Family Sampled

[?]He Postman With No

[?]NGERS HATES HATES HER . . .'

[?]hen The Becke Family Sampled Life In Paris

By Lew Priday

:etches From Normandy is

;ly one of Louis Becke’s most lected books, and it is ques able whether many of the

it avid readers of this brilliant

ific writer’s South Sea yams e ever heard of it, much less 1 it.

PROBABLY never would have ead it myself were it not for l recent request I received from rell known Paris magazine for article cn Becke’s life, he book bears reading—it was 3, in fact, compared with ckeray for its humorous com it on life across the English nnel. Becke, when he wrote it, still writing and thinking of adventurous Pacific days, but Droved man of the world enough look with amusement on the y annoyances, as well as accept joys of living French in the y years of the Entente Cordiale. fter a few years in France, ;algia for Pacific shores drew back, to Fiji, to New Zealand, i six months rest at the hotel ;he Sydney “marine suburb” of :son’s Bay (to an islander cer ly the most sympathetic suburb), finally to his death from cancer he throat at a York Street, Syd hotel.

Hilarious Pages

)me of the most hilarious pages he Sketches quote comments on in northern France by one of se’s daughters, then aged eight, hich, untranslatable into French igh they may be, I hope I have iciently drawn the attention of ary Paris in my article.

Drtion of two of these quota s will convey their rich delight: ugust 3: We came to this place last two weeks it is a farm se with lots of little pigs and of Orchids, they make cider, woman is very nice but has a \tarch like a man and Awful y Nails enough to make annyone quite sick hut she is kind but been married twice and Mother ; she will soon get another 'oand when this one dies as she 'colding him to Death day and

night and he looks very 111. The postman comes once a Day he only has 1 hand the other has no fingers on it, they dropped off from a Frost bite in the pirenknees mountains. . .

A second entry: There are 19 Rabits in the Barn with some young Ones, Madame killed 2 big ones and let the blood

run into a casserole. She keeps the blood for Mademoiselle Mardon who washed her Face with it to cure the Spots on it, she is an Old maid and very Ugly and says horrid things, she says the King of Egland is a savage man and sent the toipedo boats to the Dogfish Banks to Massaker the poor Russian men ofwar and that english people ought to be ashamed to help a lot of monkeys like the Jappanese Japonais and she got cross when father said that some of the she Monkeys were very pretty and very Nice and that a Frenchman he knows whose name is Captain Loti in the navy Loved one of the she Monkeys because she was so Beautiful, and Mademoiselle said if it was true he was a Beast.

I think she is a beast to Wash in Blood, the postman with no fingers hates Her and says she is a Mean old Cat and no one is Brave enuf to marry such a Frite although she is so rich. Mr. Craig (an American who used to send Eecke tobacco) sent my father some

(Continued on page 97)

Sabina Becke, photographed in Eastbourne, England, in 1898, with the daughter whose youthful diary added hilarity to Louis Becke's "Sketches From Normandy". The daughter, now Mrs. Jim Hardy, today lives in Sydney. When this photo was taken, the Beckes were neigh bours of Kipling.

zards in a letter, and one of was so funny that he took.

Hid it but I found it under •lotting Padd, and it was a ~e of Addam and Eve, they sitting under a Tree quite I because their fig Leaves were g on a clothes line and it said s their first washing Day. father showed it to Madem ’ Mar don and said it was id in France and that it was shocking such awful obdecent should be printed and that in nd that the man who Sold would be put in Gail and the n who looked at it could be no but he was sure she would not as she was French. She got She is a hateful old thing and

keeps washing her Ugly face in rabits blood. .

It appears from this extract, written about 1903, that Becke had met Pierre Loti, the French naval officer whose exotic stories of love in Tahiti, Japan, and other places were once the rage. (But how feeble they seem today, alongside Becke’s realities).

German Governess

When in Auckland, about 1908, Mrs. Sabina Becke contributed one or two long but unremarkable articles to the New Zealand Herald signed “by an Australian Woman”, which add to our knowledge of the family’s life in France. Cheap liv ing there was, she said, a fallacy, in fact it was dearer than England (the same may be said today).

Becke seems to have been at least

making a living from his writings at the time, for Sabina speaks of renting an eight-roomed house, even of a German governess for the children. But it is the succession of French maids (one at a time) whose idiosyncracies Becke himself de velops: these bonnes he observes with the same kindly eye as he had for his Pacific island characters.

First came she whom he calls Madeleine, a cow-like Alsatian who left to marry an artilleryman; then Jeanne, whom he had to dismiss be cause she posed as a single woman while all the time she was married to a hussard who was doing 12 months in prison at Bordeaux; then, and best of all, came Celine, who broke so much crockery but was so much loved by the dog and the children —only 17 she was, “tall, erect, full-chested and willowy, built more

3oy,” of astonishing energy ility, but she, too, went off y an infantryman; and then srthe, who brought a soldier • house whom she said was her-in-law, but who eventu ifessed ce n’est pas mon ;re. mder Becke wrote; “How I he French military spirit!”

They Overstayed

Jecke family only meant to r rance a few weeks; instead, lyed four years. The fact Reef and Palm had been d in Paris with some suc ker the title Scenes de la nesienne may also have at- Becke across La Manche. m story is that the family ig in Dublin (where Becke i introduction for an illus iition of Moby Dick for G. P. & Sons), when he came n old skipper friend who ng a cargo of remounts for ich Army to Brittany. r ited the Beckes to go with t after seeing some of the is of the coast, they finally Le Havre, and decided to permanent lodgings. ;ine few people know very .bout what happened to 1 the period between the left Sydney for London, a living as an author, and rn to Sydney towards the is strangely diversified life: in Sydney in 1913. lere is one man who re- Becke quite well.

Mr. James Tyrell, Sydney’s ookseller —he started sell s at the age of 13, is now people he remembers sell :s to in Sydney as a lad L. Stevenson and Mark rell went to London repre- Vngus and Robertson with

who hid hto ma 0 d a nd e U a vSitto her of the Sarage Club g m ' Tyrell stm has his club memfrom Becke who tad decline-

frfend" d hi l

TCinbno- a i? f hb u ’ ? ud y ard tan to g 'se?him er t 0 g 0 Up t 0 Lon -