|
|
|
Book Review by Judith Haydel
Louisiana History, 2006, Vol 47 No 3, pages 368-70.
Evening Visits with a Sister or The Destiny of a Strand of Moss, originally written in French by Désirée Martin and first published in New Orleans in 1877, is an unusual and compelling book. It is a charming, insightful, and witty memoir of a courageous woman’s devotion to God and family: a depiction of daily life in St. James Parish, Louisiana, in the early to mid-nineteenth century; a peek inside the cloistered world of a sister of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the mid-nineteenth century; and a series of religious and moral lessons. Even readers who are not Roman Catholic, or who have never lived in or visited south Louisiana will enjoy it and learn something from it.
Désirée Martin is the “strand of moss” of the title; not as imposing, perhaps, as a giant cedar tree, but just as important in God’s plan. She was born on September 8, 1830, and reared in Grand Point in St. James Parish. She had one brother, Michel, to whom she dedicated her book, and a sister who died young. Her father died when she was two years old. From her own account, she was a rambunctious, headstrong child whom her family nicknamed “Miss Too Much.” Her mother’s often reiterated wish was for her to enter the convent. Although Désirée knew she did not have a vocation, she acceded to her mother’s wish and entered the Society of the Sacred Heart religious order at Grand Coteau, Louisiana, when she was sixteen. She spent most of her twenty-seven years in the Society teaching French. Her mother’s death, her own poor health, and an increasing conviction that God had something else in store for her led her to request to be released from her vows. Her request was granted, and in 1873 she returned to Grand Point to live with her brother and his family. She died November 8, 1877.
One of Miss Martin’s goals in writing her book was to teach her nieces and nephews the Catechism, moral values, and the importance of accepting one’s place in society. Writing it also gave her an opportunity to explain her departure from the convent, an unusual act at the time that created quite a stir among her friends and neighbors. The book was written in the form of veillées, or evening visits. In these veillées, Miss Martin presents her moral and religious lessons and illustrates them with examples from her life. Her writing style varies with her topic. The moral lessons are rather pedantic, sometimes bordering on the grandiloquent, but when writing about her life she paints captivating pictures that transport the reader from her home in Grand Point to Grand Coteau, St. Louis, New York, Cuba, and back to Grand Point. For example, in Evening Visit 45, “A Pleasant Journey,” Miss Martin describes the antics of a fellow train traveler to illustrate a lesson about the importance of good manners. “She began by raising her glasses and twitching her nose; then she stared at everyone and eyed them from head to toe with one of those cold and contemptuous smiles that, similar to the winter sun, drips off the face without warming the heart.” (p. 167) The object lesson is behave like ladies and gentlemen. “Be kind and thoughtful, my dear young friends, and you will know just how and when to be polite within your family as well as while traveling.” (p. 168)
Her description of her steamboat trip to Cuba not only illustrates her lyricism but also the translators’ skill. “As the night progressed, we saw the water being churned by the powerful paddle wheels of the ‘Bienville’ flaring up under our wake with a strange and phosphorescent glow, which gave it the appearance of a streaming mass of melted silver. We could see thousands of sparks in each drop of water. The silver-plated reflection from this fantastic light played on the side of the ship and on the white lifeboats suspended on its davits, like a mysterious light from a submarine palace.” (p.145)
Although Miss Martin’s original memoir is incomplete, Rémillard and Chachere’s superb translation and their faithful adherence to Miss Martin’s writing style and voice capture her deep and abiding religious faith as well as her wit and personal charm. Their impressively researched introductory and supplementary material, including maps and photographs, fill-in most of the historical and genealogical gaps and provide an illuminating historical context for the events of Miss Martin’s life. Rémillard and Chachere make the book vivid, educational, informative, and relevant for modern readers.
|
|
Book Review by Judith Haydel
Louisiana History, 2006, Vol 47 No 3, pages 368-70.
Evening Visits with a Sister or The Destiny of a Strand of Moss, originally written in French by Désirée Martin and first published in New Orleans in 1877, is an unusual and compelling book. It is a charming, insightful, and witty memoir of a courageous woman’s devotion to God and family: a depiction of daily life in St. James Parish, Louisiana, in the early to mid-nineteenth century; a peek inside the cloistered world of a sister of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the mid-nineteenth century; and a series of religious and moral lessons. Even readers who are not Roman Catholic, or who have never lived in or visited south Louisiana will enjoy it and learn something from it.
Désirée Martin is the “strand of moss” of the title; not as imposing, perhaps, as a giant cedar tree, but just as important in God’s plan. She was born on September 8, 1830, and reared in Grand Point in St. James Parish. She had one brother, Michel, to whom she dedicated her book, and a sister who died young. Her father died when she was two years old. From her own account, she was a rambunctious, headstrong child whom her family nicknamed “Miss Too Much.” Her mother’s often reiterated wish was for her to enter the convent. Although Désirée knew she did not have a vocation, she acceded to her mother’s wish and entered the Society of the Sacred Heart religious order at Grand Coteau, Louisiana, when she was sixteen. She spent most of her twenty-seven years in the Society teaching French. Her mother’s death, her own poor health, and an increasing conviction that God had something else in store for her led her to request to be released from her vows. Her request was granted, and in 1873 she returned to Grand Point to live with her brother and his family. She died November 8, 1877.
One of Miss Martin’s goals in writing her book was to teach her nieces and nephews the Catechism, moral values, and the importance of accepting one’s place in society. Writing it also gave her an opportunity to explain her departure from the convent, an unusual act at the time that created quite a stir among her friends and neighbors. The book was written in the form of veillées, or evening visits. In these veillées, Miss Martin presents her moral and religious lessons and illustrates them with examples from her life. Her writing style varies with her topic. The moral lessons are rather pedantic, sometimes bordering on the grandiloquent, but when writing about her life she paints captivating pictures that transport the reader from her home in Grand Point to Grand Coteau, St. Louis, New York, Cuba, and back to Grand Point. For example, in Evening Visit 45, “A Pleasant Journey,” Miss Martin describes the antics of a fellow train traveler to illustrate a lesson about the importance of good manners. “She began by raising her glasses and twitching her nose; then she stared at everyone and eyed them from head to toe with one of those cold and contemptuous smiles that, similar to the winter sun, drips off the face without warming the heart.” (p. 167) The object lesson is behave like ladies and gentlemen. “Be kind and thoughtful, my dear young friends, and you will know just how and when to be polite within your family as well as while traveling.” (p. 168)
Her description of her steamboat trip to Cuba not only illustrates her lyricism but also the translators’ skill. “As the night progressed, we saw the water being churned by the powerful paddle wheels of the ‘Bienville’ flaring up under our wake with a strange and phosphorescent glow, which gave it the appearance of a streaming mass of melted silver. We could see thousands of sparks in each drop of water. The silver-plated reflection from this fantastic light played on the side of the ship and on the white lifeboats suspended on its davits, like a mysterious light from a submarine palace.” (p.145)
Although Miss Martin’s original memoir is incomplete, Rémillard and Chachere’s superb translation and their faithful adherence to Miss Martin’s writing style and voice capture her deep and abiding religious faith as well as her wit and personal charm. Their impressively researched introductory and supplementary material, including maps and photographs, fill-in most of the historical and genealogical gaps and provide an illuminating historical context for the events of Miss Martin’s life. Rémillard and Chachere make the book vivid, educational, informative, and relevant for modern readers.
|
Book Review by Sister Frances M. Gimber, RSCJ
Review for Religious, 2005, Vol 64 No 3, pages 328-9. A chance discovery of a memoir written in French and published in 1977 in Nouvelle-Orleans, Louisiana, led the translators, Denise Rémillard Chachere and her father, Claude Rémillard, to bring out an English version of Desirée Martin’s story. Evening Visits With a Sister is that story. Using the device of a conversation each evening with her brother and nieces and nephews, Desirée describes her childhood home in rural Louisiana, her brief stay at the Sacred Heart boarding school in Grand Coteau, her entrance into the Society of the Scared Heart at the age of sixteen, her years as a religious serving in Louisiana, in Cuba, and at Manhattanville, the Society’s boarding school in New York. After twenty-seven years Desirée left the Society and returned to her family. From her narrative, it is clear that she was a woman of spirit, of imagination, of deep sincerity and joyous outlook. It is also clear that she did not have a personal conviction that God was calling her to religious life; she entered out of respect for her widowed mother’s wishes. Given that motivation, her decision to seek a release from her vows is not surprising. She says that she left when her health no longer permitted her to be of use to the Society. She spent her last years in her brother’s home, living quietly and teaching catechism. Her avowed purpose in writing her memoirs is to instruct her young relatives and to offer a justification in the face of criticism for her departure from the convent. A didactic style is apparent throughout. It is the style of late 19th-century Catholicism, moralistic, pious and emotional. Her subtitle, “The Destiny of a Strand of Moss,” is reminiscent of “The Story of the Springtime of a Little White Flower.” She is sensitive to nature and to people, and she has a sense of humor. Describing her sense of importance upon taking charge of her grandmother’s flock of geese, she remarks, “I assumed my duties on March 4, 1839, with as much joy and solemnity as Martin Van Buren assumed the Presidency of the U.S.” The translators set out to reproduce the style of the era and to convey Miss Martin’s real voice. They are mostly successful; if the prose is somewhat overwritten, so is the original. Here and there, the translation misses a beat: a reference to the “Host-God” on the occasion of the First Communion and use of “recluse” to translate solitare when speaking of Jesus. There is an error in a note referring to Miss Martin’s vows, and some religious expressions sound alien to Catholic ears. However, occasional minor lapses are compensated for by the wealth of information in the footnotes and appendices. The editors have gone to great lengths to document by maps, photos, and a chronological chart the known facts of Desirée Martin’s life. In so doing, they have brought to life for the 21st-century English reader a vignette og 19th-century American Catholic life. Students of Acadiana, religious life, and vocation would be especially interested in this book.
|
 |
| Claude, Rose-Marie, Denise, Father Poché, Steve |
|
“Sister Desireé Martin’s Book Is Now Available At The Historical Museum” By Louis A. Poché, SJ, Contributor News-Examiner, Lutcher, Louisiana January 6, 2005, p.1 A special gift to residents of St James Parish arrived this year with publication of the life and stories of Desireé Martin, the Grand Point native and former nun who built the first Catholic chapel in Grand Point and published a book based on the evening stories she told her nieces and nephews. The Destiny of a Strand of Moss, which was first published in New Orleans in 1877 under its French title, Le Destin d'un Brin de Mousse, has long been regarded as a masterpiece of early Louisiana literature. Thanks to Claude Rémillard, a native of French Canada and now resident of Santa Clara, California, and his daughter, Denise Chachere, of St Louis, Missouri, a definitive annotated translation is now available. Evening Visits With a Sister is the result of many years of labor, with Denise Chachere in St Louis spending hours and days of her spare moments digging into the archives of the Religious of the Sacred Heart. In Grand Point, Desireé lived with her brother, Michel Martin, and his large family. The stories she told her young listeners take the reader through her adventurous life and trials. Desireé was an accomplished French teacher at the Sacred Heart schools in Convent and Grand Coteau (Louisiana), St Louis (Missouri), Manhattanville (New York), and Sancto Spiritus, Cuba. It is clear she was also an artist and an interested collector of mineral specimens. But perhaps her truest gift lay in her firm faith in God and her ability to inspire children with a sense of her own deep love and devotion. It is this personal quality of her writing that most engages the reader. Convent and Grand Point residents were honored this past Christmas with the visits of Claude and Rose-Marie Rémillard and Stephen and Denise Chachere. The historians and authors from California and Missouri were the guests of the extended Neal Poché family of Hester, all descendants of Michel Martin. After attending Christmas eve Mass at St. Michael Church, the church in Convent where Desireé had once prayed, our visitors marveled at the fires burning on the levee, savored Papa Neal's gumbo, and met with family members and friends who came to Hester from far and wide to gather with them around the Christmas fire. Denise and Claude also autographed many books. Copies of Evening Visits With a Sister are available at the St James Parish Historical Society Museum in Lutcher or online at www.eveningvisits.com. Call 225-869-9752.
|
|
|
