CHAPTER I (7)

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A MORNING IN PICARDY

The beginning of spring in Northern France is elating above the month of May in the RhÔne Valley—not because spring in Southern France is not more beautiful, but because it is less welcome. It is by comparison that the loveliness of the Picardy spring takes hold upon you: by comparison with the bitterness of the Picardy winter. You may walk about Marseilles or Lyon in January without a great-coat; in Arras this would be the death of you. The frozen mud, the sleet, the snow, the freezing wind, the lowering sky, and the gaunt woods of Pas de Calais, are ever with you, from September to April. But by the beginning of May the leaves are sprouting and the greening of the earth is begun. There is rain—much of it. But there are sunny days without the bitterness of wind. There is singing of birds in the early morning. The children no longer creep along the frozen street to school; they race, and fill the street with their laughter. The 'planes whose hum fills the air look less forbidding than they seemed a month ago. In February, in the darkening heaven, they showed a relentless aspect; they seem to fly now as though at sport. The old citadelle has lost its grimness; the ramparts are greening; the shade of blackness taken on by its grey slate-roofs when the trees were leafless is gone now; the moat that was a pool of mud is flowering.

The Authie flows below it, full-tided. The margin now is not snow. It has been snow for long, and half the stream was murky snow-slush. Now it is clear. The ducks from the chÂteau that looks up at the Citadelle are sporting in it again.

Saint-Pol Road, Amiens Road, Arras Road, are beginning to stand grey again. In the winter there was nothing but their bare trees to mark them; they were the colour of the fields. Now both trees and fields foil them, setting out over the slopes.

It is a joy to walk down the Authie on a spring morning. The Citadelle towers above you on the left. You are conscious of its graceful immensity long after you have passed it. The little French cottages straggle down-stream from the Citadelle base. They are white and grey, red and white—French in construction from their tiny dormer windows to the neat little gardens with their bricked-up margins flushed by the stream. Long tree-lined boulevardes start away from the road which skirts the river; you can see for many kilometres along their length. The wine-barrels are piled beneath the plane-trees. The children play about them. You will come upon a chÂteau standing stately in its low ground fronting the river. And beyond the chÂteau, which marks the border of the town, you are in the richness of the river fields and the river slopes. Here are the elm-groves, and the clumps of soaring poplar, and the long lines of stubby willow clipped yearly by the hand of industry; they sprout long and delicate from the head. Groseille and hop tangle about the bank. Far off on the ridges the white road traverses under its elms, picking a way among the hedged terraces. You see no denizens here other than the old men and the girls who are at work in the fields. From them you will have a cheery "Bonjour" and some shrewd remarks on the weather: "Ah, oui!—toujours le travail, m'sieur—toujours! Mais Ça ne fait rien: nous sommes contents—oui." And so they are.

Then you come to Gezaincourt. That fine old chÂteau in its parc. The parc is of many acres, and there are deer in the woods of it, and a lake where the wild-fowl are.

To return we left the river and struck up into the ridge. We came to Bretel, midway between Gezaincourt and the Citadelle. We entered a private maison standing back in its garden; it was, none the less, marked cafÉ. Madame received us unprofessionally, inviting into the kitchen to drink. There she was preparing the dinner. Je ne sais pas pourquoi—but the French are deliciously friendly with the Australians. They take us into their homes with a readiness that is elating. They will not do it with the English. But, after all, they are frank, and we approach them frankly. We are given to domesticity, and they are intensely domestic. Indeed, the Australian temperament is far nearer to the French than is the English. The Australian tendency to the spirit of democracy finds sympathy in the provinces of this splendid Republic. The national spirit of democracy has its counterpart (may even have its roots) in the local trend towards communism which, in France, makes you welcome to enter the maison, chatting easily about its domestic affairs, and, in Australia, makes you welcome in the house of the country stranger, where you drink and eat without embarrassment at the hospitable table for the first and last time. The Australian is guiltless of the habitual industry of the French—of their intense interest in the detail of their lives and work; but he has their unconventionality and their lightness of heart and their hospitality. He understands their communistic way of life in the provinces. And when a French girl on a country road looks him directly in the eye for the first time, and with the smile of friendly frankness gives him a "Bonjour, m'sieur," he is no more embarrassed than she. He meets and returns the greeting with an understanding of which an Englishman knows nothing. The French and the Australians are allies by nature. There is nothing amazing in their immediate understanding of each other. How, on the other hand, the English and the French continue to do anything in conjunction is a source of continual wonder. Between their temperaments there is a great gulf fixed.

So Madame takes us direct to the kitchen, where she is basting. She makes exhaustive inquiries into the Australian methods of cooking. We explain that the foods are largely the same—but in the mode, quelle diffÉrence! She thinks the Australian practice of the hearty breakfast an extraordinary beginning to the day. The drinking of tea she cannot away with: wine and cidre are the only fluids to be taken with food—or without it. She prefers beef to horse; it is in Normandy they eat so much horse. We express approval of the French universal usage of butter in cooking: they fry their eggs in butter, roast their meat with it, fry potatoes in it. She asks what is our substitute for it. Lard and dripping. "O, la la! Quel goÛt!" And so it is; Australians know little of the blessings of butter in cookery. She asks if we are fond of salads. "Up to a point, yes; but not as you are." "En France, toujours la salade, m'sieur! Regardez le jardin." She takes us to the window and indicates the vegetable-garden with a proud forefinger: "Voulez-vous vous promener?"—"Oui, madame, avec plaisir."

"Madeleine!" She calls her daughter. Madeleine is a comely girl who has been at work in the next room. She shakes hands as though she had known us as boys, and fills up the glasses again before we go out, and takes one herself with the grace of a lady. For high-bred ease and graciousness of manner, in fact, you are to go to the demoiselles of the provinces. "A votre santÉ, m'sieur." She raises her glass and smiles—as well as enunciates—the toast. "A votre santÉ, mademoiselle!" "A la paix, madame!" "Bonne santÉ!"—"Oui, À la paix, messieurs!—nÉcessaire, la paix!" ...

Madeleine leads the way into the garden. It is clear at once to what degree the French are addicted to salads: canals of water-cress, fields of lettuce and radish and celery. Most of the plants in that garden are potentially plants for a salad. But there are some fine beds of asparagus, and of these le pÈre is proud. He is obviously pleased to meet anyone who is interested by his handiwork. It's politic even to feign an exaggerated interest in every plot; you are rewarded by the old man's enthusiastic pride: "Ah, messieurs, le printemps s'est ÉveillÉ! Bon pour le jardin!" We finish by the rivers of water where the cress grows. "Regardez la source," says Madeleine. She points to it oozing from the hill-side. They have diverted it and irrigated a dozen canals each thirty yards long and two wide. There is more cress there than the whole village could make into salads, you say. But three housewives come with their bags, buying, and each takes such a generous load of the cresson that you know the old man has not misjudged his cultivation.

"Voulez-vous une botte de cresson, messieurs?"—"Oui, s'il vous plait, m'sieur: merci bien!" The old fellow places his little bridge across the canal, cuts a bundle, and binds it from the sheaf of dried grass at his waist. "VoilÀ, messieurs!"

The purchasers stop far longer than is necessary to talk about the War and the price of sugar and the scarcity of charbon. Conversation is the provincial hobby, as it is the national hobby. Yet I have never seen the French mutually bored by conversation—never. Nor are there, in French conversation, those stodgy gaps which are to be expected in the conversation of the English, and, still more, of the Australians. French conversation flows on; ebbs and flows expresses better not only the knack of apt rejoinder which gives it perfect naturalness, but also the rhythmic rise and fall of it which makes it pleasant to hear, even when you don't understand a word. That, and its perfect harmony of gesture, make it a living thing, with all the interest of a thing that lives.

We (unnecessarily, again) wander about the garden with Madeleine. She gives the history of each plot. What interests us is to her a matter of course: the extraordinary neatness of the garden, the uniformity of plot, the assiduous exclusion of weeds, the careful demarcation of paths, the neatness of the all-surrounding hedge. The French genius for detail and for industry shows itself nowhere so clearly as in a garden. They are gardeners born.

On returning to the house, madame insists that we stay to dinner. We accept without hesitation. Le pÈre comes in and brings the dogs. Soon we know their history from puppyhood. Finu is morose and jealous; she has a litter of pups that make her unfriendly. Koko is a happy chap—always a friend to soldiers, as the old man puts it. He is a souvenir left by a Captain of artillery. All this is, in itself, rather uninteresting, but in the way in which it is put it is absorbing. That, in fact, is the secret of the charm of most French conversation. In the mouth of an Englishman—such is its trifling detail—it would be deadly-boring. The French aptness and vividness of description dresses into beauty the most uninteresting detail.

It soon appears that the whole family are refugees from Arras; have lived here two years. I told them I had recently visited Arras. This flooded me with questions. I wish I had known the detailed geography of Arras better. The narrative of a recent Arras bombardment moved them to tears. They love their town: they love more than their home. This is the spirit of the Republic. The Frenchman's affection for his town is as strong as the Scotchman's for his native heath.

They had brought from Arras all their worldly goods. They took us to the sitting-room and to the bedroom. Much of the furniture was heirlooms. Each piece had its age and history. The carved oak wardrobe was extremely fine; it had belonged to madame's great-grandmother. Chairs, table-covers, pictures—all were treasured. Here was more evidence to expose the fallacy that French family life is decaying. Gentle reader, never believe it. Family history is as sacred in the provinces as natural affection is strong: which is to say much.

But the typical French family heirloom is antique plate. This takes the form of china and porcelain embellished with biological and botanical design. Some of it is very crude and ugly, but dear to the possessor. Every French salle À manger has a wall-full; they are in the place of pictures.

The dinner was elaborate and delicious. No French famille is so poor that it does not dine well: soup, fish with salade, veal with pommes de terre frites, fried macaroni with onions, prunes with custard, coffee and cigars. This—except for the cigars, perhaps—was presumably a normal meal. And between each course Madeleine descended the cave and brought forth a fresh bottle of cidre. And Madeleine's glass was filled by her parent, with a charming absence of discrimination, as often as ours—or as her mother's. The colour mounted in her cheeks; but she did not talk drivel. To generous draughts of wine and cidre had she been accustomed from her youth up. And the youngest French child will always get as much as Madeleine to drink at table. So the French are not drunkards.

After lunch came two visitors to talk. They were sisters, friends of Madeleine. For two years and a half they had been prisoners in a French town held by the Germans, near Albert, and had been liberated only a month before by the German evacuation. They told pitiful tales of German ill-usage, though not of a physiological nature. But constantly the Boches demanded food and never paid, so that they themselves went hungry daily. Also, they worked for Germans under compulsion, and never were paid; and worked very hard. The German soldiers they described as not unkind, though discourteous, but the officers were invariably brutal. Maintenant vous Êtes chez nous was the German officers' formula, with its implied threat of violation; which was never executed, however.

We rose to go, and made to pay. This was smiled at indulgently. "Au revoir, messieurs! Bonne chance!" cried le pÈre. "Quand vous voudrez," said Madame. "Quand vous voudrez," echoed Madeleine. So we went—like Christian—on our way rejoicing.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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