Here, too, our wheels were still on beaten tracks; though the morning’s flight across country to Orléans was meant to give us a glimpse of a new region. But on that unhappy morning Boreas was up with all his pack, and hunted us savagely5 across the naked plain, now behind, now on our quarter, now dashing ahead to lie in ambush6 behind a huddled7 village, and leap on us as we rounded its last house. The plain stretched35 on interminably, and the farther it stretched the harder the wind raced us; so that Pithiviers, spite of dulcet8 associations, appeared to our shrinking eyes only as a wind-break, eagerly striven for and too soon gained and passed; and when, at luncheon10-time, we beat our way, spent and wheezing11, into Orléans, even the serried12 memories of that venerable city endeared it to us less than the fact that it had an inn where we might at last find shelter.
The above wholly inadequate13 description of an interesting part of France will have convinced any rational being that motoring is no way to see the country. And that morning it certainly was not; but then, what of the afternoon? When we rolled out of Orléans after luncheon, both the day and the scene had changed; and what other form of travel could have brought us into such communion with the spirit of the Loire as our smooth flight along its banks in the bland14 May air? For, after all, if the motorist sometimes misses details by going too fast, he sometimes has them stamped into his memory by an opportune15 puncture16 or a recalcitrant17 “magneto”; and if, on windy days, he has to rush through36 nature blindfold18, on golden afternoons such as this he can drain every drop of her precious essence.
Certainly we got a great deal of the Loire as we followed its windings19 that day: a great sense of the steely breadth of its flow, the amenity20 of its shores, the sweet flatness of the richly gardened and vineyarded landscape, as of a highly cultivated but slightly insipid21 society; an impression of long white villages and of stout conical towns on little hills; of old brown Beaugency in its cup between two heights, and Madame de Pompadour’s Ménars on its bright terraces; of Blois, nobly bestriding the river at a noble bend; and farther south, of yellow cliffs honeycombed with strange dwellings22; of Chaumont and Amboise crowning their heaped-up towns; of manoirs, walled gardens, rich pastures, willowed23 islands; and then, toward sunset, of another long bridge, a brace25 of fretted26 church-towers, and the widespread roofs of Tours.
Had we visited by rail the principal places named in this itinerary, necessity would have detained us longer in each, and we should have had a fuller store of specific impressions; but we37 should have missed what is, in one way, the truest initiation27 of travel, the sense of continuity, of relation between different districts, of familiarity with the unnamed, unhistoried region stretching between successive centres of human history, and exerting, in deep unnoticed ways, so persistent28 an influence on the turn that history takes. And after all—though some people seem to doubt the fact—it is possible to stop a motor and get out of it; and if, on our way down the Loire, we exercised this privilege infrequently, it was because, here again, we were in a land of old acquaintance, of which the general topography was just the least familiar part.
It was not till, two days later, we passed out of Tours—not, in fact, till we left to the northward29 the towered pile of Loches—that we found ourselves once more in a new country. It was a cold day of high clouds and flying sunlight: just the sky to overarch the wide rolling landscape through which the turns of the Indre were leading us. To the south, whither we were bound, lay the Berry—the land of George Sand; while to the northwest low acclivities sloped away, with villages shining on their sides. One arrow of38 sunlight, I remember, transfixed for a second an unknown town on one of these slopes: a town of some consequence, with walls and towers that flashed far-off and mysterious across the cloudy plain. Who has not been tantalised in travelling, by the glimpse of such cities—unnamed, undiscoverable afterward30 by the minutest orientations31 of map and guide-book? Certainly, to the uninitiated, no hill-town is visible on that particularly level section of the map of France; yet there sloped the hill, there shone the town—not a moment’s mirage32, but the companion of an hour’s travel, dominating the turns of our road, beckoning33 to us across the increasing miles, and causing me to vow34, as we lost the last glimpse of its towers, that next year I would go back and make it give up its name.
ORLéANS: GENERAL VIEW OF THE TOWN
But now we were approaching a town with a name—a name so encrusted and overgrown with associations that it was undeniably disappointing, as we reached its outskirts35, to find Chateauroux—aside from its fine old chateau36 on the Indre—so exactly like other dull French towns, so provokingly unconscious of being one of the capital cities of literature. And it seems, in fact,39 literally37 as well as figuratively unaware38 of its distinction. Fame throws its circles so wide that it makes not a ripple39 near home; and even the alert landlady40 of the H?tel Sainte Catherine wrinkled her brows perplexedly at our question: “Is one permitted to visit the house of George Sand?”
“Le chateau de George Sand? (A pause of reflection.) C’est l’écrivain, n’est-ce pas? (Another pause.) C’est à Nohant, le chateau? Mais, Madame, je ne saurais vous le dire41.”
Yet here was the northern gate of the Sand country—it was here that, for years, the leaders of the most sedentary profession of a sedentary race—the hommes de lettres of France—descended from the Paris express, and took a diligence on their pilgrimage to the oracle42. When one considers the fatigue43 of the long day’s railway journey, and the French dread44 of déplacements, the continual stream of greatness that Paris poured out upon Nohant gives the measure of what Nohant had to offer in return.
As we sat at breakfast in the inn dining-room we irreverently pictured some of these great personages—Liszt, Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Dumas40 fils, Flaubert—illustrious figures in the queer dishabille of travel, unwinding strange cache-nez, solicitous45 for embroidered46 carpet-bags, seated in that very room over their coffee and omelette, or climbing to the coupé of the diligence outside. And then we set out on the same road.
Straight as an arrow, after the unvarying fashion of the French government highway, it runs southeast through vast wheatfields, past barns and farmhouses47 grouped as in the vanished “drawing-books” of infancy—now touching48, now deserting the Indre banks, as the capricious river throws its poplar-edged loops across the plain. But presently we began to mount insensibly; till at length a sharp turn, and an abrupt49 fall of the land, brought us out on a ridge24 above the plain of the Berry, with the river reappearing below, and far, far south a blue haze50 of mountains.
The road, after that, descends51 again by gentle curves, acquainting one gradually with the charming details of the foreground—pale-green copses, fields hedged with hawthorn52, long lines of poplars in the plain—while, all the way, the distant horizon grows richer, bluer and more41 mysterious. It is a wide lonely country, with infrequent villages—mere hamlets—dotting the fields; one sees how the convivial53 Dudevant, coming from the livelier Gascony, might have found it, for purposes of pot-house sociability54, a little thinly settled. At one of these small lonely villages—Vicq—just where the view spreads widest, the road loses it again by a gradual descent of a mile or so; and at the foot of the hill, among hawthorn and lilac hedges, through the boughs55 of budding trees, a high slate56 roof shows to the left—the roof of a plain-faced fawn-coloured house, the typical gentilhommière of the French country-side.
No other house is in sight: only, from behind the trees, peep two or three humble57 tiled cottages, dependencies of the larger pile. There is nothing to tell us the name of the house—nothing to signalise it, to take it out of the common. It stands there large, placid58, familiarly related to the high-road and the farm, like one side of the extraordinary woman it sheltered; and perhaps that fact helps to suggest its name, to render almost superfluous59 our breathless question to the pretty goose-girl knitting under the hedge.
42 “Mais oui, Madame—c’est Nohant.”
The goose-girl—pink as a hawthorn bud, a “kerchief” tied about her curls—might really, in the classic phrase of sentimental60 travel, have “stepped out” of one of the novels written yonder, under the high roof to which she pointed61: she had the honest savour of the terroir, yet with that superadded grace that the author of the novels has been criticised for bestowing62 on her peasants. She formed, at any rate, a charming link between our imagination and the famous house; and we presently found that the miracle which had preserved her in all her 1830 grace had been extended to the whole privileged spot, which seemed, under a clear glass bell of oblivion, to have been kept intact, unchanged, like some wonderful “exhibit” illustrative of the extraordinary history lived within it.
NOHANT: CH?TEAU OF GEORGE SAND
The house faces diagonally toward the road, from which a high wall once screened it; but it is written in the Histoire de ma vie that M. Dudevant, in a burst of misdirected activity, threw down several yards of this wall, and filled the opening with a hedge. The hedge is still there; and thanks to this impulse of destruction, the43 traveller obtains a glimpse of grass terraces and stone steps, set in overgrown thickets63 of lilac, hawthorn and acacia, and surmounted64 by the long tranquil65 front of the chateau. On each side, beyond the stretch of hedge, the wall begins again; terminating, at one corner of the property, in a massive old cow-stable with a round pepper-pot tower; at the opposite end is a charming conical-roofed garden-pavilion, with mossy steps ascending66 to it from the road.
At right angles to the highway, a shady lane leads down past the farm buildings; and following this, one comes, around their flank, on a large pleasant untidy farm-yard, full of cows and chickens, and divided by the long range of the communs from the entrance-court of the chateau. Farm-yard and court both face on a small grassy67 place—what, in England, would pass for a diminutive68 common—in the centre of which, under an ancient walnut-tree, stands a much more ancient church—a church so tiny, black and shrunken that it somehow suggests a blind old peasant woman mumbling69 and dozing70 in the shade. This is the parish church of Nohant; and a few yards from it, adjoining the court of44 the chateau, lies the little walled graveyard71 which figures so often in the Histoire de ma vie, and where she who described it now rests with her kin9. The graveyard is defended from intrusion by a high wall and a locked gate; and after all her spirit is not there, but in the house and the garden—above all, in the little cluster of humble old cottages enclosing the shady place about the church, and constituting, apparently72, the whole village of Nohant. Like the goose-girl, these little houses are surprisingly picturesque73 and sentimental; and their mossy roofs, their clipped yews74, the old white-capped women who sit spinning on their doorsteps, supply almost too ideal an answer to one’s hopes.
NOHANT: GARDEN PAVILION
And when, at last, excitedly and enchantedly75, one has taken in the quiet perfection of it all, and turned to confront the great question: Does a sight of Nohant deepen the mystery, or elucidate76 it?—one can only answer, in the cautious speech of the New England casuist: Both. For if it helps one to understand one side of George Sand’s life, it seems actually to cast a thicker obscurity over others—even if, among the different sides contemplated77, one includes only those directly45 connected with the place, and not the innumerable facets78 that reflected Paris, Venice, Fontainebleau and Majorca.
The first surprise is to find the place, on the whole, so much more—shall one say?—dignified and decent, so much more conscious of social order and restraints, than the early years of the life led in it. The pictures of Nohant in the Histoire de ma vie are unlike any other description of French provincial79 manners at that period, suggesting rather an affinity80 with the sombre Bront? background than the humdrum81 but conventional and orderly existence of the French rural gentry82.
When one recalls the throng83 of motley characters who streamed in and out of that quiet house—the illegitimate children of both sides, living in harmony with one another and with the child of wedlock84, the too-intimate servants, the peasant playmates, the drunken boon85 companions—when one turns to the Hogarthian pictures of midnight carouses86 presided over by the uproarious Hippolyte and the sombrely tippling Dudevant, while their wives sat disgusted, but apparently tolerant, above stairs, one feels one’s46 self in the sinister87 gloom of Wildfell Hall rather than in the light temperate88 air of a French province. And somehow, unreasonably89 of course, one expects the house to bear, even outwardly, some mark of that dark disordered period—or, if not, then of the cheerful but equally incoherent and inconceivable existence led there when the timid Madame Dudevant was turning into the great George Sand, and the strange procession which continued to stream through the house was composed no longer of drunken gentlemen-farmers and left-handed peasant relations, but of an almost equally fantastic and ill-assorted company of ex-priests, naturalists90, journalists, Saint-Simonians, riders of every conceivable religious, political and literary hobby, among whom the successive tutors of the adored Maurice—forming in themselves a line as long as the kings in Macbeth!—perhaps take the palm for oddness of origin and adaptability91 of manners.
One expected the scene of these confused and incessant92 comings and goings to wear the injured déclassé air of a house which has never had its rights respected—a house long accustomed to jangle its dinner-bell in vain and swing its broken47 hinges unheeded; and instead, one beholds93 this image of aristocratic well-being94, this sober edifice95, conscious in every line of its place in the social scale, of its obligations to the church and cottages under its wing, its rights over the acres surrounding it. And so one may, not too fancifully, recognise in it the image of those grave ideals to which George Sand gradually conformed the passionate96 experiment of her life; may even indulge one’s self by imagining that an old house so marked in its very plainness, its conformity97, must have exerted, over a mind as sensitive as hers, an unperceived but persistent influence, giving her that centralising weight of association and habit which is too often lacking in modern character, and standing98 ever before her as the shrine99 of those household pieties100 to which, inconsistently enough, but none the less genuinely, the devotion of her last years was paid.
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1
glades
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| n.林中空地( glade的名词复数 ) | |
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invitingly
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| adv. 动人地 | |
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itinerary
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| n.行程表，旅行路线；旅行计划 | |
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savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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ambush
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| n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵；v.埋伏；伏击 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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dulcet
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| adj.悦耳的 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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wheezing
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的现在分词 )；哮鸣 | |
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serried
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| adj.拥挤的；密集的 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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opportune
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| adj.合适的，适当的 | |
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puncture
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| n.刺孔，穿孔；v.刺穿，刺破 | |
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recalcitrant
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| adj.倔强的 | |
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blindfold
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| vt.蒙住…的眼睛；adj.盲目的；adv.盲目地；n.蒙眼的绷带[布等]； 障眼物，蒙蔽人的事物 | |
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windings
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| （道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手） | |
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amenity
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| n.pl.生活福利设施，文娱康乐场所；（不可数）愉快，适意 | |
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insipid
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| adj.无味的，枯燥乏味的，单调的 | |
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dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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willowed
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| v.用打棉机打开和清理（willow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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orientations
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| n.方向( orientation的名词复数 )；定位；（任职等前的）培训；环境判定 | |
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mirage
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景 | |
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beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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chateau
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| n.城堡，别墅 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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oracle
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| n.神谕，神谕处，预言 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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farmhouses
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| n.农舍，农场的主要住房( farmhouse的名词复数 ) | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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51
descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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52
hawthorn
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| 山楂 | |
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convivial
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| adj.狂欢的，欢乐的 | |
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sociability
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| n.好交际，社交性，善于交际 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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bestowing
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| 砖窑中砖堆上层已烧透的砖 | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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surmounted
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| 战胜( surmount的过去式和过去分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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diminutive
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| adj.小巧可爱的，小的 | |
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mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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72
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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yews
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| n.紫杉( yew的名词复数 ) | |
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enchantedly
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| 使欣喜，使心醉( enchant的过去式和过去分词 )； 用魔法迷惑 | |
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elucidate
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| v.阐明，说明 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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facets
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| n.（宝石或首饰的）小平面( facet的名词复数 )；（事物的）面；方面 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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humdrum
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| adj.单调的，乏味的 | |
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82
gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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wedlock
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| n.婚姻，已婚状态 | |
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boon
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| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
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carouses
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| v.痛饮，闹饮欢宴( carouse的第三人称单数 ) | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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unreasonably
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| adv. 不合理地 | |
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naturalists
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| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
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adaptability
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| n.适应性 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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beholds
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| v.看，注视( behold的第三人称单数 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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edifice
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| n.宏伟的建筑物(如宫殿，教室) | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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pieties
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| 虔诚，虔敬( piety的名词复数 ) | |
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