The various scenes of Toile de Jouy

Eve's Story

My master told me to bring the horse to water, it was late afternoon, still warm, my little brother came with me dogs on his heels trying to get some water too. 

My day wasn't over yet, I had to muck the cows, milk them, gather eggs and take the laundry off the lines.   What a long day it has been.  Like all my days, without seeing my lover Bernard, the Smithy.   Then I saw him shoeing a horse, he was bare chested, black from the fire but his teeth flashed so white when he saw me.   I couldn't talk to him, the mistress had said so.  She forgets how it was to be young and in love.   To her I was just a poor maid doing most of the chores around here.  No time for fun but sometimes Bernard slipped me a litle flower and my day was brilliant, sky so blue, green , green grass calling me to roll in it and forget it all.  Forget what a poor farm girl I was, yearning for pretty dresses, delicate shoes, ribbons in my hair and Bernard by my side holding my hand.   It was just a foolish wish but my day was better with the daydreaming. 

I stopped the horse from drinking too much, him being over heated.  What would the master say if his prize horse was taken ill.  So we went home slowly, enjoying the last rays of sunshine, hoping for a better day tomorrow.  Maybe I could see Bernard, smiling at me, and I could even wave at him.   Now I am looking forward to tomorrow and who knows, something wonderful might happen.


Paula's dark dark story

Peter’s Perfect Paste

Madame Sophie Martin carefully inserted the long pole into the dash churn, looking furtively over her shoulder as she did so. The cream she was using had risen to the top of the cooling bucket of milk just that morning, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. As she worked the pole vertically in the barrel, she added a few drops of ammonia, to control the stench.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Monsieur Peter Martin was a traveling salesman, a peddler of all types of wares commonly used in households in the late 1800s. He would hook his old mare up to his cart, piled high with buttons and bows, scissors and knives, twine and utensils, and travel from village to village. He was gone from home for days at a time, and that’s when Sophie could relax. Because when her husband was at home, he was often violent, rarely sober, and always abusive.

One evening, after a few weeks of hard selling while traveling the back roads of their region, he fell asleep at the kitchen table after supper, with the hands he had used to throttle her -- as he yelled that she had made the worst stew in all of France -- lying peacefully alongside him. It had been an evening of shouted accusations, thrashings with a switch, and threats of worse to come. Sophie was bruised, battered, and exhausted, tired of living like a frightened wretch. This was not the life she had dreamed of as a girl, nor the life Peter had promised her when he came a-courting when she was barely 18.  Now, ten years later, her life on a small plot of land in the countryside revolved around caring for the hens, mending the nets Peter would sell to local fishermen, and handling all of the household chores. She felt relaxed and at peace only when her husband was on the road. It was too much. It was enough. She snapped.

As Peter snored, his head lolling against the rough boards of the kitchen table, Sophie took the huge knife she used to cut off the chickens’ heads and raised it high above her head. Then, with all her might, she swung it down, right into the filthy flesh of her husband’s neck. He didn’t stir. She looked aghast, then, her excitement mounting, she saw that she had made a clean cut. It was done. Peter would trouble her no more.

She got to work. She carefully severed each of Peter’s limbs, moving his arms into the deep kitchen sink to cut them into tiny pieces, then his legs, then his torso. She shaved his head and disposed of the hair in the compost heap. She grew a little squeamish as she broke his skull, and sawed the features off his face, but she knew it had to be done.

Under the fading light of a waning moon, she moved all of the pieces of Peter into a fishing net strung beneath the henhouse, then lifted them into the coop. She checked the big bucket of milk and realized the cream would be separated and ready for churning the next morning.

She hardly slept. As the sun rose, so did she, and began her work. Piece by awful piece, she fed the scraps of Peter’s body into the churn, adding every so often a healthy dose of the lye she kept on hand for making soap. Once all the body parts were disposed of, she set to work in earnest, working the long pole up and down, up and down, adding lye as necessary, and humming a snatch of an old-fashioned tune that her mother had taught her years ago as they churned butter together at home:

Come butter come

Come butter come

Peter stands at the gate

Waiting for a buttered cake

Ha! Sophie thought. Peter will never stand at my gate again. She would become the first woman peddler in all of France, and she would sell a new product, a special paste that could be used for cleaning everything from grease to blood. She would call it Peter’s Perfect Paste, and it would be a hit. She would be much more successful than Peter ever was. After all, she had a way with men.

Jackie's contribution

 Maggy loved when it was bedtime.   Her families milk farm meant that her parents  retired in the early evenings and she was happy to go up the three flights of rickety stairs to her own bedroom.    Her life  had been shaped by toile de Jouy wallpaper that her mother had papered on the walls when she was 4 years old and from that time on she became enthralled with the stories she was able to invent just by looking at the different scenes on her bedroom walls.

The  French rural landscapes were in a darker shade of pink - the colour of wine - a rich Burgundy wine - and the various scenes of the French countryside let her dream - let her drift into an imaginary wonderland and become the person she was to turn out to be.   Later  at the age of 8/9 years of age she gazed at the designs on this wallpaper and dreamt a different fantasy each night.   One night  a dark handsome prince  would come to their farm located in the deep French countryside and ask her to dance.   They would twirl, twist and swirl  round and round in circles with the dogs and chickens playing at their feet.   She would wear pretty blue dancing shoes, a cotton fichu and long pleated skirt with a bolero in the same blue as her satin shoes.   Her handsome partner would be in grey velvet - a waistcoat made of peacock feathers and a beautiful cone shaped hat on his head.    He would lead the way and they would gaily dance into the night - until Maggy fell asleep in her childhood bed.
Upon waking she would again stare at her wall of the bedroom and remember her dream in part - put it aside until she was again alone the next night and a new story and trance would commence.    She loved her wallpaper - it allowed her to do what she liked best.  Dream and drift into a state of real unreality.     having finished her homework, eaten her meagre supper - said goodnight to Ma and Pa and go to her room she loved nothing more than  lie  on her bed half asleep and half awake drifting in and out of a fantasy world ;
Then she was the girl washing clothes in the stream that ran next to the pretty field full of buttercups, stretching up to catch the butterflies ………. another time she became a man on a horse leading him to a fountain and letting him slurp up as much cold fresh rainwater as his heart desired surrounded by the sheep and their lambs.    Another time she was churning butter, the chicken coop perched high in the trees and faithful puppy at her feet.   When she could feel the butter taking form in the barrel as the milk set and wrapped itself around the big wooden spoon making it harder and harder to turn -  she’d  smell the thick milkiness that would make wonderful butter for her bread in the mornings.    The cockerel forever present would allow her to  stroke his feathers and he would fluff up proudly showing off his beautiful colours of crimsons blues and greens.    Perhaps he would allow her  to pluck one of those feathers and stick it in her hat.   Those dreams lead her to  many imaginary adventures.
When the two young youths came to pour fresh juice during grape harvest time  - she would accept the cup they offered her - and although so very young admire the golden head of hair of the youngest boy - look into his blue blue eyes that were clear as the sky, hair wavy as the wind and she felt a desire, felt the beginnings, a stirring of something feminine that she couldn’t define.

As she grew older, married a boy with flaxen hair she papered the walls of their home with this famous toile de Jouy wallpaper - they had many children who in turn danced away their evenings and so it continues ;   these classic patterns are still popular today