CHAPTER I
A MORNING IN PICARDY
The beginning of spring in Northern France is elating above the month of May in the Rhône Valley—not because spring in Southern France is not more beautiful, but because it is less welcome. It is by comparison that the loveliness of the Picardy spring takes hold upon you: by comparison with the bitterness of the Picardy winter. You may walk about Marseilles or Lyon in January without a great-coat; in Arras this would be the death of you. The frozen mud, the sleet, the snow, the freezing wind, the lowering sky, and the gaunt woods of Pas de Calais, are ever with you, from September to April. But by the beginning of May the leaves are sprouting and the greening of the earth is begun. There is rain—much of it. But there are sunny days without the bitterness of wind. There is singing of birds in the early morning. The children no longer creep along the frozen street to school; they race, and fill the street with their laughter. The 'planes whose hum fills the air look less forbidding than they seemed a month ago. In February, in the darkening heaven, they showed a relentless aspect; they seem to fly now as though at sport. The old citadelle has lost its grimness; the ramparts are greening; the shade of blackness taken on by its grey slate-roofs when the trees were leafless is gone now; the moat that was a pool of mud is flowering.
The Authie flows below it, full-tided. The margin now is not snow. It has been snow for long, and half the stream was murky snow-slush. Now it is clear. The ducks from the château that looks up at the Citadelle are sporting in it again.
Saint-Pol Road, Amiens Road, Arras Road, are beginning to stand grey again. In the winter there was nothing but their bare trees to mark them; they were the colour of the fields. Now both trees and fields foil them, setting out over the slopes.
It is a joy to walk down the Authie on a spring morning. The Citadelle towers above you on the left. You are conscious of its graceful immensity long after you have passed it. The little French cottages straggle down-stream from the Citadelle base. They are white and grey, red and white—French in construction from their tiny dormer windows to the neat little gardens with their bricked-up margins flushed by the stream. Long tree-lined boulevardes start away from the road which skirts the river; you can see for many kilometres along their length. The wine-barrels are piled beneath the plane-trees. The children play about them. You will come upon a château standing stately in its low ground fronting the river. And beyond the château, which marks the border of the town, you are in the richness of the river fields and the river slopes. Here are the elm-groves, and the clumps of soaring poplar, and the long lines of stubby willow clipped yearly by the hand of industry; they sprout long and delicate from the head. Groseille and hop tangle about the bank. Far off on the ridges the white road traverses under its elms, picking a way among the hedged terraces. You see no denizens here other than the old men and the girls who are at work in the fields. From them you will have a cheery "Bonjour" and some shrewd remarks on the weather: "Ah, oui!—toujours le travail, m'sieur—toujours! Mais ça ne fait rien: nous sommes contents—oui." And so they are.
Then you come to Gezaincourt. That fine old château in its parc. The parc is of many acres, and there are deer in the woods of it, and a lake where the wild-fowl are.
To return we left the river and struck up into the ridge. We came to Bretel, midway between Gezaincourt and the Citadelle. We entered a private maison standing back in its garden; it was, none the less, marked café. Madame received us unprofessionally, inviting into the kitchen to drink. There she was preparing the dinner. Je ne sais pas pourquoi—but the French are deliciously friendly with the Australians. They take us into their homes with a readiness that is elating. They will not do it with the English. But, after all, they are frank, and we approach them frankly. We are given to domesticity, and they are intensely domestic. Indeed, the Australian temperament is far nearer to the French than is the English. The Australian tendency to the spirit of democracy finds sympathy in the provinces of this splendid Republic. The national spirit of democracy has its counterpart (may even have its roots) in the local trend towards communism which, in France, makes you welcome to enter the maison, chatting easily about its domestic affairs, and, in Australia, makes you welcome in the house of the country stranger, where you drink and eat without embarrassment at the hospitable table for the first and last time. The Australian is guiltless of the habitual industry of the French—of their intense interest in the detail of their lives and work; but he has their unconventionality and their lightness of heart and their hospitality. He understands their communistic way of life in the provinces. And when a French girl on a country road looks him directly in the eye for the first time, and with the smile of friendly frankness gives him a "Bonjour, m'sieur," he is no more embarrassed than she. He meets and returns the greeting with an understanding of which an Englishman knows nothing. The French and the Australians are allies by nature. There is nothing amazing in their immediate understanding of each other. How, on the other hand, the English and the French continue to do anything in conjunction is a source of continual wonder. Between their temperaments there is a great gulf fixed.
So Madame takes us direct to the kitchen, where she is basting. She makes exhaustive inquiries into the Australian methods of cooking. We explain that the foods are largely the same—but in the mode, quelle différence! She thinks the Australian practice of the hearty breakfast an extraordinary beginning to the day. The drinking of tea she cannot away with: wine and cidre are the only fluids to be taken with food—or without it. She prefers beef to horse; it is in Normandy they eat so much horse. We express approval of the French universal usage of butter in cooking: they fry their eggs in butter, roast their meat with it, fry potatoes in it. She asks what is our substitute for it. Lard and dripping. "O, la la! Quel goût!" And so it is; Australians know little of the blessings of butter in cookery. She asks if we are fond of salads. "Up to a point, yes; but not as you are." "En France, toujours la salade, m'sieur! Regardez le jardin." She takes us to the window and indicates the vegetable-garden with a proud forefinger: "Voulez-vous vous promener?"—"Oui, madame, avec plaisir."