A Versailles Christmas Tide - Mary Stuart Boyd
The less sophisticated Henri, however, feeling a boyish interest in the
little comedy, could not resist a curious glance in Madame's direction.
That was sufficient. Waving imperiously, Madame compelled his approach,
and, moving reluctantly, fearful of the issue, Henri advanced.
"Couteau!" hissed Madame. Henri flew to fetch the desired implement,
and, realising that Madame had at last been satisfied, we again breathed
freely.
A more attractive personage was a typical old aristocrat, officer of the
Legion of Honour, who used to enter, walk with great dignity to his
table, eat sparingly of one or two dishes, drink a glass of his _vin
ordinaire_ and retire. Sometimes he was accompanied by a tiny spaniel,
which occupied a chair beside him; and frequently a middle-aged son,
whose bourgeois appearance was in amazing contrast to that of his
refined old father, attended him.
[Illustration: The Aristocrat]
There were others, less interesting perhaps, but equally self-absorbed.
One afternoon, entering the cable car that runs--for fun, apparently, as
it rarely boasted a passenger--to and from the Trianon, we recognised in
its sole occupant an Ogam who during the weeks of our stay had eaten, in
evident oblivion of his human surroundings, at the table next to ours.
Forgetting that we were without the walls of silence, we expected no
greeting; but to our amazement he rose, and, placing himself opposite
us, conversed affably and in most excellent English for the rest of the
journey. To speak with him was to discover a courteous and travelled
gentleman. Yet during our stay in Versailles we never knew him exchange
even a bow with any of his fellow Ogams, who were men of like
qualifications, though, as he told us, he had taken his meals in the
hotel for over five years.
Early in the year our peace was rudely broken by the advent of a
commercial man--a short, grey-haired being of an activity so foreign to
our usage that a feeling of unrest was imparted to the _salle-a-manger_
throughout his stay. His movements were distractingly erratic. In his
opinion, meals were things to be treated casually, to be consumed
haphazard at any hour that chanced to suit. He did not enter the
dining-room at the exact moment each day as did the Ogams. He would rush
in, throw his hat on a peg, devour some food with unseemly haste, and
depart in less time than it took the others to reach the _legumes_.
[Illustration: Papa, Mama et Bebe]
He was hospitable too, and had a disconcerting way of inviting guests to
luncheon or dinner, and then forgetting that he had done so. One morning
a stranger entered, and after a brief conference with Iorson, was
conducted to the commercial man's table to await his arrival. The
regular customers took their wonted places, and began in their leisurely
fashion to breakfast, and still the visitor sat alone, starting up
expectantly every time a door opened, then despondently resuming his
seat.
At last Iorson, taking compassion, urged the neglected guest to while
away his period of waiting by trifling with the _hors-d'oeuvres_. He was
proceeding to allay the pangs of hunger with selections from the tray of
anchovies, sardines, pickled beet, and sliced sausage, when his host
entered, voluble and irrepressible as ever. The dignified Ogams
shuddered inwardly as his strident voice awoke the echoes of the room,
and their already stiff limbs became rigid with disapproval.
In winter, transient visitors but rarely occupied one or other of the
square centre tables, though not infrequently a proud father and mother
who had come to visit a soldier son at the barracks, brought him to the
hotel for a meal, and for a space the radiance of blue and scarlet and
the glint of steel cast a military glamour over the staid company.
An amusing little circumstance to us onlookers was that although the
supply of cooked food seemed equal to any demand, the arrival of even a
trio of unexpected guests to dinner invariably caused a dearth of bread.
For on their advent Iorson would dash out bareheaded into the night, to
reappear in an incredibly short time carrying a loaf nearly as tall as
himself.
One morning a stalwart young Briton brought to breakfast a pretty
English cousin, on leave of absence from her boarding-school. His
knowledge of French was limited. When anything was wanted he shouted
"Garcon!" in a lordly voice, but it was the pretty cousin who gave the
order. _Dejeuner_ over, they departed in the direction of the Chateau.
And at sunset as we chanced to stroll along the Boulevard de la Reine,
we saw the pretty cousin, all the gaiety fled from her face, bidding her
escort farewell at the gate of a Pension pour Demoiselles. The ball was
over. Poor little Cinderella was perforce returning to the dust and
ashes of learning.
[Illustration: Juvenile Progress]
CHAPTER III
THE TOWN
The English-speaking traveller finds Versailles vastly more foreign than
the Antipodes. He may voyage for many weeks, and at each distant
stopping-place find his own tongue spoken around him, and his
conventions governing society. But let him leave London one night, cross
the Channel at its narrowest--and most turbulent--and sunrise will find
him an alien in a land whose denizens differ from him in language,
temperament, dress, food, manners, and customs.
Of a former visit to Versailles we had retained little more than the
usual tourist's recollection of a hurried run through a palace of
fatiguing magnificence, a confusing peep at the Trianons, a glance
around the gorgeous state equipages, an unsatisfactory meal at one of
the open-air _cafes_, and a scamper back to Paris. But our winter
residence in the quaint old town revealed to us the existence of a life
that is all its own--a life widely variant, in its calm repose, from the
bustle and gaiety of the capital, but one that is replete with charm,
and abounding in picturesque-interest.
[Illustration: Automoblesse Oblige]
Versailles is not ancient; it is old, completely old. Since the fall of
the Second Empire it has stood still. Most of the clocks have run down,
as though they realised the futility of trying to keep pace with the
rest of the world. The future merges into the present, the present fades
into the past, and still the clocks of Versailles point to the same long
eventide.
[Illustration: Sable Garb]
The proximity of Paris is evinced only by the vividly tinted automobiles
that make Versailles their goal. Even they rarely tarry in the old town,
but, turning at the Chateau gates, lose no time in retracing their
impetuous flight towards a city whose usages accord better with their
creed of feverish hurry-scurry than do the conventions of reposeful
Versailles. And these fiery chariots of modernity, with their ghoulish,
fur-garbed, and hideously spectacled occupants, once their raucous,
cigale-like birr-r-r has died away in the distance, leave infinitely
less impression on the placid life of Versailles than do their wheels on
the roads they traverse. Under the grand trees of the wide avenues the
townsfolk move quietly about, busying themselves with their own affairs
and practising their little economies as they have been doing any time
during the last century.
Perhaps it was the emphatic and demonstrative nature of the mourning
worn that gave us the idea that the better-class female population of
Versailles consisted chiefly of widows. When walking abroad we seemed
incessantly to encounter widows: widows young and old, from the aged to
the absurdly immature. It was only after a period of bewilderment that
it dawned upon us that the sepulchral garb and heavy crape veils
reaching from head to heel were not necessarily the emblems of
widowhood, but might signify some state of minor bereavement. In Britain
a display of black such as is an everyday sight at Versailles is
undreamt of, and one saw more crape veils in a day in Versailles than in
London in a week. Little girls, though their legs might be uncovered,
had their chubby features shrouded in disfiguring gauze and to our
unaccustomed foreign eyes a genuine widow represented nothing more
shapely than a more or less stubby pillar festooned with crape.
But for an inborn conviction that a frugal race like the French would
not invest in a plethora of mourning garb only to cast it aside after a
few months' wear, and that therefore the period of wearing the willow
must be greatly protracted, we would have been haunted by the idea that
the adult male mortality of Versailles was enormous.
"Do they wear such deep mourning for all relatives?" I asked our hotel
proprietor, who had just told us that during the first month of mourning
the disguising veils were worn over the faces.
Monsieur shook his sleek head gravely, "But no, Madame, not for all. For
a husband, yes; for a father or mother, yes; for a sister or brother, an
uncle or aunt, yes; but for a cousin, _no_."
He pronounced the _no_ so emphatically as almost to convince us of his
belief that in refusing to mourn in the most lugubrious degree for
cousins the Versaillese acted with praiseworthy self-denial.
There seemed to be no medium between sackcloth and gala-dress. We seldom
noted the customary degrees of half-mourning. Plain colours were
evidently unpopular and fancy tartans of the most flamboyant hues
predominated amongst those who, during a spell of, say, three years had
been fortunate enough not to lose a parent, sister, brother, uncle, or
aunt. A perfectly natural reaction appeared to urge the _ci-devant_
mourners to robe themselves in lively checks and tartans. It was as
though they said--"Here at last is our opportunity for gratifying our
natural taste in colours. It will probably be of but short duration.
Therefore let us select a combination of all the most brilliant tints
and wear them, for who knows how soon that gruesome pall of woe may
again enshroud us."
Probably it was the vicinity of our hotel to the Church of Notre Dame
that, until we discovered its brighter side, led us to esteem Versailles
a veritable city of the dead, for on our bi-daily walks to visit the
invalids we were almost certain to encounter a funeral procession either
approaching or leaving Notre Dame. And on but rare occasions was the
great central door undraped with the sepulchral insignia which
proclaimed that a Mass for the dead was in prospect or in progress.
Sometimes the sable valance and portieres were heavily trimmed and
fringed with silver; at others there was only the scantiest display of
time-worn black cloth.
[Illustration: A Football Team]
The humblest funeral was affecting and impressive. As the sad little
procession moved along the streets--the wayfarers reverently uncovering
and soldiers saluting as it passed--the dirge-like chant of the
_Miserere_ never failed to fill my eyes with unbidden tears of sympathy
for the mourners, who, with bowed heads, walked behind the wreath-laden
hearse.
Despite the abundant emblems of woe, Versailles can never appear other
than bright and attractive. Even in mid-winter the skies were clear, and
on the shortest days the sun seldom forgot to cast a warm glow over the
gay, white-painted houses. And though the women's dress tends towards
depression, the brilliant military uniforms make amends. There are
12,000 soldiers stationed in Versailles; and where a fifth of the
population is gorgeous in scarlet and blue and gold, no town can be
accused of lacking colour.
Next to the redundant manifestations of grief, the thing that most
impressed us was the rigid economy practised in even the smallest
details of expenditure. Among the lower classes there is none of that
aping of fashion so prevalent in prodigal England; the different social
grades have each a distinctive dress and are content to wear it. Among
the men, blouses of stout blue cotton and sabots are common. Sometimes
velveteen trousers, whose original tint years of wear have toned to some
exquisite shade of heliotrope, and a russet coat worn with a fur cap and
red neckerchief, compose an effect that for harmonious colouring would
be hard to beat. The female of his species, as is the case in all
natural animals, is content to be less adorned. Her skirt is black, her
apron blue. While she is young, her neatly dressed hair, even in the
coldest weather, is guiltless of covering. As her years increase she
takes her choice of three head-dresses, and to shelter her grey locks
selects either a black knitted hood, a checked cotton handkerchief, or a
white cap of ridiculously unbecoming design.
No French workaday father need fear that his earnings will be squandered
on such perishable adornments as feathers, artificial flowers, or
ribbons. The purchases of his spouse are certain to be governed by
extreme frugality. She selects the family raiment with a view to
durability. Flimsy finery that the sun would fade, shoddy materials that
a shower of rain would ruin, offer no temptations to her. When she
expends a few _sous_ on the cutting of her boy's hair, she has it
cropped until his cranium resembles the soft, furry skin of a mole, thus
rendering further outlay in this respect unlikely for months. And when
she buys a flannel shirt, a six-inch strip of the stuff, for future
mending, is always included in the price.
But with all this economy there is an air of comfort, a complete absence
of squalor. In cold weather the school-girls wear snug hoods, or little
fur turbans; and boys have the picturesque and almost indestructible
berets of cloth or corduroy. Cloth boots that will conveniently slip
inside sabots for outdoor use are greatly in vogue, and the comfortable
Capuchin cloaks--whose peaked hood can be drawn over the head, thus
obviating the use of umbrellas--are favoured by both sexes and all ages.
[Illustration: Mistress and Maid]
As may be imagined, little is spent on luxuries. Vendors of frivolities
know better than to waste time tempting those provident people. On one
occasion only did I see money parted with lightly, and in that case the
bargain appeared astounding. One Sunday morning an enterprising huckster
of gimcrack jewellery, venturing out from Paris, had set down his strong
box on the verge of the market square, and, displaying to the admiring
eyes of the country folks, ladies' and gentlemen's watches with chains
complete, in the most dazzling of aureate metal, sold them at six sous
apiece as quickly as he could hand them out.
Living is comparatively cheap in Versailles; though, as in all places
where the cost of existence is low, it must be hard to earn a livelihood
there. By far the larger proportion of the community reside in flats,
which can be rented at sums that rise in accordance with the
accommodation but are in all cases moderate. Housekeeping in a flat,
should the owner so will it, is ever conducive to economy, and life in a
French provincial town is simple and unconventional.
[Illustration: Sage and Onions]
Bread, wine, and vegetables, the staple foods of the nation, are good
and inexpensive. For 40 centimes one may purchase a bottle of _vin de
gard_, a thin tipple, doubtless; but what kind of claret could one buy
for fourpence a quart at home? _Graves_ I have seen priced at 50
centimes, _Barsac_ at 60, and _eau de vie_ is plentiful at 1 franc 20!
Fish are scarce, and beef is supposed to be dear; but when butter, eggs,
and cheese bulk so largely in the diet, the half chicken, the scrap of
tripe, the slice of garlic sausage, the tiny cut of beef for the
_ragout_, cannot be heavy items. Everything eatable is utilised, and
many weird edibles are sold; for the French can contrive tasty dishes
out of what in Britain would be thrown aside as offal.
On three mornings a week--Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday--the presence of
the open-air market rouses Versailles from her dormouse-like slumber and
galvanises her into a state of activity that lasts for several hours.
Long before dawn, the roads leading townwards are busy with all manner
of vehicles, from the great waggon drawn by four white horses driven
tandem, and laden with a moving stack of hay, to the ramshackle
donkey-cart conveying half a score of cabbages, a heap of dandelions
grubbed from the meadows, and the owner.
[Illustration: Marketing]
By daybreak the market square under the leafless trees presents a lively
scene. There are stalls sacred to poultry, to butter, eggs, and cheese;
but the vegetable kingdom predominates. Flanked by bulwarks of greens
and bundles of leeks of incredible whiteness and thickness of stem, sit
the saleswomen, their heads swathed in gay cotton kerchiefs, and the
ground before them temptingly spread with little heaps of corn salad, of
chicory, and of yellow endive placed in adorable contrast to the scarlet
carrots, blood-red beetroot, pinky-fawn onions, and glorious orange-hued
pumpkins; while ready to hand are measures of white or mottled haricot
beans, of miniature Brussels sprouts, and of pink or yellow potatoes, an
esculent that in France occupies a very unimportant place compared with
that it holds amongst the lower classes in Britain.
[Illustration: Private Boxes]
In Versailles Madame does her own marketing, her maid--in sabots and
neat but usually hideous cap--accompanying her, basket laden. From stall
to stall Madame passes, buying a roll of creamy butter wrapped in fresh
leaves here, a fowl there, some eggs from the wrinkled old dame who
looks so swart and witch-like in contrast to her stock of milk-white
eggs.
Madame makes her purchases judiciously--time is not a valuable commodity
in Versailles--and finishes, when the huge black basket is getting heavy
even for the strong arms of the squat little maid, by buying a mess of
cooked spinach from the pretty girl whose red hood makes a happy spot of
colour among the surrounding greenery, and a measure of onions from the
profound-looking sage who garners a winter livelihood from the summer
produce of his fields.
[Illustration: A Foraging Party]
Relations with uncooked food are, in Versailles, distinguished by an
unwonted intimacy. No one, however dignified his station or appearance,
is ashamed of purchasing the materials for his dinner in the open
market, or of carrying them home exposed to the view of the world
through the transpicuous meshes of a string bag. The portly gentleman
with the fur coat and waxed moustaches, who looks a general at least,
and is probably a tram-car conductor, bears his bunch of turnips with an
air that dignifies the office, just as the young sub-lieutenant in the
light blue cloak and red cap and trousers carries his mother's apples
and lettuces without a thought of shame. And it is easy to guess the
nature of the _dejeuner_ of this _simple soldat_ from the long loaf, the
bottle of _vin ordinaire_, and the onions that form the contents of his
net. In the street it was a common occurrence to encounter some
non-commissioned officer who, entrusted with the catering for his mess,
did his marketing accompanied by two underlings, who bore between them
the great open basket destined to hold his purchases.
[Illustration: A Thriving Merchant]
A picturesque appearance among the hucksters of the market square is the
_boite de carton_ seller. Blue-bloused, with his stock of lavender or
brown bandboxes strapped in a cardboard Tower of Pisa on his back, he
parades along, his wares finding ready sale; for his visits are
infrequent, and if one does not purchase at the moment, as does Madame,
the opportunity is gone.
The spirit of camaraderie is strong amongst the good folks of the
market. One morning the Artist had paused a moment to make a rough
sketch of a plump, affable man who, shadowed by the green cotton awning
of his stall, was selling segments of round flat cheeses of goat's milk;
vile-smelling compounds that, judged from their outer coating of
withered leaves, straw, and dirt, would appear to have been made in a
stable and dried on a rubbish heap. The subject of the jotting, busy
with his customers, was all unconscious; but an old crone who sat, her
feet resting on a tiny charcoal stove, amidst a circle of decadent
greens, detecting the Artist's action, became excited, and after eyeing
him uneasily for a moment, confided her suspicions as to his ulterior
motive to a round-faced young countryman who retailed flowers close by.
He, recognising us as customers--even then we were laden with his
violets and mimosa--merely smiled at her concern. But his apathy only
served to heighten Madame's agitation. She was unwilling to leave her
snug seat yet felt that her imperative duty lay in acquainting Monsieur
du Fromage with the inexplicable behaviour of the inquisitive foreigner.
But the nefarious deed was already accomplished, and as we moved away
our last glimpse was of the little stove standing deserted, while Madame
hastened across the street in her clattering sabots to warn her friend.
The bustle of the market is soon ended. By ten o'clock the piles of
vegetables are sensibly diminished. By half-past ten the white-capped
maid-servants have carried the heavy baskets home, and are busy
preparing lunch. At eleven o'clock the sharp boy whose stock-in-trade
consisted of three trays of snails stuffed _a la_ Bourgogne has sold all
the large ones at 45 centimes a dozen, all the small at 25, and quite
two-thirds of the medium-sized at 35 centimes.
The clock points to eleven. The sun is high now. The vendors awaken to
the consciousness of hunger, and Madame of the _pommes frites_ stall,
whose assistant dexterously cuts the peeled tubers into strips, is fully
occupied in draining the crisp golden shreds from the boiling fat and
handing them over, well sprinkled with salt and pepper, to avid
customers, who devour them smoking hot, direct from their paper
cornucopias.
Long before the first gloom of the early mid-winter dusk, all has been
cleared away. The rickety stalls have been demolished; the unsold
remainder of the goods disposed of; the worthy country folks, their
pockets heavy with _sous_, are well on their journey homewards, and only
a litter of straw, of cabbage leaves and leek tops remains as evidence
of the lively market of the morning.
[Illustration: Chestnuts in the Avenue]
CHAPTER IV
OUR ARBRE DE NOEL
We bought it on the Sunday morning from old Grand'mere Gomard in the
Avenue de St. Cloud.
It was not a noble specimen of a Christmas-tree. Looked at with cold,
unimaginative eyes, it might have been considered lopsided; undersized
it undoubtedly was. Yet a pathetic familiarity in the desolate aspect of
the little tree aroused our sympathy as no rare horticultural trophy
ever could.
Some Christmas fairy must have whispered to Grand'mere to grub up the
tiny tree and to include it in the stock she was taking into Versailles
on the market morning. For there it was, its roots stuck securely into a
big pot, looking like some forlorn forest bantling among the garden
plants.
[Illustration: The Tree Vendor]
Grand'mere Gomard had established herself in a cosy nook at the foot of
one of the great leafless trees of the Avenue. Straw hurdles were
cunningly arranged to form three sides of a square, in whose midst she
was seated on a rush-bottomed chair, like a queen on a humble throne.
Her head was bound by a gaily striped kerchief, and her feet rested
snugly on a charcoal stove. Her merchandise, which consisted of half a
dozen pots of pink and white primulas, a few spotted or crimson
cyclamen, sundry lettuce and cauliflower plants, and some roots of
pansies and daisies, was grouped around her.
[Illustration: The Tree-Bearer]
The primulas and cyclamen, though their pots were shrouded in pinafores
of white paper skilfully calculated to conceal any undue lankiness of
stem, left us unmoved. But the sight of the starveling little fir tree
reminded us that in the school hospital lay two sick boys whose roseate
dreams of London and holidays had suddenly changed to the knowledge that
weeks of isolation and imprisonment behind the window-blind with the red
cross lay before them. If we could not give them the longed-for home
Christmas, we could at least give them a Christmas-tree.
The sight of foreign customers for Grand'mere Gomard speedily collected
a small group of interested spectators. A knot of children relinquished
their tantalising occupation of hanging round the pan of charcoal over
whose glow chestnuts were cracking appetisingly, and the stall of the
lady who with amazing celerity fried pancakes on a hot plate, and sold
them dotted with butter and sprinkled with sugar to the lucky possessors
of a _sou_. Even the sharp urchin who presided over the old red
umbrella, which, reversed, with the ferule fixed in a cross-bar of wood,
served as a receptacle for sheets of festive note-paper embellished with
lace edges and further adorned with coloured scraps, temporarily
entrusting a juvenile sister with his responsibilities, added his
presence to our court.
[Illustration: Rosine]
Christmas-trees seemed not to be greatly in demand in Versailles, and
many were the whispered communings as to what _les Anglais_ proposed
doing with the tree after they had bought it. When the transaction was
completed and Grand'mere Gomard had exchanged the tree, with a sheet of
_La Patrie_ wrapped round its pot, for a franc and our thanks, the
interest increased. We would require some one to carry our purchase, and
each of the bright-eyed, short-cropped Jeans and Pierres was eager to
offer himself. But our selection was already made. A slender boy in a
_beret_ and black pinafore, who had been our earliest spectator, was
singled out and entrusted with the conveyance of the _arbre de Noel_ to
our hotel.