About My Father's Business. Archer Thomas

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Protestants of the district. They had formerly endured in silence; now they were desperate enough for insurrection. And the insurrection followed. Séguier was captured, maimed, and burnt alive; but others took his place. The war of the "Camisards" had commenced. Then it was that the leaders of the Protestant army in the Cevennes arose; – Roland and Cavalier, and the men who for a long time waged successful warfare against the royal forces, till defeat came accompanied by a new régime.

      The rumbling of the revolutionary earthquake was already shaking the throne and the persecuting church. Voltaire, educated by the Jesuits, and hating religion, was helping to deliver the martyrs of the Protestant faith even before he began to "philosophise."

      The struggle of the Camisards can only be said to have ceased when the persecutions were nearly at an end, and France itself was tottering. But what of that great Huguenot contingent which had invaded Britain, and was growing in number year by year as the émigrés, leaving houses and land, shops, warehouses, and factories, fled across the frontier, or got down to the shore, and came over the sea in fishing-boats and other small craft, in which they took passage under various disguises, or were stowed away in the holds, or packed along with bales of merchandise, to escape the vigilance of the emissaries who were set to watch for escaping Protestants? It is a little significant that of these non-combatant Protestants eleven regiments of soldiers were formed in the English army; but the truth is that of the vast number of émigrés who left France, some 30,000 were trained soldiers and sailors, and doubtless a proportion of these came to England, though probably fewer than those of their number who served in the Low Countries. At any rate, in 1687, two years after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there arrived in England 15,500 refugees, some of whom brought with them very considerable property, and most of them were men of education, or skilled in the knowledge of the arts, or of those manufactures and handicrafts which are the true wealth of a nation. At Norwich and Canterbury they quickly formed communities which became prosperous, and helped the prosperity of the districts, where they set up looms, and dyeworks, and other additions to the local industries. In London they formed two or three remarkable colonies, so that when Chamberlain wrote his "Survey of London," there were about twenty French Protestant churches, the greater number of which stood in Shoreditch, Hoxton, and Spitalfields – in fact, above 13,000 emigrants had settled in or near the metropolis. The one French Protestant church founded by Edward VI. was, of course, inadequate to receive them, and their immediate necessities were so great that a collection was made for their relief, and a sum of 60,000l. was by this means obtained in order to alleviate their distress.

      Among these émigrés were many noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, who, with their wives, were reduced to extreme poverty by the confiscation of their property. These had learned no trade, but with characteristic courage many of them set themselves to acquire the knowledge of some craft by which they might earn their bread, while some of their number learned of their wives to make pillow-lace, and so continued to support themselves in decent comfort.

      To those who knew the "old French folk," as they came to be called in after years, when the later emigration had again increased the number of the weavers' colony in Spitalfields, nothing was more remarkable than the cheerfulness, one might almost say the gaiety, that distinguished them. Reading the account given by French writers of the old Huguenots in France, one might be disposed to regard them as stern and sour sectaries, but that would be a very erroneous opinion. Perhaps the sudden freedom to which they came, the rest of soul, and the opportunity to endeavour to serve God with a quiet mind raised them to a tranquil happiness which revived the national characteristic of light-heartedness; but however it may have been, the real genuine old French weaver of Spitalfields and Bethnal Green was a very courteous, merry, simple, child-like gentleman. The houses in which these people lived, some of which are still to be seen with their high-pitched roofs and long leaden casements, were very different to the barely-furnished, squalid places in which their descendants of to-day are to be found; and, indeed, the Spitalfields weaver even of seventy years ago was usually a well-to-do person; while in the old time he could take "Saint Monday" every week, wear silver crown-pieces for buttons on his holiday coat, and put on silk stockings on state occasions. This was in the days when French was still spoken in many of the little parlours of houses that stood within gardens gay with sweet-scented blooms of sweet-william, ten-weeks-stock, and clove-pink. When there was still an embowered greenness in "Bednall," and Hare Street Fields were within a stone's throw of "Sinjun" – St. John, or rather St. Jean Street, – or of the little chapel of "La Patente," in Brown's Lane, Spitalfields. Even in later times than that, however, I can remember being set up to a table, and shown how to draw on a slate, by an old gentleman with a face streaked like a ruddy dried pippin. I was just old enough to make out that the tea-table talk was in a strange tongue; but I can remember that there were evidences of the refinements that the old refugees had brought with them across the sea. Not only in their neat but spruce attire, in their polite grace to women, in their easy, good-humoured play and prattle to little children, in their cultivation of flowers, their liking for birds, and their taste for music, but in a score of trifling objects about their tidy rooms, where the click of the shuttle was heard from morning to night, these old French folk vindicated their birth and breeding. By tea-services of rare old china, rolls of real "point" lace, a paste buckle, an antique ring, a fat, curiously-engraved watch, a few gem-like buttons, delicately-coloured porcelain and chimney ornaments; by books and manuscript music, or by flute and fiddle deftly handled in the playing of some old French tune, these people expressed their distinction without being aware of it. It has not even yet died out. Unfortunately, many of their descendants – representatives of a miserably paid, and now nearly superseded industry – have deteriorated by the influences of continued poverty; and even so long ago as the evil war-time of Napoleon I., many of the old families anglicised their names in deference to British hatred of the French, but there are still a large number of people in the eastern districts of London whose names, faces, and figures alike proclaim their origin.

      But we must go back once more to the time when the great collection was made. It is at least gratifying to know that the £60,000 soon increased to £200,000, and was afterwards called the "Royal Bounty," though Royalty had nothing to do with it during that reign. In 1686-7 about 6000 persons were relieved from this fund, and in 1688 27,000 applicants received assistance, while others had employment found for them, or were relieved by more wealthy émigrés who had retained or recovered some part of their possessions. But there were still aged and sick people, little children, widows, orphans, broken men, homeless women, and lonely creatures who had become almost imbecile or insane through the cruelties and privations that they had suffered. For these a refuge was necessary, and at length – but not till 1708 – an institution was founded in St. Luke's, under the name of the French Hospital, but better known to the "old folks" as the "Providence."

      Of what it was and is I design to tell in another chapter.

      WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN

      That great invading French army of nobles, gentry, artists, traders, handicraftsmen, of which some account has already been given, was added to from time to time, even as lately as the Revolution, and the restoration of the dynasty after the downfall of Napoleon, when a strange reaction against the Protestants was commenced, partly as a pretence for concealing political animosity. The department of the Gard was once more the scene of horrible atrocities, against which Lord Brougham invoked the aid of the English Parliament, and obtained the help of Austrian bayonets to protect the people, who were being murdered, tortured, or outraged, in defiance of feeble local authorities. But by this time there was a new generation of the first great Anglo-French colony in London. Spitalfields had grown to the dimensions of a township. Bethnal had begun to lose its greenness. There was, as there still is, a remarkable settlement about Soho. "Petty France" was as well known as the exhibition of needlework in Leicester Square, or Mrs. Salmon's wax figures in Fleet Street.

      Those poor refugees who fled to escape from the horrors of Sainte Guillotine, or the ruthless cruelties at Nismes, came to brethren many of whom had never seen the glowing valleys and golden fields of Languedoc, whence their forefathers escaped only with life and hands to work. They had СКАЧАТЬ