In the vine country

by E. Oe. Somerville; Martin Ross

The few days that we spent there with Monsieur and Madame A. were like no other part of our lives, and retained to the last the ease and enjoyment and the pervading sense of welcome that came so soothingly to us that first afternoon. English management and comforts were not made incongruous by the aromatic flavour of French surroundings and the vivid pageant of the vintage; each accented the other, and retired into the background with unfailing fitness. It was near the end of the vintage when we arrived. The handsome red and white buildings which held the cuvier, the long line of stables and farm-buildings, the immense storehouses full of wine and wine barrels, were at their busiest, and on the slopes below the château the vintagers were working at top speed to finish by the end of the week. As we walked through the long vineyards by the river, the grapeless rows of vines looked forlorn and elderly, like mothers who have married off their daughters and have no occupation left. It was far more inspiriting to move farther on, and watch the sight that was now so familiar and yet always so fresh, the women’s figures moving waist-high in the green,—the men carrying the heavy hottes of fruit on their necks, the overseer with his eight-foot pole pointing fatefully to the bunch of grapes left behind by the careless vendangeuses, the hurry and bustle of everything, and the creamy oxen stepping slowly and imperturbably through it all, with their seventeen hands of height shrouded in grey draperies to preserve them from the flies, sentient apparently of nothing except the driver’s voice and the guiding

FIN DE VENDANGE.

touch of his stick. There is a stable full of great English cart-horses at Loudenne, such as had not been seen in France since the days of Agincourt, but these descendants of the mediæval warhorse are used only for the rougher farm-work; it is said that the oxen, from their clockwork slowness and placidity, do not break and injure the vines as a horse might, and though this is contradicted, and the days of oxen are said to be numbered in the Médoc, they still pace in couples from vineyard to cuvier, setting their hoofs down together with the grave accuracy of a minuet, neither slackening nor straining, whether the two tall tubs on the cart behind them are full or empty.

The clack of conversation died down a little while we stood with Monsieur A. and looked on at the work, but one could feel that it was a seething repression, as of soda-water behind its cork. We felt bound, however, to combat the justice of giving the women less wages than the men on the grounds that they talked more; it seemed to us that no created being could talk in such volumes as the male Médoc peasant, unless it be a Galway beggar, or a Skibbereen fishwoman before the Bench. The next piece of information seemed, from previous observation, more likely. It is calculated that the vintagers on this estate eat during the vintage an amount of grapes equal to a hogshead of claret—a creditable performance for people who are forbidden to eat any, and are under constant strict surveillance. ‘We cannot enforce the rule,’ said Monsieur A., beckoning to us two girls from the end of a row; ‘we can only prove when it is broken. Put out your tongues!’

This direction was to the two grinning vendangeuses; and, in response, two large tongues, as purple-black as a parrot’s, were presented to us, while the eyes of their owners goggled above them with guilty deprecation and an inextinguishable sense of the absurdity of the situation. They had the full sympathy of the jury, and the judge only held up his hands and laughed too.

It was already late in the day, and sunset and its signal to leave off work came soon. The crowd flocked out of the vines—men, women, and children, talking and laughing with unexhausted zest, and grouping themselves in the sandy cart-track in unerring harmonies of blue and white and grey, flecked here and there with the flash of a red kerchief or cap. The movement towards home gradually assumed the aspect of a religious procession. Headed by the sacrificial oxen and their load of grapes, it passed slowly through the vineyards in the dewy spell of the evening, till, as it moved distantly up the slopes and breasted the afterglow, it seemed that a Samian glade and a temple to Ceres must be its destination. It was the last of the vintage, and the first feeling of coming farewell touched us while we came back among the stripped vines; the metallic whirr of the cigales and the loud interjections of the bullfrogs were the only voices left to replace the shrill babble that had penetrated every square yard of the green landscape. A suspicion of frost was in the air, touching the tender evening like a spur, to remind it of the tyranny that was to come, when the vines would shrink to brown skeletons, and the winter day would darken above them to its setting, in the chilly silence of the snow.

Dinner was scarcely over that evening when the scraping of a fiddle and the husky note of a flute were audible in the hall, and as we came into the drawing-room there entered by the other door a group of people who might have come straight out of Arcadia or an Italian opera. In front were the two musicians, playing a gay little tune, while behind them two peasant girls advanced, carrying each an enormous bouquet of flowers, with a party of the vintagers bringing up the rear. The music finished with a flourish, and one of the bearers of the bouquets brought her offering forward and presented it to Monsieur A. with a few eulogistic sentences, followed by the second bearer, who performed the like office for Madame A. How in this position would an English country gentleman have stiffened, stammered, and assumed a galvanic gratification; how his wife would have murmured inane thanks with uneasy condescension; and how totally different in all particulars was the demeanour of Monsieur and Madame A.! Each in turn made a speech of a few sentences, with perfect graciousness, point, and fluency; they even looked as if they thoroughly enjoyed doing it, and we gaped from the background with respectful admiration. The fiddle and flute struck up again, and to their music the deputation withdrew, leaving just enough flavour of garlic behind to blend quaintly with the heliotrope and rose perfumes of the two bouquets.

This ceremonial was the prelude of the dance that celebrated the fin de vendange, and a little later we wrapped ourselves in shawls and went out to join in the revels. The room in which the vintagers dine at the Château Loudenne is an extremely large one, with a musicians’ gallery running across one end of it—an accessory that showed that dancing was as recognised a part of the programme as dinner. The dance had hardly begun when we came in; a few of the smaller kind were plodding round in a kind of polka with only three steps to the bar, but the men were for the most part grouped near the door, and the ladies lined the benches, calm in the certainty that they were in the minority. We took our seats at the top of the room under the musicians’ gallery, prepared to observe with the intelligent interest of the tourist this splash of local colour that good luck had thrown in our way. The music ceased, and there was a pause, during which the men filed into the room and partners were chosen, while an incredible clang of talk filled the air. Presently a hoot from the long horn announced the beginning of the dance, and each man grasped his partner by the waist and led her forth. It was called a contre-danse, and by the time that a tune of the most furious friskiness had been played through once, ten or twelve couples were standing, not only ready, but prancing in their impatience to start. The men were mostly small, agile creatures of comparatively tender years; the women, on the contrary, were tall and stout, seemingly of a different race, and not by any means distressingly young. In fact, the pretty girls whom we had picked out as the probable belles of the entertainment were sitting neglected round the room, talking apparently to their fathers and mothers.

As soon, however, as the signal to go had been given, we realised that, in the practical Médoc, ‘handsome is that handsome does.’ The tall person whom we had lightly compared to a bolster, went away down the room as if there were a spiral spring inside the bolster-case, and her matronly vis-à-vis advanced to meet her in a manner only comparable to ‘the way the divil went through Athlone, in standing leps,’ to quote Sergeant Mulvaney. We watched these gambols in undisturbed enjoyment for about a minute, and then suddenly my cousin was aware of a man standing in front of her, bowing, and silently holding out both hands.