My
Great-Great-Great-Grandmother’s
Letter
|
It is strange that men of
intellectual eminence concern themselves not with saving civilization
or reforming the abuses of the administration, but with preaching the
merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized
infants.
|
Bertrand Russell
|
to
Dawn
A brief
Report of my Escape from France
(translation)
“It happened
in the year of the Lord 1687 at La Rochelle de Saint
Denis, where there is a harbor. I am the oldest among my brothers and
sisters,
and during the absence of my parents was charged with the care for my
siblings:
the youngest brother was five and the youngest sister only two years of
age. My
dear parents had impressed on me not to miss any opportunity to escape
from the
kingdom if not with all, then at least with some of the children.
“On April 24, of the
same year there came into our house a good and dear friend who asked me
never
to mention his name because of the harsh penalties and awful
consequences this
may cause him to suffer. He informed me of a small vessel bound to
England,
whose skipper he had implored to take on board four or five of us. He
also said
that there was no more space on this ship than to accommodate just five
people.
In order to hide us between the cargo of
sea-salt the
skipper would have to toss a barrel of wine into the ocean, and since
he ran
the danger of being discovered and lose everything, he demanded a great
sum of
money for taking this risk. All this seemed not unreasonable for our
plan and
we agreed.
“I
asked our friend that he may bring the
ship’s captain to our house, not later than 3.45 a.m., so that none of
the
neighbors would grow suspicious, while I could employ our friend’s
services in
this agreement as a witness and translator. We came to an accord, I
promised
the skipper 200 Louis d'ors per head of
the five
people he would provide with passage; this was 1,000 Louis d'ors
in French currency. One half he was to receive before we set out, and
the rest
when safely landing us in Chichester (a
city in
England), to where he promised to bring us. After in the presence of
our
witness I’d made the accord, we then decided, that the time to go
aboard should
be on the 27th of April at 8.00 o’clock in the evening. – The day
arrived
and I, with two of my brothers and two of my sisters dressed up as
clean and
fastidious as possible, keeping on us everything that we were allowed
to carry;
the situation did not allow us to handle it any other way. I also
ordered the
governess to go with us, because she knew of the secret.
“We
pretended
to
take
a
turn
on
the
palace
promenade,
where
people
of
consequence
used
to
gather every evening. About ten, the
public began
to disperse and we absented ourselves from our acquaintances; but left
on a
different route from the usual way home, according to my instructions,
namely
to the pickup point not far from the city’s pond. In the building next
to it we
found a door ajar, holding our breath slipped in, climbed up the unlit
stairs
and remained in there in utmost silence
until well
after midnight, when our friend and the captain entered the house. I
said to
the captain that nothing caused me greater pains than to leave behind
my
smallest sister; especially since she is my
goddaughter, and that I felt even more obliged to rescue her
from the idolaters than the others.
“This
I
said
with
great
many
tears
and
sorrow:
I
promised
the
captain
everything,
whatever
he
desired and the heaven’s blessing, if
he could
find it in his heart to do us this kindness. I could see on his face
that my
words and my tears had moved him and he was willing to let her go with
us, if
only I could promise him that she wouldn’t scream and make noises
should the
coast guards inspect his vessel, something which at two or three
occasions
might not go without the guards poking their rapiers into suspicious
nooks and
crannies. I promised it, putting all my faith in the grace of God.
Immediately
my friend and the governess rushed back to fetch my sister from where
we’d left
her.
“Lifting
the
child
from
the
bed,
the
governess
wrapped
her
with
her
dresses
into
a
blanket
and carried her hidden in her apron; it
was
God’s will that nobody should notice the least of it. The little one
was
particularly attached to me and very glad to see me again. She
promised, to be
obedient and quiet, and only to do what I would tell her. I dressed her
and
swaddled her in the remaining clothes.
“Later
that
night,
at
about
two
a.m.,
four
members
of
the
crew
came
from
the
harbor
and carried all of us on their shoulders on
board of
the ship – me while holding my little sister in my arms –
and directed us to the prepared place in the cargo hull: the entrance
to our
hiding spot was so small, that the captain’s cabin boy needed to crawl
in first
and drag us after him. Squeezed in tight between the salt barrels we
were unable
to move about. The boy left and the opening was sealed, making it look
as
before, so that nobody would suspect anything. The rafters of the deck
above
were so low that we hit our heads; yet we all endeavored to keep the
faces high
and towards the back, so that the coast guard’s rapiers couldn’t reach
us.
“As
soon
as
we
had
boarded,
the
vessel
hoisted
sail;
the
king’s
guards
came
to
stop
and inspect it no less than three times on
our way,
but we had the good fortune to remain undiscovered. The wind was
favorable and
by noon it carried us away from all the enemies of the truth.”
*****
Here the torn fragment ends.
Together with the letter there has been handed down a tradition that it
was
written by my great-great-grandmother when she was seventeen and that
it had
been mailed from Amsterdam, not Chichester,
the
original
destination.
Why
and
how
is
unknown;
we
also
know
that
Marian
married
an
other
Huguenot
living in Scotland, a Monsieur Coliere,
my
father’s
ancestor
on his mother’s side. The “idolaters” mentioned in the
letter are the Roman Catholics.
1687 was the year when the catholic
King James II of England signed the Declaration of Indulgence, which
suspended
the laws against Catholics and nonconformists while his colleague in
France,
Les Roi Soleil, Louis XIV (1638 –
1715), began
prosecuting a
thrifty minority of the middle-class.
Louis had seen it all. As a ten year old
he had become the helpless object of hostile curiosity when an angry
mob invaded the royal bedchamber and stared at him in silence. A
foretaste of the French Revolution in 1789! For twelve more years Louis
was made to look on when an utterly corrupt cabal of self-serving
courtiers and grandees sidelined the young prince as a mere nuisance
obstructing their own schemes and ambitions. It was a lesson he would
not forget. When at last he was able to formally take the reins, his
surrounding was in for a surprise. A cabinet of able advisors of his
own choosing reformed the currency and introduced profitable
industries. Virtually from scratch Louis put a French navy on the
waters, and after losing several battles against the French the English
Admiralty issued orders to the captains to refuse giving battle and
hide their ships in the rivers. Trafalgar was still a long way off.
King Louis left Paris and built in Versailles a palace worthy to
celebrate his glory. But the glamour at Versailles was all theatre and
decoration. For some reason, the court architect of Louis XIV in his
infinite wisdom had decided against plumbing and septic tanks.
Presumably because it was upsetting the symmetry of the clipped boxwood
hedges in his Majesty's "deer-park." The French aristocrat from the
17th century shat and peed behind the floor-long portieres directly
onto Versailles' polished parquet floor, never brushed his teeth,
barely ever washed and his fingernails reeked of gravy. At
often-frequented spots the parquet panels started rotting. The liveried
retainer holding on to powder puff and perfume for the aristocratic
rectum was a familiar fixture and as unnoticed as a piece of furniture.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, the rectum's owner, breeches down,
pulled out of his laced cuff a lorgnette and holding a perfumed napkin
to the powdered nose entertained himself from a little book, printed in
a tiny typeface. It was a book with illustrations about butt naked
couples whipping their tush with thorny roses and courting God's gift
for the energetic lover: the clap and the syphilis. A moment of solace
and meditation, except when the little dauphine came running at you.
Before the age of twelve he didn't wear any pants, and for laughs he
peed
high arcs at the bowing courtiers. His father didn’t relieve his royal
bowels
onto the parquet, like his courtiers. He used a 'pot de chambre,' a
piece of crockery with an eyeball painted on
the inner bottom, as if His Majesty’s performance among all those
watching valets and chambermaids wouldn't be public enough. Then the
royal physicians marched in, looked at the evidence and took a hearty
sniff.
In 1685,
Louis XIV
married his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigne,
Marquise
de
Maintenon. She was a Catholic convert from a Calvinist family. The
liaison sounded the death knell for the Protestants in
France. People of her former faith
accused Madame de Maintenon to be the mastermind behind the king’s
decision to repeal
the religious freedoms granted in 1598 in the Edict of Nantes. The
Protestants were
subjected to forced billeting, their schools were closed, the children
taken from the parents and forcibly baptized into Catholicism, the
places of worship confiscated and turned into stables. In 1685, on the
cynical
pretext that the near-extinction of Protestantism and Protestants in
France had made
any grant of privileges redundant, the Edict of Fontainebleau
graciously
granted"liberty to persons of the Pretended
Reformed Religion on condition of not engaging in the exercise of their
religion, or of meeting under pretext of prayers or religious services."
Amazing
what
a jurist can take in his mouth without barfing all over the place.
The Huguenots, however, were skilled in
crafts
and commerce, so the very same bill that prosecuted their faith also
prohibited
them from leaving the country. This failed completely.
200,000 Huguenots slipped through
the border controls, carrying their trade to countries only too happy
to
receive
them with open arms. As is evident from the letter, not every refugee
was a
fully educated adult. Nevertheless, the French economy was beginning to
falter
and the fortunes of war take a turn to the worse. The
English dared to fly their colors again.
©
– 3/27/2009 – by michael sympson 1,850
words, all rights reserved
