The Eagle and the Dove

by Vita Sackville-West

  Mlle. Guérin was a profoundly religiously minded young woman exactly suited to the man she was to espouse, and moreover had already suffered a disappointment similar to his own. It had been her desire to enter the Order of St. Vincent de Paul, but on presenting herself for an interview the Mother Superior had replied quite simply and without hesitation that such was not God’s will. It looked almost as though God Himself had intervened to inspire both the Prior and the Prioress in their refusals…. A further intervention of Providence was likewise noticed: the families of the two young people were not on terms of acquaintance, although their social standing was much the same and Alençon only a small provincial town; they did not live in the same parish and were in fact unaware of each other’s existence. It was necessary for the purposes of Providence that they should in some way be brought together, and it appears that the first meeting took place on the Dantesque model half-way across the Pont St. Leonard, over the river Sarthe, when he stood civilly aside to let her pass. We know nothing of the further stages which finally brought them to the altar in Notre Dame d’Alençon in July 1858. He was then thirty-five and she was twenty-eight.

  Ever since her rejection by the Mother Superior of the convent of St. Vincent de Paul, Zelie had deliberately turned her thoughts in another direction. God had not chosen that she should serve Him in the way her inclinations suggested, but, since she was determined to devote herself to Him at all costs, she now made it her constant prayer that He might send her many children, all of them to be dedicated to His service. It must therefore have come as somewhat of a disappointment to her when her bridegroom, on their wedding night (and apparently not until then) announced his intention of regarding her always as his sister rather than as his wife. Still, in her submissiveness, she fell in with his wishes, and for many months they lived together under these conditions, M. Martin occupied with his business as a watch-maker and jeweller, Mme. Martin with her own business as a lace-maker. It was a peaceful and devout existence. On Sundays their shop remained closed despite the protests of their friends. Why, they were asked, could they not at least leave a side-door open to admit the holiday-making young peasants coming into the town from the neighbouring villages? The shutters would be down, it would look outwardly as though the shop were closed, yet their sales would be assured. M. Martin was not ashamed to reply that he preferred the blessings of God. Upright and industrious, he allowed himself only one recreation, when he occasionally joined that patient string of anglers without which no French river-bank is complete. Even so, the eels and trout which he drew from the Sarthe were not put to his personal benefit but were instantly conveyed to the necessitous convent of the Poor Clares.

  Every morning at an early hour the couple were to be seen kneeling together before the altar; the fasts and abstinences of the Church were faithfully observed in the house; While for their favourite relaxation they had recourse to pious books. It was not only their duty, but their inclination, to render tribute to the God whose Hand was apparent in every circumstance of their lives; He it was who had enabled them to recognise one another when, total strangers, they passedat the age of four, and of Mari in the street; He it was, or perhaps our Lady speaking for Him, who had impelled Mme. Martin to take up her profession with the command “Make Point d’Alençon!” She remembered the exact date and occasion: it was on the 8th of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when she was busy with other things and for once not thinking of the dowry she must accumulate if she wished to marry and become the mother of servants of God. Heaven had certainly ordered their ways; the only thing lacking was those very servants of God she had so ardently desired.

  Gradually, however, by steps which no information enables us to follow, the personal situation modified itself between Mme. Martin and her husband, and as one writer delicately puts it, “nine white flowers germinated in this chosen flowerbed.” Four little girls came first, Marie-Louise, Marie-Pauline, MarieLéonie, and Marie-Hélène, but in spite of many tears and petitions the absorbing desire of the parents for “a little priest” or “a little missionary” remained unsatisfied. Finally, thanks, they believed, to the intercession of St. Joseph whose aid they had invoked, a boy, Marie-Joseph, was born, but departed from this life at the age of five months. His younger brother, another Marie-Joseph, survived for nine months, but after this second loss the prayers for a little missionary ceased : the parents had decided that it was evidently not God’s will. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”

  Mme. Martin had need of all the resignation at her command. She had to suffer not only the deaths of her two little sons, but also of Marie-Hélène who died of consumption at the age of four, and of Marie-Mélanie who came in a second batch of sisters and died at three months. But her faith and her living belief in another world sustained her. “As I closed my children’s eyes,” she wrote, “I heard people saying that they had better never been born. I could not endure this way of talking, as I could not admit that our griefs and cares deserved to be weighed against the eternal happiness of my children. Besides, they are not lost for ever. Life is short and full of misery; I shall find them again on high.”

  Although she had buried four children, Mme. Martin was still left with another four. It was at about this time (1871) that M. Martin’s earthly prosperity allowed him to retire from trade and to transfer himself and his family into a more convenient house on the steep rue Saint-Blaise, recently inherited from Mme. Martin’s father. M. Martin had given up his watch-making and jewellery, but Mme. Martin continued to carry on with her Point d’Alençon. She preferred to do so, quite apart from the fact that she sometimes received as much as 500 francs (£20) a yard for it. She was happiest, she said, sitting at her window fitting together the strips and pieces of lace prepared by her work-girls under her supervision; and indeed one may readily believe that there is something very soothing about the mechanical occupation of the lace-maker with her pillow and her bobbins, something analogous to the telling of the rosary, something peculiarly suited to the life of intense and inward meditation. Point d’Alençon, as it happens, is made entirely by the needle, but still it should have seemed significant to observe how small threads gradually made complete patterns. Unfortunately we have no means of knowing whether this pertinent simile ever occurred to Mme. Martin’s imagination.

  She was due, however, soon to experience something startlingly removed from the peaceable routine of the rue Saint-Blaise. She was sitting alone one evening, quietly reading in the Lives of the Saints, when she suddenly felt her shoulder clutched by something which she afterwards described as the claws of a wild animal (une griffe de bête féroce). Knowing herself to be for the ninth time pregnant, she was at first considerably alarmed, and although she speedily recovered her trust in God it was not until some time later that she was able to connect this strange occurrence with the anger of the Powers of Darkness against the unborn child.

  II

  THE BABY, BORN towards midnight on January the 2nd, 1873, and christened Marie-Françoise-Thérèse two days later, was so delicate that her mother almost despaired of her life. It must be admitted that the mother was herself partly to blame, owing to her disregard of the doctor’s advice and her reluctance to put the baby out to nurse; but now, forlorn in M. Martin’s absence, she realised bitterly that she was incapable of nursing her own child and hung over it for the whole of an agonised night alone, waiting for the dawn. Day was breaking as she left Alençon on foot for the village of Sémallé, two leagues away, in search of Rose TaiIlé, a peasant’s friendly wife, already known to her. Weary and exhausted, for her confinement lay not so very far behind her, she arrived at the cottage just as the peasant household was stirring to the day’s work. Her arrival created some consternation, for in the eyes of the humble TaiIlés Mme. Martin was une dame who should not tramp the country lanes unaccompanied at such an hour. The poor lady, they argued, must indeed have found herself in a plight to take so dras
tic and unconventional a step. Together the two women set hastily out on the return to Alençon along the wintry roads.

  Thérèse was apparently dying when they reached the rue SaintBlaise; the life which has now influenced millions was on the point of fading way. So slender was the hope, that at one moment the mother rushed in despair to her own room to pray for the passing of yet another infant soul. But Rose TaiIlé, the humble instrument, carried the fount of physical life within her, and the two women watched as the baby drank feebly at that warm natural source.

  It was necessary to take Thérèse out to Sémallé, for Rose could not abandon her own children, and there, after some vicissitudes (within three weeks Thérèse was again given up for lost, this time with intestinal trouble) her perilous beginnings changed gradually to the normal health of a country-bred child. The cottage was simple : three-roomed and thatched, close to the usual farm-buildings, byres, and middens, a real Normandy homestead, where for fifteen months Thérèse was trundled about in a wheelbarrow full of hay, or was carried in Rose’s apron when Rose went out to milk the cow. The cow was large and friendly; she was called La Rousse, and would allow the baby to be held on her back for a ride. There were other days when Thérèse was taken into Alençon with Rose to sell the butter and be shown to her parents—a regular and placid existence with the orchards and buttercups for its background. Thérèse was plump and gay and extremely self-willed when she returned to Alençon to become the pet of her family household.

  There may be no significance in the fact that her father was already fifty when she was born, but it seems that he idolised this child as he had never idolised any of the others. Admittedly, the milieu is the small French bourgeoisie in a small provincial town at a date when the domestic virtues and affections were particularly highly esteemed,—and even to-day the French family tie is notoriously close, and French children notoriously spoilt according to English ideas,—but even so M. Martin’s familiar endearments strike us as slightly extravagant. Thérèse was known as his “little queen,” and when in a particularly jocose mood he would add “of France and of Navarre.” Perhaps it is somewhat unfair that these intimate •exuberances should ever have been exposed outside the circle of his family—even the wisest amongst us are apt to speak foolishly to our children or our dogs in private—but they may be taken as indicative of the playful, tender atmosphere prevailing in the rue Saint-Blaise, nor is it irrelevant to suggest that both the manner and the attitude had a considerable influence on Thérèse’s later development. How could it be otherwise? The favourite adjectives in her parents’ vocabulary were “dear” and “little”; sweetness was the rule of the house. Many letters from Mme. Martin have been preserved in which she relates with loving detail the smallest actions and sayings of her children, more especially of Thérèse whom she regarded as precocious in charm and angelic virtue. The family life emerges with complete intimacy : Thérèse creeping into her sister’s bed and calling out to the servant, “Let me alone, poor Louise, you must see that we are like two little white chickens, you can’t separate us”; Thérèse clambering up the staircase, stopping on every step to call out “Maman! Maman!” She was loving, demonstrative, and, even at the age of three, pathetically anxious to be good (“Maman, je vais être bien mignonne”), but at the same time so lively and inquisitive that she got called by other names, “little imp,” “little ferret,” as her mother wondered how she would turn out. “So tiny, such a mad-cap, a very intelligent child, but much less docile than her sister, and, above all, of an almost invincible obstinacy. When she says No, nothing will make her yield. You could put her into the cellar for a whole day without getting a Yes from her; she would sooner sleep there.” She was proud, too. “My little Thérèse, if you will kiss the ground I will give you a sou.” “Oh no, my little mother, I would rather go without the sou.” Yet evidently she had the grace of contrition already within her, for one night after her mother had manifested displeasure and had left her in her bed, she hear the sound of sobs and there was Thérèse beside her, barefoot, stumbling over her long nightgown, begging for forgiveness.

  This fond family, however, was soon to be disrupted, for when Thérèse was only four and a half poor Mme. Martin at the age of forty-six succumbed to a disease from which she had long been suffering, cancer of the breast. A pilgrimage to Lourdes had been undertaken, but although she had entered the piscina four times, sitting in icy water up to her shoulders, no improvement had resulted. She came back to Alençon to die. The two youngest children, Céline and Thérèse, were kept out of sight of their mother’s sufferings, which had now become severe, but when the dire moment arrived for Extreme Unction to be administered the little girls were brought into the room to witness the ceremony. Thérèse remembered all her life the exact corner of the room where she had been told to kneel; she remembered being taken back next day and lifted up by her father to kiss the death-cold forehead; she remembered suddenly finding herself alone in the corridor, confronted by the coffin propped upright; she had never seen one before but she knew instantly what it was, and, so small was she, only by raising her head could she contemplate it in its entirety.

  III

  M. MARTIN, WHOSE HAIR and beard had gone white, was now left with the care of his five surviving daughters, and decided to transport them to Lisieux where he could depend on the help of his wife’s brother and sister-in-law, M. Guérin, a chemist, and Mme. Guérin. A house was found for them, and found quickly: Les Buissonnets, which one might translate as The Shrubbery, on the outskirts of the small and hilly town. It lay up the slope of a winding path just off the road which leads to Trouville, in a real shrubbery of a secluded garden, thickly planted in parts with laurel, thuya, euonymus, and ivy. The architecture of the house was of a glaring red with ornamentation of lacy rustic woodwork painted white, crowned by a belvedere in the roof which commanded views over the roofs of Lisieux and the pleasant surrounding country. M. Martin took this belvedere as his study for his hours of retirement; it was an understood thing that he should not be interrupted there, but his favoured Thérèse, sa Benjamine, sa petite reine, might always clamber the stair with the certainty of her welcome:

  J’aimais encore, au belvédère,

  Inondé de vive lumière,

  À recevoir les doux baisers d’un père,

  À caresser ses blancs cheveux Neigeux.

  Thus the belvedere, although aesthetically speaking it added nothing to the architectural attractions of the house, did supply something with its seclusion and its wide windows to the solitary man and the affectionate child. For the rest, Les Buissonnets was precisely the sort of house we see standing “in its own grounds” at the approach to any of our own large towns and according to our standards of taste was both ugly and, for its size, pretentious. Anything less like the gaunt forbidding palace at Avila could scarcely be imagined than this chalet bourgeois. The furniture put into Les Buissonnets by M. Martin matched it inevitably. Heavy and highly polished mahogany; a circular table on one central leg; a side table in the dining-room with carved rabbits, pheasants, and partridges; a clock under a glass case on the mantelpiece; engravings after David on the walls. It is still there to-day, strangely eloquent, and touching even in its hideousness; certain alterations have been made inside the house and the furniture pushed unnaturally against the walls, giving it the air of a museum which indeed it is; but the garden remains very much the same as it was, with its heavy greenery, its stray and spiky yuccas, its oval flower-bed set in the middle of the front lawn, its wash-house where, in a neglected corner, Thérèse had her own garden. She planted periwinkles in it and ferns; she decorated it with shells and pebbles and bits of wood; she made an altar and put flowers on it; one expects to see her come running round the corner, but her toys, instead of being left about all over the grass, are indoors as precious relics now : her skipping-rope, her miniature oven, her toy piano, the cage for her canary, her draught-board, her sailing-boat, her doll in the bassinette, all preserved even
as her long golden curls hang in a glass case in the church down in the town. Her very modernity, her closeness to us in date, make the material legacy of St. Thérèse so multiple, so personal, so detailed. Whatever doubts may be cast upon the relics of other saints, these at least are incontrovertible.

  Thérèse had not minded leaving Alençon. As she herself wrote later on in this connexion, children enjoy change and anything unusual. She thought Les Buissonnets charming (cette riante habitation), and so it must have appeared to a child who had always lived cramped in a house giving on to a street; and as she grew older there were many treats she could enjoy: she was old enough now to go fishing sometimes with her father in the River Touques, taking a little rod of her own, and every afternoon she went for a walk with him, which led them sometimes into a church to visit the Blessed Sacrament, and sometimes into the chapel of Carmel. “Look, my little queen, behind that big grating are holy nuns who constantly pray to God.” At this time also she began to go to confession; well instructed by her sister, she knew exactly what she had to do, but alas, when she knelt the top of her head did not reach to the ledge, and the priest, ‘peering through his grille in search of his penitent, failed to perceive her. The greatest of modern saints was at that moment also the smallest: she was too small to be seen. Back at Les Buissonets again, she had her lessons to do, and remembered always that the word “heaven” was the first word she ever learnt to read; then she must arrange her own indoor altar, which she was allowed to do for herself before saying her prayers. She had her own flower vases for it, but everything was on so small a scale that a couple of tapers could do duty for candles in the tiny candlesticks. Sometimes Victoire, the servant, would give her two ends of real candles as a surprise; but this was very seldom. During the winter evenings, after a game of draughts, Marie or Pauline read the Liturgical Year, and then some pages out of an improving book, when Thérèse climbed on to her father’s knees, leant her head against his heart, and listened half asleep while he sang to her and rocked her in his arms. The description is her own, for she remembered every detail of their simple familiar life and did not hesitate to set it down; in her heedless fluency she was a born autobiographer. Even to the games she played with her cousin Marie, relating how they amused themselves by walking along the street hand-in-hand with their eyes shut, pretending to be blind, until they fell over a pile of empty boxes standing on the pavement, and by the clatter brought the shopkeeper out in a rage.