Part 8 (1/2)
Pichon, made a speech in which he openly avowed the object of laicising the schools to be the destruction of religion. 'Between you, the Catholics,' he exclaimed, 'and us, who are Republicans, there is a great abyss. The interests of the Church are incompatible with those of the Republican Government.' That the Republicans in the a.s.sembly should have applauded this declaration is rather astonis.h.i.+ng, since it was in substance an admission that the interests of the 'Republican Government'
are inconsistent with those of an admittedly immense majority of the French people. But they did applaud it, and not long before M. Pichon made the speech a solid Republican vote of 232 members had been recorded for the suppression of the French Emba.s.sy to the Vatican. Is it surprising that the Catholics of France should be asking themselves all over the country whether it is possible for them to accept the Republic without abjuring their religion?
The 'abyss' of which M. Pichon speaks has been dug, not by the Church, but by the theorists who have expelled the Sisters of Charity from the hospitals and the chaplains from the prisons of France, who refuse to the poor the right to pray in the almshouses, and who throw the crucifix out of school-houses which are maintained by the money of Catholic taxpayers. As between M. Pichon and M. Ferry and their fellow-conspirators on one side of this abyss, and the Marist Brethren and the little children of France on the other side of it, the history of the world hardly encourages the belief that it is the Marist Brethren and the little children who will finally be engulfed!
It is a notable proof of the hold which Catholic ideas have upon the people in this part of France, that notwithstanding a marked tendency to emigration among the peasantry of the Boulonnais and of Artois, the population has steadily increased through the excess of births over deaths. This is not true of France as a whole. On the contrary, while the deaths in France in 1888 were 837,857, against an annual average of 847,968 from 1884 to 1887, the births diminished from an annual average of 937,090 between 1881 and 1884 to 882,639 in 1888, leaving the small excess of 44,772 over the deaths. Of these only 33,458 were of French parentage! In Artois and the Boulonnais, the population is more dense than in any other part of France, excepting the metropolitan regions.
While France, as a whole, in 1881, gave an average of seventy inhabitants to the square kilometre, which is the precise proportion in Bavaria--the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Bethune in the coal-mining country of Artois (fed by an exceptional immigration from Belgium) gave 173 to the square kilometre, which exceeds the proportion in any division of the German Empire except Saxony, Lubeck, Bremen, and Hamburg.
The Department of the Pas-de-Calais, as a whole, gave 117 inhabitants to the square kilometre, which is the precise proportion in Saxe-Altenburg, and exceeds by five the proportion in the British Islands taken as a whole. In the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of St.-Omer the rate of increase by natural growth some years ago outran that of the older sea-board States of the American Union.
This phenomenon cannot be explained by the improvidence of the Artesians, for they are admittedly remarkable, even in France, for their frugality and their forecasting habit of mind. A friend of mine, who lives near St.-Omer, is probably right when he attributes it to their strong domestic tastes and habits, and to the influence over them of their religion. He says they are 'fanatics of the family.' Certainly in the cottages the children seem to have things all their own way, almost as much as in America. 'The Artesian parents,' my friend tells me, 'make their children the objects of their lives.' In the rural regions there is not much immorality. Concubinage, which is by no means uncommon in the towns, is exceedingly uncommon in the country of Artois.
The agricultural Artesian wishes to be the recognised head of his house, hates to have things at loose ends, and habitually makes his wife a consulting partner in all his affairs. Even when he is not particularly devout he likes to be on good terms with, his curate, and has very positive ideas as to what is decent and becoming. 'In short,' said my friend, 'he is an ideal husbandman in every sense of that English word, for which we have no equivalent. The a.s.size records show that offences against public morality are almost wholly confined to the towns in Artois, and it is a notable fact that these particular offences are much more frequently committed by persons who can read and write than by the illiterate.'
My friend seemed to be startled when I told him that this 'notable fact'
appeared to me to be quite in accordance with the nature of things, as set forth in the sound old maxim cited by the Apostle, that 'evil communications corrupt good manners.' So long as thirty years ago, the American Census showed that in the six New England States, in which the proportion of illiterate native Americans to the native white population was 1 to 312, the proportion to the native white population of native white criminals was 1 to 1,084; whereas, in the six southern States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and the two Carolinas, the proportion of native white illiterates being 1 to 12 of the native white population, the proportion of native white criminals to the native white population was only 1 to 6,670. Mr. Montgomery of California, a.s.sistant-Attorney-General of the United States in the Administration of President Cleveland, working on the lines of inquiry suggested by such facts as these, did not hesitate, two years ago, to a.s.sert that 'the boasted New England public school system, as now by law established throughout the length and breadth of the American Republic, is a poisonous fountain fraught with the seeds of human misery and moral death.' He cites the official statistics given by a New England professor, Mr. Royce, to prove that 'there is hardly a state or country in the civilised world, where atrocious and flagrant crimes are so common as in educated Ma.s.sachusetts,' and he shows that the alarming and unquestionable increase of crime in the United States cannot be attributed, as it too often is, to the 'foreign element in American society, the criminal rate of which has remained the same or even lessened, while the native criminals increased during 1860-1870, from 10,143 to 24,173.' During that decade the total population of the United States increased from 31,443,321 to 38,567,617. Deducting 2,466,752 for the increase by immigration, we have a general increase of 4,657,538 in the native American population, or of less than 15 per cent, against an increase of about 140 per cent. in the number of native white criminals!
It is no part of my present purpose to discuss Mr. Montgomery's contention. But it seems to me to deserve grave consideration in connection with the adventure to which the French Republican Government has committed itself, of suddenly subst.i.tuting for the religious and parental system of education in France, a French modification, in the interest of unbelief, of that American public school system which, as Mr. Montgomery maintains, rests upon the principle 'that the whole people must be educated to a certain degree at the public expense, irrespectively of any social distinctions.'
I have already said that St.-Omer appears to be in its politics decidedly Republican. An odd ill.u.s.tration of this I found in a hot local controversy waging there over the setting up of a statue in one of the public squares, to commemorate the courage and patriotism of a local heroine, Jacqueline Robins. This statue, which, as a work of art is not unworthy to be compared with the statue of Jeanne Hachette at Beauvais, was set up, with much ceremony, in 1884 (I believe the State paid for it), and stands upon a pedestal, with an inscription setting forth how Jacqueline Robins, in the year 1710, saved the besieged city of St.-Omer by going off herself with a train of boats down the Aa to Dunkirk, and bringing back the provisions and munitions of war necessary for the defence of the city.
As the city of St.-Omer was certainly not besieged in 1710, this inscription naturally excited the critical indignation of the local antiquaries, and on July 27, 1885, an exceedingly clear and conclusive report on the subject was laid before the Society of Antiquaries of Morinia, a body which has done good service to the cause of history in Northern France. From this report it plainly appears that St.-Omer was not besieged at all in 1710. Prince Eugene, who marched into Artois with the Duke of Marlborough in that year in pursuit of Villars, wished to attack St.-Omer after the fall of Douai and Bethune, but the States-General of Holland would not hear of it; and the gallant defence made of Aire-sur-la-Lys by the Marquis de Goesbriant kept the allies at bay so late in the year that no attempt upon St.-Omer could be made. The local chronicles rejoice over this escape, particularly, because they say the Duke of Marlborough had vowed special vengeance against the city, its authorities having refused to oblige him by getting out of the English Jesuits' College and sending him certain papers which the d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton (the wife of the brilliant duke who was killed in Hyde Park by Lord Mohun and General Macartney) desired him to procure for her use in a law suit against 'Lord Bromley.'[2] St.-Omer, then, not having been besieged in 1710, why should a statue be set up in honour of an Audomaraise dame for delivering it? On this point the Report of the Society of Antiquaries throws a sufficient and interesting light. It seems that there really lived in St.-Omer in 1710 a certain dame Jacqueline Isabelle Robins, obviously a woman of mark and force, since she carried on a number of thriving industries, and among them the management, under a contract, of the boats between St.-Omer, Calais, and Dunkirk. Napoleon would have thought her much superior to Madame de Stael, for before she was forty years old she had married three husbands, and surrounded herself with six or seven flouris.h.i.+ng olive branches. She was constantly in the law courts fighting for her rights, not against private persons only, but against the 'mayor and echevins of the city of St.-Omer.' Though St.-Omer, as I have said, was not besieged by the allies, it was constantly occupied by the troops of his Most Christian Majesty, who gave the magistrates and the people almost as much trouble as if they had been enemies, and the records show that not long before the surrender of Aire-sur-la-Lys to the allies in November 1710, the Comte d'Estaing (an ancestor of the Admiral who did such good service to the American cause), under orders from Versailles succeeded in bringing to St.-Omer from Dunkirk a complete supply of powder and other munitions of war. It seems to be likely enough that in this operation the military authorities availed themselves of the services of dame Jacqueline and of her boats. As she was a masterful dame, and, burying her third husband, who was twelve years her junior, in 1720, lived on to depart at the age of seventy-five in 1732, a local legend evidently grew up about her personal share in the events of the great war of 1710. The first official historian of St.-Omer, a worthy priest Dom Devienne, writing in 1782, gave this legend form. As he transformed Jacqueline from a rich and prosperous woman of affairs into a 'woman of the dregs of the people,' calling her Jane, by the way, instead of Jacqueline, she became, after the Revolution, a popular heroine; her third husband, who appears to have been a young Squire de Boyaval and a das.h.i.+ng grey mousquetaire of King Louis, was metamorphosed into a brewer's apprentice (Jacqueline among her other possessions owned a brewery); and now, in the year 1889 we have the thrifty dame who helped the king's officers carry out the king's orders for the supplying of St.-Omer, immortalised in bronze as an Audomaraise Jeanne Hachette or Maid of Saragossa!
[2] This is a curious sidelight on English political history. 'Lord Bromley' was obviously Sir William Bromley, M.P., the bitter enemy of Marlborough, who earned the undying hatred of the d.u.c.h.ess by comparing her to Alice Perrers, the mistress of Edward III. In 1705 Harley prevented the election of Bromley as Speaker by re-publis.h.i.+ng an account of the 'Grand Toure' written by him, and foisting into it notes intended to show that Bromley was a 'Papist.' Bromley was again a candidate for the same office in 1710, and Marlborough evidently hoped to get from St.-Omer doc.u.mentary proof of the 'papistry' of his foe. The second d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton came, I think, of a Catholic family, and may have thought she had a clue to these doc.u.ments. The intrigue, however, failed, and Bromley was elected Speaker without opposition in November, 1710.
Is not this worthy to stand on record with Sir Roger de Coverley's tale of the old coachman who had a monument in Westminster Abbey because he figured on the box of the coach in which Thomas Thynne of Longleat was barbarously murdered by Count Konigsmark?
The Republican Mayor of St.-Omer took sides on the question of Jacqueline Robins in 1885 with the Republican 'Professor of History in the Lyceum,' both of them being 'officers of the Academy,' against the Society of Antiquaries; and I dare say the matter may affect the Parliamentary elections in September, 1889!
CHAPTER III
IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--_continued_
AIRE-SUR-LA-LYS
It is a local tradition at Aire-sur-la-Lys that, about half a century ago, the good people of this ancient and picturesque town (which, like St.-Omer, remained a part of the Spanish dominions when all the rest of the Artois became French by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659) turned out with flags and music to welcome their mayor back from Paris, bringing the good news that the projected Northern railway should not pa.s.s through their territory, to disturb their settled trade.
This unique incident is often cited to show the tenacious conservatism of the Artesians. I believe, however, it only proves that the people of Aire, dwelling in a region which has been fought over from time immemorial, had a well-grounded objection to the exclusively military views with which Marshal Soult then desired that the Government of Louis Philippe should take up and carry out the projected enterprise.
At all events, Aire-sur-la-Lys now rejoices in a comfortable little railway station, which makes it an important point in the system of the Northern Railway of France.
There, on a lovely evening in June, I found the carriage of M. Labitte, one of the Councillors-General of the department, waiting to take me to his charming and hospitable home in the richly-cultivated agricultural commune of St.-Quentin.
It was on the eve of Pentecost when, as the German poet tells us, 'the woods and fields put off all sadness,' and a lovelier summer evening it would be hard to find even in England.
M. Labitte is a Conservative and a devout Catholic. As I have already mentioned, he was a candidate in the Pas-de-Calais in 1886 for the seat in the Chamber now held by M. Camesca.s.se, and received 74,554 votes against 86,356 for his opponent. In Aire he was beaten by only 22 votes out of a total of 3,536. His influence in the country here is, in a certain sense, hereditary, for he came of a family which in the last century gave many excellent ecclesiastics to the service of the Church, among a population then, as now, remarkable for its strong religious feeling. When the States-General were convened by Louis XVI. a century ago, the first date fixed for the elections in Artois had to be postponed, at the request of the Duc de Guines, because it interfered with Easter. The Artesians cared more for the Church than for the State.
Yet, in no part of France was the calling of the States-General more popular, and nowhere were more efforts made before 1789 than in Artois to improve the condition of the people and to secure a more just and liberal fiscal administration. The clergy were extraordinarily powerful in Artois, alike by reason of their property and of the religious disposition of the people; and it is a curious and interesting fact that under the const.i.tution of the Estates of Artois it was established (thanks to the union of the clergy with the Third Estate) that, while no votes of the n.o.bility and the clergy united should bind the Third Estate, any joint vote of the Third Estate with either of the other two orders should bind them all. Here, long before the much-bewritten date of 1789, we have the Church in Artois arraying itself on the side of the tax-paying people against the privileged cla.s.ses. Modern inquiries show, indeed, that this was the att.i.tude of the great body of the French clergy long before what is called the 'Revolution.' The majority of the representatives of the clergy in the States-General of 1789 did not wait for the theatrical demonstrations in the Tennis Court of Versailles, about which so much nonsense has been talked and written, to join the Third Estate in insisting upon a real reform of the public service. No French historian has ventured to make such a picture of the Catholic clergy of France under the Bourbons as Lord Macaulay thought himself authorised to paint of the Protestant clergy of England under the Stuarts. There were flagrant scandals among the higher orders of the Church in France, no doubt, as there were in England. The names of Dubois, of Lomenie de Brienne, of De Rohan are not a.s.sociated with the cardinal virtues. De Jarente, Bishop of Orleans, driving Mdlle. Guimard to the opera in his coronetted and mitred coach, is not an edifying figure, nor is Louis de Grimaldi, Bishop of Mans, saying Ma.s.s in his red hunting-coat and breeches. But the Protestant Dean of St. Patrick's thought the execution for felony of another Protestant dean a capital theme for a merry ballad; and at the end of the eighteenth century Arthur Young painted the English rural clergy in very dark colours. The curates, the rectors, the monks of France as a body, showed under the old regime the same qualities of devout faith and Christian sympathy with the people with which they met and baffled their persecutors after the crash of the monarchy. The three representatives of the clergy who first struck hands with the Third Estate on June 13, 1789, were curates sent to Paris by a province more intensely Catholic than Artois. They were Poitevin priests from the region which we now know as La Vendee, and which only four years afterwards rose in arms to defend its altars and its homes against the intolerable despotism of the 'patriots' of Paris.
When Turgot was put in charge of that work of fiscal reform which might have spared France the horrors and the disasters of the Revolution, had Louis XVI. been capable of standing even by Turgot to the end, he carried on an extensive correspondence with curates in Artois as well as in the other provinces of France, as the best means of educating the people to an intelligent appreciation of his purposes and of his plans.