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Matilda Betham-Edwards - East of Paris
Alsatian coiffe that enormous construction of black ribbon just mentioned. These young ladies
were daughters of the village mayor, a rich peasant, and had been educated in Switzerland, speaking
French correctly and fluently. Many daughters of wealthy peasants marry civilians at Strasburg, when
they for once and for all cast off the last feature of traditional costume. After a little chat, and being
bidden to return to tea in half an hour, we visited some other old acquaintances of my friends, a worthy
peasant family residing close by. Here also a surprise was in store for me. The head of the house and his
wife - both far advanced in the sixties and who might have walked out of one of Erckman-Chatrian's
novels - could not speak a word of French, although throughout the best part of their lives they had been
French subjects!
Admirable types they were, but by no means given to sentiment or romance. The good man assured me
in his quaint patois that he did not mind whether he was French, German, or, for the matter of that,
English, so long as he could get along comfortably and peacefully! He added, however, that under the
former regime taxes had been much lower and farming much more profitable. The good folk
brought out bread and wine, and we toasted each other in right hearty fashion. Over the sideboard of their
clean, well-furnished sitting room hung a small photograph of William II. On our return to our first host
we found a sumptuous five o'clock tea prepared for the ladies, whilst more solid refreshments awaited the
gentlemen in the garden.
Even in a remote corner of Alsace, memorialized by Germany's greatest poet, we find pathetic clinging to
France.
Everyone has read the story of Goethe and Frederika, how the great poet, then a student at the Strasburg
University, was taken by a comrade to the simple parsonage of Sesenheim, how the artless daughter of
the house with her sweet Alsatian songs, enchanted the brilliant youth, how he found himself, as he tells
us in his autobiography, suddenly in the immortal family of the Vicar of Wakefield. "And here comes
Moses too!" cried Goethe, as Frederika's brother appeared. That accidental visit has in turn immortalised
Sesenheim. The place breathes of Frederika. It has become a shrine dedicated to pure, girlish love.
A new line of railway takes us from Strasburg in about an hour over the flat, monotonous stretch of
country, so slowly crossed by diligence in Goethe's time. The appearance of the city from this side - the
French side - is truly awful: we see fortification after fortification, with vast powder magazines at
intervals, on the outer earthworks bristling rows of cannon, beyond, several of the thirteen forts
constructed since the war. The bright greenery of the turf covering these earthworks does not detract
from their dreadful appearance. Past the vast workshops and stores of the railway station - a small town
in itself - past market gardens, hop gardens, hayfields, beech-woods, all drenched with a week of rain,
past old-world villages, the railway runs to Sesenheim, alongside the high road familiar to Goethe. We
alight at the neat, clean, trim station (in the matter of cleanliness the new regime bears the palm
over the old), and take the flooded road to the village. An old, bent, wrinkled peasant woman, speaking
French, directs us for full information about Frederique - thus is the name written in French - to the
auberge. First, with no little interest and pride, she unhooks from her own wall a framed picture,
containing portraits of Goethe, and Frederika, and drawings of church and parsonage as they were. The
former has been restored and the latter wholly rebuilt.
As we make our way to the little inn over against these, we pass a new handsome communal school in
course of erection. On questioning two children in French, they shake their heads and pass on. The
thought naturally arises - did the various French Governments, throughout the period of a hundred and
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