Beyond The Narrow Life A Guide For Psychedelic

Integration And Existential Exploration Kile M

Ortigo download

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-narrow-life-a-guide-for-
psychedelic-integration-and-existential-exploration-kile-m-
ortigo-46424362

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Beyond The Narrows M R Durbin

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-narrows-m-r-durbin-51240048

Beyond The Astral Metaphysical Short Stories William Buhlman Susan

Buhlman

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-astral-metaphysical-short-
stories-william-buhlman-susan-buhlman-44908450

Beyond The Voting Rights Act The Untold Story Of The Struggle To
Reform Americas Voter Registration Laws Gregory T Moore

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-voting-rights-act-the-untold-
story-of-the-struggle-to-reform-americas-voter-registration-laws-
gregory-t-moore-45034500

Beyond The Campus David J Maurrasse

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-campus-david-j-
maurrasse-45458496
Beyond The Tides Liz Johnson

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-tides-liz-johnson-46253048

Beyond The Veil Aubrey Thamann Kalliopi M Christodoulaki

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-veil-aubrey-thamann-kalliopi-
m-christodoulaki-46779686

Beyond The Known Realization The Beyond The Known Trilogy Book I Paul
Selig

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-known-realization-the-beyond-
the-known-trilogy-book-i-paul-selig-46845032

Beyond The North American Model Of Wildlife Conservation From Lethal

To Compassionate Conservation Anja Heister

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-north-american-model-of-
wildlife-conservation-from-lethal-to-compassionate-conservation-anja-
heister-46869984

Beyond The Supernatural Rpg Kevin Siembieda

https://ebookbell.com/product/beyond-the-supernatural-rpg-kevin-
siembieda-46879176
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 Auvergne en Fête, 6th September
1890.

T
hese good folk of Auvergne seem to get much more fun, or at
least much more play, out of life than we do; at any rate, they
have been twice en fête in the three weeks we have been
here. I suppose it is because we have in this business cut down our
saints till we have only St. Lubbock left, with his quarterly holiday,
while they, more wisely, have stuck to the old calendar. But it seems
all wrong that they, who get five times as much sun as we, should
also get three or four times as many holidays; for sunshine is surely
of itself a sort of equivalent for a holiday. Perhaps, however, if we
had lots of it, the national “doggedness as does it” might wear out.
That valuable, but unpleasant characteristic could scarcely have
leavened a nation living in a genial climate; but, with about half
Africa on our hands, in addition to Ireland and other trifles all round
the world, the coming generation will need the “dogged as does it”
even more than their fathers. So let us sing with Charles Kingsley,
“Hail to thee, North-Easter,” or with the old Wiltshire shepherd, claim
that the weather in England must be, anyhow, “sech as plaazes God
A’mighty, and wut plaazes He plaazes I.”
Determined to see all the fun of the fair, a friend and I started for
Clermont from Royat by the electric tramway, and reached the Place
de Jaude in a few minutes—the “Forum Clermontois,” as it is called
in the local guidebooks—the largest open space in the ancient
capital of Auvergne. It is a famous place for a fair, being nearly the
size and shape of Eaton Square, with two rows of plane-trees
running round it, but otherwise unenclosed. As we alighted from the
tram-car, we could see a long line of booths, with prodigious pictures
in front of them, and platforms on which bands were playing and
actors gesticulating; but before starting on our tour, we were
attracted by a crowd close to the stopping-place of the cars. It
proved to be a ring, four or five deep, round the carpet of athletes.
They were two, a man and a woman, both in the usual flesh-
coloured tights, the latter without any pretence of a skirt. The man
was walking round, changing the places of the weights and clubs,
until sufficient sous had been thrown on to the carpet, the woman
screening her face from the sun with a big fan, and talking with her
nearest neighbours in the ring. She was a remarkably fine young
woman, with well-cut features, and a snake-head on a neck like a
column; and, strange to say, her expression was as modest and
quiet as though pink tights were the ordinary walking-dress on the
Place de Jaude. The necessary sous were soon carpeted, and the
performance began. It was just the usual thing, lifting and catching
heavy weights, wielding clubs, etc., the only novelty being that a
woman should be one of the performers. She followed the man,
doing several feats with heavy weights which were painful to
witness, and we passed on to the row of booths. The average price
for entrance was 2 1/2 sous, but after experimenting on the two
first, we agreed that in such a temperature the outside was
decidedly the best part of the show. These two were some Indian
dancers, male and female, who stood up one after another and
postured from the hips, and waved scarfs, the rest beating time on
banjos; and a “Miss Flora, dompteuse,” a snake-tamer. From this
announcement over the booth entrance we rather expected to find a
countrywoman, but the performer was a squat little Frenchwoman,
in the same skirtless tights, who took some sleepy snakes out of a
box, put them round her neck, and then wanted to make us pay a
second time, which we declined to do. The next booth ought to have
been amusing, but no boys came to play while we stopped. It was
announced as “Le Massacre d’Innocents.” A number of these
“Innocent” puppets looked out of a row of holes in a large wooden
frame, not more than eight feet from the rail in front of it. Standing
behind this rail the player, on paying 5 centimes, is handed a soft
ball, which he can discharge at any one of the Innocents he may
select, and “chaque bonhomme renversé gagne une demi-douzaine
de biscuits.” I suppose the biscuits were bad, as otherwise the
absence of boys seemed incredible. Any English lower-school boy
would have brought down a bonhomme at that distance with every
ball, unless the balls were somehow doctored. But no boy turned up;
so we passed on to the biggest booth in the fair, with pictures of
wondrous beasts and heroic men and women over the platform, on
which a big drum and clarionet invited entrance, in strains which
drowned those of all the neighbouring booths. We read that inside a
“Musée historique, destructive, et amusant” was on show, but
contented ourselves with the pictures outside.
Facing the other side of the place, with their backs to the larger
booths along which we had come, were a row of humbler stalls and
booths, most of the latter being devoted to some kind of gambling.
There were three or four courses des petits chevaux, not so well
appointed as the permanent one in the Royat Park, but on the same
lines, and a number of hazard-boards-and other tables, about the
size of those which the thimble-riggers used to carry about at
English fairs. These last were new to me. They have a hollow rim
round them, into which the player puts a large marble, which runs
out on to the face of the table, which is marked all over with
numbers, six or eight towards the centre being red, and the rest
black. If the marble stops on one of these red numbers, the player
wins; if on a black one, the table wins. The odds seemed to be more
than twenty to one against the player; but if so, the tables would
surely be less crowded. As it was, they did a merry trade, never for a
moment wanting a player while we looked on. Most of these were
soldiers of the garrison, interspersed with peasants in blouses, who
dragged out their sous with every token of disgust and resentment,
but seemed quite unable to get away from the tables. On the whole,
after watching for some time, I was confirmed in the belief that we
are right in putting down gambling in all public places. Nothing, I
suppose, can stop it; but there is no good in thrusting the
temptation under the noses of boys and fools.
After making the round of the fair, we strolled up the hill to the
Cathedral, which dominates the city, and looks out over as fair and
rich a prospect as the world has to show. Brassey, when he was
building one of the railways across La Limagne, the plain which
stretches away east of Clermont, is reported to have said that if
France were utterly bankrupt, the surface value of her soil would set
her on her legs again in two years; and one can quite believe him.
The streets of the old town, which surrounds the Cathedral, are
narrow and steep, but full of old houses of rare architectural interest.
Many of them must have belonged to great folk, whose arms are still
to be seen over the doors, inside the quiet courts through which you
enter from the streets. In these one could see, as we passed, little
groups of gossips, knitting, smoking, “causer-ing.” The petit
bourgeois has succeeded to the noble, and now enjoys those grand,
broad staircases and stone balconies. They form an excellent setting
to the Cathedral, itself a grand specimen of Norman Gothic, begun
by Hugues de la Tour, the sixty-sixth bishop, before his departure for
the Crusades, and finished by Viollet-le-Duc, who only completed the
twin spires in 1877. But interesting as the Cathedral is, it is eclipsed
by the Church of Notre Dame du Port, the oldest building in
Clermont. It dates from the sixth century, when the first church was
built on the site by St. Avitus, eighteenth bishop. This was burnt 853
A.D., and rebuilt by St. Sigon, forty-third bishop, in 870. Burnt again,
it was again rebuilt as it stands to-day, in the eleventh century. In it
Peter the Hermit is said to have preached the First Crusade, when
the Council called by Pope Urban II. was sitting at Clermont.
Whether this be so or not, it is by far the most perfect and
interesting specimen of the earliest Gothic known to me; and the
crypt underneath the chancel is unique. It is specially dedicated to
St. Mary du Port, and over the altar is the small statue of the Virgin
and Child, around and before which votive offerings of all kinds—
crosses and military decorations, bracelets, jewels, trinkets, many of
them, I should think, of large value—hang and lie. The small image
has no beauty whatever—in fact, is just a plain black doll—but of
untold value to many generations of Auvernois, who regard it as a
talisman which has, again and again, preserved their city from sword
and pestilence. I am not sure whether, amongst the small marble
tablets which literally cover the walls, one may not be found in
memory of the great fight of Gergovia, in which Vercingétorix, if he
did not actually defeat Cæsar, turned the great captain and his
Roman legions away from this part of Gaul. At any rate, amongst the
most prominent, is one inscribed with the names “Coulmiers,”
“Patay,” “Le Mans,” the battles which in 1870-71 stayed the German
advance on Clermont, and saved the capital of Auvergne. The rest
are, for the most part, private tablets, thanksgivings for the cure of
all manner of sickness and disease to which flesh is heir. To this
shrine all sufferers have come in the faith which finds a voice all
round these old walls,—“Qu’on est heureux d’avoir Marie pour
mère”! That human instinct which longs for a female protectrix and
mediator “behind the veil,” speaks here, too, as it did 2000 years
ago, when the [Greek phrase] guarded the shrines of Athens and
her colonies.
 Scoppio Del Carro, Florence, Easter
Eve, 1891.

I
have just come back from witnessing an extraordinary, and, I
should think, a unique ceremony, which is enacted here on
Easter Eve; and, on sitting down quietly to think it over, can
scarcely say whether I am most inclined to laugh, or to cry, or to
swear. In truth, the “Scoppio del Carro”—or “explosion of the
fireworks”—as it is called, is a curious comment on, or illustration of,
your last week’s remarks on Superstitions. “The carefully preserved
dry husk of outward observance” in this case undoubtedly speaks, to
those who have ears to hear, of a heroic time, and the spectator
rubs his eyes, and feels somehow—

As though he looked upon the sheath

Which once had clasped Excalibur.

At any rate, that is rather how I felt, as, standing at noon in the
dense crowd in the nave of the Duomo, I saw the procession pass
within a few feet of me, on their way from the great entrance up to
the high altar, which was ablaze already with many tall candles.
Although within a few feet, the intervening crowd was so thick that I
could only see the heads and shoulders of the taller choristers and
priests as they passed; but I saw plainly enough, though the wearer
was low of stature, the tall mitre—it looked like gold—which the
Archbishop wore as he walked in the procession. Our bishops, I am
told, are wearing or going to wear them (Heaven save the mark!),
which made me curious. They threaded their way slowly up to the
high altar; and presently we heard in the distance intoning and
chants; and then, after brief pause, the dove (so called) started from
the crucifix, I think, at any rate from a high point on the altar, for the
open door. But in order to be clear as to what the dove carries and is
supposed to do, we must go back to the Second Crusade.
I give the story as I make it out by comparing the accounts in
various guide-books with those of residents interested in such
matters. These differ much in detail, but not as to the main facts.
These are, that in 1147 A.D. a Florentine noble of the Pazzi family,
Raniero by name, joined, some say led, the 2500 Tuscans who went
on the Crusade. In any case, he greatly distinguished himself by his
courage, and is said to have planted the first standard of the Cross
on the walls of Jerusalem. For this he was allowed to take a light
from the sacred fire on the Holy Sepulchre, which he desired to carry
back to his much-loved F’orence. An absurd part of the legend now
comes in. Finding the wind troublesome as he rode with the light, he
turned round, with his face to his horse’s tail (as if the wind always
blew in Crusaders’ faces), and so at last brought it safely home,
where his ungrateful fellow-citizens, when they saw him come riding
in this fashion, called out, “Pazzo!” “Pazzo!” or “Mad!” which his
family forthwith wisely adopted as their patronymic.
The sacred fire was housed in a shrine in St. Biagio, built by
Raniero, and has never been allowed to go out since that day—so it
is said—and from it yearly are relighted all the candles used in
Florentine churches at the Easter festival. It is a striking custom.
Gradually, during the Good Friday services, the lights are
extinguished in the Duomo, and all the churches, till at midnight
they are in darkness, and are only relit next day by fire brought even
yet by a Pazzi, a descendant of Raniero, from St. Biagio. This is,
however, doubtful, some authorities asserting that the family is
extinct, others that it not only exists, but still spends 2000 lire a year
in preserving the sacred fire. A stranger has no means that I know
of, of sifting out the fact. Anyhow, I can testify that somehow the
fire is in the Duomo before noon, as any number of candles were
alight on the high altar when I got there at 11.30, half an hour
before the procession. Anything more orderly than the great crowd I
have never seen. It was of all nations, languages, and ranks, though
the great majority were Tuscan peasants with their families from all
the surrounding country, waiting in eager expectation for the flight
of the dove from the high altar, through the doors to the great car
which stands waiting outside at the bottom of the broad steps in
front of the Duomo. If the dove makes a successful flight, and lights
the fireworks which are hung round the car, there will be a good
harvest and abundance of wine and oil, and of oranges and lemons.
This year the faces of the peasants and their wives and children—
and most attractive brown faces they were—were anxious, for it had
been raining hard in the morning, and still drops were falling.
However, all went well. At about 12.10 the chanting ceased, and the
dove—a small firework of the rocket genus—rushed down the nave,
some ten feet over our heads, along a thin wire which I had not
noticed before, and set light promptly to the fireworks on the car,
which began to turn and explode, not without considerable fizzing
and spluttering, but on the whole successfully. Then the dove turned
and came back, still alight, and leaving a trail of sparks as it sped
along, to the high altar. How it was received there, and what became
of it, I cannot say, as I was swept along in the rush to the doors
which immediately followed, and had enough to do to pilot my
companion, a lady, to the new centre of interest. This was the car to
which the sacred fire had now been transferred, and which was
about to start on its round to the other churches. It is chocolate-
coloured, and spangled with stars, some twenty feet high,
surmounted by a large crown and Catherine-wheel. As our crowd
swept out of the Duomo and down the steps, to mingle with the still
larger crowd outside, men were rehanging the car with fresh
fireworks, and putting-to four mighty white oxen, gaily garlanded. I
remarked that the conductor, a tall, six-foot man, could not look over
the shoulder of one of these shaft-oxen as he was harnessing him in
the shafts!
There could be no question as to the very best place for
spectators. It was the centre of the top step leading up to the
Duomo façade; and, finding ourselves there, we stopped and let the
crowd surge past us. Almost at once I became aware that this
favoured spot was occupied by the English-speaking race almost
exclusively, the accent of cousin Jonathan, I think, on the whole
predominating. Two Italian boys looked up at us with large, lustrous
brown eyes; otherwise the natives were absent. It seems like a sort
of law of social gravitation, that in these latter days the speakers of
our language should get into all the world’s best places, and having
got there should stop. One cannot much wonder that the speakers in
other tongues should feel now and then as if they were being rather
crowded out. We did not pursue the car as it lumbered away under
the glorious campanile, surrounded by the rejoicing multitude, for
the sun had now got the upper hand, and the whole city and plain
right away to the lower hills, and the snow-capped Apennines in the
background, were aglow with the sort of subdued purple or
amethyst light which seems to me to differentiate Tuscany from all
other countries known to me. Now, gradually to put out all the lights
in the churches on Good Friday, and to relight them from fire from
the Holy Sepulchre next day, seems to me a worthy and pathetic
custom; but this mixing it up with the firework business, and having
the Bishop and all the strength of the Cathedral out to help in this
dove trick, spoils the whole thing, and makes one wish one had not
gone to see it, recalling too forcibly, as it does to an Englishman, the
Crystal Palace on a fireworks’ night, and the similar “dove” which
travels from the Royal Gallery, where too-well-fed citizens and others
sit smoking, to light the great “concerted piece” in the grounds
below. It was like inserting “Abracadabra!” in the middle of the
“Miserere.” P.S.—Since writing the ‘above, we have had an arrival in
Florence which will interest your readers,—to wit, fifty young
persons of both sexes from Toynbee Hall, with Mr. Bolton King as
conductor; and the English community are doing all they can to
make their stay pleasant. On the morrow of their arrival Lady Hobart
entertained them at her villa of Montauto, the one in which
Hawthorne wrote Transformation. It is a thirteenth-century house,
or, I should rather say, that the villa, with its large, airy suite of
rooms, with vaulted ceilings, has grown round a machicolated
tower* of that date, the highest building on the Bellosquardo Hill, to
the south-west of the city. From the top of it, reached by rather
rickety and casual old stairs, there is, I should think, as glorious a
view as the world can show,—a perfect panorama, with Florence
lying right below, and beyond, Fiesole and Vallombrosa, and the
village of stone-cutters on the slope of the Apennines, which reared
the greatest of stonecutters, Michael Angelo, and beyond, the
highest Apennines, still snow-covered; and to the north, the rich
plain of vineyards, and olive-groves, and orange and lemon gardens,
thickly sprinkled with the bright white houses of the peasant
cultivators and the graceful campaniles of village churches, beyond
which one could see clearly on this “white-stone” day the snow-clad
peaks of the Carrara Mountains in the far north. I can hardly say
whether the Toynbee visitors, or those who were gathered to
welcome them by the hospitable hostess, enjoyed the unrivalled
view most; but this we soon discovered, that the visitors were about
as well acquainted with the story of each point of interest, as it was
pointed out to them, as the oldest resident. Surely the schoolmaster
is at last abroad with us in England in many ways of which we have
good right to feel proud, and for which we may well be thankful.
A Scamper at Easter, 8th April 1893.

N
o one can dislike more than I the habit which has become so
common of late years amongst us—thanks, or rather no
thanks, to Mr. Gladstone—of running down our own English
ways of dealing with all creation, from Irishmen to black-beetles. I
believe, on the contrary, that on the whole there is not, nor ever
was, a nation that kept a more active conscience, or tried more
honestly to do the right thing all round according to its lights.
Nevertheless, I am bound to admit that our methods don’t always
succeed, as, for instance, with our treatment of our “submerged
tenth,” if that is the accepted name for the section of our people
which Mr. G. Booth, in his excellent Life and Labour in London,
places in his A and B classes (and which, by the way, are only 8.2,
and not 10 per cent), or with our seagulls. Some years ago I called
your readers’ attention to the rapid demoralisation of these beautiful
birds at one of our northern watering-places; how they just floated
past the pier-heads hour after hour, waiting for the doles which the
holiday folk and their children brought down for them in paper-bags.
Our sea-going gulls, I regret to note, are now similarly affected. At
any rate, some forty of them diligently followed the steamer in which
I sailed for my Easter holiday, from the Liverpool docks till we
dropped our pilot and, turned due south off Holyhead. By that time
our last meal had been eaten and the remains cast into the sea. The
gulls seemed to be quite aware of this; and we left them squabbling
over the last scraps of fish and potatoes, or loafing slowly back to
Liverpool. Thirty-six hours later we entered the Garonne, and
steamed sixty miles up it to Bordeaux. For all that distance there
were plenty of French gulls on the water or in the air, but, so far
from following us, not one of them seemed to take the least notice
of us, but all went on quietly with their fishing or courting; and yet
our cook’s mate must have thrown out as much broken victuals after
breakfast in the Garonne as he did after luncheon or dinner on the
Welsh coast. It cannot be because the French gulls are Republicans,
for the Republic has, if anything, increased the national appetite for
unearned loaves and fishes. It is certainly very odd; but, anyhow, I
hope our gulls will not take to more self-respecting ways of life, for it
is a real treat to watch them in the ship’s wake, without effort, often
without perceptible motion of the wings, keeping up the fourteen
knots an hour. The Captain and I fraternised over the gulls, whom he
loves, and will not allow to be shot at from his ship. “I’ll shoot
whether you like it or not,” insisted a sporting gent on a recent
voyage. “If you do, I’ll put you in irons,” retorted the Captain;
whereupon the sporting gent collapsed—a pity, I think, for an action
for false imprisonment would have been interesting under the
circumstances. I fancy the Captain is right, but must look up the law
after Easter.
I am surprised that this route is not more popular with the
increasing numbers of our people who like a short run to the south
of France in our hard spring weather. You can get by this way to
Bordeaux quicker than you can by Dover or Folkestone from any
place north of Trent, unless you travel day and night, and sleep on
the trains, and for about half the money. The packets are cargo-
boats, but with excellent cabins and sleeping accommodation for
twelve or fourteen passengers, including as good a bath as on a
Cunard or White Star liner. And yet I was the only passenger last
week. There can scarcely be a more interesting short voyage for any
one who is a decent sailor; but I suppose the fourteen or sixteen
hours “in the Bay of Biscay, oh!” scares people. As far as my
experience goes, the Atlantic roars like a sucking-dove in the
Channel and the Bay at Easter-time. There was not wind enough to
dimple the ocean surface, and until we passed Milford Haven, no
perceptible motion on the ship. Then, as we crossed the opening of
the Bristol Channel, she began to roll—quite unaccountably, as it
seemed at first; but on watching carefully, one became aware that,
though the surface was motionless, the great deep beneath was
heaving with long pulsations from the west, which lifted us in regular
cadence every thirty or forty seconds. I have often crossed the
Atlantic, but never seen the like, as always before there has been a
ripple on the calmest day, which gave the effect, at any rate, of
surface motion. The best idea I can give of it is, if on a long stretch
of our South Downs the successive turf slopes took to rising and
falling perpendicularly every minute. The Captain said there must
have been wild weather out west, and these were the rollers. It was
a grand sight to watch the great heave pass on till it reached the
Land’s End, and ran up the cliffs there. We passed near enough to
see the mining works, close to the level of high-tide, and the villages
on the cliff-tops above, or clinging on to the slopes wherever these
were not too precipitous. One can realise what manner of men and
sailors this Ear West has bred of old, and, I hope, still breeds. I pity
the Englishman whose pulse does not quicken as he sails by the
Land’s End, and can see with a glass some of the small harbours out
of which Drake and Frobisher and Hawkins sailed, and drew the
crews that followed and fought the Armada right away to the Straits
of Dover.
As the Land’s End light receded, we became aware of another
light away some twenty miles to the south-west. It is on a rock not
fifty yards across, the Captain says, at high tide, and often
unapproachable for weeks together—“The Hawk,” by name, on
which are kept four lighthouse-men, who spend there alternate
months, weather permitting. I was glad to hear that there are four
at a time, as the sight of “The Hawk” brought vividly to my mind the
gruesome story of fifty years back, when there were only two men,
who were known not to be good friends. One died, and his
companion had to wait with the dead body for weeks before his
relief came.
I noticed, before we were two hours out, that there was
something unusually smart about the crew, quite what one would
look for on the Umbria or Germanic, but scarcely on a 700-tons
cargo-boat plying to Bordeaux. Several of the young hands were fine
British tars, with the splendid throats and great muscular hands and
wrists which stand out so well from the blue woollen jerseys; but the
one who struck me most was the ship’s carpenter, a gray, weather-
beaten old salt, who was going round quietly, but all the time with
his broad-headed hammer, setting little things straight, helping to
straighten the tarpaulins over the hatches and deck-cargo, and
sounding the well. I caught him now and then for a few words, as
he passed my deck-chair, and got the clue. Most of the crew were
Naval Reserve men, and followed the Captain, a lieutenant in the
R.N.R., who could fly the blue ensign in foreign ports, which they
liked. Besides, he was a skipper who cared for his men, looked after
their mess and berths, and never wanted to make anything out of
them; charged them only a shilling a pound for their baccy, the price
at which he could get it out of bond, while most skippers charged
2s. 6d., the shop price. He had come to this boat while his big ship
was laid up in dock, to oblige the owners, so they had followed him.
Besides, he never put them to any work he wouldn’t bear a hand in;
had stood for hours up to his waist last year in the hold when they
were bringing five hundred cattle and seven hundred hogs from
Canada, running before a heavy gale. The water they shipped was
putting out the engine fires, and the pumps wouldn’t work till they
had bailed for ten hours. However, they got in all right, and never
lost a beast. Of course I was keen to hear the Captain on this
subject, and so broached it at his table. Yes, it was quite true; they
had run before a heavy gale from off Newfoundland, and the pumps
gave out off the Irish coast. They got the sludge bailed out enough
for all the fires to get to work just about in time, or would have
drifted on the rocks and gone all to pieces in a few minutes. Yes, it
was about the nastiest piece of work he had ever had to do; the
sludge, for it was only half water, was above his waist, and had quite
spoiled his uniform. The deck engineer—a light-haired man, all big
bones and muscle, whom he pointed out to me—was in the deepest
part of the hold up to his arm-pits, and had worked there for ten
hours without coming up! He was a R.N.R. man, like the old
carpenter and most of the rest. The old fellow was one of the
staunchest and best followers, probably because he was tired of
going aground. He had been aground seventeen times! for the
Captain in his last ship had a way of charging shoals, merely saying,
“Oh, she’ll jump it!” which she generally declined to do. The Captain
is a strong Churchman, but shares the prejudice against carrying
ministers. “The devil always has a show” when you’re carrying a
minister. The first time he tried it, he was taking out his own brother,
and they were twenty-two days late at Montreal. It was an awful
crossing, a gale in their teeth all the way; most of the ships that
started with them had to put back. I suggested that if he hadn’t had
his brother on board, he mightn’t have got over at all; but he
wouldn’t see it. Next time, a man fell from the mast-head and was
killed; and the next, a man jumped overboard. He would never carry
a minister again if he could help it.
One pilot took us out to Holyhead, but it took three French ones
to take us up to Bordeaux. The Garonne banks are only picturesque
here and there; but the flat banks have their own interest, for do we
not see the choicest vineyards of the claret country as we run up?
There was the Chateau Lafitte and the Chateau Margaux. I suppose
one ought within one’s heart, or rather, within one’s palate perhaps,
“to have felt a stir”—

As though one looked upon the sheath

Which once had clasped Excalibur.

But I could not tell the difference between Margaux and any
decent claret with my eyes shut, so I did not feel any stir—unless,
perhaps, as a patriot, when we passed much the most imposing
establishment, and the Captain said, “That is Chateau Gilbey”! I
looked with silent wonder, for did I not remember years ago, when
the Gladstone Grocers’ Licences Bill was young, and the Christie
Minstrels sung scoffingly—

Ten little niggers going out to dine,

One drank Gilbey, and then there were nine?
 And here was Gilbey with the finest “caves” and the choicest
vineyard in the Bordelaise! Who can measure the competitive energy
of the British business-man?
I must end as I set out, with the birds. As we neared the mouth of
the Garonne, sixteen miles from land, the Captain said, two little
water-wagtails flitted into the rigging. There they rested a few
minutes, and then, to my grief, started off out to sea, but again and
again came hack to the ship. At last a sailor caught one, and the
Captain secured it and took it to his cabin, but thought it would be
sure to die. It was the hen-bird. She did not die, but flitted away
cheerfully when he brought her out and let her fly on the quay of
Bordeaux. But I fear she will never find her mate.
 Lourdes, 15th April 1893.

T
he farthest point south in our Easter scamper was Lourdes, to
which I found that my companions were more bent on going
than to any other possible place within our range. The
attractions even of the Pass of Ronces-valles, of St. Sebastian, and
the Pyrenean battle-fields of 1814, faded with them before those of
the nineteenth-century Port Royal. At first I said I would not go. The
fact is, I am one of the old-fashioned folk who hold that some day
the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of Christ,
and that all peoples are to be gathered “in one fold under one
Shepherd.” It has always seemed to me that one of the surest ways
of postponing that good time is to be suspicious of other faiths than
our own; to accuse them of blind superstition and deliberate
imposture; even to walk round their churches as if they were
museums or picture-galleries, while people are kneeling in prayer. So
I said “No”; I would stop on the terrace at Pau, with one of the most
glorious views in the world to look at, and carefully examine Henry
IV.‘s château, or go and get a round of golf with my hibernating
fellow-countrymen. I thought that the probable result of visiting
Lourdes might be to make me more inclined to think a large section
of my fellow-mortals dupes, and their priests humbugs—conclusions
I was anxious to avoid. However, I changed my mind at the last
moment, and am heartily glad I did. It is an easy twenty miles
(about) from Pau, from which you run straight to the Pyrenees, and
pull up in a green nook of the outlying lower mountains, where two
valleys meet, which run back towards the higher snow-capped
range. They looked so tempting to explore, as did also the grim old
keep on the high rock which divides them and completely dominates
the little town, that twenty years ago I couldn’t have resisted, and
should have gone for an afternoon’s climb. But I am grown less
lissom, if not wiser, and so took my place meekly in the fly which my
companions had chartered for the grotto. We were through the little
town in a few minutes, the only noteworthy thing being the number
of women who offered us candles of all sizes to burn before the
Madonna’s statue in the grotto, and the number of relic-shops.
Emerging from the street, we found ourselves in front of a green
lawn, at the other end of which was a fine white marble church,
almost square, with a dome—more like a mosque, I thought, than a
Western church; and up above this another tall Gothic church, with a
fine spire, to which the pilgrims ascend by two splendid semi-circular
flights of easy, broad steps, one on each side of the lower church,
and holding it, as it were, in their arms. We, however, drove up the
steep ascent outside the left or southern staircase, and got down at
the door of the higher church, which is built on the rock at the
bottom of which is the famous spring and grotto. We entered by a
spacious porch, where my attention was at once arrested by the
mural tablets of white marble, each of which commemorated the
cure of some sufferer: “Reconnaissance pour la guérison de mon
fils,” “de ma fille,” etc., being at least as frequent as those for the
cure of the person who put up the tablet. I thought at first I would
count them, but soon gave it up, as not only this big vestibule, but
the walls of all the chapels, and of the big church below (built, I was
told, and hope, by the Duke of Norfolk at his own cost), are just
covered with them. This upper church was a perfect blaze of light
and colour, much too gorgeous for my taste; but what the
decorations were which gave this effect I cannot say, as I was
entirely absorbed in noting the votive offerings of all kinds which
were hung round each of the shrines, both here and in the lower
church. The most noteworthy of these, to my mind, are the number
of swords, epaulettes, and military decorations, which their owners
have hung up as thank offerings. I do not suppose that French
officers and privates differ much from ours, and I am bold to assert
that Tommy Atkins would not part with his cross or medal, or his
captain, for that matter, with his epaulettes or sword, if they had
gone away from Lourdes no better in body than when they went
there hobbling from wounds, or tottering from fever or ague.
 When we had seen the upper church we went down a long flight
of circular stairs, and came out in the lower (Duke of Norfolk’s)
church,—much more interesting, I think, architecturally, and
decorated in better, because quieter, taste than the upper one. From
this we went round to the grotto in the rock, on which the upper
church stands, and in which the famous spring rises, and over it a
not unpleasant (I cannot say more) statue of the Madonna; and all
round candles alight of all sizes, from farthing-dips to colossal
moulds, many of which had been burning, they said, for a week. A
single, quiet old priest sat near the entrance reading his Missal, but
only speaking when spoken to. In front were ranged long rows of
chairs, on which sat or knelt some dozen pilgrims with wistful faces,
waiting, perhaps for the troubling of the waters. These are carried
from the grotto to a series of basins along the rock outside, at one
of which two poor old crones with sore eyes were bathing them, and
talking Basque (I believe)—at any rate some unknown tongue to me.
I should have liked to hear their experiences, but they couldn’t
understand a word of my Anglican French. Here, again, the most
striking object is the mass of crutches of all shapes and sizes, and
fearsome-looking bandages, which literally cover the rock on each
side of the entrance to the grotto, for the space (I should guess) of
fourteen or fifteen feet on one side, and ten or twelve on the other.
And so we finished our inspection, and went back to our fly, which
we had ordered to meet us at the end of the lawn above mentioned,
which lies between the churches and the town; and so to the railway
station, and back to Biarritz by Pau. I daresay that people who go
there at the times when the great bodies of pilgrims come, may
carry away a very different impression from mine. All I can say is,
that I never was in a place where there was less concealment of any
kind; and there was no attempt whatever to influence you in any
way by priest or attendant. There were all the buildings and the
grotto open, and you could examine them and their contents
undisturbed for any time you chose to give to them, and draw from
your examination whatever conclusions you pleased. So I, for one,
can only repeat that I am heartily glad that I went; and shall think
better of my Roman Catholic brethren as the result of my visit for
the rest of my life.
Of course, the main interest of Lourdes lies in the world-old
controversy between the men of science and the men of faith, as to
the reality of the alleged facts—miracles, as many folk call them—of
the healing properties which the waters of this famous spring, or the
air of Lourdes, or the Madonna, or some other unknown influence,
are alleged to possess, and to be freely available for invalid pilgrims
who care to make trial of them. Every one in those parts that I met,
at Lourdes itself, at Pau, Biarritz, Bayonne, is interested in the
question and ready to discuss it. Perhaps I can best indicate the
points of the debate by formulating the arguments on each side
which I heard, putting them into the mouths of representative men
—a doctor and a priest. I was lucky enough to fall in with an
excellent representative of the scientific side, an able and open-
minded M.D. on his travels. I had no opportunity of speaking to one
of the priests; but their side of the argument is stoutly upheld by at
least half of the people one meets.
Dr.—They are nothing but what are called faith-cures, akin to
those which the Yankee Sequah effects when he goes round our
northern towns in his huge car, with his brass band and attendant
Indian Sachems in the costume of the prairie. Of course, here the
surroundings are far more impressive and serious; but the cures are
the same for all that—some action of the nerves which makes
patients believe they are cured, when they are not really. Probably
nine-tenths are just as bad again in a few months.
Priest.—Well, don’t we say they are faith-cures? We don’t pretend
that we can do them, as this Sequah you talk about does. You allow
that great numbers think they are cured, and walk about without
crutches or bandages, or pains in their bodies, and enjoy life again
for a time at any rate; which is more than you can do for them, or
they wouldn’t come here to be healed.
Dr.—How long do they walk about without crutches or pains in
their limbs? Why don’t you take us behind the scenes, and let us test
and follow up some of these cures?
Priest.—We can’t take you behind the scenes, for there are no
scenes to go behind. We tell you we don’t do the cures, or know
precisely how they are done. We can’t hinder your inquiries, and
don’t want to hinder them if we could. There are the tablets of
“reconnaissance,” with names and addresses; you can go to these, if
you like, or talk to the patients whom you see at the spring or in the
chapels.
Dr.—Come, now! You don’t really mean to say you believe that our
Lord’s Mother appeared to this girl on 23rd March 1858, and told her
that this Lourdes was a specially favourite place with her; and that
she has since that time given these special healing qualities to the
water or air of Lourdes, or whatever it is that causes these effects at
this place?
Priest.—We mean to say that the girl thoroughly believed it, and
we hold that her impression—her certainty—didn’t come from the
devil, as it must if it was a lie; that it wasn’t the mere dream of a
hysterical girl, and was not given her for nothing. Else, how can one
account for these buildings, costing, perhaps, as much as one of
your finest cathedrals, all put up in thirty-five years?
Dr.—Yes; but that doesn’t answer my question. Did the Mother of
our Lord appear to this girl, and is it she who works the cures.
Priest.—If you mean by “appear,” “come visibly,” we don’t know.
But you should remember always that the French have a very
different feeling about the Madonna from you English. Perhaps you
can’t help connecting her with another French girl, Joan of Arc, who
believed the Madonna had appeared to her and told her she should
turn you English out of France, which she did—a more difficult and
costly job even than building these churches.
Dr.—Well, we won’t argue about the Madonna, and I am quite
ready to admit that the evidence you have here, in the tablets and
votive offerings, the crutches and bandages, are primâ-facie proof
that numbers of pilgrims have gone away from Lourdes under the
impression that they were cured. What I maintain is, that you have
not shown, and cannot show, that your cures are not merely due to
the absorption of diseased tissue as the result of strong excitement
—an effect not at all common, but quite recognised as not
unfrequent by some of the highest authorities in medical science.
There the controversy rests, I think; at any rate, so far as I heard
it debated; and I must own that the scientific explanation does not
seem to me to hold water. To take one instance, would the
absorption of diseased tissue drive a piece of cloth out of a soldier’s
leg or body? Perhaps yes, for what I know; but would the
excitement of a mother cure the disease of her child? These two
classes of cures (of which there are a great number) struck me,
perhaps, more than any of the rest. But I must not take up more of
your space, and can only advise all your readers who are really
interested in this problem to take the first opportunity they can of
going to Lourdes, and, if possible, as we did, at a time when the
great bodies of pilgrims are not there, and they can quietly examine
the facts there, for—pace the doctors and men of science—these
tablets, swords, crutches, etc., are facts which they are bound to
acknowledge and investigate. I shall be surprised if they do not
come away, as I did, with a feeling that they have seen a deeply
interesting sight for which it is well worth while to come from
England, and that there are two sides to this question of the Lourdes
miracles (so-called), either of which any reverent student of the
world in which he is living may conscientiously hold.
 Fontarabia, 22nd April 1893.

E
very year the truth of Burns’s “the best-laid schemes o’ mice
and men gang aft a-gley,” comes more home to me. From the
time I was ten the Pass of Roncesvalles has had a fascination
for me. Then the habit of ballad-singing was popular, and a relative
of mine had a well-deserved repute in that line. Amongst her old-
world favourites were “Boland the Brave” and “Durandarté.” The first
told how Boland left his castle on the Rhine, where he used to listen
to the chanting in the opposite convent, in which his lady-love had
taken the veil on the false report of his death, and “think she blessed
him in her prayer when the hallelujah rose”; and followed
Charlemagne in his Spanish raid, till “he fell and wished to fall” at
Boncesvalles. The second, how Durandarté, dying in the fatal pass,
sent his last message to his mistress by his cousin Montesinos. In
those days I never could hear the last lines without feeling gulpy in
the throat:—

Kind in manners, fair in favour,

Mild in temper, fierce in fight,—
Warrior purer, gentler, braver,
Never shall behold the light.

They may not be good poetry, but Monk Lewis, the author, never
wrote any others as good. Then Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads were
given me, and in one of the best of those stirring rhymes, Bernardo
del Carpio’s bearding of his King, I read—
 The life of King Alphonso I saved at Roncesval,
Your word, Lord King, was recompense abundant for it
all;
Your horse was down, your hope was flown; I saw the
falchion
shine
That soon had drunk thy royal blood had I not ventured
mine, etc.

Then, a little later, a family friend who had been an ensign in the
Light Division in July 1813, used to make our boyish pulses dance
with his tales of the week’s fighting in and round Roncesvalles, when
Soult was driven over the Pyrenees and Spain was freed. And again,
later, came the tale of Taillefer, the Conqueror’s minstrel, riding
before the line at the battle of Hastings, tossing his sword in the air,
and chanting the “Song of Roland,” and of the “Peers who fell at
Roncesvalles.” So you will believe, sir, that my first thought when I
got to Biarritz, with the Pyrenees in full view less than twenty miles
off, was, “Now I shall see the pass where Charlemagne’s peers, and
five hundred British soldiers as brave as any paladin of them all, had
fought and died.” The holidays galloped, and one day only was left,
when at our morning conference I found that my companions were
bent on Fontarabia and San Sebastian, and assured me we could
combine the three, as Roncesvalles, they heard, was close to
Fontarabia. Then my faith in Sir Walter—combined, I fear, with my
defective training in geography—led me astray, for had he not
written in the battle-canto of Marmion:—

Oh, for one blast of that dread horn,

On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come,
 When Roland brave, and Oliver,
And every Paladin and Peer,
At Roncesvalles died, etc.

Now, of course, if Charlemagne could hear the horn of Roland on

the top of the pass where he turned back, “borne on Fontarabian
echoes,” then Fontarabia must be at the foot of the pass, where
Roland and the rear-guard were surrounded and fighting for their
lives. In a weak moment I agreed to Fontarabia and San Sebastian,
and so shall most likely never see Roncesvalles. It is fourteen miles
distant as the crow flies, or thereabouts; and I warn your readers
that the three can’t be done in one long day from Biarritz.
However, I am bound to admit that Fontarabia and San Sebastian
make a most interesting day’s work. I had never been in Spain
before, and so was well on the alert when a fellow-passenger, as we
slowed on approaching the station, pointed across the sands below
us and said, “There’s Fontarabia!” There, perhaps two miles off, lay a
small gray town on a low hill with castle and church at the top, and
gateway and dilapidated walls on the side towards*us, looking as
though it might have gone off to sleep in the seventeenth century—a
really curious contrast to bustling Biarritz from which we had just
come. We went down to the ferry and took a punt to cross the river,
which threaded the broad sands left by the tide. It was full ebb; so
our man had to take us a long round, giving us welcome time for the
view, which, when the tide is up, must be glorious. Our bare-footed
boatman, though Basque or Spaniard, was quite “up to date,” and
handled his punt pole in a style which would make him a formidable
rival of the Oxford watermen in the punt race by Christ Church
meadow, which, I suppose, is still held at the end of the summer
term. A narrow, rough causeway led us from the landing-place to the
town-gate in the old wall, where an artist who had joined the party
was so taken with the view up the main street that he sat down at
once to about as difficult a sketch as he will meet in a year’s
rambles. For from the gateway the main street runs straight up the
hill to the ruined castle and church at the top. It is narrow, steep,
and there are not two houses alike all the way up. They vary from
what must have been palaces of the grandees—with dim coats-of-
arms still visible over the doorways, and elaborately carved, deep
eaves, almost meeting those of their opposite neighbours across the
street—to poor, almost squalid houses, reaching to the second story
of their aristocratic neighbours’, but all with deep, overhanging,
though uncarved eaves, showing, I take it, how the Spaniard values
his shade. Up we went to the church and castle, the ladies looking
wistfully into such shops as there were, to find something to buy;
but I fancy in vain. Not a tout appeared to offer his services; or a
shopkeeper, male or female, to sell us anything. Such of the
Fontarabians as we saw looked at us with friendly enough brown
eyes, which, however, seemed to say, “Silly souls! Why can’t you
stop at home and mind your own business?” Even at the end of our
inspection, when we spread our lunch on a broad stone slab near
the gate—the tombstone once, I should think, of a paladin—there
being no houses of entertainment visible to us, we had almost a
difficulty in attracting three or four children and a stray dog to share
our relics.
The old castle is of no special interest, though there were a few
rusty old iron tubes lying about, said to have once been guns, which
I should doubt; and Charles V. is said to have often lived there
during his French wars. The church is very interesting, from its
strong contrast with those over the border—square, massive,
sombre, with no attempt at decoration or ornament round the high
brass altars, except here and there a picture, and small square
windows quite high up in the walls, through which the quiet,
subdued light comes. The pictures, with one exception, were of no
interest; but that one exception startled and fascinated me. The
subject is the “Mater Dolorosa,” a full-length figure standing, the
breast bare, and seven knives plunged in the heart,—a coarse and
repulsive painting, but entirely redeemed by the intense expression
of the love, the agony, grid the sorely shaken faith which are
contending for mastery in the face. The painter must have been
suddenly inspired, or some great master must have stepped in to
finish the work. San Sebastian does not do after Fontarabia; a fine
modern town, with some large churches and a big new bull-ring, but
of little interest except for the fort which dominates the town on the
sea-front. How that fort was stormed, after one repulse and a long
siege of sixty-three days; how, in the two assaults and siege, more
than four thousand gallant soldiers of the British and allied army fell;
and the fearful story of the sack and burning of the old town by the
maddened soldiers, is to me almost the saddest episode in our
military history. I was glad when we had made our cursory
inspection and got back to the station on our return to Biarritz. That
brightest and most bustling of health resorts was our head-quarters,
and I should think for young English folk must be about the most
enjoyable above ground. I knew that it was becoming a formidable
rival of the Riviera for spring quarters, but was not at all prepared
for the facts. Almost the first thing I saw was a group of young
Englishmen in faultless breeches and gaiters, just come back from a
meet of the pack of hounds; next came along some fine strapping
girls in walking costume, bent, I should think, on exploring the
neighbouring battlegrounds; next, men and youths in flannels,
bound for the golf links, where a handicap is going on (I wonder
what a French caddie is like?); then I heard of, but did not see, the
start of the English coach for Pau (it runs daily); and then youths on
bicycles, unmistakable Britons,—though the French youth have taken
kindly, I hear, to this pastime. There are four gigantic hotels at which
friends told me that nothing is heard but English at their tables
d’hôte; and in the quiet and excellent small “Hôtel de Bayonne,” at
which we stayed, having heard that it was a favourite with the
French, out of the forty guests or thereabouts, certainly three-
fourths were English, and the other one-fourth mostly Americans.
On Easter Monday there was a procession of cars, with children in
fancy dresses representing the local industries; but the biggest was
that over which the Union Jack waved, and a small and dainty
damsel sat on the throne surrounded by boys in the orthodox rig of
a man-of-war’s-man and Tommy Atkins. In fact, a vast stream of
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com