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_ 'It is neither a bold nor a diversified country,' said I to myself,
'this country which is three-quarters Flemish, and a quarter
French; yet it has its attractions too. Though great lines of
railway traverse it, the trains leave it behind, and go puffing off
to Paris and the South, to Belgium and Germany, to the Northern
Sea-Coast of France, and to England, and merely smoke it a little
in passing. Then I don't know it, and that is a good reason for
being here; and I can't pronounce half the long queer names I see
inscribed over the shops, and that is another good reason for being
here, since I surely ought to learn how.' In short, I was 'here,'
and I wanted an excuse for not going away from here, and I made it
to my satisfaction, and stayed here.
What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, is of no
moment, though I own to encountering that gentleman's name on a red
bill on the wall, before I made up my mind. Monsieur P. Salcy,
'par permission de M. le Maire,' had established his theatre in the
whitewashed Hotel de Ville, on the steps of which illustrious
edifice I stood. And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged director of
such theatre, situate in 'the first theatrical arrondissement of
the department of the North,' invited French-Flemish mankind to
come and partake of the intellectual banquet provided by his family
of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number. 'La Famille P.
SALCY, composee d'artistes dramatiques, au nombre de 15 sujets.'
Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and withal
an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, when the paved
roads over the flats and through the hollows, are not too deep in
black mud. A country so sparely inhabited, that I wonder where the
peasants who till and sow and reap the ground, can possibly dwell,
and also by what invisible balloons they are conveyed from their
distant homes into the fields at sunrise and back again at sunset.
The occasional few poor cottages and farms in this region, surely
cannot afford shelter to the numbers necessary to the cultivation,
albeit the work is done so very deliberately, that on one long
harvest day I have seen, in twelve miles, about twice as many men
and women (all told) reaping and binding. Yet have I seen more
cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in better case, than where
there is purer French spoken, and also better ricks--round swelling
peg-top ricks, well thatched; not a shapeless brown heap, like the
toast of a Giant's toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with one of
the skewers out of his kitchen. A good custom they have about
here, likewise, of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or
cottage, so that it overhangs three or four feet, carrying off the
wet, and making a good drying-place wherein to hang up herbs, or
implements, or what not. A better custom than the popular one of
keeping the refuse-heap and puddle close before the house door:
which, although I paint my dwelling never so brightly blue (and it
cannot be too blue for me, hereabouts), will bring fever inside my
door. Wonderful poultry of the French-Flemish country, why take
the trouble to BE poultry? Why not stop short at eggs in the
rising generation, and die out and have done with it? Parents of
chickens have I seen this day, followed by their wretched young
families, scratching nothing out of the mud with an air--tottering
about on legs so scraggy and weak, that the valiant word drumsticks
becomes a mockery when applied to them, and the crow of the lord
and master has been a mere dejected case of croup. Carts have I
seen, and other agricultural instruments, unwieldy, dislocated,
monstrous. Poplar-trees by the thousand fringe the fields and
fringe the end of the flat landscape, so that I feel, looking
straight on before me, as if, when I pass the extremest fringe on
the low horizon, I shall tumble over into space. Little
whitewashed black holes of chapels, with barred doors and Flemish
inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and often they are
garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's swords;
or, in their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in
it, is similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint
enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are
deficient in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the
church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of
the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, and made out
with painted canvas and wooden figures: the whole surmounting the
dusty skull of some holy personage (perhaps), shut up behind a
little ashy iron grate, as if it were originally put there to be
cooked, and the fire had long gone out. A windmilly country this,
though the windmills are so damp and rickety, that they nearly
knock themselves off their legs at every turn of their sails, and
creak in loud complaint. A weaving country, too, for in the
wayside cottages the loom goes wearily--rattle and click, rattle
and click--and, looking in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man or
woman, bending at the work, while the child, working too, turns a
little hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its height. An
unconscionable monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting
himself ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling over the
children's straw beds, cramping the family in space and air, and
making himself generally objectionable and tyrannical. He is
tributary, too, to ugly mills and factories and bleaching-grounds,
rising out of the sluiced fields in an abrupt bare way, disdaining,
like himself, to be ornamental or accommodating. Surrounded by
these things, here I stood on the steps of the Hotel de Ville,
persuaded to remain by the P. Salcy family, fifteen dramatic
subjects strong.
There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion being
irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I
made the tour of the little town to buy another. In the small
sunny shops--mercers, opticians, and druggist-grocers, with here
and there an emporium of religious images--the gravest of old
spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat contemplating one another
across bare counters, while the wasps, who seemed to have taken
military possession of the town, and to have placed it under wasp-
martial law, executed warlike manoeuvres in the windows. Other
shops the wasps had entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and
nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the board of
custom. What I sought was no more to be found than if I had sought
a nugget of Californian gold: so I went, spongeless, to pass the
evening with the Family P. Salcy.
The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so like one
another--fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts--
that I think the local audience were much confused about the plot
of the piece under representation, and to the last expected that
everybody must turn out to be the long-lost relative of everybody
else. The Theatre was established on the top story of the Hotel de
Ville, and was approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an
airy situation, one of the P. Salcy Family--a stout gentleman
imperfectly repressed by a belt--took the money. This occasioned
the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did the
curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the
person of the young lover (singing a very short song with his
eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gentleman
imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the
paying-place, to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on
that dress-coat, that clear complexion, and those arched black
vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of time. It then became
manifest that this was another stout gentleman imperfectly
repressed by a belt: to whom, before the spectators had recovered
their presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman imperfectly
repressed by a belt, exactly like him. These two 'subjects,'
making with the money-taker three of the announced fifteen, fell
into conversation touching a charming young widow: who, presently
appearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible by
any means--quite a parallel case to the American Negro--fourth of
the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth who presided over the
check-department. In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects
were dramatically presented, and we had the inevitable Ma Mere, Ma
Mere! and also the inevitable malediction d'un pere, and likewise
the inevitable Marquis, and also the inevitable provincial young
man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and
cried and laughed and choked all at once. The story was wrought
out with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning, a
vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing
(which arrived by post) from Ma Mere towards the end; the whole
resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout
gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs
per annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly
repressed by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the
provincial young man that if he were not supremely happy--which he
seemed to have no reason whatever for being--he ought to be. This
afforded him a final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking
all at once, and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted.
Audience more attentive or better behaved there could not possibly
be, though the places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family
P. Salcy were sixpence each in English money, and the places of
first rank a shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat
upon it, the kind Heavens know.
What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till they
gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the garniture of
my home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and had had the
money! What shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at
the turntables, if I had had the luck! Ravishing perfumery also,
and sweetmeats, I might have speculated in, or I might have fired
for prizes at a multitude of little dolls in niches, and might have
hit the doll of dolls, and won francs and fame. Or, being a
French-Flemish youth, I might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my
compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain;
which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied a
full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors wore
grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French-Flemish man or
woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby-
horse in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast,
interspersed with triumphal cars, going round and round and round
and round, we the goodly company singing a ceaseless chorus to the
music of the barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals. On the whole, not
more monotonous than the Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much
merrier; for when do the circling company sing chorus, THERE, to
the barrel-organ, when do the ladies embrace their horses round the
neck with both arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the
tails of their gallant steeds? On all these revolving delights,
and on their own especial lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with
them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, and the Hotel de Ville
sheds an illuminated line of gaslight: while above it, the Eagle
of France, gas-outlined and apparently afflicted with the
prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is in a
very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting. Flags
flutter all around. Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper
of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to
have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that
agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the
prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillite, because of its charming
situation), resounds with the voices of the shepherds and
shepherdesses who resort there this festive night. And it reminds
me that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in trouble, tending
this way, over the jagged stones of a neighbouring street. A
magnificent sight it was, to behold him in his blouse, a feeble
little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two immense
gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly wide
enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not
have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the
prisoner.
'Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a mark of
my confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, and as an act
of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist,
the Ventriloquist! Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to
you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of
Countenances, who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed
upon him into an endless succession of surprising and extraordinary
visages, comprehending, Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions,
energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and
all the passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge,
Hatred, Avarice, Despair! Hi hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! Come in!' To
this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of
tambourine--bestowed with a will, as if it represented the people
who won't come in--holds forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour;
a man in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of
the inner secrets of the booth. 'Come in, come in! Your
opportunity presents itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for
ever. To-morrow morning by the Express Train the railroad will
reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker! Algeria will reclaim
the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker! Yes! For the honour of
their country they have accepted propositions of a magnitude
incredible, to appear in Algeria. See them for the last time
before their departure! We go to commence on the instant. Hi hi!
Ho ho! Lu lu! Come in! Take the money that now ascends, Madame;
but after that, no more, for we commence! Come in!'
Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of Madame
receiving sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply
after the ascending money has ascended, to detect any lingering
sous at the turning-point. 'Come in, come in! Is there any more
money, Madame, on the point of ascending? If so, we wait for it.
If not, we commence!' The orator looks back over his shoulder to
say it, lashing the spectators with the conviction that he beholds
through the folds of the drapery into which he is about to plunge,
the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker. Several sous burst out of
pockets, and ascend. 'Come up, then, Messieurs!' exclaims Madame
in a shrill voice, and beckoning with a bejewelled finger. 'Come
up! This presses. Monsieur has commanded that they commence!'
Monsieur dives into his Interior, and the last half-dozen of us
follow. His Interior is comparatively severe; his Exterior also.
A true Temple of Art needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small
table with two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an ornamental
looking-glass let into the wall. Monsieur in uniform gets behind
the table and surveys us with disdain, his forehead becoming
diabolically intellectual under the moderators. 'Messieurs et
Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist. He will commence
with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window. The bee,
apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window,
and about the room. He will be with difficulty caught in the hand
of Monsieur the Ventriloquist--he will escape--he will again hover-
-at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and
will be with difficulty put into a bottle. Achieve then,
Monsieur!' Here the proprietor is replaced behind the table by the
Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect.
While the bee is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart on
a stool, immersed in dark and remote thought. The moment the bee
is bottled, he stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and
then announces, sternly waving his hand: 'The magnificent
Experience of the child with the whooping-cough!' The child
disposed of, he starts up as before. 'The superb and extraordinary
Experience of the dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his
dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding
with the songsters of the grove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-
yard animals.' All this done, and well done, Monsieur the
Ventriloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as
if his retiring-room were a mile long instead of a yard. A
corpulent little man in a large white waistcoat, with a comic
countenance, and with a wig in his hand. Irreverent disposition to
laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous gravity of the Face-
Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect that sort of
thing we are mistaken. A very little shaving-glass with a leg
behind it is handed in, and placed on the table before the Face-
Maker. 'Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance than this
mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you a
thousand characters.' As a preparation, the Face-Maker with both
hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out. He then
becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor, 'I am
ready!' Proprietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and
announces 'The Young Conscript!' Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind
side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a
conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I
should think the State would never get any good of him. Thunders
of applause. Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass, brings his
own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave. 'A
distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.' Face-Maker
dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless,
slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth.
'The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides on the fete-day of his
master.' Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the wig on one side, has
become the feeblest military bore in existence, and (it is clear)
would lie frightfully about his past achievements, if he were not
confined to pantomime. 'The Miser!' Face-Maker dips, rises,
clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to express that
he lives in continual dread of thieves. 'The Genius of France!'
Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and smoothed flat, little
cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put a-top of it, Face-
Maker's white waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker's left hand in
bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker's right hand behind his back.
Thunders. This is the first of three positions of the Genius of
France. In the second position, the Face-Maker takes snuff; in the
third, rolls up his fight hand, and surveys illimitable armies
through that pocket-glass. The Face-Maker then, by putting out his
tongue, and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the
Village Idiot. The most remarkable feature in the whole of his
ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise
himself, has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself
than he was at first.
There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of
recognising several fields of glory with which I became well
acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as
Mexican victories. The change was neatly effected by some extra
smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free
range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms. As
no British troops had ever happened to be within sight when the
artist took his original sketches, it followed fortunately that
none were in the way now.
The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the particular night of
the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself;
merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close
to the railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire
to it. (In Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.) There, in
a tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy
flags, the people danced all night. It was not an expensive
recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady
being one and threepence in English money, and even of that small
sum fivepence was reclaimable for 'consommation:' which word I
venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at
the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in
it. It was a ball of great good humour and of great enjoyment,
though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the
fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.
In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to
this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple
enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life.
How dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering--when the
Fair was over--when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the
windows of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held--when
the windows were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time--when
the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle--when
the two paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving population
of the town, were ramming down the stones which had been pulled up
for the erection of decorative poles--when the jailer had slammed
his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his charges. But
then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of the departed
hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in my mind how long
some hobby-horses do leave their tracks in public ways, and how
difficult they are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly
sight. I beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing the Place
together, in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the town, and
having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not belonging
to any town. One was clad in a suit of white canvas, another in a
cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock, the fourth in a
shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made out of old
umbrellas. All wore dust-coloured shoes. My heart beat high; for,
in those four male personages, although complexionless and
eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy. Blue-
bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of
cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a 'Whitechapel
shave' (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied to
the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them. As I stood
admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the
excellent Ma Mere, Ma Mere, with the words, 'The soup is served;'
words which so elated the subject in the canvas suit, that when
they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with his hands
stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after the
Pierrot manner. Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw of him was,
that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one
leg.
Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town,
little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune. But more was in
reserve. I went by a train which was heavy with third-class
carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn
unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to
a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military
material is worked up into soldiery. At the station they had been
sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with
their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and
clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of
them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts
and singing choruses on the smallest provocation; the gayest
spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread speared upon their
walking-sticks. As we went along, they were audible at every
station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest
hilarity. After a while, however, they began to leave off singing,
and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled with their
laughter the barking of a dog. Now, I had to alight short of their
destination, and, as that stoppage of the train was attended with a
quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation of what
Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to
reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go
forward on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits,
whose heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like
delighted children. Then I perceived that a large poodle with a
pink nose, who had been their travelling companion and the cause of
their mirth, stood on his hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme
verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the train went off.
This poodle wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very
much on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the
regulation white gaiters. He was armed with a little musket and a
little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect
attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior
officer, who stood by him. So admirable was his discipline, that,
when the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers of
the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of which
struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose him, he remained
staunch on his post, until the train was gone. He then resigned
his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over
it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into the
absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the
platform in his white gaiters, waging his tail to an exceeding
great extent. It struck me that there was more waggery than this
in the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get
through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily
as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets
some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to
the face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker!
Though it was not the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the
military poodle's Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with
a small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an
umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the
poodle went their mysterious way. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXVIII - MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION
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