Juniper Farm

by René Bazin

A brilliant story of life in rural france in the 1920's.

180 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

René François Nicolas Marie Bazin (26 December 1853 – 20 July 1932) was a French novelist.

Born at Angers, he studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became Professor of Law in the Catholic university. In 1876, Bazin married Aline Bricard. The couple had two sons and six daughters. He contributed to Parisian journals a series of sketches of provincial life and descriptions of travel, and wrote Stephanette (1884), but he made his reputation with Une Tache d'Encre (A Spot of Ink) (1888), which received a prize from the Academy. He was admitted to the Académie française on 28 April 1904, to replace Ernest Legouvé.

René Bazin was a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, and was President of the Corporation des Publicistes Chretiens.

Reviews

[Orsolya Könyvtáros (formerly Memp) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a series of often-beautiful vignettes about a family in rural France in the 1890s, and I only wish the entire book had been as charming and wholeheartedly lovable as the very beginning.

The Fruytiers live on Juniper Farm, their ancestral land: Nicholas, a hardworking man of few words who loves his family; Marie, a saintly woman of humor and motherliness; and their four children, serious Max, reliable Peter, imaginative Vincent, and affectionate Jeanne. Bazin's portrait of Marie is particularly winning. She is known for "the soundness of her advice" and is "adored, respected, and trusted" by her husband and friends; "to look at her was like gazing on some quiet peaceful landscape that made you think: 'How restful that is!'" It is Marie, a few chapters in, who tells her beloved children that they will someday "break into blossom too, just like the meadows" on the day they each choose a path in life.

The descriptions of the land and the Fruytiers' way of life are lush, lingering, and reverent. The sacredness of honest work is one of the central themes. One of my favorite passages describes the cultural education of the children, who learn from their love of home how "to know and love their whole native country":

If at school, for instance, or in reading a book, a forest were mentioned, they immediately thought of the woods near the farm; if a palace, they enlarged in imagination the house, the stables and barn, their own courtyard and pond at home; when they read about the beauties of the great French cathedrals, of Notre Dame, Rheims, and Chartres, then they saw in their minds the image of a church like the church at Trois Épines, only much bigger, with taller spires, more statues, older windows, and choir boys among whom they did not recognize their own friends.

I wondered several times throughout the first few chapters why I had never heard of such a marvelous book before. It soon became obvious.

About halfway through, there is a shift in continuity without explanation. Marie, first described as someone who "never complains," is now "a grumbler." Gentle Nicholas threatens to beat her for performing an act of charity, and she is white-faced and trembling as she defies him. Worst of all, neither parent is able to cope with the children growing up and leaving the home: when Vincent asks for permission to be apprenticed for a mechanic, Nicholas becomes a roaring red-faced clodhopper, and even Marie, who's more sympathetic, doesn't end up having the ability to be supportive of the "callings" of her children which she had so looked forward to celebrating. In fact, young Vincent can't even go back home for visits because of the intensity of the guilt-tripping and manipulation he faces from both parents and siblings as a result of having chosen something non-agricultural as a life path (despite repeatedly showing no talent for farming). I'm familiar with this mentality -- we're a happy family and we support you in whatever you want to do in life, unless it involves leaving the happy family -- and it disappointed me greatly to find it here.

Even so, Bazin could at least have made this situation more intentional: if Marie and Nicholas had grappled with their faith over it, or remembered past resolutions, or had any level of the humble self-awareness I'd been led to think they possessed, it could have been profound. There could have been a reprise of a much earlier scene where the family watches migrating birds, and a meditation on the idea that sometimes people leave our lives for a season but return someday. Then again, if families are supposed to stay together indefinitely, where are Nicholas's relatives? or Marie's? The Fruytiers have no extended family, and Juniper Farm itself isn't even a multigenerational household.

A hint of resolution comes when Nicholas visits Vincent in Nevers and admits that people who build things, like cathedrals, are doing God's work as much as farmers do. This doesn't last long, because shortly afterwards Max, the eldest, leaves for his three years' military service and kicks off an even more intense familial grieving process. At this point I lost the rest of the goodwill I'd had for the Fruytier parents. For a working-class family in the 1890s, they are extraordinarily privileged: they are in good health; they own a prosperous farm; their children survive to adulthood; they are respected in the community; they suffer no tragedy. Within their society, apprenticeship and conscription are a normal part of life, not an aberration or a shocking turn of events. Yes, it's bittersweet when children grow up, but it's not tragic. It's the opposite of tragic.

At the end, there is a grudging sort of resolution featuring a tender moment of family prayer for Max, but it comes with a level of resignation and grief that, again, seemed disproportionate to me. As the book itself was, throughout, explicitly Catholic, I will be explicitly Catholic here, too: Nicholas and Marie are spiritually crippled by their inordinate attachment to one "season" or aspect of their married vocation (parents of young children). Their years-long negative response to the coming-of-age of their sons and ultimate inability to accept that God might have plans for some of these young men that do not involve their hometown is extraordinarily selfish. The purpose of a family is not for a family to exist. This trap ensnares family-minded Catholics to this day.

A note on the translation: this was originally published as Il était quatre petits enfants in the 1920s (I can't find a definitive original publication date). Margery Williams Bianco's translation was published in 1928. I admire her work: she did not anglicize the flow of the language or dialogue for her readers and the Gallic atmosphere is uninterrupted.

[Neil Munday · Rating 4 out of 5]

a beautiful book about life in rural france in the 1920's