While I am on this subject, despite my humble position, perhaps I may be allowed to make a personal contribution to the life story of the great …
Monsieur Paul Bourget, the famous novelist, was the intimate friend and spiritual guide of Countess Fardin, where, last year, I was employed as housemaid. I was always hearing it said that he was the only man who really understood women’s complex nature to its very depths, and many a time I had the idea of writing to him, in order to lay before him this particular example of passionate psychology … There is no reason for being too surprised at the seriousness of these preoccupations. They are not usual among servants, I agree. But, in the countess’s drawing-room, everybody was for ever discussing psychology … It is generally accepted that our minds are influenced by those of our employers, and that what is said in the drawing-room will be repeated in the servants’ hall. The only trouble was that, in the servants’ hall there was no Paul Bourget capable of elucidating and resolving the feminine problems that we used to discuss there. Even the explanations of Monsieur Jean himself did not satisfy me.
One day, however, my mistress sent me with an urgent letter for the illustrious master, and he himself brought me the reply. This emboldened me to lay before him the problem that was tormenting me; though, of course, I attributed the scabrous story to one of my friends. Monsieur Bourget asked me. ‘And what kind of a woman is your friend? A woman of the people? One of the poorer classes?’
‘A maid like myself, sir.’
Monsieur Bourget assumed a most superior and disdainful expression. Heavens! He certainly doesn’t Like poor people!
‘I’m not really concerned with such people,’ he said … ‘They are too small-minded, completely lacking in soul … They do not fall within the scope of my psychology.’
I realized at once that, in the circles in which he moved, no one with an income of less than 100,000 francs a year was expected to have a soul.
Monsieur Jules Lemaitre, on the other hand, another frequent visitor to the house, was quite different. When I put the same question to him, he replied with a friendly dig in the ribs: ‘Well, Célestine my dear, all I can say is, your friend must be a nice girl, and if she’s anything like as charming as you, I know precisely what I should say to her … Ha, ha!’
With his humorous expression, looking like a little hunchbacked faun, at least he didn’t attempt to put on any airs. But there, he was really a decent sort. It’s just too bad that now he’s gone all religious!
With all this, I don’t know what would have become of me in this hellish existence at Audierne, if the Little Sisters of Poncroix, finding me intelligent and pretty, had not taken charge of me out of pity. They made no attempt to take advantage of my youth and ignorance, nor of my difficult and shameful position, by shutting me away from the world so that I could look after them, as happens in so many convents of this kind, where human exploitation is carried to criminal lengths. They were poor, artless little creatures, timid and charitable; and, though they were certainly not rich, they were much too scared to beg in the street or to call upon the wealthy for subscriptions. Sometimes they were reduced to extreme poverty, but they just carried on as best they could, and amid all the hardships of their existence they always managed to keep cheerful, twittering away like so many little birds. There was something touching about their complete ignorance of life, which, today, when I understand their infinite goodness and purity better, moves me to tears.
They taught me to read and write, to sew and do housework, and when I was more or less properly trained they found me a place with a retired colonel, who used to spend every summer with his wife and two daughters at a shabby little country house near Comfort. They were good people, I admit, but so sad! Oh, so sad! And crazy! Never a smile on their faces, nor a trace of gaiety in their clothes, which were always the most sombre black. The colonel had built himself a room under the rafters, and there he would stay all day by himself, turning boxwood eggcups on a lathe, or those ‘darning eggs’ that women use for mending their stockings. His wife was forever writing letters and petitions in the hope of getting a licence to sell stamps and tobacco, and the two daughters never seemed to do anything at all, hardly even speaking. One looked like a duck, and the other like a rabbit, and both of them were pale and thin, angular, like two wilting plants that were drying up under your eyes for lack of the sun and moisture and soil that they needed. Oh, how they bored me! … After sticking it for eight months, I just walked out on them one day, on a sudden impulse which I later regretted.
But all the same, this meant that now, for the first time, I was to know what it was to feel around me the seething life of Paris and the warmth of its breath, which filled my heart with new longings. Though I did not often go out, I was overwhelmed by admiration, and the streets, the shop windows, the crowds, the palaces, the dazzling carriages and elegantly dressed women entranced me. And, at night, when I climbed up to the sixth floor to go to bed, I used to envy the other servants in the house, enthralled by all the pranks they got up to and the marvellous tales I heard them telling each other. During the short time that I stayed in this job I was to see every kind of debauchery, as it was practised up there on the sixth floor … and, before long, I was playing my part in it, with all the competitive enthusiasm of a novice … Seduced by that deceptive ideal of vice and pleasure, what vague hopes I fed on, what dubious ambitions …
But there it is! When you’re young, and know nothing of life, what else can you do but live on your imagination, on your dreams? … Dreams, indeed … stupidities! Oh, I drank my fill of them all right, as Monsieur Xavier used to say, a really perverted little rascal of whom I shall have more to say later on … And how I knocked about in those days—I was a regular rolling stone. It’s frightening to think of it.
Though I’m still young, the things I have seen, and at close quarters, too. I have seen people stark naked, and smelt the odour of their linen, of their skins, of their very souls … And for all the scent they use, the smell is not at all a pleasant one, I assure you. What filthiness, what shameful vices and mean crimes disguised as virtue are hidden away by decent families in respectable homes. Oh, you don’t have to tell me! It’s no use their being rich, dolling themselves up in silks and velvets, surrounding themselves with gilded furniture, using silver wash-bowls and generally showing off … I know them through and through. Beneath all the display their hearts are even more disgusting than my mother’s bed used to be!
What a pathetic creature a poor servant-girl is, and how lonely! Even if she’s one of a crowded, gay, noisy household, she is still always alone. Solitude is not just a question of living on your own, but of living in other people’s houses, amongst people who have no interest in you, who regard you as being of less importance than the dogs they stuff with tit-bits, or the flowers they cherish like a rich man’s child … People from whom all you get are useless, cast-off clothes and left-over food, already going bad. ‘You can have this pear, it’s rather over-ripe … Finish up that chicken in the kitchen, it’s beginning to go off …’
With every word, they express contempt for you, their very gestures treat you like dirt: but you must never say a word—just smile and be thankful, or else you are considered to be ungrateful and ill-natured … Sometimes when I’ve been brushing my mistress’s hair I’ve felt a mad desire to scratch her neck, savage her breasts with my nails.
Fortunately, you aren’t always obsessed with such black thoughts … You must forget your worries and do your best to have as good a time as possible amongst yourselves.
This evening, after dinner, seeing me looking so sad, Marianne took pity on me and tried to console me. She went to the sideboard and fished out a bottle of brandy from a pile of old papers and dirty rags.
‘You mustn’t get so upset,’ she said to me. ‘Pull yourself together a bit, my poor girl, and try to cheer up.’
She poured me out a glass and, for the next hour, sitting with her elbows on the table and speaking i
n a drawling, mournful voice, she told me sinister stories of illnesses and lyings-in, describing in detail the death of her mother, her father and her sister. As time went on her voice grew thicker, and her eyes began to run. Draining the last drop from her glass, she repeated:
‘It’s no good upsetting yourself like this. Your mother’s death … of course it’s very sad. But what can you expect? We’re all of us only mortal. Oh my God, you poor kid!’
Then she suddenly started crying, and kept moaning through her tears: ‘It’s no good getting upset … It’s no good getting upset …’
It started as a kind of lamentation, but her voice grew louder and louder and soon it turned into a hideous bray. And her huge round belly and enormous breasts were shaken with her sobs.
‘If you make such a row, Marianne,’ I said to her, ‘the mistress will hear you, and come downstairs!’
But she paid no attention, and went on howling louder than ever: ‘Oh, but it’s so sad, so sad!’
With the result that I, too, feeling queasy from the drink and moved by Marianne’s tears, began sobbing like a Magdalene … Still, she’s not a bad sort …
But I hate it here, I hate it, I hate it. I would rather work for a cocotte, or try to find a place in America.
1 OCTOBER
Poor Monsieur Lanlaire! I think perhaps I may have been a bit too stand-offish with him the other day in the garden. Maybe I went too far. He’s so simple that he may have thought he had offended me seriously, and that I’m hopelessly virtuous. He keeps looking at me with such a humble, imploring expression, as though he were trying to beg my pardon.
Though I’ve been behaving in a friendlier, more provocative way than ever, he has made no further reference to the subject at all, and he can’t make up his mind to try some new attack, not even the classical tactic of asking me to sew on a button for him. A pretty vulgar approach, but surprisingly successful, all the same. God knows how many buttons I must have sewn on in my time!
Still, it’s pretty clear he wants me more than ever, he’s dying for it. The least thing he says to me is an admission, however indirect, but at the same time he’s becoming shyer and shyer. He’s afraid of coming to the point, in case it results in a final breach between us, and he no longer trusts my encouraging advances.
On one occasion, accosting me with a strange expression and a wild look in his eyes, he said:
‘Célestine, you … er … you clean my boots beautifully … beautifully. Really, I… er … I don’t think they’ve ever been cleaned so well … my boots, I mean.’
I thought this was really going to be it … but not at all. After puffing and blowing, and slavering at the mouth as if he were eating a huge juicy pear, he just whistled for his dog and went off.
But here’s something even crazier. Yesterday, Madame went to market—she always likes to do her own shopping. The master had been out since dawn with his gun and dog. He got back early, having shot three thrushes, and immediately went up to his dressing-room to have a bath and change his clothes as usual. I must say he likes to keep himself clean all right, he’s not afraid of water. I thought this was a favourable moment to try something that would make things easier for him. Leaving my work, I went to the door of the dressing-room and stood there listening for a moment. I could hear him walking about, whistling and singing to himself. Whenever he sings, he has the funny habit of mixing up all sorts of different songs. I could hear him moving the chairs about, opening and shutting cupboards, and then the sound of water being poured into the bath, followed by a succession of ‘Ows!’ and ‘Ohs!’ at the shock of the cold water. Then I suddenly threw open the door. And there he stood, facing me, dripping with water and shivering. Oh, if you could have seen him … eyes, head, body, suddenly motionless! Never in my life have I seen a man so utterly flabbergasted. Having nothing else to cover up his nakedness, with an instinctive movement of shame, that was incredibly comic, he used the sponge for a vine leaf. Confronted with this fantastic spectacle, it was honestly all I could do not to burst out laughing. I just had time to notice the tufts of hair on his shoulders and his chest like a bear’s—Oh, he’s a fine specimen of a man, all right. Then, naturally, I uttered a cry of shame and alarm as the situation demanded, and closed the door with a bang But I didn’t go away, for I was certain he’d call me back … and then what was going to happen?
I waited for several minutes, but there was not a sound, not even the noise of dripping water.
‘He’s wondering what to do,’ I thought, ‘and daren’t make up his mind. But hell call me back.’
But it was no good. Soon I heard once more the splashing of water, and then the sound of him drying himself, rubbing himself strenuously, and of his slippers dragging across the floor. Then more moving of chairs, more opening and shutting of cupboards, and presently he started singing again.
‘No, really! The man’s a fooll’ I muttered to myself, furiously angry. And off I went to the linen-room, having made up my mind never to allow him the pleasure of what, without the least feeling of desire on my part, I had sometimes dreamt of giving him out of pity.
All afternoon the master was very preoccupied. He came out into the yard, where I was emptying the cat’s box on to the manure heap, and just as a joke, to see how embarrassed he would be, I apologized for what had happened in the morning.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter at all … On the contrary …’
In the hope of keeping me there, he started mumbling all sorts of nonsense. But I cut him short in the middle of one of his endless sentences, and said in a cutting voice:
‘You must excuse me, sir, but I’m much too busy to stay here chattering … Madame is waiting for me.’
‘Damn it all, Célestine surely you can listen to me for just a second …’
‘I’m afraid not, sir.’
As I reached the turn in the alley leading to the house I caught sight of him out of the tail of my eye. He hadn’t moved. He was just standing there, with bowed shoulders, still gazing at the manure heap and scratching the back of his neck.
In the drawing-room after dinner the two of them had a furious row. I heard Madame say: ‘I tell you, you are running after that girl.’
‘Me?’ he replied. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, what a crazy idea. Really, darling, a dirty little prostitute like that, a whore who has probably got every conceivable disease? No, no … that’s really going too far!’
Madame went on: ‘Do you imagine I don’t know how you carry on? And your dirty tastes … All the women you run after, when you’re supposed to be out shooting. Messing about with their filthy clothes and dirty little backsides!’
I could hear the floor of the drawing-room creak as the master strode backwards and forwards in a state of great indignation.
‘Me? But you’re just imagining things, my dear. Where on earth do you get hold of such ridiculous ideas?’
But Madame was not to be put off: ‘And what about the little Gezureau girl, then? Only fifteen years old, you beast! And the 500 francs I had to pay out, just to save you from going to prison like your thief of a father.’
The master had stopped walking about. He had collapsed into an armchair, and was sitting there without saying a word. And Madame brought the discussion to a close by saying: ‘Mind you, it’s all the same to me … I’m not jealous. If you really want to, you can sleep with Célestine. All I’m concerned about is that it doesn’t cost me any money.’
No, honestly! They disgust me, the pair of them …
Whether Monsieur Lanlaire really sleeps around with the peasant girls as Madame maintains I don’t know. If he does, and enjoys it, I don’t see why he shouldn’t. He’s a big strong man with a healthy appetite, and he needs it. And if Madame refuses to give it him … At least she has ever since I’ve been here, that I’m certain of, which is all the more extraordinary since they still share the same bed. A chambermaid with her wits about her and who has eyes in her head knows exactly what her
employers are up to. She doesn’t even have to snoop on them. Their dressing-room, bedroom, underclothes—all sorts of things—tell her quite enough. Since they are so fond of lecturing other people about their morals, and demand the most complete chastity from their servants, it is quite inconceivable that they should not be at greater pains to conceal the evidence of their own sexual manias. Indeed, on the contrary, some of them seem to enjoy drawing attention to them, either as a sort of challenge or from some strange kind of corruption. I am certainly no prude, and I enjoy a good laugh as much as anyone, but some of the couples I have known, often the most respectable ones, really have been the absolute limit.
In the past, when I first went into service, it used to have a funny effect on me when I saw them again … afterwards … next morning. I’d be quite upset, and when I took them their breakfast I could scarcely keep my eyes off them, gazing so insistently at their eyes, their mouths, their hands, that often the master or mistress would say to me: ‘What’s the matter with you, staring at us like that? Just keep your mind on what you’re doing …’
Somehow, just to see them used to stir up all kinds of ideas, images—how shall I say?—desires, that plagued the life out of me, and being unable to satisfy these in the way I would have liked, I was driven to seek relief in frantic but unsatisfying bouts of self-abuse.
The Diary of a Chambermaid Page 10