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 emigre 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."
Ribeyrolles37 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 Lefevre appeared before the registrar for the census. "Is it Lefevre 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 Dobree versus Jehan (April 5, 1866) gave rise to a judicial summing-up that said, a 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 vergees and vergees 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 Ile 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."
XIV
PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION IN THE ARCHIPELAGO
Jersey is the seventh largest English port. In 1845 the archipelago possessed 440 ships with a total burden of forty-two thousand tons, and its harbors handled an incoming traffic of sixty thousand tons and an outgoing traffic of fifty-four thousand tons, carried in 1,265 vessels of all nations, including 142 steamers. These figures have more than tripled in twenty years.
Paper money is used on a large scale in the islands, and with excellent results. On Jersey anyone who wishes can issue banknotes; and if the notes are honored when they fall due the bank is established. Banknotes in the archipelago are invariably for a pound sterling. If and when the idea of bills is understood by the Anglo-Normans, they will undoubtedly adopt them; and we should then have the curious spectacle of the same thing as a Utopian vision in Europe and as an accomplished fact in the Channel Islands. A financial revolution would have been achieved, though on a microscopic scale, in this small corner of the world. The people of Jersey are characterized by a firm, lively, alert, and rapid intelligence that would make them admirable Frenchmen if they so desired. The people of Guernsey, though just as penetrating and just as solid, are slower. These are strong and valiant people, more enlightened than is generally supposed, who afford not a few surprises. They are well supplied with newspapers in both English and French, six on Jersey and four on Guernsey--excellent, high-class papers. Such is the powerful and irreducible English instinct. Imagine a desert island: the day after his arrival Robinson Crusoe will publish a newspaper, and Man Friday will become a subscriber. To complement the newspapers there are the advertisements: advertising on a colossal, limitless scale, posters of all colors and all sizes, capital letters, pictures, illustrated texts displayed in the open air. On all the walls of Guernsey is displayed a huge picture of a man, six feet tall, holding a bell and sounding the alarm to call attention to an advertisement. Guernsey has more posters than the whole of France. This publicity promotes life; frequently the life of the mind, with unexpected results, leveling the population by the habit of reading, which produces dignity of manner. On the road to St. Helier or St. Peter Port you may fall into conversation with a passerby of unexceptionable aspect, wearing a black coat, severely buttoned up, and the whitest of linen, who talks of John Brown42 and asks about Garibaldi. Is he a minister of the church? Not at all: he is a cattle drover. A contemporary writer comes to Jersey, goes into a grocer's shop,1 and sees, in a magnificent drawing room attached to the shop, his complete works, bound, in a tall glass-fronted bookcase topped by a bust of Homer.
XV
OTHER PECULIARITIES
The various islands fraternize with one another; they also make fun of each other, gently. Alderney, which is subordinate to Guernsey, is sometimes vexed by this, and would like to become the seat of the bailiff and make Guernsey its satellite. Guernsey ripostes, goodhumoredly, with this popular jest:
Hale, Pier', hale, Jean,
L'Guernesey vian.
Pull (the oar), Pierre, pull, Jean:
Guernsey's coming!
These islanders, being a sea family, are sometimes cross with one another, but never feel rancor. Anyone who thinks they utter coarse insults misunderstands them. We do not believe in the proverbial exchange that is said to have taken place between Jersey and Guernsey: "You are a lot of donkeys," with the retort: "You are a lot of toads." This is a form of salutation of which the Norman archipelago is incapable. We cannot accept that two islands in the ocean play the parts of Vadius and Trissotin.43
In any case Alderney has its relative importance: for the Casquets it is London. The daughter of a lighthouse keeper named Houguer, who had been born on the Casquets, traveled to Alderney for the first time at the age of twenty. She was overwhelmed by the tumult and longed to get back to her rock. She had never seen cattle before; and, seeing a horse, exclaimed: "What a big dog!"
On these Norman islands people age early. Two islanders meet and chat: "The old fellow who used to pass this way is dead."--"How old was he?"--"All of thirty-six."
The women of this insular Normandy do not like to be servants: are they to be criticized or praised for this? Two servants in the same house find it difficult to agree. They make no concessions to each other: hence their service is awkward, intermittent, and spasmodic.
They have little care for the well-being of their master, though without bearing him any ill will: he must get along as best he can. In 1852 a French family who had come to Jersey as a result of events in their country took into their service a cook who came from St. Brelade and a chambermaid who came from Boulay Bay. One morning in December the master of the house, having risen early, found the front door, which opened on to the main road, standing wide open, and no sign of the servants. The two women had been unable to get on together, and after a quarrel--no doubt feeling that they had fully earned their wages--had bundled up their belongings and gone their separate ways in the middle of the night, leaving their master and mistress in bed and the front door open. One had said to the other: "I can't stay in the house with a drunkard," and the other had retorted: "I can't stay in the house with a thief."
"Always the two on the ten" is an old local proverb. What does it mean? It means that if you employ a laborer or a female servant your two eyes must never leave their ten fingers. It is the advice of a miserly employer: ancient mistrust denouncing ancient idleness. Diderot tells us how five men came to mend a broken pane of glass in his window in Holland: one was carrying the new pane, one the putty, one a bucket of water, one the trowel, and another the sponge. It took two days for the five of them to replace the pane.
These are, of course, ancient Gothic habits of idleness born of serfdom, just as Creole indolence is born of slavery, which nowadays are disappearing everywhere under the friction of progress, in the Channel Islands as in other countries, but perhaps more rapidly there than elsewhere. In these industrious island communities active work, which is an essential element of honesty, is increasingly becoming the law of labor.
In the archipelago of the Channel certain things belonging to the past can still be seen. This, for example: "Fief court held in the parish of St. Ouen, in Monsieur Malzard's house, on Monday, May 22, 1854, at noon. Presided over by the seneschal, with the provost on his right and the serjeant on his left. Also present the noble squire, seigneur of Morville and other places, who possesses part of the parish in vassalage. The seneschal called on the provost to take the oath, in these terms: 'You swear and promise, by your faith in God, that you will well and faithfully perform the duties of provost of the fief and seigneurie of Morville and preserve the rights of the seigneur.' And the said provost, having raised his hand and bowed to the seigneur, said: 'I swear so to do.' "
The Norman archipelago speaks French
, but with some variants, as we shall see. Paroisse (parish) is pronounced paresse. You may have un ma a la gambe qui n'est pas commun ("a sore leg, which doesn't often happen"). "How are you?" " Petitement. Moyennement. Tout a l'aisi": that is to say, poorly, fairly well, well. To be sad is to "have low spirits"; to smell bad is to have a mauvais sent; to cause damage is faire du menage; to sweep your room, wash the dishes, etc., is picher son fait; a bucket, which is often filled with refuse, is a bouquet. A man is not drunk, he is bragi. You are not wet, you are mucre. To be a hypochondriac is avoir des fixes. A girl is a hardelle; an apron is a tablier; a tablecloth is a doublier; a dress is un dress; a pocket is a pouque; a drawer is an haleur; a cabbage is a caboche; a cupboard is a presse; a coffin is a co fret a mort; New Year gifts are irvieres; the roadway is the cauchie; a mask is a visagier; pills are boulets. "Soon" is bien dupartant. If stocks are low in the market hall and there is little on sale they say that fish and vegetables are ecarts (scarce). Early potatoes are temprunes on Guernsey and heurives on Jersey. Going to law, building, traveling, running a house, having people to dinner, entertaining friends are all coutageux (costly; in Belgium and French Flanders they say frayeux). A girl does not allow a young man to kiss her for fear of coming home bouquie, with her hair disarranged. Noble is one of the words most frequently heard in this local variant of French. Anything that has been successfully achieved is a noble train. A cook brings back from the market a noble quartier de veau. A plump duck is a noble pirot. A fat goose is a noble picot. The language of justice and the law also has a Norman flavor. Case papers, petitions, and draft laws are "lodged with the clerk of court." A father whose daughter marries is no longer responsible for her while she is couverte de mari.