A PEASANT CHILD OF NORMANDY.
The peasant might almost be said to wear a uniform, so universal in France is the soft black felt hat and the dark-blue cotton smock in which he appears in the market-place. In this garb one sees a wide variety of national types, from the English-looking men of Normandy to the dark-complexioned, black-haired, and lithe race of the south. Often the latter have an almost wild appearance, terrifying to the British or American girl who strays any distance from the modern types of palatial hotel which can now be found in regions of medicinal springs in the Pyrenees. He is, however, a much less formidable person when he enters into conversation, and, taken as a whole, the agriculturalist is a very pleasant-mannered, hospitable, and dignified person. He possesses in a marked degree the domestic virtues, the level-headed shrewdness, the patience, thrift, and foresight which give steadiness to his nation. In small towns in the south he can be a person of immense sociality. The place during the warmer months of the year, after the work of the day is done, buzzes with conversation, the steady hum of which would puzzle a stranger until he saw its cause. In the strange little walled town of Aigues-Mortes, the entire male population seems to congregate in the central square, and there passes the evening at the tables of the three or four cafés. So much conversation as that indulged in by these peasants of the Rhone delta would seem sufficient to produce solutions for all the problems of the wine industry, as well as those of rural populations in general.
Care for the future makes the peasant toil and save for his children. Husband and wife will keep their children's future in view in a most self-effacing fashion, and if their shrewdness in business may go rather beyond the mark, it is in the interests of their family that they are working. The reward is too often that which comes to the old—the sense of being a burden to their offspring when rheumatism and kindred ills have robbed them of further capability for toil.
In the country districts that are out of touch with modern influence, the peasant keeps his womenkind in a state of subservience that is almost mediaeval, and the custom of keeping the wife and daughters standing while the father and sons are at meals is still said to be maintained in some parts of the country.[10] The peasant is often a tyrant in his family. In some districts he is in the habit of calling his sons and daughters "my sons and the creatures." He is sometimes quite without any interest in politics. The various types are, however, so marked that the impossibility of labelling the peasantry of such a large slice of Europe with any one set of characteristics is obvious. By reading Zola or George Sand, one gets an insight into the peasant life which little else can give.
[10] Hannah Lynch, French Life in Town and Country.
One of George Sand's descriptions of the peasantry of the Cevennes is vigorous and vivid. She writes of it as a race "meagre, gloomy, rough, and angular in its forms and in its instincts. At the tavern every one has his knife in his belt, and he drives the point into the lower face of the table, between his legs; after that they talk, they drink, they contradict one another, they become excited, and they fight. The houses are of an incredible dirtiness. The ceiling, made up of a number of strips of wood, serves as a receptacle for all their food and for all their rags. Alongside with their faults I cannot but recognise some great qualities. They are honest and proud. There is nothing servile in the manner in which they receive you, with an air of frankness and genuine hospitality. In their innermost soul they partake of the beauties and the asperities of their climate and their soil. The women have all an air of cordiality and daring. I hold them to be good at heart, but violent in character. They do not lack beauty so much as charm. Their heads, capped with a little hat of black felt, decked out with jet and feathers, give to them, when young, a certain fascination, and in old age a look of dignified austerity. But it is all too masculine, and the lack of cleanliness makes their toilette disagreeable. It is an exhibition of discoloured rags above legs long and stained with mud, that makes one totally disregard their jewellery of gold, and even the rock crystals about their necks." This description is growing out of date in regard to the hats and knives, but the picturesque white cap, with its broad band of brightly coloured ribbon, worn by nearly all the women over a certain age, which George Sand does not mention, seems likely to persist.
The peasant women of France are too often extremely plain and built on clumsy lines. Exceptional districts, such as Arles and other parts of Provence, may produce beautiful types, but the average is not pleasing. This, at least, is the consensus of opinion of those who profess to know France well. The writer would not venture on such a statement on his own authority, although his knowledge of a very considerable number of the departments entirely endorses their opinion. But the more one knows of provincial France the more prepared does one become for surprises, and the less ready to generalise.
Between the educated and uneducated there is less of a gulf than in other countries, on account of the very high average of good manners to be found throughout the whole country, and because of the quick intelligence that is common to the whole people. The almost pathetic awkwardness of the old-fashioned English hodge scarcely exists in France.