Born in the canton of Vaud, Roud is considered the premiere poetic voice of French-speaking Switzerland, stretching in the western-most part of the country from the Lower Valais in the south, to Fribourg and up into the Bernese Jura. Educated, but countrified, after receiving his degree in Classics at Lausanne he returned to the family-owned property. Inherited from his maternal grandfather, the farm in Carrouge became his central focus. He never married, living out his life there as a bachelor.
6 comments:
A rather exotic collection of photographs! Thanks for posting.
Gustave Roud,
is that him in the last shot, holding a book?
The photos of the handsomely built young farmhand remind me of Simon. Simon was a small, slightly gaunt chap, not a muscular young man, such as these by Gustave, but he was very pleasant of personality. Simon and I were both Pages at Queen's Park back in the early 70's. After our 4 month long stint of running messages back and forth at the legislature, Simon invited me to go spend a week at his family farm home. They lived in Kemptville, not far from Smith Falls Ontario. Surprisingly, my strict military father allowed me to go. I got on the train at Union and got off at Smith Falls. Simon's father picked me up at the station and we drove to their farmhouse, in the middle of nothing but hay fields. It was late August, early 1970's. There was no sexual attraction, not on my part. But Simon and his family struck me as as very simple, educated caring people. At breakfast we had what seemed to me to be an unusual but very healthy breakfast: Raw, large grain quaker oats, in a bowl and with dry raisins on hand to add. Cold fresh cow milk was added. That was it. No cornflakes, no captain crunch or magic charms, no sugar-coated pop tarts from the toaster.
This novel breakfast really impressed me! My own family had come from a place where breakfast was merely a chunk of bread (and butter, if you were lucky - mostly we weren't lucky) and a cup of sweetened tea.
Immigrating to Canada, my parents quickly adopted the eating habits as promoted on our black and white TV, which picked up 3 or 4 channels from Buffalo New York. Lot's of commercials pushing sweet creations onto kids, so they could hound mom into buying their "new and improved" treats - instead of real food, such as flat, simple oats.
The simple farm life that Simon and his family lived was plain, healthy and not easy.
I became aware of just how much sweaty heavy work it was to rustle up the hay in the fields. I recall spending a good long afternoon in the sun, on top of a hay wagon, with Simon and his father. We worked in the field and in the barn. The work was hard. My strong and sinewy 14 year old body felt the soreness the following night. It was hard but satisfying work. Certainly a breakfast of oats will sustain much longer than a bowl of expensive, sweet but empty lucky charms.
Late summer, the smell of the hay fields, the golden sun, the farm animals, cats and chickens.
Ah, golden memories. Thank you Simon! Thank you Gustave, and thank you Mr. Starched Collar. G.
Most welcome Naven! I had seen his photos around, here and there, and curiosity took its usual course with me, haha!
OMG G! What a story! Amazing, the impressions one never forgets, small simple things that are invested in sometimes quite profound meaning! Wow! Thank you for sharing the story, love it! Much like my memoirs here! And indeed, yes, the last 5 photos are of Roud himself (and his model employee!).
That first set of the farmer... and, actually, all the farm photos are rather brilliant, capturing a sort of wistful masculinity. And I must say... the photographer was an interesting sort... he would have been fun to have for tea.
Upton I would have had tea based on the fellow's moustache alone. I'm not a National Socialist, but the fellow is intriguing, he is steeped!
Post a Comment