Mary Brotherton

“ Labour is a god, and his votaries wreath themselves with flowers. They are not, as in England, ashamed of being honest workmen and workwomen; they do not ape ladies and gentlemen, or wear dirty flowers, tawdry faded dresses, and coats and trousers that have evidently had many possessors. ”

“ There are generally about twenty-four enfans de famille, gentlemen’s children, who are unmanageable, at Mettray. They never see one another, and none but their preceptors ever see them. Their health is preserved by gymnastic exercises, and twice a week they are taken separately out walking. Within, their solitary hours are fully filled up by more lessons than they can possibly get through; and the solitude is found not to make them mad or melancholy. ”

“ Nine hundred and forty-three persons reside at Mettray, and it is virtually a colony, producing everything within itself. It has farms; a mill where their produce is ground; a butcher’s abbattoir where the cattle are killed; a brewery, on whose grains the cows to be killed are fattened, when they cease to give milk. The cows are always kept in stalls, and never go out into the fields; but they look sleek and healthy, and they are never allowed to live long. There are tailors and shoemakers on the establishment, and the boys are taught agriculture or a trade at choice. ”

“ As to the women, how smart and pretty they look with their well-fitting, clean dark gowns, the aprons of all hues with their ample poches, and the faultlessly snowy goffered cap, set so jauntily on the head, and the trim neat shoe and stocking, or grey bottine. ”

“ Though I saw gardens and fruit-trees all around, I could buy none, while in every little English village one can buy in this season a halfpennyworth of apples or plums. There seems no such thing as a village shop in the general line where hanks of worsted, knitting needles, sweetstuff, and apples tempt the passer by. ”

“ The great mistake English people make in travelling is to expect English customs in a foreign land. The sooner a traveller puts such an expectation out of his or her head the better. You never will get things as they are in England, but you may get different things as good, or even better. ”

“ Then the clarions sounded—the boys formed, like soldiers, in single then in double file, and all marched into school. In winter, school is kept morning and evening; in summer, only once during the hot part of the day.
After this we went to see the garden and the infirmary, which last is superintended by nine nuns from Tours. We saw them also at their prayers in their pretty little chapel and we peeped into their rooms, in each of which we saw a comfortable-looking bed with its white draperies. ”

“ I find travelling here very pleasant. I talk to everybody I meet in railway stations and carriages, and am rewarded by obtaining a great deal of useful information as to what is worth seeing, and a great many small civilities which are very valuable at the time. I have made several excursions out of the town; not because it was de rigueur, but because I had a fancy to go. I was much struck in coming along the railway to Tours, by a curious village mostly built in the rock, so I set off to visit it. ”

“ In frames, round the schoolroom, hang tables containing the name of every Colon educated at Mettray, with his subsequent conduct and position after quitting it, so that there is always, before the eyes of the boys, a prospect of infamy, or the reverse. The manner in which they behave will always be known to their ancient comrades, and in their old home. The obtaining this knowledge costs the establishment a large sum yearly, but it is found useful in inciting the Colons to do well. ”

“ If any one is behind time he is punished by having to wash the vessels of the home. Each home is called a family, and a boy remains in the family in which he is placed until he leaves Mettray. There is generally among them a feeling of fraternity which the conductors seek to develope, and some boys will not play except with their family. ”

“ They work in the fields in summer, and fine weather; and in winter and bad weather at their looms. The cloth they make is coarse but excellent, and their looms seem of a most primitive and clumsy description, with very heavy treadles like stems of poplar-trees. The working them must be very laborious. The wife of one told me her “man” could earn about thirty sous a day. These cave dwellings have a very picturesque appearance, with their vines growing beside the doors, and their chimneys projecting suddenly out of a copse of young brushwood clothing the hill top that forms the roof above. ”

“ But oh! there are unmentionable things in which the French of all classes seem as little civilised as our own Irish peasants or the Ojibbeway Indians! One can hardly conceive how such a want of decency and comforts necessary to humanity, can exist along with such natural taste and refinement in other things. ”

“ The Judgment is for the purpose of depriving these parents of all rights over them, and consigning them legally to the conductors of Mettray.
Since Mr. Demety founded the Colonie, in 1840, eighty other establishments, in different parts of France, have been founded on the same plan, as it is found the maintaining and educating them, as honest men, costs less to the Government than the retaining them hereafter in prison, and prosecuting them as criminals would do. ”

“ If they had been warm, I dare say they would have been good, but a half-cold dinner is my aversion, and they had clearly no idea of warming them up for my convenience. A French ménagère is always unwilling to relight the fire when it is once extinguished. ”

“ They are a perfect picture, and have a gentility of their own far above any cast-off airs and graces. Then they are all so polite and ready to oblige. It only needs a pleasant smile in speaking, and a cordial tone of voice to get all the civility you wish for in France. ”

“ A desire to enter the army is encouraged, and in order to stimulate their young imaginations, two pictures of Colons who have distinguished themselves by military prowess are suspended in the principal schoolroom; but otherwise, the conductors prefer to bring them up as agriculturists, that they may not return to the towns whence they have come and be exposed to the temptations of renewing their bad acquaintance there. ”

“ Their shirts arc always clean and white, and though they often wear no stockings, and wooden sabots, in lieu of shoes, there is a general air of bien être and respectability about them sadly wanting to the poor in England. ”

“ Until they make choice of a trade, the new comers are, for the first two or three months, employed under two or three paysannes in washing the clothes of the inhabitants of the Colonie. Each boy’s food costs rather less than a franc a day. There are several outlying farms where those destined for farm-labourers are taught farming. ”

“ The outside facing is generally cut so as to resemble an archway in the rock, and this is divided into squares to imitate an arch built of quarried stones. The door is always under this archway and sometimes the window of the principal room. Most of these dwellers in the rock are weavers. ”