Georges Guynemer | Page 7

frail, with his curls and his dainty little frock, he had an _air de princesse_. His father felt that a mistake was being made, and that this excess of tenderness must be promptly ended. He took the child on his knees; a scene as trifling as it was decisive was about to be enacted:
"I almost feel like taking you with me, where I am going."
"Where are you going, father?"
"There, where I am going, there are only men."
"I want to go with you."
The father seemed to hesitate, and then to decide:
"After all, too early is better than too late. Put on your hat. I shall take you." He took him to the hairdresser.
"I am going to have my hair cut. How do you feel about it?"
"I want to do like men."
The child was set upon a stool where, in the white combing-cloth, with his curly hair, he resembled an angel done by an Italian Primitive. For an instant the father thought himself a barbarian, and the barber hesitated, scissors in air, as before a crime. They exchanged glances; then the father stiffened and gave the order. The beautiful curls fell.
But now it became necessary to return home; and when his mother saw him, she wept.
"I am a man," the child announced, peremptorily.
He was indeed to be a man, but he was to remain for a long time also a mischievous boy--nearly, in fact, until the end.
When he was six or seven years old he began to study with the teacher of his sisters, which was convenient and agreeable, but meant the addition of another petticoat. The fineness of his feelings, his fear of having wounded any comrade, which were later to inspire him in so many touching actions, were the result of this feminine education. His walks with his father, who already gave him much attention, brought about useful reactions. Compi��gne is rich in the history of the past: kings were crowned there, and kings died there. The Abbey of Saint Cornille sheltered, perhaps, the holy winding-sheet of Christ. Treaties were signed at Compi��gne, and there magnificent f��tes were given by Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I, and Napoleon III. And even in 1901 the child met Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra, who were staying there. So, the palace and the forest spoke to him of a past which his father could explain. And on the Place de l'H?tel de Ville he was much interested in the bronze statue of the young girl, bearing a banner.
"Who is it?"
"Jeanne d'Arc."
Georges Guynemer's parents renounced the woman teacher, and in order to keep him near them, entered him as a day scholar at the lyceum of Compi��gne. Here the child worked very little. M. Paul Guynemer, having been educated at Stanislas College, in Paris, wished his son also to go there. Georges was then twelve years old.
"In a photograph of the pupils of the Fifth (green) Class," wrote a journalist in the Journal des D��bats, who had had the curiosity to investigate Georges' college days, "may be seen a restless-looking little boy, thinner and paler than the others, whose round black eyes seem to shine with a somber brilliance. These eyes, which, eight or ten years later, were to hunt and pursue so many enemy airplanes, are passionately self-willed. The same temperament is evident in a snapshot of this same period, in which Georges is seen playing at war. The college registers of this year tell us that he had a clear, active, well-balanced mind, but that he was thoughtless, mischief-making, disorderly, careless; that he did not work, and was undisciplined, though without any malice; that he was very proud, and 'ambitious to attain first rank': a valuable guide in understanding the character of one who became 'the ace of aces.' In fact, at the end of the year young Guynemer received the first prize for Latin translation, the first prize for arithmetic, and four honorable mentions."
The author of the D��bats article, who is a scholar, recalls Michelet's mot: "The Frenchman is that naughty child characterized by the good mother of Duguesclin as 'the one who is always fighting the others....'" But the best portrait of Guynemer as a child I find in the unpublished notes of Abb�� Chesnais, who was division prefect at Stanislas College during the four years which Guynemer passed there. The Abb�� Chesnais had divined this impassioned nature, and watched it with troubled sympathy.
"His eyes vividly expressed the headstrong, fighting nature of the boy," he says of his pupil. "He did not care for quiet games, but was devoted to those requiring skill, agility, and force. He had a decided preference for a game highly popular among the younger classes--_la petite guerre_. The class was divided into two armies, each commanded by a general chosen by the pupils themselves, and