Auvergne en Fête, 6th September 1890.
These good folk of Auvergne seem to get much more fun, or at least much more play, out of life than we do; at any rate, they have been twice en fête in the three weeks we have been here. I suppose it is because we have in this business cut down our saints till we have only St. Lubbock left, with his quarterly holiday, while they, more wisely, have stuck to the old calendar. But it seems all wrong that they, who get five times as much sun as we, should also get three or four times as many holidays; for sunshine is surely of itself a sort of equivalent for a holiday. Perhaps, however, if we had lots of it, the national “doggedness as does it” might wear out. That valuable, but unpleasant characteristic could scarcely have leavened a nation living in a genial climate; but, with about half Africa on our hands, in addition to Ireland and other trifles all round the world, the coming generation will need the “dogged as does it” even more than their fathers. So let us sing with Charles Kingsley, “Hail to thee, North-Easter,” or with the old Wiltshire shepherd, claim that the weather in England must be, anyhow, “sech as plaazes God A’mighty, and wut plaazes He plaazes I.”
Determined to see all the fun of the fair, a friend and I started for Clermont from Royat by the electric tramway, and reached the Place de Jaude in a few minutes—the “Forum Clermontois,” as it is called in the local guidebooks—the largest open space in the ancient capital of Auvergne. It is a famous place for a fair, being nearly the size and shape of Eaton Square, with two rows of plane-trees running round it, but otherwise unenclosed. As we alighted from the tram-car, we could see a long line of booths, with prodigious pictures in front of them, and platforms on which bands were playing and actors gesticulating; but before starting on our tour, we were attracted by a crowd close to the stopping-place of the cars. It proved to be a ring, four or five deep, round the carpet of athletes. They were two, a man and a woman, both in the usual flesh-coloured tights, the latter without any pretence of a skirt. The man was walking round, changing the places of the weights and clubs, until sufficient sous had been thrown on to the carpet, the woman screening her face from the sun with a big fan, and talking with her nearest neighbours in the ring. She was a remarkably fine young woman, with well-cut features, and a snake-head on a neck like a column; and, strange to say, her expression was as modest and quiet as though pink tights were the ordinary walking-dress on the Place de Jaude. The necessary sous were soon carpeted, and the performance began. It was just the usual thing, lifting and catching heavy weights, wielding clubs, etc., the only novelty being that a woman should be one of the performers. She followed the man, doing several feats with heavy weights which were painful to witness, and we passed on to the row of booths. The average price for entrance was 2 1/2 sous, but after experimenting on the two first, we agreed that in such a temperature the outside was decidedly the best part of the show. These two were some Indian dancers, male and female, who stood up one after another and postured from the hips, and waved scarfs, the rest beating time on banjos; and a “Miss Flora, dompteuse,” a snake-tamer. From this announcement over the booth entrance we rather expected to find a countrywoman, but the performer was a squat little Frenchwoman, in the same skirtless tights, who took some sleepy snakes out of a box, put them round her neck, and then wanted to make us pay a second time, which we declined to do. The next booth ought to have been amusing, but no boys came to play while we stopped. It was announced as “Le Massacre d’Innocents.” A number of these “Innocent” puppets looked out of a row of holes in a large wooden frame, not more than eight feet from the rail in front of it. Standing behind this rail the player, on paying 5 centimes, is handed a soft ball, which he can discharge at any one of the Innocents he may select, and “chaque bonhomme renversé gagne une demi-douzaine de biscuits.” I suppose the biscuits were bad, as otherwise the absence of boys seemed incredible. Any English lower-school boy would have brought down a bonhomme at that distance with every ball, unless the balls were somehow doctored. But no boy turned up; so we passed on to the biggest booth in the fair, with pictures of wondrous beasts and heroic men and women over the platform, on which a big drum and clarionet invited entrance, in strains which drowned those of all the neighbouring booths. We read that inside a “Musée historique, destructive, et amusant” was on show, but contented ourselves with the pictures outside.
Facing the other side of the place, with their backs to the larger booths along which we had come, were a row of humbler stalls and booths, most of the latter being devoted to some kind of gambling. There were three or four courses des petits chevaux, not so well appointed as the permanent one in the Royat Park, but on the same lines, and a number of hazard-boards-and other tables, about the size of those which the thimble-riggers used to carry about at English fairs. These last were new to me. They have a hollow rim round them, into which the player puts a large marble, which runs out on to the face of the table, which is marked all over with numbers, six or eight towards the centre being red, and the rest black. If the marble stops on one of these red numbers, the player wins; if on a black one, the table wins. The odds seemed to be more than twenty to one against the player; but if so, the tables would surely be less crowded. As it was, they did a merry trade, never for a moment wanting a player while we looked on. Most of these were soldiers of the garrison, interspersed with peasants in blouses, who dragged out their sous with every token of disgust and resentment, but seemed quite unable to get away from the tables. On the whole, after watching for some time, I was confirmed in the belief that we are right in putting down gambling in all public places. Nothing, I suppose, can stop it; but there is no good in thrusting the temptation under the noses of boys and fools.
After making the round of the fair, we strolled up the hill to the Cathedral, which dominates the city, and looks out over as fair and rich a prospect as the world has to show. Brassey, when he was building one of the railways across La Limagne, the plain which stretches away east of Clermont, is reported to have said that if France were utterly bankrupt, the surface value of her soil would set her on her legs again in two years; and one can quite believe him. The streets of the old town, which surrounds the Cathedral, are narrow and steep, but full of old houses of rare architectural interest. Many of them must have belonged to great folk, whose arms are still to be seen over the doors, inside the quiet courts through which you enter from the streets. In these one could see, as we passed, little groups of gossips, knitting, smoking, “causer-ing.” The petit bourgeois has succeeded to the noble, and now enjoys those grand, broad staircases and stone balconies. They form an excellent setting to the Cathedral, itself a grand specimen of Norman Gothic, begun by Hugues de la Tour, the sixty-sixth bishop, before his departure for the Crusades, and finished by Viollet-le-Duc, who only completed the twin spires in 1877. But interesting as the Cathedral is, it is eclipsed by the Church of Notre Dame du Port, the oldest building in Clermont. It dates from the sixth century, when the first church was built on the site by St. Avitus, eighteenth bishop. This was burnt 853 A.D., and rebuilt by St. Sigon, forty-third bishop, in 870. Burnt again, it was again rebuilt as it stands to-day, in the eleventh century. In it Peter the Hermit is said to have preached the First Crusade, when the Council called by Pope Urban II. was sitting at Clermont. Whether this be so or not, it is by far the most perfect and interesting specimen of the earliest Gothic known to me; and the crypt underneath the chancel is unique. It is specially dedicated to St. Mary du Port, and over the altar is the small statue of the Virgin and Child, around and before which votive offerings of all kinds—crosses and military decorations, bracelets, jewels, trinkets, many of them, I should think, of large value—hang and lie. The small image has no beauty whatever—in fact, is just a plain black doll—but of untold value to many generations of Auvernois, who regard it as a talisman which has, again and again, preserved their city from sword and pestilence. I am not sure whether, amongst the small marble tablets which literally cover the walls, one may not be found in memory of the great fight of Gergovia, in which Vercingétorix, if he did not actually defeat Cæsar, turned the great captain and his Roman legions away from this part of Gaul. At any rate, amongst the most prominent, is one inscribed with the names “Coulmiers,” “Patay,” “Le Mans,” the battles which in 1870-71 stayed the German advance on Clermont, and saved the capital of Auvergne. The rest are, for the most part, private tablets, thanksgivings for the cure of all manner of sickness and disease to which flesh is heir. To this shrine all sufferers have come in the faith which finds a voice all round these old walls,—“Qu’on est heureux d’avoir Marie pour mère”! That human instinct which longs for a female protectrix and mediator “behind the veil,” speaks here, too, as it did 2000 years ago, when the [Greek phrase] guarded the shrines of Athens and her colonies.
Scoppio Del Carro, Florence, Easter Eve, 1891.
I have just come back from witnessing an extraordinary, and, I should think, a unique ceremony, which is enacted here on Easter Eve; and, on sitting down quietly to think it over, can scarcely say whether I am most inclined to laugh, or to cry, or to swear. In truth, the “Scoppio del Carro”—or “explosion of the fireworks”—as it is called, is a curious comment on, or illustration of, your last week’s remarks on Superstitions. “The carefully preserved dry husk of outward observance” in this case undoubtedly speaks, to those who have ears to hear, of a heroic time, and the spectator rubs his eyes, and feels somehow—
As though he looked upon the sheath
Which once had clasped Excalibur.
At any rate, that is rather how I felt, as, standing at noon in the dense crowd in the nave of the Duomo, I saw the procession pass within a few feet of me, on their way from the great entrance up to the high altar, which was ablaze already with many tall candles. Although within a few feet, the intervening crowd was so thick that I could only see the heads and shoulders of the taller choristers and priests as they passed; but I saw plainly enough, though the wearer was low of stature, the tall mitre—it looked like gold—which the Archbishop wore as he walked in the procession. Our bishops, I am told, are wearing or going to wear them (Heaven save the mark!), which made me curious. They threaded their way slowly up to the high altar; and presently we heard in the distance intoning and chants; and then, after brief pause, the dove (so called) started from the crucifix, I think, at any rate from a high point on the altar, for the open door. But in order to be clear as to what the dove carries and is supposed to do, we must go back to the Second Crusade.
I give the story as I make it out by comparing the accounts in various guide-books with those of residents interested in such matters. These differ much in detail, but not as to the main facts. These are, that in 1147 A.D. a Florentine noble of the Pazzi family, Raniero by name, joined, some say led, the 2500 Tuscans who went on the Crusade. In any case, he greatly distinguished himself by his courage, and is said to have planted the first standard of the Cross on the walls of Jerusalem. For this he was allowed to take a light from the sacred fire on the Holy Sepulchre, which he desired to carry back to his much-loved F’orence. An absurd part of the legend now comes in. Finding the wind troublesome as he rode with the light, he turned round, with his face to his horse’s tail (as if the wind always blew in Crusaders’ faces), and so at last brought it safely home, where his ungrateful fellow-citizens, when they saw him come riding in this fashion, called out, “Pazzo!” “Pazzo!” or “Mad!” which his family forthwith wisely adopted as their patronymic.
The sacred fire was housed in a shrine in St. Biagio, built by Raniero, and has never been allowed to go out since that day—so it is said—and from it yearly are relighted all the candles used in Florentine churches at the Easter festival. It is a striking custom. Gradually, during the Good Friday services, the lights are extinguished in the Duomo, and all the churches, till at midnight they are in darkness, and are only relit next day by fire brought even yet by a Pazzi, a descendant of Raniero, from St. Biagio. This is, however, doubtful, some authorities asserting that the family is extinct, others that it not only exists, but still spends 2000 lire a year in preserving the sacred fire. A stranger has no means that I know of, of sifting out the fact. Anyhow, I can testify that somehow the fire is in the Duomo before noon, as any number of candles were alight on the high altar when I got there at 11.30, half an hour before the procession. Anything more orderly than the great crowd I have never seen. It was of all nations, languages, and ranks, though the great majority were Tuscan peasants with their families from all the surrounding country, waiting in eager expectation for the flight of the dove from the high altar, through the doors to the great car which stands waiting outside at the bottom of the broad steps in front of the Duomo. If the dove makes a successful flight, and lights the fireworks which are hung round the car, there will be a good harvest and abundance of wine and oil, and of oranges and lemons. This year the faces of the peasants and their wives and children—and most attractive brown faces they were—were anxious, for it had been raining hard in the morning, and still drops were falling. However, all went well. At about 12.10 the chanting ceased, and the dove—a small firework of the rocket genus—rushed down the nave, some ten feet over our heads, along a thin wire which I had not noticed before, and set light promptly to the fireworks on the car, which began to turn and explode, not without considerable fizzing and spluttering, but on the whole successfully. Then the dove turned and came back, still alight, and leaving a trail of sparks as it sped along, to the high altar. How it was received there, and what became of it, I cannot say, as I was swept along in the rush to the doors which immediately followed, and had enough to do to pilot my companion, a lady, to the new centre of interest. This was the car to which the sacred fire had now been transferred, and which was about to start on its round to the other churches. It is chocolate-coloured, and spangled with stars, some twenty feet high, surmounted by a large crown and Catherine-wheel. As our crowd swept out of the Duomo and down the steps, to mingle with the still larger crowd outside, men were rehanging the car with fresh fireworks, and putting-to four mighty white oxen, gaily garlanded. I remarked that the conductor, a tall, six-foot man, could not look over the shoulder of one of these shaft-oxen as he was harnessing him in the shafts!
There could be no question as to the very best place for spectators. It was the centre of the top step leading up to the Duomo façade; and, finding ourselves there, we stopped and let the crowd surge past us. Almost at once I became aware that this favoured spot was occupied by the English-speaking race almost exclusively, the accent of cousin Jonathan, I think, on the whole predominating. Two Italian boys looked up at us with large, lustrous brown eyes; otherwise the natives were absent. It seems like a sort of law of social gravitation, that in these latter days the speakers of our language should get into all the world’s best places, and having got there should stop. One cannot much wonder that the speakers in other tongues should feel now and then as if they were being rather crowded out. We did not pursue the car as it lumbered away under the glorious campanile, surrounded by the rejoicing multitude, for the sun had now got the upper hand, and the whole city and plain right away to the lower hills, and the snow-capped Apennines in the background, were aglow with the sort of subdued purple or amethyst light which seems to me to differentiate Tuscany from all other countries known to me. Now, gradually to put out all the lights in the churches on Good Friday, and to relight them from fire from the Holy Sepulchre next day, seems to me a worthy and pathetic custom; but this mixing it up with the firework business, and having the Bishop and all the strength of the Cathedral out to help in this dove trick, spoils the whole thing, and makes one wish one had not gone to see it, recalling too forcibly, as it does to an Englishman, the Crystal Palace on a fireworks’ night, and the similar “dove” which travels from the Royal Gallery, where too-well-fed citizens and others sit smoking, to light the great “concerted piece” in the grounds below. It was like inserting “Abracadabra!” in the middle of the “Miserere.” P.S.—Since writing the ‘above, we have had an arrival in Florence which will interest your readers,—to wit, fifty young persons of both sexes from Toynbee Hall, with Mr. Bolton King as conductor; and the English community are doing all they can to make their stay pleasant. On the morrow of their arrival Lady Hobart entertained them at her villa of Montauto, the one in which Hawthorne wrote Transformation. It is a thirteenth-century house, or, I should rather say, that the villa, with its large, airy suite of rooms, with vaulted ceilings, has grown round a machicolated tower* of that date, the highest building on the Bellosquardo Hill, to the south-west of the city. From the top of it, reached by rather rickety and casual old stairs, there is, I should think, as glorious a view as the world can show,—a perfect panorama, with Florence lying right below, and beyond, Fiesole and Vallombrosa, and the village of stone-cutters on the slope of the Apennines, which reared the greatest of stonecutters, Michael Angelo, and beyond, the highest Apennines, still snow-covered; and to the north, the rich plain of vineyards, and olive-groves, and orange and lemon gardens, thickly sprinkled with the bright white houses of the peasant cultivators and the graceful campaniles of village churches, beyond which one could see clearly on this “white-stone” day the snow-clad peaks of the Carrara Mountains in the far north. I can hardly say whether the Toynbee visitors, or those who were gathered to welcome them by the hospitable hostess, enjoyed the unrivalled view most; but this we soon discovered, that the visitors were about as well acquainted with the story of each point of interest, as it was pointed out to them, as the oldest resident. Surely the schoolmaster is at last abroad with us in England in many ways of which we have good right to feel proud, and for which we may well be thankful.
A Scamper at Easter, 8th April 1893.
No one can dislike more than I the habit which has become so common of late years amongst us—thanks, or rather no thanks, to Mr. Gladstone—of running down our own English ways of dealing with all creation, from Irishmen to black-beetles. I believe, on the contrary, that on the whole there is not, nor ever was, a nation that kept a more active conscience, or tried more honestly to do the right thing all round according to its lights. Nevertheless, I am bound to admit that our methods don’t always succeed, as, for instance, with our treatment of our “submerged tenth,” if that is the accepted name for the section of our people which Mr. G. Booth, in his excellent Life and Labour in London, places in his A and B classes (and which, by the way, are only 8.2, and not 10 per cent), or with our seagulls. Some years ago I called your readers’ attention to the rapid demoralisation of these beautiful birds at one of our northern watering-places; how they just floated past the pier-heads hour after hour, waiting for the doles which the holiday folk and their children brought down for them in paper-bags. Our sea-going gulls, I regret to note, are now similarly affected. At any rate, some forty of them diligently followed the steamer in which I sailed for my Easter holiday, from the Liverpool docks till we dropped our pilot and, turned due south off Holyhead. By that time our last meal had been eaten and the remains cast into the sea. The gulls seemed to be quite aware of this; and we left them squabbling over the last scraps of fish and potatoes, or loafing slowly back to Liverpool. Thirty-six hours later we entered the Garonne, and steamed sixty miles up it to Bordeaux. For all that distance there were plenty of French gulls on the water or in the air, but, so far from following us, not one of them seemed to take the least notice of us, but all went on quietly with their fishing or courting; and yet our cook’s mate must have thrown out as much broken victuals after breakfast in the Garonne as he did after luncheon or dinner on the Welsh coast. It cannot be because the French gulls are Republicans, for the Republic has, if anything, increased the national appetite for unearned loaves and fishes. It is certainly very odd; but, anyhow, I hope our gulls will not take to more self-respecting ways of life, for it is a real treat to watch them in the ship’s wake, without effort, often without perceptible motion of the wings, keeping up the fourteen knots an hour. The Captain and I fraternised over the gulls, whom he loves, and will not allow to be shot at from his ship. “I’ll shoot whether you like it or not,” insisted a sporting gent on a recent voyage. “If you do, I’ll put you in irons,” retorted the Captain; whereupon the sporting gent collapsed—a pity, I think, for an action for false imprisonment would have been interesting under the circumstances. I fancy the Captain is right, but must look up the law after Easter.
I am surprised that this route is not more popular with the increasing numbers of our people who like a short run to the south of France in our hard spring weather. You can get by this way to Bordeaux quicker than you can by Dover or Folkestone from any place north of Trent, unless you travel day and night, and sleep on the trains, and for about half the money. The packets are cargo-boats, but with excellent cabins and sleeping accommodation for twelve or fourteen passengers, including as good a bath as on a Cunard or White Star liner. And yet I was the only passenger last week. There can scarcely be a more interesting short voyage for any one who is a decent sailor; but I suppose the fourteen or sixteen hours “in the Bay of Biscay, oh!” scares people. As far as my experience goes, the Atlantic roars like a sucking-dove in the Channel and the Bay at Easter-time. There was not wind enough to dimple the ocean surface, and until we passed Milford Haven, no perceptible motion on the ship. Then, as we crossed the opening of the Bristol Channel, she began to roll—quite unaccountably, as it seemed at first; but on watching carefully, one became aware that, though the surface was motionless, the great deep beneath was heaving with long pulsations from the west, which lifted us in regular cadence every thirty or forty seconds. I have often crossed the Atlantic, but never seen the like, as always before there has been a ripple on the calmest day, which gave the effect, at any rate, of surface motion. The best idea I can give of it is, if on a long stretch of our South Downs the successive turf slopes took to rising and falling perpendicularly every minute. The Captain said there must have been wild weather out west, and these were the rollers. It was a grand sight to watch the great heave pass on till it reached the Land’s End, and ran up the cliffs there. We passed near enough to see the mining works, close to the level of high-tide, and the villages on the cliff-tops above, or clinging on to the slopes wherever these were not too precipitous. One can realise what manner of men and sailors this Ear West has bred of old, and, I hope, still breeds. I pity the Englishman whose pulse does not quicken as he sails by the Land’s End, and can see with a glass some of the small harbours out of which Drake and Frobisher and Hawkins sailed, and drew the crews that followed and fought the Armada right away to the Straits of Dover.
As the Land’s End light receded, we became aware of another light away some twenty miles to the south-west. It is on a rock not fifty yards across, the Captain says, at high tide, and often unapproachable for weeks together—“The Hawk,” by name, on which are kept four lighthouse-men, who spend there alternate months, weather permitting. I was glad to hear that there are four at a time, as the sight of “The Hawk” brought vividly to my mind the gruesome story of fifty years back, when there were only two men, who were known not to be good friends. One died, and his companion had to wait with the dead body for weeks before his relief came.
I noticed, before we were two hours out, that there was something unusually smart about the crew, quite what one would look for on the Umbria or Germanic, but scarcely on a 700-tons cargo-boat plying to Bordeaux. Several of the young hands were fine British tars, with the splendid throats and great muscular hands and wrists which stand out so well from the blue woollen jerseys; but the one who struck me most was the ship’s carpenter, a gray, weather-beaten old salt, who was going round quietly, but all the time with his broad-headed hammer, setting little things straight, helping to straighten the tarpaulins over the hatches and deck-cargo, and sounding the well. I caught him now and then for a few words, as he passed my deck-chair, and got the clue. Most of the crew were Naval Reserve men, and followed the Captain, a lieutenant in the R.N.R., who could fly the blue ensign in foreign ports, which they liked. Besides, he was a skipper who cared for his men, looked after their mess and berths, and never wanted to make anything out of them; charged them only a shilling a pound for their baccy, the price at which he could get it out of bond, while most skippers charged 2s. 6d., the shop price. He had come to this boat while his big ship was laid up in dock, to oblige the owners, so they had followed him. Besides, he never put them to any work he wouldn’t bear a hand in; had stood for hours up to his waist last year in the hold when they were bringing five hundred cattle and seven hundred hogs from Canada, running before a heavy gale. The water they shipped was putting out the engine fires, and the pumps wouldn’t work till they had bailed for ten hours. However, they got in all right, and never lost a beast. Of course I was keen to hear the Captain on this subject, and so broached it at his table. Yes, it was quite true; they had run before a heavy gale from off Newfoundland, and the pumps gave out off the Irish coast. They got the sludge bailed out enough for all the fires to get to work just about in time, or would have drifted on the rocks and gone all to pieces in a few minutes. Yes, it was about the nastiest piece of work he had ever had to do; the sludge, for it was only half water, was above his waist, and had quite spoiled his uniform. The deck engineer—a light-haired man, all big bones and muscle, whom he pointed out to me—was in the deepest part of the hold up to his arm-pits, and had worked there for ten hours without coming up! He was a R.N.R. man, like the old carpenter and most of the rest. The old fellow was one of the staunchest and best followers, probably because he was tired of going aground. He had been aground seventeen times! for the Captain in his last ship had a way of charging shoals, merely saying, “Oh, she’ll jump it!” which she generally declined to do. The Captain is a strong Churchman, but shares the prejudice against carrying ministers. “The devil always has a show” when you’re carrying a minister. The first time he tried it, he was taking out his own brother, and they were twenty-two days late at Montreal. It was an awful crossing, a gale in their teeth all the way; most of the ships that started with them had to put back. I suggested that if he hadn’t had his brother on board, he mightn’t have got over at all; but he wouldn’t see it. Next time, a man fell from the mast-head and was killed; and the next, a man jumped overboard. He would never carry a minister again if he could help it.
One pilot took us out to Holyhead, but it took three French ones to take us up to Bordeaux. The Garonne banks are only picturesque here and there; but the flat banks have their own interest, for do we not see the choicest vineyards of the claret country as we run up? There was the Chateau Lafitte and the Chateau Margaux. I suppose one ought within one’s heart, or rather, within one’s palate perhaps, “to have felt a stir”—
As though one looked upon the sheath
Which once had clasped Excalibur.
But I could not tell the difference between Margaux and any decent claret with my eyes shut, so I did not feel any stir—unless, perhaps, as a patriot, when we passed much the most imposing establishment, and the Captain said, “That is Chateau Gilbey”! I looked with silent wonder, for did I not remember years ago, when the Gladstone Grocers’ Licences Bill was young, and the Christie Minstrels sung scoffingly—
Ten little niggers going out to dine,
One drank Gilbey, and then there were nine?
And here was Gilbey with the finest “caves” and the choicest vineyard in the Bordelaise! Who can measure the competitive energy of the British business-man?
I must end as I set out, with the birds. As we neared the mouth of the Garonne, sixteen miles from land, the Captain said, two little water-wagtails flitted into the rigging. There they rested a few minutes, and then, to my grief, started off out to sea, but again and again came hack to the ship. At last a sailor caught one, and the Captain secured it and took it to his cabin, but thought it would be sure to die. It was the hen-bird. She did not die, but flitted away cheerfully when he brought her out and let her fly on the quay of Bordeaux. But I fear she will never find her mate.
Lourdes, 15th April 1893.
The farthest point south in our Easter scamper was Lourdes, to which I found that my companions were more bent on going than to any other possible place within our range. The attractions even of the Pass of Ronces-valles, of St. Sebastian, and the Pyrenean battle-fields of 1814, faded with them before those of the nineteenth-century Port Royal. At first I said I would not go. The fact is, I am one of the old-fashioned folk who hold that some day the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of Christ, and that all peoples are to be gathered “in one fold under one Shepherd.” It has always seemed to me that one of the surest ways of postponing that good time is to be suspicious of other faiths than our own; to accuse them of blind superstition and deliberate imposture; even to walk round their churches as if they were museums or picture-galleries, while people are kneeling in prayer. So I said “No”; I would stop on the terrace at Pau, with one of the most glorious views in the world to look at, and carefully examine Henry IV.‘s château, or go and get a round of golf with my hibernating fellow-countrymen. I thought that the probable result of visiting Lourdes might be to make me more inclined to think a large section of my fellow-mortals dupes, and their priests humbugs—conclusions I was anxious to avoid. However, I changed my mind at the last moment, and am heartily glad I did. It is an easy twenty miles (about) from Pau, from which you run straight to the Pyrenees, and pull up in a green nook of the outlying lower mountains, where two valleys meet, which run back towards the higher snow-capped range. They looked so tempting to explore, as did also the grim old keep on the high rock which divides them and completely dominates the little town, that twenty years ago I couldn’t have resisted, and should have gone for an afternoon’s climb. But I am grown less lissom, if not wiser, and so took my place meekly in the fly which my companions had chartered for the grotto. We were through the little town in a few minutes, the only noteworthy thing being the number of women who offered us candles of all sizes to burn before the Madonna’s statue in the grotto, and the number of relic-shops. Emerging from the street, we found ourselves in front of a green lawn, at the other end of which was a fine white marble church, almost square, with a dome—more like a mosque, I thought, than a Western church; and up above this another tall Gothic church, with a fine spire, to which the pilgrims ascend by two splendid semi-circular flights of easy, broad steps, one on each side of the lower church, and holding it, as it were, in their arms. We, however, drove up the steep ascent outside the left or southern staircase, and got down at the door of the higher church, which is built on the rock at the bottom of which is the famous spring and grotto. We entered by a spacious porch, where my attention was at once arrested by the mural tablets of white marble, each of which commemorated the cure of some sufferer: “Reconnaissance pour la guérison de mon fils,” “de ma fille,” etc., being at least as frequent as those for the cure of the person who put up the tablet. I thought at first I would count them, but soon gave it up, as not only this big vestibule, but the walls of all the chapels, and of the big church below (built, I was told, and hope, by the Duke of Norfolk at his own cost), are just covered with them. This upper church was a perfect blaze of light and colour, much too gorgeous for my taste; but what the decorations were which gave this effect I cannot say, as I was entirely absorbed in noting the votive offerings of all kinds which were hung round each of the shrines, both here and in the lower church. The most noteworthy of these, to my mind, are the number of swords, epaulettes, and military decorations, which their owners have hung up as thank offerings. I do not suppose that French officers and privates differ much from ours, and I am bold to assert that Tommy Atkins would not part with his cross or medal, or his captain, for that matter, with his epaulettes or sword, if they had gone away from Lourdes no better in body than when they went there hobbling from wounds, or tottering from fever or ague.
When we had seen the upper church we went down a long flight of circular stairs, and came out in the lower (Duke of Norfolk’s) church,—much more interesting, I think, architecturally, and decorated in better, because quieter, taste than the upper one. From this we went round to the grotto in the rock, on which the upper church stands, and in which the famous spring rises, and over it a not unpleasant (I cannot say more) statue of the Madonna; and all round candles alight of all sizes, from farthing-dips to colossal moulds, many of which had been burning, they said, for a week. A single, quiet old priest sat near the entrance reading his Missal, but only speaking when spoken to. In front were ranged long rows of chairs, on which sat or knelt some dozen pilgrims with wistful faces, waiting, perhaps for the troubling of the waters. These are carried from the grotto to a series of basins along the rock outside, at one of which two poor old crones with sore eyes were bathing them, and talking Basque (I believe)—at any rate some unknown tongue to me. I should have liked to hear their experiences, but they couldn’t understand a word of my Anglican French. Here, again, the most striking object is the mass of crutches of all shapes and sizes, and fearsome-looking bandages, which literally cover the rock on each side of the entrance to the grotto, for the space (I should guess) of fourteen or fifteen feet on one side, and ten or twelve on the other.
And so we finished our inspection, and went back to our fly, which we had ordered to meet us at the end of the lawn above mentioned, which lies between the churches and the town; and so to the railway station, and back to Biarritz by Pau. I daresay that people who go there at the times when the great bodies of pilgrims come, may carry away a very different impression from mine. All I can say is, that I never was in a place where there was less concealment of any kind; and there was no attempt whatever to influence you in any way by priest or attendant. There were all the buildings and the grotto open, and you could examine them and their contents undisturbed for any time you chose to give to them, and draw from your examination whatever conclusions you pleased. So I, for one, can only repeat that I am heartily glad that I went; and shall think better of my Roman Catholic brethren as the result of my visit for the rest of my life.
Of course, the main interest of Lourdes lies in the world-old controversy between the men of science and the men of faith, as to the reality of the alleged facts—miracles, as many folk call them—of the healing properties which the waters of this famous spring, or the air of Lourdes, or the Madonna, or some other unknown influence, are alleged to possess, and to be freely available for invalid pilgrims who care to make trial of them. Every one in those parts that I met, at Lourdes itself, at Pau, Biarritz, Bayonne, is interested in the question and ready to discuss it. Perhaps I can best indicate the points of the debate by formulating the arguments on each side which I heard, putting them into the mouths of representative men—a doctor and a priest. I was lucky enough to fall in with an excellent representative of the scientific side, an able and open-minded M.D. on his travels. I had no opportunity of speaking to one of the priests; but their side of the argument is stoutly upheld by at least half of the people one meets.
Dr.—They are nothing but what are called faith-cures, akin to those which the Yankee Sequah effects when he goes round our northern towns in his huge car, with his brass band and attendant Indian Sachems in the costume of the prairie. Of course, here the surroundings are far more impressive and serious; but the cures are the same for all that—some action of the nerves which makes patients believe they are cured, when they are not really. Probably nine-tenths are just as bad again in a few months.
Priest.—Well, don’t we say they are faith-cures? We don’t pretend that we can do them, as this Sequah you talk about does. You allow that great numbers think they are cured, and walk about without crutches or bandages, or pains in their bodies, and enjoy life again for a time at any rate; which is more than you can do for them, or they wouldn’t come here to be healed.
Dr.—How long do they walk about without crutches or pains in their limbs? Why don’t you take us behind the scenes, and let us test and follow up some of these cures?
Priest.—We can’t take you behind the scenes, for there are no scenes to go behind. We tell you we don’t do the cures, or know precisely how they are done. We can’t hinder your inquiries, and don’t want to hinder them if we could. There are the tablets of “reconnaissance,” with names and addresses; you can go to these, if you like, or talk to the patients whom you see at the spring or in the chapels.
Dr.—Come, now! You don’t really mean to say you believe that our Lord’s Mother appeared to this girl on 23rd March 1858, and told her that this Lourdes was a specially favourite place with her; and that she has since that time given these special healing qualities to the water or air of Lourdes, or whatever it is that causes these effects at this place?
Priest.—We mean to say that the girl thoroughly believed it, and we hold that her impression—her certainty—didn’t come from the devil, as it must if it was a lie; that it wasn’t the mere dream of a hysterical girl, and was not given her for nothing. Else, how can one account for these buildings, costing, perhaps, as much as one of your finest cathedrals, all put up in thirty-five years?
Dr.—Yes; but that doesn’t answer my question. Did the Mother of our Lord appear to this girl, and is it she who works the cures.
Priest.—If you mean by “appear,” “come visibly,” we don’t know. But you should remember always that the French have a very different feeling about the Madonna from you English. Perhaps you can’t help connecting her with another French girl, Joan of Arc, who believed the Madonna had appeared to her and told her she should turn you English out of France, which she did—a more difficult and costly job even than building these churches.
Dr.—Well, we won’t argue about the Madonna, and I am quite ready to admit that the evidence you have here, in the tablets and votive offerings, the crutches and bandages, are primâ-facie proof that numbers of pilgrims have gone away from Lourdes under the impression that they were cured. What I maintain is, that you have not shown, and cannot show, that your cures are not merely due to the absorption of diseased tissue as the result of strong excitement—an effect not at all common, but quite recognised as not unfrequent by some of the highest authorities in medical science.
There the controversy rests, I think; at any rate, so far as I heard it debated; and I must own that the scientific explanation does not seem to me to hold water. To take one instance, would the absorption of diseased tissue drive a piece of cloth out of a soldier’s leg or body? Perhaps yes, for what I know; but would the excitement of a mother cure the disease of her child? These two classes of cures (of which there are a great number) struck me, perhaps, more than any of the rest. But I must not take up more of your space, and can only advise all your readers who are really interested in this problem to take the first opportunity they can of going to Lourdes, and, if possible, as we did, at a time when the great bodies of pilgrims are not there, and they can quietly examine the facts there, for—pace the doctors and men of science—these tablets, swords, crutches, etc., are facts which they are bound to acknowledge and investigate. I shall be surprised if they do not come away, as I did, with a feeling that they have seen a deeply interesting sight for which it is well worth while to come from England, and that there are two sides to this question of the Lourdes miracles (so-called), either of which any reverent student of the world in which he is living may conscientiously hold.