The Childhood and Youth of a French "Maçon"

ONE of the characteristic features of the latter part of the nineteenth century, in the history of literature, will be the number of biographies and autobiographies which it has brought forth. Third and fourth rate people have felt bound to tell the world all about themselves, or about other people equally third or fourth rate. Time, the great winnower, will no doubt sooner or later toss all the chaff to the four winds of deserved oblivion, and gather in the few grains that may remain out of each rubbishy cartload. On the other hand, many works of sterling value will remain in the class, to be transmitted to future generations, now as literary models, now as ensamples of noble manhood and womanhood, now as repertories of valuable information, — pictures which enable us to realize the times they spread over, the life which the writers lived.

It is mainly on the last two grounds that a recent volume, published in a second-rate French town, in the eightieth year of the author’s life, claims our interest. The Mémoires de Léonard. Ancien Garmon Maçon (Bourganeuf, 1895), — the name “Léonard ” being an avowed, and so far as I can see, perfectly useless pseudonym for “ Martin Nadaud,” — though by no means devoid in many parts of a certain rough power of style, have no claim to be regarded as a literary or artistic model. The sequence of the narrative is often clumsy or involved ; the writer, though he for years taught his own language, not unfrequently sins against its rules. But the work is thoroughly original, and while bringing out, all the more vividly through its artlessness, the picture of a strong, earnest nature breasting dauntlessly the tides of social and political effort, preserves for us also, with invaluable realism, a picture of peasant and artisan life in the France of sixty and even more years ago. M. Nadaud I may say is a friend of my own, of many years’ standing, and I can vouch for his honesty and truthfulness.² The dedication of the book deserves to be quoted at length : —

“ To my three grandchildren, Louis, Marie, Helene Bouquet. These recollections being a family book, I dedicate them to you, as well as to Henri Lombard and Alphonse Bertrand, my two grandsons-in-law, both so worthy of having come into our family.

“ I do not forget my two great-grandchildren, Michel and Julienne Lombard, and am indeed very happy to add their names to this dedication.

“ I had you under my direction, as orphans, when very young, my dear children, and I am happy to do you to-day the justice of saying that you have always shown me the greatest affection and the greatest respect.

“ The dearest wish of your grandfather and great-grandfather is that, in all circumstances of life, you will behave yourselves as honest citizens, that you will keep up amongst yourselves the purest and closest friendship, and that you will always bear high and steadfast the republican flag, the flag which will insure — be certain of this — quiet destinies to our dear and worthy fatherland.

MARTIN NADAUD.”

I have said that the picture presented to us by the Ménoires is one of both peasant and artisan life; for it is a peculiarity of many of the workmen employed in the French building trades, and was formerly so of nearly all, that they are peasants in the winter, artisans the rest of the year. It is from the central departments, representing the old provinces of Le Limousin and La Marche, that these chiefly come, the two main streams of yearly migration being to and from Paris and Lyons. M. Nadaud, as a maçon, comes naturally from the latter province, now the department of La Creuse, which indeed supplies stone-cutters as well. He quotes Bonnemèrc’s Histoire des Paysans as showing that in former days the Marchois wandered as far as Catalonia in search of work ; but the present yearly migration appears to date chiefly from the seventeenth century, when Richelieu, for the building of fortresses and military seaports, sent agents into the province to hire large numbers of workmen, who later on, when wanted, were even seized by force and taken in chain-gangs wherever their services were needed. The same movement continued, no doubt in milder guise, under Louis XIV., for carrying out the plans of the great military engineer, Vauban.

The poverty of the soil, however, accounts largely for this migration of labor. The country is mostly hilly ; in the upland districts the winters are long and severe. There is but little grain grown, and the main sustenance of the peasants in the uplands is supplied in the winter by their chestnut - trees, chestnut - soup being the staple dish for dinner.³ The cows, too, are small, and give but little milk, being yoked to the plough where this is used at all, and getting almost nothing but chestnut-leaves for winter forage. (Nadaud used to be quite amazed at the quantity of milk drawn from English cows.) Till of late years the working population were wholly uneducated, and, though kindly among themselves, so rough that, as Nadaud has told me himself, there are neighborhoods where stones would be thrown at any stranger not accompanied by some one known in the place.

Although M. Nadaud gives no connected details of his family history, its records date back for centuries. Ragpickers for several generations, — the trade being a lucrative one in the early days of the printing-press, — his ancestors had bought several parcels of land and built themselves a cottage in the middle of the fifteenth century, which was transformed into a house by his father and grandfather in 1808. This was called “ La Martineche ” (a name since extended to a hamlet which has grown up round it), from the habit adopted by the branch of the Nadauds inhabiting it (the name being virtually a clan name in the neighborhood) of always calling the eldest son in every generation "Martin.’' Let it be observed that although M. Nadaud shares to the full the Celtic enthusiasms of contemporary French writers, his name testifies against his Celtic descent. “Nadaud” is evidently the Teutonic “ Nadald,” and he has admitted to me that it is so written in the older records.

His earliest, recollections, he tells us, are of the veillées, evenings spent always in the same house, and presided over by an old dame, midwife and sole doctor of the village, where tales were told of ghosts and Bluebeard ; of dead men who had come back to tell who of their neighbors were in paradise, and who in hell ; of those who ran by night as wolves, and those who had been strong enough to overcome the were wolf, — the result being that on leaving the veillée the terrified listeners could only creep home hand in hand, and that young Nadaud’s mother had often to come and sit by his bed and talk to him till sleep should vanquish his fright. Then, again, there were the evil-eyed ones, before whom the housewife durst not milk her cows or beat her cream ; and the whole year’s work would lie under a curse if one should have failed to cross himself in due season. All this, be it observed, was long after the first French Revolution, since M. Nadaud was born on the 17th of November, 1815.

But a new spirit was abroad. Nadaud the father, one of the best workmen of the neighborhood, and greatly respected for the friendly care he took of the youngsters, when first sent up to Paris could neither read nor write, but he was determined that his son should be a scholar. The whole family protested. The mother needed the boy for field work. The grandfather told his son that he would have done better to remain in Paris than to come back and talk about schooling. Neither his own brothers, nor himself, nor his son had ever learnt their letters, and they had eaten their bread all the same. But the father persisted.

The result was not very successful, on the whole. With his first master, young Nadaud spent a twelvemonth in learning his letters and spelling syllables. With the second, a severe man, but passionately attached to his calling, he did better, and won a couple of prizes, to the great delight of both his parents. But a fall from a wall detained him three months from school. Meanwhile his master died, and under his successor boys did pretty nearly what they would. Nadaud and his master fell out, and he admits that he ended not only by not working himself, but by hindering others who wished to work, besides taking part in a trick on an ill - conditioned elder lad which cost the latter his life. On the boy’s refusing, in the agony of his self-reproach, to return to school after this, he was sent by his mother for a short time to a perfectly incompetent teacher, but eventually was placed by his father with a retired officer, named Dyprès, who had taken to keeping school in a small town of the neighborhood, where young Nadaud had to be boarded. The terms of his schooling and boarding are curious enough to be recorded here. The charge for schooling was five francs a month. The goodwife of the house where the boy lodged was to receive three francs a month for bed and (not board but) cooking the broth (tremper la soupe) ; Nadaud’s mother undertaking, for eighteen months, to bring every week a sufficient provision of bread and cheese. As it happened, master and pupil lodged at the same house; the latter was thus able to listen to his master’s talks with two other old soldiers, all furious against the government of the Restoration. Nadaud admits that but for the imperious ways of Captain Dyprès he would never have known the difference between noun and adjective. The captain, on the other hand, discerned the boy’s capacity, and wrote to his father that if he continued to work with the same ardor he would become something else than a maçon. But he was exposed to a terrible moral danger. His master drank brandy by the tumblerful, and, following his example, young Nadaud made himself tipsy, with another lad, three or four times. Still, he must have borne a high character, since the curé of the place got him to come of a morning to the church to hear the village girls repeat their catechism. Dyprès’s drunken habits having, however, become noised abroad, his pupils fell away by degrees, and he left the place. The boy remained only three or four months with Dypres’s successor, and that was the end of his schooling. He returned to field labor. He was growing up. The shepherdesses taught him to dance and sing : the dance was the boitrrée of central France, the songs were traditional. During the long and rigorous winter of 1829-30, when the ground was covered with snow, and the sheep had to be kept in stall, fed with ferns and leaves, the evenings were spent at home; Nadaud the father telling tales of Paris life, or stories of the Empire, largely learnt while working for two years at General Montholon’s, one of Napoleon’s companions in captivity at St. Helena. “ I wonder still,” Nadaud writes of his father, “ that a man who could neither read nor write could have got into his head the principal events of the imperial epic.” He had, moreover, provided himself with a store of pamphlets and bulletins of the Napoleonic era, which he made his son read, and had also brought back from Paris some of Bérunger’s songs, which soon became popular among the girls.

But the time came when the boy had to earn his livelihood. He was in his fifteenth year, and on the 20th of March, 1830, he started for Paris with his father, in a suit all of drugget, woven from the wool of the sheep belonging to the family, stiff as pasteboard, nearly paralyzing all movement, with big shoes which were soon to gall his unaccustomed feet. When parting from his mother, his grandmother, his sisters, “ If we had been carried to our grave,” he says, “ the women’s shrieks could not, I think, have been more agonizing.” Four of his boy friends were waiting for him outside. They shut themselves up in a barn for their good-bys. Strange to say, young Nadaud never saw any of them again. At the neighboring town of Pontarion the two Nadauds met the other migrants of the neighborhood, together with a still greater number of friends who had come to escort them. Bottles of white wine were emptied, and the old men who remained behind enjoined upon them to behave well and not forget the pays (a term used frequently amongst the French in a much more limited sense than our “ country "). Further on, another batch of fellow-travelers awaited them, and they had to take to crosscountry lanes, where a highroad has since been made. They next had to cross the forest of Guéret, where the roads were still worse, in some places choked with branches which had to be pushed aside, bringing down a cold rain upon their shoulders. Young Nadaud’s shoes already let in the water. “ Had I dared,” he says, “ I should have asked to go back.” Towards eleven o’clock they reached the town of Guéret, where they breakfasted. Here the elder Nadaud was formally made treasurer of the party, each member of the band handing him ten francs for expenses. The business of the treasurer (who must needs be a first-rate walker) was to go on ahead, order meals, reckon the bottles of wine, and bargain for the price. Each band on the road had its own treasurer. On they went, stopping, it might be, at this or that inn for a draught of wine ; if some of the youngsters began to be tired, the older men would strike up a stave of some country song to make them laugh. At nightfall they reached the town of Genouilhat, where they were told by their treasurer that a very great number of migrants were on the road, and that it would be wise to push on two leagues farther in order to be well ahead. They started, accordingly, soon after supper, by a splendid moonlight. But no jolly songs could now cheat the weariness of the younger members of the band, and young Nadaud was lagging behind, when a stalwart fellow-traveler offered to carry for him his pack ([baluchon). On reaching their destination, Bordesoulle, the lad had walked fifteen leagues — about forty-five miles — for his first day’s tramp.

The inn was a rendezvous for wagoners and muleteers, and two hands of the latter class arrived at the same time, the huge bells of the mules, with the cracking of whips and barking of dogs, making an indescribable noise and clatter. Some of the mules were laden with wine in skins ; the younger ones were meant for sale at the markets by the way, or even in Paris. To youngsters who had not yet left their villages, the hoarse voices of the muleteers and their bold reddish-brown faces made them seem highwaymen. Entering a huge kitchen, in a vast fireplace the travelers saw whole quarters of meat roasting, and three very long tables, at one of which they sat down. But having supped at Genouilhat, they were more thirsty than hungry. Young Nadaud’s father made the boy drink some mouthfuls of hot wine; and these he could swallow only with difficulty, through sheer exhaustion. He was anxious only for his bed.

But what a bed he found ! The sheets were black as soot, with traces of various kinds of filthiness. The practice was, at the inns where the migrants stopped, to put on white sheets in mid-November, which should last till about mid-March, unless torn or altogether too filthy. No one who slept in them dreamed of undressing. Wrapping their heads round, that they should not touch the bolster, they slept with arms crossed upon the chest. “ What will hardly be believed, one crept into these filthinesses rather with a laugh than a curse.”The morning answered to the night. Some greenhorns expected water for washing. They had to wash their eyes with their shirts moistened with spittle, putting off all other ablutions till they should come upon clean water by the roadside.

Though they started merrily on the second day’s tramp, it proved a heavy one. The roads were bad, cut up into ruts, full of pools and big stones ; the travelers were often ankle-deep in mud, and the water gurgled in their shoes. By the time they reached their stopping-place, Issoudun, the lad felt as if he could not get through another day’s tramp. His father told him that he had himself, when younger, traveled to La Vendée without whimpering. A very good meal was served them, but the sleeping was even worse than at Bordesoulle. There were in the house a full hundred of Creusois, and thirty of these were lodged in a tiled-floor room with half the tiles wanting, and beds one over the other, and quite as filthy as those of the previous night. Of course no one undressed.

The writer observes, moreover, that throughout their journey they were the constant objects of humiliating jokes and coarse insults. On the other hand, when they started at early morning, they would roar out the cry of the Creusois when dancing to the bagpipes, “ Hif, hif, hif, fou, fou ! ” perfectly regardless of the comfort of the sleeping inhabitants. On the third day, after a tramp of one or two hours, some peasants who were trimming hedges began to call out, “ The geese! the turkeys ! ” and others who were working in the fields joined in the cry. Insults were bandied from side to side, but when a few of the Creusois prepared to climb over the hedges to meet their adversaries, the latter took to flight. Nadaud remarks that at this period all the trades were in a state of mutual hostility. No member of a devoir (as a trade society was then termed) could meet a member of another devoir on the road without their falling to with their sticks, and this all over France.

By the time they arrived at the next sleeping-place, Salbris, the rumor had preceded them of what had been only an exchange of insults, but had been magnified into a pitched battle, and the gendarmes were afoot. Here the host and his wife offered to the Nadauds one of their children’s beds, and they were able to sleep between clean sheets.

The next day was the last of their tramp. From Orleans, which they were to reach that evening, the rest of the journey would be in certain miserable vehicles called coucous (which I myself can recollect), in effect baskets on wheels, in which four passengers were tossed about. Nadaud senior, with two of his companions, had much ado to secure places for the band, the number of coucous being insufficient to hold all the migrants. The drivers were in league, stopping to drink at every inn, and meeting all complaints of delay with only a laugh.

At last they reached Paris, and before taking his son to the garni (or workmen’s boarding-house) where he was in the habit of lodging, Nadaud went with him to the Quai de la Grève, to wash his face and hands. The latter were black as coals, and he could only clean them a little by rubbing them with sand ; he also took off his jacket and waistcoat, to get rid of the vermin picked up at the inns on the road, which were devouring him. At the garni, where his father was looked on as an old friend, young Nadaud was abashed on being kissed by the elder of the landlord’s two girls. But five minutes later his father took him away, first to see a friend, then to a place in the country where an uncle had work for them. In four days they had walked sixty leagues (about one hundred and miles), without reckoning the time spent in the “ accursed coucous.”

M. Nadaud says he has related at length the incidents of his journey, because the men of his generation were the last who had to endure such trials, before the coming of the “ golden age ” of railway traveling. He observes — and I think every reader will agree with him —that “ to subject children of thirteen or fourteen to such harsh trials would now seem to him the extreme of cruelty.”

Nadaud’s uncle was a builder at Villemomble, close to the park of Rainey, owned by the Duke of Orleans, and Nadaud’s father was himself a partner with his brother. Even the latter could not read or write, and young Nadaud was at first employed, under the very insufficient teaching of the village beadle, in keeping the books and in odd jobs. But finding himself made game of by the workmen, he got employment as helping lad to a worthy journeyman plasterer, and so entered upon the practice of his calling.

A few months later the revolution of July, 1830, broke out. It was not till all firing was over that Nadaud was taken with his father into Paris ; and no sight, he says, except the murders in cold blood which followed the insurrection of June, 1848, and the massacres of the Commune ever impressed him more. On their return, all Villemomble was en fête, celebrating with fireworks and balls the accession of their neighbor, Louis Philippe, to the throne. But it was to be an ill time for the Nadauds. The owner of the park and chateau of Villemomble, with whom they had a building contract, was ruined by the revolution, and escaped to Switzerland. The two brothers Nadaud lost twelve thousand francs, each being responsible for half, and Nadaud’s father had just bought from his brother the latter’s share (forty-five hundred francs) in the family property of La Martinechc. On settling accounts, he found that he owed his brother over eleven thousand francs.

Father and son now returned to the garni where they had stopped at first, and the lad was placed in a room on the fourth story, where there were six beds and twelve lodgers, with a passage less than two feet wide between the two rows of beds. Here are set down some interesting details of the Paris workman’s life in those days : —

” In every room there are two streams of talk, that of the misers and that of the spendthrifts. With the first one learns how to reckon up the coppers. They are generally evil-tongued, always ready to pass an unfavorable judgment on those whose qualities are not theirs.”

Still, “ the miser was wanting neither in uprightness nor in honorable conduct. On the contrary, hie loved his family, and perhaps his friends, but he tormented his own body. (Il était bourtrae de son corps.) He must not spend more than fourteen or fifteen francs a month beyond his board and lodging, which cost him six francs a month, for which sum he had his bed, his broth, and his bread, which he took by measure, and paid for likewise month by month. Every morning he left a piece of bread on a plank (which was not dusted every day), and the hostess came and picked up all these pieces into her apron, and, without knowing which was whose, put them to soak in sixty or eighty porringers, as soon as the water of the big earthenware pot (marmite) was hot. A second piece of bread our man put under his arm, and munched at it on his way to the yard, placing the rest of his supply in some corner, to take with him at nine o’clock to his breakfast, on which he spent five or seven sous, according as he did or did not have broth. In the former case, he kept the little bit of meat that was served to him for the two-o’clock meal, which he ate sitting on the plaster or in a corner of the yard.” ⁴

As to the spendthrifts, money melts in their hands ; they spend it in drink on pay-day or the day after, and eat dry bread for the remainder of the week, or try to borrow money which they never repay. Their conversation is, for all that, very amusing, and the misers have a most peculiar knack of making them talk.

It would take too long to follow young Nadaud through the different stages of his career as a workingman. Wages were at first miserably low. He received thirty-six sous a day, or two francs for the long days. The full-trained maçon got only three and a quarter to three and a half francs. In 1831 he had a terrible accident, falling from a third floor into a cellar, and thereby injuring his head and breaking both arms at the wrists. He recovered, however, and at seventeen became a workman, or compagnon, with a boy to help him, such as he had been himself hitherto. In the winter of 183233 the maladie du pays took hold of him. He had not seen his mother or sisters for three years. But doctors’ fees and three months’ idleness after his accident had swallowed up his small savings, and he had to borrow two hundred francs of a friend, out of which he renewed his wardrobe ; buying, amongst other things, a fine blouse with red and blue collar, and a tricolor belt, which was the height of fashion amongst workingmen in those days. When he reached home, he found his mother and sisters eating their supper, soup and radishes. The next day, after a dinner of whey, bread, and potatoes, he began working as a peasant, beating out the sheaves, a fatiguing task which lasted a couple of weeks. It was also his business, before nightfall, to cut wood for the veillées, to be burnt in fireplaces six feet wide. Neighbors came to these veilées, particularly to hear the maçon, who had so much to tell about Paris. Young Nadaud. however, by this time preferred to go about to the balls held in one or another village, always in a barn, and almost always beginning with the traditional bourrée. It is a singular custom that the young men should open these balls by inviting the oldest women present to dance the bourrée with them. Pretty women, Nadaud tells us, abound in the Creuse, and at the balls marriages are soon arranged, which generally take place within a few weeks, as the month of March drives away the younger men from the villages. In this same year one of Nadaud’s sisters was engaged. But twelve hundred francs had to be paid by way of dot, or marriage portion, and the Nadauds owed already about ten thousand francs, pretty nearly what the Martineche property was worth. They had to borrow four hundred francs at thirty per cent, young Nadaud joining in signing bills, though only seventeen years old. Three or four days after the marriage he returned to Paris, to find the building trade in a state of great depression, the worst labor crisis he ever went through, except that of 1848. He had to take work again as a builder’s lad, earning only two francs two sous a day, and met with another mishap through having a stone flung by accident on his arm. It was only a contusion, but he fainted, and had to go to a hospital. After a few weeks of enforced idleness he obtained a little work, but only to be interrupted by a strike of the carpenters, which cost him five weeks more of idleness.

The years 1833 and 1834 were very bad for him. At one time he had to work as a mere wagoner, earning fiftyfive sous, and later three francs a day. Those were evil days for the French working class. The jealousies between the workmen of different trades were more than ever embittered. To put a stop to the fights between the compagnons on tramp, the government forbade them to carry sticks. Even among the Creusois there were rivalries between the men of different cantons or communes, so that a foreman of the one set durst not give a job to men of the other. There were two or three years of great lawlessness. For a gesture, for a word, men came to blows. Twice in a short space of time young Nadaud was taken up by the police. To break his son of his bad habits, the elder Nadaud got three worthy mates of his to talk with him, and one of them offered to take the young man into his own lodgings. Eventually the two secured quarters in one of the quietest neighborhoods in Paris, that of St. Louis. From henceforth Nadaud was a reformed character. Paris was just then opening free schools for the working class. He went to one of these, and was soon made monitor. But this was a loss of time for him. He tried a private master, and could now measure his literary ignorance. Yet what he most wanted was technical instruction. He bought drawing materials, and began attending a course. But, on calculation, he saw that the time needed to go through the course lesson by lesson was more than he could afford. He was able to borrow a book containing a complete course, and worked out its twentyfour plates in his own room, then returned for four or five months to his teacher.

All this time the family indebtedness weighed upon him. Twenty pounds of interest had to be paid every year. What if he could earn this by teaching others ? There were all around him worthy, hardworking young fellows who could not even sign their names. At four francs a month each he might earn from four to five hundred francs in the year. He tried the experiment, and succeeded. Fifteen pupils came, as many as his room would hold. The work was hard. He had to get up at five in the morning, crush plaster till six P. m., rush back from the building-yard to swallow the soup of the garni, and then return home to teach till eleven. He taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, and the principles of building. If master and pupils got tired of study, they talked politics.

“ It is often fortunate,” he says, for a man to be born poor. I believe this was the case with me. If my family debts had not weighted me with five hundred frn cs yearly interest to pay, the idea of opening the school would never have come to me, and I should very likely have remained unknown among my companions in work and misery. This long assiduity in intellectual labor, lasting from 1838 to 1848, is what has most contributed to implant in my mind the taste for study and serious reading : and I also acquired during this period the habit of speaking in public.”

At the age of twenty-four he married a young girl of his own country, and had to leave her seventeen days after the wedding to return to work. It was three years before he saw her again, bringing with him an unheard-of pile of savings, four thousand francs, which all went towards paying the family debts, but still left one thousand francs due.

A hard life, surely, so far, and a worthy one ; it remains to be seen how the maçon fared later.

J. M. Ludlow.