The Life of Henry Brulard by John Sturrock

Author:John Sturrock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2016-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

Sunday altar.—Mountains.—Périer garden.—Terrace 40 feet high decked with vines and flowers.—My uncle’s room.

J. My private garden next to the water stone.—A. Natural history room.—F. Locked cupboards containing minerals, seashells.—T. Lunch table containing excellent café au lait and very good small rolls well baked, perfect griches.—S. M. Santerre with his hat with the broad brim because of his weak, red-rimmed eyes.—H. Me devouring the news reports.—B. My grandfather’s (M. Henri Gagnon) study.—L. Pile of my uncle’s books smelling of musk which provided my education.

It was at point H that I perhaps experienced the most intense raptures of love for my country and hatred for the aristocrats, the legitimists of 1835, and the priests, its enemies.

M. Santerre worked in the post office and regularly brought us six or seven newspapers purloined from the subscribers, who only got them two hours later because of our curiosity. He would have his finger of wine and bit of bread and listen to the papers. Often he had had news from Lyon.

In the evenings I would go out on to the terrace on my own, to see if I could hear the cannon from Lyon. I see from the Table Chronologique, the one book I have in Rome, that Lyon was taken on 9 October 1793. So it was during the summer of 1793, at the age of TEN, that I went out to listen to the cannon from Lyon. I never heard them. I gazed enviously at the mountain of Méaudre (pronounced Mioudre), from where they could be heard. Our worthy cousin Romagnier, a cousin from having married a Mlle Blanchet, a relation of my grandfather’s wife, I believe, came from Mioudre where he went every other month to visit his father. When he got back he would make my heart pound by telling me:

“We can hear the cannon from Lyon very clearly, especially in the evening at sunset and when the wind is in the north-west (norwest).”

I used to contemplate point B with the most intense desire to go there, but that was a desire I had to be very careful not to express.

I should perhaps have placed this detail much higher up, but I repeat that where my childhood is concerned I only have very clear mental pictures, without dates and without any physiognomy.

I write them down more or less as they come to me.

I have no books and I don’t want to read any books; I have the help just of the stupid Chronologie which bears the name of that shrewd, dried-up man M. Loève-Veimars. I shall do the same for the Marengo campaign (1800), for that of 1809, for the Moscow campaign, for that of 1813 when I was an intendant in Sagan (Silesia, on the Bober); I don’t at all claim to be writing a history, but quite simply to be recording my memories so as to work out what sort of man I have been: stupid or intelligent, fearful or courageous, etc., etc. This in answer to the great saying: Gnoti seauton.

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