The Toilers of the Sea (5 page)

XII

RANDOM MEMORIES

In the Middle Ages poor people and poor money went together. One created the other. The poor improvised the sou. Rags and farthings were brothers: so much so that the former sometimes invented the latter. It was a bizarre kind of right, tacitly permitted. There are still traces of this on Guernsey. A quarter of a century ago anyone who had need of a double
³³
tore a copper button off his jacket; the buttons from soldiers' uniforms were current coin; a scrap metal merchant would cut out pennies from an old cauldron. This coinage circulated freely.

The first steamship to be seen on Guernsey, on its way to somewhere else, gave the idea of having one on the island. It was called the
Medina
and had a burden of around a hundred tons. It called in at St. Peter Port on June 10, 1823. A regular service of steamers to and from England, by Southampton and Portsmouth, started only much later. The service was run by two small steamships, the
Ariadne
and the
Beresford.
Viscount Beresford was then governor of the islands.

Isolation has a long memory, and an island is a form of isolation. Hence the tenacity of memory in islanders. Traditions continue interminably. It is impossible to break a thread stretching backward through the night as far as the eye can reach. People remember everything—a boat that passed that way, a shower of hail, a fish they caught, and, still more understandably, their forebears. Islands are much given to genealogies.

A word in passing about genealogies. We shall have more to say about them. Family trees are venerated in the archipelago. They are much regarded even for cows—more usefully, perhaps, than for people. A countryman will refer to “my ancestors.”

When Monsieur Pasquier was made a duke, Monsieur Royer-Collard
³⁴
said to him: “It won't do you any harm.” It is the same with genealogies: they do no harm to anyone.

Tattooing is the earliest form of heraldry. The innocence of the savage points toward the pride of nobility. And the Channel Islands are innocent, very innocent, and savage, to a certain degree. In these sea-borne territories, where a kind of saltiness preserves everything, even vanities, people have a firm faith in their own antiquity. In a way this is respectable and touching. It leads to impressive claims. If these claims are made in the presence of a skeptical Frenchman he smiles; if he is polite as well as skeptical he bows. One day (May 26, 1865) I had two visitors, a Jersey man and an Englishman, both perfect gentlemen. The Jersey man said: “My name is Larbalestier.” Seeing that this did not sufficiently impress me, he added: “I am a Larbalestier, of a family that went on the Crusades.” The Englishman said: “My name is Brunswill. I am descended from William the Conqueror.” I asked them: “Do you know a Guernsey man, Mr. Overend, who is descended from Rollo?”

There is a Granite Club in St. Sampson. Its members are stone breakers, who wear a blue rosette in their buttonhole on May 31. May is also the cricket season.

The Channel Islands are remarkable for their impassiveness. A matter that stirs passions in England seems to pass unnoticed here. The author of this book happened one day to commit a barbarism in the English language, which he did all the more readily because he knows no English. Deceived by false information given by a misprint in a pocket dictionary, he wrote “bugpipe” instead of “bagpipe.” A
u
instead of an
a!
It was an enormity. “Bug” and not “bag”: it was almost as bad as “shibboleth” instead of “sibboleth.” Once upon a time England burned people at the stake for that. This time Albion contented itself with raising its hands to heaven. How can a man who knows no English make a mistake in English? The newspapers made this scandal headline news. Bugpipe! There was a kind of uprising throughout Great Britain; but, strange to say, Guernsey remained calm.
³⁵

Two varieties of traditional French farmhouse are to be seen on Guernsey. On the east side it is the Norman type, on the west side the Breton. The Norman farm has more architecture, the Breton farm more trees. The Norman farm stores its crops in a barn; the Breton farm, more primitive, shelters its crops under a thatched roof borne on rugged columns that are almost cyclopean in aspect—shapeless cylinders of undressed stones bonded with Portland cement. From these farms women, some still wearing the old Guernsey headdress, set out for the town with their baskets of vegetables and fruit on a
quériot,
a donkey cart. When a market woman earns her first money of the day she spits on it before putting it in her pocket. Evidently this brings luck.

These good countryfolk of the islands have all the old prickliness of the Normans. It is difficult to strike the right note in dealing with them. Walking out one winter day when it was raining, an acquaintance of ours noticed an old woman in rags, almost barefoot. He went up to her and slipped a coin in her hand. She turned around proudly, dropped the money to the ground, and said: “What do you take me for? I am not poor. I keep a servant.” If you make the opposite mistake you are no better received. A countryman takes such politeness as an offense. The same acquaintance once addressed a countryman, asking: “Are you not Mess Leburay?” The man frowned, saying: “I am Pierre Leburay. I am not entitled to be called Mess.”
³⁶

Ivy abounds, clothing rocks and house walls with magnificence. It clings to any dead branch and covers it completely, so that there are never any dead trees; the ivy takes the trunk and branches of a tree and puts leaves on them. Bales of hay are unknown: instead you will see in the fields mounds of fodder as tall as houses. These are cut up like a loaf of bread, and you will be brought a lump of hay to meet the needs of your cowshed or stable. Here and there, even quite far inland, amid fruit and apple orchards, you will see the carcasses of fishing boats under construction. The fisherman tills his fields, the farmer is also a fisherman: the same man is a peasant of the land and a peasant of the sea.

In certain types of fishery the fisherman drops his net into the sea and anchors it on the bottom, with cork floats supporting it on the surface, and leaves it. If a ship passes that way during the night it cuts the net, which drifts away and is lost. This is a heavy loss, for a net may cost as much as two or three thousand francs. Mackerel are caught in a net with meshes too wide for their head and too small for their body; the fish, unable to move forward, try to back out and are caught by the gills. Mullet are caught with the trammel, a French type of net with triple meshes, which work together to trap the fish. Sand eels are caught with a hoop net, half meshed and half solid, which acts as both a net and a bag.

Small ponds vary the pattern of the farms in western Guernsey, particularly in low-lying areas. Close by are the bays in which, scattered about on the turf, the fishermen's boats—the
Julia, Piety,
the
Seagull,
and so on—are beached, supported by four blocks of wood. Gulls and ducks perch fraternally on the sides of the boats, the ducks coming from the ponds and the gulls from the ocean. Here and there along the coast rocky promontories sometimes retain the sand brought in by the tide, forming a kind of basin in which the residues left by the sea accumulate; at first it is only an alluvial deposit, then it is an islet, then grass grows on it and it becomes an island. The owners of the land bordering the shore claim, in spite of latent contradiction by the government, that these formations belong to them. Monsieur Henry Marquand was good enough to sell me one of them. It is a pretty little island with rocks and grass. I paid three francs for it.

To prevent the haystacks from being carried away by the wind, chains from boats are laid over them. In the fields on the west coast, where hurricanes have freedom of action, the trees are on the defensive, bending down in unnatural attitudes, like athletes. There are no flowers in the gardens of the west, and the ingenious proprietors make good the lack with plaster statues. The yew trees in the gardens of cottages, clipped low and widening toward the foot, are like round tables, of a convenient shape for dogs to scratch their backs on. The walls are topped by lines of large round boulders.

Sometimes, on the deserted shore, there is a tower occupied by a soldier and his wife and children. These coastal towers are called Martello towers after their inventor. The tower provides comfortable accommodation for the soldier's family. The casemate serves as a bedroom; the wife does her cooking and her laundry; the cradle is next to the cannon, and the embrasure forms an alcove; from the distance smoke can be seen emerging peaceably from the top section of the tower, which has become a kitchen. In the Norman isles the main concern of domestic servants, who are seen perpetually kneeling in front of the house door, is to keep the doorstep white—an activity that wears away a lot of sandstone. The same fashion is found in Holland: on the day when the sheets are as white as the steps of the staircase a great progress will have been achieved.

The archipelago has an abundance of plants that are excellent for medicinal purposes or for cooking, though they are rather disdained by the inhabitants. They are surprised to see the French eating salads of dandelions, lambs' lettuce, and what they call
sarcle,
which they say is “as bitter as gall.” It is necessary to beware of a large, squat species of mushroom found on salt meadowland known as a toadstool. All over the island, even outside cottages, you will see flagstaffs; for it is a great satisfaction to an Englishman to deck his house with a flag.

Laid out on the short turf of the untilled land to dry in the wind and sun are black cakes of peat cut from the local bog. The large fields of communal grazing at L'Ancresse have gates that half-naked children will open for you for a penny. Poor children have free schools, officially known as ragged schools. Such harsh terms are quite acceptable to the English. On some steamships you will see a notice beside the helmsman: “Do not speak to this man.” In France we would say: “Please do not speak to the helmsman.” If you are curious to see the gulf that separates a “man” from a “gentleman,” you must go to England. In this respect the Channel Islands are England.

Any manual work makes you a “man.” The duc de Caumont-La Force, an émigré who worked as a bookbinder, had become a “man.” Vicomtesse ***, who had sought refuge on Jersey, suffered the poverty of exile and swept out her own room. The old woman from whom she rented the room, a Mrs. Lamb, used to say: “She looks after herself; she does all her own work, whatever has to be done. She's not a lady; she's a woman.”

Ribeyrolles
³⁷
used to work in his garden, wearing a smock. “He's but a portioner,” said the neighbors. One of the Hungarian exiles, Colonel Katona, performed for General Mezzaros all the services that an aidede-camp performs for his general. This classed him as a lackey. When someone called at his lodging and asked for the general his landlady pointed to the colonel, saying: “There's his toady.” Some nuances are almost imperceptible. A countryman named Lefèvre appeared before the registrar for the census. “Is it Lefèvre or Lefebvre?” he was asked. “Do you spell it with a
b
?” “Oh no!” he replied. “I am not a gentleman.”

On Guernsey the judges wear purple robes. Surprisingly in this old Norman territory, stamped paper is unknown. Legal disputes are carried on using ordinary paper. Parliamentary discussions sometimes become quite lively. In local council meetings you will hear remarks such as these:

One speaker to another: “You are an impertinent fellow and a rogue.”

The chairman: “What you are saying is quite off the point.”

Some of our colloquial Parisian turns of phrase have been imperturbably adopted into the grave language of official business. For example, the case of Dobrée versus Jehan (April 5, 1866) gave rise to a judicial summing-up that said, à propos of the deposition of one Marguerite Jehan: “This witness is completely off her head.” Another unusual use of language: we have in front of us a doctor's prescription for a purgative: “Take one of these pills this evening and the other tomorrow morning if the first one has not paid off.”

XIII

LOCAL PECULIARITIES

Each island has its own coinage, its own patois, its own government, its own prejudices. Jersey is worried about having a French landowner. Suppose he wanted to buy up the whole island! On Jersey foreigners are not permitted to buy land; on Guernsey they may. On the other hand, religious austerity is less on the former island than on the latter; the Jersey Sunday is freer than the Guernsey Sunday. The Bible has greater mandatory force in St. Peter Port than in St. Helier. The purchase of a property on Guernsey is a complicated matter, particularly for an ignorant foreigner, and one of great peril: the buyer gives security on his purchase for twenty years that the commercial and financial situation of the seller shall be the same as it was at the precise moment when the sale took place. Other confusions arise from differences in the coinage and in weights and measures. The shilling, the old French
ascalin
or
chelin,
is worth twenty-five sous in England, twenty-six sous on Jersey, and twenty-four sous on Guernsey. The “Queen's weight” also has its whims: the Guernsey pound is not the same as the Jersey pound, which is not the same as the English pound. On Guernsey land is measured in
vergées
and
vergées
in
perches.
There are different measures on Jersey. On Guernsey only French money is used, but it is called by English names. A franc is known as a tenpenny piece. The lack of symmetry is carried so far that there are more women than men in the archipelago: six women to five men. Guernsey has had many names, some of them archaeological: to scholars it is known as Granosia, while for loyal citizens it is Little England. And indeed it resembles England in geometrical form; Sark can be seen as its Ireland, though an Ireland off the east coast. In the waters around Guernsey there are two hundred varieties of shellfish and forty species of sponges. For the Romans the island was sacred to Saturn, for the Celts to Gwyn; it did not gain much by the change, for Gwyn, like Saturn, was a devourer of children. It has an old law code dating from 1331 called the Precept of Assize. Jersey for its part has three or four old Norman courts: the Court of Inheritance, which deals with cases concerning the fiefs; the Cour de Catel, a criminal court; the Cour du Billet, a commercial tribunal; and the Saturday Court, a police court. Guernsey exports vinegar, cattle, and fruit, but above all it exports itself: its main trade is in gypsum and granite. Guernsey has 305 uninhabited houses: why? The reason, for some of them at least, is perhaps to be found in one of the chapters of this book.
³⁸
The Russian troops who were stationed on Jersey in the early years of this century have left their memory in Jersey's horses, which are a compound of the Norman horse and the Cossack horse. The Jersey horse is a fine runner and a powerful walker; it could carry Tancred and leave Mazeppa behind.
³⁹

In the seventeenth century there was a civil war between Guernsey and Castle Cornet, Castle Cornet being for the Stuarts and Guernsey for Cromwell—rather as if the Île Saint-Louis declared war on the Quai des Ormes.
⁴⁰
On Jersey there are two factions, the Rose and the Laurel—diminutives of the Whigs and the Tories. The islanders of this archipelago, so well called the “unknown Normandy,”
⁴¹
delight in divisions, hierarchies, castes, and compartments. The people of Guernsey are so fond of islands that they form islands in the population. At the head of this little social order are the “Sixty,” sixty families who live apart; halfway down are the “Forty,” forty families who form a separate group and keep to themselves; and around them are the ordinary people. The authorities of the island, local and English, consist of ten parishes, ten rectors, twenty constables, 160 douzeniers, a Royal Court with a public prosecutor and controller, a parliament called the States, ten judges called jurats, and a bailiff, referred to as
ballivus et
coronator
in old charters. In law they follow the customs of Normandy. The prosecutor is appointed by commission, the bailiff by patent—a distinction of great importance in England. In addition to the bailiff, who holds civil authority, there are the dean, who is in charge of religious affairs, and the governor, who is in command of the military. Other offices are listed in detail in the “Table of Gentlemen occupying Leading Positions on the Island.”