The Christmas Kalends of Provence
T >> Thomas A. Janvier >> The Christmas Kalends of Provence[Illustration: "'TO THE HEALTH OF THE COUNT!'"
See p. 32]
The Christmas Kalends
of
Provence
AND SOME OTHER
PROVENCAL FESTIVALS
* * * * *
BY
THOMAS A. JANVIER
SOCI DOU FELIBRIGE
AUTHOR OF
"IN OLD NEW YORK" "THE PASSING OF THOMAS"
"IN GREAT WATERS" ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
* * * * *
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1902
Copyright, 1902, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published November, 1902.
TO
C. A. J.
Contents
PAGE
THE CHRISTMAS KALENDS OF PROVENCE 1
A FEAST-DAY ON THE RHONE 133
THE COMEDIE FRANCAISE AT ORANGE 209
Illustrations
"'TO THE HEALTH OF THE COUNT!'" _Frontispiece_
AT THE WELL _Facing p._ 6
PLANTING SAINT BARBARA'S GRAIN " 14
ELIZO'S OLD FATHER " 74
MAGALI " 100
THE PASSING OF THE KINGS " 112
"THE BLIND GIRL"--NOEL " 118
THE LANDING-PLACE AT TOURNON " 166
THE DEFILE OF DONZERE " 190
THE ROUMANILLE MONUMENT " 198
AVIGNON " 204
GENERAL VIEW OF THE THEATRE " 210
"IT LOOKED TREASONS, CONSPIRACIES AND MUTINOUS " 236
OUTBURSTS"
THE GREAT FACADE " 238
SCENE FROM THE FIRST ACT OF "OEDIPUS" " 248
SCENE FROM THE SECOND ACT OF "ANTIGONE" " 256
The Christmas Kalends of Provence
I
Fancy you've journeyed down the Rhone,
Fancy you've passed Vienne, Valence,
Fancy you've skirted Avignon--
And so are come _en pleine_ Provence.
Fancy a mistral cutting keen
Across the sunlit wintry fields,
Fancy brown vines, and olives green,
And blustered, swaying, cypress shields.
Fancy a widely opened door,
Fancy an eager outstretched hand,
Fancy--nor need you ask for more--
A heart-sped welcome to our land.
Fancy the peal of Christmas chimes,
Fancy that some long-buried year
Is born again of ancient times--
And in Provence take Christmas cheer!
In my own case, this journey and this welcome were not fancies but
realities. I had come to keep Christmas with my old friend Monsieur de
Vielmur according to the traditional Provencal rites and ceremonies in
his own entirely Provencal home: an ancient dwelling which stands high
up on the westward slope of the Alpilles, overlooking Arles and Tarascon
and within sight of Avignon, near the Rhone margin of Provence.
The Vidame--such is Monsieur de Vielmur's ancient title: dating from the
vigorous days when every proper bishop, himself not averse to taking a
breather with sword and battle-axe should fighting matters become
serious, had his _vice dominus_ to lead his forces in the field--is an
old-school country gentleman who is amiably at odds with modern times.
While tolerant of those who have yielded to the new order, he himself is
a great stickler for the preservation of antique forms and ceremonies:
sometimes, indeed, pushing his fancies to lengths that fairly would lay
him open to the charge of whimsicality, were not even the most
extravagant of his crotchets touched and mellowed by his natural
goodness of heart. In the earlier stages of our acquaintance I was
disposed to regard him as an eccentric; but a wider knowledge of
Provencal matters has convinced me that he is a type. Under his genial
guidance it has been my privilege to see much of the inner life of the
Provencaux, and his explanations have enabled me to understand what I
have seen: the Vidame being of an antiquarian and bookish temper, and
never better pleased than when I set him to rummaging in his memory or
his library for the information which I require to make clear to me some
curious phase of Provencal manners or ways.
The Chateau de Vielmur has remained so intimately a part of the Middle
Ages that the subtle essence of that romantic period still pervades it,
and gives to all that goes on there a quaintly archaic tone. The donjon,
a prodigiously strong square tower dating from the twelfth century,
partly is surrounded by a dwelling in the florid style of two hundred
years back--the architectural flippancies of which have been so tousled
by time and weather as to give it the look of an old beau caught
unawares by age and grizzled in the midst of his affected youth.
In the rear of these oddly coupled structures is a farm-house with a
dependent rambling collection of farm-buildings; the whole enclosing a
large open court to which access is had by a vaulted passage-way, that
on occasion may be closed by a double set of ancient iron-clamped doors.
As the few exterior windows of the farm-house are grated heavily, and as
from each of the rear corners of the square there projects a crusty
tourelle from which a raking fire could be kept up along the walls, the
place has quite the air of a testy little fortress--and a fortress it
was meant to be when it was built three hundred years and more ago (the
date, 1561, is carved on the keystone of the arched entrance) in the
time of the religious wars.
But now the iron-clamped doors stand open on rusty hinges, and the
court-yard has that look of placid cheerfulness which goes with the
varied peaceful activities of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and
ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a
melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic
thought, and a great flock of extraordinarily tame pigeons flutters back
and forth between the stone dove-cote rising in a square tower above
the farm-house and the farm well.
[Illustration: AT THE WELL]
This well--enclosed in a stone well-house surmounted by a very ancient
crucifix--is in the centre of the court-yard, and it also is the centre
of a little domestic world. To its kerb come the farm animals three
times daily; while as frequently, though less regularly, most of the
members of the two households come there too; and there do the
humans--notably, I have observed, if they be of different sexes--find it
convenient to rest for a while together and take a dish of friendly
talk. From the low-toned chattering and the soft laughter that I have
heard now and then of an evening I have inferred that these nominally
chance encounters are not confined wholly to the day.
By simple machinery (of which the motive-power is an aged patient horse,
who is started and left then to his own devices; and who works quite
honestly, save that now and then he stops in his round and indulges
himself in a little doze) the well-water is raised continuously into a
long stone trough. Thence the overflow is led away to irrigate the
garden of the Chateau: an old-fashioned garden, on a slope declining
southward and westward, abounding in balustraded terraces and stone
benches stiffly ornate, and having here and there stone nymphs and
goddesses over which in summer climbing roses kindly (and discreetly)
throw a blushing veil.
The dependent estate is a large one: lying partly on the flanks of the
Alpilles, and extending far outward from the base of the range over the
level region where the Rhone valley widens and merges into the valley of
the Durance. On its highest slopes are straggling rows of almond trees,
which in the early spring time belt the grey mountains with a broad
girdle of delicate pink blossoms; a little lower are terraced
olive-orchards, a pale shimmering green the year round--the olive
continuously casting and renewing its leaves; and the lowest level, the
wide fertile plain, is given over to vineyards and wheat-fields and
fields of vegetables (grown for the Paris market), broken by plantations
of fruit-trees and by the long lines of green-black cypress which run
due east and west across the landscape and shield the tender growing
things from the north wind, the mistral.
The Chateau stands, as I have said, well up on the mountain-side; and on
the very spot (I must observe that I am here quoting its owner) where
was the camp in which Marius lay with his legions until the time was
ripe for him to strike the blow that secured Southern Gaul to Rome. This
matter of Marius is a ticklish subject to touch on with the Vidame:
since the fact must be admitted that other antiquaries are not less firm
in their convictions, nor less hot in presenting them, that the camp of
the Roman general was variously elsewhere--and all of them, I regret to
add, display a lamentable acerbity of temper in scouting each other's
views. Indeed, the subject is of so irritating a complexion that the
mere mention of it almost surely will throw my old friend--who in
matters not antiquarian has a sweetness of nature rarely equalled--into
a veritable fuming rage.
But even the antiquaries are agreed that, long before the coming of the
Romans, many earlier races successively made on this mountain
promontory overlooking the Rhone delta their fortified home: for here,
as on scores of other defensible heights throughout Provence, the merest
scratching of the soil brings to light flints and potshards which tell
of varied human occupancy in very far back times. And the antiquaries
still farther are agreed that precisely as these material relics (only a
little hidden beneath the present surface of the soil) tell of diverse
ancient dwellers here, so do the surviving fragments of creeds and
customs (only a little hidden beneath the surface of Provencal daily
life) tell in a more sublimate fashion of those same vanished races
which marched on into Eternity in the shadowy morning of Time.
For this is an old land, where many peoples have lived their spans out
and gone onward--yet have not passed utterly away. Far down in the
popular heart remnants of the beliefs and of the habits of those
ancients survive, entranced: yet not so numbed but that, on occasion,
they may be aroused into a life that still in part is real. Even now,
when the touch-stone is applied--when the thrilling of some nerve of
memory or of instinct brings the present into close association with
the past--there will flash into view still quick particles of seemingly
long-dead creeds or customs rooted in a deep antiquity: the faiths and
usages which of old were cherished by the Kelto-Ligurians, Phoenicians,
Grecians, Romans, Goths, Saracens, whose blood and whose beliefs are
blended in the Christian race which inhabits Provence to-day.
II
In the dominion of Vielmur there is an inner empire. Nominally, the
Vidame is the reigning sovereign; but the power behind his throne is
Mise Fougueiroun. The term "Mise" is an old-fashioned Provencal title of
respect for women of the little bourgeoisie--tradesmen's and
shopkeepers' wives and the like--that has become obsolescent since the
Revolution and very generally has given place to the fine-ladyish
"Madamo." With a little stretching, it may be rendered by our English
old-fashioned title of "mistress"; and Mise Fougueiroun, who is the
Vidame's housekeeper, is mistress over his household in a truly
masterful way.
This personage is a little round woman, still plumply pleasing although
she is rising sixty, who is arrayed always with an exquisite neatness in
the dress--the sober black-and-white of the elder women, not the gay
colours worn by the young girls--of the Pays d'Arles; and--although
shortness and plumpness are at odds with majesty of deportment--she has,
at least, the peremptory manner of one long accustomed to command. As is
apt to be the way with little round women, her temper is of a brittle
cast and her hasty rulings sometimes smack of injustice; but her nature
(and this also is characteristic of her type) is so warmly generous that
her heart easily can be caught into kindness on the rebound. The Vidame,
who in spite of his antiquarian testiness is something of a philosopher,
takes advantage of her peculiarities to compass such of his wishes as
happen to run counter to her laws. His Machiavellian policy is to draw
her fire by a demand of an extravagant nature; and then, when her lively
refusal has set her a little in the wrong, handsomely to ask of her as
a favour what he really requires--a method that never fails of success.
By my obviously sincere admiration of the Chateau and its surroundings,
and by a discreet word or two implying a more personal admiration--a
tribute which no woman of the Pays d'Arles ever is too old to accept
graciously--I was so fortunate as to win Mise Fougueiroun's favour at
the outset; a fact of which I was apprised on the evening of my
arrival--it was at dinner, and the housekeeper herself had brought in a
bottle of precious Chateauneuf-du-Pape--by the cordiality with which she
joined forces with the Vidame in reprobating my belated coming to the
Chateau. Actually, I was near a fortnight behind the time named in my
invitation: which had stated expressly that Christmas began in Provence
on the Feast of Saint Barbara, and that I was expected not later than
that day--December 4th.
"Monsieur should have been here," said the housekeeper with decision,
"when we planted the blessed Saint Barbara's grain. And now it is grown
a full span. Monsieur will not see Christmas at all!"
But my apologetic explanation that I never even had heard of Saint
Barbara's grain only made my case the more deplorable.
"Mai!" exclaimed Mise Fougueiroun, in the tone of one who faces suddenly
a real calamity. "Can it be that there are no Christians in monsieur's
America? Is it possible that down there they do not keep the Christmas
feast at all?"
To cover my confusion, the Vidame intervened with an explanation which
made America appear in a light less heathenish. "The planting of Saint
Barbara's grain," he said, "is a custom that I think is peculiar to the
South of France. In almost every household in Provence, and over in
Languedoc too, on Saint Barbara's day the women fill two, sometimes
three, plates with wheat or lentils which they set afloat in water and
then stand in the warm ashes of the fire-place or on a sunny window
ledge to germinate. This is done in order to foretell the harvest of the
coming year, for as Saint Barbara's grain grows well or ill so will the
harvest of the coming year be good or bad; and also that there may be on
the table when the Great Supper is served on Christmas Eve--that is
to say, on the feast of the Winter Solstice--green growing grain in
symbol or in earnest of the harvest of the new year that then begins.
[Illustration: PLANTING SAINT BARBARA'S GRAIN]
"The association of the Trinitarian Saint Barbara with this custom," the
Vidame continued, "I fear is a bit of a makeshift. Were three plates of
grain the rule, something of a case would be made out in her favour. But
the rule, so far as one can be found, is for only two. The custom must
be of Pagan origin, and therefore dates from far back of the time when
Saint Barbara lived in her three-windowed tower at Heliopolis. Probably
her name was tagged to it because of old these votive and prophetic
grain-fields were sown on what in Christian times became her dedicated
day. But whatever light-mannered goddess may have been their patroness
then, she is their patroness now; and from their sowing we date the
beginning of our Christmas feast."
It was obvious that this explanation of the custom went much too far for
Mise Fougueiroun. At the mention of its foundation in Paganism she
sniffed audibly, and upon the Vidame's reference to the light-mannered
goddess she drew her ample skirts primly about her and left the room.
The Vidame smiled. "I have scandalized Mise, and to-morrow I shall have
to listen to a lecture," he said; and in a moment continued: "It is not
easy to make our Provencaux realize how closely we are linked to older
peoples and to older times. The very name for Christmas in Provencal,
Calendo, tells how this Christian festival lives on from the Roman
festival of the Winter Solstice, the January Kalends; and the beliefs
and customs which go with its celebration still more plainly mark its
origin. Our farmers believe, for instance, that these days which now are
passing--the twelve days, called _coumtie_, immediately preceding
Christmas--are foretellers of the weather for the new twelve months to
come; each in its turn, by rain or sunshine or by heat or cold, showing
the character of the correspondingly numbered month of the new year.
That the twelve prophetic days are those which immediately precede the
solstice puts their endowment with prophetic power very far back into
antiquity. Our farmers, too, have the saying, 'When Christmas falls on
a Friday you may sow in ashes'--meaning that the harvest of the ensuing
year surely will be so bountiful that seed sown anywhere will grow; and
in this saying there is a strong trace of Venus worship, for
Friday--Divendre in Provencal--is the day sacred to the goddess of
fertility and bears her name. That belief comes to us from the time when
the statue of Aphrodite, dug up not long since at Marseille, was
worshipped here. Our _Pater de Calendo_--our curious Christmas prayer
for abundance during the coming year--clearly is a Pagan supplication
that in part has been diverted into Christian ways; and in like manner
comes to us from Paganism the whole of our yule-log ceremonial."
The Vidame rose from the table. "Our coffee will be served in the
library," he said. He spoke with a perceptible hesitation, and there was
anxiety in his tone as he added: "Mise makes superb coffee; but
sometimes, when I have offended her, it is not good at all." And he
visibly fidgeted until the coffee arrived, and proved by its excellence
that the housekeeper had been too noble to take revenge.
III
In the early morning a lively clatter rising from the farm-yard came
through my open window, along with the sunshine and the crisp freshness
of the morning air. My apartment was in the southeast angle of the
Chateau, and my bedroom windows--overlooking the inner court--commanded
the view along the range of the Alpilles to the Luberoun and
Mont-Ventour, a pale great opal afloat in waves of clouds; while from
the windows of my sitting-room I saw over Mont-Majour and Arles far
across the level Camargue to the hazy horizon below which lay the
Mediterraenean.
In the court-yard there was more than the ordinary morning commotion of
farm life, and the buzz of talk going on at the well and the racing and
shouting of a parcel of children all had in it a touch of eagerness and
expectancy. While I still was drinking my coffee--in the excellence and
delicate service of which I recognized the friendly hand of Mise
Fougueiroun--there came a knock at my door; and, upon my answer, the
Vidame entered--looking so elate and wearing so blithe an air that he
easily might have been mistaken for a frolicsome middle-aged sunbeam.
"Hurry! Hurry!" he cried, while still shaking both my hands. "This is a
day of days--we are going now to bring home the _cacho-fio_, the
yule-log! Put on a pair of heavy shoes--the walking is rough on the
mountain-side. But be quick, and come down the moment that you are
ready. Now I must be off. There is a world for me to do!" And the old
gentleman bustled out of the room while he still was speaking, and in a
few moments I heard him giving orders to some one with great animation
on the terrace below.
When I went down stairs, five minutes later, I found him standing in the
hall by the open doorway: through which I saw, bright in the morning
light across the level landscape, King Rene's castle and the church of
Sainte-Marthe in Tarascon; and over beyond Tarascon, high on the farther
bank of the Rhone, Count Raymond's castle of Beaucaire; and in the far
distance, faintly, the jagged peaks of the Cevennes.
But that was no time for looking at landscapes. "Come along!" he cried.
"They all are waiting for us at the Mazet," and he hurried me down the
steps to the terrace and so around to the rear of the Chateau, talking
away eagerly as we walked.
"It is a most important matter," he said, "this bringing home of the
_cacho-fio_. The whole family must take part in it. The head of the
family--the grandfather, the father, or the eldest son--must cut the
tree; all the others must share in carrying home the log that is to make
the Christmas fire. And the tree must be a fruit-bearing tree. With us
it usually is an almond or an olive. The olive especially is sacred. Our
people, getting their faith from their Greek ancestors, believe that
lightning never strikes it. But an apple-tree or a pear-tree will serve
the purpose, and up in the Alp region they burn the acorn-bearing oak.
What we shall do to-day is an echo of Druidical ceremonial--of the time
when the Druid priests cut the yule-oak and with their golden sickles
reaped the sacred mistletoe; but old Jan here, who is so stiff for
preserving ancient customs, does not know that this custom, like many
others that he stands for, is the survival of a rite."
While the Vidame was speaking we had turned from the terrace and were
nearing the Mazet--which diminutive of the Provencal word _mas_, meaning
farm-house, is applied to the farm establishment at Vielmur partly in
friendliness and partly in indication of its dependence upon the great
house, the Chateau. At the arched entrance we found the farm family
awaiting us: Old Jan, the steward of the estate, and his wife Elizo;
Marius, their elder son, a man over forty, who is the active manager of
affairs; their younger son, Esperit, and their daughter Nanoun; and the
wife of Marius, Janetoun, to whose skirts a small child was clinging
while three or four larger children scampered about her in a whir of
excitement over the imminent event by which Christmas really would be
ushered in.
When my presentation had been accomplished--a matter a little
complicated in the case of old Jan, who, in common with most of the old
men hereabouts, speaks only Provencal--we set off across the home
vineyard, and thence went upward through the olive-orchards, to the high
region on the mountain-side where grew the almond-tree which the Vidame
and his steward in counsel together had selected for the Christmas
sacrifice.
Nanoun, a strapping red-cheeked black-haired bounce of twenty, ran back
into the Mazet as we started; and joined us again, while we were
crossing the vineyard, bringing with her a gentle-faced fair girl of her
own age who came shyly. The Vidame, calling her Magali, had a cordial
word for this new-comer; and nudged me to bid me mark how promptly
Esperit was by her side. "It is as good as settled," he whispered. "They
have been lovers since they were children. Magali is the daughter of
Elizo's foster-sister, who died when the child was born. Then Elizo
brought her home to the Mazet, and there she has lived her whole
lifelong. Esperit is waiting only until he shall be established in the
world to speak the word. And the scamp is in a hurry. Actually, he is
pestering me to put him at the head of the Lower Farm!"
The Vidame gave this last piece of information in a tone of severity;
but there was a twinkle in his kind old eyes as he spoke which led me to
infer that Master Esperit's chances for the stewardship of the Lower
Farm were anything but desperate, and I noticed that from time to time
he cast very friendly glances toward these young lovers--as our little
procession, mounting the successive terraces, went through the
olive-orchards along the hill-side upward.
Presently we were grouped around the devoted almond-tree: a gnarled old
personage, of a great age and girth, having that pathetic look of
sorrowful dignity which I find always in superannuated trees--and now
and then in humans of gentle natures who are conscious that their days
of usefulness are gone. Esperit, who was beside me, felt called upon to
explain that the old tree was almost past bearing and so was worthless.
His explanation seemed to me a bit of needless cruelty; and I was glad
when Magali, evidently moved by the same feeling, intervened softly
with: "Hush, the poor tree may understand!" And then added, aloud: "The
old almond must know that it is a very great honour for any tree to be
chosen for the Christmas fire!"
This little touch of pure poetry charmed me. But I was not surprised by
it--for pure poetry, both in thought and in expression, is found often
among the peasants of Provence.
Even the children were quiet as old Jan took his place beside the tree,
and there was a touch of solemnity in his manner as he swung his heavy
axe and gave the first strong blow--that sent a shiver through all the
branches, as though the tree realized that death had overtaken it at
last. When he had slashed a dozen times into the trunk, making a deep
gash in the pale red wood beneath the brown bark, he handed the axe to
Marius; and stood watching silently with the rest of us while his son
finished the work that he had begun. In a few minutes the tree tottered;
and then fell with a growling death-cry, as its brittle old branches
crashed upon the ground.