Rev. Michael Houdin, A.M. He was born in France, 1705, educated a Franciscan friar, and, on Easter day, 1730, ordained a priest by the Archbishop of Trêves, and subsequently preferred to the post of superior in the convent of the Recollects at Montreal. But, disgusted with monastic life, M. Houdin, at the commencement of the French war, left Canada and retired to the city of New York. Here, on Easter day, 1747, he made a public renunciation of Popery, and joined the Church of England. Attaining great proficiency in the English language, in June, 1750, he was invited by the people of Trenton, N.J., to officiate as a missionary in that State.
When he first reached New York with his wife, in June, 1744, Governor Clinton, suspicious of all Frenchmen at that moment, confined them to their lodgings, guarded by two sentinels. The following day he was examined by his Excellency, and learned that 'the French intended to attack Oswego with eight hundred men, the French having a great desire of being masters of that place.' Then M. Houdin was ordered to reside at Jamaica, Long Island, where he complained that his circumstances were 'very low,' and 'can do nothing to get a living;' that 'his wife and himself must soon come to want, unless his Excellency will be pleased to take him into consideration.' After this appeal, the authorities advised his return to the city, on his taking the oath of allegiance.
For some years, M. Houdin officiated at Trenton and the neighboring places as an 'itinerant missionary;' and in 1759 his services were required, as a guide, for General Wolfe, in his well-known expedition against Quebec. Before marching, he preached to the Provincial troops destined for Canada, in St. Peter's church, Westchester, from St. Matthew, ch. x. 28: 'Fear not them which kill the body.' And the French chaplain escaped the dangers of the war; but his brave General, at the very moment of victory, fell mortally wounded, on the Heights of Abraham, September 13, 1759. After the reduction of Quebec, he asked leave to join his mission again; but General Murray would not consent, as there was no other person who could be depended on for intelligence of the French movements. While M. Houdin was stationed at Quebec, an attempt was made by the Vicar-General of all Canada to seduce him from English allegiance, with an offer of great preferment in the Romish Church. This pressing invitation found its way into the hands of Generals Murray and Gage, when they sent a guard to arrest the Vicar-General.
M. Houdin, returning to New York, in 1761, was appointed 'itinerant missionary' to New Rochelle, by the 'Venerable Society' of England, 'he being a Frenchman by birth, and capable of doing his duty to them, both in the French and English languages.' During his incumbency, Trinity church, New Rochelle, received its first charter from George III., which the present corporation still enjoys with all its trusts and powers. It is dated in 1762, and was exemplified by his Excellency George Clinton in 1793. In 1763 he writes, complaining that the Calvinists used unlawful methods to obtain possession of the church glebe. These were the few old French Protestant families who had not conformed to the Church of England; and Houdin says of them: 'Seeing the Calvinists will not agree upon any terms of peace proposed to them by our church, * * * we are in hopes the strong bleeding of their purse will bring them to an agreement after New York court.'
The French Protestant preacher continued his pious labors at New Rochelle until October, 1766, when he departed this life. He was a man of considerable learning, irreproachable character, and esteemed a worthy Christian missionary. His remains, which were the last of the Huguenot pastors, were interred beneath the chancel of the old French church at New Rochelle, and by the side of his predecessors, Boudet and Stouppe. Since the removal of this sacred edifice, the ashes of these earliest Protestant French missionaries to our land repose beneath the public highway, and not a stone tells where they lie, or commemorates their usefulness, excellences, or piety. Their silent graves ought not thus to remain neglected and unhonored: some monumental record should mark the spot where these early Huguenot preachers in America were entombed.
Boudet, Stouppe, and Houdin were the last of the Huguenot preachers in our land of whose histories we can find anything, and as they never can be fully written, we have made a more full record of these fragments concerning their memories, than otherwise would have been written. Especially let the children of the French Protestants in Westchester venerate these men, who were consecrated to sacred offices in the days of their pious ancestors, and, like Moses, led them from oppression and bondage to the land of Canaan in this Western World.
We might mention many who deserve the honor, among the descendants of the New Rochelle Huguenots; but the name of one will suit our purposeJohn Jay. He was born in New York, from a family originally of La Guienne, France; and he was sent, by his fellow citizens to the General Congress which assembled at the commencement of the conflict between the colonies and England. In 1774 he signed the act of association to suspend the importation of British merchandise; in 1779 he was honored with the presidency of Congress. At the expiration of this important post, Mr. Jay was commissioned to represent his country at the court of Louis XVI., and he was one of the four commissioners who signed, on the 30th November, 1782, the treaty of Versailles, by which Great Britain recognized our National Independence. A Huguenot, Elias Boudinot, was the first president of the great national institution, the American Bible Society; and at his death, bequeathed to it a noble benefaction. The French Protestants were always ardent lovers of the Bible, and John Jay succeeded Mr. Boudinot in his important office of president to that noble institution. 'No one in America,' says the eminent Dr. Baird, 'need blush at having one of these respectable Huguenots among his ancestors;' and Bancroft, the historian of our land, recognizes in them that moral elevation of which they gave so many proofs in every country where they settled; and he adds: 'The children of the French Calvinists have certainly good reason to hold the memory of their fathers in great honor.' (Vol. ii, p. 183.) So think we.
MACCARONI AND CANVAS
XA WALK AROUND SEGNIThere are three quiet old places on the Continent that Caper always remembers with solemn pleasureBreda in Holland, Segni in Italy, Neufchâtel in Switzerland. He reposed in Breda, rested in Segni, was severely tranquil in Neufchâtel: the real charm of travelling is best appreciated when one is able to pause in one's headlong career in some such place and meditate over it. Caper paused for many months at Segni.
Segni, or Signia, a Latium city of the Volscians, was, after its colonization by the Romans, always faithful to the Republic. Strabo, Pliny, Plautus, Martial, Juvenal, Silius, Italicus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, and Livy, all make mention, in one way or another, of this city. Little is known of its history, from the fact that it was burned to the ground by the order of the Duke of Alva, viceroy of Naples, on the 14th of August, 1557; and in the fire all records of the city were destroyed. Its polygonal or Cyclopean walls, of Pelasgic origin, still remain in many parts as perfect as they ever were: consisting of gigantic blocks of hewn limestone, they are fitted one into another with admirable precision; no mortar was used in laying them, and there they stand, these well-named Cyclopean walls, for some of the stones are 12 feet long by 5 feet wide, firmly as if centuries on centuries had not sent a myriad of storms to try their strength. There are several gates in these walls, noted among which is one called the Saracen's Gate; it is known in architecture from its indicating by its form one of the first attempts toward the pointed arch.
In walking through the town, you find here and there bits of middle-age architecture, which have escaped ruin; here a door, there a window, of graceful design, built around with the rough masonwork for which Segni is noted in later days; but the greater number of the houses are constructed in the rudest manner, indicating the poverty and ignorance of the majority of the inhabitants. It is, however, a decent poverty, for, to the credit of the town be it spoken, there was not, when Caper was there, a professional beggar, excepting the friars, in or around it.
Taking the first streetif a rough road winding around the top of the mountain, and but four or five feet wide, may be called soCaper saw at the doors of the houses, standing chatting to each other, many old women, their white hair flying in every direction, who, as they talked, knitted stockings; or, with distaff in hand, twirled the spindle, making flax into thread for spinning, or wool into woof and web for weaving. Hearing a shuttle, he looked in at an open door, and found a young girl busily weaving a heavy blue cloth at a queer old loom; not far from her, an elderly woman was weaving flax thread into coarse, heavy linen goods. Passing along, he heard the whir of millstones, and, entering a house, saw a girl working one of the handmills of the country; on a stand, where there was a stone basin, the girl turned in the wheat; another stone, fitting exactly in the basin, was attached to the ceiling by a long pole; catching hold of this, she gave the stone a rotary motion, grinding the wheat very fairly.
Suddenly Caper saw in the back part of the room a woman, holding what seemed a large, red-headed caterpillar, without any fuzz on it; she was evidently nourishing it in the way represented in that famous painting 'The Roman Daughter,' thus proving that it was a baby. Its resemblance to the caterpillar arose from the way it was swathed: around all the Segnian infants they wind a strip of knit or woven cloth, about eight feet long and four inches wide, fairly mummifying them; then, to crown the work, they put on their little bullet heads, a scarlet cap with brilliant flowers and ribbons, making the poor babies resemble anything but Christian productions. In a neighboring town they hang their babies up in a wicker basket, resembling the birch-bark contrivances for our Indian papooses.
Continuing his walk, our artist next came to where they were building a house; and its future occupant, who was a man of some enterprise and action, told Caper, with a long face, that he almost despaired of seeing it completed: the harvest came, and almost every workman went off to the wheat fields, leaving the house unfinished until they were ready to recommence work on it, well knowing that there were no other ones in the town able to do their labor; however, those who mixed mortar, carried tiles, and stone, and plaster, were hard at work. These laborers were girls of from twelve to sixteen years old, and one or two of them, spite of dirt and hard labor, were really handsome, with bright, intelligent countenances. They earned one paul (ten cents) each a day, and seemed contented and happy, joking with each other and laughing heartily nearly all the time. Probably our Chippewa Indians would think twice before they set the young women of their tribe to hod-carrying as a livelihood; but then the Chippewas are savages. The hods carried by these girls on their heads were flat, wooden trays, square at each end: once poised on the head, they balanced themselves, and were carried around without a fall. This carrying on the head, by the women, from an eight-gallon barrel of wine down to a sickle or pocket handkerchief, helps to give them their straight forms and fine carriage of head, neck, and shoulders.
Napoleon the First, in breaking down most of the feudal customs of the Papal States, should be regarded by the poor inhabitants as one of their greatest benefactors; still, many a remnant of the middle ages remains firmly marked in the habits of the country people. Even now the inhabitants of the Campagna live, not in isolated houses, but in small towns built around the once protecting castle or powerful monastery, where, in times past, they fled, when attacked in the fields by the followers of some house inimical to the one under whose protection they lived. Follow the entire Campagna, from Rome to Naples, by way of Frosinone, and you will see the ruins of watch towers, built to warn the workmen in the fields of the approaching enemy. Thus, in Segni, although the fields cultured by the inhabitants, lay miles away at the foot of the mountain, yet every day seven eighths of the 5,000 inhabitants walked from four to six miles or more down the mountains to the scene of their daily labors, returning the same distance at sunset. Often and often Caper saw the mother, unable to leave the infant at home, carry it in a basket on her head to the far-away fields, bringing it back at night with the additional burden of corn shelled or wheat garnered in the field. Trotting along gayly at her side, you may be sure, was the ever-present black pig, with a long string wound around his body, by which he is attached to some tree or stone as soon as he reaches the fields, and thus prevented from rooting where he should not root. The day's labor of his mistress finished, she unties him, wraps the string around his body, and he follows her up to the town with the docility of a well-trained dog.
It is the women, too, who daily walk four or five miles up the mountain for their supply of firewood. Arriving at the forest of the commune, they collect split wood and fagots, tying them into round bundles, a yard long, and two or three feet in diameter, and return to Segni, carrying this small woodpile all the way on their heads. It is the women, too, who bring water from the fountains for their household use, in A copper vessels (conche) holding from two to three gallons: these are placed on the head, and carried self-balancing sometimes for long distances. At a fair held at Frosinone, Caper once saw several women, each one carrying on her head two of these conche filled with water, one balanced on the other; and this for half a mile up a steep road, from the fountain at the foot of the mountain, to the town above.
The women, too, do their fair share of harvesting; they cut the wheat with sickles; then, after it is cut, separate the grains from the stalk by rubbing a handful of stalks with a small piece of wood in which a series of iron rings are placed, making a rude rasp; collecting the grains, they then carry them from the fields, sifting them at their leisure in a large round sieve, suspended from a triangle of long poles; then, on a breezy day, you may see them standing over a large cloth, holding a double handful of wheat high above their heads, and letting it fall: the wind blows away the chaff, and the clean grain falls on the outspread cloth.
In the autumn, when the men are employed in the vintage, comes the chestnut season; and then the women, who are not busy in the vineyard, and who regard it as a frolic, go for miles up in the mountains, collecting the nuts, large as our horse chestnuts. They form no small part of the winter stock of food for the mountaineers, while the refuse nuts are used to fatten the pet pig. We can have but small conception of the primeval look these chestnut woods wear, the trees growing to an enormous size, many a one being ten to twelve feet in diameter. The weather is glorious during this season: clear, bright, and buoyantly refreshing, blow the autumn winds; and as Caper, day after day, wandered among the old trees, now helping an old woman to fill a sack with the brown nuts, now clubbing the chestnuts from the trees for a young girl, he, too, voted chestnut gathering a rare good time. Far off, and now near, the girls were singing their quaint wild songs. Thus heard, the rondinella sounds well: it is of the woods and deserts; strange, barbaric, oriental, bacchantic, what you please, save dawdling drawing-room and piano-ic.