Part 13

The rambler in old France can seldom undertake a little journey during the summer without coming upon some town where a fair is in progress. At least, that has been my own experience, and in the course of wide wanderings through the highways and by-ways of the most delightful land in Europe I have witnessed many fairs in towns so far apart as Morlaix and Montluçon, Orleans and Beaucaire, Rennes and Lisieux. Nowhere does the distinctive character of a people show itself more strongly than in its public fairs and rejoicings. Thus, if one desired to get at a glance a glimpse into the different natures of the Briton and the Gaul, a visit to Glasgow Fair or Nottingham's famous Goose Fair, followed by a look round the great fair of Rennes or Orleans, would do more for one's education in this regard than a great deal of book learning.

An extensive and peculiar knowledge of Scottish and English holiday-making, which the vagrant life of journalism has enabled me to acquire, goes far to justify in my mind, when I think of the Frenchman and his merry-making, the charge directed against us by our friends across the Channel--that we take our pleasures sadly. There is very little to choose between an English and Scottish festival of the common people, though that little of brightness and genuine high spirits is in favour of the former. A more vulgar, tasteless, saddening spectacle than a Scottish saturnalia it is difficult to conceive. For ill manners, foul speech, stupid and low diversions, I have seen nothing so lacking in all the elements of joy as an Ayrshire country fair; it has made me blush for my countrymen. But when such a melancholy festival has awakened memory's contrasts of sights seen in merry France, I have been glad to believe that, speaking generally, while a fair in Scotland or in England stirs up the less worthy elements in the people's character, such an occasion in France, on the contrary, calls forth some of the better traits of the people.

In our own time, and due in some measure to the growth of refinement arising out of our improved education, the institution of the public fair in this country has been steadily declining in popularity; but in France it still flourishes. There are other reasons for this, though the chief is--again accepting a French criticism--that we are essentially a nation of shopkeepers. The origin of the fair was, of course, the bringing together of people with goods to sell or barter, and a touch of pleasure was given to the business by the association of amusements therewith. Time was when Nottingham Goose Fair was an event of the highest importance in the commercial life of the district, and continued over a period of a month; but with the rise of the shopkeeper, who has ever a jealous eye on the huckster, this, like many another of our fairs, has been gradually curtailed, on the plea of its interfering with regular business, until it is now limited to a week, and is threatened with reduction to three days. In France, however, many of the fairs still last for a month, although the most celebrated of all, that of Beaucaire, which is almost continental in its importance and is less a festival than a commercial institution, is held for one week only. At Orleans one of the finest fairs in France takes place annually in June, and continues for a whole month. It may be taken as typical of these provincial carnivals, and in endeavouring to give my readers some idea of its leading features, I shall be describing to them the character of French fairs in general.

II.

Most of the towns in France are peculiarly adapted for the holding of festivals, with their wide main street and "bit of a square"; but Orleans is especially fortunate in this respect. Although it is a town of not more than seventy thousand inhabitants, it possesses a series of spacious boulevards and public squares which would be thought remarkable in an English city of three or four times that population. The chief part of Orleans lies on the north bank of the wide and swiftly-flowing Loire, and the boulevards, following roughly the outline of an arc, compass the town with the river for base. The great width of these highways--at a moderate estimate six times that of the Strand--makes it possible for an immense number of booths and stalls to be ranged along them without in any degree obstructing the regular road traffic. Thus, if you arrive at the railway station during the fair month, you will find the entire stretch of the northern thoroughfares--close on a mile and a half as I should estimate--occupied by the show people, who have created a boulevard within a boulevard, as the fair-ground is one long avenue of booths, with a wide promenade between and roadways as roomy as an English turnpike still remaining free to ordinary traffic on the outer edges.

If it were the first affair of its kind you had seen in France, you would be immediately impressed by the remarkable cleanliness of the shows and of the attendants at the numerous stalls, where every variety of goods are on sale. What may be described as the business part of the fair is distinct from that devoted to amusements, and the high-class character of the stalls and their keepers is explained when we know that the tradesmen of the town have become hucksters for the nonce, most of these temporary structures being fitted up and conducted by local shopkeepers. The appointments of some of them are elaborate to a surprising degree, but never defaced by such crude and tasteless displays as we find at English fairs.

III.

To mention the varieties of business represented by these stalls would be to enumerate every trade in the town, and a few more. Bakers and pastrycooks are there in abundance; the stalls at which a bewildering choice of sweetmeats is displayed are marvels of neatness, and their name is legion. As many as five or six smartly-dressed young women with white oversleeves will be busy at one counter supplying the customers, who are endeavouring to increase the purchasing value of their coppers by speculating at the roulette table kept by the proprietor, for at such time the Frenchman introduces the gambling element into every transaction where it can be applied. At the miscellaneous stalls, where all sorts of fancy goods are on sale, the "wheel of fortune" is practically the only method of exchange. Many of the places are run on the principle of "all one price," and thrifty housewives may be seen deliberating on the respective merits of knives and forks, cruet-stands, butter-dishes, and scores of minor household utensils, each to be had at the price of half a franc (fivepence). It is clear that the women-folk regard the occasion as an opportunity for getting unusual value for their money. Peasants may purchase an entire suit of clothes at some of the stalls, and if they are wishful of a crucifix or an image of the sacred heart, here they are in abundance, with rosaries, bambinoes, and all the brightly-coloured symbols of Catholic worship.

But the real interest of the fair, and, of course, its most picturesque part, lies in the great Boulevard Alexandré Martin, which stretches eastward from the railway station. Here are congregated most of the places of entertainment. These, no less than the temporary shops of the tradesmen, present a striking contrast to anything one may see at an English fair. The Frenchman's instinctive feeling for art is everywhere noticeable, and the exterior decoration of the shows exhibits a lightness and daintiness of touch quite unknown in the same connection in England. The gilded horror of the ghost-show exterior, so familiar a feature of our own fairs, has no counterpart in France, but the booths wherein are exhibited "freaks of Nature" are curiously similar in both countries, the crude pictures on the canvas fronts being preposterous exaggerations of the objects to be seen within.

IV.

What strikes one particularly in wandering through the fair-ground at Orleans is that while all is different from an English festival, the difference is one of degree and not of kind. Here, for example, are several circuses, where performances very similar to those given by any travelling circus in our own land are "about to commence." On the outside platform two clowns are shouting to the crowd to walk up; the gorgeous ring-master with his whip joins in the general advertisement; a girl and a boy are dancing to the music of a small but noisy orchestra. There is this difference, however, between a French circus and an English one: the whole enterprise wears a more noticeable appearance of success, is better housed, the place being brilliantly lighted by electricity generated by an excellent portable plant, the performers better dressed. But curiously enough, the finest travelling circus I have ever seen in any land was Anderson's "Cirque Féerique," which I came upon during a flying visit to the industrial town of Vierzon, some hundred and twenty-five miles south of Paris. The proprietor was a Scotsman! "Mother Goose" was the chief item of the performance, and the coloured posters of the old lady and her goose had been printed in England!

Pitched close to such a circus stands a large wooden opera-house, capable of holding from six to eight hundred people, the seats being arranged on an inclined plane, the higher priced ones as substantial and comfortable as the stalls of one of our provincial theatres. The stage is commodious, and the performers as accomplished as any touring company that visits the second-class English towns. Indeed, their performance of "Les Cloches de Corneville" was given with a _verve_ and a finish not seldom lacking in more ambitious opera companies one has seen at home. Instead of an orchestra, a very clever and good-looking young lady pianist played the accompaniments throughout the entire performance.

The travelling theatres, too, force comparison with the regular playhouses in the smaller English towns, rather than with the wretched "tuppenny" shows that represent the drama at an English fair. Like the opera-house just described, they are fitted up substantially, and in good taste, the charges for admission ranging from half a franc to three or four francs. Many notable French actors have graduated from these portable theatres, and, indeed, those who perform in them are of a class considerably above the mummers who exhibit in our "fit-ups"; they are the best type of "strolling-players."

One of the most detestable features of an English fair is the appalling noise created by mechanical organs. This is happily absent from the French fête, and of the few contrivances of the kind which I remember at Orleans there was only one designed solely for the sake of noise. Perhaps the most remarkable of these orchestrions was a real triumph of musical machinery, around which, and contained within an immense and brilliantly lighted wooden building, whirled an endless chain of fairy coaches, hobby horses, swan boats, and other fantastic vehicles, eminently contrived for the purpose of producing giddiness. This was truly the _pièce de résistance_ of the Orleans Fair, and it would be impossible to conceive a more striking contrast than that between this really magnificent construction and the familiar English merry-go-round. Externally the building would have borne favourable comparison with a "Palace of Electricity" at some of our international exhibitions. The façade was of Byzantine style, and myriads of beautifully-coloured electric lamps picked out the design, two huge peacocks with outspread tails, also composed of coloured lights, being introduced with most artistic effect on each side of the glittering archway. Inside, the decorations were gorgeous "to the _n_th degree," as Mr. W. E. Henley might have said, but the scheme of colours was in perfect harmony, the whole making up a veritable feast of light that must dazzle and fascinate the simple country-folk wherever this wonderful merry-go-round is set up. At a moderate estimate, I should name £10,000 as the cost of this single show, and perhaps that will indicate the lavish way in which the French are catered for by their travelling showmen.

Cinematographs there were in profusion, most of them exhibiting scenes of a kind which would speedily be suppressed on this side the Channel; shooting galleries galore, exactly like our own; peep-shows, marionette theatres, panoramas; a booth with a two-headed bull and other monsters, a Breton bagpiper playing his instrument outside being worthy of inclusion in the list; but one saw no "fat women"--possibly because they are such common objects of French life! A large switchback railway seemed to be very popular, and, like all the rival attractions, its proprietors claimed for it the distinction of having come "direct from the Paris Exhibition," where it had been awarded first prize. The smallest side-shows, consisting of perhaps a few distorting mirrors, had all been "exhibited at Paris," and the two-headed bull was advertised by a huge painting showing all the crowned heads of Europe and President Loubet examining the beast, which, on inspection, turned out to be only a little removed from the normal by having a head slightly broader than usual, with the incipient formation of a third eye in its forehead, and a muzzle remotely suggestive of two joined together.

V.

A performance which I enjoyed not a little was given by a quack doctor. An enormous carriage, resembling in outline an old stage-coach, but decorated with much carved moulding and thickly covered with gilt and crimson, which produced a most bizarre effect, stood in an open space. Seated on the roof was a boy, who turned a machine which emitted the only hideous noise to be heard at the fair. In the open fore-part, richly cushioned, a man stood dressed in a dazzling suit of brass armour, his glittering helmet lying in front of him, and in his hand a small bottle of clear liquid. He was of the southern type, swarthy, wonderfully fluent of speech. He assured a gaping crowd that his medicine could cure any disease from toothache to tetanus, and he invited any sufferer to step up. Immediately one did so, the boy ground out the hideous din above, and the doctor sat for a few noisy seconds while his patient told him his trouble! Then the racket was stopped with a wave of the quack's hand, and he explained for five minutes, in vivid words, the terrible nature of the patient's disease, and invited the poor wretch to pick any bottle from the stock in front of him. This done, he had to open his waistcoat and shirt--for it was a severe pain in the left side from which he suffered--and the quack in armour struck the bottom of the bottle on his knee, thus causing the cork to pop out. He now shook the bottle vigorously with his forefinger on the neck, and the fluid changed into green, brown, and finally black, whereat the simpletons around marvelled, as they were meant to do. The comic practitioner next thrust the bottle into the open shirt-front of his patient, and shook the contents of it against the victim's skin, pressing his hand for a few moments on the part. Then he asked the fellow to step down as cured, and go among the crowd "telling his experience." A dozen cases were treated in less than half an hour--people with neuralgia, sprained wrists and ankles--and always the same formula as to consultation, explanation, application! A handful of liquid applied to a man's cheek evaporated mysteriously and worked wonders. Intending patients were told that the doctor could be consulted at the hotel near by during certain hours each day, and many must have gone to him there, for the fluent humbug had every appearance of driving a prosperous practice.

VI.

But the feature of this fair which, more than any other, distinguished it sharply from anything to be seen in our country, was "The Grand Theatre of the Walkyries and of the Passion of N. S. J. C." The mysterious initials stand for the French of "Our Lord Jesus Christ." A gentleman with a shaggy head of hair, dressed in a well-fitting frock-coat, and possessed of an excellent voice, stood on the platform outside, surrounded by oil paintings of sacred pictures and a dozen or more performers in the costumes of Roman soldiers, apostles and other Biblical characters. Judas was readily distinguished by his red hair, Mary by her nunlike garb. The showman announced that the performance was "about to commence," and urged us to walk up and witness the most pleasing spectacle of the fair. A hand-bill distributed among the crowd described the entertainment as a "mimodrame biblique" of the Passion, played, sung, enterpreted and mimicked by forty persons! "This spectacle, unique in France, will leave in the minds of the inhabitants of this town an unforgettable memory. It is not to be confounded with anything else you may have seen; it is no mere series of living pictures. At each performance M. Chaumont, the originator, will present twenty-one tableaux, three hundred costumes will be used, and three apotheoses will be shown. The establishment is comfortable, lighted by electricity from a plant of thirty-horse power. It is a spectacle of the best taste, pleasing to everyone, and families may come here with the fullest confidence. Balloons will be distributed to the children every Thursday." So ran the circular, which also contained the information (mendacious, I doubt not) that the entertainment was the property of a limited company with a capital of £20,000.

When the signal to begin was given the place was not more than half filled, and the audience seemed in no reverential mood. A pianist began to play on a very metallic piano, and outside the voice of the manager was still heard urging the crowd to "walk up" and "be in time." The drop-curtain was rolled up, and the manager stepped inside the building as a number of characters in the sacred drama filed on to the stage. He explained, in a rapid torrent of words, what they were supposed to be doing, but Judas jingled the filthy lucre so lustfully that the pantomime was very obvious in its purport. The curtain fell again, and the manager stepped outside to harangue the crowd while the second tableau was being prepared; but the ringing of a bell brought him in again, and so on through the whole series.

It must be confessed that the performance was carried out with no small dramatic ability, and M. Chaumont gave a wonderfully realistic interpretation of the rôle of Christ, some of the tableaux being strikingly conceived, as, for examples, the kiss of Judas and Christ before Pilate, the latter character being admirably represented by a performer who looked a veritable Roman proconsul, and washed his hands with traditional dignity. The Crucifixion, too, was represented with vivid reality; but the audience was disposed to laugh at the writhing of the malefactors on their crosses, and did indeed giggle when the soldier held up the sponge of vinegar to the dying Saviour. It was obvious that the whole performance, although really discharged by the actors with remarkable fidelity to tradition, and a commendable assumption of reverence, was more amusing than impressive to the spectators, who, though moved to laughter when St. Veronica pressed her handkerchief to the face of Christ and, turning to the audience, displayed the miraculous impression of His features, applauded the more dramatic scenes liberally. What interested me personally was M. Chaumont's idea of a miracle. Save that of St. Veronica, I have forgotten the others enacted; they were quite unfamiliar to me, but in the instant of each miracle a limelight was flashed for two or three seconds from "the flies," and this was supposed to betoken the super-natural character of the affair.

VII.

Of course, such a spectacle as I have described would be quite impossible in our country to-day, although time was in our history, when miracle plays were a recognised feature of the church in England. It was in no sense comparable with any of the passion plays still performed periodically in some continental towns, and while the incongruous surroundings of "The Grand Theatre of the Passion of N.S.J.C." were not calculated to induce a spirit of reverence in the spectators, it was a saddening spectacle to find an audience of Catholic people taking so lightly the representation of scenes which, however wrong in the light of history, should have been to them sacred subjects of faith.

It was characteristically French that immediately opposite the theatre wherein this Biblical pantomime was presented stood a large exhibition containing an enormous collection of pathological models and curiosities. This was, without doubt, the foulest display of unspeakable horrors to be seen in any civilised country in our time, for under the hypocritical plea of illustrating, by wax models and otherwise, the obstetrics of human life and the diseases of the body, its proprietor--a woman, if you will believe me--had gathered together a collection of incredible horrors which men and women, and even young people, were allowed to inspect on the payment of one franc. The same exhibition, which is probably not over-valued at £20,000, was actually brought to London some few years ago, but the police speedily cleared it out of our country.

These blots, however, are the only blemishes on the Orleans Fair, and for brightness, gaiety, and general good taste, I must conclude as I began, by saying that a French carnival is in every sense a more pleasing spectacle than any of our English or Scottish fairs present.

The Palace of the Angels

I.

It was in Evreux, while cycling through Normandy one summer, that my wife and I met three "new women," who were also touring the country a-wheel. Their route was for the most part the reverse of ours, but not so extended, and in discussing the country with them I asked how long they had spent at Mont St. Michel. "Oh, we have not gone there," was the reply; "we were told it wasn't interesting, and so we have kept away from it." We were saddened to find that three English women, especially of the "advanced type," could know so little of the monuments of France as to accept the irresponsible opinion of some one-eyed tourist, who in his or her idle babble had said Mont St. Michel was not worth visiting.

Not interesting, indeed! There is not in the whole of Normandy, in all France, in historic England even, an example of so much interest concentrated in so small a space. An enthusiastic Frenchman has described it as the eighth wonder of the world. Victor Hugo has said that Mont St. Michel is to France what the Pyramids are to Egypt. Large and deeply interesting volumes have been written about it. It will form a theme for writers for generations to come, and artists will employ their pencils here so long as a vestige of the wonderful buildings remains.

There is a strong temptation in writing of Mont St. Michel to fall into the style of the junior reporter, who will blandly tell you that a thing is indescribable, and immediately proceed to describe it. One is persuaded that this marvellous monument of the Middle Ages cannot be adequately described in plain prose, however apt the pen, yet one is equally desirous of making the attempt. But I shall promise my readers on this occasion to make no effort at an elaborate description, which, indeed, the space of a single chapter renders impossible, and to attempt no more than a general sketch of the most noteworthy features of the Mount.

II.