by Victor Hugo
So, at least, thought Gilliatt.
VIII
THE SEAT OF GILD-HOLM-'UR
Nowadays you will look in vain, in the little bay of Houmet, for Gilliatt's house, his garden, and the creek in which he moored his boat. The Bu de la Rue is no longer there. The little promontory on which it stood has fallen to the picks of the cliff demolishers and has been carried, cartload by cartload, aboard the ships of the rock merchants and the dealers in granite. It is now transformed into quays, churches, and palaces in the capital city. All this ridge of rocks has long since gone off to London.
These lines of rocks extending into the sea, with their fissures and their fretted outlines, are like miniature mountain chains. Looking at them, you have the same kind of impression as would a giant looking at the Cordilleras. In the language of the country they are called banks. They have very different forms. Some are like backbones, with each rock representing a vertebra; others are in the form of herringbones; others again resemble a crocodile in the act of drinking.
At the end of the Bu de la Rue bank was a large rock that the fishing people of Houmet called the Beast's Horn. Pyramidal in shape, it was like a smaller version of the Pinnacle on Jersey. At high tide the sea cut it off from the bank, and it was isolated. At low tide it could be reached on a rocky isthmus. The remarkable feature of this rock, on the seaward side, was a kind of natural seat carved out by the waves and polished by the rain. It was a treacherous place. People were attracted to it by the beauty of the view; they came here "for the sake of the prospect," as they say on Guernsey, and were tempted to linger, for there is a special charm in wide horizons. The seat was inviting. It formed a kind of recess in the sheer face of the rock, and it was easy to climb up to it: the sea that had hewn it from the rock had also provided a kind of staircase of flat stones leading up to it. The abyss sometimes has these thoughtful ideas; but you will do well to beware of its kindness. The seat tempted people to climb up to it and sit down. It was comfortable, too: the seat was formed of granite worn and rounded by the surf; for the arms there were two crevices in the rock that seemed made for the purpose; and the back consisted of the high vertical wall of the rock, which the occupant of the seat was able to admire above his head, without thinking that it would be impossible to climb. Sitting there, it was all too easy to fall into a reverie. You could look out on the great expanse of sea; you could see in the distance ships arriving and departing; you could follow the course of a sail until it disappeared beyond the Casquets over the curve of the ocean. Visitors were entranced; they enjoyed the beauty of the scene and felt the caress of the wind and the waves. There is a kind of bat at Cayenne that sets out to fan people to sleep in the shade with the gentle beating of its dusky wings. The wind is like this invisible bat: it can batter you, but it can also lull you to sleep. Visitors would come to this rock, look out on the sea and listen to the wind, and then feel the drowsiness of ecstasy coming over them. When your eyes are sated with an excess of beauty and light, it is a pleasure to close them. Then suddenly the visitor would wake up. It was too late. The tide had risen steadily, and the rock was now surrounded by water. He was lost.
The rising sea is a fearful blockading force. The tide swells insensibly at first, then violently. When it reaches the rocks it rages and foams. Swimming is not always possible in the breakers. Fine swimmers had been drowned at the Beast's Horn on the Bu de la Rue.
At certain places and at certain times to look at the sea is a dangerous poison; as is, sometimes, to look at a woman.
The old inhabitants of Guernsey called this recess fashioned from the rock by the waves the Seat of Gild-Holm-'Ur or Kidormur. It is said to be a Celtic word, which those who know Celtic do not understand and those who know French do. The local translation of the name is Qui-Dort-Meurt, "he who sleeps dies." We are free to choose between this translation and the translation given in 1819, I think, in the Armoricain by Monsieur Athenas. According to this respectable Celtic scholar Gild-Holm-'Ur means "the resting place of flocks of birds."
There is another seat of the same kind on Alderney, the Monk's Seat, which has been so well fashioned by the waves, with a rock projection so conveniently placed that it could be said that the sea has been kind enough to provide a footstool for the visitor's feet.
At high tide the Seat of Gild-Holm-'Ur could no longer be seen: it was entirely covered by water.
Gild-Holm-'Ur was a neighbor of the Bu de la Rue. Gilliatt knew it well and used to sit in the seat. He often went there. Was he meditating? No. As we have just said, he did not meditate: he dreamed. He did not allow himself to be caught unawares by the sea.
"Vieux Guernesey" (1864-65).
BOOK II
MESS LETHIERRY
I
A RESTLESS LIFE, BUT A QUIET CONSCIENCE
Mess Lethierry, a leading figure in St. Sampson, was a redoubtable sailor. He had sailed far and wide. He had been cabin boy, sail maker, topman, helmsman, leading hand, boatswain, pilot, and master. He was now a shipowner. No man knew the sea as he did. He was intrepid in rescue work. In bad weather he would be out on the shore, scanning the horizon. What's that out there? Someone in trouble? It might be a small fishing-boat from Weymouth, a cutter from Alderney, a bisquine85 from Courseulle, the yacht of some English lord, an Englishman, a Frenchman, a poor man, a rich man, the Devil himself: it made no difference.
He would jump into a boat and call on two or three stout fellows to join him; but he could do without them if necessary--crew the boat all by himself, cast off, take up the oars, and put to sea, sinking into the hollow of the waves and rising to the crest again, plunging into the hurricane, heading for danger. Then he would be seen in the distance amid the gusting winds and the lightning, standing erect in his boat, dripping with rain, like a lion with a mane of foam. Sometimes he spent his whole day in this way--in danger, amid the waves and the hail and the wind, coming alongside boats in distress, saving their crew, saving their cargo, challenging the storm. Then in the evening he would go home and knit a pair of stockings.
He led this kind of life for fifty years, from the age of ten to sixty, so long as he felt young. Then when he was sixty he noticed that he was no longer able to lift with one hand the anvil in the smithy at Le Varclin, which weighed three hundred pounds; and suddenly he was taken prisoner by rheumatism. He was compelled to give up the sea, and passed from the heroic to the patriarchal age. He was now just a harmless old fellow, rheumaticky and comfortably off. These two products of a man's labor often come together. At the very moment when you become rich you are paralyzed. That rounds off your life. Then men say to themselves: "Let us enjoy life."
On islands like Guernsey the population consists of men who have spent their life walking around their field and men who have spent their life traveling around the world. There are two kinds of laborers, the workers on the land and the toilers of the sea. Mess Lethierry belonged to the latter category. Yet he also knew the land. He had worked hard all his life. He had traveled on the continent. He had for some time been a ship's carpenter at Rochefort and later at Sete. We have just spoken of sailing around the world. He had made the circuit of France as a journeyman carpenter. He had worked on the pumping machinery of the saltworks in Franche-Comte. This respectable citizen had led the life of an adventurer. In France he had learned to read, to think, to have a will of his own. He had turned his hand to all sorts of things, and in all he had done he had gained a character of probity. At bottom, however, he was a seaman. Water was his element; he would say: "My home is where the fish are." And indeed his whole life, apart from two or three years, had been devoted to the ocean--as he used to say, he had been "flung into the water." He had sailed the great seas-- the Atlantic and the Pacific--but he preferred the Channel. He would exclaim enthusiastically: "That's the real tough one!" He had been born there and wanted to die there. After sailing once or twice around the world he had returned to Guernsey, knowing what was right for him, and had never left it. His voyages now were to
Granville and Saint-Malo.
Mess Lethierry was a Guernsey man: that is to say, he was Norman, he was English, he was French. He had within him that quadruple homeland, which was submerged, one might say drowned, in his wider homeland, the ocean. Throughout his life, and wherever he went, he had preserved the habits of a Norman fisherman.
But he also liked to look into a book from time to time; he enjoyed reading; he knew the names of philosophers and poets; and he had a smattering of all the world's languages.
II
A MATTER OF TASTE
Gilliatt was a kind of savage. Mess Lethierry was another. But this savage had some refined tastes.
He was particular about women's hands. In his early years, while still a lad, somewhere between seaman and cabin boy, he had heard the Bailli de Suffren86 say: "There goes a pretty girl, but what horrible great red hands!" A remark by an admiral, on any subject, carries great weight: it is more than an oracle, it is an order. The Bailli de Suffren's exclamation had made Lethierry fastidious and exacting in the matter of small white hands. His own hand was a huge mahogany-colored slab; a light touch from it was like a blow from a club, a caress was like being grasped by pincers, and a blow from his clenched fist could crack a paving stone.
He had never married. Either he did not want to get married or he had never found the right woman. It may have been because he wanted someone with the hands of a duchess. There are few such hands to be found among the fisher girls of Portbail.87
It was rumored, however, that once upon a time, at Rochefort in the Charente, he had found a grisette who matched up to his ideal. She was a pretty girl with pretty hands. She had a sharp tongue, and she scratched. Woe betide anyone who attacked her! Her nails, exquisitely clean, without reproach and without fear, could on occasion become claws. These charming nails had enchanted Lethierry and then had begun to worry him; and, fearing that one day he might not be the master of his mistress, he had decided against appearing before the mayor with this particular bride.
Another time he was attracted by a girl on Alderney. He was thinking of marriage when an Alderney man said to him, "Congratulations! You will have a good dung-woman for a wife." He had to have the meaning of this commendation explained to him. It referred to a practice they have on Alderney. They collect cowpats and throw them against a wall; there is a particular way of throwing them. When they are dry they fall off the wall. The cakes of dried dung, known as coipiaux, are then used for heating the house. An Alderney girl will get a husband only if she is a good dung-woman. Lethierry was scared off by this talent.
In matters of love and lovemaking he had a good rough-and-ready peasant philosophy, the wisdom of a sailor who was always being captivated but was never caught, and he boasted of having been easily conquered in his younger days by a "petticoat." What is now known as a crinoline was then called a petticoat--meaning something more and something less than a woman.
These rude seafaring men of the Norman archipelago have a certain native wit. Almost all of them can read and do read. On Sundays you can see little eight-year-old cabin boys sitting on a coil of rope with a book in their hands. These Norman seamen have always had a sardonic turn of mind and are ever ready with an apt remark, what we nowadays call a mot. It was one such man, a daring pilot called Queripel, who addressed Montgomery, who had sought refuge on Jersey after accidentally killing King Henry II in a tournament, with these words: "An empty head broken by a foolish one." Another-- Touzeau, a sea captain of St. Brelade--was the author of the philosophical pun wrongly attributed to Bishop Camus: Apres la mort les papes deviennent papillons et les sires deviennent cirons ("After death popes become butterflies and seigneurs become mites").
III
THE OLD LANGUAGE OF THE SEA
These seamen of the Channel Islands are true old Gauls. The islands, which are now rapidly becoming anglicized, long remained independent. Countryfolk on Sark speak the language of Louis XIV.
Forty years ago the classical language of the sea could be heard in the mouths of the seamen of Jersey and Alderney. A visitor would have found himself carried back to the seafaring world of the seventeenth century. A specialist archaeologist could have gone there to study the ancient language, used in working ships and in battle, roared out by Jean Bart88 through the loud-hailer that terrified Admiral Hyde. The seafaring vocabulary of our fathers, almost completely changed in our day, was still in use on Guernsey around 1820. A ship that was a good plyer was a bon boulinier, one that carried a weather helm, in spite of her foresails and rudder, was a vaisseau ardent. To get under way was prendre l'aire; to lie to in a storm was capeyer; to make fast running rigging was faire dormant; to get to windward was faire chapelle; to keep the cable tight was faire teste; to be out of trim was etre en pantenne; to keep the sails full was porter plain. All these terms have fallen out of use. Today we say louvoyer (to beat to windward), they said leauvoyer; for naviguer (to sail) they said naviger; for virer (to tack) they said donner vent devant; for aller de l'avant (to make headway) they said tailler de l'avant; for tirez d'accord (haul together) they said halez d'accord; for derapez (weigh anchor), deplantez; for embraquez (haul tight), abraquez; for taquets (cleats), bittons; for burins (toggles), tappes; for balancines (lifts), valancines; for tribord (starboard), stribord; for les hommes de quart a babord (men of the port watch), les basbourdis. Admiral Tourville89 wrote to Hocquincourt, Nous avons single (sailed) instead of cingle. They said le ra fal for la rafale (squall); boussoir for bossoir (cathead); drousse for drosse (truss); faire une olofee for lo fer (to luff ); alonger for elonger (to lay alongside); survent for forte brise (stiff breeze); jas for jouail (stock of an anchor); fosse for soute (storeroom).
Such, at the beginning of this century, was the seafarers' language of the Channel Islands. If he had heard a Jersey pilot speaking, Ango 90 would have been puzzled. While everywhere else sails faseyaient (shivered), in the Channel Islands they barbeyaient. A saute de vent (sudden shift of wind) was a folle-vente. Only there were the two antique methods of mooring, la valture and la portugaise, still in use. Only there could be heard the old commands tour et choque! and bosse et bitte! While a seaman of Granville was already using the term clan for sheave hole, a seaman of St. Aubin or St. Sampson was still saying canal de pouliot. The bout d'alonge (upper futtock) of Saint-Malo was the oreille d'ane of St. Helier. Mess Lethierry, just like the duc de Vivonne,91 called the sheer of a deck the tonture and the caulker's chisel a patarasse. It was with this peculiar idiom in their mouths that Duquesne beat Ruyter, Duguay-Trouin 92 beat Wasnaer, and Tourville, in broad daylight, put down anchors fore and aft on the first galley that bombarded Algiers in 1681. It is now a dead language. Nowadays the jargon of the sea is quite different. Duperre93 would not understand Suffren.
The language of naval signals is likewise transformed. We have moved on a long way from the four pennants--red, white, blue, and yellow--of La Bourdonnais94 to the eighteen flags of today, which, hoisted in twos, threes, or fours, facilitate communication at a distance with their seventy thousand combinations, are never at a loss, and, as it were, foresee the unforeseen.
IV
YOU ARE VULNERABLE IN WHAT YOU LOVE
Mess Lethierry wore his heart on his hand: a big hand and a big heart. His failing was that admirable quality, confidence in his fellowmen. He had a very personal way of undertaking to do something: with an air of solemnity, he would say: "I give my word of honor to God," and would then go ahead and do what he had undertaken. He believed in God, but not in any of the rest. He rarely went to church, and when he did it was merely out of politeness. At sea he was superstitious.
Yet he had never been daunted by any storm. This was because he was intolerant of opposition. He would not put up with it from the ocean any more than from anyone else. He was determined to be obeyed. So much the worse for the sea if it resisted his authority: it would just have to accept the fact. Mess Lethierry would not give way. He would no more be stopped by a rearing wave than by a quarrelsome
neighbor. What he said was said; what he planned to do was done. He would not bend before an objection nor before a storm at sea. For him the word no did not exist, either in the mouth of a man or the rumbling of a thundercloud. He pressed on regardless. He would take no refusals. Hence his obstinacy in life and his intrepidity on the ocean.
He liked to season his own fish soup, knowing the exact measure of pepper and salt and herbs required, and took pleasure in making it as well as in eating it. A man who is transfigured by oilskins and demeaned by a frock coat; who, with his hair blowing in the wind, looks like Jean Bart, and, wearing a round hat, like a simpleton; awkward in town, strange and redoubtable at sea; the broad back of a porter, never an oath, seldom angry, a gentle voice that turns to thunder in a loud-hailer, a peasant who has read the Encyclopedie, a Guernsey man who has seen the Revolution, a learned ignoramus, with no bigotry but all kinds of visions, more faith in the White Lady than in the Virgin Mary, the strength of Polyphemus, the will of Columbus, the logic of the weather vane, with something of a bull and something of a child about him; almost snub-nosed, powerful cheeks, a mouth that has preserved all its teeth, a deeply marked face, buffeted by the waves and lashed by the winds for forty years, a brow like a brooding storm, the complexion of a rock in the open sea; then add to this rugged face a kindly glance, and you have Mess Lethierry.
Mess Lethierry had two special objects of affection: Durande and Deruchette.
BOOK III
DURANDE AND DERUCHETTE
I
CHATTER AND SMOKE
The human body is perhaps nothing more than an appearance. It conceals our reality. It solidifies over the light and shadow of our life. The reality is the soul. In absolute terms, our face is a mask. The real man is what exists under the man. If we were able to perceive that man crouching, sheltered, behind that illusion that we call the flesh, we should have many a surprise. The common error is to take the external being for the real one. Some girl we know, for example, if we were to see her as she really is, would appear in the form of a bird. A bird in the form of a girl: what could be more exquisite? Just imagine that you have one in your own home. Take, for example, Deruchette. What a charming creature! One would be tempted to say to her, "Good morning, Mademoiselle Wagtail!" You do not see her wings, but you hear her twittering. Now and then she sings. In her chattering she is below mankind; in her singing she is above it. There is a mystery in this singing; a virgin is the mortal habiliment of an angel. When she develops into a woman the angel departs; but later it returns, bringing back a small soul to the mother. While waiting for life to begin, she who will one day be a mother long remains a child; the little girl continues to exist within the young woman, and now she is a warbler. Looking at her, we think, How good of her not to fly away! This sweet familiar being moves freely about the house, from branch to branch--that is to say, from room to room--going in and out, drawing nearer and then retreating, preening her feathers or combing her hair, making all kinds of delicate little noises, murmuring ineffable things in your ears. She asks questions, and you reply; you ask her something in return, and she twitters a reply. You chat with her: chatting is a form of relaxation after serious talk. This creature has something of the sky within her. She is a blue thought mingling with your black thought. You are grateful to her for being so light, so fleeting, so evasive, so ungraspable, and for her kindness in not being invisible, when she could, it seems, be impalpable. In this world of ours, beauty is a necessity. There are few functions on earth more important than this: simply being charming. The forest would be in despair without the hummingbird. To shed joy around, to radiate happiness, to emit light amid dark things, to be the gilding on our destiny, to be harmony and grace and kindness: is not this to render a service? Beauty does me good merely by being beautiful. Occasionally we meet with someone who has this fairylike power of enchanting all around her. Sometimes she is not aware of it herself, and this makes her power all the more sovereign. Her presence lights up her surroundings; her nearness is warming. She passes on her way, and we are content; she stays, and we are happy. Merely to look at her is to feel alive; she is like the dawn with a human face. She need merely be there to make an Eden of the house; she exudes Paradise from every pore; and she distributes this ecstasy to all by doing nothing more than breathing in their presence. To have a smile that somehow lessens the weight of the enormous chain dragged behind them by all living beings in common--what else can we call it but divine? Deruchette had such a smile; indeed we might rather say that Deruchette was that smile. If there is one thing that has more resemblance to us than our face, it is the look on our face; and if there is one thing that has more resemblance to us than the look on our face, it is our smile. Deruchette smiling was simply Deruchette.