Part 32

Every year the truth of Burns’s “the best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley,” comes more home to me. From the time I was ten the Pass of Roncesvalles has had a fascination for me. Then the habit of ballad-singing was popular, and a relative of mine had a well-deserved repute in that line. Amongst her old-world favourites were “Boland the Brave” and “Durandarté.” The first told how Boland left his castle on the Rhine, where he used to listen to the chanting in the opposite convent, in which his lady-love had taken the veil on the false report of his death, and “think she blessed him in her prayer when the hallelujah rose”; and followed Charlemagne in his Spanish raid, till “he fell and wished to fall” at Boncesvalles. The second, how Durandarté, dying in the fatal pass, sent his last message to his mistress by his cousin Montesinos. In those days I never could hear the last lines without feeling gulpy in the throat:--

Kind in manners, fair in favour,

Mild in temper, fierce in fight,--

Warrior purer, gentler, braver,

Never shall behold the light.

They may not be good poetry, but Monk Lewis, the author, never wrote any others as good. Then Lockhart’s _Spanish Ballads_ were given me, and in one of the best of those stirring rhymes, Bernardo del Carpio’s bearding of his King, I read--

The life of King Alphonso I saved at Roncesval,

Your word, Lord King, was recompense abundant for it all;

Your horse was down, your hope was flown; I saw the falchion

shine

That soon had drunk thy royal blood had I not ventured mine, etc.

Then, a little later, a family friend who had been an ensign in the Light Division in July 1813, used to make our boyish pulses dance with his tales of the week’s fighting in and round Roncesvalles, when Soult was driven over the Pyrenees and Spain was freed. And again, later, came the tale of Taillefer, the Conqueror’s minstrel, riding before the line at the battle of Hastings, tossing his sword in the air, and chanting the “Song of Roland,” and of the “Peers who fell at Roncesvalles.” So you will believe, sir, that my first thought when I got to Biarritz, with the Pyrenees in full view less than twenty miles off, was, “Now I shall see the pass where Charlemagne’s peers, and five hundred British soldiers as brave as any paladin of them all, had fought and died.” The holidays galloped, and one day only was left, when at our morning conference I found that my companions were bent on Fontarabia and San Sebastian, and assured me we could combine the three, as Roncesvalles, they heard, was close to Fontarabia. Then my faith in Sir Walter--combined, I fear, with my defective training in geography--led me astray, for had he not written in the battle-canto of Marmion:--

Oh, for one blast of that dread horn,

On Fontarabian echoes borne,

That to King Charles did come,

When Roland brave, and Oliver,

And every Paladin and Peer,

At Roncesvalles died, etc.

Now, of course, if Charlemagne could hear the horn of Roland on the top of the pass where he turned back, “borne on Fontarabian echoes,” then Fontarabia must be at the foot of the pass, where Roland and the rear-guard were surrounded and fighting for their lives. In a weak moment I agreed to Fontarabia and San Sebastian, and so shall most likely never see Roncesvalles. It is fourteen miles distant as the crow flies, or thereabouts; and I warn your readers that the three can’t be done in one long day from Biarritz.

However, I am bound to admit that Fontarabia and San Sebastian make a most interesting day’s work. I had never been in Spain before, and so was well on the alert when a fellow-passenger, as we slowed on approaching the station, pointed across the sands below us and said, “There’s Fontarabia!” There, perhaps two miles off, lay a small gray town on a low hill with castle and church at the top, and gateway and dilapidated walls on the side towards*us, looking as though it might have gone off to sleep in the seventeenth century--a really curious contrast to bustling Biarritz from which we had just come. We went down to the ferry and took a punt to cross the river, which threaded the broad sands left by the tide. It was full ebb; so our man had to take us a long round, giving us welcome time for the view, which, when the tide is up, must be glorious. Our bare-footed boatman, though Basque or Spaniard, was quite “up to date,” and handled his punt pole in a style which would make him a formidable rival of the Oxford watermen in the punt race by Christ Church meadow, which, I suppose, is still held at the end of the summer term. A narrow, rough causeway led us from the landing-place to the town-gate in the old wall, where an artist who had joined the party was so taken with the view up the main street that he sat down at once to about as difficult a sketch as he will meet in a year’s rambles. For from the gateway the main street runs straight up the hill to the ruined castle and church at the top. It is narrow, steep, and there are not two houses alike all the way up. They vary from what must have been palaces of the grandees--with dim coats-of-arms still visible over the doorways, and elaborately carved, deep eaves, almost meeting those of their opposite neighbours across the street--to poor, almost squalid houses, reaching to the second story of their aristocratic neighbours’, but all with deep, overhanging, though uncarved eaves, showing, I take it, how the Spaniard values his shade. Up we went to the church and castle, the ladies looking wistfully into such shops as there were, to find something to buy; but I fancy in vain. Not a tout appeared to offer his services; or a shopkeeper, male or female, to sell us anything. Such of the Fontarabians as we saw looked at us with friendly enough brown eyes, which, however, seemed to say, “Silly souls! Why can’t you stop at home and mind your own business?” Even at the end of our inspection, when we spread our lunch on a broad stone slab near the gate--the tombstone once, I should think, of a paladin--there being no houses of entertainment visible to us, we had almost a difficulty in attracting three or four children and a stray dog to share our relics.

The old castle is of no special interest, though there were a few rusty old iron tubes lying about, said to have once been guns, which I should doubt; and Charles V. is said to have often lived there during his French wars. The church is very interesting, from its strong contrast with those over the border--square, massive, sombre, with no attempt at decoration or ornament round the high brass altars, except here and there a picture, and small square windows quite high up in the walls, through which the quiet, subdued light comes. The pictures, with one exception, were of no interest; but that one exception startled and fascinated me. The subject is the “Mater Dolorosa,” a full-length figure standing, the breast bare, and seven knives plunged in the heart,--a coarse and repulsive painting, but entirely redeemed by the intense expression of the love, the agony, grid the sorely shaken faith which are contending for mastery in the face. The painter must have been suddenly inspired, or some great master must have stepped in to finish the work. San Sebastian does not do after Fontarabia; a fine modern town, with some large churches and a big new bull-ring, but of little interest except for the fort which dominates the town on the sea-front. How that fort was stormed, after one repulse and a long siege of sixty-three days; how, in the two assaults and siege, more than four thousand gallant soldiers of the British and allied army fell; and the fearful story of the sack and burning of the old town by the maddened soldiers, is to me almost the saddest episode in our military history. I was glad when we had made our cursory inspection and got back to the station on our return to Biarritz. That brightest and most bustling of health resorts was our head-quarters, and I should think for young English folk must be about the most enjoyable above ground. I knew that it was becoming a formidable rival of the Riviera for spring quarters, but was not at all prepared for the facts. Almost the first thing I saw was a group of young Englishmen in faultless breeches and gaiters, just come back from a meet of the pack of hounds; next came along some fine strapping girls in walking costume, bent, I should think, on exploring the neighbouring battlegrounds; next, men and youths in flannels, bound for the golf links, where a handicap is going on (I wonder what a French caddie is like?); then I heard of, but did not see, the start of the English coach for Pau (it runs daily); and then youths on bicycles, unmistakable Britons,--though the French youth have taken kindly, I hear, to this pastime. There are four gigantic hotels at which friends told me that nothing is heard but English at their _tables d’hôte_; and in the quiet and excellent small “Hôtel de Bayonne,” at which we stayed, having heard that it was a favourite with the French, out of the forty guests or thereabouts, certainly three-fourths were English, and the other one-fourth mostly Americans. On Easter Monday there was a procession of cars, with children in fancy dresses representing the local industries; but the biggest was that over which the Union Jack waved, and a small and dainty damsel sat on the throne surrounded by boys in the orthodox rig of a man-of-war’s-man and Tommy Atkins. In fact, a vast stream of very solvent English seem to have fairly stormed and occupied the place, to the great delight of the native car-drivers and shopkeepers; and so grotesque was it that Byron’s cynical doggerel kept sounding in my head as, at any rate, appropriate to Biarritz:

The world is a bundle of hay,

Mankind are the asses that pull;

Each tugs in a different way,

And the greatest of all is John Bull.

But, apart from all the high jinks and festive goings-on, there is one spot in Biarritz which may well prove a magnet to us, and before which we should stand with uncovered heads and sorrowfully proud hearts; and that is the fine porch of the English church. One whole side of it is filled by a tablet, at the head of which one reads: “_Pristinæ virtutis memor_. This porch, dedicated to the memory of the officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the British army, who fell in the south-west of France from 7th October 1813 to 14th April 1814, was erected by their fellow-soldiers and compatriots, 1882.” Then come the names of forty-eight Line regiments, and the German Legion, followed in each case by the death-roll, the officers’ names given in full. Let me end with a few examples. The 42nd lost ten officers--two at Nive, one at Orthez, and seven at Toulouse; the 43rd--five at Nivelle and Bayonne; the 57th--six at Nivelle and Nive; the 79th--five at Toulouse, of whom three bore the name of Cameron; the 95th--six at the Bidassoa, Nivelle, and Nive. Such a record, I think, brings home to one even more vividly than Napier’s pages the cost to England of her share in the uprising of Europe against Napoleon; and it only covers six months of a seven years’ struggle in the Peninsula! At the bottom of the tablet are the simple words:--

Give peace in our time, oh Lord!

Echoes from Auvergne, La Bourboule, 2nd July 1893.

We had heard through telegrams and short paragraphs in the French papers of the sinking of the _Victoria_ before the _Spectator_ of 1st July came to us here, in these far-away highlands of Auvergne; but yours was the first trustworthy account in any detail which reached us. I am sure that others must have felt as thankful to you as I did, for your word was worthy the occasion, and told as it should be told, one of the stories which ennoble a nation, and remain a [Greek phrase] for all time. The lonely figure on the bridge is truly, as you say, a subject for a great pictorial artist, and belongs “rather to the poet than the journalist”; and one trusts that Sir George Tryon’s may stand out hereafter in worthy verse as one of “the few clarion names” in our annals. But it was surely the noble steadfastness of all, from admiral to stoker, which has once more given us all “that leap of heart whereby a people rise” to a keener consciousness of the meaning of national life. I think one feels it even more out here amongst strangers than one would have felt it at home, and can give God thanks that the old ideal has come out again in the sinking of the _Victoria_ as it did in that of the _Birkenhead_ forty years ago, when the ship’s boats took off all the women and children, and the big ship went down at last “still under steadfast men.”

Those are, as you know, the words of Sir Francis Doyle, who gave voice to the mixed anguish and triumph of the nation in worthy verse. I heard the great story from the lips of one of the simplest of men, Colonel Wright, who as a subaltern had formed the men up on the deck of the _Birkenhead_ under Colonel Seton, and stood at his place on the right of the line when she broke in two. He was entangled for some moments in the sinking wreck, but managed to free himself, and, being a famous swimmer, rose to the surface, and struck out for the shore amongst a number of the men. It must have been one of the most trying half hours that men ever went through; for, as they swam and cheered one another, now and again a comrade would suddenly disappear, and they knew that one of the huge sharks they had seen from the deck, passing backwards and forwards under the doomed ship, was amongst them. When they had all but reached the shore the man who swam by Wright’s side was taken. When I heard the tale he was Assistant-Inspector of Volunteers under Colonel M’Murdo, and going faithfully through his daily work. Strange to say, neither Horse Guards nor War Office had taken any note of that unique deck-parade and swim for life, and Ensign Wright had risen slowly to be Major and Sub-Inspector of Volunteers. Stranger still, he seemed to think it all right, and there was no trace of resentment or jealousy in his plain statement of the facts--which, indeed, I had to draw out by cross-questioning on our march from the Regent’s Park to our headquarters in Bloomsbury. I was so moved by the story that I wrote it all to Mr. Cardwell, then at the War Office, and had the pleasure of seeing Major Wright’s name in the next _Gazette_ amongst the new C.B.’s.

Well, well! It does one good now and then to breathe for a little in a rarer and nobler atmosphere than that of everyday, into which we must after all sink, and live there for nine-tenths of our time,--like the old fish-wife, Mucklebackit, going back to mending the old nets and chaffering over the price of herrings which have been bought by men’s lives. And here we have great placards just out, announcing “Fêtes de jour et de nuit,” with donkey-races and all manner of games, and fireworks, including an “embrasement général,” whatever that may forebode. “This life would be quite endurable but for its amusements,” said Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, a wise man and excellent Minister of the Crown.

Our first Sunday at La Bourboule has been edifying from the Sabbatarian point of view, and I shouldn’t wonder if the good little parson who is taking the duty here during the bathing-season holds it up to us for instruction next Sunday, if he can get a room for service, and a congregation. There is no English church, and from what I hear not much prospect of an arrangement for joint worship in the French Protestant church, which was almost concluded, being carried out. Unfortunately, a succession of young Ritualists have managed to alarm the French Protestant pastor and his small flock, by treating them as Dissenters, and making friends ostentatiously with the Roman Catholic priests. However, happily the present incumbent (or whatever he should be called) is a sensible moderately broad Churchman, who it may be hoped will bring things straight again. But to return to my Sabbatarian story. An English lady fond of equestrian exercise hired horses for herself and a friend, and invited the able and pleasant young Irishman who doctors us all, and is also churchwarden, to accompany them for a ride in these lovely mountains. They started from this hotel, and, as it happened, just as the parson was coming by; so, not being quite easy in their consciences (I suppose), asked him if he saw any harm in it. To this he replied, sensibly enough, that it was their fight, not his; and if they saw none, he had nothing to say. So off they rode, meaning certainly to be back by 8 P.M. for supper. I was about till nearly nine, when they had not turned up; and next morning I heard the conclusion of the whole matter. The doctor’s horse cast a shoe, and had to be led home, limping slightly; while the lady’s horse came back dead-lame, and her companion’s steed with both knees broken! Judging by the unmistakable talent of these good Bourboulais for appreciating the value to their guests of their water and other possessions, I should say that this Sunday ride will prove a costly indulgence to the excursionists.

La Bourboule, 10th July 1893.

Currency questions are surely amongst the things “which no fellow can understand,”--a truth for which. I think, sir, I may even claim you as a witness, after reading your cautious handling of the silver question in recent numbers. But so far as my experience goes, there are no questions as to which it is more difficult to shake convictions than those which have been arrived at by unscientific persons. For instance, in this very charming health-resort, the authorities at the Établissement des Bains, where one buys bath-tickets, are under the delusion that 20 fr. (French money) are the proper equivalent for the English sovereign. On my first purchase of six tickets, amounting to 15 fr. (each bath costs 2 fr. 50 c., or 50 c. more than at Royat), the otherwise intelligent person who presided at the _caisse d’établissement_, tendered me a single 5 fr. piece; and on my calling his attention to the mistake, as I supposed it to be, and demanding a second 5 fr., calmly informed me that 20 fr. was the change they always gave, and he could give no other. Whereupon, I carried off my sovereign in high dudgeon, and--there being neither bank nor money-changer’s office in this place, though more than twenty large hotels!--applied to two of the larger shops only to find the same delusion in force. In short, I only succeeded in getting 25 fr. in exchange for my sovereign as a favour from our kind hostess at this hotel. Wherefore, as I hear that a great crowd of English are looked for next month, I should like to warn them to bring French money with them. This experience reminded me of a good story which I heard Thackeray tell thirty years ago. (If it is in _The Kicklebury’s on the Rhine_, or printed elsewhere, you will suppress it). Either he himself or a friend, I forget which, changed a sovereign on landing in Holland, put the change in one particular pocket, and on crossing each frontier on his way to the South of Italy, before that country or Germany had been consolidated, again exchanged the contents of that pocket for the current coin of the Kingdom, Duchy, or Republic he was entering. On turning out the contents at Naples he found them equivalent to something under 5s. of English money.

Before I forget it, let me modify what I said last week as to the ecclesiastical position of the Protestants here.

The Anglicans are now represented by the “Colonial and Continental Society.” They sent a clergyman, who has managed so well that we are now on excellent terms with our French Protestant brethren, though we have as yet no joint place of worship. This, however, both congregations hope to secure shortly,--indeed, as soon as they can collect £400, half of which is already in hand. Then the municipality, or the “Compagnie d’Établissement des Bains,” I am not sure which, give a site, and another £400, which will be enough to pay for a small church sufficient for the present congregations. These will hold the building in common, and, let us hope, will adjust the hours for the services amicably. At present, the French Protestants worship in the _buvette_, where we all drink our waters; and we Anglicans in an annex of the establishment--a large room devoted during the week to Punch and Judy and the marionettes. This rather scandalises some of our compatriots; I cannot for the life of me see why. Indeed, it seems to me a very healthy lesson to most of us, who are accustomed to the ritual which prevails in so many of our restored, or recently built, English churches,--the lesson which Jacob learnt on his flight from his father’s tents, when he slept in the desert with a stone for pillow, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” Our congregation yesterday was something over thirty. I believe it rises to one hundred, or more, next month. The service was thoroughly hearty, and I really think every one must have come meaning to say their prayers. I felt a slight qualm as to how we should get on with the singing, and could not think why the parson should choose about the longest hymn in the book, for there was no organ, harmonium, or other musical instrument, and no apparent singing-men or singing-women. However, my qualms vanished when our pastor led off with a well-trained tenor voice which put us all at our ease.