A Hilltop on the Marne - Mildred Aldrich
I remember years ago to have heard Ysolet, in a lecture at the Sorbonne,
state that the "struggle for life" among the plants was fiercer and more
tragic than that among human beings. It was mere words to me then. In
the short three weeks that I have been out here in my hilltop garden I
have learned to know how true that was. Sometimes I am tempted to have a
garden of weeds. I suppose my neighbors would object if I let them all
go to seed and sow these sins of agriculture all over the tidy farms
about me.
Often these lovely mornings I take a long walk with the dog before
breakfast. He is an Airedale, and I am terribly proud of him and my
neighbors terribly afraid of him. I am half inclined to believe that he
is as afraid of them as they are of him, but I keep that suspicion, for
prudential reasons, to myself. At any rate, all passers keep at a
respectful distance from me and him.
Our usual walk is down the hill to the north, toward the shady route
that leads by the edge of the canal to Meaux. We go along the fields,
down the long hill until we strike into a footpath which leads through
the woods to the road called "Paves du Roi" and on to the canal, from
which a walk of five minutes takes us to the Marne. After we cross the
road at the foot of the hill there is not a house, and the country is so
pretty--undulating ground, in every tint of green and yellow. From the
high bridge that crosses the canal the picture is--well, is
French-canally, and you know what that means--green-banked,
tree-shaded, with a towpath bordering the straight line of water, and
here and there a row of broad long canal-boats moving slowly through the
shadows.
By the time I get back I am ready for breakfast. You know I never could
eat or drink early in the morning. I have my coffee in the orchard
under a big pear tree, and I have the inevitable book propped against
the urn. Needless to say I never read a word. I simply look at the
panorama. All the same I have to have the book there or I could not
eat, just as I can't go to sleep without books on the bed.
After breakfast I write letters. Before I know it Amelie appears at the
library door to announce that "Madame est servie"--and the morning is
gone. As I am alone, as a rule I take my lunch in the breakfast-room.
It is on the north side of the house, and is the coolest room in the
house at noon. Besides, it has a window overlooking the plain. In the
afternoon I read and write and mend, and then I take a light supper in
the arbor on the east side of the house under a crimson rambler, one of
the first ever planted here over thirty years ago.
I must tell you about that crimson rambler. You know when I hired this
house it was only a peasant's hut. In front of what is now the
kitchen--it was then a dark hole for fuel--stood four dilapidated posts,
moss-covered and decrepit, over which hung a tangle of something. It
was what I called a "mess." I was not as educated as I am now. I
saw--it was winter--what looked to me an unsightly tangle of disorder.
I ordered those posts down. My workmen, who stood in some awe of me,--I
was the first American they had ever seen,--were slow in obeying. They
did not dispute the order, only they did not execute it.
One day I was very stern. I said to my head mason, "I have ordered that
thing removed half a dozen times. Be so good as to have those posts
taken down before I come out again."
He touched his cap, and said, "Very well, madame."
It happened that the next time I came out the weather had become
spring-like.
The posts were down. The tangle that had grown over them was trailing
on the ground--but it had begun to put out leaves. I looked at it--and
for the first time it occurred to me to say, "What is that?"
The mason looked at me a moment, and replied, "That, madame! That is a
'creamson ramblaire'--the oldest one in the commune."
Poor fellow, it had never occurred to him that I did not know.
Seven feet to the north of the climbing rose bush was a wide hedge of
tall lilac bushes. So I threw up an arbor between them, and the crimson
rambler now mounts eight feet in the air. It is a glory of color
to-day, and my pride. But didn't I come near to losing it?
The long evenings are wonderful. I sit out until nine, and can read
until almost the last minute. I never light a lamp until I go up to
bed. That is my day. It seems busy enough to me. I am afraid it
will--to you, still so willing to fight, still so absorbed in the
struggle, and still so over-fond of your species--seem futile. Who
knows which of us is right ?--or if our difference of opinion may not be
a difference in our years? If all who love one another were of the same
opinion, living would be monotonous, and conversation flabby. So cheer
up. You are content. Allow me to be.
Ill
June 20, 1914.
I have just received your letter--the last, you say, that you can send
before you sail away again for "The Land of the Free and the Home of the
Brave," where you still seem to feel that it is my duty to return to
die. I vow I will not discuss that with you again. Poverty is an
unpretty thing, and poverty plus old age simply horrid in the wonderful
land which saw my birth, and to which I take off my sun-bonnet in
reverent admiration, in much the same spirit that the peasants still
uncover before a shrine. But it is the land of the young, the
energetic, and the ambitious, the ideal home of the very rich and the
laboring classes. I am none of those--hence here I stay. I turn my
eyes to the west often with a queer sort of amazed pride. If I were a
foreigner--of any race but French--I 'd work my passage out there in an
emigrant ship. As it is, I did forty-five years of hard labor there,
and I consider that I earned the freedom to die where I please.
I can see in "my mind's eye" the glitter in yours as you wrote--and
underscored--I'll wager you spend half your days in writing letters back
to the land you have willfully deserted. As well have stayed among us
and talked--and you talk so much better than you write. "Tut! tut! That
is nasty." Of course I do not deny that I shall miss the inspiration of
your contradictions--or do you call it repartee? I scorn your arguments,
and I hereby swear that you shall not worry another remonstrance from
me.
You ask me how it happens that I wandered in this direction, into a part
of the country about which you do not remember to have ever heard me
talk, when there were so many places that would have seemed to you to be
more interesting. Well, this is more interesting than you think. You
must not fancy that a place is not interesting because you can't find it
in Hare, and because Henry James never talked about it. That was
James's misfortune and not his fault.
The truth is I did look in many more familiar directions before
fortunate accident led me here. I had an idea that I wanted to live on
the heights of Montmorency, in the Jean Jacques Rousseau country. But
it was terribly expensive--too near to Enghien and its Casino and
baccarat tables. Then I came near to taking a house near Viroflay,
within walking distance of Versailles. But at the very mention of that
all my French friends simply howled. "It was too near to Paris"; "it
was the chosen route of the Apaches"; and so on and so forth. I did not
so much care for the situation. It was too familiar, and it was not
really country, it was only suburbs. But the house attracted me. It
was old and quaint, and the garden was pretty, and it was high. Still
it was too expensive. After that I found a house well within my means
at Poigny, about an hour, by diligence, from Rambouillet. That did
attract me. It was real country, but it had no view and the house was
very small. Still I had got so tired of hunting that I was actually on
the point of taking it when one of my friends accidentally found this
place. If it had been made to order it could not have suited me
better--situation, age, price, all just to my taste. I put over a year
and a half into the search. Did I keep it to myself well?
Besides, the country here had a certain novelty to me. I know the
country on the other side of the Petit Morin, but all this is new to me
except Meaux. At first the house did not look habitable to me. It was
easily made so, however, and it has great possibilities, which will keep
me busy for years.
Although you do not know this part of the country, it has, for me, every
sort of attraction--historical as well as picturesque. Its historical
interest is rather for the student than the tourist, and I love it none
the less for that.
If ever you relent and come to see me, I can take you for some lovely
walks. I can, on a Sunday afternoon, in good weather, even take you to
the theater--what is more, to the theater to see the players of the
Comedie Francaise. It is only half an hour's walk from my house to
Pont-aux-Dames, where Coquelin set up his maison de retraite for aged
actors, and where he died and is buried. In the old park, where the du
Barry used to walk in the days when Louis XVI clapped her in prison on a
warrant wrung from the dying old king, her royal lover, there is an
open-air theater, and there, on Sundays, the actors of the Theatre
Francais play, within sight of the tomb of the founder of the retreat,
under the very trees--and they are stately and noble--where the du Barry
walked.
Of course I shall only take you there if you insist. I have outgrown
the playhouse. I fancy that I am much more likely to sit out on the
lawn and preach to you on how the theater has missed its mission than I
am--unless you insist--to take you down to the hill to listen to Moliere
or Racine.
If, however, that bores you,--it would me,--you can sit under the trees
and close your eyes while I give you a Stoddard lecture without the
slides. I shall tell you about the little walled town of Crecy, still
surrounded by its moat, where the tiny little houses stand in gardens
with their backs on the moat, each with its tiny footbridge, that pulls
up, just to remind you that it was once a royal city, with drawbridge
and portcullis, a city in which kings used to stay, and in which Jeanne
d'Arc slept one night on her way back from crowning her king at Rheims:
a city that once boasted ninety-nine towers. Half a dozen of these
towers still stand. Their thick walls are now pierced with windows, in
which muslin curtains blow in the wind, to say that to-day they are the
humble homes of simple people, and to remind you of what warfare was in
the days when such towers were a defense. Why, the very garden in which
you will be sitting when I tell you this was once a part of the royal
estate, and the last Lord of the Land was the Duke de Penthievre. I
thought that fact rather amusing when I found it out, considering that
the house I came so near to taking at Poigny was on the Rambouillet
estate where his father, the Duke de Toulouse, one of Louis XIV's
illegitimate sons, died, where the Duke de Penthievre was born, and
where he buried his naughty son, the Duke de Lamballe.
Of course, while I am telling you things like this you will have to
bring your imagination into play, as very few vestiges of the old days
remain. I still get just as much fun out of Il y avait une fois, even
when the "once on a time" can only be conjured up with closed eyes.
Still, I can show you some dear little old chapels, and while I am
telling you about it you will probably hear the far-off, sad tolling of
a bell, and I shall say to you "Ca sonne a Bouleurs." It will be the
church bells at Bouleurs, a tiny, tree-shaded hamlet, on another
hilltop, from which, owing to its situation, the bells, which rarely
ring save for a funeral, can be heard at a great distance, as they have
rung over the valley for years. They sound so sad in the still air that
the expression, Ca sonne a Bouleurs, has come to mean bad luck. In all
the towns where the bell can be heard, a man who is having bad luck at
cards, or has made a bad bargain, or has been tricked in any way,
invariably remarks, "Ca sonne a Bouleurs."
I could show you something more modern in the way of historical
association. For example, from the road at the south side of my hill I
can show you the Chateau de la Haute Maison, with its mansard and Louis
XVI pavilions, where Bismarck and Favre had their first unsuccessful
meeting, when this hill was occupied by the Germans in 1870 during the
siege of Paris. And fifteen minutes' walk from here is the pretty
Chateau de Conde, which was then the home of Casimir-Perier, and if you
do not remember him as the President of the Republic who resigned rather
than face the Dreyfus case, you may remember him as the father-in-law of
Madame Simone, who unsuccessfully stormed the American theater, two
years ago.
You ask me how isolated I am. Well, I am, and I am not. My house
stands in the middle of my garden. That is a certain sort of isolation.
There is a house on the opposite side of the road, much nearer than I
wish it were. Luckily it is rarely occupied. Still, when it is, it is
over-occupied. At the foot of the hill--perhaps five hundred yards
away--are the tiny hamlet of Joncheroy and the little village of
Voisins. Just above me is the hamlet of Huiry--half a dozen houses.
You see that is not sad. So cheer up. So far as I know the commune has
no criminal record, and I am not on the route of tramps. Remember,
please, that, in those last winters in Paris, I did not prove immune to
contagions. There is nothing for me to catch up here--unless it be the
gayety with which the air is saturated.
You ask me also how it happens that I am living again "near by Quincy?"
As true as you live, I never thought of the coincidence. If you please,
we pronounce it "Kansee." When I read your question I laughed. I
remembered that Abelard, when he was first condemned, retired to the
Hermitage of Quincy, but when I took down Larousse to look it up, what
do you think I found? Simply this and nothing more: "Quincy: Ville des
Etats-Unis (Massachusetts), 28,000 habitants."
Isn't that droll? However, I know that there was a Sire de Quincy
centuries ago, so I will look him up and let you know what I find.
The morning paper--always late here--brings the startling news of the
assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria. What an unlucky family
that has been! Franz Josef must be a tough old gentleman to have stood
up against so many shocks. I used to feel so sorry for him when Fate
dealt him another blow that would have been a "knock-out" for most
people. But he has stood so many, and outlived happier people, that I
begin to believe that if the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, the
hides, or the hearts, of some people are toughened to stand the gales of
Fate.
Well, I imagine that Austria will not grieve much--though she may be
mad--over the loss of a none too popular crown prince, whose morganatic
wife could never be crowned, whose children cannot inherit, and who
could only have kept the throne warm for a while for the man who now
steps into line a little sooner than he would have had this not
happened. If a man will be a crown prince in these times he must take
the consequences. We do get hard-hearted, and no mistake, when it is
not in our family that the lightning strikes. The "Paths of Glory lead
but to the grave," so what matters it, really, out by what door one
goes?
This will reach you soon after you arrive in the great city of tall
buildings. More will follow, and I expect they will be so gay that you
will rejoice to have even a postal tie with La Belle France, to which,
if you are a real good American, you will come back when you die--if you
do not before.
IV
July 16, 1914.
Your Fourth of July letter came this morning. It was lively reading,
especially coming so soon after my first quatorze de juillet in the
country. The day was a great contrast to the many remembrances I have
of Bastille Day in Paris. How I remember my first experience of that
fete, when my bedroom window overlooked one of the squares where the
band played for the three nights of dancing. That was a fierce
experience after the novelty of the first night had worn off, when hour
after hour the dance music droned on, and hour after hour the dancing
feet on the pavement nearly drove me frantic. To offset it I have
memories of the Champs-Elysees and the Place de l'Hotel de Ville turned
into a fairyland. I am glad I saw all that. The memory hangs in my
mind like a lovely picture. Out here it was all as still as--I was
going to say Sunday, but I should have to say a New England Sunday, as
out here Sunday is just like any other day. There was not even a
ringing of bells. The only difference there was to me was that Amelie
drove Pere over to Coutevroult, on the other side of the valley of the
Grand Morin, where he played for the dance, and did not get back until
long after daylight. I did put out my flags in honor of the day. That
was the extent of my celebrating.
In the evening there was a procession at Voisins, and from Meaux and the
other towns on the hill there was an occasional rocket. It was not
really an exciting day.
The procession at Voisins was a primitive affair, but, to me, all the
prettier for that. It looked so quaint with its queer lanterns, its few
flags, its children and men in blouses, strolling through the crooked,
hilly streets of the old town, to the tap of the drum. No French
procession, except it be soldiers, ever marches. If you ever saw a
funeral procession going through the street, or one going about a
church, you do not need to be told that.
I was glad that this little procession here kept so much of its old-time
character, but I was sorry it was not gayer. Still, it was so
picturesque that it made me regret anew, what I have so many times
regretted of late years, that so many of the old habits of country life
in France are passing away, as they are, for that matter, all over
Europe, along with ignorance and national costumes.
I must tell you that up to three years ago it was the custom in this
commune, which, simply because it is not on a railroad, has preserved
its old-days air and habits, for wedding and baptismal parties to walk
in procession through the streets from the house to the church and back
again. Pere Abelard used to head the procession, playing on his violin.
There has been but one event of that kind since I came, and I am afraid
it will be the last. That was for the baptism of the first grandchild
of a French officer who had married a woman born in this commune, and
the older members of the family had a desire to keep up the old
traditions. The church is at Quincy, just a step off the route
nationale to Meaux. Pere walked ahead,--he could not be accused of
marching,--fiddling away for dear life. The pretty young godmother
carried the baby, in its wonderful christening finery, walking between
the grandmother and the father, and the guests, all in their gayest
clothes, followed on as they liked behind, all stepping out a little on
account of the fiddle ahead. They came back from the church in the
same way, only father carried the baby, and the godmother scattered her
largesse among the village children.
It is a pity that such pretty customs die out. Wedding parties must
have looked so attractive going along these country roads. The fashion
that has replaced it is unattractive. To-day they think it much more
chic to hire a big barge and drive down to Esbly and have a rousing
breakfast and dance in the big hall which every country hotel has for
such festivities. Such changes are in the spirit of the times, so I
suppose one must not complain. I should not if people were any happier,
but I cannot see that they are. However, I suppose that will come when
the Republic is older. The responsibility which that has put on the
people has made them more serious than they used to be.
I don't blame you for laughing at the idea of me in a donkey cart. You
would laugh harder if you could see the cart and me. I do look droll.
But this is the land where nothing astonishes any one, thank Heaven.
But you wait until I get my complet de velours--which is to say my
velveteens. I shall match up with the rig then, never fear. Rome was
not built in a day, nor can a lady from the city turn into a
country-looking lady in the wink of an eye. By the time you have
sufficiently overcome your prejudices as to come out and see me with
your own eyes, I'll fit into the landscape and the cart in great style.
Absolutely no news to write you, unless you will consider it news that
my hedge of dahlias, which I planted myself a month ago, is coming up
like nothing else in the world but Jack's Beanstalk. Nothing but weeds
ever grew so rank before. Pere says I was too generous with my
biogene--the latest French thing in fertilizers. But I did want them to
be nourished in a rich soil--and come up quick. They did. I can
actually see them grow. I am almost afraid to tell you that they are
over two feet high now. Of course you won't believe me. But it is not
a fairy tale. I would not have believed it myself if I had not seen it.
Alas! I find that I cannot break myself of reading the newspapers, and
reading them eagerly. It is all the fault of that nasty affair in
Servia. I have a dim recollection that I was very flippant about it in
my last letter to you. After all, woman proposes and politics upset her
proposition. There seems to be no quick remedy for habit, more's the
pity. It is a nasty outlook. We are simply holding our breaths here.
July 30,1914.
This will be only a short letter--more to keep my promise to you than
because I feel in the mood to write. Events have broken that. It
looks, after all, as if the Servian affair was to become a European
affair, and that, what looked as if it might happen during the Balkan
War is really coming to pass--a general European uprising.
It is an odd thing. It seems it is an easy thing to change one's
environment, but not so easy to change one's character. I am just as
excited over the ugly business as I should have been had I remained near
the boulevards, where I could have got a newspaper half a dozen times a
day. I only get one a day, and this morning I got that one with
difficulty. My "Figaro," which comes out by mail, has not come at all.
Well, it seems that the so-called "alarmists" were right. Germany has
NOT been turning her nation into an army just to divert her population,
nor spending her last mark on ships just to amuse herself, and keep
Prince Henry busy.
I am sitting here this morning, as I suppose all France is doing, simply
holding my breath to see what England is going to do. I imagine there
is small doubt about it. I don't see how she can do anything but fight.
It is hard to realize that a big war is inevitable, but it looks like
it. It was staved off, in spite of Germany's perfidy, during the Balkan
troubles. If it has to come now, just imagine what it is going to mean!
It will be the bloodiest affair the world has ever seen--a war in the
air, a war under the sea as well as on it, and carried out with the most
effective man-slaughtering machines ever used in battle.
I need not tell you--you know, we have so often talked about it--how I
feel about war. Yet many times since I came to France to live, I have
felt as if I could bear another one, if only it gave Alsace and Lorraine
back to us--us meaning me and France. France really deserves her
revenge for the humiliation of 1870 and that beastly Treaty of
Frankfort. I don't deny that 1870 was the making of modern France, or
that, since the Treaty of Frankfort, as a nation she has learned a
lesson of patience that she sorely needed. But now that Germany is
preparing--is really prepared to attack her again--well, the very hair
on my head rises up at the idea. There have been times in the last ten
years when I have firmly believed that she could not be conquered again.
But Germany! Well, I don't know. If she is, it will not be for lack of
nerve or character. Still, it is no secret that she is not ready, or
that the anti-military party is strong,--and with that awful Caillaux
affair; I swore to myself that nothing should tempt me to speak of it.
It has been so disgraceful. Still, it is so in the air just now that it
has to be recognized as pitifully significant and very menacing to
political unity.
The tension here is terrible. Still, the faces of the men are stern,
and every one is so calm--the silence is deadly. There is an absolute
suspension of work in the fields. It is as if all France was holding
its breath.
One word before I forget it again. You say that you have asked me twice
if I have any friend near me. I am sure I have already answered
that--yes! I have a family of friends at Voulangis, about two miles the
other side of Crecy-en-Brie. Of course neighbors do not see one another
in the country as often as in the city, but there they are; so I hasten
to relieve your mind just now, when there is a menace of war, and I am
sitting tight on my hilltop on the road to the frontier.