses are coming out, and the honeysuckle, in the beautiful waving hedges that are never cut or trimmed like ours, and where the nightingales have their homes and sing. Owls and magpies also inhabit this country in large numbers. We skirt great woods, perhaps with their legend of ghost or Loup-garou, calling in the dogs, that they may not disturb the game, and very unwilling the dogs are to rester la, according to orders. Sometimes we stop at a white, untidy farm, buried among the lanes, with a mountain of dead ling for fodder piled in front of it. The goodwornan comes out to talk to Madame, perhaps to ask some little favour, granted with the same polite grace that asks it. And we walk back to the chateau while the sunlight is deepening into yellow, and giving an additional glory to this land of the Plantagenets, already clothed, you must remember, with its mantle of golden broom.
But I must not boast that the sun shines always, even in the May of Anjou. There comes a morning when great clouds gather, and all the beauty of the place is veiled in pouring rain. Monsieur le Cure happens to come to breakfast on this very wet day. He is a sturdy little man, with thick, grey hair, and a square, brown, peasant face. He talks very fast, and with great authority, chiefly on religion and French history, in which he is very well informed. The ladies of the chateau, good and polite as they are, confess among themselves that he talks rather too much. Still, they hear with satisfaction that he does not think it likely that the world will come to an end on June 24th. The world is not yet wicked enough for that, though no doubt be foi diminishes every day ! Soon after breakfast M. le Cure takes his leave and goes back to the village. It is pour- ing in torrents ; he carefully picks up his soutane under his large umbrella as he descends the steps of the perron. " Panvre petit Cure !" murmurs a young girl, who stands at the salon window, with a smile in her dark eyes.
After all, a wet day here now and then is easily endured. It may rain, certainly, but there is no creeping, chilling damp in the atmosphere. Wet, but not damp ! When I say so, I am accused of being Irish ; but, like many such Irish remarks, it is true. In the evening of such a day, a great blazing fire of logs lights up the old-world beauty of the salon, flaming on the vaguely gay figures of the tapestry, ghosts of two centuries ago, on the shining floor and the rich dark colours of furniture and ceiling. The poodle lies by his mistress's chair. The young girl with dark eyes, followed by her own faithful little terrier, goes to the piano and plays a minuet of the olden time. Through voices, manners, looks, music, colour, there breathes the same temperament, the same sweet air,—iu fact, what Du Bellay once called be douceur Angeeine.
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