My
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
and obstruction to their own schemes and ambitions. It was a lesson he
would
not
forget. The moment 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 brand-new navy on the waters. 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 removed his seat of government from Paris and built the
palace of Versailles. 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, if not 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 these 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 be made to take in
his mouth
without barfing all over the place.
The Huguenots 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
